McBain, Ed - Killer's Wedge

Virginia Dodge put down her receiver, picked up the bottle of nitro and slowly walked to where Meyer Meyer was sitting at the desk near the window.

She did not say a word.

She put the bottle down on the desk before him and then she brought her arm across her body and swung the gun in a backhanded swipe which ripped open Meyer's lip. Meyer put up his hands to cover his face, and again the gun came across, again, again, numbing his wrists, forcing his hands down until there was only the vicious metal swiping at his eyes and his bald head and his nose and his mouth.

Virginia's eyes were bright and hard.

Viciously, cruelly, brutally, she kept the pistol going like a whipsaw until, bleeding and dazed, Meyer Meyer collapsed, on the desk top, almost overturning the bottle of nitroglycerin.

She picked up the bottle and looked at Meyer coldly.

Then she walked back to her own desk.

CHAPTER I6

"I hated the old bastard, and I’m glad he’s dead"

Alan Scott said.

He seemed to have lost all the shocked timidity with which he'd greeted Carella yesterday. They stood in the gun room of the old house, on the main floor, a room lined with heads and horns. A particularly vicious looking tiger head hung on the wall behind Alan, and the expression on his face now-as contrasted to his paleness yesterday-seemed to match that of the tiger.

"That's a pretty strong admission to make, Mr. Scott," Carella said.

"Is it? He was a vicious mean bastard.

He's ruined more men with his Scott Industries, Inc." than I can count on both hands. Was I supposed to have loved him?

Did you ever grow up with a tycoon?"

"No," Carella said.

"I grew up with an Italian immigrant who was a baker."

"You haven't missed anything, believe me. The old bastard's power wasn't quite absolute, but he had enough to make him almost absolutely corrupt. As far as I'm concerned, he was a big chancre dripping corruption. My father. Dear old dad. A murdering son of a bitch."

"You seemed pretty upset by his death yesterday."

"Only by the facts of death. Death is always shocking. But there was no love for him, believe me."

"Did you hate him enough to kill him, Mr. Scott?"

"Yes. Enough to kill him. But I didn't.

Not that I probably wouldn't have sooner or later. But I didn't do this job. And that's why I'm willing to level with you. I'll be damned if I'm going to get involved in something I had nothing to do with. You do suspect murder, don't you?

That's why you're hanging around so long, isn't it?"

"Well ..

"Come on, Mr. Carella, let's play it straight with each other. You know the old bastard was killed."

"I know nothing for sure," Carella said.

"He was found in a locked room, Mr. Scott.

In all truth, it looks pretty much like suicide."

"Sure. But we know it isn't, don't we?

There are a lot of clever people in this rotten family who can do tricks that'd make Houdini look sick. Don't let the locked room throw you. If somebody wanted him dead badly enough, that person would find a way of doing it. And making it look like suicide."

"Who, for example?"

"Me, for example," Alan said.

"If I'd ever decided to really kill him, I'd work it out, don't worry. Somebody just beat me to it, that's all" "Who?" Carella said.

"You want suspects? We've got a whole family full of them."

"Mark?"

"Sure. Why not Mark? He's been pushed around by the old bastard all his life. He hasn't said a word against him since the time he was fourteen. All that hatred building up inside while he smiled on the outside. And the latest slap in the face, sending Mark to that New Jersey rattrap where-when he finishes his cheap on-the job-training- he goes into the firm at the magnificent salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year. For the boss's son! Why, the old bastard pays his file clerks more."

"You're exaggerating," Carella said.

"All right, I'm exaggerating. But don't think Mark liked what the old bastard was doing to him. He didn't like it one damn bit. And David had his own reasons for killing dear father."

"Like what?"

"Like lovely Christine."

"What are you saying, Mr. Scott?"

"What does it sound like I'm saying?"

"You mean..

"Sure. Look, I'm playing this straight with you, Carella.

My hate is big enough to share, believe me.

And I don't want to see my neck stretched for something somebody else did, even if he deserved it."

"Then your father..

"My father was a lecherous old toad who kept Christine in this house by threatening to cut David off penniless if they left.

Period. Not nice, but there it is."

"Not nice at all. And Christine?"

"Try talking to her. An iceberg. Maybe she liked the setup, how do I know? At any rate, she knew who buttered her bread. And it was well-buttered, believe me."

"Maybe you all got together, Mr. Scott, to do the job. Is that a possibility?"

"This family couldn't get together to start a bridge game," Alan said.

"It's a wonder we managed to open that door in concert.

You've heard of togetherness? This family motto is 'apartheid."~ Maybe it'll be different now that he's dead-but I doubt it."

"Then you believe that someone in this house-one of your brothers, or Christinekilled your father?"

"Yeah. That's what I believe."

"Through a locked door?"

"Through a locked bank vault, if you will, with six inches of lead on every damn wall.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

"And there was a fat will here," Carella said.

Alan Scot did not smile.

"I'll tell you something, Detective Carella. If you work this from the motive angle, you'll go nuts.

We've got enough motive in this run-down mansion to blow up the entire city."

"How then, Mr. Scott, would you suggest that I work it?"

"I'd find out how somebody managed to hang the bastard through a locked door.

Figure out how it was done, and you'll also figure out who did it. That's my guess, Mr.

Carella."

"And, of course," Carella said, "that's the easiest part of detective work. Everyone knows that."

Alan Scott did not smile.

"I'm leaving," Carella said.

"There isn't much more I can do here tonight."

"Will you be back tomorrow?"

"Maybe. If I think of anything."

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise it's a suicide. We've got motive, as you say, plenty of it. And we've got means. But, man, we sure are lacking in the opportunity department. I'm no genius, Mr. Scott. I'm just a working stiff. If we still suspect a homicide, we'll dump the case in the Open File." Carella shrugged.

"You didn't strike me as being that kind of a man, Mr. Carella," Alan said.

"Which kind of a man?"

"The kind who gives up easily."

Carella stared at him for a long moment.

"Don't confuse the Open File with the Dead Letter department of the Post Office," he said at last.

"Good night, Mr. Scott."

When Teddy Carella walked into the squad room at two minutes past seven, Peter Byrnes thought he would have a heart attack. He saw her coming down the corridor and at first he couldn't believe he was seeing correctly and then he recognized the trim figure and proud wafic of Steve's wife, and he walked quickly to the railing.

"What are you doing?" Virginia said.

"Somebody coming," Byrnes answered, and he waited. He did not want Virginia to know this was Carella's wife. He had watched the woman grow increasingly more tense and jumpy since the pistol whipping of Meyer, and he did not know what action she might conceivably take against Teddy were she to realize her identity. In the corner of the room, he could see Hawes administering to Meyer. Badly cut, Meyer tried to peer out of his swollen eyes. His lip hung loose, split down the center by the unyielding steel of the revolver. Hawes, working patiently with iodine, kept mumbling over and over again, "Easy, Meyer, easy," and there was a deadly control to his voice as if he-as much as the nitro-were ready to explode into the squad room