James Cain - The Magician's Wife

It seemed they stood very badly, “and for no good reason, Clay.” The case against Buster, he said, “is wholly circumstantial, and circumstantial cases are weak. I might even have got it quashed except for one thing. This girl won’t let me attack the case against her, this web of circumstance that’s been put together mainly at the wife’s instigation. She insists on a case of her own — that the wife did it, that she killed her husband, by driving up without lights, banging a horn in his ear, and causing him to swerve. She insists that she saw the car, that she got its number, and nothing that I can say, no amount of dope the police collected about it, can unlock her from that story. I’ve explained to her that to set up such a defense she’ll have to take the stand — she can’t stand on her rights and say nothing. In effect she’ll have to start another case and prosecute it herself. She says she won’t have a defense ‘that says I’m guilty, only you can’t prove it.’ That, of course, is something I can’t disregard — it has that strange, sweet smell of the truth. But, allowing for that, it’s all wrong! It forgets something I can’t quite say to her — not in so many words. Clay, you may be fond of this girl — I can’t know how you feel — but her life’s at stake and I’d better say what I mean. She’s what she is: a chantoosie, a striptoosie, a—”

“Flip-floosie? Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Well, you said it, Clay. I didn’t.”

“O.K. She’s that — and looks it, Nat.”

“And talks it — she sounds like one of those twerps that Jack Benny digs up to do a bit on his show... I’m sorry, Clay, if I—”

“It’s O.K. Her life’s at stake, after all!”

Mr. Pender was still obviously under the impression that Clay’s interest in Buster was personal, and Clay wanted to set him right. He realized, however, that correction of one impression might very well lead to another, and so once more he let the misapprehension ride. Mr. Pender went on: “Well, since you don’t mind discussing it freely, I can tell you that once she starts this line, John Kuhn will rip her apart. He’s not a wolf at his job — just a good lawyer that’s state’s attorney. But, he’s a damned good lawyer who takes his job very serious. And where she’ll lead with her chin is from having this idea that the wife was just a bitch who came between two loving hearts and started causing them trouble, winding up with this murder. It may have been that — I can’t say it wasn’t. But as John Kuhn is going to develop it, she was the one who broke up Alexis’ marriage, and also she had boy-friends on the side. Clay, you weren’t the only one — you might just as well know it. Daytime, she ran a free-wheeling joint. And — well, you see what I’m up against?”

“When do you go to trial?”

“Monday.”

“Then — I’ll send you your check—”

“Clay, I told you, forget the check! Whenever—”

“You’ll get it — before you go to court.”

“Clay, there’s one more thing.”

“Yeah? Which is?”

“Something’s going to be made of Buster’s nagging Alexis to climb up on a ladder to check an installation of overhead rails. But she says it was your idea.”

“That’s right, I told him to do it.”

Briefly he recounted the conversation in the cold room, including the Mexico City anecdote, and wound up: “I urged on him the importance of getting them level — any rails that might be put in.”

“Would you take the stand and say that?”

After hesitating, Clay said: “All right, Nat.”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” said Mr. Pender, “to speak for this tramp in public — but it’ll help her in more ways than one. For one thing, it’ll ventilate this charge that she spent the whole summer scheming to break his neck. For another, to have someone of substance up there, to say something on her behalf, will help most of all. In a criminal case it’s not only what’s said. Who says it is still more important. And Mike Dominick won’t be much help.”

“Oh, Mike’s O.K. — except for the blue chin.”

“Right! Except for that, he’s fine.”

Monday, though nearly a week off, seemed to fly in: too many things had to be done. Clay hated it, getting U.S. bonds from his box, taking them to his broker, and having them sold for cash, but Grace eased things by offering to go along. At the Channel City National Bank, as well as at Stone, Stone & Johns, she chatted with the clerks, managing to small the thing down and make it seem quite casual. When they left the bank, she handed him a deposit slip for $2,000, this representing another withdrawal from her personal checking account, almost all she had — she having managed to visit the teller without his seeing her do it. He was ashamed, and yet at the same time proud, that she would do such a thing with such offhand ease. At last, when they got home that day, he screwed up his courage to tell her of what he had promised Nat Pender, to take the stand for Buster. But instead of being upset she actually seemed glad. “The one thing that bothered me,” she confessed, “was that we were trying to buy you out — buy ourselves out, as I’m in it as well as you. It sounds good, that we’d put up twelve and a half thousand bucks to help this girl in distress. But we have twelve and a half thousand bucks, or did have, and after all it’s nothing but money. This, though, goes beyond that. It proves that we’ll do what has to be done. Now! Perhaps that makes you feel better!”

There were other things too, but what frazzled his nerves most were the endless telephone calls, from friends, her friends and his friends, from people they hardly knew, from people they didn’t know at all — requesting the pleasure of their company at lunch, at cocktails, at dinner. At first she sidestepped these invitations, with innocuous little fibs: “Oh, how sweet of you to remember us — and of course we’d be delighted — except for the hectic time we’re having, and will have for a week or two — all sorts of things have come up — we’re here today and gone tomorrow — we’re like bats, flitting hither, thither, and yon — but could you give us a raincheck? So when things do settle down, and we have some time for our friends, before we leave for the West—?” But things grew more and more complicated, her voice shriller and shriller, his mood worse and worse from the jitters. And so at last, after one particularly bad time on the phone, she marched herself back to the bedroom, remaining a while. When she reappeared she was hatted, coated, and gloved and had a packed bag in her hand. “Come on,” she said grimly. “We’re going to Rosemary Park.” She still had her apartment, not having had time so far to store her things and sublet it. He took her in his arms and kissed her, and they moved to her little modernist place. There, for their few days remaining, they had peace. The phone did ring occasionally, but they grinned at each other and let it.

At last Monday came, and for a long time Clay stared incredulously around the courtroom in Channel City’s austere courthouse. It was crowded, but with the help of a bailiff, one of Nat Pender’s friends, Clay found a seat on a bench near the rail without any trouble. And what he found so hard to believe was that a place so warmly pleasant, its ceiling so aglow from soft indirect lighting, its acoustics so quiet that footfalls made no sound, could hold life or death in the balance, for anyone at all, especially someone as harmless as Buster. Even the two flags, the red, white, and blue of the United States to the right of the bench, the gold and black of Maryland to its left, were of such beautiful silk that they hardly implied this power, or anything, except poetic patriotism. Suddenly, as he pondered this paradox, Buster came in by a side door, escorted by a policewoman and met by Mr. Pender, who appeared from somewhere and brought her to a table inside the rail. She still had on her black dress, with a small black shell hat, and a beige coat on her arm. She was thinner than Clay remembered her, paler, and infinitely more dignified. She saw him, smiled, and gave him a little wave. He nodded and tried to smile back. Then he felt eyes upon him and turned to find Sally there, at the other end of the bench he was sitting on. At that moment a man appeared at her side, shaking hands, whom Clay identified, from his pictures in the paper, as John Kuhn, the prosecutor. He appeared to be in his forties, a medium-sized man, dark, with some distinction about him, a point Clay noted with relief. He had dreaded a bully, knowing only too well his own reaction to such men, which was to turn bully himself. Mr. Kuhn had scarcely gone through the rail and taken his place at a table across from Mr. Pender’s than a bailiff appeared by the Maryland flag, banged three times with a gavel, and announced: “This honorable court is now in session,” while simultaneously everybody stood up and a judge appeared from below, taking his seat on the bench. His name, Clay had learned, was Warfield, he being of the same family as one of the state’s governors. He was perhaps in his sixties, with pink face, silver hair, and mild, humane expression. In his robes, he had his share of the good looks his family was noted for.