“What,” I asked, “do you want me to do?”
“I doubt,” he said, “that they’ll bring in a first-degree murder verdict against Spred. They might convict him of manslaughter. There are several elements of weakness in the prosecution’s case. Boniface has, as a lawyer, one asset and only one — a rigid respectability. Behind the ethical screen which he will naturally provide for your activities, you shouldn’t have much trouble making the case look so sick the prosecution will drop it.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “You want me to take the three-ten?”
“Yes. Have Miss Devers give you seven hundred and fifty dollars expense money.”
“Better make it two thousand,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll be running into. Or if I run short shall I drop in and ask Boniface to advance the balance?”
That shot told. “No, no,” he said hastily. “You must never do anything like that. Boniface is highly ethical. He’s the chairman of one of the important committees of the local bar association. It’s only his ultra respectability that makes it possible for me to take advantage of the things you do. If Boniface ever found out, he’d quit. What’s more, he’d be quite capable of making a stink about it.”
I said, “But if I run out of expense money, I’ll have to go to him.”
He said testily, “Tell Miss Devers to give you two thousand. Damn it, Wennick. I find your resourcefulness invaluable, but at times you go too far. You might remember that before I picked you up here, you were a free-lance private detective drawing down damn few dollars a day — on rare days.”
“Well,” I said, “if you want to go into that, before you brought me into the firm, Boniface was losing cases with rhythmic regularity.”
E.B. swung around in the swivel chair, and said, in a tone of finality, “I don’t care to discuss it.”
Marlin’s Plaza Hotel was a pretentious affair. Boniface had the best suite in the house and was enjoying the role of being the high-priced city attorney imported to save the mayor’s neck from the rope.
In the meantime, the town was buzzing with speculation and rumors, and the recall election was five days away.
The Free Press, the rival newspaper, was doing what it could for Spred. It had an editorial to the effect that Spred was undoubtedly justified in what he had done. It laid stress on the fact that the malicious campaign of character assassination which had been carried on by Cromley Dalton, followed up as it was by an impudent invasion of Spred’s residence, certainly gave Spred every reason to believe that the dead man had been up to mischief, and had perhaps actually planted a bomb.
The newspaper gave me more details concerning the crime than I’d gotten from E.B. Jonathan. The two men who had driven out to Spred’s place with Cromley Dalton were Preston Bode and Ray Mansfield, and there was considerable speculation as to the nature of the errand which had taken these three to Spred’s residence.
Both Bode and Mansfield were members of the city council facing recall. Dalton was the editor of the paper which had been instrumental in bringing about that recall election. Rumor was rife that the two city councilmen had made some political deal with the opposition, and that the price demanded by Dalton for a cessation of his political attacks was the matter to be discussed at Spred’s residence.
And there were some intimations the mayor was to be cynically and deliberately sacrificed on the altar of public opinion to save the political faces of all concerned.
I noticed that the editorial soft-pedaled the part of Spred’s story which dealt with the two shots which had been fired at him. Two witnesses who lived nearby had testified positively to three shots, and only three. That made the three chambers in Spred’s gun look rather bad for him combined with the fact that he had been standing up against the side of the house and the police could find no bullets buried in the wall anywhere or on the ground close to the house.
Even if the shots he’d claimed had been fired at him had gone wild a police search should have turned them up somewhere.
The betting was ten to one against Spred on the recall and three to one he’d be convicted of something — if not first-degree murder, then second-degree or manslaughter.
Boniface took the brief I gave him and said grumblingly, “I wonder how E.B. thinks I’ll have time to read a brief with this case getting more complicated and explosive by the minute.”
“A lot of excitement?”
“Yes,” he said, shortly.
“I wonder if E.B. would let me stay up here and give you a hand,” I said. “It should be a wonderful practical experience for me.”
“There’s nothing you could do, Wennick,” he said. “You’d do more good for yourself by going back to your books and laying the foundations for a career of your own.”
“I’ve nothing against books,” I said. “But I like murder cases better when I’ve spent a week with Blackstone.”
His silence was eloquent.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t want to butt in, but sometimes people have little lapses of memory. How do we know Mayor Spred’s daughter didn’t take that gun out to do some target practice with it without telling her father. She might have fired a couple of shots, and then forgotten all about it. If that’s the case, it would account for the three exploded chambers. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to ask her about it?”
“Certainly not,” Boniface said with dignity. “If anything like that had happened, she would have told me.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t remember it. You should refresh her memory.”
Boniface stared at me in righteous indignation.
“Don’t you think you being just a little too much of a Southern gentleman in refusing to question Mayor Spred’s daughter at all?” I asked.
Boniface said, “Pete Wennick, I am surprised. You’ll never make an attorney until you have a more keen appreciation of professional ethics.”
I saw there wasn’t any use arguing with him, so I went out. From the doorway, I said, “I’ll call E.B. and see if he’ll let me stick around to watch. If he says ‘yes,’ can I help you in any way?”
“I don’t know,” Boniface said, “but I think not. To be perfectly frank with you, Wennick, I am very much disappointed in the way you are developing. If you are ever going to be of any practical assistance to me, you must progress more rapidly with your studies and learn to take the ethics of the profession more seriously.”
I said, “Perhaps you’re right at that, Mr. Boniface,” and gently closed the door behind me.
II
Buildings were ablaze with lighted windows in Marlin as men sat late in their offices discussing the political situation, commenting on the murder and trying to turn a flip-flop in their political alignments so they could do business with the winners.
I found Preston Bode in his office. He looked tired and worried. He was that rare combination of a fat man and an inwardly lean man who is explosively energetic. He looked at my card, and said, “Your name’s Peter Wennick, eh? Just what do you want?”
“A chance to talk,” I said.
“Talk’s cheap,” he observed, shifting a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, working his thick lips as he did so. Beneath the heavy jowls, I could see his jaw muscles tighten. A man with a powerful bite, a powerful grip, a powerful mind, a driving, obstinate, dangerous man.
“My talk,” I said, “isn’t going to be cheap.” And I sat down.
He looked me over and said, “Out of Town?”
“Yes.”