Donald Westlake - The New Black Mask ( No 3 )

Dewey grunted softly to himself. The prosecution in the murder case just concluded had not found that murder weapon either, but apparently it had not hindered this jury in deciding that Jack Strawn was guilty.

“Let’s go, Simply,” said Dewey. “I’ll call in the preliminary story for the evening final while you type up about a thousand words for tomorrow’s sunrise edition. Then you can buy my supper on your expense account.”

“Uh, the assistant city editor doesn’t allow me to put meals on my expense account. Just gas and phone calls.”

“Well, that’s got to change,” Dewey said darkly. “You pay the supper tab tonight and I’ll use it as a test case to get that restriction lifted.”

“Uh, sure, if you say so, Mr. Taylor.”

“You’ve got a good attitude, Simply,” Dewey said, slapping him on the back.

When they were going down the courthouse steps, Jack Strawn’s lawyer hurried to catch them. “Are you Dewey Taylor of the Birmingham Herald ?” he asked. Dewey said he was. “Jack Strawn wants to see you before they take him upstate to Death Row.”

“That so? What for?” Dewey asked.

The lawyer shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. Just that it might be well worth your while to come talk to him.”

After the lawyer left, Dewey thought about it for a moment, then draped an arm around Fred Simply’s shoulders. “You call in the prelim story for me, Simply. Tell the city editor—”

“I’m only allowed to talk to the assistant city editor,” Simply interjected.

“All right then, tell the assistant city editor that I’m trying to get an exclusive interview with the condemned man. Trying , Simply. Don’t tell him anything else, got me?”

“Uh, sure, Mr. Taylor.”

Dewey gave him a wink. “Good man. Reporters have to stick together; always remember that, Simply.” As he walked away, Dewey looked over his shoulder and added, “Pick someplace expensive for supper tonight. We’re going to make a real issue of this expense-account thing.”

A few minutes later, Dewey faced Jack Strawn through two layers of Plexiglas with a wire-mesh grille between them. They talked on telephone handsets.

“I’m Dewey Taylor of the Herald ,” the reporter said. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yeah,” Strawn said. His eyes flicked nervously. “You think these phones might be bugged?”

“These hicks down here aren’t smart enough to bug phones,” Dewey assured him. “Come on, what do you want?”

“I want to confess to a murder,” Strawn said. He waited for some kind of reaction from Dewey. When he got none, he continued, “I remembered you from ten years ago, when I was on trial for killing my wife. You impressed me as a pretty fair guy. When I was acquitted, you didn’t write about it like it was some great miscarriage of justice or something.”

“Okay, I’m a prince of a fellow. Get to the point.”

“So I want to give you a story. I want to confess to a murder.”

“Which murder?”

“My wife. The one I was acquitted of. I did it.”

“Most people thought you did. Why confess to it now?”

Strawn leaned forward urgently. “Because I am not guilty of this one. I didn’t do it.”

Dewey’s expression did not change. Strawn swallowed tightly.

“Listen, man, you’ve got to believe me. I am innocent Somewhere in this lousy little town, there’s a real murderer.”

“You’re a real murderer yourself, Strawn. You just admitted it.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the murderer in this case, man.”

“Maybe you’re not. But why tell me about it? It’s just another variation of the condemned-man-screaming-innocence story. They’re a dime a dozen, Strawn.”

“Yeah, but what if you could prove it? What if you could catch the right murderer?”

Dewey pursed his lips. Now that might be something. That might be Pulitzer-prize material. That might be, at long last, his ticket off the goddamned Birmingham Herald and onto one of the big dailies: a Miami sheet, maybe even D.C., or — dare he even think it? — New York itself. Back to the big time. After all these years.

“What makes you think I could catch the real murderer, assuming I believed there was such a person?”

“Because I think I know who it is?”

“Who?”

“The victim’s wife. Leonora Trane.”

Dewey weighed it in his mind for a moment and decided it had possibilities. “All right, give me the whole story,” he said.

Strawn sat back, visibly relieved. If nothing else, at least someone was going to listen to him.

“I moved to New Rome from Birmingham two years ago and got a job on the Trane estate as a gardener. George Trane himself hired me. He liked his lawn and flower beds and shrubbery to look manicured at all times. When I showed him what I could do, he was very pleased. I am a good landscape gardener, you know? I have a real feeling for the work. Trane and I hit it off real good because he was so proud of the grounds and the work I did for him. Hell, he used to give me a bonus every time I turned around—”

“All right, you’ve got a green thumb,” Dewey said impatiently. “Get to the important stuff.”

“Yeah, okay.” Strawn stared off into space for a moment, then said quietly, “It wasn’t long before Leonora Trane and I noticed each other. She was one of those good-looking wealthy women who’s left alone too much of the time. The Tranes didn’t have any kids, and Trane himself always seemed to be working late or going on business trips; the only time he was really around the place was on weekends, and then he paid more attention to the grounds and the landscaping than he did to his wife. After a while, Leonora came to rely more and more on me for companionship; I was with her more than her husband was. Eventually, we started an affair.”

“Was she in love with you?” Dewey asked.

“Yeah. She started talking about leaving Trane; she wanted us to run away together.”

“How’d you feel about that?”

“I wanted her to divorce him first,” Strawn told him candidly. “Hell, why just run off and leave all that alimony behind?”

“Real sentimental, aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

Strawn shrugged. “Just practical.”

“What makes you think she killed her husband?”

“It just figures, man. There was nobody else in the picture. She must have figured that if she sued for divorce, he would countersue, maybe name me, and then she’d get nothing. If she got nothing, she wouldn’t get me either, because I wasn’t about to run off with her unless she had some dough.”

Dewey changed the subject from motive to method. If she did kill Trane, why would she use an ice pick? If she s so crazy about you, why choose a weapon that’s going to make you the instant prime suspect?”

“Leonora didn’t know about my first trial,” Strawn pointed out. “Nobody around here did. Even the local cops didn’t know until they ran my name through the state criminal-records computer. Hell, I wasn’t even arrested until two days after the body was found.”

Dewey mentally reviewed what he knew of the case from earlier stories that Fred Simply had sent in. “His wife testified that she found the body, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. Leonora said he hadn’t come home all night, that she had spent the evening alone in her bedroom, reading. She said the next morning when she got up, she called the cook to serve her breakfast on the east veranda. That was her favorite side of the house; I had ringed the whole patio with yellow roses, which were also her favorite. Anyway, she testified that she was having breakfast, looking across the east grounds of the estate, when she noticed a lot of activity among some blackbirds down where the boundary hedge separates the property from the road. She was curious, she said, so she walked across the lawn to see what the birds were so excited about. She claims she found her husband’s body just beyond the hedge, in a gully at the side of the road.”