“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“May I see your checkbook stubs, Mrs. Mencken?”
“Certainly not.”
“May I see your canceled checks?”
“No.”
“I can get a search warrant.”
“That’s just what you’ll have to do, then, Mr. Carella. My checkbook and my canceled checks are private. Not even my husband questions me on what I spend or how I spend it.”
“I’ll come back with a warrant,” Carella said, rising.
“Do you really expect to find anything when you return, Mr. Carella?” she asked.
“I suppose not,” he said wearily. He looked at her searchingly. “You don’t dress like an ex-fashion model, Mrs. Mencken.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.”
“This suit cost three hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Carella.”
“That’s a lot of money to hide behind.”
“Hide?”
“Mrs. Mencken, a man was murdered. He was not what you might consider an ideal citizen, but he was nonetheless murdered. We are trying to find his murderer. I wish you had helped me. We’ll find out what we want to know, anyway. You can hide your checks and your stubs, and you can hide yourself behind that expensive suit, but we’ll find out.”
“Mr. Carella, you are being impertinent.”
“Forgive me.”
Lucy Mencken rose, moving with easy grace within the shapeless suit.
“The children are in the pool alone,” she said. “Were you leaving, Detective Carella?”
“I was leaving,” Carella said tiredly, “but I’ll be back.”
THE CHECK LAY on the desk between them.
The legend on the frosted-glass door read, SCHLESSER’S SOFT DRINKS. The man behind the desk was Edward Schlesser, a balding man in his early fifties. He wore a dark-blue suit and a yellow weskit. He wore black-rimmed bop glasses. The glasses covered blue eyes, and the eyes studied the check on the desk.
“Is that your check, Mr. Schlesser?” Cotton Hawes asked.
Schlesser sighed. “Yes,” he said.
“Did you send it to a man named Seymour Kramer?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“What difference does it make? He’s dead.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Hawes said.
“It’s over now,” Schlesser said. “Are you like a priest? Or a doctor? Does what I tell you remain confidential?”
“Certainly. In any case, it won’t get outside the department.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t. Did you trust Sy Kramer?”
“No,” Schlesser said. “If I’d trusted him, I wouldn’t have been sending him checks.”
“This wasn’t the first check?”
“No, I—” Schlesser stopped. “Who will you tell this to?”
“Two people. My partner on the case, and my immediate superior.”
Schlesser sighed again. “I’ll tell you,” he said.
“I’m listening, sir.”
“I run this business,” Schlesser said. “It’s not a big one, but it’s growing. There’s competition, you know. It’s hard to buck the big companies. But my business is growing, all the time. I’ve got money in the bank, and I’ve got a nice house in Connecticut. My business is here, but I live in Connecticut. I make good soft drinks. Our orange is particularly good. Do you like orange?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you a case when you leave. If you like it, tell your friends.”
“Thank you,” Hawes said. “What about Kramer?”
“We had an accident a little while ago. In the bottling plant. Not too serious, but a thing like that, if it gets around…This is a small business. We’re just beginning to make a mark, people are just beginning to recognize our bottle and the name Schlesser. A thing like this…”
“What happened?”
“Somehow, don’t ask me how, a freak accident—a mouse got bottled into one of the drinks.”
“A mouse?” Hawes asked incredulously.
“A tiny little thing,” Schlesser said, nodding. “A field mouse. The bottling plant is in a field, naturally. Somehow the mouse got in, and somehow he got into one of the bottles, and somehow it went through the plant and was shipped to our distributors. A bottle of sarsaparilla as I recall.”
Hawes wanted to smile, but apparently this was a matter of extreme seriousness to Schlesser.
“Somebody bought the bottle of soda. It was the large family size, the economy size. This person claimed he drank some of the soda and got very sick. He threatened to sue the company.”
“For how much?”
“A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Hawes whistled. “Did he win the case?”
“It never got to court. The last thing we wanted was a trial. We settled for twenty-five thousand dollars out of court. I was glad to have it over with. There wasn’t a peep in the papers about it. It could have ruined me. People remember things like that. A mouse in a bottle of soda? Jesus, you can be ruined!”
“Go on,” Hawes said.
“About a month after we’d settled, I got a telephone call from a man who said he knew all about it.”
“Kramer?”
“Yes. He threatened to turn a certain document over to the newspapers unless I paid him money to withhold it.”
“Which document?”
“The original letter that had come from the claimant’s attorney, the letter telling all about the mouse.”
“How’d he get it?”
“I don’t know. I checked the files, and sure enough it was gone. He wanted three thousand dollars for the letter.”
“Did you pay him?”
“I had to. I’d already paid twenty-five thousand dollars to keep it quiet. Another three wouldn’t hurt me. I thought it would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. He’d had photostated copies of the letter made. He asked for an additional three hundred dollars a month. Each time I sent him my check, he’d send back another photostated copy. I figured he’d run out sooner or later. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He’s dead.”
“He may have friends,” Hawes said.
“What do you mean?”
“A partner, a cohort, someone who’ll pick up right where he left off.”
“In that case, I’ll keep paying the three hundred dollars a month. It comes to thirty-six hundred dollars a year. That’s not so much. I spend sixty thousand dollars a year advertising my soft drinks. All that would go down the drain if that letter got to the newspapers. So another thirty-six hundred a year isn’t going to kill me. If Kramer has a partner, I’ll keep paying.”
“Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth, Mr. Schlesser?” Hawes asked.