Hog Murders

by William L. DeAndrea

  Ron was dubious. “It’s not exactly right for a social occasion, Maestro. I heard from my correspondent today. I’d rather save it for a time we’re concentrating on business.”

  “You will have no choice,” the professor said. “Your hostess will demand it of you. I am sure the whole purpose of this dinner is for this Mrs. Chester to feel closer to the chase. In fact—”

  Fleisher’s phone call interrupted him.

  It was a motel room, no different from countless motel rooms Ron had seen all over the country. It was done up in the same grayish pastels, with the same marshmallow-soft bed, and the same plywood and formica drawer-and-desk combination. The body was seated at that desk, in the same semimodern chair; a thin pad of vinyl-covered foam rubber stretched over a curved wire frame. It wasn’t a chair so much as a basket that caught one’s form before it hit the floor—it took an effort to sit in one.

  Ron looked at the corpse. There was a small hole in his right temple, and a larger one where his left temple used to be. He was dressed casually in slacks and turtle-neck. His sleeves were rolled up to show an eagle tattoo just below the elbow of the arm that held the gun.

  Fleisher was arguing with one of the meat-wagon boys. “Leave that body right where it is,” he said. “Right across the desk. I want—Oh, he’s here. Hello, Professor.”

  Benedetti’s lips showed a faint smile. “Good evening, Inspector. What is it about this murder you wish me to see?”

  “Well,” Fleisher began, “I—What makes you think it’s a murder?” he asked suspiciously. “I said ‘apparent suicide’ on the phone.”

  Benedetti chuckled. “You have your methods, Inspector, but you know mine. I am sure you would never think of dragging me away from my easel just because you felt obliged to visit the death scene. Therefore, something here bothers you. Since we are involved with murders that try to look like accidents or suicides, and you have called me, what is bothering you is an apparent suicide you believe is a murder.”

  “I know it’s a murder,” the inspector said. “In a way, I almost wish it wasn’t, for crysake. This guy would have been a great candidate for Hog.”

  “You know who he is?” Ron Gentry asked.

  Buell Tatham said, “I recognized him the second I got here, from the Courant, and the inspector already had the word out on him.”

  “Well,” Ron asked, “who is he?”

  “No, no,” Fleisher said. “First I want the professor to tell me why it’s murder.”

  “You challenge me, eh, Inspector?” The professor was amused.

  “Just checking my own ideas,” Fleisher said.

  “Very well.” Benedetti looked closely at the body, starting by meeting the staring dead eyes. “If it was suicide,” the old man said, “he was well disposed to meet it—his face is calm, his eyes open.”

  He took his eyes off the body momentarily to look at his protégé. “Don’t just stand around, Ronald. Ask the necessary questions.”

  “Yes, Maestro,” Ron said. “Who found the body, Inspector?”

  “Hotel manager. One of the guests started a small fire, a little trash can thing, but the local ordinance says they have to evacuate the place. J—the victim had told the manager he’d be in his room all evening and didn’t want to be disturbed—”

  “That’s why this room is so far out for such an empty motel?”

  “Yeah. Told the manager he’d be getting some work done, wanted to be quiet. He’s been here since January twelfth. That’s why—

  “Anyway, he didn’t come out when the fire alarm rang, so the manager had to go and get him.”

  The professor put a bony hand on the back of the wire chair. The meat-wagon man said, “Hey, cut that out!” as the bloody head started sliding on the blotter toward the edge of the desk.

  “I am so sorry,” the professor said, with absolutely no sincerity. “Please continue, Inspector.”

  Fleisher shrugged. “There’s nothing more to say. The manager, guy by the name of Ickes, knocked on the door, got no answer, figured “the victim was asleep, used his key and found him.”

  “Just the way he is now?” Benedetti asked. “I mean to say, the way he was before I shifted the position of his head?”

  “Yeah, just like that.”

  “Then you are correct, it is murder.”

  “I knew it!” Fleisher said. “Suicide and accidents are damn hard to fake, but Hog is good, I was losing faith in myself. Do you call it murder for the same reason I do?”

  The professor nodded. “If your reason is this abomination masquerading as a chair, yes.”

  When Fleisher indicated his agreement, and understanding came into Ron’s face, Buell said, “Well, it still isn’t clear to me. Don’t you all go mysterious on me the way the inspector has been.”

  “It’s really very simple, Mr. Tatham,” the professor said. “Do you see the position of the body?”

  “Of course. Why couldn’t he have shot himself in the head and then have fallen over on the desk?”

  The professor touched the back of the chair again, eliciting a growl from the man in white when the head slid another fraction of an inch.

  “This chair,” the old man said, “is made of a thick steel wire. It is very springy—furthermore, it is made so that it tilts backward. This is not the kind of chair that should be placed at a desk (or anywhere else in my opinion), but especially at a desk, because in order to do any writing, you must lean over the desk, and in a chair like this, you must exert a steady effort to do so. In fact, it takes some effort merely to sit up straight.

  “Now the body of our anonymous friend is found slumped over the desk. That means he must have been leaning forward when the trigger was pulled, leaning over the surface of the desk, in fact, so that his head fell straight down to the desk. Even so, this chair makes that a precarious position—you saw how just the weight of my hand started the head sliding backward. One more touch, and he will flop to the floor.”

  “Don’t, huh?” the attendant pleaded. “I’ll only have to explain the bruises to Dmitri.”

  The professor took pity on him. “Of course, of course. I have no further use for the remains. Inspector?”

  “Nah, get him out of here.”

  The meat-wagon boys got busy, and Benedetti went on. “Now. If the dead man were seated straight up when he pulled the trigger, we would have found him either on the floor, or more likely, leaning back in his chair, the same way Leslie Bickell was on her bean-bag.

  “That is why I say it was murder. Because if I say it was suicide, I must explain why a man will exert effort to lean so far forward his nose is perpendicular with the surface of a desk before blowing out his brain! For that, I have no intelligent explanation. And Niccolo Benedetti takes no joy in appearing stupid.”

  The professor did his catlike hand-scratching again. “Now, since I have explained, perhaps someone will be kind enough to tell me who the dead man is?”

  Surprisingly, it was Ron Gentry who spoke. “It’s Jastrow, isn’t it?”

  Fleisher said, “Yeah. Did you know him?”

  Ron shook his head. “Buell ran his picture with a couple of columns, I remember. I was keeping a crime scrap-book at the time. High school project.”

  “Your academic career is, of course, fascinating,” the professor said, “but it still doesn’t tell me who the dead man is.”

  How does it feel to be in the dark for a change, Maestro? Ron thought but did not say. Instead he said, “Jastrow—I think his first name was Jeffrey—” Buell nodded “—used to be a cop, or rather a deputy sheriff for the county. Until he got kicked off, he was the terror of the county roads. He was—”

  “He was crooked down to the ground, for crysake,” Fleisher growled. “It made me sick to find out about it.”

  “He was a kind of Johnny marijuana seed, wasn’t he, Inspector?”

  “Yeah. He’d stop a car for speeding (though it didn’t make any difference to him if it was really speeding or not), get eve
rybody out of the car, search it, and ‘find’ just enough marijuana to mean a jail term. Especially on cars with out-of-state plates, you know? Then, he’d manage to be convinced not to haul them in, you know? He took about a hundred and fifty dollars worth of convincing.”

  The professor rubbed his chin. “In other words, extortion, pure and simple.”

  “That’s about it, Professor,” Buell told him. “And if they didn’t have enough money to convince him, he’d haul them in anyway. He was very good at getting backroom confessions. Or, if there were girls in the car, letting them work it off, if you know what I mean.”

  “Indeed. A charming specimen, all together.”

  Ron said, “He’d still be at it, if it weren’t for Buell.”

  “And the inspector, too, don’t forget,” the reporter said.

  “My pleasure,” the inspector said. “Bastard like that gives every lawman a bad name for crysake.”

  “Well, anyway,” Buell went on, “I started hearing rumors about this Jastrow—I heard one that said a kid was hauled off to the substation and never heard from again—a runaway. So I decided to check it out. I told the inspector, and he came along with me. I got hold of a car with plates from the South, ran two miles over the speed limit, and when Jastrow stopped us I did all the talking. We almost had him to the point where he took money from us—”

  “But I screwed it up,” Fleisher growled. “I took my badge out of my wallet, all right, but I forgot to remove my ID card. Jastrow saw it, let on he recognized me all along, and tried to make out like it was a joke.” The inspector rammed a fist into an open hand, still angry with himself. “Anyway, I said the hell with it, told Tatham to do the column anyway, you know? We didn’t have enough to put him away—nobody wanted to come from out of state to testify, but we got him kicked out of the sheriff’s department. Cost the bastard his pension, too. Buell got a commendation from the sheriff, for cleaning up the place.”

  “And you and Buell are the ones who’ve been most closely connected with the case,” Ron said. “Is that why you liked him for Hog?”

  “That’s it,” Fleisher said. “It could be a way at getting back at us, you know? Also, he’s an ex-cop. Now Shaughnessy’s got this theory that Hog stands for something, and one of things we’ve been looking at is brutal cops, you know? Pig? Hog?”

  Benedetti smiled. “Fascinating theory. Did you hear that, amico?”

  “I certainly did, Maestro,” Ron said. “My congratulations to the sergeant.”

  “All right, all right, you don’t have to be so sarcastic, for crysake. The guy is trying, just like the rest of us.”

  Ron couldn’t help laughing. Fleisher gave him a disgusted look. The professor said, “I would like to talk to the manager, if I might, Inspector.”

  “Okay.” The inspector stuck his head out the door and yelled for Shaughnessy, who returned with a man who looked frightened out of his wits. More than that—who looked so frightened, it was hard to believe he had ever had wits.

  Ickes was a member of that relatively new economic class—the franchise manager. They are a masochistic lot who want the responsibility of ownership, and the danger of risking their own money, without sacrificing their God-given right to have someone higher up to be afraid of.

  Ickes was in a virtual ecstasy of fear. He was afraid of the police, ipso facto. He was afraid of the guy with the accent—he looked like an emissary of the devil. He was afraid of not handling these people right, and winding up on the carpet in front of the regional supervisor. He was afraid the bloodstains would never come out of the carpet. When the big bony foreigner asked him if Jastrow had had any visitors tonight, he said, “I’m afraid I don’t know,” in his best welcome-to-the-Restover-Inn voice. “We don’t lock the side doors until midnight. ‘When you stop at a Restover Inn, you’re just coming home again,’ we like to say, and it’s bad psychology to lock a person in or out of his home. The company manual says ...”

  Inspector Fleisher stopped him before he could explain what the company manual said. “Okay, okay, no visitors. Any phone calls?”

  “No, sir. In the time he was here, he neither placed or received any calls. At least not through the Inn. He may have used the pay phone in the parking lot.” Ickes bit his lip, trying to decide whether he wanted to risk saying what he had to say. The regional supervisor might not like his butting in on police business. Still, the company demanded all its franchise holders to be citizens of the highest caliber. He decided to risk it, for the greater glory of Restover Inns.

  “Inspector,” he began. “Inspector, in the accommodation industry, we get to be pretty good judges of character. You can appreciate that, can’t you?”

  “Oh, sure,” the inspector told him dryly.

  “For example,” Ickes went on, reassured, “the other day, a man and a woman came in and tried to register as Mr. and Mrs. William Smith. Well, that name. Such an obvious alias. But let me tell you, the poor man was so self-conscious, I was sure he was telling the truth. I mean, there have to be thousands of real William Smiths in the world, right? So, I said to myself—”

  Fleisher did not subscribe to the Benedetti philosophy. “What’s the point?” he snapped.

  Ickes had reached nirvana. He was at the absolute zenith of fear. God, he had antagonized the police! Fatalistically, he finished his thought. “Well ... ah ... I just thought ... that is it seemed ... at least to me, though of course I’m no expert ...”

  “Out with it!”

  “Well, it just seems obvious that there couldn’t have been a visitor here with Jastrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if someone was here with him they wouldn’t have let him kill himself, would they?”

  Fleisher groaned and rubbed his eyes.

  The professor came to the rescue. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Ickes, that is very logical. It had never even occurred to us.”

  Hearing that, Ickes bigheartedly understood and forgave Inspector Fleisher. The police had been under a lot of pressure, after all. “My pleasure,” he smiled. “Any time I can be of help.”

  The foreigner (who no longer looked half so sinister) said, “How kind of you. I have a question. How much stationery might one expect to find in this room?”

  That was an easy one. “The stationery comes in sealed plastic packets of twelve pieces of Restover Inn stationery and twelve envelopes. It’s terrific advertising, you know,” he confided.

  “I’m sure it is. How often are these packets replaced?”

  “Well, if the customer hasn’t opened it, the maid leaves the packet; but if it’s been started but not finished, she replaces it with a brand new one. ‘Everything’s the best over at your friendly Restover,’ ” he quoted.

  “It is indeed,” the professor said. He turned to the inspector. “There you have it. Ronald, show him the contents of the drawer.”

  A young guy with blond hair and glasses, whom Ickes had thought was a cop, opened a drawer, and removed the torn plastic packet. “Eight pieces of paper,” he said. “Still twelve envelopes, though.”

  “So,” the old Italian guy said. “We have our explanation for the position of the corpse: Jastrow was engaged in writing something when he was shot.”

  “Like what?” drawled a voice from the Deep South. Ickes suddenly recognized him as Buell Tatham. Ickes loved his column, but wisely decided this wasn’t the time to say so.

  The professor shrugged. “Who can say what he was writing? Perhaps the killer’s name. In any case, the papers were taken away. I would not be surprised, Mr. Tatham, if your next note from Hog came on Restover Inn letterhead.”

  Oh, my God! Ickes thought in panic. A Hog murder at a Restover Inn! The regional supervisor was going to be furious.

  TWELVE

  TUESDAY WAS AN EVENTFUL day. Early that morning the professor, who had not gone to bed, finished the boar hunt painting and started on one that looked to Ron’s bleary sleep-starved eyes like a map of New York State. When he asked the pr
ofessor and found out that was indeed what it was, he asked why.

  “Because,” the old man said, “I have traveled to every continent but one, and I have dealt with evil in the most exotic lands on earth; yet nothing I have ever seen can match the cases this state and this city have produced for my enlightenment.”

  Enlightenment, Ron knew, was Benedetti’s highest praise for criminal cleverness. “You think this is going to be a classic, then?”

  “Yes, I do, even if Hog does turn out to be merely a lunatic who should be put out of his misery, but, of course won’t be. The case of the severed head in the bathroom bowl was child’s play by comparison.”

  Ron removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “It’s always a pleasure to be in on history, Maestro,” he said. “What do you want for breakfast?”

  The old man looked up from the canvas. “If, as I think you are, you are offering me a choice of abominable cereal products to be eaten with cold milk, I shall skip breakfast and continue to paint.”

  “Good,” Ron said. “I’ll see you later at my office.”

  Downtown, Ron found Mrs. Goralsky in a happy mood, humming to herself as she answered some correspondence. Ron wondered about it until she started asking him coy questions about what time the professor was coming into the office. Ron mumbled something, and retreated to his private sanctuary.

  He returned a couple of calls, one from Janet Higgins, who was more than a little miffed at not being invited out to the motel last night, but who would still be going around with Ron and the professor today; and one from a friend in Albany, who informed Ron that a Mr. Harold Atler had filed a charge of unethical conduct against him with the State License Bureau.

  Ron looked at his watch. It was going to be a long day.

  Diedre Chester wouldn’t have agreed. The morning was flying by; she was positively radiant. She turned up a gorgeous turkey at a little poultry shop she had never seen before, and she had turned up vegetables so fresh, it was as though it wasn’t even winter. Her party tomorrow night would dazzle, especially with the new murder to talk about—oops, she thought, Buell wouldn’t like that kind of thinking. And of course he was right. How would she feel if Buell or Ricky were to have something happen to them?