“Did she have any part in the killing?” I asked.
“Not exactly. Bucky Sullivan killed him. Here’s the way it went. Leda was working for a guy down in the Village, a jeweler. This guy was trying to make time with her, and she kind of led him on because he slipped her a few extra bucks now and then. Anyhow, this guy — Dannion, his name is — had been knocking down on his income tax. Every time someone paid cash for something, he’d stash the money in his safe. God knows how long he’d been putting it away, but one night he got half crocked and told Leda about it. He said there was twenty thousand in the safe — and when she didn’t believe him, he showed her.”
I lit a cigarette and leaned up against the edge of the table. I didn’t say anything.
“Well, Leda had been fooling around a lot with this goddamned Teddy Connors,” Willard went on. “Connors had dropped a word now and then that made her think he might be able to do something about that twenty grand. She put it up to him, and sure enough Connors gets Bucky Sullivan, a guy he used to spar with in the old days, and the two of them went over to the jewelry shop and hit it. They got the dough all right, but Connors — he saw a chamois bag in a corner of the safe, and he took that along too, without saying anything to Bucky about it.”
“What was in the bag?”
“Sapphires. About a dozen of them. Worth a lot more than diamonds. Anyhow, this jeweler reported the stones missing, and called the insurance company. But he didn’t say anything about the money, because he was afraid to. He got into the country illegally, about fifteen years ago, and he knew that if the feds heard about that twenty grand and started smelling around, he might be deported.” He took a deep breath. “Well, the insurance company wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally they let it out in the right places that they’d pay a flat four grand for return of the stones, and no questions asked. When Bucky Sullivan got the rumble, he knew what Connors had pulled. It made him sore as hell, to think his old buddy had held out on him, and he went on the prowl.”
“And caught up with him at Janice Pedrick’s place?” I said.
“That’s right. Leda and Connors had been shacked up there all night. This morning, Connors went out for some cigarettes. That’s when Bucky saw him. He trailed him back to the apartment. He had a gun, and he forced Connors to let him in with him. He told Connors he’d let him go if Connors gave him the rocks, but Connors couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because Leda had conned him out of them. She’d sold them for peanuts. He was real gone on her, I guess. He was an ugly guy, and no woman had ever given him a tumble before. Anyhow, Bucky went nuts. He hit Connors across the throat with the side of his hand and knocked him out. Then he clipped Leda over the temple with the butt of his gun. She fell down and made out she was unconscious, but she wasn’t. Then Bucky grabbed a rag or something and started choking Connors. He turned his back on Leda a moment, and she saw her chance and jumped up and beat it.”
I rubbed my cigarette out in a tray, studying him. “Why’d you and your wife check out of your hotel, Mr. Willard?”
“I must have been a little crazy myself, I guess. Leda — she was almost nuts. She thought sure her part in the jewelry heist would come out, once they really got to checking. She’d done a bit out on the West Coast once, for fingering another guy to a burglar — and that’s something else I didn’t know till this morning. And she said it’d be her word against Bucky’s, and that she might end up in the death house with him. Anyhow, I couldn’t think straight, right at first. All I could think about was trying to help her get away. And then all at once it hit me, what a goddamned fool I’d been all these years. And all of a sudden I knew I wasn’t going to be a nanny for her any more. I’d had a gut full of her. It was like I was seeing her for the first time since I’d known her.”
“If she’s earned a fall, then she’s going to take it alone — is that what you mean?”
“You’re damned right. I’ve been a chump long enough. From now on, she’s on her own.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in room fourteen-oh-nine, at the Milsener Hotel.”
8.
We picked up Leda Willard. She was in such a state of panic that it took us almost two hours to get a coherent story from her. But when we did, it was a complete admission. She was too frightened to fight us, even too frightened to be capable of lying. She completely absolved Janice Pedrick and Eddie Willard of any implication.
Four nights later we cornered Bucky Sullivan in the men’s room of a bar in Harlem. He shot it out with us, and took two slugs through the chest. While he was waiting to be operated on, he became convinced he was dying and called for a priest. Afterward, he made a full admission. Declarations by persons who think they are dying are powerful instruments. It was powerful enough to close the case for us, though Bucky Sullivan lived through the operation.
He was very bitter toward the doctor who saved him. He couldn’t understand why the State should save his life — only to send him up the river and take it away from him again in the electric chair.
I Don’t Fool Around
by Charles Jackson
Tonight Lynette McCaffrey was wearing a short red skirt that seemed all torn and jagged around the edge, like fringe; and when George Burton, watching through the open window, looked more carefully, he saw that it was fringe. Above the skirt was a thin blouse that you could see through, and above that, a small close-fitting hat of silver straw, with her brown curls bunched out below the curling brim. On her feet were flat sandals, the kind that children used to wear. He had never seen a fringed skirt before, or sandals on a girl her age, or a hat at the Yacht Club dance. As if her beauty alone was not enough to set her apart, it was like Lynette McCaffrey to wear something different, to create a new style, to get herself looked at and talked about. George Burton followed her around the floor with his eyes, and hoped that it was love.
The small orchestra from the city was playing Hindustan and she was dancing with Arthur Wallace again. Art had on white flannels and a blue double-breasted jacket with shining brass buttons. The flannels were certainly his own, because he had been wearing them all summer long at the Saturday night dances. George Burton said aloud, “Damn Dad anyway,” feeling a momentary burst of anger that frightened him.
He looked around quickly to see if anybody had heard. There was no one. He was alone on the raised edge of weather-beaten planks that ran alongside the Clubhouse to the broad pier fronting the bay. But if his father had only let him borrow his white flannels, which fitted perfectly all right if he tightened the belt enough, he might have had a chance with a girl like Lynette McCaffrey.
The music ended with a matched crescendo of piano and banjo, and Lynette and Art strolled from the floor toward the open doors at the bay end. She did not applaud, as the other girls did, and when Art Wallace saw how indifferent she was, he arrested his palms in midair and didn’t applaud either. She reached into a side pocket of Art’s jacket and drew out a pack of cigarettes. Right in front of everybody she put one in her mouth and tilted her face up for a light. Then, with the cigarette hanging from her lip in the most wonderful way, she passed through the doors and out to the pier.