John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“I have done the necessary reading in that area, Mr. McGee,” Gaffner said.

“Then you know their willingness to take risks, their confidence they can get away with anything. They’re sly and they’re cruel. They never admit guilt. They are damned hard to convict.” He nodded agreement.

I told him about the couple who had worked for the Pikes. I told him of the golf club incident. Then I described Tom Pike’s bedroom, the strange sterility and neatness of it, how impersonal it seemed, without any imprint of personality.

Gaffner asked Stanger if he could add anything. “Not much on him,” Al said, examining the sodden end of a dead cigar. “Florida born. Lived here and there around the center of the state, growing up. His folks worked the groves, owned little ones and lost them, took over some on lease, made out some years and crapped out other years. Don’t know if there’s any of them left or where they are now. Tom Pike went off to school up north someplace. Scholarship, I think. Came here a few years ago, just married, had money enough to build that house out there. I guess there must have been credit reports on him for the size loans he’s got into and I guess if they turned up anything out of line, he wouldn’t have got the loans. The people that don’t like him, they really don’t like him a damned bit, but they keep their mouths shut. The ones that do, they think he’s the greatest thing ever walked on two legs.”

After a silence Ben Gaffner said softly, “Ego. The inner conviction that everybody else in the world is soft and silly and gullible. Maybe we are, because we’re weighted down with excess baggage the few Tom Pikes of this world don’t have to bother with. Feelings. The capacity to feel human emotions, love, guilt, pity, anger, remorse, hate, despair. They can’t feel such things but don’t know they can’t, so they think our insides are just like theirs, and they think the world is a con game and think we fake it all, just as they have learned to do.”

I said. “You’ve done your reading, sir.”

“What have we got right now? Let’s say we could open Broon up and make him the key witness for the prosecution. If he confirms what you think he can confirm, McGee, then I’d take a chance on going for an indictment. But Pike is going to be able to get top talent to defend him. The jury is going to have to either believe Broon or believe Pike. Circumstantial case. Pike is likable and persuasive. And I’m saddled with a story to present that sounds too fantastic and I’m saddled with medical experts who’ll be contradicted by his medical experts. One long, long trial, a lot of the public monies spent on it, and I would say four to one against a conviction.”

“About that,” Stanger agreed unhappily.

“So what if there’s no way to open Broon up? Or what if he’s gone for good? Nothing to go on. I’d be a fool to go after an indictment.”

“Gone for good?” Stanger asked. “Little cleanup job by Pike?”

“Only if Pike could be sure Broon wouldn’t leave anything behind that might turn up in the wrong hands. Otherwise, on the run. Cash in the chips and leave for good, knowing that sooner or later Pike would want to get rid of the only link to all the rest of it.”

“So where does that leave us, Mr. Gaffner?” Stanger asked.

“I think you and Rico better start moving. What time is it? Three fifteen. Best get a panel delivery. We’ll have to make sure Pike isn’t in that area anywhere. Get that body out of there at first light. Drive it back over to Lime City. Is that old phosphate pit on the Hurley ranch dry at the bottom?”

“Since he cut through, it runs off good.”

“About eighty-foot drop down that north wall. Get hold of that big matron with the white hair.”

“Mrs. Anderson.”

“She can keep her mouth shut. I want the fancy clothes off that body, tagged and marked and initialed by both of you and put away in my safe, Rico, and I want her dressed in something cheap and worn out. Put her at the bottom of that drop, then, soon as you can, you get her found. You could tell Hessling to go check a report of kids messing around there last night. Then I can come in on it through normal channels and we’ll process an autopsy request, and I’ll make sure I have somebody come in to backstop Doc Rause and run a complete series on the brain tissue.”

He turned toward me with the slow characteristic movement of his round head, moon face. “It isn’t all that big a risk, in case we get nowhere. She kept wandering off and had to be found. So she wandered off and hitched a ride maybe, and ended up dead in the bottom of a phosphate pit.”

Stanger said, “Won’t Pike make sure she’s listed as missing, and won’t she fit the description enough so that he might come over to make the identification?”

“We’d better make a positive on her. We can change our mind later on. Who do you think, Rico?”

The pale, mild investigator said, “That drifter girl that jumped bond on that soliciting charge four, five months back? If the prints matched, it could be a screwup in the filing system that we could catch later on.”

“I like it,” Gaffner said. Lozier had returned. He said Hardahee had pulled himself together. Gaffner said they would decide later on if they wanted an affidavit from Hardahee.

Then Gaffner swiveled his head slowly and nailed us each in turn with the yellow appraisal. “All of you listen carefully. We are engaged in foolishness. You do not have to be told to keep your mouths shut. I do not buy all of McGee’s construction. I buy enough of it to continue the idiocy he started. We are all going to remember that our man won’t get jumpy. He won’t become superstitious and fearful. Psychos are notoriously pragmatic. If a body is gone, somebody took it. He’ll wait to find out who and why, and while he is waiting he’ll make the perfectly normal and understandable moves of the alarmed husband with a missing wife. Stanger, you and Rico better get going. And after Rico is loaded and gone, Stanger, your job is find Broon for me. Lozier, wait in the hall out there while I have a word with Mr. McGee.”

The table had been cleared of gear. All that remained were the overflowing ashtrays. Gaffner looked as fresh and rested as when the session had begun.

He stood at attention and looked up into my face. “You’re the bait, of course. When the woman is not found, Miss Pearson is going to feel more and more guilty. She is going to blame herself. And so she will confess to her brother-in-law that she knew Maureen was gone and didn’t tell him. She will say that you saw Maureen leaving. Then you are the key, because you can supply the information about the body. No body, and the whole scheme is dead.”

“So he has to talk to me.”

“And he is still wondering what’s in that letter Mrs. Trescott wrote you.”

“And what he says to me, that’s what you have to know. That’s what you need so you can move. What if he decides to accept his losses, write this one off, go on from here? What if he can squeak through, assuming he is in a little financial bind?”

“As soon as the working day starts, Mr. McGee, I am going to make some confidential phone calls to some of the more important businessmen I know over here in Fort Courtney. I’ll tell them it’s just a little favor. I can say that as a matter of courtesy I was told that the Internal Revenue people are building up a case against Pike for submitting fraudulent tax returns, and it might be a good time to bail out, if they happen to be in any kind of joint venture with him. I think he might feel a lot of immediate pressure. You could provide the answers that would relieve it. I think we can hurry him along.”

“So how do you want me to handle it?”