Glass Cell (23 page)

Carter had to smile. “Why didn’t you gouge them for more? Palmer and Drexel, too?”

Gawill twitched, as if illustrating his memory of being unable to act.

Drexel and Palmer had had something on Gawill, of course. Probably. What else? “Never mind, I understand,” Carter said. He looked at the telephone, and just as he did, it rang. Carter asked quickly, “Where were you tonight, Greg?”

Gawill’s hand stopped on the way to the telephone. “Me?— I was in a bar watching a fight on television.”

“You were with me. All evening.”

“Hah!” Gawill said, nervously.

The telephone rang a third time.

“I met you in the bar. You came home first, I came a little later with a bottle of scotch.”

“A
little
later. What’s all this?” Gawill frowned.

“Answer the telephone.”

Gawill took his suspended hand away from the telephone, almost back to his lap, then reached out and picked the telephone up. “Hello.”

Carter could hear only a burring masculine voice. He watched Gawill’s face.

“Yeah?— Yeah.— Oh, yeah?” Surprised, taut-faced now, Gawill looked at Carter. “No, I don’t.— Yeah, I’ll be here. Okay.” He hung up. “O’Brien’s dead.” His dark eyes seemed to grow smaller with certainty. “And you killed him.”

“It’s either me or you, obviously. But it better be neither of us, Greg, and we better have been together tonight. I’ll tell Hazel I lied about the office dinner and came to see you. I met you in the bar. Was it a crowded bar?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Northern Boulevard. Not O’Brien’s. I don’t know the name of it.— Yeah, Roger’s Tavern.”

“Okay.— What’s the matter with your watchdog tonight? Isn’t there a policeman on guard downstairs?” Carter stood up suddenly and glanced at the door. He looked at Gawill. “I didn’t see a police car when I came in, but I wasn’t looking for one.”

Gawill wiped his forehead, and ran a hand around his neck, inside his pajama collar. “Why did you kill O’Brien? Was he blackmailing you? Why?”

“Sullivan’s dead, isn’t he? What do you care why? Yes, I killed O’Brien. Shall I say I saw your hired man going down the steps, rushing out just as I was going
in
to Sullivan’s? You don’t want me to tell them you planned to kill Sullivan, do you?”

“
Jee-sus!
” Gawill squealed, and put his hands over his face, in his duped-again-I’m-tortured style.

Carter smiled at him. He lit a cigarette. “You have no choice, Greg. Neither have I. But we can make an agreement. Somebody else killed O’Brien, someone he owed money to, maybe, but not us.”

“Jesus,” Gawill repeated more quietly, through his hands.

“Is it a deal?”

Gawill’s doorbell rang.

Gawill got up and lumbered into the kitchen and pressed the release bell, lumbered in again.

“You went to the bar when tonight?” Carter asked, not knowing what Gawill’s reply would be—hostile, negative, or cooperative.

“Eight thirty,” Gawill said, glancing at him, and there was a helpless look in his eyes.

Carter felt the balance of his fate swing. He said in a calmer tone, “I joined you there around eight thirty. I called you around six thirty this evening to make the appointment.” The doorbell rang on the last words. “Were you in at six thirty?”

“Yeah,” Gawill said. He went to the door.

Ostreicher and a police officer whom Carter had never seen before came in.

“Well, Mr. Carter,” Ostreicher said. “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” Carter said.

“And Mr. Gawill, ready for bed.”

“At this hour, yeah,” Gawill said.

Ostreicher and his companion did not sit down. Ostreicher managed to watch both Carter’s and Gawill’s faces as he said, “Mr. Carter, you probably heard the news. O’Brien was found dead over on the West Side tonight. Beaten up and dead.”

Carter said nothing, only looked at Ostreicher. He held a nearly finished drink in his right hand, his little finger under the bottom of his glass.

“Where were you tonight, both of you, around eleven o’clock? Mr. Carter?”

“I was walking around Northern Boulevard around that time, I think. I’d spent part of the evening with Gawill.”

“What part?”

“From about eight thirty till—about ten thirty, I don’t know.”

“Till ten thirty, then you separated?” Ostreicher asked. “Get this, please, officer.”

And the officer hastened to get out his tablet and pen.

“We sat in a bar for a while talking,” Carter said. “Then Gawill went off. But I wasn’t finished talking, so I bought a bottle of scotch and came over.”

Ostreicher opened his mouth slightly, but said nothing. He looked from Carter to Gawill and back again, as if he might be wishing he had thought to ask them separately where they had been. “You, Mr. Gawill, where were you?”

“I left the bar around—”

“What bar?”

“Roger’s Tavern,” Gawill said, and put a cigarette in his mouth. He was also standing. “Around ten thirty I came home, I think. I dunno. Ask the cop downstairs. He ought to know. Or are you the cop?” he asked the policeman writing, but the policeman only glanced at him and said nothing.

Ostreicher said to the officer, “What time did he come in?”

The officer referred to another page of his tablet. “Ten fifteen,” he said.

“And Carter?”

The officer looked again, then shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get this gentleman’s time of arrival, sir.”

Ostreicher looked annoyed. “What time did you come to Jackson Heights, Mr. Carter?”

“Around eight thirty,” Carter said.

“What were you talking to Gawill about?”

“What do you think I was talking to Gawill about?” Carter said.

Ostreicher’s blue eyes glinted as he looked at Gawill. “Who did you hire to kill off O’Brien, Gawill, and how much did you pay
him
? Or not pay him?”

“Oh, let me off it!” Gawill yelled back.

“The hell I’ll let you off it. Not this time. This time you’ll spend a few days in the clink. And nights!”

“I dunno who killed O’Brien and I don’t give a damn and you won’t learn a thing from me,” Gawill replied.

Carter admired him at that moment.

Ostreicher looked bested. He turned and mumbled something to the officer, who was still writing, and the officer nodded. Then Ostreicher went over and picked up Gawill’s telephone. He dialed a number, then curtly told whoever had answered to “ask Hollingsworth to stay on.” Ostreicher hung up and turned to Carter and Gawill. “Get your clothes on, Gawill. We’re going first to the bar you were at.”

Gawill started to move, then looked at his watch. “They’re early closers. They close around twelve thirty.”

“We’ll find someone,” Ostreicher retorted.

The bar was closed when they got there in the police car. Ostreicher went into a bigger bar that was still open down the street, presumably to telephone the dark bar to see if anyone would answer, or possibly to ask the proprietor’s name, which Gawill hadn’t known or hadn’t disclosed when Ostreicher asked him. He came back after about five minutes. “Let’s go to the precinct,” Ostreicher said to the officer who was driving.

As soon as they got there, Carter asked if he could telephone his wife. Ostreicher said yes, but then rudely stayed three feet away from Carter while he called from the desk telephone, so he could hear what Carter said.

“Where
are
you?” Hazel asked.

“I’m okay,” Carter said, not smiling, but in a tone of unmistakable cheer. “Can’t talk to you now because I’m not alone, but I’m okay and I don’t want you to worry.” No, not even if they beat the hell out of him tonight. He could take it, he was okay, and he’d finally be home.

Ostreicher kept them up until nearly 4 a.m., separately and alternately questioning them. Carter did not see Gawill at all after they arrived at the station. An air of defeat began to hang about Ostreicher toward 3 a.m., as surely as his questions were repetitious. Then came Ostreicher’s pretense that Gawill had broken down.

“Gawill said you refused to pay O’Brien for him—even though he promised to pay you back later. But you were going to pay for this one to help Gawill out. Who were you going to pay, Carter?— We’ll find out and connect you, just like we connected Gawill with O’Brien. Why put it off?”

“Why on earth should I help Gawill out?” Carter sat calmly in a straight chair, his arms folded, his legs crossed. It was a luxurious cross-examination compared to prison experiences, compared to being hung up by the thumbs. “You’re wasting your time,” Carter said quietly. He was prepared—mentally at least—to stay up the rest of the night, all day the next day, while Ostreicher slept, and all night tomorrow night, with Ostreicher again. And he was sure Gawill hadn’t broken down, or Ostreicher would be putting his statements much more forcefully, perhaps underlined with a punch in the ribs. Carter felt quite secure with Gawill as a partner, in these circumstances. Gawill was out to protect himself.

“You’re wasting yours. I’m not wasting mine,” Ostreicher said, reminding Carter suddenly of church services on Sunday morning in prison:
Your time here is not wasted, because you may profit by it to reflect upon
. . .

Carter looked him steadily in the eye.

A little later, Ostreicher gave it up for the night. Carter was taken by an officer—who had sat with him in the intervals while Ostreicher talked to Gawill—to a cell down the hall, where gray pajamas were laid out for him on the wall-held cot as if by a chambermaid. There was only cold running water from the single tap at the basin, but the toilet was immaculately clean, and it was a hotel room compared to the cells Carter had known in the penitentiary. Carter still saw no sign of Gawill, but he was sure Gawill was spending the night somewhere here, too.

Nothing happened until 10 a.m., when Ostreicher appeared with two men Carter had never seen before. They were the proprietor and a barman of Roger’s Tavern. Both said they had not noticed Carter in the bar, but might have missed him. They did not know Gawill by name, but recognized him by sight, as he had been in “a few times.” Carter was present when Ostreicher confronted Gawill with the two men, because the men were then asked if they remembered seeing Carter and Gawill together.

“I don’t,” said the barman, shaking his head, “but there was such a big crowd last night watching the wrestling, you know, people would come up by themselves to get a couple of drinks and take them back to their friends, maybe in a booth.”

“You remember him buying two drinks last night any time?” Ostreicher asked, nodding at Gawill.

The barman moistened his lips and answered carefully, “I honestly don’t, but I could be wrong. I mean, there was so many people standing three deep at the bar. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and get somebody in trouble, you understand. I just don’t remember.”

Well done, Carter thought. A fine upholder of Mr. Average Citizen’s motto,
Don’t get involved
.

Neither did the proprietor remember if Gawill had bought two drinks. It seemed the proprietor had spent most of the evening in a booth with three old cronies at the back of the place.

“Okay,” Ostreicher said to the two men. “We may want to talk to you again.”

The two men were dismissed.

Then Ostreicher talked with Carter alone in Carter’s cell. Carter was in his own clothes, but in shirtsleeves.

“Let’s go over last night again,” said Ostreicher. “I saw your wife this morning. She said you told her you were going to be out with some office people. Why did you lie?”

“I knew she’d worry, if she knew I was going to see Gawill.”

“Why should she worry? You’d seen him twice before.”

“Gawill’s no pal of mine. He goes with a rough crowd. My wife was worried after I’d told her I saw him.”

“And why did you tell her you saw him? For what purpose?”

“To see if he’d admit he hired O’Brien. I thought—even if he lied to the police about it, I could tell if he was lying or not.”

Ostreicher’s eyes narrowed. “But what could you do about it?”

Carter looked at Ostreicher in the same sly, annoyed way. “Isn’t it interesting to find out the truth whether you can do anything about it or not?”

“Your wife said you found out—to
your
satisfaction—days ago that Gawill hired O’Brien. Why did you see him last night?” Ostreicher looked huge on the small straight chair.

Carter was sitting on the edge of his hard cot. “I wanted some more details. How much Gawill paid or promised to pay O’Brien, for instance. Gawill never admitted to me he hired O’Brien. He denied it. But I thought he had and I told my wife I thought so. I thought if I could break him down a little more, get the sum he promised, I could get myself off the hook.”

“Oh, you admit you were on a hook,” Ostreicher said.

“Of course.”

“You’re on a bigger one now. Let’s say Gawill hired O’Brien, but you actually killed Sullivan. If you did, O’Brien knew that, and he was in a fine position to blackmail you. Wasn’t he trying to blackmail you, Mr. Carter, and you decided to kill him? And did? Didn’t O’Brien make a date with you?”

“No,” Carter said.

“Last night?”

“You won’t find any money gone out of my bank. Take a look.”

“There isn’t any gone out of Gawill’s, either. You wouldn’t have taken any out, if you expected to kill him.”

“I didn’t expect to kill him. He was Gawill’s headache, not mine.” Carter opened his hands, then let them hang relaxed between his knees. Slowly, he reached for a cigarette, his last one, and he was aware that he looked very calm and relaxed, but he was glad Ostreicher hadn’t his lie detector plastered to his chest now. Now was different from the interview three weeks ago. Now Carter cared more.
The justice I have received, I shall give back
, he thought to himself, the words burning across his brain out of nowhere, and he looked straight at Ostreicher.

“What did you order in that bar last night?” Ostreicher asked.

“Scotch and water.”

“How many?”

“Two, I think, maybe three.”

“Who bought them?”

“I think we each bought a round,” Carter said.