by James Yaffe
“He said it was only a few minutes. Whatever it was, how much time would he need to decide he wanted to pursue the acquaintanceship? He called her up that night maybe, that’s when the affair got started maybe.”
“Mom, Mom, don’t go so fast! Are you saying that McBride—Marvin McBride, our district attorney—is the one who killed that woman?”
“I’m not saying, I’m not not saying. But I’ll point out a few more facts you should think about. For instance, the story Edna Pulaski told to Harry Stubbins—that she’s got a boyfriend who’s been trying to dump her, which gets her mad at him, she’s threatening to tell the whole world about him. This fits very nice with McBride, you wouldn’t agree? Just before the election—for McBride this would be the worst time for such a thing to happen. Can you come up with a better motive for killing somebody?
“And here’s another fact you should also throw into the pot. To strangle somebody with a necktie, you have to pull it pretty tight. I couldn’t be so easy to untie it again and tear it off somebody’s neck. So why did this murderer go to such a lot of trouble to take this necktie away with him? Neckties are neckties, most of them aren’t such personal individual items—but this one was! This one the murderer couldn’t afford to leave behind. Maybe because it was a red-white-and-blue tie with little American flags on it, right away everybody would recognize it was McBride’s.”
“But he was wearing that tie when Ann and I met him at his office the next morning. If he’d used it to kill her the night before, it couldn’t have been in any condition—”
“You said he had a whole batch of those ties specially made up for him. So the one he was wearing on Sunday wasn’t the one he killed her with on Saturday. That one he got rid of the same night.”
“My God, Mom, you are accusing McBride of the murder!”
“No, no, always you want to leap before you walk, Davey. What I’m telling you is, there’s reasons to do a little more investigating, to look at him close and find out some things. Like where was he when the murder happened? The dinner from the Women’s League of Voters broke up at eleven—plenty of time for McBride to get to Edna Pulaski’s house at eleven-thirty-five. Did he do this, or did he go someplace else—has he got maybe an alibi? You take my advice, you’ll ask him about all this, you’ll repeat to him my theory. Even if he denies it, the way he denies it could tell you something.”
I promised her I’d pass her suggestion on to Ann, and a few minutes later it was time for Roger and me to get back to work. I paid the check, and we went out to the street. Mom’s little red Japanese car was parked right in front of the restaurant. She stepped into it, but before she could go tootling off Roger went up to the window.
“My curiosity is killing me. Which way did he decide?”
Mom lifted her eyebrows at him. “Which way did who decide what?”
“Your uncle Moe, I mean. Did he give up eating or did he give up sleeping with his wife?”
Mom beamed. It’s always gratifying to her when the audience takes an interest in one of her stories. “He cut down on the eating and lost sixty pounds in a month, and he and Millie had some wonderful nights in the bed.”
“I’m glad the story had a happy ending,” Roger said.
Mom shrugged. “Only partly. At Moe’s age, in his weakened physical condition, the strain and exertion was too much for him. He had a stroke on the third night, and he died.”
NINE
When we got back from lunch Roger returned to the switchboard, and I went straight in to Ann and told her my astounding deduction about McBride’s having an affair with Edna Pulaski—and the possibility that he was the murderer. (Well, Mom’s deduction, of course, but her modesty will never let me reveal that to the world. Roger is the only other person who’s in on the secret.)
Then I had the supreme pleasure of seeing Ann’s mouth fall open and her eyes widen. It takes a lot to produce a reaction like that in her.
“So what do you think?” I said. “Is our crime-fighting DA going to turn out to be a love-nest killer?”
Ann started shaking her head, her cool coming back to her. “I can believe the love nest part all right. But somehow I can’t see him actually killing somebody in cold blood. First, he wouldn’t have the guts. Second, he’d probably make a mess of it and end up with a scratched face and a live victim. Still, even if he didn’t do the killing, this theory of yours does account for how eager he is to pin it on Harry Stubbins. Blame it all on an old bum who broke in to rob her, and nobody has to poke into the details of her private life.”
“So what do we do now?” I said.
Ann thought it over a few seconds, and her jaw set grimly. “What’ve we got to lose by trying this out on the little son of a bitch? Just to see what happens.”
She called McBride’s office, and asked his secretary if he could see us on a matter of great importance. She said he wasn’t in, he had gone downtown to his campaign headquarters with Mr. Brock. Ann hung up and looked at me a moment and then gave a little grin. “Why not? Carrying the war into enemy territory, bearding the lion in his den—all the military experts recommend it, don’t they?”
We got our coats and went to the outer office, where Roger was bubbling over with news. “I just talked to that professor in Michigan,” he said. “He was chairman of the English department when Harry Stubbins was teaching there. He gave me a lot of interesting dope.”
And Roger told us the sad story of Harry Stubbins. Thirty years ago he had gotten out of graduate school at Berkeley, an up-and-coming young scholar from California, an expert on Romantic poetry. He had taught at a couple of lesser places and ended up as a tenured associate professor at Ann Arbor. He had published a couple of books and a lot of articles in learned journals. He had also acquired a wife and two young daughters. Life couldn’t have been more beautiful.
Seven years ago, when the daughters were in their teens, an icy road three blocks from his house had brought an end to all that beauty. His wife was driving back from grocery shopping, and the daughters were with her in the car. A beer truck, coming at them down a long hill, had gone into a skid on the ice, and in five minutes Harry Stubbins had lost his whole family.
That was when he started drinking. Well, actually—his chairman told Roger—Harry had been a fairly heavy drinker for many years, but it had never been a problem for him to keep his thirst under control. After the death of his wife and children, the control ended, and two years later the university fired him. It’s not easy to fire a tenured professor. Incompetence, surliness, lechery, even failure to show up at your classes won’t do it. His chairman didn’t specify what Stubbins had actually done, but it must have been way beyond the pale.
After that Stubbins sold his house and left Ann Arbor, and the chairman lost track of him. Nobody else in the department seemed to have kept in touch with him either. There was a rumor that he had gone back to the town where his wife had been born and grew up—some town in the mountains out west somewhere—but that rumor was never confirmed.
“All right, life isn’t fair,” Ann said after a moment. “If we’re desperate enough, I suppose we can use some of this in court, it might squeeze some sympathy out of the jury. But just between us, I’d prefer a few hard facts. For instance”—her face lighted up—“a nice plausible alternative murderer.” Then she gave a brisk nod, rubbed her hands together, and said, “Come on, Dave, we’ve got a lion to beard.”
* * *
Ann and I used my car to drive out to the Richelieu Hotel, where McBride’s campaign headquarters were located—the Richelieu did a nice business at election time. McBride’s campaign headquarters took up a couple of suites on the second floor and must have been costing a pretty penny. One of the suites was filled with desks and people chattering on the phone and pounding typewriters. Most of these people looked to be in their sixties or even older.
The connecting suite was less hectic, just one secretary in the outer room. The walls were covered with posters that showed McB
ride glaring out at you and stabbing his finger at you. Over his head was his slogan, in black belligerent letters: VOTE FOR MCBRIDE! HE’S ON YOUR SIDE!
The secretary told us McBride was in conference and would see people only by appointment, but Ann insisted she let him know we were there. A few seconds letter, rather miffed, she told us to go right in.
McBride, as usual, was sitting behind a big desk, looking small. He jumped up as soon as we came in and bustled up to us. He gave Ann a big hug and me a vigorous handshake.
Ed Brock, his face and his bald pate scrubbed bright like a fat baby’s, gave us a couple of amiable how-are-yous from one of the chairs. Brock didn’t get up, though, and nobody expected him to.
Ann got right down to business. “Something’s come up in the Pulaski murder, Marvin. We thought we’d better discuss it with you, before we decided what to do about it.”
Her solemn tone of voice didn’t seem to perturb him in the least. “Sit down, make yourselves comfortable.” He settled back in his desk chair, picked up the smoldering cigar from his ashtray, and waved it at us. “Let’s hear what’s up.”
Ann and I sat. “I think we’d better talk in private,” she said.
“Why should we? Ed is like my double, my second self—right, Ed?”
Ed nodded slowly, smiling, but his eyes were fixed intently on Ann’s face.
“Even so.” Ann said, “I may be telling you some things now—well, maybe you wouldn’t want your second self to hear them. You might as well know, what we have to say doesn’t concern my client alone. It also concerns you personally. And the private nature of this information—”
“How private can it be, for Christ sake?” McBride said. “I don’t have any deep dark secrets. Okay, I’ll come clean, I snore whenever I sleep on my back. Otherwise”—he grinned and took a big puff from his cigar—“my hands are white as snow. Everything on the up-and-up. Strictly kosher, like the ki—like our Jewish friends say.”
Ann looked steadily into his grin. “If Ed were ever subpoenaed, he’d have to testify to this conversation.”
“In my entire life,” Ed said, “nobody’s ever obliged me to tell anything I didn’t want to tell. Not anybody. Not even my late sainted wife.” He hitched forward a little in his chair. “What’s this about being subpoenaed? In what context? How could my testimony possibly be required in the Stubbins trial?”
“If it turned out,” Ann said quietly, “that Marvin had some personal knowledge in the case. If it turned out, for instance, that he had an intimate connection with the dead woman that was relevant to the circumstances of her death.”
McBride’s grin disappeared. “What the hell are you getting at? I told you everything about my involvement with that Pulaski broa—dame—woman! I talked to her for a few minutes six or seven months ago, when we brought her in for questioning. I never saw her before or since in my life.”
Ann sighed. “That’s really a lie, isn’t it, Marvin?”
His face got redder. “Goddammit, if any man called me a liar to my face—”
“Just a minute, Marvin.” Ed Brock spoke softly, but McBride ground his teeth together and shut up. “I assume”—Ed turned to Ann—“you’ve got some grounds for these rather provocative insinuations?”
Ann sighed again, then she went through Mom’s line of reasoning step by step—the steps, that is, leading to the conclusion that McBride had been having an affair with Edna Pulaski. She didn’t mention, as yet, the steps leading to the conclusion that McBride might have killed her.
When she stopped talking, Ed Brock’s head was lowered, and his huge hand was shading the upper part of his face; no way to see what his expression was.
McBride chomped at his cigar for a while, and then he removed it and looked up at us. “That’s not evidence, for Christ sake. You couldn’t come out with any of that in court, the judge would kick you out on your ass. And if you went to the newspapers with it, if you were crazy enough to make any public statements about it, I could sue you for every cent you’ve got.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Ann said. “If we were really pressured into it, I have a feeling we could come up with some facts here and there that’ll tie the two of you together.”
“You couldn’t, because the two of us never were together. But even if we had been, even if I was having an affair, don’t you think I’d be damn careful about leaving a trail? What kind of a moron do you think I am?”
“We’re pretty good diggers, Marvin,” Ann said. “And nobody can think of everything. For instance, did you always meet her in her house? Didn’t you ever take her out—to a restaurant, for instance, or to the movies?”
“You think I’m a total basket case? If I was having an affair—which I wasn’t—would I go anyplace where people could see us together?”
“What about money?” Ann said. “Assuming there was something between you and Edna Pulaski, wouldn’t you have given her money from time to time? Are you sure you never signed your name to any checks that you made out to her?”
“I’d have to be out of my mind. Any money I’d ever give her would be cash. And if I ever gave her presents, flowers or a bottle of perfume, say, you’d better believe I’d always bring them to her in person, I’d never have the store send them. And it would never be anything fancy or expensive. Any relationship of that type that I ever got into, money wouldn’t enter into it, believe me. Women are attracted to me because they’re attracted to me.” Onto his face came a self-congratulating simper that made my stomach turn a little. “You’d be surprised how attractive I can be, when I put my mind to it.” The simper spread into a grin. “Besides, Ed would never let me do anything with a woman that could be traced back to me. If I started to make a wrong move, he’d always catch it in time.”
McBride laughed and leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t have looked more relaxed. Then, suddenly, he produced a grin that was practically boyish. Like a naughty kid caught out in one of his pranks. “Okay, why not? Strictly off the record, Ann, you double-cross me on this and I’ll deny every word of it—”
“Marvin, I wouldn’t advise you—” Ed Brock started in, but McBride laughed and rode right over his words.
“Don’t be such a worrier, Ed, you’ll make yourself bald before your time!” Brock settled back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes again.
McBride turned back to Ann. “Okay, I’ll put you out of your misery. You’re absolutely right about Edna and me. You worked it out very neatly, women are getting too damn smart these days. I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t know Edna until early this year, when the cops pulled her in on that raid. There wasn’t enough evidence to go ahead with a prosecution against her, but I talked with her for a while, and I got the feeling maybe we could get something going between us. You know how you get that feeling sometimes? It’s something about the way somebody looks at you or the tone in her voice, you can’t put your finger on exactly why, but the feeling always turns out to be right. And I was thinking, it might be kind of interesting and unusual, a healthy change, I never did have any of that Oriental pussy before. You read a lot about it, all the amazing things they can do, those geisha girls—”
“That’s Japanese,” I said. “Edna Pulaski was Korean.”
“Whatever.” McBride made a gesture, pushing aside my hair-splitting. “So a couple nights later I called her up, and sure enough she had been thinking what I was thinking. So I started seeing her on a regular basis. She always got rid of the girls that worked for her first, told them she was coming down with the bug or something and had to close shop. Because she knew I had a public position to keep up, there couldn’t be any ugly rumors, I had my duty to my constituents. Anyway, for the last six months I’ve been seeing her one night a week. That’s the best I could manage. Fact is, I’m a busy guy most nights, what with political dinners, public functions, Bar Association and Chamber of Commerce—you name it, I have to put on my fancy dress and be there. Anyway, in a situation like this, it isn’t
a good idea to see the woman too often. She could start to get ideas about how serious you are. Anyway, that’s my experience.”
“How much experience do you have?” I put in. “How many other little lapses have you gone in for in the last few years?”
McBride looked at me, friendly, without taking offense. “Not all that many, Dave. A man gets to my age, your marriage isn’t doing too well, for years your wife won’t satisfy your natural desires and finally she throws you out—well, I’m a normal healthy guy, I never claimed I was the type to be a monk. Anyway, I never have more than one of them going at a time!” He emphasized that with a firm nod: a definite point of honor with him. “More than that would be greedy, right? Even if I didn’t have enough sense myself to go easy, Ed would never stand for it.”
“Wait a second, wait a second!” Ann turned to Ed sharply. “You knew what was going on between Marvin and Edna Pulaski?”
Ed spread his hands. “In a way.”
“What do you mean, in a way? You either knew something or you didn’t?”
“In the world of logic that might be the case,” Ed said. “It’s different in the world of politics. Let’s say that Marvin never actually told me what was going on, because as his campaign manager I would certainly never condone such immoral behavior. I would have advised him to bring an end to it right away, and if he refused to do so I should have been obliged to resign from his campaign. Therefore he never did tell me anything. If I became aware of anything, that could only be a guess on my part, an abstract speculation, and if I gave him advice on what to do—and what to avoid doing, what precautions to take, et cetera—it was strictly abstract advice, designed to apply to general situations and not to any that actually existed.”
“It doesn’t bother your conscience any,” Ann said, “that you’ve been conniving at a coverup, letting him go on prosecuting a case when he himself was personally involved?”
Ed leaned forward in his chair, with a more earnest expression on his face. “My dear Ann, why should my conscience enter into this at all? You have to look at these things in context. This is politics we’re talking about, not life. When you’re in politics, you have to get elected. That’s the whole basis of our democratic system. Whether you’re tricky Dick Nixon or Saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt, you can’t do a bit of good for yourself, or for your city or country or what-have-you, if the people throw you out at the polls. High ideals are useless, unless you’re in office to do something about them.”