Джон Макдональд - Area of Suspicion [= My Brother’s Widow]

Shennary glanced at me and back at Portugal. Obviously I meant nothing to him. His knuckles were white where he gripped the bars. “You get the right guy, did you?”

“You’re it, Wally. Let’s not kid each other.”

“How many times I got to tell you it wasn’t me? How many times, copper?” His voice was thin and high and it trembled.

“You’re coming apart, Wally. Your nerves are going bad.”

“Get that lawyer back here. Get him to come back. I’ve been telling you it’s a frame. It stinks.”

“This is the brother of the man you killed, Wally.”

Shennary looked at me for long moments. He shook his head. “Don’t let them give you that, mister. They’re making it easy for themself. That’s all it is. Look, I’m a loser. These guys, all they think about is keeping the books clean. Wrap everything up. So they grab the first guy the can find and that’s me. Honest, I never in my life saw that gun until they take it out from under my shirts. That blond copper found it. That place hasn’t got decent locks. Anybody could put it there. Even the copper that found it. Look, mister, I’m not a moron. If I shoot anybody, I get rid of the gun, don’t I? That figures, doesn’t it? And I get out of town, don’t I?”

“You were drunk,” Portugal said heavily. “Pig drunk.”

“Is there a law now a guy can’t drink?”

“If he’s on parole, there is. And you don’t have a job, and you had a couple of hundred dollars. Where did that come from?”

“I confessed! I told you! So I knocked over a supermarket a couple weeks ago. Send me up for that. But no murder rap. You got to listen to me. Lita can tell you where I was. I told you all that. Why don’t you listen to her?”

Portugal turned toward me. “Seen enough?”

I nodded. Shennary’s voice followed us down the cell block, shrill and frightened. “Mister, they won’t work on it because it’s easier this way. And they don’t care if they get the right guy. They just get somebody and make it stick and then the books are clean. Don’t let him tell you...”

We rode down the elevator. It had shaken me. I guess Portugal sensed that. He said, “They all go into that song and dance. ‘Honest it wasn’t me. There’s some mistake.’ That’s the way their minds work.”

When we walked into the courtyard Portugal said, “We think he was casing those fancy Lime Ridge houses and your brother surprised him. Wally was liquored up and jumpy and so he fired. They all put on an act. He’ll crack before the trial and give us a statement.”

“When will the trial be?”

“One of the assistant D.A.’s was over this morning and approved the file. We’re closing him out and trial will be in the fall sometime.”

“Who is that Lita he was talking about?”

“Girl friend. Italian girl. Lita Genelli.”

“Where could I find her?”

He eyed me a bit warily. “Look, Mr. Dean, you’re not falling for that act, are you? I see it all the time.”

“No — I just wonder what kind of a man he is. Why he’d do a thing like that. I want to see what she’s like.”

“She’s a dumb kid who wants to be a heroine like in the movies and swear Shennary was with her all the time.”

“I really would like to talk to her.”

He was obviously reluctant. He sighed audibly. “Okay, she’s a car hop at a drive-in on the South Valley Road. It’s called The Pig and It. They got a big pig on their sign, all made of neon.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

He picked a bit of cigar leaf off his underlip and rolled it in his fingers. “That’s okay, Mr. Dean. We always feel kind of responsible when people like you get knocked off by some punk.”

I watched him as he walked back toward his wing of the building. He looked tired, worn, shrewd, and disenchanted. I decided I’d have better luck looking the Genelli girl up later in the day. That would give me some time to find out what was going on at the plant, to learn the facts in the Mottling-Granby tussle. There were two good sources of reliable information and the first one was Tom Garroway, a smart young production engineer. I had promoted him twice before I left four years ago.

I called the plant from a drugstore booth near Police Headquarters and asked the main switchboard to connect me with the engineering offices. I asked the girl there if she could give me Mr. Garroway.

“Mr. Garroway left the firm some time ago, sir,” she said. “Can I connect you with someone else?”

“This is a personal matter. Could you tell me where I can locate Mr. Garroway?”

“Please hold the line a moment, sir.” She was gone for thirty seconds and came back on the line. “Hello? Mr. Garroway is with the Stringboldt Corporation in Syracuse, New York, sir. He left over five months ago.”

I thanked her and walked slowly back to the hotel. It bothered me that Tom was gone. He was smart enough to know he had a good future with Dean Products, and he was the sort of man that companies must attract if they hope to maintain a competitive position. He was one of those intuitive engineering brains, the kind that have that extra sense which enables them to cut through to the heart of a problem, instinctively avoiding all those promising bypaths that lead nowhere. And though he was sometimes hard to control, he had a nice leadership talent.

There was a note waiting for me at the desk. It was in a sealed silver-gray envelope, addressed in Niki’s familiar scrawl. I sat in one of the lobby chairs and held it to my nose. There was a faint perfume. I ripped it open: Gev — Lester told me you’re in town. Can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to come home. Most anxious to see you. I’ll expect you for a drink at four-thirty at the house. — Niki .

I crumpled the note, then smoothed it out and read it again. There was no uncertainty in it. Just the confident assumption that I would do exactly as she wished. I was expected to forget the rainy night of four years ago.

I remembered the first time I had seen Niki. That too had been a time of rain. One of those December afternoons when dusk comes at three. I came out of the offices, heading for my car, ducking my head against the misty rain. The girl came up to me, slim and dark, with a raincoat belted around her, rain beads caught in her hair.

“If your name is Dean, I have a question,” she said. She looked and sounded angry. In a job spot like that you are always running into cranks. She didn’t look like one.

“Come in out of the rain, then, and ask your question. I’m Gevan Dean.”

“I like the rain. And I don’t like a brush-off, and I’d like to know what you have to do to make an appointment with that Personnel Manager in there. If he says no, I’ll accept that. But I don’t want to be told no by some little sheep-eyed receptionist.”

“Did you make an appointment?”

“I tried to.”

I looked at her. She stood there in the rain, purse strap looped around her waist, hands shoved deep in the slash pockets of the raincoat, feet planted, eyes of hot blue like a gas flame. Very much girl. Very completely girl.

It started right there. She came with me and we talked it over at a little rainy-afternoon bar. I ignored my scruples and saw that she got the job she wanted. I knew it made a certain amount of office gossip, and marked her as my protégée, which meant she had to be better than good at her work.

She turned out to be crisply efficient, superbly trained. She wore neat black and navy suits, starched white blouses. But the sedateness of her office uniform seemed only to enhance the proud, free swing of her body when she walked down a corridor. She hit the office males like a pickax dropped from a roof. They found excuses to go to her desk, lean over her and repeat unnecessary instructions.