Erle Gardner - Beware the Curves

“Tell him he’s underestimating you,” I told her. “Tell him you’ve been compounding a felony. Stealing chickens is a misdemeanor.”

“Well,” Bertha said, “let’s go tell Elizabeth Endicott, and I suppose we should telephone Barney Quinn.”

“No,” I said.

“No what?”

“We’ll tell Elizabeth Endicott we searched the whole damn hedge and couldn’t find anything,” I told her. “We tell Barney Quinn the same thing.”

“Sometimes,” Bertha said with feeling, “I wish to hell I’d never seen you.”

There was one thing wrong with the story John Dittmar Ansel had told Barney Quinn.

The gun was pretty badly rusted. I couldn’t even break the cylinder open without subjecting the gun to a lot of treatment designed to remove rust. But by using my flashlight after I’d cleaned out some of the dirt from the barrel, I could see, despite the rust, that the shell in line with the barrel had been fired. The beam of the flashlight very plainly showed the empty cartridge case. The other five cartridges had bullets in them.

It was one hell of a mess.

The case started on schedule. We droned through getting the jury empaneled.

Barney Quinn had our notes. He had us sitting in court where we could be consulted, but the guy had lost heart. He was like a man being dragged into the execution chamber. He carefully refrained from asking us anything about the gun.

During the noon recess, I took him off to one side where there were no reporters around and handed it to him straight from the shoulder.

“This is the kind of stuff that separates the men from the boys,” I told him. “You’re in this case as an attorney representing a defendant who is charged with murder. The punishment for murder is death. The jurors are watching the district attorney and the jurors are watching you. You look like a man who’s defending a guilty client. That’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to your client. Get the hell in there and fight. Don’t fight as though you had your back to the wall, but fight with the smiling confidence of a man who is representing an innocent defendant.”

“I’m not that good an actor,” Quinn said.

“You’d better start learning then,” I told him.

He did a little better in the afternoon.

Using the information we had dug up for him, Quinn knew everything there was to know about the jurors. The danger, of course, lay in the fact that the panel would be exhausted. Then the judge would have to order a special venire, and Quinn would have a list of names about which he knew nothing.

Mortimer Irvine, the district attorney, was a tall, good-looking, dignified man with wavy dark hair, broad shoulders, slim waist and an air of distinction.

Irvine was unmarried, considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the country, and he loved to get impressionable young women on a jury. He’d also go for the older, white-haired, matronly type. He didn’t like the horny-handed ranchers.

The impressionable young women looked on him as they’d look on a matinee idol. They’d listen to his arguments and bring in a verdict of conviction, walk out of a courtroom and say to each other, “Wasn’t he just wonderful!”

The older women said Irvine reminded them of what “Jimmy” would have been like if “Jimmy” had only lived. “Jimmy” had always wanted to be a lawyer.

Some of the horny-handed old ranchers would look at Irvine’s carefully combed hair, gaze into his soulful eyes, and return a verdict for the defendant.

Barney Quinn had made up his jury list with the idea of keeping as many of the young women as possible off the jury. Irvine had made up his jury list with the idea of getting an all-woman jury if possible.

After I saw the way things were going, I got Barney to one side.

“Play into his hands, Barney.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let him get women on the jury.”

“Gosh, no!” Quinn protested. “He’s got too many of them on there now. Women go for him. He has a rich resonant voice. He looks soulfully into the eyes of each woman on the jury as he argues. He pays three hundred dollars for his suits, and he puts on a freshly pressed suit every morning. The guy’s got enough property so he isn’t dependent on his law practice. He wants adulation and influence. He’s got his eye on being a state senator, attorney general and governor.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “play into his hand. Let him get women on the jury.”

Quinn sighed. “Hell,” he said, “I don’t know what we want a jury for anyway. The guy might as well plead guilty.”

“What you need,” I told him, “is a pint of liquor, a night’s sleep and a babe. Get up on your toes. This case is either going to make you or break you.”

“Well, it won’t make me,” he said gloomily. “That’s for certain.”

“Not if you go about it this way,” I told him.

I stuck it through until court adjourned at five o’clock. Then I let Bertha drive her own car home. I rang up Stella Karis and made a dinner date.

We had cocktails, dinner and went back to her apartment for liqueurs. She didn’t sit on the davenport. She sat in a chair. She was just a little reserved.

“How you coming with your boy friend?” I asked.

“What do you mean, my boy friend?”

“The banker.”

“Oh, Cooper,” she said. “You know, Donald, I’m afraid there’s just a little masculine jealousy on your part.”

She looked at me archly.

“Perhaps there is,” I admitted.

“Cooper is a good guy. He appeals to me a little teeny bit.” She laughed throatily and said, “I don’t know what appeals to you! You’re one of the most standoffish persons I’ve ever seen. I’ll tell you one thing, Cooper’s smart.”

“I’m not standoffish,” I told her. “I’m working on this Endicott case and I’m worried about it.”

“Why?”

“Confidentially,” I said, “there’s a witness I’m afraid the district attorney may uncover, a witness who can furnish motivation.”

She lowered her lashes, looked at the tip of her cigarette. “Who is it?” she asked without looking at me.

“Girl by the name of Helen Manning,” I said. “An ex-secretary. She worked for Endicott. Endicott fired her. It’s not generally known, but she went to Mrs. Endicott and told her that Endicott was a heel, that he’d sent John Ansel into the Brazilian jungle so he could get John out of the way. It was one hell of a story.”

“I can imagine how that must have made Mrs. Endicott feel,” Stella said.

I didn’t say anything. Stella Karis thought things over for a while. “You know, Donald,” she said, “I think you’re right at that. I think I should convert my property into securities that would give me an income and get back to my art work.”

“Just be careful who holds the securities,” I said.

She pursed her lips. “I can usually size up character,” she said. “And if I can’t, well, if anyone tries to give me a double cross, Donald, I’m ruthless, absolutely, utterly ruthless.”

“Most women are,” I told her, “but few of them admit it.”

“I not only admit it, I’m proud of it. Don’t ever try to give me a double cross, Donald.”

“I won’t” I said.

“I’m a hell cat,” she said.

She got up to pour more liqueur. She was wearing some kind of a filmy white thing. The bottle was getting empty. She had another bottle in the kitchen. She opened the kitchen door to go get the bottle.

Bright lights were on in the kitchen. The lights flooded through the doorway and silhouetted every curve of her figure against the white gossamer.

Halfway through the doorway she thought of something, turned and said, “Would you prefer brandy and Benedictine to crème de menthe, Donald?”