Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

George goes to see Mary. Tells her he’s going back home. There’s something he wants to look into. “Would it make any difference to you whether I came back here, Mary?” Mary just looks at him. “Or will you be all right with Joe?” Mary flares up a bit. Then she busts out crying, “I–I guess I’m in love with Joe,” she says. “I’m sorry, George. I guess that’s how it is.”

George says fine. “Always provided he’s the right kind of guy for you.” “Do you think I wouldn’t know?” George: “I know somebody who didn’t.”

He leaves. Mary is not sore, but she is hurt. George starts to pack, tells Joe. Joe offers to drive him to the station. Fine. They just miss the train. Fine. Make it at the junction easy. Fine. Out in the country George says: “Stop a minute, Joe. Here’s the letter you didn’t find.”

Joe reads it. “Yeah,” he admits. “Edna and I were pals. I got to know her because she came from here and I was in camp here. Kind of a bond. After she was killed I wanted to come back. Kind of funny. We both came here for the same reason, you and I.”

“But that isn’t why you thought I came here, is it, Joe?” “Huh?” “Well, I have to make that train. Better get moving.” Joe doesn’t move. George tells him why he is going home. “But you see, Joe, I’m really doing it for your sake. Mary’s in love with you. I’ve got to know.” Joe: “Know what?” “I’ve got to know whether Edna’s death was an accident — like the ones I had here. On account of Mary I’ve got to know. She’s in love with you, Joe.”

Joe: “And if it wasn’t an accident?” George: “Then I have to find out where you were that night. If it’s not too late to find out. How about driving on? Or would you rather pull that gun?”

Joe pulls the gun he has been holding in his pocket. “No bullets in it, Joe. I took them out.” Joe smiles. “I reloaded it, sucker. Think I’d overlook that?” “There’s something else I ought to tell you, Joe.” “Save it, get under this wheel and drive.”

They drive. They come to a bridge over the river. It’s a swift river. Joe makes George stop. Get out. Down the bank with you. They go down the bank. Joe lectures on murder. “Saps kill twice the same way. Not me. By the time they find you, bud — and this is your car, remember?”

They go down to the edge of the river. Deep, fast, dark. “Stand on the bank, George. I don’t like to do this, but a guy has to. Lucky you were leaving town tonight. Helps. So long, pal.”

Joe lifts the gun and fires. There is an unnaturally heavy explosion. Well, who said what kind of gun it was.

Darkness. Something goes into the river. Steps. There is a digging sound off. A car starts and fades off into the night.

A man gets on a train. A car is left in a garage.

They miss Joe around town after a while. Mary is silent. They miss George, too. Mary knows where he went, but she doesn’t tell. She doesn’t know where Joe went. They find George’s car. And a guy took a ticket for New York. What did he look like? Looked like a guy with a suitcase looks. They go to Joe’s room. Clothes not packed. Went standing up. George left nothing. Oh well, these ex-soldiers. They don’t stay put.

Mary packs a suitcase herself. Her old man is bothered, but Mary’s always known how to take care of herself.

Beattie Lewis is in the squad room, bored as hell. No business. A man wants to see him. The door opens. George walks in.

They bust Joe’s alibi. They look up the coroner’s report. The autopsy. Edna was thrown from the car, hit side of head against rock, neck broken, death instantaneous. George says: “How about the hyoid bone?” “Nothing.” “You mean, you didn’t look at it?” The coroner admits that. Cause of death obvious. George says: “Sure, blood, crushed skull, broken neck, all you wanted. But all that could be faked. How far was she thrown?” “Too damn far,” Beattie says, “for my taste. And too clear. And the way the car was broke up she ought to of been trapped in it. But they happen all kinds of ways. You never know. I had one lying on the roof of a sedan once, dead as a pickled herring.” “I’d like to know about the hyoid bone,” George says. “Either that or a bruise on her chin.” “Little late for that, son,” the coroner says. “It might mean my own neck,” George says. “You see, I killed the guy who did it.”

They pinch George and then they get the doc that did the autopsy. “No signs of strangulation,” he say s. “No bruises on chin.” He looks over his notes. “Only one thing you could even notice apart from the main injury. The woman was wearing an anklet and the anklet lock made a bruise on her leg. That could happen all sorts of ways.” Beattie shakes his head. “Boy, am I dumb. That tells the whole story. Look, this guy knocks the woman out with a sandbag on the side of her head. Then he winds something strong but soft around her ankles and swings her the way an adagio dancer swings his partner. Then he slams her into the rock. Maybe twice. Let’s see, did this guy ever—”

So they find out he did, before the war. He was in a cheap act with a girl and he swung her by the ankles shoulder high.

They find foe down river. His head is in bad shape. Pieces of steel have torn off half his face and a lot of his throat and chest. Or maybe it was fishes.

Mary goes to see George in jail. “George, why did you run away? Why didn’t you just tell your story?”

George: “Because what I did was murder — unless I could prove self-defense — unless I could prove that Joe had tried to kill me before. I could only prove that by proving a motive. The motive was that he killed Edna. So I had to prove he killed Edna. And I had to have time to do that, so I had to put him in the river. After all, it was his own idea. Suppose I said he held a gun on me and fired and the gun killed him. That’s just me talking. Even if I got off, I was cooked with you. This way I’ve got what they call a cumulative defense.”

They take George back to Poonville and the county attorney gets to work on him. Mary’s father wants to get him a big city lawyer. George says any old lawyer will suit him. Some nice old guy with a beard. All the defense he needs is a map. The map is in George’s head. Find the place where Joe was killed. Walk nineteen steps away from the river and turn sharp right and walk seven more and dig. “You’ll find a busted gun buried in an oilskin shaving kit bag.”

They find it. The gun is all blown to hell, except for the barrel, which is in fine shape, except that a piece of lead has been hammered down it with a punch.

The least the guy was asking for who fired that gun was a tin hand. But Joe was smart. He collected one hundred percent.

P.S. Something tells me George collected the girl, but I could be wrong.

“Quotes make the story, ” George V. Higgins has written, “so you damned right well better learn to listen” He first showed his ability to listen — and to write tough, convincing dialogue of the first order — in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972). Since then he has published ten novels (most recently Penance for Jerry Kennedy, 1985), proving his ability to write with verisimilitude about characters from the whole range of the legal system, from the politicians who make the law to the criminals who break it.

Asked to comment on “A Case of Chivas Regal” Higgins wrote: “The past decade or so has been a worrisome time for the courts of justice. Media have developed hypersensitivity to influence peddling, and the FBI, among other law enforcement agencies, has made a cottage industry out of capturing judges and court officers meddling with cases. Judges are therefore very watchful that no funny business occurs, and that vigilance, as Panda says, leaves little room for human weakness — but much for cleverness.”