by Marvin Kaye
“What about the shooting?” Hilary reminded him, impatiently.
“Well, while I was waiting, I decided to try reasoning with Sid after all. So I finally walked in. Harry was in the office, I think, so he didn’t see me. But Sid did ... and he immediately ran to his desk to get out the gun, so I turned right around and walked back out.”
“And then?”
“I just waited. Whelan left around nine-thirty, I think. I knew Sid was alone then, but I thought it better to wait until he locked up, even if it took all night. But Sid must have been worrying about me, because all of a sudden, he yanked his door wide open—as if he’d been hiding behind it. I closed the fire door just in time, and he didn’t see me. Then I waited about ten seconds and peeked out again. Sid was standing a few feet away in the hall, looking around. The corridor was deserted. Bell’s had closed maybe half an hour earlier, so we were the only ones still up here on the tenth floor.”
“Do you think Sid was looking to see if you were still around?” Hilary asked.
“Absolutely. He sneaked down the hall and looked into my showroom. But I’d turned the lights off and locked up, so he must have been convinced I was gone. He must really have been shocked when he saw me in his showroom a minute later.”
“You ran across while he was up the hall?”
“That’s right. The first thing I did was duck into his office and grab the gun. I didn’t want any kind of an incident, so I just stuck it my pocket and started rummaging through the drawers of his desk. Of course, Sid caught me a moment later and tried to rush me. So I pulled out the pistol and made him sit down at one of the showroom tables. Then I examined everything in his office—every drawer, every page of his account books, underneath the desk, the cushion of the chairs. No dowel! Then I started in on the showroom, which was easier—”
“Easier?” the lawyer scoffed. “It’s twenty times as big!”
“Yes,” Jensen agreed, “but just look at it! Everything’s out in the open ... no desks, no crevices of any kind—nothing but bare chairs, walls, and worktables. Shelves with boxed toys and games on them. I picked up every one of them just the same, but without any results. I even walked along the walls, checking all the pegboard holes to see whether the dowel might’ve been crammed into one of them ... even though I knew it was too small and probably would have dropped out.”
“What was Goetz doing all this while?” Hilary wanted to know.
“Fuming. Cursing at me. I said I wasn’t going to leave till I found the dowel.”
“Did he admit having it? Or deny it?”
Jensen shook his head, his characteristic semirueful smile upon his lips. “Sid’s way was to pull something rotten, then simply ignore it. He made positively no comment on the dowel. All he kept yelling was for me to get the hell out.”
“What happened when you found out it wasn’t in the showroom?”
“I knew it had to be somewhere, so I turned back to his office again. But as I did, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d completely forgotten to search Sid’s pockets. In that split second when I had my back to him, Sid jumped up and tried to rush me. I whirled around—”
“And the gun went off?” asked Hilary.
“No. I jumped away from Sid, and it was the worst thing I could have done. I ran to the far corner of the showroom—just as if I were still the guilty one! Sid instantly guessed that I couldn’t bring myself to fire at him, that I couldn’t kill anybody. My retreat gave him all the confidence he needed, and he advanced on me, backing me behind a table. He lunged for the gun, got it, tried to wrest it from me. But I pulled back, and we struggled back and forth. While we were doing so, it went off, with both of our hands on it.”
“In that case,” Hilary reassured him, “it was certainly an accident.”
“But,” he argued, “it was my finger on the trigger. And whether or not I deliberately pulled it ... well, I can’t remember. Nor can I allow myself to make the brighter assumption and excuse myself.” His hands tightened into fists, which he pressed against the sides of his forehead. “I just don’t know whether the shot was deliberate or not! Christ!”
With that, he sat back down and, lowering his bunched hands into his lap, withdrew into his private hell.
After a moment, Hilary rose and walked across the showroom to the shelf where she’d earlier propped the closed Scrabble box. Lifting it down, she plucked off the lid and prodded the pieces until she’d located the three tiles. With the playing board under her arm, Hilary brought them back to our table.
“What happened,” she asked Jensen, “after the gun went off? What did you do?”
“I panicked! I was certain the shot had been heard through the whole building, it was so loud. So I ran!”
“Where to?”
“I slammed the door and dashed back into the fire exit. I took the stairs two at a time to the ninth floor, where I ran across the bridge. There were still people working in the FAB offices, and it’s a wonder nobody noticed me running. I got to the elevators before I realized I still had Goetz’s pistol in my hand! I stuck it into my jacket pocket and walked down to the lobby. Nine floors. I needed the time to get my thoughts in order. When I got to the lobby, there was the usual late-hours sign-out book, but the attendant was down the hall sweeping up, so I only pretended to write in it. Then I took a long walk when I got outside.”
“And what did you do with the gun?” Hilary interrupted.
“That’s why I walked,” Jensen said. “I was still confused, didn’t know what to do, whether to report it, or what. But I finally let the sense of self-preservation get the better of me. I could see no way of proving to anyone that I hadn’t planned to kill Sid all along. So I walked all the way across to the East Side—in bitter wind, without a jacket. I’d left it upstairs in my showroom. I dropped the gun in the East River.”
“One thing,” said Frost. “How did you know Goetz was dead? Did you feel his pulse, check his heart?”
“I told you I panicked! I didn’t stop to think!”
“But afterwards? Surely it must have occurred to you that you might not have murdered him?”
Jensen bit a knuckle, averted his eyes from the lawyer. “I never thought of it till now, Willie. Christ, I know what it sounds like! But I didn’t think of it! If it had been an accident, I would’ve called a doctor ... but I didn’t! I must have wanted him dead, because I just assumed he was from the very instant the gun went off!”
There was a rattling sound. Hilary had tossed the three Scrabble tiles on the tabletop. “Well,” she told Jensen, “Sid wasn’t quite dead when you ran off because he left a message.”
Jensen and Frost stared at the three squares of wood. They both looked puzzled, so I explained the way we’d found the showroom and the body that morning.
“Apparently,” said Hilary, “Goetz was able to struggle to the shelf where he’d stuck the Scrabble set. I presume it was the nearest thing usable to communicate with. The office must have been impossibly far, and he must have known he could never crawl to the telephone or even to a pencil and paper. So he grabbed the set, which spilled all over the place, the way we found it—”
“Wait a minute,” said Frost, “you’re trying to tell us that, with a few seconds left to live, Sid rooted through the box trying to get enough letters to spell Pete’s name? Sid was a lousy speller, but from PJ to QH is a pretty long jump. And what’s the blank supposed to mean?”
I noticed with some amusement that Hilary had taken care to lay the letters out in a different sequence than I had noted that morning.
Jensen started to say that he understood the import of the dying message, but Hilary shushed him. She wasn’t about to be shoved from the limelight at the climactic moment.
She pointed to the three tiles, arranged with the blank at the left and the Q and H in the middle and right-hand positions, respectively.
“The answer,” she said, “is easily observable, but let’s consider the logical alternatives first.” She o
pened the game board and pointed to the letter distribution column. “Now I took the time earlier, when I was alone, to count up the number of letter tiles in a Scrabble set. According to this table, there should be one hundred of them. Now what would have happened if Goetz, with his last few breaths and waning energy, had attempted to find Pete Jensen’s initials? I’m not even considering the possibility of his trying to spell the whole name, that’s out of the question. Look at this distribution table ... there are just two Ps in the assortment, and a single J! For that matter, there are also only two Hs and one Q.”
“Which means?” the lawyer asked.
“It means that Goetz was trying to implicate Mr. Jensen another way entirely! Look hard at these two letter tiles, what else do you see?”
I cursed myself for a damned fool. For the first time, I understood the meaning of the term “psychological set.”
All along, even though I didn’t play the game, I’d noticed, almost subliminally, that there were numbers on all the Scrabble tiles. But I’d paid no attention to the fact, even when Hilary and Scott were busy tallying their scores that morning.
“You see,” Hilary explained, “there are two letters in the set that are worth ten points—Q and Z—and no fewer than ten tiles worth four points each. Not only that—there are a number of letters worth two points, and a couple of eight-pointers—J and X—as well. So Sid had many available options for completing his message. We were just lucky that he hit upon one of the clearest combinations for doing so. ...”
She tapped her finger against the Q tile. “What do you see, counselor?”
“Beneath the letter? A small number—ten.”
“And here?” she proceeded, tapping the H.
“That’s a four. So what?”
Pushing the blank between the letters, Hilary told Frost to read off the result, ignoring the letters.
His brow knitted. “Ten. Blank. Four.”
“And what room,” she asked, “are we in now?”
The lawyer looked up, realization dawning in his eyes.
Goetz Sales: Room 1006 of the 1111 Broadway building. Bell’s, across the hall, was 1005. So ...
“Yes,” Hilary stated, “Goetz was trying to tell us to look for his killer in the showroom next door, ten-zero-four, PeeJayCo.”
“And the blank?” Frost asked.
“Fortuitous. There are only two. But he didn’t have to find one to get his meaning across. Finding a blank just made it easier.”
“And now,” said Jensen, “what happens to me?”
For answer, Hilary asked Frost what he thought the police would do when they found that Dean Wallis was perfectly alibied for the time of the Goetz killing.
He shrugged. “They may still try to pin it on him, break down his alibi. But if they can’t, they’ll just start prying again, questioning Pete here, me, Ruth Goetz ...”
“Will it be prejudicial to Wallis’s trial?”
“For pushing Lasker down the steps? It could be,” Frost answered, “depending on how carefully Betterman digs beforehand. Why?”
“Because,” said Hilary, “I may not like Wallis, but I’m not going to stick him with something he doesn’t deserve.”
“Don’t worry,” Jensen told her. “I’ve made up my mind, anyway—”
“To tell the police?” Hilary asked. When he nodded, she told him he was a fool. “If you don’t know whether you intended to kill Sid or not, what are they going to think? Nothing’s going to happen to anyone else, there aren’t enough clues—”
“Especially,” I remarked, “since the main one has been criminally concealed.”
Frost nodded. “Which is why, I suppose, Hilary asked Betterman to keep her name out of the case.”
She rose. “I’m not aware that I have to outline my motivation to the pair of you, but I’ll tell you three things. First, if Betterman gets full credit, he’ll be tempted to overlook what he’ll consider a natural mistake on my part in assuming that Wallis killed Goetz as well as Lasker. Second of all, if my name does not appear in the papers, it will not come to the attention of—expert eyes. ...”
She left it at that, but I saw her drift. She was afraid her old man might read about the case and her part in it, then get mad and do enough digging to teach her a lesson.
“My last point,” she said, “is this. The only real villain in this whole affair has been Sid Goetz. He stole from Trim-Tram, twisted Tom Lasker even more than Lasker’s natural inclination led him to be warped, used his wife as a tool, ruined Mr. Jensen once and tried to crush him a second time. He’s been preying upon the entire industry for two decades, and, as far as I’m concerned, his death is a desirable thing, a public benefit!” She glowered at Frost, daring him to contradict her.
“Well,” the lawyer grinned, “he who is guiltless among us, I suppose ... still, I have to sympathize with your viewpoint, Hilary.”
She turned to me, which I thought unnecessary. But I paraphrased Betterman: “I don’t give a damn about the law, so long as justice is done.”
“Mr. Jensen,” said Hilary, “both my assistant and I spoke to you earlier. Based on our impressions, we have obscured the one most damning clue. We don’t know whether that will be sufficient to free you from being connected with Goetz’s death, but so far as we are concerned, there’s no need to punish you for what happened, intentional or otherwise.”
The toyman rose, looked first at Hilary, then at me. I tried to manage the ghost of a reassuring smile. “I don’t know,” he said at last, “whether I should allow myself the luxury of remaining unpunished. But ...” Unable to express a hope he almost deemed obscene, he turned to the lawyer, but Frost had his eyes closed.
“Don’t wake me up,” he mumbled, “I’ve been asleep for hours.”
“Well,” Jensen said to Hilary, “I still don’t know how I’ll resolve this in my own mind, but—thanks.”
“For what?”
“For the time to decide.” He turned toward the door then, and would have walked out, but I stopped him.
“Wait,” I said. “Before you go, Mr. Jensen ... don’t you want to recover your missing dowel?”
28
IT PRODUCED QUITE AN effect.
For one thing, Frost woke up. Jensen just stood there with his mouth open.
As for Hilary ...
“Very showy,” she smiled sweetly. “Waiting till I’m all done, then leaping in with facts you forgot to tell me.”
“No, goddamnit!” I snapped back, “no such thing. I just didn’t see the significance of a few things.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” she said, fixing me with a chilly stare.
I decided to ignore her. Turning to Jensen, I told him that there could only be one possible place Goetz hid the dowel. “Assuming that it was neither on his person nor in the main showroom, it can only follow that it’s somewhere in the small office.”
“Brilliant!” Hilary complimented me. But she came with Jensen and Frost as they followed me into Goetz’s office.
Her behavior was really nettling me. After playing Sherlock all night, there was no reason for her not to give ground graciously. I wasn’t trying to upstage her, although I knew I could probably never make her see it.
In the office, I swept an arm in a broad gesture, indicating the desk and remaining furniture. “Both Jensen and the police searched this room,” I said, “and so did Hilary. Now if the dowel is not on or in the desk where it was looked for three times ... and if we eliminate Goetz’s pockets, which the police examined and which I also searched for the key to the front door ... and if it is also not in the main showroom, where there’s no place to conceal it anyway ... where does it have to be?”
Hilary had tumbled to it by then, of course. It was the first time she’d come in second on a trail of thought I’d traveled first; I admit I relished the experience.
“Of course,” she said, “you hit on it by a lucky guess. While I was busy with thirty thousand other problems—”
&n
bsp; “Damn it, Hilary, I’m not trying to do you in the eye! Not only is it a matter of elimination ... after all, the police were looking for a gun, which never would have fit ... but I also had three clues. Or, rather, one clue twice. The other was supplied by Frost—”
“By me?” the attorney asked, amazed.
“Yes, when you were telling me about your nutty hobby!”
“And after that,” Hilary added, “you called the Paradol—”
“And I also talked to Scott at Trim-Tram. Both times, the other party had a lot of trouble hearing me.”
Reaching down, I hefted the receiver of Goetz’s telephone. I unscrewed the mouthpiece, removed it, and shook the instrument. Two objects dropped out.
I picked up a tubular length of metal a little over an inch long. Noting the miniature program-notches etched into its sides, I passed the dowel to Jensen. “This was rattling around free inside the receiver,” I explained, “and that’s why some calls I made were perfectly clear, while others proved staticky. The dowel rolled back and forth, most likely, shorting the connection variably.”
A round, perforated disc had also fallen from the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Here,” I told Frost, tossing it to him, “add this to your transmitter collection.”
Postscript
LAST OF ALL, LET me tie up a few tangled skeins.
I’m not much for aftermaths, but I guess I ought to mention that Wallis got five-to-ten with Frost, of all people, defending. The counselor did some dickering with the D.A. and got the charge reduced from second-degree to manslaughter.
There was no need for Jensen to confess, as it turned out. Betterman groused around for a while, and—despite Hilary’s assumptions—cut up a little nasty with her before he was done. But he was too lazy to follow up the obscurer directions, so he never narrowed down the suspects the way Hilary did.
Despite the lack of threat, I was surprised to open the paper about a month-and-a-half later and see headlines proclaiming the Goetz case to be solved. I showed the story to Hilary; she wasn’t any too thrilled about the news. But when we checked, we found we were in no danger. Jensen had mailed a carefully edited confession to the police, who, though skeptical, decided to pick him up, anyway.