Ed McBain - Puss in Boots

Being dead was her own business. Dumb husband decides to kill his wife, who the hell knew why? Maybe she was playing around outside the marriage. You got these quiet, serious types, they turned out to be screamers in bed. Not their own beds. Always somebody else’s bed. Screamed loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.

He’d written checks to her production company — the Prudent Company — each and every week of the shooting. Wrote the first one on the third of October, wrote checks every damn week after that, kept writing them right up to the Friday before she died.

So where was the film?

What the hell had she done with the film?

He figured he’d have to drive over to Calusa, do some looking around.

He didn’t like the idea.

Calusa was boring, except when dumb cunts were getting themselves killed.

Matthew would have gone to Otto Samalson, but Otto Samalson was dead.

He would have gone to May Hennessy, the Chinese lady who’d been Otto’s assistant at Samalson Investigations, but Otto’s family had dismantled the business and sold off the furniture and equipment the moment his will was probated, and the last Matthew had heard, May had moved to Hong Kong.

There were only a dozen detective agencies in the city of Calusa, population fifty-some-odd thousand, and so the choices were limited. The private detective he decided to use was a young black man named Warren Chambers, recommended by Benny Weiss, who was indisputably the best criminal lawyer in town.

Warren had been a police officer in his native St. Louis, and had been living in Calusa for the past three years, where he’d done security work for several firms before opening his own agency. He was a soft-spoken man in his mid-thirties, his shy, reserved manner and his horn-rimmed glasses giving him the look of an accountant rather than what one imagined a private eye should look like. Beanpole tall, a former basketball player for the University of Missouri, which he’d attended for two years before joining the St. Louis PD, Warren still moved like an athlete, and seemed uncomfortable in the lightweight business suit he wore to his first meeting with Matthew. His eyes were the color of his skin, as dark as loam, and they watched Matthew intently as he spoke. Matthew liked people who listened . Warren Chambers was a listener. Which perhaps accounted for his reputation as a careful and accurate investigator.

“The cameraman’s name is Vaughan Turner,” Matthew said. “The lighting man is Lew Smollet. The sound man is Mark Wiley. That’s the nucleus crew she normally used. Here are their addresses, they all live right here in Calusa.” He handed a sheet of paper across the desk. “I’m also giving you copies of the state attorney’s witness list and the witnesses’ statements — I’ll need your help there, too. There are only two of them. Both of them live right next door to Markham. Velma Mason lives in the house on the right. Her statement says she saw Markham breaking the glass on his own kitchen door on the night of the burglary. Positive ID, she’s been living next door to him for seven—”

“What kind of visibility that night?” Warren asked.

“That’s one of the things I want you to find out.”

“Okay, who’s the second witness?”

“Man named Oscar Raddison. Lives in the house on the left. Claims he saw Markham burying something in the backyard on the night of the murder. That was what gave them probable cause for the search warrant.”

“Where does our man say he was?”

“At the movies. Twin Plaza One, the South Dixie Mall. And later on at a bar.”

“Got home when?”

“Around midnight.”

“Is that when this guy saw him?”

“No, he saw someone at eleven-fifteen.”

“Burying the clothes and the knife?”

“No, just burying something. ”

“Didn’t identify the something as bloody clothing? Or a bloody knife?”

“No.”

“Again, you want to know whether a positive ID was feasible. I’ll get on that right away. Did the police find any bloodstains in Markham’s car?”

“There’s nothing in the lab reports about bloodstains in his car.”

“How do they figure he drove all the way from Rancher Road to his house without leaving bloodstains in the car? I mean, if he was wearing these clothes soaked with blood... ”

“I don’t know what they have in mind,” Matthew said. “They’re not obliged to disclose how they plan to hang him.”

“They’ll have to work pretty damn hard to explain his car being clean.”

“The best way to explain it is to say he didn’t kill her.”

“Anybody see him at the movies?” Warren asked. “Or later in the bar? In his blood stained clothes?” Light sarcasm in his voice. Matthew smiled.

“Not that he knows of.”

“So we’re still looking for an alibi.”

“Anyone who might have seen him on the night of the murder, yes.”

“That’ll be like searching for a needle in a haystack,” Warren said, “but I’ll do my best. Do you have a picture of him?”

“Just this one,” Matthew said, and opened the top drawer of his desk and took out an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of Markham standing alongside his wife on a beach someplace. “I had it enlarged from a recent snapshot.”

“I wish we had one without his wife in it,” Warren said. “Her picture’s been all over the papers, it might scare off a potential witness. But let’s say we do come up with somebody who’ll say, ‘Yes, I saw this fellow buying a ticket there at Twin One,’ or ‘I saw him eating a hot dog later there in the South Dixie Mall,’ or having a drink in the bar... what’s the name of the bar?”

“Harrigan’s.”

“What’d he drink? Did he tell you?”

“A Tanqueray martini. Very dry, straight up, with two olives.”

“Just the one drink?”

“Just the one.”

“So, okay, suppose somebody says, ‘Yeah, I saw him.’ I’m not so sure that’ll stand up. The prosecution’ll tear into him, remind him that the murder took place back in November and can he be sure this is the man he saw, can he be positively certain because we are dealing here with a brutal murder, sir, and I know you understand the gravity of the charge against the defendant. That kind of legal bullshit.”

Matthew smiled again.

“Anyway, it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that the man went to a movie alone because his wife was working, and stopped for a drink later, and didn’t see anyone he knew or anyone who knew him. There’s nothing wrong with that story.” Warren picked up the witness statements, read both carefully, and then looked across the desk at Matthew again. “Judging from this lady they’ve come up with, they’re gonna claim Markham faked the burglary,” he said. “Lady saw him breaking into his own house, that’s what they’re gonna try to show. The man stole his own clothes and the knife because he planned to use them in a murder ten days later. Where’d he say he was on the night of the burglary?”

“A friend’s house.”

“From when to when?”

“Nine to eleven.”

“And got home when?”

“Around eleven-thirty.”

“And this lady says she saw him breaking in at ten -thirty, right?”

“According to her statement.”

“So if we can show Markham was with this friend — what’s the guy’s name?”

“Alan Saunders, lives out on Whisper Key.”

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“On the phone. He seemed vague about the exact time Markham left him.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay if I take a run at him?”

“I’ll give you his address,” Matthew said.