Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

“All of it was the truth.”

“Then everybody else is lying. Do you know a man named Luther Jackson?”

“Nossir.”

“He says he saw you on the beach with Michelle the night she was murdered.”

“He’s mistaken.”

“Another liar, right? Sally Owen’s lying, Lloyd Davis is lying, Luther—”

“Maybe they juss ain’t rememberin correctly. Anyway, Sally never did like me, an’ Lloyd’s somebody I mostly do business with. Which reminds me, Mr. Hope. How much , ezzactly, is all this gonna coss me?”

“I haven’t had a chance to discuss it fully with my partner,” I said. “I’ve already told you—”

“Well, I wish you’d do that soon,” Harper said. “Won’t be no sense ’scapin the chair and then havin to work the ress of my life to pay off a bunch of lawyers.”

“Mr. Harper,” I said, “let’s take first things first, okay?”

“Far as I’m concerned, that is the fust thing. An’ I want it put in writin, hear? When you comes to a fee, I want you to put it for me in writin. I don’t want you to go changin it later on.”

“I’ll put it in writing,” I said, and sighed deeply.

“Okay,” Harper said, and nodded.

It occurred to me that a man worrying about legal fees rather than the possible loss of his life was surely a man who was as innocent as the day is long. In which case, why did his version of events differ so strongly from what Lloyd Davis and Sally Owen had—

“You said Sally never liked you. What’s she got against you?”

“Her husband’s a friend of mine. Her ex -husband. When the divorce come about, I took his side. She ain’t never forgive me for it. Never will.”

“Where is he now? Her former husband?”

“Right here in Calusa. Owns a liquor store on Vine and Second, I think it is. Second or Third.”

“Andrew, is it?” I said, trying to remember. “Is his first name Andrew?”

“Andrew Owen, correct.”

“What’s the N in your name stand for?”

“Whut?”

“The N . Your middle initial.”

“Nat. I was named for Nat Turner. Whut’s that got to do with anythin?”

“I hate mysteries,” I said.

It was close to 5:00 P.M. when I got to the liquor store owned and operated by Andrew Owen. He was standing at the cash register when I came in, the drawer open, the shelves behind him lined with rows and rows of whiskey in differing shades of brown. His own shade of brown was a deep mahogany. He was almost as tall as I was, but much heftier, a burly man with huge hands that deftly transferred the cash from the drawer to the countertop, stacking the money there in neat little piles of singles, fives, tens, and occasional twenties. At last, he looked up.

“What’ll it be?” he said. “I’m about to close.”

“My name is Matthew Hope,” I said. “I’m representing—”

“Hope,” he said, and looked at me more closely, and nodded, and came around the counter. He went to the front door, locked it, and then turned a sign hanging there so that the word Closed faced the plate-glass inset. Over his shoulder he said, “I remember you. You’re the lawyer who got Sally that big settlement.”

“Well, not so big,” I said. I was thinking of what my own wife had managed to get from me , under the guidance of that mealymouthed shyster, Eliot McLaughlin.

“The house and three hundred bucks a month is plenty big where I come from,” Owen said, walking back to the counter. “So what’s it this time? Is she starting up again? I make my payments each and every month, right on the dot. What’s she—”

“This has nothing to do with the divorce settlement.”

“Then what?”

“Your friend George Harper has been accused of murdering his wife. I’m the attorney—”

“Yeah, I saw that on television,” Owen said.

“I’m representing him.”

“I suppose he could do worse. After what you got for Sally, maybe you won’t do so bad by George.”

“He is a friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“I guess you might call him that.”

“What would you call him?”

“A friend, sure.”

“How good a friend?”

“So-so. We used to go fishing a lot together. He was nice to me when all that shit with Sally started. Is that a good friend? I guess. Who knows? We sort of lost touch lately, but I guess we used to be good friends.”

“What happened to change the friendship?”

“Nothing. Who says it changed? He’s still my friend, okay? It’s just that people drift, man, they drift.”

“What kind of support did he give you during the divorce?”

“Shoulder to cry on,” Owen said.

They were the exact words his former wife had used in describing her relationship with Michelle.

“Can you go into that?”

“Sure, why not? I wish you’d asked me this at the time of the divorce, though, I might’ve come out of it with something more than the shirt on my back. I loved Sally a lot. She wanted the divorce, I didn’t. I cried to George about it, and George listened. He was a good listener, George. A friend in need.”

“This was when?”

“Almost a year ago to the day. You handled the divorce for her, don’t you remember when it was?”

“I was trying to... she’d have been friends with Michelle by then, isn’t that so?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Good friends?”

“I suppose.”

“Good enough for Michelle to have confided in?”

“Man, I had troubles enough of my own without wondering whether Michelle was confiding in my wife.”

Someone rattled the front doorknob.

“We’re closed!” Owen shouted. “Read the sign! It says closed!” He shook his head, and said, “Damn winos wait till the last minute to get what they need. The sign says closed, what’s he shaking the doorknob for?” He looked to the front door again, and again shouted, “We’re closed! Go home! Get lost!” He shook his head again, said, “Damn winos” under his breath, and then said, “Anyway, that’s the story.”

“Did Harper ever discuss Michelle with you?”

“No.”

“Did he seem like a jealous person to you?”

“No.”

“How’d she behave when other men were around?”

“Fine.”

“Ever flirt with any of them?”

“No.”

“Ever see them argue in public?”

“No.”

“Ever come home and find her in tears in your house? Talking to your wife?”

“No.”

“What’d Harper talk about on those fishing trips?”

“They weren’t trips. We’d go over to the bridge and fish from there.”

“At night?”

“At night, usually. Sometimes on weekends. Wouldn’t be a bridge, would it, unless half a dozen niggers were fishing from it.”

He waited for my reaction, and seemed disappointed when my face registered nothing.

“So what’d you talk about while you were fishing?”

“Is this before the divorce started or afterward?”

“Before.”

“Everything under the sun. Most talkative guy I ever met in my life, George. He’d bend my ear all night long. Army stories, stories about his business, things that happened when he was growing up in Miami, everything. Nonstop talker.”

“That wasn’t your wife’s impression of him.”

“Well, that’s what he was. Mr. Big-Mouth himself. Listen, Sally is the most fucked-up woman in the universe, her impressions of things aren’t always too accurate, you follow me? The only thing that interests Sally is her own little self and the two inches of vertical real estate between her legs. George Harper could’ve conducted a four-day filibuster in the Senate and Sally wouldn’t have noticed. All Sally cares about is Sally , period.”