by James Yaffe
“So it seemed obvious to me at that point, I couldn’t afford to let those preparations go to waste. Even though I hadn’t killed him, I needed to work that reverse-alibi gimmick just as if I had. I’d have to go through exactly the same routine I’d been planning to go through before.
“The first step was to find a copy of Black Boy on Stu’s bookshelf. Everybody would have to think he was killed while he was reading it over the phone, so when I found it I put it into his right hand and closed his fingers down on it tight.” He paused, shutting his eyes briefly, then opening them.
“You weren’t afraid of leaving fingerprints?” I said.
“I was wearing gloves, of course. I did go there to kill him, do you think I wouldn’t take such a simple precaution?” For a moment there was a glint of offended pride in his eyes. Then he went on, “Well, as soon as the book was planted there, I took the telephone off his desk and put it on the floor near the body. Then I took the receiver off the hook, so it would look as if Stu had been talking on the phone when he was killed.
“Then I got out of the house pretty damn quick, slamming the front door behind me.”
“What time was that?”
“Seven twenty-three exactly. I looked at my watch. I hadn’t been in his house more than eight minutes—I could hardly believe it.
“Well, I went back to my car, and when I opened the door I saw by the light there was blood on the sleeve of my overcoat and on my gloves. I drove back here as fast as I could—but not so fast I’d be picked up for speeding—and as soon as I got here I dialed Marcus’ number. That was around five to eight. When he answered I turned on the tape recorder, putting it right up against the mouthpiece of the phone—well, you know about all that. Then I left my house for the second time that night and drove over to the party. I knew the cops would be there by then, I pretended to be surprised.”
“What did you do about the bloodstains on your coat and gloves?”
“When I got back from Stu’s house, I started them soaking in hot water in the bathtub. Later that night, three or four hours later, they were clean again, so I put the coat back in the hall closet and the gloves in my dresser drawer.”
I felt a small twinge of satisfaction, which I carefully concealed. The incriminating fact I’d been waiting for, the fact that the DA could build a case on, had finally dropped into my lap.
“And the next day, when you got out on bail,” I said, “you sent me that anonymous note?”
“That’s right. And I met you in the park that night, and gave you my A-number-one imitation of Deep Throat. It was kind of fun, to tell the truth—” He broke off, and the next moment his face seemed to crumble. “What are you going to do?” he said.
I looked at him for a while. Then I said, “What can I do? I’m an officer of the court. If I find evidence that somebody committed a murder, I have to turn it over to the DA.”
“But I didn’t commit a murder!”
I said nothing to that.
“Your boss is my lawyer,” he said. “You’re her representative. Everything I told you is confidential, it’s against the law for you to tell anybody about it.”
“The DA dropped the charges against you this morning,” I said. “Ann isn’t your lawyer anymore.”
“But, Dave, for God’s sake, what good would it do to tell people about me? You don’t have any evidence, nothing that’ll stand up in court. I cleaned the blood off my coat and gloves, there are no witnesses to testify against me.”
“You shouldn’t have told me about the coat and gloves, Mike,” I said. “It isn’t as easy as people think to wash all traces of blood from a garment. They’ve got tests nowadays that can bring out latent bloodstains even after a few years. And it wouldn’t do you any good to get rid of those things. People have seen you wearing them, questions could be asked about where they are. And anyway, it’s no cinch making a coat or even a pair of gloves disappear. Garbage dumps can be searched. Things that get thrown in the river have a way of coming to the surface. And cloth, especially thick cloth, takes an amazingly long time to burn. In fact, it hardly ever burns completely, some of it is always left for the lab to work on. The jury might very well think it was enough to convict you—”
“The jury! My God, if there was a trial—don’t you understand what that would mean? Even if they didn’t convict me—just the fact that I went to trial would kill my chances of getting tenure! People who don’t have tenure yet—the college can fire them whenever it wants without even giving a reason.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve heard that.”
“I’ll never get another teaching job,” he said. “Why do you think I went through all this in the first place? I did it so I could go on teaching! My God, without that it’s all over for me anyway!”
I didn’t say anything.
“And I didn’t kill him! That’s the crazy part of it—I didn’t even kill him!”
“Let’s suppose I believed that,” I said. “I don’t see how it changes things much. You planned to kill him, didn’t you? You went to his house with a weapon in your pocket. You would have killed him if you hadn’t found him dead already. A lot of people would say you’re just as guilty as if you had killed him.”
He sank into the nearest chair, and when his voice came, it was pleading, almost tearful. “Please—don’t do this to me! We’re not enemies, we’re on the same side, you’re as much their victim as I am!”
I stared at him. “How do you figure that?”
“What do you suppose they think about you? Do you suppose they’re ever going to let you into the club? They’re snickering behind your back right now—those genteel superior little hypocrites—and calling you an uncouth little Jewboy! Don’t you see, we’ve both been getting our asses kicked all our lives—by the same people! You can’t do their dirty work for them, you can’t throw me to the dogs!”
I stood up and started to the door.
He jumped to his feet and started after me. “Listen! You think I’m capable of killing somebody—so how do you know I won’t—I have got twenty-five years on you!”
I turned to him and said, “Yes, you got up enough guts to do it once. But you’ll never be able to do it again. You were right about yourself, Mike. You’re not naturally a violent person.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. I walked out the front door.
It was nearly midnight when I got home. Mom was waiting for me in the living room. She looked up from her book with a benign smile. For a woman who had expected her only child to be mowed down by a killer, she didn’t seem particularly relieved or surprised to see me.
I told her everything that had happened, and then I said, “I’ll call Ann now. She’ll notify the DA.”
Mom looked at her watch. “How long ago was it that you left his house? Half an hour, forty-five minutes? Yes, good, I think that’s time enough.”
That remark was completely incomprehensible to me, but I was too wrung out to give it any thought. I went to the phone and got Ann at her house. I told her the whole story, and she was silent for a long time, and finally she said, “You never know about them, do you?”
Then she told me she’d get in touch with the DA’s office, and I should forget about it and get some sleep.
CHAPTER 30
BUT AN HOUR LATER I was awakened by the phone.
I answered it, and it was Ann. She sounded upset, and it takes a lot to make her sound that way. She told me that the police had just called her. They had gone to Mike Russo’s house to pick him up. When nobody answered the doorbell, they broke in and found Mike lying on the floor of his kitchen, he hadn’t been dead more than an hour. An empty pill bottle—some kind of sleeping pill, you could buy it without a prescription—was on the coffee table. The stereo was on, but the police report didn’t say what piece was playing.
There was no note.
I hung up and stumbled out of bed and into my bathrobe. I knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep for a long time tonight. I
went downstairs and found Mom in the kitchen making coffee.
I told her what had happened. I guess I didn’t look too good, because she went up to me and took hold of my hand.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I don’t get guilty feelings that easy. He was a murderer, so he had to be exposed. And if that was going to make him kill himself, he would’ve done it sooner or later even if I hadn’t talked to him last night.”
I saw the look of relief on her face. She poured coffee for me and asked me if I wanted a cookie with it, and while I was munching it, something suddenly dawned on me.
“What are you doing down here, Mom? It’s two o’clock in the morning. How come you’ve got coffee all ready?”
“I couldn’t get to sleep. At my age, insomnia is a common—”
“Not for you, Mom. You’ve been sleeping like a baby for seventy-two years. You expected me to get that phone call, didn’t you? And you knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again afterward. You knew what Ann would be calling about.”
Mom stood up and started to brush crumbs off the table. I took hold of her wrist and eased her down into the kitchen chair. “Look at me, Mom. This is a very serious matter. We have to talk about this.”
“It’s so late, darling. Talking can wait until—”
“You knew ahead of time what Mike Russo would do, didn’t you? You knew he’d kill himself if I told him he was going to be arrested again!”
She smiled softly. “You’re a good detective. I always said so. One thing you’re just a little bit inaccurate about though. I only thought I knew what Russo was going to do. There was no way I could be sure. Believe me, it was a big relief to me when I turned out—”
“Wait a second, wait a second!” I broke in, in a kind of orgy of understanding. “My God, you not only wanted me to talk to him tonight, you manipulated me into doing it! All those reasons I gave for going to see him—that it was my best chance of breaking him down and getting him to confess and so on—you were delighted when I came up with those reasons, if I hadn’t come up with them you would’ve come up with them yourself. And that big act you put on, telling me how worried you were about him hurting me! Actually you didn’t think there was any danger at all, but you were afraid, if I didn’t hear you express some concern, I’d get suspicious, I’d realize you wanted me to talk to Mike, and I might start wondering why. Damn it all, Mom, you stood by and let a man kill himself—and you made me your accomplice!”
“Did I have any choice?” she said. “Like I told you before you went to that party tonight, justice had to be done.”
“Justice! He was a murderer!”
“What do you think, I’m crazy about murderers? People have a right to go on living their own lives, even if they’re no-goods. Don’t you follow me, Davie, it isn’t justice for him I’m interested in, it’s justice for her.”
“Who?”
“His mother, who else? This poor old lady that sacrificed her whole life to him. Now she’s in the rest home, her only pleasure is bragging to the other old ladies about her son the college professor. You want she should spend her last years feeling ashamed because of her son the murderer?”
“But he’s dead. That’ll give her plenty of pain.”
“There’s pain and pain. A boy dies young, naturally his mother feels grief. But grief and pride you can feel at the same time. You want to give her the grief and take away the pride, too?”
“The truth about the murder is bound to come out. The DA’s office knows all about it—”
“The truth will come out in private maybe, people whispering rumors. But those the old lady will never hear. And in public, why should anything come out? Whatever the district attorney knows, there won’t be any court case now. And he’ll never give the story to the newspapers either.”
“Why not? To make himself look good, to justify his arresting Mike in the first place—”
“He’ll keep quiet on account of the college. Do you think the college wants there should be publicity that one professor killed another professor? Naturally not. And you told me plenty of times, the college is a very big macher in this town.”
I could only stare at her in amazement. The smile on her face couldn’t have been more serene. It simply didn’t enter her mind that she might not have done the right thing.
“Look, Mom,” I made one more attempt, “you’re not seeing the point. Even if everybody is better off because Mike Russo killed himself, you never had the right to make that decision. You just can’t take the law into your own hands. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“How couldn’t I understand?”
“Well, then, will you promise me—your solemn promise, Mom—you’ll never do anything like this again.”
She reached over and patted me on the cheek. “You’re so upset about this. Only stop being upset, and I’ll promise.”
I wasn’t too pleased at the way she said this, but sometimes you have to settle for what you can get.
CHAPTER 31
MOM’S PREDICTIONS TURNED OUT to be completely accurate. The next morning, when I got to the office, Ann told me officially that the district attorney didn’t intend to make any public accusations in connection either with Mike Russo’s or Stuart Bellamy’s death. Since there was no defendant to put on trial, the case was now closed, the official theory being that Russo had taken an accidental overdose of pills and that Bellamy had fallen from a chair, while reaching for a book at the top of his bookshelf, and struck his head against a paperweight that was lying on his desk.
So Mom had been right about Mesa Grande College. Her long experience of life had taught her what a big macher can do.
At dinner that night, while she seduced me with her special roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Mom broke two pieces of news to me. First, she had called up the airline and made reservations to go back to New York the next morning.
“But what’s your hurry?” I said. “You’ve only been here a week. Has it been that boring for you? I realize I didn’t give you more than one murder—”
“I’m going home because you know what next Friday is? It’s Passover. I have to get back in time to start getting ready for the seder.”
“You’re having a lot of people?”
“The synagogue is having a lot of people. A couple hundred. And five of us are doing the food. My job is the chopped liver.”
Chopped liver for two hundred people! It was more than the human imagination could encompass.
“And also,” Mom added, “I have to start advertising my furniture for sale.”
“You want to sell your furniture, Mom? All that old stuff that you bought when you and Dad first got married?”
“Old junk is what it is. If I make a couple hundred dollars out of it, I’ll be lucky. And those pictures—the English landscapes and the Roman ruins—for fifty-five years they’ve been boring me to death. I’m hoping I can talk some garbageman into carting them away for nothing.”
“But why do you want to get rid of all your things, after all these years?”
“You don’t think I’m paying good money to ship all those schmattes out here, do you? There’s very nice furniture for sale in this town, I’ve been looking around.”
Finally I caught on. I was on my feet immediately, hugging her. “Enough, enough already!” she pushed me away.
Later I asked her why she had changed her mind. What made her decide to settle in Mesa Grande after all?
She gave one of her shrugs. “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe you convinced me this isn’t such an uncivilized place. Not so civilized as New York City, naturally, but not from the cavemen either. You got a synagogue, you got a college, you got a place to play bridge, you got a supermarket with matzo ball soup, you got a mountain that don’t look too bad when there aren’t any clouds. You even got some interesting murders.”
“When is it going to be, Mom? How long before you’ll be coming back here?”
“I’ll need maybe five weeks.
The first of May, does this sound like a convenient date?”
“It sounds perfect. And which bedroom are you going to want? It won’t be any trouble for me to switch around if you prefer—”
“Bedrooms!” She gave a snort. “What do you think, I’ll be living with you in this house?”
“Well, naturally I assumed—”
“Stop assuming, thank you. For thirty-four years of my life I lived with a man, and also for some of those years with a growing boy—your father and you, that is. For thirty-four years I did all the cooking and washed all the clothes and cleaned the toilet bowls daily. It was very nice, I was happy to do it—but for the last twenty years, I’m living alone, I’m taking care of the food and clothes and toilet bowls for only one person, and it suits me nicely. So if you’re looking for a woman to do for you what I used to do, please go on looking, I’ll even give you a little help if you want—but excuse me, I don’t volunteer. I’m in the market for a nice one-bedroom condominium, and the prices out here, if you go by New York standards, aren’t bad.”
“My God, you’ve been pricing them already?”
“And also, keep your eyes open for a nice used car. A little foreign model maybe with four seats in it? One thing I found out while I was visiting you. In this town of yours, since nobody was ever smart enough to build a subway, people can’t get around without a car.”
“I didn’t know you could drive a car.”
“This is another thing I’ll be doing in the next five weeks. I’ll take lessons.”
She laughed and told me to close my mouth or I’d get a fly down my throat. It was what she used to say to me all the time when I was a kid.
The next morning I saw Mom off on the plane. She put her arms around me and gave me one of her quick businesslike kisses. “All right, all right, good-bye is unnecessary. I’m back in only five weeks. I’m practically not going away at all.”
She turned quickly, and her dumpy little figure disappeared down the ramp.
Driving home, I realized that today was Tuesday. I’d be seeing Marcia tonight. We’d be going to the movies. The new Robert Redford was in town, and while I personally could take him or leave him Marcia was crazy about him. She found him as beautiful as a poem.