“I thought you’d be interested, since Mrs. Deloney is your client.”
“Is she?”
“I assumed she was.”
“You’re welcome to your assumptions. I suppose you followed her here.”
“I happened to see her come in. But I’ve wanted to get in touch with you for a couple of days.”
“Why?”
“You defended Tom McGee. His wife’s death was the second in a series of three related murders which started with Deloney and ended with Helen Haggerty. Now they’re trying to pin the Haggerty death on McGee or his daughter, or both of them. I believe McGee is innocent, and has been all along.”
“Twelve of his peers thought otherwise.”
“Why did they, Mr. Stevens?”
“I get no pleasure from discussing past mistakes.”
“This could be very relevant to the present. McGee’s daughter admits she lied on the witness stand. She says she lied her father into prison.”
“Does she now? The admission comes a little belatedly. I should have borne down on her in cross, but McGee didn’t want me to. I made the mistake of respecting his wishes.”
“What was the motive behind them?”
“Who can say? Paternal love, perhaps, or his feeling that the child had been made to suffer enough. Ten years in prison is a big price to pay for such delicacies of feeling.”
“You’re convinced that McGee was innocent?”
“Oh, yes. The daughter’s admission that she was lying removes any possible doubt.” Stevens took a blotched green cigar out of a glass tube, clipped it and lit it. “I take it that is highly confidential advice.”
“On the contrary, I’d like to see it publicized. It might help to bring McGee in. He’s on the run, as you probably know.”
Stevens neither affirmed nor denied this. He sat like a mountain behind a blue haze of smoke.
“I’d like to ask him some questions,” I said.
“What about?”
“The other man, for one thing – the man Constance McGee was in love with. I understand he played some part in your case.”
“He was my hypothetical alternative.” Stevens’s face crumpled in a rueful smile. “But the judge wouldn’t let him in, except in my summing-up, unless I put McGee on the stand. Which didn’t seem advisable. That other man was a twoedged weapon. He was a motive for McGee, as well as an alternative suspect. I made the mistake of going for an outright acquittal.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s only history.” He waved his hand, and the smoke shifted around him like strata of time in an old man’s memory.
“Who was the other man?”
“Come now, Mr. Archer, you can’t expect to walk in off the street and pump me dry. I’ve been practicing law for forty years.”
“Why did you take McGee’s case?”
“Tom used to do some work on my boats. I rather liked him.”
“Aren’t you interested in clearing him?”
“Not at the expense of another innocent man.”
“You know who the other man is?”
“I know who he is, if Tom can be believed.” While he still sat solidly in his chair, he was withdrawing from me like a magician through dissolving mirrors. “I don’t divulge the secrets that come to me. I bury ’em, sir. That’s why they come to me.”
“It would be a hell of a thing if they put Tom back in San Quentin for the rest of his life, or gassed him.”
“It certainly would. But I suspect you’re trying to enlist me in your cause, rather than Tom’s.”
“We could certainly use you.”
“Who are ‘we’?”
“McGee’s daughter Dolly and her husband Alex Kincaid, Jerry Marks and me.”
“And what is your cause?”
“The solution of those three murders.”
“You make it sound very simple and neat,” he said. “Life never is. Life always has loose ends, and it’s sometimes best to let them ravel out.”
“Is that what Mrs. Deloney wants?”
“I wasn’t speaking on behalf of Mrs. Deloney. I don’t expect to.” He worked a speck of tobacco onto the tip of his tongue, and spat it out.
“Did she come to you for information about the McGee case?”
“No comment.”
“That probably means yes. It’s a further indication that the McGee case and the Deloney killing are connected.”
“We won’t discuss it,” he said shortly. “As for your suggestion that I join forces with you, Jerry Marks had the same idea this morning. As I told him, I’ll think about it. In the meantime I want you and Jerry to think about something. Tom McGee and his daughter may be on opposite sides of this issue. They certainly were ten years ago.”
“She was a child then, manipulated by adults.”
“I know that.” He rose, bulking huge in his light tweed suit. “It’s been interesting talking to you but I’m overdue for a luncheon meeting.” He moved past me to the door, gesturing with his cigar. “Come along.”
Chapter 26
I walked down the main street to the Pacific Hotel and asked for Mrs. Hoffman. She had just checked out, leaving no forwarding address. The bellhop who handled her bag said she had ridden away in a taxi with another old lady wearing a green coat. I gave him five dollars and my motel address, and told him it would be worth another five to find out where they’d gone.
It was past two o’clock, and my instinct told me this was the crucial day. I felt cut off from what was happening in the private offices of the courthouse, in the shooting gallery and laboratory where the ballistics tests were being conducted, behind the locked door of the nursing home. Time was slipping away, flowing past me like Heraclitus’ river, while I was checking up on the vagaries of old ladies.
I went back to the telephone booths behind the hotel lobby and called Godwin’s office. The doctor was with a patient, and wouldn’t be available until ten minutes to three. I tried Jerry Marks. His secretary told me he was still out.
I made a collect call to the Walters agency in Reno. Arnie answered the phone:
“Nice timing, Lew. I just got the word on your boy.”
“Which one? Bradshaw or Foley?”
“Both of them in a way. You wanted to know why Foley lost his job at the Solitaire Club. The answer is he used his position in the cashier’s cage to find out how much Bradshaw was worth.”
“How did he do that?”
“You know how the clubs check up on their customers when they open an account. They put in a query to the customer’s bank, get an approximate figure on his bank balance, and set a limit to his credit accordingly. ‘Low three’ means a three-figure bank balance on the low side, and maybe a limit of a couple of hundred. A ‘high four’ might be seven or eight thousand, and a ‘low five’ maybe twenty or thirty thousand. Which incidentally is Bradshaw’s bracket.”
“Is he a gambler?”
“He isn’t. That’s the point. He never opened an account at the Solitaire, or anywhere else that I know of, but Foley put in a query on him anyway. The club caught it, did a double check on Foley, and got him out of there fast.”
“It smells like possible blackmail, Arnie.”
“More than possible,” he said. “Foley admits to a bit of a record in that line.”
“What else does he admit?”
“Nothing else yet. He claims he got the information for a friend.”
“Helen Haggerty?”
“Foley isn’t saying. He’s holding back in the hope of making a deal.”
“Go ahead and deal with him. He got hurt worse than I did. I’m willing to drop charges.”
“It may not be necessary, Lew.”
“Deal with him. Assuming blackmail, which I do, the question is what makes Bradshaw blackmailable.”