Mamie took me up to Dodge’s office. We put on the lights and I went into the library. I said, “I’m going to do a little studying.”
“Studying? Here?” Her face constricted in bewilderment. “Why?”
“Because there’s a law library here. I’m playing a hunch. I’m bouncing bludgeons against rapiers, and playing a hunch.”
“Hunch?” she said.
“In my business it’s part of the standard equipment. Hunch, sixth sense, experience, unconscious urge—it’s got a lot of names, and none of them actually makes sense.”
“Bludgeons?” she said. “Rapiers?”
“Figures of speech. In a cockeyed kind of way, I’m trying to get the guy that got Mr. Dodge.”
That made her decidely happier.
I said, “How is he?”
“I call the hospital each hour, making a real pest of myself. So far, each time, the report is ‘Fair.’ ”
“Could be worse.”
“Yes. I’ll go outside now and let you work.”
I pored over books like a kid giving a workout to pornography. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew where to look, but this wasn’t my racket and it took time. I got close a couple of times but not close enough. I checked each reference and the books piled up on the library table like a football heap on an autumn gridiron and then—bang—I had it right on the head. I closed the book and folded it under my arm and went out to Mamie. I said, “Sweetie, we can blow the joint now.”
“Blow?” she said. “Joint?”
“I’ll take you home. And thanks for the use of the hall. And I’m borrowing this law book.”
Dear old Mamie. She said, “Oh. You’ll have to sign a receipt.” She sat down at the typewriter and tapped out a receipt that had more clauses than Donald Root’s will. I signed it and she put out the lights, and we got out of there, and downstairs, I shoved two fingers into my mouth and shrilled for a cab.
I took Mamie home first, and then I had the cabbie drive me to 35th Street, and we stopped at a cafeteria, and he waited while I went in and used a public phone and called Nolan, and got no answer. Mr. Nolan was out having himself a good time, but he wasn’t going to have a good time for long. I went back to the cab and said, “10 West 35th.”
It turned out to be a four-story house with a remodeled front, an open downstairs door, and no elevators inside. I trudged up two flights to 2 E, rang the bell for just-in-case, and then used Mel’s key to invite myself in. I flipped a light and locked the door behind me. I laid down the law book and did quick exploring. There were three rooms: a bedroom with an extra wide bed; an ample kitchen and a large living room with good furniture, a liquor cabinet with a lot of bottles, and high bookcases along the walls with a preponderance of law books. I moved a chair so that it faced the door, switched off the lights, sat down and let myself get angry.
I didn’t smoke. I didn’t want him to open door and get a whiff of tobacco. I sat very still and grew rigid, waiting. I thought about a son of a bitch who used a girl for a patsy and put her in a spot where she could do time for attempted extortion. I thought about a burning cigar thrown at the face of a stranger. I thought about a guy grabbing a fallen man’s hair and rapping the back of his head against a stone floor. I thought about the back end of a heater crashing into the skull of a man past seventy. I thought about murder, putting a bullet into the head of an invalid trapped in a wheel chair … and then there was footfalls in the corridor outside the door, and a key in the lock, and I was standing up, waiting for a guy that was good with his mitts, that had been an amateur champion and a professional pug, a guy with big shoulders and a lot of power and a guy that would stop at nothing.
The door opened and I hit him.
The left caught him in the stomach and he bent over face forward, and the right caught him with all my strength square on the nose, and I could hear the break of bone under the impact of the blow. But he didn’t go down. He rushed me and kicked his knee hard to my groin, and I fell against him, and we both fell against the door, closing it. We struggled against the closed door, his knees punching up viciously, always toward my groin. It was too dark to see, but I didn’t stop swinging, and then a fist caught me on the point of the chin and I flew back and fell to the floor.
He clicked on the light.
I could see him coming at me now. He plunged forward in a flying leap, and yet, in one second you noticed the craziest things. At the very moment that you saw the blood on his face and his nose blue and twisted, you noticed too that he was wearing the same suit as yesterday, and you saw the watch chain across his vest and the dangling gold boxing glove. He was flying toward me, but the heel of my shoe cracked against his eye and he fell sidewise, and now I was on top of him, a knee in his belly and my fists rapping at his face. But he was strong and somehow, his hands came up and clutched at my throat, and his thumbs pressed in against my Adam’s apple, and I wheezed for breath and I fell off him, but I twisted out of the grip of his hands.
He was up now, near the liquor cabinet. He grabbed at the neck of a bottle, smashed off the base against a corner of the cabinet, and he was coming at me, the ragged-edged bottle a murderous weapon. I was on one knee like a runner starting for a sprint. He came at me and I jumped, and I caught the wrist of the hand holding the bottle, and we struggled again, panting, tight to each other, the jagged bottle waving above us, a weapon of many daggers. Sweat popped from both of us, and hand trembled against wrist, and then I swept the hand down and the bottle slashed at his ear, and it slit the ear where it was attached to the head, and the blood came down in a red sheet and it must have frightened him, because the grip on the bottle loosened, and I shook it out of his hand and it fell to the floor, crashing to pieces. He turned just as I wheeled, and my left caught him on the nose again in a full pivot, flat-smashing-soggy-wet, and he stood still like a stricken animal, shaking his head. I had him down to size now. He ripped open his jacket and I saw the holster, and he was fumbling for the gun but he didn’t have a chance. It was like chopping down a tree. I kept banging fists at his face as his hands hung loose and he shuddered; then he stumbled and fell flat on his back, spread-eagled and unconscious, blood gurgling from his mouth.
I leaned against a wall and waited for the fire to go out of my lungs. Then I went to him and bent to him and looked at each end of the watch chain and found what I expected. One vest picket held a watch, the other a sharp-bladed gold knife. The knife sparkled clean—Mr. Nolan had done a good job of cleansing it—but nothing was going to help him. I reached into my own pocket for the tuft of red carpet out of Donald Root’s apartment. If a clincher was going to be necessary, this would be the clincher. I tucked the tuft deep into the knife pocket, returned the knife, put the watch back in the other pocket, stood up and went to the phone. For the second time in two days I called my doctor in an emergency, but this was some one else’s emergency. I got through to him and I said, “Doc?”
“Yes …?”
“Pete Chambers. I need you bad. Emergency.”
“Again?”
“Trouble, doc. Can you make it?”
“If it’s an emergency …”
“It’s an emergency. 10 West 35th. Apartment 2 E. As fast as possible. Brother, am I going to get a bill this month.”
“Brother, you just said a mouthful.
Nolan slumbered raspingly as I made more phone calls. I called Anabel and I told her to come a-visiting and to come quickly. Then I called Parker at Headquarters. I said, “I’ve got your murderer.”
“Which murderer?”
“Donald Root.”
“Wrong number. I’ve got that murderer.”
“No you haven’t. Come on up here.”
“Where?”
“Jonathan Nolan’s apartment. 10 West 35th. 2 E.”
“That the other nephew?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve been trying to contact him.”
“I’ve got him for you. Reclining and resting. Right here.”
“See you, young feller.”
“The faster the better. And bring Root’s will with you.”
“Bye, now.”
While I waited I eavesdropped on Roger Aldridge’s correspondence. You think of Roger Aldridge, prim with blue-grey temples and a white mustache and an affected enunciation, and you read the incandescent letters that show the man inside the man and it gives you a chuckle.
I built a bonfire in an ashtray and cremated Roger’s indiscretions and opened a window and flicked the ashes to oblivion. Then the bell was ringing. It was Doc with his little black bag. He saw his patient at once, opened his bag, and went to work on him. “What happened to this guy?” he muttered. “Get his head caught in a concrete-mixer?”
“Doctors and their corny cracks,” I said. “How is he?”
“Pretty bad.”
He stitched his eye, took four sutures bringing the ear back to the face, and stuffed plugs into a nostril. He said, “This baby needs a hospital.”
“He come to yet?”
“He’s semi-conscious.” He took a hypo out of his bag.
I said, “What are you going to do?”
“Give him a jab.”
“I want him conscious, Doc.”
“He’ll be conscious but woozy.”
“Woozy’s all right with me, as long as he stays with us and knows what’s going on.”
Doc said, “Give me a hand.”
We lifted him to a couch and Doc gave him the needle. Then the bell was ringing again, and our first visitor was Anabel Jolly in a mauve suit and glistening nylons and mauve shoes and a black net blouse right up to the neck, and then Parker piled in with a pair of burly cops.
I pointed at the couch. I said, “There’s your murderer.”
Nolan leaned on one elbow and observed us groggily.
Parker glanced at the patched-up face, and said, “What happened?”
“Concrete-mixer,” Doc said.
Parker said, succinctly: “Uh huh.”
“The bullet in the ceiling,” I said. “That gave it to me right away. I don’t care how hard you tried to convince me, Lieutenant, you weren’t happy with that bullet in the ceiling.”
Parker said, “If you’ve got a story, let’s have it.”
“Miss Jolly’s got a story first.”
“Who’s Miss Jolly?”
“The lady in the purple suit. You’ve got the floor, Anabel.”
Miss Jolly told her story.
“That,” said Parker, “implicates him in a blackmail deal. It doesn’t make him out a murderer. He was looking for a big touch and a fast one.”
“Wrong,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because this guy was looking for more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He was reaching for the jackpot. Plus.”
“Plus?” Parker said. “Plus what?”
“Plus your way—that does it with a bludgeon.” I shook my head. “Not this baby. This one makes with a rapier.”
Parker squinted his eyes. “What? What’s that?”
“This guy’s complex, a brain-guy. The blackmail deal was to provide a motive for Roger Aldridge. Exactly what you fell for. All of a sudden, Aldridge needed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And he needed it bad. A partnership in Winston Parnell was at stake.”
“Let’s have the story,” Parker said. “Your way.”
“Nolan knew that Aldridge didn’t have that kind of loot. He knew that sooner or later he’d appeal to Donald Root. So he kept an eye on him and today, when Aldridge finally went to Root, Nolan was his tail. He had this on him.” I went to Nolan, opened his jacket, took the gun out of the holster and gave it to Parker. “Exhibit One,” I said.
Parker fondled the gun. “Go on.”
“Nolan knew that Emerson Beach was off. He knew that Beach was due back at five. Nolan is a nephew—he knew all about the old man’s habits. So … as close to five as he dared, he rang the bell, ducked when Aldridge answered, then jumped him and blasted him with the butt end of the heater.”
“That way,” Parker said, “going along with your story, Aldridge couldn’t identify his assailant.”
“Correct. He knew that Aldridge carried a gun. We’ll suppose, of course, he wore gloves. He took out Aldridge’s gun, threatened the old man, got the will out of the safe where it was kept and had the old man change it … under threat of death. This done, he plugged the old man. With Aldridge’s gun. Then he put the gun in Aldridge’s hand and shot another bullet. The one in the ceiling.”
This time it was Doc who asked the question. “Why?”
“To get cordite impregnations in Aldridge’s hand. These show up in a thing called the paraffin gauntlet test. The Lieutenant understands.”
Parker said, “Yeah.”
“Then he turned him around to face the door, as though he were on his way out. Then he cut a slit in the carpet to make it look as though it had torn when Aldridge supposedly tripped on it. Then he scuffed it wide with the point of Aldridge’s shoe, stuck the point in, and now it looked like Aldridge tripped and knocked himself out in his hurry to scram. He had to work fast. He wanted Aldridge still unconscious when Beach returned.”
“Any ideas,” Parker said, “as to what he used to cut this alleged slit?”
I went near to Nolan. “He wears this watch chain.” I reached in for the knife attached to the chain. “This, Lieutenant, is a knife. And it looks like it’s recently been cleaned.” I dug into the pocket, and then, surprise, surprise, I came up with a tuft of red carpet. “But I think, Lieutenant, that he forgot to clean the pocket.”
This was evidence. The Lieutenant alerted to action. He grabbed the tuft of carpet, examined it, took a piece of paper out of his pocket, folded it into the paper and put the paper away. “Anthing else?” he said.
“Plenty else. He was through, and he wanted to get out fast, away from the scene of action. He had rigged his plant and he wanted out. He knew nothing of the fact that I was due there and Warren Dodge. He knew Beach was due and he wanted to duck out. But as the elevator came down, he saw Warren Dodge in the lobby. Dodge had his back to him. It wouldn’t do for Dodge to see him there, it wouldn’t do at all. So out came the heater, and he opened Dodge’s skull with it. It took eleven stitches to close it.”
“Where’s Dodge now?”
“You’re Homicide. You wouldn’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means that you don’t know about every single police inquiry in the city. Dodge is at the Flower Hospital … and he’s sort of held out a bit of information on the cops. But the minute you fix him up with the facts, you’ll have his full statement.”
“Question, please.”
“You say his back was turned.” He jerked his thumb at Nolan. “Then how’d he see this guy?”
“He was facing a mirror. He saw him but he couldn’t get out of the way in time. That’s positive evidence, Lieutenant.”
To Nolan, Parker said, “Can you talk?”
“I can talk,” Nolan said.
“Any remarks?”
“Strictly a frame.”
Grimly, Parker said, “It’s a frame you’re going to punch hard to get out of.”
“Where’s motive?” Nolan said. “I wouldn’t kill Root to make Roger richer. You may be able to hold me, Lieutenant, but a jury’ll throw you out of court.”
Parker twisted to me. “He’s got a point there.”
“No he hasn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I can show you motive. This is a shrewdie. He works boths ends against the middle. It only looks like no motive.”
“Show me,” Parker said.
“You know that Nolan is the only heir-at-law of Donald Root. The only one beside the guy you’ve got in the clink.”
“So?”
“Where’s the will?”
Parker produced it.
“Notice,” I said, “that the additional bequest is written after the signature.”
“I also notice that the bequest is to Roger Aldridge, not Jonathan Nolan. Where’s the percentage?”
“Hold it,” I said. I strode to the law book, real legal-counsel-courtroom-manner, and opened it to the place I had marked. “My reference,” I said in my best lawyer-like tones, “is to a case entitled In Re Ryan’s Will, 252 N.Y. 620. Therein we have a rule of law. A will is void when not signed at its physical end. Thus, if after the signature, there is more writing of a dispository nature, the will is not signed at its physical end, and it is therefore void in its entirety. That’s the law, Lieutenant.”
The Lieutenant scratched his head. “Sure,” he said. “If the will is void, Donald Root dies intestate. Intestate—which means without a will—then his heirs-at-law inherit. That cuts Nolan in for half the estate.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” I snapped the book shut.
The Lieutenant beckoned one of the police officers. “Nippers,” he remarked in his most acidly courteous manner, “for Mr. Nolan.”
The officer grinned and complied. Jonathan Nolan was finished and he looked it. I wasn’t.
“Just in case that wouldn’t work,” I said, “there’s another rule of law.”
Parker beamed. “Hidden talents,” he said. “A real legal eagle.”
“There’s a rule of law that states that a criminal cannot profit by his wrongdoing. Thus, if Nolan’s plant worked, Aldridge would be convicted of the murder … which covered Nolan two ways. First, if the will were declared void, then the entire estate would go to the heirs. Since Aldridge could not profit by his own wrongdoing … the entire estate would go to one Jonathan Nolan.”
“And second?” Parker said.
“If, by chance, the will would hold up—”
“How?” Parker said.
“There are lawyers and lawyers, and the law’s got more curves than … than … even Anabel Jolly.”
Demurely, Miss Jolly said, “Thanks. Lots.”
“Anyway, if it did hold up, then the charitable bequest would go to the charity named—but, once again, Aldridge’s share could not go to Aldridge—same reason—criminal cannot profit by his own wrongdoing. Then—what would happen?”
“What?” said Miss Jolly, her eyes wide now, her red mouth puckered in the beginning of a small smile. “Terrific, this boy, isn’t he?” Now the smile was big and beaming.
“If you’ll look, Lieutenant, you’ll see there’s no residual clause in the will, no direction as to what happens with any part of the estate that, for some reason, cannot go as the testator wished. For that share of the estate, then, the testator, Donald Root is deemed to have no will. And his heir-at-law inherits. Who dat? Jonathan Nolan again.”
“So the worst that could happen to him,” Parker said, “is that he winds up with half the estate, which would be—from what our investigation shows—at least half a million, maybe plenty more.”
“How’s that for motive?”
“Pretty good,” Parker acknowledged. “And pretty slick.”
“Finished?” inquired Anabel Jolly.
“All done,” I said.
“Put the book away.”
I put the book away.
She took me under the arm and led me to the door.
Parker called: “I need this guy.”
“Not more than I do,” Jolly called back. She smiled, winked, composed her face to elfish innocence. “I’ll save some of him. Got some cross-examining of my own to do.”
“Cross-examining?” Parker said.
“He’s good at making like a detective, and he’s good at talking like a lawyer. I’m curious to discover how good he is at ringing bells.”
“Bells?” said Parker.
“Bells, Lieutenant.”
She opened the door and marched me out.