Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

Hofert’s widow livedin a ranch house just across the city line. The two kids were in school when Traynor and Grey got there. Mrs. Hofert was worried when she saw them. They told her as gently as you can tell a wife that someone has murdered her husband. A doctor came from down the block to give her a hypo, and an hour later she said she was ready to talk to them. She wasn’t, really, but they didn’t want to wait. It was a neat case, the kind you wrap up fast.

“That poor, poor man,” she said. “He worked so hard. He worked and he worried and he wanted so very much to get ahead. He put his blood into that business. And now he’s gone and nothing’s left.”

Grey started to light a cigarette, then changed his mind. Mrs. Hofert was crying quietly. Nobody said anything for a few minutes.

“I hardly ever saw him,” she said. “Isn’t that something? I hardly ever got to see him and now he’s gone. So much work. And it wasn’t for himself, nothing was ever for himself. He wanted money for us. For me, for the boys. As if we needed it. All we ever needed was him and now he’s gone—”

Later, calmer, she said, “And he didn’t leave us a thing. He was a gambler, Dave was. Oh, not cards or dice — not that kind of a gambler — stocks, the stock market. He made a decent living but that wasn’t enough because he wanted more, he wanted a lot of money, and he tried to make it fast. He wanted to take risks in the business, to borrow money and expand. He had dreams. He always complained that Jim wouldn’t let him build the business, that Jim was too conservative. So he took chances in the market, and at first he did all right, I think. He told me he did, and then everything fell in for him and... Oh, I don’t understand anything!”

On the way downtown, Grey said, “Try it this way. Hofert went into Jordan’s office last night. They’d been arguing off and on all day. He wanted to draw more money out of the company, or to borrow and expand, or anything. He was in terrible shape financially. The house was mortgaged to the roof. He’d already cashed in his personal insurance policies. He was in trouble, desperate. They argued again. Maybe he even threw a punch. The office was a mess, they could have been fighting a little. Then Jordan took out a gun and shot him. Right?”

“That’s the only way it plays.”

“Let’s talk to Jordan again,” Grey said.

They double-teamed Jordan and kept questions looping in at him until he had admitted almost everything. He admitted ownership of the gun, said he had bought it two years ago and had kept it in his desk ever since. He admitted quarreling with Hofert that afternoon and said that Hofert kept provoking arguments. He confirmed the secretary’s statement about the time of her departure and the fact that he and Hofert had stayed alone in the office.

He denied killing Hofert.

“Why? Why would I do it?”

“You were fighting with him. Maybe he swung at you—”

“Dave? You’re crazy. Why should he hit me?”

“Maybe he hated you. Maybe you hated each other. You shot him, panicked, and left. You couldn’t face his corpse in the morning and you stayed home in bed until we came here for you.”

“But I—”

“You stood to gain complete control of the business with him dead. All the profits instead of half, and no partner to get in your hair.”

“Profits!” Jordan was shouting now. “I have enough! I have plenty!” He caught his breath, slowed down. “I’m a bachelor, I live alone, I save my money. Check my bank account. What do I want with blood money?”

“Hofert was dead weight. He was in hock up to his ears and he was giving you a bad time. You didn’t plan on killing him, Jordan. You did it on the spur of the moment. He provoked it. And—”

“I did not kill David Hofert!”

“You admit it’s your gun.”

“Yes, damn it, it is my gun. I never fired it in my life. I never pointed it at anything. It was in my desk, in case I ever needed it—”

“And last night you needed it.”

“No.”

“Last night—”

“Last night I finished my work and went home,” Jordan said. “I went home, I was tired, I had a headache. Dave stayed in the office. I told him I might not be in the next morning. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. That was the last thing he said to me. ‘Take it easy.’ ”

Traynor and Grey looked at each other.

“He was alive when I left him.”

“Then who killed him, Jordan? Who lured him into your office and took your gun and shot him in the chest and—”

They kept up the questions, kept hammering away like a properly efficient team. They got nowhere. Jordan never contradicted himself and never made very much sense. They kicked his story apart and he stayed with it anyway. After fifteen more minutes of getting nowhere they took him back to his cell and locked him away. Traynor stopped to stare at him, at the small round face peering out through the bars of the cage. Jordan looked trapped.

Two hours later, Traynor pushed a pile of papers to one side of his desk, eased his chair back, and stood up. Grey asked him where he was going. “Out,” Traynor told him.

“He said thatJim Jordan was trying to ruin him,” Mrs. Hofert said. “I always felt... well, Dave felt persecuted sometimes. He had so many big plans that came to nothing. He thought the world was ganging up on him. I never believed that Jim would actually—”

“We think it happened during an argument,” Traynor told her. “Jordan got excited, didn’t know exactly what he was doing. If he had planned to murder your husband he would have picked a brighter way to do it. But in the heat of an argument things happen in a hurry.”

“The heat of an argument.” She sat for a long time looking at nothing at all. Then she said, “I believe everything has a pattern, Mr. Traynor. Do you believe that?”

Traynor didn’t answer.

“Dave’s life — and his death, trying, struggling, working so very hard, and getting every bad break there was. Getting bad breaks because he tried so hard, because he wasn’t prudent about money. And then having everything build to a climax with everything going wrong at once. And the tragic ending, dying at what he could only have thought of as the worst possible moment. You see, all he wanted to do was provide for me and for the boys. He was... he was the kind of man who would have thought it a triumph to die well insured.” More long silence. “And not even that. A year ago, six months ago, all his policies were paid up. Then, as things went wrong, he cashed the policies to get money to recoup his losses, and lost that, too. And then the final irony of dying without anything to leave us but a legacy of debts. Do you see the pattern, Mr. Traynor?”

“I think so,” Traynor said.

He got very busy then. He went to the lawyer he had spoken to earlier, went alone without Grey. He asked the lawyer some questions, went to an insurance man and asked more questions. He called the Haber girl, and with her he went over the few hours prior to Hofert’s death. He got the autopsy results, the lab photos, the lab report. He went to the Hofert & Jordan office and stood in the room where Hofert had died, visualizing everything, running it through in his mind.

It was pushing six o’clock. He picked up a phone, called headquarters, and got through to Grey. “Don’t leave yet,” he said. “I’ll be right over. Stay put.”

“You got something?”

“Yes,” he said.

They were ina small cubbyhole office off the main room. Grey sat at a desk. Traynor stood up and did a lot of pacing.

“There were no fingerprints on the gun,” he said.

“So? Jordan wiped it.”