Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

“Too busy to raise some of that hell you mentioned when we were coming down here?” Shayne asked.

Lomack’s smile was bitter. “I’d just as soon not, if that’s all right with you, Mike.”

Shayne sipped from the tumbler of cognac he held and said, “Fine by me, Jack. I talked to Lucy earlier today, and I’ve got something I need to get back to. We’ll make it next time.”

“Sure, Mike. Sure.”

Everybody coped in his own way, Shayne thought. He remembered other times, in years past, when something had hurt Jack Lomack. And Mad Jack had grinned and pushed up his sleeves and jumped right back into his work. Injury, hangover... heartbreak... Lomack would come through, Shayne was sure of that.

In the meantime, there were things for him to do, too. He was anxious to get back to Miami. From the way Lucy had talked on the phone, he might have some trouble coming up that would be every bit as tough as this job had been.

Yeah. Some things never changed.

The man convicted of rape claimed he was innocent. So what else was new? Still, Siderman thought he might look into it. There might even be a Pulitzer Prize newspaper story there!

That afternoon, Siderman had been darting back and forth between the several courtrooms of Franklin County Superior Court, his attention fractured like a cat’s before ten balls of rolling yarn. Twenty-six years, man and boy, as the Herald-Graphic’s police reporter, he couldn’t recall a day filled with as much criminal variety.

Nine very serious matters had been before the courts that day. There had been five arraignments on charges of murder, two arson trials and a case of fraud and embezzlement. The latter rated as Siderman’s favorite. A former used car dealer, who was now calling himself a rock-music entrepreneur, had been chased into court by no less than a dozen amateur “basement” rock bands.

Friends and relatives of the bands had shelled out over $120,000 for satin jumpsuits, strobe lights, speakers, amplifiers and flashpots, in addition to cash for promised recording studio time, demonstration tapes, with the modern day Music Man promising big-time recording contracts and concert dates just around the corner. Of course the only thing just around the corner was the shark-skin’s car, gassed and idling and readied for a fast exit from town. The trial sessions had a definite lynch-mob feel to them and for the first time in a long time for Siderman, court reporting was fun.

Only a single important case among these was resolved that day, a cut-and-dried first-degree rape case involving a 25-year-old male and his 22-year-old female victim in an incident which had taken place in the vicinity of the airport some two months earlier. The jury’s verdict had been a quick issuance and completely expected. The prosecution’s case against the young man, in fact, had been so solid, Siderman could summon no genuine interest in the rapist’s upcoming appeals.

One other case had been placed in the hands of the jury that, evening, which meant Siderman had to keep himself available in the event of a verdict until the jury was bedded down at ten p.m. So he wandered across the avenue from the Courts Building to a favorite watering hole of bailbondsmen, lawyers and process servers to serve out his time.

He removed from his glass scarely an ounce of his first Murphy’s Irish when the bartender handed him the telephone receiver from behind the bar. The caller was Constantine Baker, the Herald-Graphic’s night city editor, who had traced Siderman to the bar via a tedious process of elimination.

“We just received a call from county jail,” the editor informed Siderman. “John Gideon just tried to hang himself in his cell. He was in a pretty bad way, raving and screaming and just a short step from being carted off to the lollipop farm. However, the jail guards did get out of him that he wanted to talk with the Herald-Graphic reporter who covered his trial. He seemed pretty adamant about not wanting to talk to anyone else. He further stated that if his request for an interview was denied, he’d find some way to end his life again and soon.”

Siderman had to spend a minute or two drumming up a referent for the name John Gideon. Gideon, Gideon. Wasn’t that the name of the rapist who had been convicted that afternoon? Siderman thought so. But John Gideon didn’t know Siderman from a sackful of ball-bearings. Throughout the trial, they hadn’t met and hadn’t spoken and Siderman’s attendance at the trial, besides, wouldn’t have gained him a gold star. Though it embarrassed him to say so, John Gideon had been to him only a back stiffened in its seat at the defense table and a nervous hand constantly running itself through a head of dark, brown hair.

“Why does Gideon want to talk with me specifically?” Siderman asked his night editor. “We’ve never met and my stories on his trial were mostly composites from police reports and reports from the Airport Authority, hand-out stuff. If Gideon is looking for someone to champion his cause, he’s searching in all the wrong nooks and crannies.”

“It’s my hunch he wants to issue you a confession,” said Constantine Baker. “Eleventh-hour confessions aren’t novel. We’ve both heard of hundreds of them. Just consider this an assignment, hear him out as far as his story will take him and then phone in what you get. The computers are down now, but I’ll have a rewrite man handy to collect what Gideon gives you. If what he gives you is just razzle-dazzle to garner him a little publicity, then just give him a cookie and bid him adieu.”

Siderman had listened to his fair share of convicted felons use and abuse the public presses on last-ditch efforts to escape punishment and he was a little too old and too wily now to fall for it. And he was tired and no longer really felt he was a member of an exalted profession, but just the pitiable device through which the successes and achievements of others passed, a flesh-and-bone conduit. And now, stuck here for the remainder of his working days in the backwashes of society where petty criminals drove him to Irish whisky and sleepless nights, another cry for justice and mercy was playing him for a patsy.

When he arrived at the seventh floor of the County-City Building, John Gideon was still in the jail’s dispensary. Siderman took a seat at one of the telephones in the visitor’s area and glanced around for a bartender.

Twenty minutes passed in excruciating sobriety and then a solitary young man was ushered from the lock-up, saw Siderman was the only visitor and headed for the seat opposite him beyond the glass. Siderman noted a bluish welt beneath his right eye where he’d likely been struck while struggling to end his life. Now, because of his unstable frame of mind, he was restrained in ankle chains and handcuffs. The brown eyes looked tired and fearful, but Siderman wasn’t being taken in altogether. He still regarded John Gideon a convicted rapist and behind bars where he properly belonged.

“Mr. Siderman?”

Siderman nodded, took out his press credentials and pressed them against the glass, then picked up the telephone.

“I guess you’re wondering why I asked to see you and not any of the other reporters who covered my trial.”

“The thought crossed my mind,” Siderman told him.

“It was because you were the only one who didn’t badger me to confess and pump me about my background and ask me about all my old girlfriends, like I was the three-headed man or the formaldehyde pig in a jar in some freak show.”

“And to show your gratitude, you want to confess to me and give the Herald-Graphic a break,” Siderman said.