Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

  “It was around the middle of August 1972 when Lilla and I were talking,” Bobby said in his statement. “She knew of a $5,000 contract and asked if I was interested in this sort of thing. I told her that normally, ‘No,’ but as ragged as I was I would think about it. No names were mentioned at this time. A week later, I called her. She told me somebody else had taken over the contract. She never did tell me who this was. The last part of August, I came to Houston and went to Lilla’s. Lilla said the ‘other people’ had turned down the contract and she offered it to me again. I told her I would see what I could do. This was when she gave me the details.

  “She told me the contract was on a doctor who had killed his wife. And that it was the wife’s father who was wanting him dead. She told me that his name was Dr. Hill, and that he was plastic surgeon. She said that Dr. Hill had rented a room and that he had grown some bacteria in the bathtub and that he had injected some of the bacteria into some candy that his wife ate. I don’t remember if she told me what the doctor’s wife’s name was. She kept referring to her as ‘the doctor’s first wife.’ She kept referring to the man wanting Dr. Hill dead as ‘my man’ or ‘the old man.’ She also said that the old man didn’t give a damn what happened to the rest of the people—but not to hurt the youngster. It was while she was giving me some of these details that she took me to the corner of Kirby Drive and Brentwood and pointed out a big white house with columns as being Dr. Hill’s house. She told me that ‘her man’ had pointed out the house.… She then took me to some office building out on Fannin Street which was the Hermann Professional Building. She took me into the garage and showed me the doctor’s parking area. She also told me that some other people had first taken the contract but that they blew it off because the doctor didn’t have a habit as to his hours. She said that the contract had been out on the streets for a couple of years.… She told me that she had gotten the money from ‘her man,’ that ‘he’ had borrowed it in small sums here and there so that it would not be traceable to him.

  “About September 12 or 13, Marcia called Dr. Hill’s office to find out about an appointment and how late the appointment could be. But she was told that the doctor would be gone about eleven days … to a convention in Las Vegas and would be back around the twenty-fifth of September. Marcia called Las Vegas and found that there was a plastic surgeons’ convention and that Dr. Hill did have reservations at the Stardust Hotel. It was decided to do the job in Las Vegas because then it would look like a robbery.

  “Lilla Paulus gave me a picture and said this was Dr. Hill, but that she did not know how recent it was. She said to me, ‘You think this mother fucker don’t want him dead? Just look how he has the picture cut.’ The picture had the corners cut off and it looked like a coffin.

  “Marcia and I then went to Las Vegas. We checked at the hotel and at the convention center but we weren’t able to find Dr. Hill. I think the convention started on the eighteenth of September and we got there that day. We stayed until September 23. During the time we were in Vegas, we kept calling Lilla from a pay phone out there. She then told us that she had found out from the ‘old man’ that Dr. Hill had gone to Seattle, Washington, and that he was due back Sunday. The convention was nearly over, so Marcia and I decided to come back to Houston. After coming back, we talked it over with Lilla both that night and the next morning. On Sunday, the ‘old man’ kept calling Lilla. She told me that he was sure that Hill had been in Washington State and that he was coming back with $15,000 or $30,000. She said that the ‘old man’ had found this out either from his accountant or from the doctor’s accountant or someone that was close to both families. The money that Dr. Hill was bringing back was supposed to be used to pay Dr. Hill’s attorney because he was going to trial in November. During one of the times that the ‘old man’ called, he gave Lilla the doctor’s phone number at home. I called Dr. Hill’s home and told them that my name was James Gleason. I was told by a woman that he would be in about 7:30 P.M. or 8 P.M.

  “Marcia then called the airline and found out … the flight number and what time he was due in. I think it was around 6:30 P.M. Around 7 P.M. I went to Dr. Hill’s house. Marcia was driving a white 1967 Olds. She pulled into the driveway facing the garage and I got out and walked to the front door.”

  After describing how he gained entrance to the house and tied up Myra Hill and her grandson, Bobby moved to the killing itself.

  “… I pulled a pillowcase over my head. I had gotten the pillowcase at Lilla Paulus’ house. The doctor and his wife came up and rang the doorbell. They kept ringing the doorbell and I could see the woman looking in throught the glass panels alongside the door. So I went to the door and opened it and invited them in. They stood there looking at me as if it was a joke. I reached out with my left hand and grabbed hold of the upper part of her jacket and I had my pistol in my right hand. I said, ‘Come on in, this is a holdup.’ The woman broke and ran and the doctor said, ‘You son of a bitch,’ or something like that. He grabbed my pistol and my pillowcase trying to pull it off. We wrestled and he got the pillowcase off my head and kind of stepped back. And I hit him across the face and knocked him back.

  “I pointed the pistol at him and I said, ‘Hold it!’ But he came toward me, and I shot him. He staggered back a few steps. I pointed the gun at him again, and he tried to grab me again and I shot him a second time. He went down but came up again. He grabbed my gun, and the gun fired again, and I think that it hit the ceiling. I hit him and knocked him back and shot him a third time. When he was going down I hit him in the face a couple of times, and I put my knee on him to keep him from getting up. But he wasn’t trying to get up any more. I went through his pockets and I got his billfold from his back pocket. I then taped him up around his face from his mouth up around his eyes.…”

  The detectives and Assistant DA Bennett felt confident that the confession was a solid one, able to stand up to any pressures that the judicial system might bring. But if a case was to be made against the others apparently involved—Marcia, Lilla, the “old man”—then more than Bobby’s word would have to be offered before a jury. In Texas, a strong law exists relating to accomplices in a crime. A jury cannot convict one defendant upon accomplice witness testimony, even if they believe it to be true. That testimony must be corroborated by other evidence independent of the accomplice witness testimony, tending to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense.

  If Marcia was ever found, then the murder weapon would be the corroborating evidence needed to convict her, as she could be tightly affiliated with the .38 taken from the black doctor. But Lilla Paulus was another matter. Bobby claimed that he borrowed one pillowcase from her linen cabinet to wear as a mask. More than six months had now passed. Surely she had destroyed the mate. But if the officers could figure out a way to get into her house, it would be worth looking for, along with any other bits of evidence she might have missed the night she burned everything in the fireplace.

  Ash Robinson at this point was nothing but a vague mention, nothing but “my man” and “the old man.” During his negotiations with Lilla, Bobby could not remember mention of the name.

  Flipping on a tape recorder and informing Bobby that the reels were spinning, the two detectives took him over and over the territory, trying to find something that might “tend to connect” either Lilla or Ash to the murder. They began with telephone calls, having obtained records from Southwestern Bell Telephone of long-distance charges made to the Paulus telephone.

  “On September 16,” said Gamino, “a call was made to Western Airlines in Seattle from the Paulus number. Do you have any idea what that call was about?”

  “Yeah,” said Bobby. “I think it was made to check on whether Dr. Hill had a reservation. He was supposed to be in Seattle or Las Vegas.”

  “Who would have made the call? You or Marcia?”

  “I think Marcia did.”

  “Here’s another call billed to Paulus made to Air West.”

  “That’s th
e same type thing. Air West and Western are the only two who go from Seattle to Las Vegas. We were trying to locate whether he was leaving Seattle and going to Las Vegas.”

  Gamino browsed over the list. “Here’s one to the Hilton in San Francisco?”

  Bobby laughed ruefully. “That was to a chip of mine who was in San Francisco on a demonstration deal for wigs.”

  On September 15 and 16 two calls to the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas.

  Bobby nodded again. He remembered each of them. “We had contacted Dr. Hill’s nurse, or receptionist, probably on the fourteenth, and learned he was supposed to be at this convention in Las Vegas. These calls were to find out if he had reservations or if he was there yet.”

  Jerry Carpenter perused the list over his partner’s shoulder. A call caught his eye. “Here’s one to the Atlanta stadium. Probably a football team. These Marcia’s tricks, you suppose?”

  Bobby agreed. “Marcia has probably got more tricks than any gal in the United States.”

  “How does she manage it?” asked Carpenter. He had the prostitute’s mug shot from an earlier Dallas arrest in his hands. Her hairdo had fallen into despair, her eyelids drooped, her pockmarks showed clearly.

  “You tell me,” shrugged Bobby. “She used to get on the telephone and call up tricks all over the United States and sweet-talk ’em, and they’d wire her money for plane tickets, and she never went. She had a purseful of valid plane tickets.”

  If he had to find Marcia this very minute, wondered Carpenter, where would Bobby look? “Caesar’s Palace. Las Vegas. That’s her office. If she’s not at the bar, then look around the crap tables. Any of the high-rolling places.”

  As whores went, mused Carpenter, who had as much sophistication as Bobby in this endeavor, he would not mark Marcia as unique. Judging from the mug shot, of course.

  “Well, that doesn’t do her justice,” said Bobby. “She gets her act together pretty good.”

  “But aren’t these scars on her face?” put in Gamino.

  “Yeah,” agreed Bobby. “She’s got scars on her forehead, too. She told me some bandidos run over her with motorcycles and dragged her behind, she got gravel imbedded everywhere. I mean, everywhere. She said she and another gal was in niggertown in Washington, D.C., and a bunch of colored dudes got ’em and put cigarettes out on ’em. She said it was a kinda riot type thing.”

  Carpenter smiled at the image of Marcia being pursued by a gang of howling blacks in the nation’s capital. He did not know her, but already he disbelieved her tales.

  “I don’t know if it really happened,” said Bobby. “It coulda been in Timbuktu on a safari for all I know. One of those man-eatin’ cannibals may have had her and turned her loose. That’s what I shoulda done.”

  “You ever know her by any other name than her trick name, Dusty, or her real name, Marcia?” asked Gamino.

  “Just Marcia. Dusty was the only trick name she ever used. You know, she might be working spots around Texas. I’d have to find my spot book, and I really don’t know where the damn thing is.”

  “She ever been in a regular whorehouse?” asked Carpenter.

  Bobby nodded. “I’m sure she has. But not any more. A regular whorehouse is run differently. She won’t go for that. At what’s-her-name’s place in Texarkana, they’ve got a P.A. system. At a certain time in the morning they say, ‘Get your ass outta bed.’”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” asked Carpenter.

  “In Dallas. Few weeks ago. But I run into a fella the other day who said he heard she was high-rollin’ in Vegas. Blowing $1,500 a night. He said he might see her again and did I have anything to tell her? I said, ‘Just tell Marcia to keep on truckin’. Win enough for a plane ticket to Outer Mongolia, and keep on truckin’.’”

  But Bobby had little to tell about Lilla Paulus. He knew her as a woman who kept her business to herself, who had enough money from her dead husband’s estate to live well, and who valued discretion and silence.

  “She don’t run her head,” explained Bobby. “If she ever does tell you about something going on, she doesn’t mention any names.”

  “The way she makes her money,” pressed Carpenter. “She never mentioned anything?”

  Bobby shook his head negatively. “No. She’s just got contacts everywhere. Maybe some coin-operated machines. I think her old man probably left her pretty well fixed. He made some money in this town. Whatever his contacts were, she probably picked ’em up after he died.” He fell silent a moment, then he realized what Carpenter was driving at. “As far as names in any of her business, she’d just say, ‘My people.’”

  “Okay,” said Gamino, moving on. “In this statement we took yesterday, you stated that she asked you, ‘Are you interested in making $5,000?’ And you told us that she kept referring to the person who wanted the contract filled as ‘my man,’ or ‘the old man.’”

  “That’s right,” said Bobby.

  “Then, based on this, did you know who was the person behind the contract?”

  “Yeah,” said Bobby. “Because she said he was the father of the doctor’s first wife.”

  Gamino moved gingerly. He did not want to put words in the confessed assassin’s mouth, but once or twice during the interrogations, Bobby had mentioned the name “Ash.” How did he know this name?

  “It came later on,” explained Bobby. “But it was just by accident … I think it came from Marcia. She had met him or knew who it was … or something. I just remember hearing the name ‘Ash,’ but I don’t think it was ever mentioned by Lilla. All I knew was that he was a real prominent, wealthy person.”

  “Did you ever know his last name?” asked Gamino. “Ever find out?”

  “No.”

  “Not to this day?” pushed Gamino.

  Suddenly Bobby said, “It’s Robinson, isn’t it?”

  Excitedly, Gamino asked, “How did you find out?”

  “Believe Jerry here mentioned it,” said Bobby casually, gesturing with his thumb toward Carpenter. Gamino groaned inwardly. Modestly embarrassed, Carpenter countered with the notion that perhaps Bobby had read a newspaper account.

  “I never did read the papers,” said Bobby. “All I know is that Lilla was worried whether the old man would hold his mud or not when he came down.”

  Normally adroit at character slang, even Carpenter needed a layman’s translation of that comment.

  “I mean,” said Bobby, “like, if you dudes got him down, would he hold his cool? He was an old man, about half crazy. He don’t give a shit, you know. He’s lived his life. So the worry was he might not hold his mud.”

  Gamino harked back to the days preceding the murder. “Did Lilla drive you by and show you Dr. Hill’s house?”

  “Yeah. In my car.” This provoked Bobby to emphasize again that it had not been his intention to commit murder, only robbery. “But like I told you before, I never intended to go through with it.”

  Carpenter had heard this story before. But he was willing to let Bobby keep telling it, as long as he kept talking about other matters.

  “At first, I was just gonna try to get some of the money that the old man had put up … beat him out of it … but when I actually decided to go to the Hill house, it was just to get some of the money he was supposed to be bringing in from Washington.” Besides, Bobby went on, a doctor was fair game. “He probably cheated on his income tax the way those guys do, had money hidden around.”

  “You knew Lilla already had money in her possession?” asked Carpenter.

  “Yeah. I was thinking about ripping her off, you know. I was never serious about wiping him. If I had of been, and if it had just been for $5,000, you wouldn’t have me sitting here right now runnin’ my head.” Bobby’s implication was that $5,000 was a far too modest commission for murder.

  Carpenter pulled a pack of glossy photographs out of a manila envelope and handed them to Bobby to study. Each showed John Hill in death, in gruesome color. Bobby studied them with no more outward emotion
than reviewing album photographs of a long-ago summer picnic. “If he’d-a froze, he wouldn’t be dead today,” said Bobby. “I told him to hold it. I can’t understand to this day why he kept coming at me. I thought maybe he did have a large amount of money on him.”

  “Out of three times you hit him,” said Carpenter, “only one was a solid hit. One went in and out of his wrist …”

  Bobby nodded. “Probably the first shot.”

  “The next one hit his shoulder,” said Carpenter, pointing to the place on the photograph, to a blood-soaked patch on the dead doctor’s shirt.

  “He went down the second time, but damned if he didn’t get back up again. Then …” Bobby’s voice trailed off and he pointed with a fluttering, hesitating hand to the third and solid shot, a mass of red splash directly in the surgeon’s stomach. “Why did he keep coming at me?”

  “Maybe he thought he could whip you,” suggested Carpenter.

  “I’ve never been foolish enough to think I could whip somebody who had a .38 pointed at me,” said Bobby dryly.

  Toward the end of the nine-day questioning period, Bobby remembered something of enormous potential in building a case against Lilla Paulus. Gamino thought to ask if, during one of the evenings at the Paulus home when other characters were in attendance, the “contract” on John Hill ever came up?

  “Did anybody else hear Lilla mention the contract to you?” Gamino wanted to know.

  Bobby thought on this for a few moments, then slowly nodded. “Maybe so,” he said. “There may have been this dude named Mart sittin’ around one night when Lilla was runnin’ things down to me.”

  And Mart, Bobby had heard, was at this very moment serving time in the North Carolina penitentiary. If Mart would confirm a clandestine conversation between Bobby Vandiver and Lilla Paulus about the plan to kill John Hill, then it would be corroboration from a non-accomplice, a substantial brick. Breaking off the questioning, the two dectectives and Bob Bennett flew that same day to Raleigh, North Carolina, and entered the gloomy, medieval fortress that is the state’s chief prison. Mart, freshly into a long sentence for robbery, was irritated at the appearance of the Houston lawmen. A few months earlier, at the time of his arrest by North Carolina police, he had mentioned to them that he had information about an important killing in Houston. He wanted to use his information for bartering a better deal. Mart complained that somebody had promised to pass on the tip to the FBI, which in turn was going to inform the Houston homicide office. But the information never progressed along the trail west.