Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“Why should I make guesses about something that didn’t happen?”

“Because if the timing was different, we could have nailed her to the wall.”

“If your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle, Johnny.”

“She is very good, this Crissy. And she’s running in enough luck to make it work out for her. Once the Muñeca took off, she recruited a patsy for what she had in mind. Not some smart-ass kid, but exactly the kind of dumb idealistic kid she could con into taking care of a little problem called Staniker. The size of the stink has startled her a little. She didn’t guess how much there’d be. All she has to do is ride the wave, keep her head down, and eventually she’s home free.”

“Which means, Johnny, you can’t build a solid file.”

“That’s my problem.”

“And that confrontation, that little masterpiece of Perry Mason drama, was bush-league desperation. You sweetened me into a little friendly cooperation, and then you pull that on my client.”

“The file isn’t solid. But there are some funny bits in it that don’t match up.”

“I bleed for you, Captain. You conned her into a hell of a lot of so-called voluntary interrogation before she had the representation she should have had from the start. That was your big chance, and I think she was a little too cute for you. You blew it.”

“Let me tell you something, Palmer Haas. Or ask you something. This file we’ve got. If she was pure dog, a dismal ugly woman, and if almost anybody in this area was representing her beside you, I think I’d take a chance and try to go with what we’ve got. But she’s got too much presence and looks and quickness of mind, and you’d use your challenges to set up a jury that would give her the most brownie points based on those assets.”

“And charge her with what, man?”

“Accessory. Murder one.”

“Come on! What do you take me for?”

“Palmy, do you remember how we got to know each other? Six years back, wasn’t it? That Todd couple. There were two places in the cross examination where you could have objected and didn’t.

Why?”

“Simple ignorance, Captain.”

“I contend that you knew they were guilty as hell and I contend you knew that was the only place where it could be opened up, and I contend that pair of butcher abortionists sickened you, just as that retired Atlanta whore sickens me. I further contend that in these past six years you’ve lowered your sights, Counsellor. You’re hooked on your batting average, and the better the average, the bigger the fees and the more of a celebrity you become.”

“Thanks for the lunch. I don’t have to take this crap from anybody. See you around.”

John Lobwohl found himself quite suddenly alone in the booth. You have to try. That’s the only constant. But, he thought, maybe the flaw is in trying harder when you can feel no pity, trying a little harder to nail the cold, clever, amoral ones, perhaps out of some pitiful compulsion to try to improve the world. The world penned up the sheep with the tigers, and nothing you could do until you could prove that was real lambs wool between the great white fangs.

Palmer Haas slid suddenly into the booth. “Six guys at the bar gave me the jolly greeting when I was on my way out, Johnny. It gave me that good old warm glow. I’m a real celebrity. What’s really on your mind?”

“I’m going to give you all the funny pieces out of the file. If it ever comes to trial, you might dig up most of them beforehand, but not all. After you get these pieces, then I ask a favor. When you say no, you’ve gotten all our ammunition free.”

“Interesting risk.”

“First item: She said she’d never been to those Mooney cottages before. She said she had a hard time finding them, a week ago tonight. We took some sneak shots of Harkinson. I assembled a set of ten similar photos, ten women, blonde, about the same age bracket. Staniker had been there one night back in April, as G. Stanley from Tampa. I sent Mercer and Tuck to see that little hump-back lady that operates the place, on the very slim chance maybe Crissy had been with him and the dwarf lady had a glimpse of her. She said she couldn’t remember any woman, and then when she went through the pictures she got a reaction to the Harkinson woman. She got flustered. She went into some kind of a wild story about remembering an outside screen wasn’t hooked on the cottage they were in, and going to fix it so the wind wouldn’t blow it off, and seeing the two of them in there. It turns out she’s a peeper, and goes scooting around in the night with her little aluminum kitchen ladder. She nailed the ID a little more solid by describing the car the blonde arrived in, a little white foreign convertible, parked beside Staniker’s Olds in front of the place. She watched some pretty strenuous fun and games, apparently. That was at about the same time, according to Crissy, she was breaking up forever with Staniker. And it means she lied about never having been there before. Conclusion: They were setting up a hideout for Staniker after he got back from the Islands.

“Second item: She claims she did not tell the Akard boy where Staniker was. She guesses he probably followed her. Yet on that same Friday night Sam Boylston tried to follow her, and she pulled a very smart trick, exactly the same trick Staniker pulled on Raoul Kelly when he tried to tail Staniker that same day.”

Palmer Haas asked what ruse was used, and Lobwohl described it. “Nothing much yet,” Haas said. “Keep going.”

John Lobwohl recounted the deft way Crissy had tricked Kindler and Scheff into letting her dispose of a bundle of something or other when they drove her in. “We phoned Kelly in Texas,” Lobwohl said, “and he questioned his girl. As far as the maid knows, Crissy never bought yard goods, never used a dressmaker. We combed that shopping center and came up empty. Conclusion: She wanted to get rid of something, and improvised a good story and dropped the bundle in a trash can, and it is long gone.”

“What would have been in it?”

“Something worth getting rid of with as much cold nerve as a burglar.” With his hands he showed the dimensions of the bundle as Kindler and Scheff had described it.

“Anything else?”

“Yes. And it doesn’t make any sense either. Mercer and Tuck searched the Akard boy’s room. There was a dufflebag in the back of his closet, packed for a trip. They found a duplicate of the note found in his pocket. It was under the blotter on his desk in his bedroom. It was almost identical to the note on the body. There was one change. The note on the body said at the end, ‘I have to get everything straightened out in my head before I do something real crazy.’ The one in the room said ‘things’ instead of ‘everything’.”

“As if one was a first draft?”

“Which one?”

Haas drained the stein and set it down. “The trouble with this, beginning to end, the ones you want to ask questions, they just aren’t around any more. Questions from your point of view, of course. My job is to defend my client to the best of my ability.”

“You know what’s holding her together, don’t you?”

“How do you mean, Johnny?”

“All that pie in the sky. She hangs on through this and she’ll never have any pain again. As Boylston said this morning, now that we know Staniker didn’t have the use of the Muñequita, the places where he could have hidden the money narrows down.”

“What direction are you going?”

“There’s an interrogation room over at Female Detention. You said this morning, Palmy, that we by God better have charges to file or we better leave your client alone. You said you were all through advising her to cooperate in any way. You said you wouldn’t let your client be used for fishing expeditions.”