Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

“Never did like the idea of bein partners with anybody,” Harper said.

“No, huh? How do you like the idea of the electric chair? Does that appeal to you?”

“Not much. But whut’s gotta be’s gotta be.”

“Nothing’s got to be, Mr. Harper. Not if we don’t want it to be.”

“Well, some things just gotta be,” he said.

“You broke jail last Thursday,” I said. “Have you been in Miami all this time?”

“Yessir. Got back to Calusa tonight, thought I’d better come see you.”

“Where were you when you heard me on television?”

“Whut?”

“Aren’t you here because—”

“Whut?” he said again.

“Didn’t you hear me on television?”

“Nossir.”

“Then why’d you come here?”

“You’re my lawyer, ain’t you? Thought I’d find out how the case was comin along.”

“Oh, the case is coming along just dandy. Every cop in the state is ready to shoot you on sight. They think you killed two people, they know you’ve broken jail, they know you’ve got a shotgun in your — have you still got that shotgun?”

“Yessir.”

“Where is it?”

“In the car.”

“What car?”

“Car I picked up.”

“A car you stole?”

“Yessir.”

“Terrific,” I said.

“Needed a car,” Harper said, and shrugged.

“Where is it?”

“Parked up the street. Dinn want t’block your driveway, figgered you’d have to get in your garage.”

“Thank you, that was very considerate.”

Harper said nothing.

“I want you to turn yourself in,” I said.

“Nossir, I ain’t about to do that.”

“If you didn’t kill your wife—”

“I din’t.”

“If you didn’t kill Sally Owen—”

“Her neither.”

“Then why the hell are you running?”

“Ain’t runnin, Mr. Hope.”

“Then what are you doing?”

He did not answer.

“Mr. Harper,” I said, “can you give me one good reason why your wife would have come to me on Monday morning, November sixteenth, claiming that you had brutally beaten her the night before, and asking that—”

“Can’t think of a single one,” Harper said.

“You were in Miami that Sunday, right?”

“Right.”

“Where you went to see Lloyd Davis and then your mother...”

“Right, but they wun’t there, neither of them.”

“So you called an old army buddy...”

“Yessir. Ronnie Palmer.”

“A recruiting sergeant in Miami.”

“Yessir.”

“And then you drove up to Pompano and Vero Beach.”

“Yessir.”

“Why?”

“Tole you. Sightseein. Lookin.”

“Where were you on Monday night? The night she was killed.”

“Back in Miami. Tole you that, too.”

“Why’d you go back to Miami?”

“Thought Lloyd might be comin back.”

“Mr. Harper,” I said, “you’re beginning to give me a pain in the ass.”

“I’m sorry ’bout that,” he said, “but they’s things you don’t know.”

“Then why don’t you tell them to me?”

“Can’t,” he said.

“What’d you find out, Mr. Harper?”

He did not answer me.

“Kitty Reynolds thinks you found out something. What , Mr. Harper?”

He sat as still as a stone in the chair, staring at me.

“Mr. Harper,” I said. “I want you to come with me to the police. I want you to turn yourself in voluntarily before somebody out there blows off your head. If you didn’t commit these murders, you’ve got nothing to hide. What do you say? Will you come with me?”

He sat in the chair thinking this over for what seemed like a full minute.

He nodded.

He lumbered to his feet.

And then the son of a bitch hit me full in the face with his huge bunched fist.

The phone was ringing.

The weather outside was rainy, windy, and cold.

It was nine o’clock on Wednesday morning, December 2, a little less than eight hours since George Harper had knocked me unconscious and fled into the night. I had come to about twenty minutes later. My watch had read 1:46. It’s a digital watch. Nobody says, “It’s a quarter to two,” anymore. It’s always either 1:44 or 1:46. I had debated calling Bloom, and had gone to bed instead. He was on the phone now.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked.

“No, I was up.”

“Any word from Harper?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “No.”

“Well, sometimes it takes a little while for somebody to make up his mind,” Bloom said. “Maybe he’ll show at the funeral today.”

“What funeral?”

“Sally Owen’s. I have to tell you, Matthew, we’re covering it like it’s a presidential visit, just in case Harper does decide to drop in. Half the cops in the city’ll be there, good day to rob a bank downtown, huh?”

“Good day for a funeral, too.”

“Yes, wonderful,” Bloom said drily. “You going?”

“What for?”

“ If Harper shows, he’s going to need his lawyer again.”

“I doubt if he’ll show, Morrie.”

“Oh?” Bloom said, and there was a long pause on the line. “What makes you think that?”

“If you’d killed her, would you go to her funeral?”

“Lots of people who kill people do crazy things later on. I once had a guy on Long Island, he stabbed his wife with a butcher knife, you know? So the very next day, half of Nassau County looking for him, he takes the knife in to have it sharpened, can you imagine? Like locking the barn door after the horse is gone, right? Brings in a knife with blood on the handle, around those little rivets in the handle, you know? So the grinder takes the knife to the back of the store, and he calls us, and when we arrest the guy, all he says is ‘The knife was dull.’ People do crazy things, Matthew.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, anyway, it’s at eleven o’clock, Floral Park Cemetery, if you feel like dropping in.”

“Don’t expect me,” I said.

“You sound grumpy this morning,” he said.

“I’ve got a toothache.”

“Ah, too bad. Do you have a good dentist?”

“Yes, thanks, Morrie.”

“Let me know if you hear from Harper, okay?” he said, and hung up.

I don’t know why I went to the funeral; funerals depress me, even when it isn’t raining. I certainly didn’t expect to see Harper there; you do not sock your own lawyer on the jaw the night before and then walk into the arms of the police the next day. Besides, I really did have a toothache; two toothaches or perhaps teethaches, where Harper had hit me. Moreover, the entire left side of my face was swollen and discolored, and my lower gum had begun bleeding when I’d brushed my teeth that morning. I had not liked getting hit on the jaw. The last time I’d been hit on the jaw (or anyplace else) was when I was fourteen years old and got into a fistfight with an eighteen-year-old football player over a girl on the cheerleading squad. The girl’s name was Bunny, and she had allowed me to fondle her breasts one night, thereby granting me (it seemed in my adolescent fantasy) priority, privilege, and longevity. The football player, whose name was Hank, thought otherwise, perhaps because he’d been laying her steadily (Everybody but me, I thought, I love you, Bunny!) since the start of the season. He told me to keep away from her. I told him he was a moronic turd. He blackened both my eyes, dislocated my jaw, and knocked out one of my molars. I still have in my mouth the restoration Dr. Mordecai Simon put in for me in Chicago. It reminds me never to start up with football players, or with practically anyone else, for that matter. But who expects a client to hit him? From now on, I would expect clients to hit me. I would expect priests to hit me. I would expect little babies in their buggies to slam me with their bottles. Frank’s extension of Murphy’s Law: If you expect the worst, it will nonetheless surprise you when it comes.