James Chase - Tell It to the Birds

Sunk! he thought, now what am I going to do?

His immediate impulse was to take Barlowe’s gun from the locked drawer in his desk and murder Jones. The thought was scarcely in his mind before he dismissed it. He would never have the strength to move this great hulk of a body from his office once Jones was dead. He had to gain time to think.

“That’s right, Jud,” he said. “I wasn’t in my office but I had nothing to do with the murder… nothing at all.”

Jones, who had been watching Anson closely, smirked. Anson could smell the sweat of excitement and fear coming from the fat man.

“I’m sure, Mr. Anson… never crossed my mind you did have anything to do with it. I just thought I’d better let you know if the cops asked me. I’ll have to tell them the truth.” He cocked his head on one side, and went on, “it wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Mr. Anson?” Anson said slowly, “Well, Jud, it might.” Jones managed to look sad.

“I wouldn’t like that. You’ve always been good to me. What sort of harm would it do?”

“I could lose my job,” Anson said. “I set up this alibi because I was fooling around with a married woman and her husband is on to me. I wanted to prove I was right here instead of being with her.” Even to him, this sounded pretty feeble, but he had no time to think up something better.

“Is that right?” Jud said and leered. “You were always sharp with girls.” He paused to scratch the back of his fat neck.

“Well, maybe I could forget it if that’s all it is. Maybe I could… I’ll have to think about it.”

Anson smelling blackmail, said quickly… too quickly, “If a hundred dollars would be of any use to you, Jud… after all, although I have nothing to do with it, this is a murder inquiry. How about a hundred bucks and you keep me in the clear?”

Jones lolled his massive frame against the wall. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Anson. It worries me. To tell the truth, my wife is far from well. The doc says she should go away. The climate here doesn’t seem to agree with her. Moving is an expensive business. You couldnt run to a thousand, could you? For that I’ll forget everything and you will be doing us a good turn.”

Anson suddenly became calm. He realized the situation. He told himself he would have to kill this fat, hulking blackmailer, but he would have to stall him until he got him where he could kill him in safety.

“A thousand!” he exclaimed. “For Pete’s sake, Jud! Where do you imagine I’d find that kind of money? Two hundred is the best I could do.”

Jones shook his head. His expression became more sorrowful. “I’d like to help you, Mr. Anson, but suppose the cops found out I had lied to them? What would happen to my wife? They could put me away for. a couple of years. Two hundred bucks is no good to me.”

Anson stared at the fat, sweating blackmailer for a long moment, then he said, “Give me a little time; two or three days.

I might manage to find five hundred, but that would be the top. How about that?”

“I hate to press a guy as nice as you, Mr. Anson,” Jones said and Anson was quick to detect a hardening in the expression of his eyes. “It’ll have to be a thousand or nothing. I will give you a couple of days to decide.”

Anson watched him heave his bulk away from the wall and over to the door. As Jones opened the door, he paused and leered at Anson.

“My wife knows,” he said. “I never keep anything from her, but she can keep her mouth shut as well as I can. Good night, Mr. Anson.”

He went out into the corridor and closed the door after him.

On his way back to his apartment, Anson stopped off at the Shell Service Station. Hornby shook hands with him and asked him how he liked his new tyres.

“They’re fine,” Anson said. “I looked in to settle the account.”

“Thanks, Mr. Anson. Come into the office and I’ll give you a receipt.”

As Hornby began to write out the receipt, he said casually, “The police have been asking about your old set of tyres, Mr. Anson.”

Anson was looking at a tyre pressure chart, hanging on the wall. His back was to .Hornly. He felt the shock of Hornby’s words like a physical blow.

Without turning, he asked, “The police? Why?”

“Something to do with the Barlowe murder,” Hornby said. “It seems the killer left an imprint of his tyres on the murder spot. The police are checking on everyone who has changed his tyres recently. I told them that you had changed your tyres and that you took your old set away.”

Now the first shock was over, Anson turned.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll see Lieutenant Jenson. He’s a good friend of mine… I wouldn’t like him to think I had anything to do with the murder,” and he forced a laugh.

“I just thought I’d mention it,” Hornby said, giving Anson the receipt.

“Sure… I’ll see the Lieutenant.”

As Anson drove away from the garage, he had a feeling he was in a trap. How many more mistakes was he going to make? He had been so eager to get the insurance money, he had rushed into this thing. He had been crazy to have used Barlowe’s gun. He had been even more crazy to have been so damned careless as to get a garage that knew him to change his tyres. Then there was Harmas asking about the coupon inquiry form and worse still, he now had no falibi for the night when Barlowe died!

Could this bright idea of his be slowly but surely collapsing? He mustn’t lose his nerve, he told himself. So long as his alibi stood up, he was in the clear. What was he to do about Jones? His hands turned damp as he gripped the steering-wheel. Would he have to murder both Jones and his wife? Somehow he would have to silence them. He was sure, even if he did manage to find one thousand dollars, Jones would come back for more. This tyre business… he had dumped his old set in a breakdown yard among hundreds of other used tyres. No one had seen him do it. Suppose Jones did betray him? Could the police prove he murdered Barlowe? He didn’t think they could… unless Meg’s nerve broke. If they worked on her, she might involve him.

She would be back the following night and alone in the sordid dirty, little house. He would go out there late and talk to her.

Maddox flicked cigarette ash off his tie.

“I never liked Anson,” he said. “There has always been something queer about him. He looks sexually starved and when a man looks like that, I don’t like him.”

Lieutenant Jenson sat behind his desk. Astride a chair, Harmas kept his eyes on Maddox. They had spent the past hour going over the details that Jenson and Harmas had collected covering Anson’s connection with Barlowe’s murder.

“Let’s take another look at it,” Maddox said, dropping his cigarette butt on the floor and lighting another cigarette. “We know Anson has been in this woman’s bedroom. We know also he has handled Barlowe’s gun-box. You have his fingerprints in the bedroom and on the gun-box. We know this because you got his prints on the glass paperweight.” He looked approvingly at Harmas. “That was smart.” He drew in a lungful of smoke and let it drift down his thick nostrils.

“We know from this woman, Fay Lawley, that Anson has been losing money on horses and has been chasing women.

We know he has been living far beyond his income. We also know on the morning following the Caltex holdup, Anson suddenly pays into his bank a thousand dollars. We know the gun that killed the officer in the hold-up belonged to Barlowe. We also know that the gun killed Barlowe. We can assume the woman gave Anson the gun. He hadn’t the money to pay for the premium so it looks as if he were forced to fake the Caltex hold-up to get the money and to pay off his debts to this bookmaker. We know he changed his car tyres after he was alerted by you…” here Maddox scowled at Harmas, “that a tyre track was found on the murder spot. We also know that he has a cast iron alibi.” Maddox leaned back in his chair “What is a cast iron alibi? Who is this night guard who tells us Anson was working until eleven on the night Barlowe died?”