Mom Among the Liars

by James Yaffe

  “We don’t know yet, naturally, if he killed this Ron Pulaski with another one of his dark ties. Whatever he used, he also had to take it away from the scene of the crime, because everybody is blaming Stubbins for the murder, and it should look like the second murder was committed by the same person that committed the first.”

  “Why did he kill Pulaski, though? Have you figured that out yet?”

  “It’s my number six, what else?” She started on the fingers of her other hand. “The second murder, this whole business with the ex-husband Pulaski—this makes sense only if Grantley was the murderer. Why did this Pulaski have to be killed? Because he saw something that would point the finger at somebody for Edna Pulaski’s murder. So what was it he saw? Pulaski was in front of his ex-wife’s house at midnight, half an hour maybe after the murder, what he saw could only be somebody walking at twelve o’clock or so out of Edna’s front door—somebody that shouldn’t be there. Pulaski said it to his girlfriend, you remember? ‘I saw, I saw—not supposed to be there—’ Except that Pulaski didn’t realize what he saw, he didn’t recognize the person that came out of Edna’s house, he didn’t understand why it was important—till after he found out Edna was killed.

  “How did he realize it already? At eleven o’clock on Sunday morning he finds out about his ex-wife’s murder from a news broadcast. This broadcast goes on a while—and all of a sudden he jumps up from the bed and runs out of his house, telling his girlfriend he’s going to the district attorney’s office to give information. What happened all of a sudden that produced in him this big reaction? Right away I knew it had to be something about this news broadcast, something he found out from it.

  “Was it something he heard or something he saw? This was the important question. This was why I told you to ask this Pulaski if he got the news from the radio or from the television. And when I found out it was from the television, how many more doubts could I have? What was there on that television news show? The woman’s dead body? This couldn’t be it. Pictures of McBride? This couldn’t be it either, everybody knows what McBride looks like, all the time he gets his picture in the papers. Pulaski would recognize him the night before if he saw him walking out of Edna’s house.

  “What Pulaski saw on the television was the assistant district attorney, Leland Grantley, making a statement how the killer was found on the scene of the crime and was arrested by the police and justice would be done even though the victim was a prostitute and so on and so on. And watching this on the television, Pulaski recognized Grantley. This was the man he saw leaving Edna’s house before the murder.

  “You want more proof of this? Didn’t it hit you what a peculiar thing it was what Pulaski did next? He’s planning on blackmail, no? He’s planning to ask the murderer for money so he won’t expose him to the police? So what’s the first thing he does? He goes to the police! He drops in front of them big hints that he knows who the murderer is! Is the man a total schlimazl or what? Suppose the police decided to arrest him, he’s obstructing justice, they’ll hold him in jail until he tells them what he knows. No blackmailer in his right mind is going to take such a chance. So I had to ask myself, why didn’t this Pulaski go to the murderer first?

  “And pretty soon I saw what the answer was. He did go to the murderer first. Going to the assistant district attorney, this was going to the murderer. When they were alone in Grantley’s office, Pulaski didn’t drop any hints about having information for sale. He told Grantley straight out what he saw and asked for money he should keep his mouth shut. And Grantley maybe didn’t give him a straight answer, he hummed and hawed a little, he said he had to see how much cash he could raise.

  “Which is the only thing, incidentally, that explains what Pulaski said to his girlfriend when he got home again. ‘Wouldn’t the police like to know what I saw! Maybe I’ll tell them, maybe I won’t. It all depends on that assistant DA.’ Not meaning, you understand, that he was going to sell his information to the assistant district attorney if the murderer didn’t buy it. Meaning that he was going to sell his information to the police if the assistant district attorney—who was also the murderer—didn’t buy it.

  “So after this talk with Pulaski, what was Grantley thinking? What else could he be thinking except ‘If I let this bloodsucker get away with it, he’ll squeeze me for the rest of my life, I won’t have no more blood left in me than a turnip.’ There’s only one way for Grantley to handle the situation. Pulaski has to be killed, just like his ex-wife was. And this time it’ll be easier to do than it was the first time. Murdering people is like any other bad habit—it’s always easier the second time.

  “So Grantley makes an appointment with Pulaski, he’ll come to his house on Wednesday afternoon, he’ll bring the money with him for the blackmail. He gets to Pulaski’s house, and because Pulaski is practically passing out from drinking—he’s celebrating his big stroke of luck, the money that’s suddenly coming into his life so he can go back to Philadelphia—Grantley don’t have much trouble killing him.

  “No, no, don’t say anything yet, I didn’t tell you my number seven—the biggest giveaway of all. When Stubbins was falling asleep from the coffee, he got just a quick look at somebody, maybe a man or maybe a woman, that was coming into the room. He didn’t see who this somebody was, but he heard Edna Pulaski talking to this person and saying out loud a name.”

  “Wait a second, Mom, Stubbins didn’t tell us that. He never mentioned that she said the murderer’s name.”

  “This is because he didn’t know it was a name she was saying. You remember maybe what he heard her calling out?”

  “Sure. It was something about the shows they’re always rerunning on television. ‘Rerun! Had enough rerun! No more!’ Something like that, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s a pleasure to see it, your memory is still good even though you’re getting older. You repeated them exactly, the words Stubbins heard her say to the person at the door. He heard them, but he didn’t understand them. It don’t make sense, at such a moment why should Edna Pulaski express her opinion about television reruns? It has to be she was saying something different.”

  “What was she saying?”

  “She didn’t speak English too good. She spoke it with an accent, one of these Asian accents. And what’s the biggest mistake that Asian people, Chinese and Korean and so on, make when they’re trying to pronounce English? The letter L gets all mixed up with the letter R, the two letters are always turning into each other.”

  “Sort of like V and Win a Yiddish accent?” I couldn’t resist saying.

  Mom went on as if I hadn’t made a sound. “In ordinary conversation, somebody mixes up L and R, you wouldn’t have any trouble figuring out what they’re saying. This is because you know ahead of time what’s the subject of the conversation, you’re expecting to hear certain words and not to hear others. But what Edna Pulaski said to the man at the door, Stubbins was hearing this without any clue to what the conversation was about. So naturally his ears have to make up for this, he has to give her words a meaning that fits with the last conversation he was having with her. She was talking a few minutes before about television reruns, so Stubbins, without anything else to go by—and remember he’s already getting a little dizzy from the pills—thinks she’s still talking about television reruns.

  “Only she wasn’t. What she was doing was giving a Chinese accent to Grantley’s first name. She was mad at him, on account of he just broke up their relationship. ‘Leland!’ she was saying to him. ‘No more, Leland! Had enough!’”

  And Mom settled back in her chair with a pleased smile on her face.…

  Not too different from the smile on Ann’s face as she finished her summing up in that gray basement room.

  * * *

  The long silence that followed was broken finally by McBride erupting. “Jesus, Leland! You been humping Edna all this time? You been poaching on my preserves all this time?” Oddly, though, McBride didn’t sound particularly angry or hurt. Ther
e was a mixture of surprise and admiration in his voice. “And I thought butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! Jee-sus!”

  Grantley turned his head sharply in McBride’s direction. “I won’t dignify that remark with an answer. Let me just go on record as saying that this whole absurd theory is a tissue of lies from start to finish. You haven’t got one shred of solid evidence. And now you’d better call off your bloodhounds, because I do intend to leave this room—”

  He was on his feet again, but he still didn’t get to take more than a few steps.

  “One more thing you ought to know, Leland,” I said. “Pat Delaney is digging up the solid evidence right now. He’s got the fingerprint guys checking every one of those unidentified prints they picked up in Edna Pulaski’s room. He’s been to your house too—with a warrant—picking up glasses and ashtrays and so on to find a good clear sample of your prints. The experts will make a comparison, and if any of those unidentified prints turn out to be yours—”

  “That won’t mean a thing,” Grantley said quickly. “I visited the Pulaski woman’s room on Sunday morning, in connection with our investigation. Naturally you’ll find some of my fingerprints there.”

  “According to Delaney,” I said, “you didn’t set foot in that room until after the fingerprint guys had left. If some of your prints do show up there, I’m afraid you left them too soon—in fact, before you were supposed to know the room even existed.

  “Delaney also has a couple of men showing your picture to Edna Pulaski’s girls, and a couple more showing it to people in the neighborhood. It’s my experience, you know, that there’s no such thing as a clandestine affair. Somebody always knows about it. Somebody sees or hears something. You can be pretty sure Delaney will dig up that somebody. The cops in this town are good at their jobs, though sometimes the cases they turn over to the DA’s office get botched in the courtroom—”

  “Hey! Wait a second!” McBride barked.

  “What Dave is leading up to, Leland,” Ann went on, “he and I are officially police officers, so with great regret I have to tell you that you’re under arrest. Dave, will you read him his rights?”

  “Glad to. ‘You have the right to remain silent—’”

  He didn’t remain silent though. It’s amazing how many of them don’t. It seems to be more important to them to tell their stories than to save their necks.

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “I didn’t want to kill her. If I’d been McBride, I wouldn’t have had to.”

  “How the hell do you figure that?” McBride said.

  Grantley turned to face him. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it, Marvin? You’re a roughneck, you’re a natural-born slob. All that barefoot farmboy bilge! Nobody expects anything else from you. You can even be a drunk, and get away with it. People smile and say, ‘Oh, that’s Marv McBride! Good old Marv, he sure can put away the stuff!’ There isn’t a person in this town who doesn’t know how much sleeping around you do. But they forgive you for it. They’re proud of you for it. ‘Good old Marv, it proves he’s still got balls!’ You won’t lose one single vote from it.

  “Unfair! No justice at all! I can’t get away with anything. I’m the Harvard man. The serious dignified young lawyer who wears vests and never uses obscenity and has no sense of humor. Have you any idea what it’s like living up to an image like that? Have you any idea what a strain it is on a man? And with a wife like mine too. Always rubbing my nose in that high-society family of hers. Always cutting me down.

  “And then Edna came along. She seemed to really like me. She thought I was fun to be with, she gave me affection, she laughed when I made a joke. You can’t understand what a relief it was, how wonderful it was to feel like a different man—”

  Grantley broke off, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to start crying. I don’t like it when murderers start crying. What right have the bastards got to make me feel sorry for them? Before the tears could flow, though, Grantley got hold of himself. He lifted his chin, there was a note of pride in his voice. “One thing I’d like to make absolutely clear. It was never part of my plan—originally, that is—to put the blame for Edna’s death on that homeless old man. I have the deepest sympathy for the homeless, I have genuine respect—”

  He turned to Stubbins and looked him steadily in the eye. “I give you my solemn word about that, Mr. Stubbins. I got to Edna’s place on Saturday night, and— Yes, my intention was to—dispose of my problem—once and for all that night. When I went in, you were lying on the sofa, and she was fluttering over you, acting quite agitated, she seemed to be afraid that you were dead. I think she realized you’d taken her medicine by mistake, and she was worried the dose might be too large for you. My first thought was I’d have to postpone the purpose of my visit to her that night. But then it occurred to me—I had this terrible second thought—that you’d make a perfect suspect. The point I’d like to stress, it was purely a sudden impulse, I’m deeply ashamed of it now—”

  Stubbins didn’t give an answer. He just blinked at Grantley, bleary-eyed. I guess the whole evening was getting to be too much for him.

  * * *

  So Grantley was hauled away, and Stubbins was taken back to jail—he couldn’t be officially released until the paperwork was done—and Ann and Roger and I took McBride up to the real world again. On the way up in the elevator, McBride gave a little laugh and rubbed his hands together quickly. “Well, now,” he said. “We did it, didn’t we? We nailed the son of a bitch.”

  He reached out to clasp Ann’s hand. “Thanks—thanks to all three of you. I was the quarterback, but I sure as hell couldn’t have done it without my backfield. You’ve earned my undying gratitude.”

  Ed Brock came up next to him and took hold of his elbow, and I could see that his grip was tight. “This is our floor, Marvin, we’ve got a lot of phone calls to make. We’ll have to set up a press conference for you—tonight—just as soon as possible.”

  The elevator stopped, and Ed led McBride firmly through the doors.

  As they shut again, and we started up to our floor, Ann said, “One thing about this case still bothers me. It kind of got lost in the shuffle, but it’s been in the back of my mind, I wonder if you’ve got any ideas about it.”

  I asked her what it was, and she said, “Why did Edna Pulaski invite Harry Stubbins into her house for coffee in the middle of the night? That was an awfully generous thing to do, and it doesn’t seem as if she was such a generous person.”

  Roger had asked Mom the same question last night, so now I gave Ann the same answer.…

  “We’ll never know for sure,” Mom said, “but maybe I can make a guess. Early that day or the night before Edna Pulaski phoned her lover, this Grantley, and told him she was going to expose their affair and ruin his life. Not such a nice thing for her to do. So maybe she was feeling a little guilty about it, and maybe she wanted to prove to herself she wasn’t actually such a bad person. It’s human nature, no? You’re doing something rotten, so at the same time you do something good. Even better if you can make a sacrifice to do it. Like Edna Pulaski hated people that got drunk, so her sacrifice was she deliberately brought an old drunk into her house and sat him down in her chair and talked nice to him. This is the type action that makes it possible you can live with your conscience.

  “Like Goldberg, the landlord, when I had my apartment in the Bronx. Goldberg used to send big turkey dinners to the Salvation Army, telling them they should give his generous gift to homeless people. Always he did this just before he evicted some poor family from their home.…”

  My answer seemed to satisfy Ann completely. She suddenly gave my arm a squeeze and said, “You never cease to amaze me, Dave. Your insight into people’s feelings, your empathy, your sensitivity—there’s something almost feminine about it.”

  “I can’t really take credit for it,” I said. “I suppose I must inherit it from my mother.”

  I lowered my eyes with the proper modesty, and also because I didn’t want to l
ook at Roger.

  TWENTY

  The Republican American’s poll, which came out on election morning, made McBride’s victory look like a forgone conclusion. It put him so far ahead that the editorial was already congratulating the voters on their wisdom and good judgment in following the newspaper’s advice.

  What clinched that election was the arrest of Leland Grantley, for which McBride, all over the TV screens and on the front pages, took sole credit. The timing was perfect. The great coup occurred before election day, but not too much before: no time for the voters to get over McBride’s momentary triumph and start remembering his long-term record.

  Poor Doris Dryden couldn’t make any headway against this. As she said to the reporters, after the debacle, “If I had Mr. McBride’s luck, I wouldn’t need my brains.”

  Just one personal note: Early in the morning, before I drove down to the courthouse, I went to my neighborhood polling place, the nearest elementary school, to cast my vote.

  I’ve explained already that, in spite of my conviction that all politicians are liars and crooks and there’s nothing to choose among them, I do vote. I do it out of habit, because I’ve been brought up thinking I should. The way you might knock wood sometimes, even though you don’t believe for a minute that it brings you good luck.

  But then, when I got into that voting booth, a very peculiar thing happened to me. I started to say eeny-meeny-miny-mo, since it didn’t matter which one of them got elected, when all of a sudden this strange little voice was in my head, telling me that maybe it did matter. In fact, maybe I really cared. On the one hand was Doris Dryden, that ruthless bitch, and on the other hand was Marvin McBride, that incompetent slob—and on the third hand (and in a situation like this who says you can’t have three hands?) there was me, facing a machine and being forced to make a choice.