A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

I said, “I’m not guilty, but you know what’s going to happen. That pin-head clerk has identified a photograph of Donald Lam as being the man who came in and got the room. You tell him that you’re going to get Donald Lam and bring him in. You come through the door dragging me in, and that clerk’s going to say, ‘That’s the guy,’ before he even gets his eyes focused.”

The D.A.’s man hesitated.

“Of course he is,” Bertha Cool said indignantly. “I saw his picture in the paper. He looks like just that sort of a nitwit, a long, thin drink of water, all mouth and Adam’s apple. What the hell can you expect of a goof like that?”

Somebody in the outskirts of the crowd gave a belly laugh. One of the cops turned around and said, “Beat it, you guys. Go on. Get out of here.”

No one paid any attention to him.

I said, “Wait a minute. There’s one other possibility.”

“What’s that?” the D.A.’s man asked.

“Is there anyone who saw this man go into the hotel but doesn’t know that you’ve picked on me and hasn’t seen my picture?”

“That girl at the cigar counter,” the D.A.’s man said.

“All right. We go up to her apartment. You call her out. Ask her if she’s ever seen me before. If she says I’m the guy, we go to jail, and you book me. If she says I’m not, you turn me loose, the newspapers don’t blow the works, and we forget the kidnapping charge.”

He hesitated, and I went on quickly. “Or you can take the woman who stood in the doorway. You can—”

“Nix on her,” the D.A.’s man said hastily. “She didn’t have her glasses on.”

I said, “Suit yourself.”

The investigator reached his decision. “Okay, boys,” he said. “Has anybody got the name and address of that girl?”

“Yeah,” one of the men said. “Her name’s Clarde. I was talkin’ with her right after the shootin’. She gave me a description of the man. It fits this guy to a T.”

I yawned.

My lawyer said hurriedly, “Look here, Lam, that’s rather an unfair test you’re giving yourself. The officers drag you up there. She looks at you, and you alone. She knows you’re suspected—”

“It’s okay,” I said wearily. “I was never in the damn joint in my life. Let ’em get it out of their system.”

“And you’ll co-operate so we can keep it absolutely on the QT?” the D.A.’s man asked.

“I don’t give a damn what you do. I want to go to bed and get some sleep. Let’s get it over with.”

Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, Donald, I think that other way was the best. You go down to the jail and—”

“My God!” I shouted at her. “You act as though you thought I was guilty, both of you.”

That quieted them. Bertha looked at me in a dazed sort of a way. The lawyer was a good guy in his place, but he’d shot his broadside. When he made his demand and passed over the papers, he didn’t have anything for a follow-up.

“And just so there won’t be any mistake about it,” I said, “Mrs. Cool and my lawyer are going to ride in the same car with us.”

“Okay,” the D.A.’s man said. “Let’s get started.”

While we were screaming through the streets, making time behind the siren and red lights, the D.A.’s man did a lot more thinking. He said, “Now, listen, Lam, you know the position we’re in. We don’t want a false identification any more than you do.”

“Personally,” I said wearily, “I don’t give a damn. If she identifies me, I can spring an iron-clad alibi for the whole damn night. It’s just the principle of the thing, that’s all. If you’d played fair with me, I’d have come down and gone to the hotel with you in the morning. I didn’t like that bum’s rush, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re sure rusty when you get rusty. How the hell did you get that woman and the lawyer tipped off so they were waiting at the airport?”

I yawned.

“Any leak out of your place, Bill?” the investigator asked one of the officers.

The officer shook his head. “It looks fishy to me,” he said.

The D.A.’s investigator stared at me. “Say, listen, suppose you tell me about your alibi first. Maybe we could check on that, and we wouldn’t have to bother getting this girl up out of bed. Why didn’t you tell me about that sooner? I could have used a telephone and maybe saved you a trip down.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t think of it. The way you folks gave me the rush act — you know how it is. Try thinking where you were every minute of the time two or three nights ago, and—”

“Well, where were you? What’s the alibi?”

I shook my head. “We’re down here now,” I said, “and it’ll be easier to get this girl out of bed than to get all of my witnesses out of bed.”

“How many are there?”

“Three.”

He leaned over and whispered something to one of the officers. The officer shook his head dubiously.

Bertha Cool looked at me with her forehead puckered in lines of worry. The lawyer looked smugly down his nose as though he’d actually done something.

We hit the city, and went screaming through the streets. The intersections whizzed past. The distances of city blocks dissolved under the wheels of the speeding automobile. That siren certainly flattened out traffic. In no time at all we were at the door of the apartment house where Esther Clarde lived.

I said to Bertha Cool, “Come on. I want a witness.”

One of the officers stayed with the car. The other one came along with us. The lawyer also got in on the party. We sounded like an army on the march pounding up the stairs. It was a walk-up, and the D.A.’s investigator, putting me in the lead, kept prodding me from behind. I think he thought he was going to leave Bertha Cool behind, but he reckoned without Bertha. She hoisted her two hundred and fifty-odd pounds up those stairs, keeping her place in the procession.

We got up to the third floor. One of the officers pounded on Esther Clarde’s door. I heard her voice saying, “Who is it?” And the D.A.’s man said, “The law. Open up.”

There was silence for four or five seconds. I could hear Bertha’s breathing. Then Esther Clarde called out, “Well, what do you want?”

“We want to come in.”

“Why?”

“We want you to look at a man.”

“Why?”

“We want to see if you know him.”

“What does the law have to do with that?”

“Nuts. Open up. Let us in.”

“All right. Wait a minute. I’ll let you in.”

We waited. I lit a cigarette. Bertha Cool looked at me with a puzzled expression in her eyes. The lawyer looked as important as a rooster in a hen yard. The officers fidgeted, exchanged looks.

Esther Clarde opened the door. She had on that black velveteen housecoat with the zipper up the side that she’d worn the night before. Her eyes looked a little sleepy. She said, “Well, I guess it’s all right. Come on in and—” She saw me and jerked the door shut. She yawned and said, “Okay, what is it?”

The investigator from the D.A.’s office jerked his thumb at me. “Ever see this guy before?” he asked.

The lawyer corrected meticulously, “Any of these men before. After all, you should be fair—”

Esther Clarde shifted her expressionless eyes over my face, looked at the lawyer, pointed her finger at him, and said, “You mean this guy? Is he the one?”

The district attorney’s man took my shoulder and pushed me forward. “No, this guy. Is he the one who was in the hotel the night of the murder?”

I looked at Esther Clarde and didn’t move a muscle in my face. She looked at me, frowned a minute, and said, “Say, he does look something like the same guy.”