Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“And I said it loud.”

“I would like to have you bring her in again, smuggle her in through the back way and up to Room C, third floor, east wing. Very routine stuff. All very polite. You and me, two of my people, recording clerks, and Sam Boylston if you agree.”

“I haven’t agreed to any part of it.”

“I ask permission to have her taken down to the little ID section downstairs for a photograph. Nothing to be construed as being in any way a charge against her. I explain that we are being swamped by crazies who claim to have seen her in a hundred different places, and this will just help weed out the ones who are sick-minded.”

“And I just sit there and say, go ahead, Johnny, old buddy.”

“It just happens that the matron who’ll take her down there belongs to the same church as the Akards. She’s called Little Annie. She’s been teamed with another matron named Norstund for a couple of years. There will be a little misunderstanding.”

“Now come on , Captain!”

“I swear to you on my word of honor that there will be no brutality. Those two are competent people. They will pay absolutely no attention to anything she says. They’ll probably be talking to each other about their favorite soap opera. If Harkinson puts up a fight, they’ll subdue her without hurting her or marking her. They’ll merely put her through the complete physical search routine, from hair roots to rubber gloves, that they give suspected female pushers. They’ll scrub her down in a disinfectant shower, put her in gray twill and paper slippers and bring her back up to Room C.”

“Have you lost your mind, Lobwohl?”

“This isn’t social register goods, Palmy. This isn’t a first horrid contact with ugly reality. But it’s been a long time for her. A long, lush time. Maybe she’s forgotten what that special kind of indignity feels like.”

“How can I justify letting a client in for...”

“Why do you have to? You don’t even know there’s going to be a little misunderstanding. The basic request is reasonable.”

“Just a lousy moralistic Christer cop after all.”

“But here is what I lay on the line. So you can get your kicks, Counsellor. If Lady Harkinson rides with it, you can cover yourself by making an official complaint. Then, you see, I can’t stay out of it and let the two matrons take the grief. I stand up at the hearing and say they did it on my orders.”

“Do you know what that might mean?”

“I do indeed.”

“Johnny, you want this one real bad, I guess.”

“This bad. If I can’t nail this one, I think I will stop giving much of a damn about any of them from now on.”

“She’s tough. She’s hard as stones, Captain Johnny. I tell you what. I’ll bring her in. I’ll have her there at four. A picture? I can advise her to cooperate. But forget all this other stuff. Okay?”

Lobwohl said slowly, “You couldn’t bring her in if you thought I was fool enough to try anything as stupid as that. You wouldn’t be living up to your obligations to your client. Okay. We’ll have a final chat with her, take a picture, apologize and let it go at that.”

“Takes about fifteen minutes to get a good picture?”

“Twenty, sometimes. You know how it is.”

“I’ll just have to be patient. Thanks again for lunch. Your kids want my autograph?”

“Next year, maybe, Palmy. They’re still hooked on the Green Bay Packers. Retarded, I guess.”

Sam Boylston watched the door swing shut as Crissy Harkinson left with the matron. The name for it was presence, he thought. Control so perfect there was mockery behind it. Today a little green dress with white trim. White gloves, shoes, purse, and jaunty little white hat on the sunstreaked casual hair. Wraparound glasses, very dark. Sensuous flavor of perfume still hanging in the air after the sway of the round hips under cool green fabric had disappeared into the corridor.

Scheff sighed and lifted a laundry case onto the table top and took out the bricks of white paper wrapped in manila bands.

“More funny tricks, Captain?” Palmer Haas asked.

“What this is,” Scheff said, “it’s from that time we had to fix up a dummy ransom, the guy was already dead before the FBI got into the act even.”

“Mr. Haas,” Lobwohl said, “I am not going to make any statement or ask any question about what might appear to be on the table when she comes back into this room. She knows nothing about any money according to her testimony thus far.”

Sam Boylston reached into his inner jacket pocket and took out the thick envelope and slid it down the table to Scheff. Scheff opened it and began to doctor each brick of paper by sliding a bill under the brown band on both sides of it.

Haas said, “I wish to make an official objection to Mr. Boylston being here.”

“You objected last time too,” Lobwohl said.

“Why should he be permitted to help you with your shabby little tricks, Captain?”

“If I requisitioned this much cash, how long do you think it would take me to get it?”

“Maybe two weeks,” Kindler said, “and with a guy assigned to it who wouldn’t let it out of his sight.”

“The way you’re handling this, Lobwohl, is offensive to me,” Haas said. “I’m letting you get away with...”

“With murder?” John Lobwohl asked.

Scheff finished doctoring the packages. He stacked them in an orderly and impressive heap on the table top.

Haas looked at his watch. “Isn’t this taking too long, just for a photograph?”

“Maybe,” Lobwohl said lazily, “I’ve got people down there beating her with rubber hoses.”

“I’m beginning to wonder. I think this case is too big for you, Captain. The publicity makes you dizzy. You keep getting these delusions. I don’t like this money nonsense. The minute my client comes back through that door I’m going to tell her to keep her mouth shut.”

“You do your job and I do mine,” Lobwohl said.

“You shouldn’t use your office to try to punish immorality, my friend. You are an officer of the law, not an avenging angel. I demand that I be taken to my client right now.”

Lobwohl asked Kindler to go see what the delay was. Kindler went out. As the door started to swing shut he pushed it open and said, “She’s being brought back right now, sir.”

Kindler had a tone of awe in his voice. He moved back into the interrogation room, holding the door wide. Little Annie, five ten, wide as two women, face of pale granite, nocolor eyes, gray hair pulled into a tight bun, marched in a swift choppy stride. Behind her came Crissy Harkinson, in a clumsy jolting trot, hair stringy damp, head humbly bowed, clad in a gray twill prison dress three sizes too large for her. Sam saw that Little Annie was using a come-along, a small loop of chain that went over the prisoner’s thumb and was tightened by turning a short metal bar the guard held in the palm of the hand. It would cause pain only when the prisoner tried to hold back.

Little Annie took her past the table and over to the blank wall. She slipped the chain off the thumb. Head still bowed, Crissy Harkinson backed against the wall. She was breathing hard. She knuckled a strand of the damp hair away from her eye. There was a vivid odor of lysol in the room.

Sam had the feeling that the shocking transformation had made everyone forget their lines and their plans.

“I must ask you to let me answer any questions asked,” said Palmer Haas in what struck Sam as a strangely mild tone.

She lifted her gaze a little further and saw the money. She held her breath and then began panting as before. She seemed to be chewing an imaginary wad of gum. She knuckled her hair back. She made a whinnying giggle. “She thought it was laughs one left. Not last. Laughs. Grabbed that silly nigger bitch and ran her into the crapper after lights out, beat on her for laughing. Oh Jesus, what a great place he picked, huh? Big old rusty boiler, he said. Half full of sand. Nobody’ll look there. Shit! That’s the ball game. Poor little Olly didn’t have the balls to cut his wrists even. Had to do it for him. Should have known you bastards would win. Botched the boat thing, let the little bitch float off. Ran over his own tow line for chrissake.”