SW01 - The Baxter Trust

by Parnell Hall

  “This is true.”

  “What about Dutton, anyway?”

  “What about him?”

  “Any confirmation he actually went to Reno?”

  Taylor stared at him. “You picked him up at the airport. His ticket was used.”

  “Yeah, but anyone could have used it.”

  “You trying to prove he did it?”

  “I will if I have to.”

  “But he’s Sheila’s boyfriend.”

  “Yeah. But he’s not my client. She is. Just find out if he really took that plane.”

  “Okay.” Taylor scribbled on his pad.

  “While you’re at it, check the alibis of Maxwell Baxter, Teddy Baxter and Phillip Baxter. Check Mrs. Rosenthal, too.”

  “You kidding?”

  “No. Check her. If we pass her up, she’ll turn out to be some frustrated old spinster that Greely did out of her life savings. Check her out.”

  “Okay. Anyone else?”

  “Yeah. Tony Zambelli.”

  “What?”

  “You know him?”

  Taylor stared at him. “I don’t know him. I know of him.”

  “Well, don’t look so surprised. You told me Carboni was connected. Zambelli’s the connection. It happens he had a perfectly good motive for the murder. Check him out.”

  Taylor gawked. “Do the police know this?”

  “No. And they mustn’t find out. Be discreet about it.”

  “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Taylor shook his head. “Look, Steve, I’m working for you. I’ll do anything I can. But Tony Zambelli? Guys who check him out have a habit of not being seen again.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Steve said. “Zambelli wants us to check him out.” Steve took out the list of names and handed it to him. “This is a list of people who were allegedly playing cards with Zambelli at the time of the murder. It don’t mean shit, ’cause if Zambelli did it, he wouldn’t have done it himself, he’d have ordered it done. But check it out just the same. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell you can find out if Zambelli ordered the hit, but if you should stumble over that information in the course of your investigations, please don’t throw it away.”

  Taylor looked at Steve with frightened eyes. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. There’s a chance the police may have these names too.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. The list was in my pocket when the cops picked me up and searched me last night.”

  “When they what?”

  Steve grinned. “Oh, your detectives missed that too. Your pipeline into police headquarters isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Taylor was incredulous. “They arrested you?”

  “A slight misunderstanding. I’m not surprised your boys missed it. Sergeant Stams thought he’d cracked the Benton case. I’m not surprised they played it very hush-hush.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. The point is, the cops had access to that list, so they may be running it down too. Only they don’t know what it is, so they won’t know what questions to ask. In case your boys should stumble over them in the course of the investigation, they should try not to give ’em a hint. Particularly since Zambelli would take it to mean we had spilled the information to the cops, and probably wouldn’t be pleased.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “So? Anything else?”

  Taylor laughed nervously. “Yes. Yeah, there is. I saved the best for last. I have a bombshell. At least I thought it was a bombshell. After that, it’s gonna seem like a firecracker, but I got it.”

  “What?”

  “Well, like I said, nothing’s coming out of police headquarters except the shit they’re feeding the papers. But one of my boys got lucky.”

  “How?”

  “The cops brought in a woman. Cheap. Flashily dressed. Looked like a hooker bust. But she wasn’t processed, she was taken upstairs. So my man tagged along on a hunch. Sure enough, they hustled her straight in to see Dirkson. She was there about an hour. When she left, it was quietly and by a side entrance.

  “My man was waiting and tagged along. He followed her home and checked her out. Without her knowing about it, of course.”

  “So? Who is she?”

  “Her name is Carla Finley.”

  “Why is she important?”

  Taylor grinned. “She was Greely’s girlfriend.”

  Steve’s eyes widened. “No shit. And the police picked her up?”

  “Picked her up and let her go again.”

  “She must have had a good story. What’d she tell ’em?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Can I see her?”

  Taylor grinned. “You can see all of her.”

  29.

  CARLA FINLEY WAS LYING NUDE on a slowly revolving table. Her knees were drawn up and her legs were spread wide. Her hands were reaching around the insides of her thighs to give a little assist just in case the position itself was not sufficient to be truly revealing. Her neck was craned up from the table, and she had a look on her face that was surely supposed to pass for unbridled lust.

  Steve Winslow watched her through the window of his private booth, one of the dozen or so such booths that ringed the performing area. Steve, unlike the half a dozen other men whose faces appeared in the various windows, was studying her face.

  Carla was heavily made up, but, on close inspection, the powder and rouge could not hide the fact that the face behind it was worn, that this was a woman on her way out, not on her way up, if such expressions applied in her chosen profession. Her face was lined, but that was not the thing that really gave her away. It was her eyes. For despite the devilish gleam she was attempting to affect, there was another, more sincere look she was unable to keep out of them.

  They were tired eyes.

  Steve’s minute was up, and the blind on his window began to close. He bent down, looking under it until it closed completely.

  He fished in his pocket and pulled out another quarter, then dropped it in the slot.

  The blind went up again. As it did, he could see that Carla was getting up from the revolving table. She stood, stretched, smiled and then began walking around the room, cupping her sagging breasts and smiling at the customers in the windows.

  When she reached his window, he banged on the glass and pantomimed wanting to talk to her. She smiled knowingly, pointed toward the back of the shop, held up three fingers, and mouthed, “Booth three.” Then she moved on to the next customer.

  Steve watched until she finished her rounds and left the stage.

  He left his booth and headed for the larger encounter booths in the back of the shop. A stout, perspiring Hispanic in a white t-shirt stopped him.

  “Goin’ to a booth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gotta buy a token, buddy.”

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Course you do, buddy. But first you buy a token, see.”

  “Yeah. I see. How much?”

  “Buck.”

  Steve pulled a dollar out of his pocket and gave it to the attendant. The attendant gave him a metal token.

  “I’ll need a receipt,” Steve said.

  The attendant stared at him. “You shittin’ me?”

  “No. I want a receipt.”

  “What for?”

  “My expense account.”

  The attendant shook his head and laughed. “Now I heard everything.”

  The attendant moved off, still chuckling.

  Steve shrugged, and moved toward the booths in the back.

  There were four of them. They were two-person affairs, arranged so the customers saw a side view of both compartments. One compartment was for the girl, the other was for the customer.

  Two of the booths were occupied by customers. In those booths, curtains were pulled over the windows, hiding the occupants from view.

  The other two were waiting for customers. The curtains were open. The girls sat on stools and smile
d at the prospective customers. The doors to the client’s side of the booths were invitingly open.

  The girl in booth three was Carla. She was wearing skimpy panties and bra, covered by a diaphanous something or other. She smiled at Steve as he approached. He smiled back, and entered the booth.

  It was not unlike the booth he’d just been in. A window with a blind and a coin slot. The main difference was a telephone receiver hanging next to the window.

  He closed the door and dropped his token in the slot. The blind went up, revealing Carla sitting on her stool. She picked up the phone receiver and gestured for him to do the same.

  He picked up the phone.

  “Hi, sugar,” she purred. “What can I do for you?”

  “I just want to talk.”

  She winked. “Sure you do, sugar. Why don’t you tell me what kind of things you like?”

  “Are you Carla Finley?”

  Her smile froze, and her face got hard. “Hey, what is this?”

  “Robert Greely.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Sheila Benton’s lawyer.”

  She stared at him for a second. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “I will, but not just yet. I did pay for my time.”

  “The cops told me not to talk to you.”

  “You always do what the cops tell you?”

  “In my business, you don’t cross ’em.”

  Steve smiled. “And we don’t tell ’em all we know, do we?”

  She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if you happened to tell me something, you wouldn’t have to tell the cops you told me. And I certainly wouldn’t tell ’em.”

  Her face twisted with anger, making the age lines more pronounced. “Listen, Mister, don’t get chummy with me. Bob Greely is dead, and Sheila Benton killed him, and why the hell should I help you?”

  “She didn’t kill him,” Steve said. “But someone else did. If you help the police convict her, you’re just helping the real killer get away.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Tell me another one.”

  He looked at her for a while. “All right,” he said. “Let me tell you something. You’re going to talk. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The hard way is I put detectives on you day and night until I catch you in a compromising situation with some prominent, upright citizen who can’t afford to let his name get dragged into this. Then I put the squeeze on him so hard he has to put the squeeze on you. It may not get me what I want to know, but it’ll sure as hell put a dent in your social life.”

  He paused and let that sink in.

  “That’s the hard way,” he said.

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills.

  “Now,” he said, “which would you rather be? Blackmailed or bribed?”

  30.

  STEVE WINSLOW SAT ON MAXWELL Baxter’s couch. Max had not offered him a drink this time, but if he had Steve might have accepted it. He was enjoying himself, and was very much at ease.

  Max was not. He stood looking down at Steve with ill-concealed hostility.

  “Well,” he said, dryly. “What is it this time, more money?”

  Steve smiled. “Uncle Max. You misjudge me.”

  “Not by much. I’ll have you know I consulted my lawyers.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. That was a lot of crap you fed me, about if I didn’t give you a retainer the D.A. could put you on the stand. Sheila spoke to you in confidence as her attorney. Fees don’t come into it. There’s no way you could testify.”

  “I know,” Steve said. “I was bluffing. I know the law. I just figured you didn’t.”

  Max glared at him. “You’re just lucky you cashed that check as quickly as you did.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, now I think you’re bluffing. Let me ask you something. When did you consult your attorneys?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Steve grinned. “It’s got everything to do with it. Here you are, striding around, saying, ‘Boy are you lucky you cashed that check in’ time.’ I think that’s bullshit. You want to have me believe that when you talked to your attorneys, it was too late to stop payment on that check. It never happened that way and you know it. You’re not that kind of guy. You didn’t wait till this morning to call your attorneys. You got ’em out of bed last night, and you told ’em the whole thing, and they told you what the law was. You could have stopped payment on the check, but you didn’t. And you wouldn’t. I could have that check in my pocket right now, and it would still be good, ’cause you have no intention of stopping payment on it.”

  Steve paused, put his feet up on the coffee table and relaxed into the couch. “You see,” he said, “I have you by the balls. You don’t want to admit it, and that’s why you’re making these hollow ‘you’re lucky you cashed it in time’ remarks, but that happens to be the fact. Because, despite what your lawyers told you, which happens to be absolutely true, you can’t get away from the underlying threat in what I told you. Because, if you didn’t pay me, even if I couldn’t testify, there would always be a way of leaking what I know to the district attorney. And the thing is, you don’t know me well enough, and there’s nothing you can find out about me to convince you one way or another as to whether I’d be unscrupulous enough to do that. And you just can’t take the chance.

  “So, like it or not, I’m Sheila Benton’s attorney, and you just have to get used to the fact. So, if you would be so kind as to give a message to Marston, Marston, and Cramden the next time you talk to them, please tell them this—lay off my client. Butt out. Because if they don’t, I am going to file a complaint with the Grievance Committee, charging them with tampering with a client and attempting to solicit her away from her attorney. And from what I know about the conservative, respectable firm of Marston, Marston, and Cramden, that is going to cause them to choke on their soup.”

  Maxwell Baxter had not been a man of wealth and power for many years without developing a tremendous amount of poise. He showed it now.

  “I see,” he said.

  “But that’s not what I came for,” Steve said.

  “Oh? What did you come for?”

  “I thought perhaps we could talk over the case.”

  “I fail to see what we have to talk about.”

  “Well, for one thing, I just had a talk with Carla Finley. Nice girl. You should meet her.”

  “Who’s Carla Finley.”

  “Your detectives haven’t told you? She was a friend of the late Mr. Greely.”

  “So?”

  “She tells a very interesting story. It seems about a week ago Greely was all excited over something. She didn’t know what it was, but it was something big. He told her in a few weeks he’d have enough money to take her someplace. He told her she’d never have to work again.”

  “So?”

  Steve shrugged. “So, the police theory on this case is cockeyed. They figure Greely knew something that would have cost Sheila her trust fund, so he was putting the bite on her.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But it doesn’t add up. Sheila doesn’t come into her money until she’s thirty-five. No one’s going to get rich blackmailing her. So, I said to myself, if I were a blackmailer, who in this case would I blackmail?”

  “Hypothetically, of course,” Max said ironically.

  “And so I come to you.”

  Max considered that for a moment. “I see. And so you’re going to claim that since Sheila had no money, Greely must have actually been blackmailing me. Therefore I killed him.”

  “It’s a nice theory,” Steve said. “It would at least punch a few holes in the prosecution’s theory of the case.”

  Max shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t think so. The police will claim that Sheila expected to get the money from me.”

  “Of course that’s what they’ll claim. And I’ll have a devil of a time proving otherwise. But you and I both know that’s bullshit. You’re Sheila
’s trustee. Can you really imagine her coming to you and saying, ‘There’s a blackmailer who knows something about me that you wouldn’t want to know. Unless you give him a lot of money he’s going to tell you.’”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Well then, you explain it to me so that it doesn’t sound absurd.”

  “That’s not the point,” Max said, with a condescending smile. “The point is, your fine theory is full of holes. If Greely were blackmailing me, why would he bother with Sheila at all? You see what I mean? It’s illogical.”

  Steve smiled back. “Yes, but that’s not my problem. I don’t have to prove my theory, I just have to advance it. Then the prosecution has to disprove it. Because they have to prove Sheila guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt, that’s all I need.”

  Steve paused while Max thought that over.

  “Well, there you are,” Steve said. “You’re the perfect red herring. I’ll dangle you in front of the jury and claim you killed him. The prosecution will have to prove you didn’t.”

  “That’s ridiculous. By your own reasoning, there was no way Greely could blackmail me over the trust.”

  “That’s right,” Steve said. “I’ll claim he was blackmailing you over the will.”

  Max was genuinely surprised. “The will!”

  “That’s right. If he knew something that could upset the will, you’d be in a position to lose everything. It’d be a dandy motive for murder.”

  “You’re crazy,” Max said, shaking his head. “The will was probated twenty years ago. It’s good as gold. There’s no way on earth he could have upset the will.”

  “Oh no?” Steve said with a smile. “Try this on for size. No person convicted of murder may profit by inheritance from his victim. Suppose you killed your father. Suppose Greely knew about it. His testimony could convict you, and convicting you would upset the will.”