Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

He firmly believed that money could buy anything, and insofar as he was concerned, apparently it could. It certainly managed to get him out of many a jam which would have landed a poorer man in jail.

But before you anticipate me by assuming I am working up to the old moral wheeze that gold is not all, that Tom Mathewson finally discovered money could not buy the one thing he wanted most, let me assure you I have no such intention. So far as I know, he went to his death never having failed to get exactly what he wanted, and at what he considered a fair price.

What I suspect upended his apple cart was another person adopting his same philosophy.

The circumstances leading up to the incident which upset me this morning go back to early 1945. We were still at war then, and the gasoline and tire shortages kept most people at home. But for Mathewson the war never existed. He somehow managed to escape the draft in spite of being only thirty-five, unmarried at the time, and in perfect physical condition. The dash compartment of his long-nosed convertible was always full of gasoline coupons which he obtained the Lord only knows where, and whenever he felt the urge to take a trip, he simply went.

This particular morning he had driven up from New York with the intention of spending the weekend at the hunting lodge he owned a few miles the other side of Catskill—the same place, incidentally, where he was killed last month. He had with him the blonde young lady who later became his seventh wife.

He was about hall-drunk as usual, and he roared onto the Rip Van Winkle Bridge at a speed witnesses later estimated at eight-five miles an hour. Unfortunately, a six-year-old boy on a bicycle was crossing the bridge from the-other direction.

When I got down to Catskill in response to Tom’s urgent phone call from the jail, I found the local authorities determined to send him up for life, providing they could deter the townspeople from taking the law into their own hands.

The dead boy was from a farm just outside of Catskill and about five miles from Tom’s own place. And of all the children around the village of Catskill whom he could have picked to kill, he had the bad luck to run down the only son of the town’s outstanding hero. Staff Sergeant Jud Peters, the boy’s father, was a battalion communications sergeant with the field artillery supporting General Patton, and only the day before, Catskill had received news of his winning the Distinguished Service Cross.

It was undoubtedly the worst jam I ever had to get him out of. And the worst of it was, his money was a disadvantage in this case—at least, in the beginning. In the end, as usual, it was money that saved his hide.

His tremendous wealth was held against him by the natives, who were in no mood to tolerate special prerogatives for the rich. Had he been penniless, I doubt that public reaction would have been nearly so strong. But his reputation for profligate spending, combined with the suspicion that he was a draft dodger, set them after his blood.

His first thought was to start greasing palms, but fortunately he always waited for my advice before making any move at all when he was in a jam. Not that he always followed my advice; to some extent it depended on whether my arguments were based on moral or practical grounds. Frequently they were the former, for he was constantly ready to bribe anyone who could render him service, and professional ethics demanded I do everything possible to dissuade him from this amoral practice. If the best I could do was read him a moral lecture, he blithely went ahead with his corruption, though he always made a pretense of following my advice and did everything possible to conceal his bribe-giving from me. This, I am convinced, was solely to avoid hearing further moral lectures, and not because he cared a mil for my opinion of him.

But he had considerable respect for my practical judgment, and if I were able to advance any objection to bribery other than an ethical one, he usually complied without question.

I remember him as he looked that day: still firm-bodied in spite of his excessive drinking, for he had professional masseurs work him over daily; entirely at ease and his expression indicating his sole emotion was irritation that the dead child had interrupted his hunting trip.

The first thing he said to me was, “Think it would speed things up if I slipped the Chief a couple of thousand to spread in the proper places?”

Having already talked to the Catskill Chief of Police and noted his grim expression, I knew any mention of money would be the worst tactical error Tom could make.

I said bluntly, “If you offer anyone in this town so much as a dime, I suspect the Chief will order you hanged without trial.”

His shoulders moved in a graceful shrug. “Then I guess it’s your baby. Counselor, just get me out of this town fast.”

But for once there was no last way to get what he wanted. Nor was there any possibility either of hushing the matter up or avoiding trial. So I threw the local authorities off balance by attempting to do neither.

On a writ of habeas corpus I got Mathewson before a J.P. who set bond with the provision the defendant remain in the county. That got him out of jail, but he still couldn’t leave Catskill. Then I quietly pulled a few strings to get the case moved up on the Grand jury’s calendar, and as soon as he was properly indicted. I played my trump. I asked for change of venue on the grounds that public opinion prohibited a fair trial in the county where the offense took place, and since the plea was obviously truthful, I got the case transferred to a neutral county without difficulty.

Then I stalled for a year by getting a series of continuances, and when everyone but the people of Catskill had entirely forgotten the matter, finally let him come to trial. The charges were reckless driving, driving while intoxicated, and manslaughter.

Since it was Tom’s third arrest for drunken driving and the second person he had killed, naturally he was found guilty. Clarence Darrow could have hoped for no other verdict. But he was found guilty with a recommendation of leniency, which I consider a courtroom triumph. All he suffered was a $500 fine, a suspended sentence, and loss of his driver’s license for a year—a mild sentence when you consider his previous record.

In the meantime I had managed an out-of-court settlement with the child’s parents—or rather with his mother, for Sergeant Jud Peters was still overseas. She was a pathetic little woman in her late twenties, so crushed by the loss of her son that she hardly knew what she was doing and automatically signed anything her Catskill lawyer told her to sign. The latter, not being the sharpest legal opponent I had ever encountered, would have settled the matter for as little as $10,000 but Mathewson arbitrarily set $50,000 as the amount which would salve his conscience, and insisted that I offer that amount. Naturally Mrs. Peters’ lawyer told her to sign.

The total cost to Mathewson was terrific, for in addition to substantial legal fees over a period of a year, I am almost certain it involved a large bribe, or possibly bribes. Whether he managed to buy one of the jury, or made a secret campaign contribution to the judge who later pronounced the lenient sentence, or both, I don’t know. I am only guessing, for I would have countenanced no such action on the part of my client had I been able to find concrete proof of it; but it is a partly substantiated guess. Not only was it entirely in keeping with Mathewson’s normal procedure, but since I handled all his financial matters, I was aware he had withdrawn a huge sum from his main bank account. And when he refused to explain the withdrawal, I simply added two and two.

A thinner-skinned person than Tom Mathewson would have disposed of the hunting lodge and never again gone near Catskill, for his squeezing out of the jam with a suspended sentence left him universally hated by the natives. But he seemed to feel that the financial cost to him had balanced his responsibility for the child’s death, and he resumed use of the lodge with an entirely clear conscience.