Parnell Hall - The Underground Man

Steve looked up. “And that’s it. Dated, signed, sealed, all legally binding. Absolutely remarkable.”

“Isn’t it?” Tracy said.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “And what a coincidence.”

“What do you mean, coincidence?” Taylor said.

Steve leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Well, aside from the hundred thousand to me, all this will really accomplishes is negating Jeremy Dawson’s will. That and setting up the trust to try to make the boy fly right. But having this will, it’s the same thing as if I lost the will contest. Jeremy Dawson’s will is knocked out, and the prior will applies. And this will, in effect, is just like the prior will.”

“Except for disinheriting Carl Jenson,” Taylor said.

“Right,” Tracy said. “But if Carl Jenson is convicted of killing Jack Walsh, he couldn’t inherit anyway. That’s it, isn’t it, Steve?”

“Exactly,” Steve said. “If Jenson’s convicted, aside from paying me, this will and that will do exactly the same thing.”

“The point,” Tracy said, “is how could Jack Walsh have known to do that? How could he have known Carl Jenson couldn’t inherit because he was gonna be convicted of his murder?”

Taylor blinked. “Run that by me again.”

“What Tracy’s saying,” Steve said, “is that Jack Walsh wrote this will as if he knew Carl Jenson had killed him.”

Taylor frowned. “You’ll pardon me if that doesn’t clarify things.”

“What I mean, Mark, is whatever date there might be on this will and this letter, it’s obvious they were both written after the trial.”

Mark Taylor’s eyes widened. “You mean?”

“That’s right, Mark,” Steve said. “Today’s bullshit theory day. We just hit the daily double on bullshit theories. First, the bullshit theory that Carl Jenson committed the crime. Second, the bullshit theory that the body wasn’t Jack Walsh.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.”

“Then who the hell was he?”

“Like I said in court, just some derelict who had the misfortune of happening to have no teeth.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Taylor said. “This is getting out of hand. Now you’re saying Jack Walsh killed him?”

Steve shook his head. “No. Carl Jenson did. But I think it’s safe to say Jack Walsh meant to kill him.”

Taylor shook his head. “This is coming a little fast. You and Tracy seem to know what’s going on. But would you mind putting it in plain English?”

“I can’t speak for Tracy,” Steve said. “But I’ll tell you what I think happened. Basically, the situation is this. Jack Walsh wanted to disappear. And more than that, he wanted to twist his relatives’ tails doing it.

“So he came to me. Partly to get advice on writing the will, and partly because Carl Jenson was following him, and he knew his going to a lawyer would drive his relatives bananas.

“Anyway, he got the information, and he’s planning to act on it. But the relatives lock him up in Bellevue. I get him out, and when I do he learns it was with Jeremy Dawson’s help.

“Now, Jack Walsh was shrewd in a lot of ways. And I don’t think he bought for a minute that Jeremy Dawson helped him out of the goodness of his own heart. I don’t think he had any illusions about Jeremy Dawson, I think he saw him for what he was, and realized Jeremy helped spring him in the hope he’d be grateful. But that didn’t matter, because he knew if he wrote Jeremy Dawson a will, the relatives would think he was taking Jeremy at face value and was actually leaving all the money to him.

“So he sought out Jeremy, and wrote out the bogus will. And to make sure Jeremy couldn’t really inherit, he took the precaution of leaving the will incomplete and unsigned. He also wrote out his other will right away.

“With that done, he was all set. He’d already lined up his scapegoat, the toothless man who was going to take his place. He got him down in the subway station, and on some pretext or other he gave him his coat, the coat with the wallet in the pocket. Then he probably sat around drinking cheap wine with the guy until he passed out.

“Then he hung out and waited.

“Now, I have no doubt in my mind the crime he was planning was for much later in the evening, say two or three in the morning. Much less chance of being observed, of anyone being around.

“Anyway, he’s hanging out down there, probably out of sight in the tunnel, because he doesn’t want to be seen, and he knows those tunnels like the back of his hand. And while he’s waiting there, who should come along but Carl Jenson.”

“Well, this has to be a rude shock to him. Jenson arriving there can blow the whole show. All Jenson has to do is see some other guy is wearing Uncle Jack’s coat, and the pitch is queered forever.

“But, irony of ironies, Carl Jenson doesn’t notice. He sees the guy lying there, face down with Uncle Jack’s coat on, right where the will said Uncle Jack would be. So he takes the guy for Uncle Jack, produces a pistol and shoots him in the head.

“The platform’s deserted at the time, probably an express is going by to muffle the shot. At any rate, nobody notices and Jenson beats it out of there.

“All well and good. Except now Jack Walsh can’t wait until two or three in the morning, he has to act now. He sneaks out of the tunnel, douses the body with gasoline, sets it on fire, and gets the hell out of there.”

Steve spread his arms wide. “After that, a shave and a haircut, some clean clothes, if he hasn’t done that already, and off he goes free as air. Ever since he’s been sitting back, watching the show, and probably laughing his ass off.”

“Jesus Christ,” Taylor said. “You really think that happened?”

“Sure do,” Steve said. He pointed to the will. “This will and that letter make it a damn near certainty that happened.”

“Then when you produce ‘em people will know?”

Steve shook his head. “Hell, no. To me they confirm theories I’ve had for some time. But there’s nothing specific in ‘em. By anyone else they’ll be taken at face value.”

“If you know all that,” Taylor said, “how can you keep quiet? You’re letting him get away with murder.”

“Murder? What murder? He didn’t commit any murder.”

“Well, attempted murder.”

“It isn’t even attempted,” Steve said. “He’s guilty of intent to commit murder, that’s for sure. But he didn’t do it. Lots of people wanna kill people. It’s no crime unless you actually do it.”

“According to you he burned the body.”

“That’s right. But that’s not attempted murder. You can’t kill a dead person. It’s certainly a crime-I’m not sure exactly what-but it isn’t murder.”

Taylor shook his head. “Christ, I don’t know. To hear you talking, it all sounds logical. But still. I mean, why would he go through that elaborate charade? He had the money. It was his. If he wanted to take off, why didn’t he just do it?”

“For one thing, he wanted to get back at his relatives. For another, he wanted to disappear in a way that no one would ever find him.

“There’s something else too, that I don’t really feel so good about.”

“What’s that?”

Steve sighed. “That is, however stupid I may have made that Bellevue psychiatrist look, I think what the guy was saying was basically true. That, though he may have been shrewd and cunning in many ways, Jack Walsh was not actually a sane man.”

Steve rubbed his head. “Even so,” he said, “I can’t help liking him, somehow. Even though he intended to commit a murder. Even though he burned the body. I can’t help feeling a certain satisfaction that he’s out of it now. That he got away with it. That, even if someone put two and two together and wanted to make a case against him, by now there isn’t a prayer that Dirkson or I could ever find him.”