Mom Among the Liars

by James Yaffe

  Actually it suited us perfectly.

  EIGHTEEN

  A little before six Ann and Roger and I got into the elevator. It stopped two floors below us, and McBride and Ed Brock got on. McBride gave a grunt, and we rode down to the basement in silence. Then we started along the long corridor to the interrogation room.

  Ann was in front, McBride followed with Ed by his side, and Roger and I brought up the rear. It was a little bit like a condemned man marching to his execution, flanked by guards, the chaplain in front of him reading from the Bible. Maybe the resemblance struck McBride too. I could see small beads of moisture forming on the back of his neck.

  The interrogation room is located halfway between the boiler and the machinery that runs the elevators. Ordinarily assistant DAs and their investigators use it for confidential talks with suspects or defendants who aren’t important enough to rate the palatial upstairs setting. Most of Ann’s clients fall into that category, so the two of us had seen a lot of this room. Our guess was that McBride had never been down here. The people he deigned to question were never that low.

  We reached the door of the interrogation room. Three uniformed cops were stationed outside of it. They saluted, and one of them opened the gray door. McBride gave them a quick nervous look. “What’s this bunch doing here?”

  “One of them brought our client from the jail,” Ann said. “The other two are extra security.”

  “Who decided we needed extra security? You never checked that with me, did you?”

  “You were in court this afternoon, Marvin—”

  Quickly Ann led us into the room, low-ceilinged, no windows, no decorations on the walls, only a wooden table and some wooden chairs. Dim light came from a ceiling fixture, and if you listened hard you could hear the ventilation system humming.

  The first person we saw was our client, Harry Stubbins. He was sitting—more accurately, he was huddled up—in the chair nearest the door. He looked even more wretched than when he was on the street; his jailers hadn’t made him shave or clean himself up, his clothes were as rumpled as ever, and his eyes were red in the center and black around the edges. His hands, linked at the wrists by handcuffs, were shaking softly, and I had no trouble figuring out why. The poor slob needed a drink.

  Farther into the room, also seated, was Leland Grantley, wearing his grayest suit, complete with vest and sober tie. McBride frowned when he saw him. “What’re you doing here, Leland?”

  “Ann asked me to come. She said—some arrests might have to be made.”

  “Arrests!” McBride’s eyes started blinking. “What arrests? I’m the one that makes the arrests around here! And why the hell didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, Ann asked me to keep it to myself—”

  “Ann asked you? Who the hell do you think you’re working for anyway?”

  “You’ve always said we should cooperate with the defense attorneys, Marvin, because it doesn’t look good if we— Well, if I made the wrong decision, I apologize. But as you’re always telling me, I have to call the plays as I see them. No football team can be run with two quarterbacks.”

  “Don’t give me quarterbacks! You never even knew what a football was until you came to work for me! What’s going on here, for Christ sake?” McBride’s eyes were shifting back and forth between Ann and Grantley. Then, suddenly, they stopped shifting. “I’m getting out of here! This meeting is over! When they start going behind my back, to my own assistant—”

  He was stamping to the door, just as we had expected he would. We had thought up several methods for stopping him, but as it turned out, we didn’t have to put any of them into operation. Ed Brock, moving amazingly fast for his bulk, stood in McBride’s way. “I’d reconsider if I were you, Marvin.”

  “Ed, they got no right! Bringing in uniformed cops without even consulting me! Am I the DA, or am I some punk off the streets—”

  “Listen to me. Will you please listen?”

  The two men faced each other. Finally McBride lowered his eyes.

  “Now what on earth have you got to lose by hearing Ann out?” Ed said, smiling, using his most soothing voice. “You know the principle you and I have always lived by—negotiation is better than confrontation. If Ann wants to share some of her ideas about the case—and if this process might lead eventually to the avoidance of a messy and expensive public fight—well, good heavens, Marvin, nobody’s going to hold it against you if you at least listen. Everybody will appreciate your generosity and flexibility—don’t you agree?”

  McBride’s shoulders lifted and dropped. He said something under his breath and started back to his chair.

  “Suppose we get started,” Ann said, moving into the chair behind the table, casually putting herself in the center of the room.

  “Wait a second,” McBride said, reaching into the inside pocket of his sports jacket. “I need a cigar.”

  “I’m sorry, Marvin,” Ann said. “There’s no smoking down here. It’s strictly against the law.”

  McBride looked up at her, a sudden flash of panic in his eyes. Then he sank into his chair.

  Since I was closest to it, I shut the door to the interrogation room.

  * * *

  McBride sat across the table from Ann. Grantley sat a little farther away, and Roger and I stood near the door, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  As Ann started talking, McBride hardly took his eyes off her. He had cross-examined plenty of witnesses in his day, but this must have been the first time he was ever on the receiving end.

  “I don’t want to bore you, Marvin,” Ann said, “but in order to be clear about where our thinking has been taking us, I’ll have to go over some old ground. Specifically some of those deductions I was making the other day about your relationship with the dead woman.”

  A dark cloud came over McBride’s face. “Like I told you the other day for the record, for public consumption—I had no relationship with the dead woman. I deny it, and you can’t prove it.”

  “Even so,” Ann said, “let me repeat my original reasons for believing there was such a relationship. Because that will lay the foundation for some further observations.”

  Then, one by one, Ann went through the points she had made two days ago at McBride’s campaign headquarters, the points I had taken from Mom and passed on: McBride’s admission that he had met Edna Pulaski six months ago when she was arrested, his not drinking anything at the League of Women Voters dinner, Edna Pulaski’s dislike of men who drank, McBride’s giveaway remark about the neon signs flashing through Edna’s windows.

  Her words produced a big reaction in the audience. Stubbins suddenly raised his head and quavered out, “Knew it, knew it all along—liar and hypocrite—”

  And Leland Grantley, his mouth open, was staring at McBride with wide eyes. Every Puritan bone in his body seemed to be shocked by what he had heard. “Marvin—if you were having an affair with that woman, how could you prosecute this case? You should have disqualified yourself. You’ve told me so often that absolute integrity and impartiality is the hallmark of—”

  “Oh, shut up!” McBride spit out at him. “If I want lessons in integrity, I won’t go to some sanctimonious Harvard asshole, for Christ sake!”

  Grantley shuddered back, as if he’d been hit in the face. But McBride, with his chin in the air, was already including all the rest of us in his outburst. “How many times do I have to keep saying this—there’s absolutely no proof I was having any affair with that woman!”

  “You’re sure of that, are you?” Ann said quietly. Then she turned to me. “Dave, show it to him, will you?”

  From the pocket of my jacket, I took out the snapshot Doris Dryden had given Ann—McBride lying nude and asleep in Edna Pulaski’s bed—and held it out to him.

  McBride looked down at it, and I could see his face turn a sick shade of white. “Where the hell did you get that? Give it to me!” He made a snatch at it, but I was too fa
st for him.

  “Don’t be childish, Marvin,” Ann said. “Do you suppose we haven’t got copies? Show it to Ed and Leland, Dave.”

  I did so. Ed frowned at it hard, and I knew the wheels were turning in his head, but he showed no expression on his face.

  “That picture’s a fake!” McBride was saying. “It’s a lie! I want to know what goddamned liar took it!”

  Ann told him, just the way Mom had figured it out and explained it to Roger and me the night before.…

  “What started me wondering,” Mom said, “was this remark that Doris Dryden made to you after the women voters dinner. You remember, you met her in the lobby, and she told you McBride’s wife kicked him out of the bed years ago, even before she kicked him out of the house. I asked myself, when I heard about this, ‘How can she know such a thing, such an intimate fact that’s strictly private between a husband and a wife?’ She made it up, I decided. She don’t like this McBride, she’s running against him in the election, so she makes up stories about him so he’ll look like a fool. If this is the truth, Doris Dryden don’t come out looking like such a nice person, but so what? I put the incident out of my mind. There wasn’t any murder yet, so why should I give to it any significance?

  “Until you repeated to me, Davey, your conversation with McBride when he said to you for years his wife wouldn’t satisfy his natural desires. Which makes it sound like this story is true, his wife did kick him out of the bed years ago. In other words, Doris Dryden wasn’t lying—which puts into my mind all of a sudden a very important question: How did she find this out? Only two people could know such a private thing—McBride and his wife. She’s the type of woman who can’t stand the world should know her private affairs, and his pride is hurt by what she did to him. Is it likely either of them is going to tell it to Doris Dryden?

  “And then I’m getting a little idea. There is somebody McBride could tell such things to. His lover—the woman he’s sleeping with instead of his wife—Edna Pulaski. In the privacy of lying in bed with a woman, sometimes a man isn’t so careful about keeping confidential matters to himself.”

  “But, Mom, that doesn’t tell us how Doris Dryden found out about it.”

  “Edna Pulaski told her—what other explanation makes sense? She’s a businesswoman, this Pulaski. Her business is going to bed with men. Any profit she can make out of this, she’s happy to make. You’re going to bed once a week with a politician, he’s telling you intimate secrets about himself, so what’s wrong with passing them on to one of his rival politicians and making a little extra money on the side?”

  “You think Edna Pulaski was a spy for Dryden?”

  “This is my thought. The idea came to her maybe when Doris Dryden made the announcement she was running against McBride in the election. A perfect opportunity already! Edna Pulaski got in touch with Dryden and they worked out a deal. So anyway, as soon as I was willing to consider this possibility, other things came along to show me I was right. For instance, Doris Dryden tells you she knows all about McBride’s affair with Edna Pulaski. How should she know? McBride was careful, he didn’t leave any trails behind him. So who told Doris Dryden about it? It could only be one of the guilty parties—and we’re pretty sure, aren’t we, which one it wasn’t?

  “And what finally makes it positive is this photograph. McBride with his clothes off is lying fast asleep in Edna Pulaski’s bed. Who took this picture? Somebody sneaked in from the outside and took it, and ran away again? An idiot wouldn’t believe this. Only one person could take such a picture—Edna Pulaski herself. Which explains, incidentally, why she isn’t lying in the bed next to McBride.…”

  “I don’t believe it!” McBride broke in on Ann, shaking his head violently. “She could never do such a thing to me! She was crazy about me!”

  He turned to look at Ed, at Grantley, at Ann—as if he expected somebody to reassure him, to tell him how impossible it was. Nobody said anything. Nobody was able to meet his eye.

  He sank back in his chair without making another sound. There was still a grin on his face, but all the cockiness had oozed out of it, it was a hideous imitation of itself. And he looked as if he had suddenly shrunk in his clothes. He had become as small and huddled-up as Harry Stubbins.

  “So you see how it is, Marvin, don’t you?” Ann went on. “If I show the jury this picture—if they believe you were having an affair with Edna Pulaski—that might be enough to raise real doubts in their mind. About the murder, I mean. How could they find Harry guilty with you looking like such a promising alternative?”

  McBride didn’t look up, and the words came out of him in a kind of groan. “I didn’t kill Edna. I wasn’t in her room that night. Okay, okay, I was having an affair with her, I admitted that to you a long time ago, but I swear I didn’t kill her.”

  “You can’t prove that, Marvin. You don’t have any alibi for the time of the murder.”

  “I was home in bed. I don’t have to prove that. You have to prove I wasn’t.”

  “True enough, if you’re on trial. But not if you’re a witness for the defense. I won’t hesitate to call you, you know. And I won’t have to make an airtight case against you, all I’ll have to do is convince the jury that you might be guilty, that you’re just as likely a suspect as my client is.”

  McBride glared up at her, and I could see a nasty word forming on his lips. But he forced it down, and let out a long sigh. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to say this. But—on the night of the murder I’ve got an alibi.”

  “Is that so?” Ann settled back in her chair.

  “After I left the dinner and dropped Ed off at his place, I—well, I didn’t go home. Okay, I had a date. I met her around eleven-thirty, and we were together for an hour and a half after that. And we weren’t anywhere close to Edna’s place.”

  “Who is she?” Ann said. “Will she swear to this?”

  “Sorry, I’m not saying who she is.”

  “If you expect us to believe in this alibi of yours—”

  “I’m not telling you who she is!” McBride’s chin lifted and quivered, and his voice got stronger. “She’d be in a lot of trouble if it ever got known that she was seeing me. I’m a gentleman, for Christ sake. A gentleman doesn’t get a lady in trouble.”

  “If there is such a lady,” Ann said with a laugh. “Honestly, do you think anybody’s going to swallow this story of yours? Chivalry’s been dead a long time, Marvin, and nobody in their right mind ever suspected you of being Sir Galahad. I promise you, if you don’t produce this mysterious girlfriend of yours, I won’t hesitate to build my case around you.”

  “Do whatever you want to do! Wild horses couldn’t drag that name out of me! Wild horses!” And McBride glared around, as if he heard those horses in the corridor, pawing the ground and champing at the bit.

  Ann watched him a moment, and then she smiled. It was the first friendly smile she had given him all evening. “You know what, Marvin? I’m beginning to think there might be some hope for you, after all. Maybe you don’t deserve to be drummed out of the human race just yet. All right, I’ll put you out of your misery. We know who was with you on Saturday night. So let me tell you.…”

  Mom had laid it all out for us last night, of course, neat and clear.

  “He was with his daughter, this Laurel girl, who else? She tells her mother she’s at a play rehearsal till one in the morning. Actually the rehearsal is over by eleven. She also won’t take a lift in the car with her friend, she tells him she’s being picked up by somebody. And three or four times before, this same thing happened. So who could this be, this somebody who picks her up so late at night and she don’t dare tell her mother about him?”

  “Why couldn’t it be a boyfriend?” I said. “Some kid her mother wouldn’t approve of?”

  “Why wouldn’t her mother approve of him? Her mother was saying to you she only wished the girl went out with boys more often. Why such secrecy, when she could bring him home for dinner and her mother would jump up and
down from pleasure?”

  “An older man then? A married man maybe, so he has to see her in secret?”

  “Maybe so. Only he’s picking her up so late at night—for a married man it’s harder, not easier, to make dates with his floozies after bedtime. He can’t give the excuse, at such an hour, that he has to work late at the office. And look at this girl, look how you’re describing her to me. Does she sound like some type vamp that older men are losing their heads over? She’s skinny, she’s got pimples, she wears thick glasses, she’s generally a mess—like most girls her age.

  “And one more thing. This date don’t last very long, does it? From eleven-thirty to one, this is a pretty short time for any serious hanky-panky.

  “Still, it could be a secret boyfriend, it’s possible, but it came over me there’s somebody a lot more possible it could be. A man that she could be dying to see, and he could be dying to see her, only they have to keep it a secret because her mother would have fits if she found out. A man that was busy till eleven on the night he picked her up, and he’s often busy till late at night because he has so many social functions to go to. A man that wouldn’t want her to smell liquor on his breath. Her own father, who else?

  “What they did together, who knows? They went maybe to an all-night cafeteria and had a couple hamburgers. They talked. She told him what she was doing and how she was feeling, and he told her the same. Father-daughter type talk. But he don’t want to tell you about it, even though this gives him an alibi, because he’s trying to protect his little girl, his baby. In fact, this is maybe the biggest clue of all. If people are saying that McBride is a murderer, and if there’s a woman he was with that night who can give him an alibi—is he going to keep her name to himself if she’s only one of his girlfriends? In the past did he ever show such respect for his girlfriends? She has to be somebody he has a different kind of feeling about, a feeling that with him goes deeper.

  “So give him a little credit already. He isn’t such a nice man, he’s a cheater and a liar, but for once in his life he’s telling a lie to help somebody else.…”