Framed in Blood ms-20

by Brett Halliday

  “I think so.” Linkle shouted, “Brooks!”

  In less than a minute the reporter came in answer to the call. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was haggard. His whole appearance was droopy in contrast with the dapper elegance of the afternoon before. He looked at the detective and shook his head gravely.

  “This is a bad business, Mr. Shayne. Do you think it has anything to do with what we talked about yesterday? If not, I hope that-all that stuff won’t have to come out.” His eyes were probing, pleading, and it was evident that his friend’s death had been a great shock to him. “That wasn’t like Bert at all. You can see that for yourself,” he went on swiftly. “When it came to the showdown Bert did the decent thing. I just don’t see why he had to get it just when he was coming through.”

  “What’s all this about?” Linkle demanded. “What did you and Shayne talk about yesterday?”

  Shayne hesitated, studying Ned Brooks. “You haven’t told anybody?” he asked quietly, “what you suspected Bert was up to?”

  “Why should I, now that I know I was wrong? I’m damned ashamed of ever suspecting him-”

  “Hold it,” said Shayne. He turned to Linkle. “I think you should be in on this, though I agree with Brooks that it wouldn’t do Jackson’s or the Tribune’s reputation any good to make it public.” He eased his rangy body down to the chair and briefly outlined what Jackson had said to him the preceding afternoon, leaving out all mention of Tim Rourke and of Betty Jackson’s later visit.

  Linkle was fuming when he finished, and Shayne said hastily, “Don’t blame Bert too much for thinking about selling out to the highest bidder. As Brooks says, give him credit for not being able to go through with it at the last minute. If you are positive about it,” he added, turning to Brooks. “That’s the one thing we’ve got to settle right here. You’re sure Jackson had decided to turn in the story When you met him on his way home last night?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Hasn’t Abe told you he phoned in and was ready to do the right thing? That’s what’s so horrible and unfair-that somebody bumped him off before he had a chance to put things straight.”

  “I know about his phone call. But we don’t know when he made that call, and I want to know exactly when he changed his mind. What happened when you met him?”

  “Well, he was staggering along the street about a block from home. He was pretty drunk, and I was worried about him, been sort of cruising around all evening looking for him.”

  “Did you try Marie’s apartment?” Shayne asked abruptly.

  Ned Brooks hesitated, shifting his bloodshot eyes. “I did phone her. About nine o’clock. She said she hadn’t seen him all evening.”

  “She was lying,” said Shayne shortly and pleasantly. “Go on about meeting Bert on the street near his home.”

  “Maybe she was lying, but I took her word for it then. Well, I stopped my car and got out and asked him if he could make it home all right. That made him sore. You know how a drunk is-hates to admit he’s drunk. He told me to go on and leave him alone, then started babbling about this story he was ready to break. Said he was looking for Rourke, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. Wanted to crow over him, I guess. Kept saying it was bigger than anything Rourke had ever come up with.”

  “So you told him that he might go on home and try looking for Tim Rourke in his wife’s bed.”

  Ned Brooks’s pale face flushed. “Not that,” he protested. “And I was sorry later that I said anything. But-well, a man shouldn’t let a drunk make him sore, but Bert did get my goat. In fact, I was all wound up at the time about this other deal you and I had talked about, and in the beginning I got the idea Bert was going ahead with that angle. You know-I was mad, and I was disgusted, and I guess I said that about Rourke,” he ended haltingly.

  “Wait a minute,” Shayne interposed. “You thought at first that Bert was talking about selling out?”

  “That’s right. He didn’t make too much sense. Later, when Abe called me to say what had happened, I realized I must have misunderstood Bert.”

  Shayne drew in a long breath. At last things were beginning to make a little sense. He said, “When you threw that at Jackson, about Rourke and his wife, was there any particular reason for you to think Rourke was at his home?”

  “No, no particular reason,” Brooks mumbled. “He just made me sore, and I spoke out of turn. Everybody knows about Tim and Betty,” he went on sullenly to exculpate himself. “Even Bert knew. And I thought I had seen Tim’s car parked around the corner earlier when I was cruising around looking for Bert. I’m sorry I said it. I don’t really know that Tim was there, even if all the shades were drawn.”

  “Go on,” Shayne snapped. “Did you take Bert home?”

  “Oh, no,” he denied stoutly. “He wouldn’t have any help. After we argued a minute on the corner he went on by himself. I got in my car and drove home.”

  “What,” asked Shayne, “did Marie Leonard say to you when she telephoned you around daylight this morning?”

  Again Ned Brooks shifted his eyes under Shayne’s hard gaze. “She called me back after breaking the connection and told me about you sneaking back and catching her calling me. But don’t get any wrong ideas about Marie and me. She just knows me as Bert’s friend, and as soon as you told her what happened to Bert she thought she ought to call me.”

  “She didn’t tell you that Bert had spent most of the preceding evening with her and that she’d run him out about ten o’clock when he insisted on trying to carry out his blackmail scheme?”

  “Good God, no!” Stupefied with surprise he jerked his eyes back to Shayne’s and demanded, “Did she tell you that?”

  “And who is this Marie?” Abe Linkle interjected with a touch of irony when Shayne answered Brooks with a nod of his red head.

  Turning to the editor, Shayne said, “I can tell you who she is, but I’ll be damned if I know what she is. Was Jackson trying to keep her in that apartment on his reporter’s salary?” he demanded of Brooks. “Is that why he needed the extra money?”

  “I think he wanted to divorce Betty and marry Marie,” Brooks muttered. “Hell, I never asked him if he was keeping her.”

  “If you ask me,” Shayne told Linkle, “she’s the kind who probably had six different men paying the rent at the same time.”

  “What’s her last name and her address?” Abe Linkle clipped the words out and compressed his thin lips.

  Shayne said, “Get it from Brooks. If the cops catch one of your reporters interviewing her I wouldn’t want them to find out I gave her to you.”

  Abe Linkle yanked his eyeshade down, picked up a pencil, and held it poised over a pad, and the angry flash of his eyes demanded the woman’s name and address from his reporter.

  Brooks gave the information reluctantly, and immediately protested, “Can’t you keep that stuff out of your filthy sheet, Abe? The guy is dead. It’s going to be tough enough on Betty Jackson without digging up this kind of dirt.”

  “I’ll decide what we print,” said Linkle curtly. “Your job is to report, not have information dug out of you the way Shayne’s been doing for the past ten minutes.”

  “Don’t blame Brooks too much for trying to cover up for a pal,” said Shayne pleasantly. “By the way, how’s our friend doing?” he added to Brooks, and when he received a blank stare for response, explained, “The one who went to visit you early this morning.”

  “Okay when I left. That is-he was hitting the bottle pretty heavy,” he amended, glancing aside at Linkle. “Nervous as a cat on a hot stove.”

  “I’m afraid he’s got reasons for being nervous,” said Shayne harshly. He arose, nodded at Linkle. “Thanks for everything. I’ll be moving along.”

  There was a stir in the outer office, and as all three of the men moved toward the door it was suddenly blocked by a uniformed policeman who looked from one to the other and said, “Ned Brooks?”

  “What do you want with Brooks?” the city editor asked.

&n
bsp; “Orders from headquarters.”

  “What for?” Ned Brooks asked hoarsely.

  “Are you Brooks?” the officer asked and took a step forward. “I don’t know what for, but you can come along easy or the hard way if you want it.”

  Brooks’s murky eyes were wide with fright. He sent a despairing glance at Shayne as the officer took him firmly by the arm.

  “Mind if I follow along, Officer?” said Shayne.

  “My orders are to bring in Ned Brooks,” he replied. “Whoever comes along is none of my business, but there’ll be no more talking now.” He ushered the reporter through the outer office and out the door.

  The wiry city editor was bristling with anger. “What the hell?”

  “I’ll go along and see,” said Shayne.

  Linkle detained him, saying, “Phone me if it’s important. Goddamn it, Shayne, I’ve already lost one reporter.”

  “I’ll phone you if it’s important,” Shayne promised, and went out in a hurry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WILLING WITNESS

  Ned Brooks and his police escort were nowhere in sight when Shayne came out of the Tribune building. He got in his car, made a U-turn on West Flagler, and drove to police headquarters, where he parked in a No Parking Reserved for Police area, and entered by a side door.

  The officer who had brought Brooks in blocked the entrance to Will Gentry’s private office. Shayne shouldered him aside impatiently, went in, and confronted the chief, who was standing in front of his desk with a plain-clothes man on each side of him.

  Ned Brooks was standing behind a chair, gripping the back of it with both hands and vehemently pointing out his rights as a private citizen.

  Gentry turned his head, rolled his rumpled eyelids up, and said, “It’s all right, Jack,” to the uniformed officer who had followed Shayne in and held a vice-like grip on his sore arm muscles.

  “Okay, Chief.”

  The man went back to the door, and Gentry said to Shayne, “You will witness the fact that we’re not trying to frame this man as he claims. There’s a party waiting in the next room to try to identify the person he saw having an altercation with Bert Jackson on the street near his house about ten o’clock last night. If Brooks insists on a formal line-up he can have it, but you and my two men here should be enough to stand alongside Brooks to make it a legitimate identification.”

  “I’m not insisting on anything,” sulked Brooks, “except decent treatment. If the cop had told me what you wanted when he came to the office I’d have come without protest. Hell, I’ll even waive the identification. I’ve admitted I saw Bert last night. Shayne knows all about that. It wasn’t an altercation. We just argued-”

  “We’ll let the witness tell it first,” Gentry broke in. “Then you can make a statement. Just for the record, Brooks.” He backed up against his desk, and the two plain-clothes men took a couple of steps forward. “Get in here between them,” he said to Brooks, “and you bring up the rear, Shayne. We’ll see if our witness can pick Brooks out.”

  Chief Gentry preceded the quartet and opened a side door, waited while they filed into a small, brilliantly lighted room, closed the door, and moved stolidly forward as the men lined up beneath the lights.

  The witness was thin and middle-aged and bald. Lines in his face bespoke years of work and worry. He wore a shabby Palm Beach suit, and his thin fingers clasped and unclasped nervously as the men lined up before him.

  “Now, Mr. Pastern,” said Chief Gentry, standing beside him.

  Mr. Pastern stiffened, jerking his round shoulders erect.

  “Look carefully at these four men,” Gentry resumed in a mild, conversational tone. “Tell me if you’ve ever seen any one of them before. Take your time. There’s no hurry. But keep in mind that you are serving the end of justice.”

  Mr. Pastern looked dutifully at each face in turn. He blinked a couple of times, swallowed his Adam’s apple several times in rapid succession, then got to his feet and stepped forward, pointing the forefinger of his right hand dramatically at Ned Brooks.

  “That one there. I saw him last night like I told you, having a fight with Mr. Jackson. They were right under a street light, and I was on my way home-a block beyond where the Jacksons live. I had to circle around on the grass to get past them because they were blocking the sidewalk.”

  One of the plain-clothes men had a pad in one hand and a pencil in the other and was scribbling rapidly when Ned Brooks protested.

  “It wasn’t a fight! Bert was drunk and got sore when I tried to help him home.”

  Gentry nodded to the officer with the notebook, slid close behind the witness while the other officer took a firm hold on Ned Brooks’s arm, and Shayne left the group to saunter over to the police chief.

  “Sit down, Mr. Pastern,” said Gentry, “and tell us exactly what you saw. Take Brooks back to my office, Wilkins,” he ordered without turning his head. “We’ll hear his story after we get Mr. Pastern’s full statement.”

  Wilkins took Ned Brooks away, closed the door, and Gentry said to Shayne, “Since you’ve already talked to Brooks about last night’s episode, you’d better sit in on this, Mike.”

  “I didn’t pump him, Will,” Shayne told him. “Brooks volunteered the information.”

  Gentry nodded his gray head. “I know. He mentioned it to my men when he was hauled in. Meeting Jackson, I mean, but nothing about a fight.” He settled himself in a chair beside the witness and said, “Go ahead with your story.”

  “I didn’t think much about it at the time,” Mr. Pastern began nervously. “I know Mr. Jackson a little, being neighbors with him, you might say. Enough to say howdy when we meet on the street. I know he’s a drinking man-like all reporters, I reckon. So I thought it was a couple of friends having a drunken argument, like I said. I was coming up the walk when I saw this car stop under the street light and a man got out. I didn’t recognize the one walking along until I got close. It was Mr. Jackson, and he was weaving from side to side. The other man, the one that was up there with the others, grabbed his arm, and they were arguing when I came up to them.

  “I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying. They were sort of growling at each other, and like I said, I had to circle around them. You know how it is when you see a thing like that. I’m a man who minds his own business, but if I’d had any idea one of them was going to be murdered, you can bet your life I’d of walked slower and listened harder. I tell you, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather when Sally said-Sally’s my wife-‘That Mr. Jackson in the next block was murdered in cold blood last night.’ She handed me a copy of the Tribune extra, and I read all about it.

  “I just couldn’t believe it at first. I said to Sally, ‘But I saw him last night and he wasn’t dead, right down the street not more’n a block from his house.’ Sally got terribly excited. We talked it over and decided that what I’d seen might be important, so I called up my boss and asked for the day off. I explained it all to him, too, and he said it was my duty and he’d see I didn’t lose a penny-”

  “Think hard, Mr. Pastern,” Gentry broke in. “Try to remember some particular thing they did, something they said.”

  The excited glow in the old man’s eyes dulled as he met Gentry’s determined gaze. “Why, I’ve told you. They were sort of wrestling and cussing-”

  “Did you see any blows struck?” Gentry interposed patiently.

  “Well, not what you’d call blows, exactly. Pushing each other around, I guess. After I went around them I kept looking back and I saw Mr. Jackson go on toward his house. This other one just stood there and watched him.”

  “Then Jackson was all right when the two men parted?” Gentry did not try to hide his disappointment.

  “Except being drunk.” Mr. Pastern seemed to realize that his story was falling flat. He fidgeted, looking from Shayne to Gentry, then went on awkwardly. “I wouldn’t want to say a single word but the truth. No matter what happened later, I’m bound to tell you the
killing didn’t happen then. I kept looking back, like I said, and saw Mr. Jackson start to turn up his walk. Then this other fellow got in his car and drove off. But with bad blood like there was between them I guess it’s pretty plain he must’ve come back later to do it, don’t you reckon?” Again he appealed to the detective and the police chief, met their cold, impersonal gazes, and his body sagged wearily, his thin hands dangling between his knees.

  Gentry said, “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Pastern, and it’s a pleasure to meet a citizen who is willing to take time off from his work to do his duty.”

  Mr. Pastern straightened, and there was pride in his bearing. “You think I’ve been a help? I always aim to do my duty.”

  “Your statement will be typed immediately. Officer Cline will take you along, and you can sign the document before you leave.” Gentry nodded to the plainclothes man; Mr. Pastern came to his feet, looked uncertainly around; then the two men went out together.

  Turning to Shayne the police chief asked, “How does his story check with what Brooks told you?”

  “Pretty close. With his friend dead, Brooks would naturally try to minimize the seriousness of the argument.”

  “There’s one thing I wonder about, Mike,” rumbled Gentry, moving stolidly toward the closed door leading from the line-up room to his private office. “When my men first got to Ned Brooks at his house this morning they found him in the kitchen wearing slippers and a robe and making coffee. He claimed he’d just waked up and couldn’t go back to sleep, but they had a feeling he wasn’t really surprised to hear about Jackson, though he pretended he was.”

  “He wasn’t,” said Shayne flatly. “Bert Jackson’s girl friend phoned him about it a short time before.”

  “How do you know that?” Gentry paused with his hand on the doorknob.

  “He told me about it, back at the newspaper office.”

  “How did she know about it?” Gentry fumed. “His girl friend, eh? Who?”

  Shayne said, “You’re not going to like this, Will, but if you jump Brooks about it he’ll tell you, anyway. Her name is Marie Leonard, and she lives at the Las Felice. I told her about Bert, Will. Right after you got me sore when they were picking up Jackson’s body.”