Killing Cousins (9 page)

TWELVE

 

The Quivera police force included, besides a chief and the usual uniformed contingent, three plain-clothes detectives, of which one was Elgin Necessary, bearing the rank of lieutenant and presently standing at Willie Hogan’s door with his hat in his hand. He was a tall, thin man with a tendency to droop at the joints, so that he gave an over-all effect of being boneless and in process of collapsing slowly with a whisper into a little pile of wilted seersucker. At this moment, as a matter of fact, he was rather embarrassed and as a consequence rather angry. He felt that he was being forced to meddle without cause in something that was none of his God-damn business, and what he wished was that certain fat, nosy women in this town were not always imposing their nosiness on the God-damn police force in general and Lieutenant Elgin Necessary in particular. He looked at Willie from under limp lids that never quite uncovered his eyes, in which there was now a gleam of appreciation. She was certainly a cute little trick, about a hundred pounds of a lonely man’s dream, and he began to feel, before saying a word, like a lousy bully.

“Mrs. Hogan?” he said.

“Yes,” Willie said.

“I’m Lieutenant Elgin Necessary of the police. I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve been asked to investigate the disappearance of your husband. Is it true that he’s gone?”

“Yes, it’s true, but it’s a personal matter and very unpleasant, and I don’t see why it’s necessary to make any investigation of it. Is it the custom of the police to make an investigation every time a husband runs away from home?”

“Only when there’s a particular complaint or request. May I come in and talk with you about it?”

“I suppose, if you must, you may.”

He went into the hall and followed her from there into the living room. He stood turning his straw hat by its brim in his hands, feeling now like a trespasser as well as a fool and a bully, until she had sat down on a sofa with her little stern just catching the edge and her knees together and her hands folded on her knees around what appeared to be a letter. He also sat down, in a chair facing her, and dropped his hat on the floor.

“I imagine,” she said, “that it was Mother Hogan who sent you here.”

“Mrs. Howard Hogan, Senior. She didn’t really send me. She requested an investigation, and I was assigned. I’m sure we can get everything cleared up quickly with your cooperation.”

“I’m willing to cooperate in any way I can. What do you want to know?”

“Mrs. Hogan, your husband’s mother, seems to be convinced that there is something wrong. Do you know why she feels that way?”

“She doesn’t like me and merely wants to cause trouble for me.”

“You don’t think it’s anything more than that?”

“I don’t know what more it could be. I’ve told her and told her that Howard and I had a quarrel, and he went away with three bags that he was packing when I got home from the Club, where we’d been to a party, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“What time was this? When you had the quarrel, I mean?”

“I don’t remember exactly, except that it was late. After one o’clock, I think.”

“Friday night?”

“Well, it was Saturday morning, to be exact.”

“Yes. Saturday morning after one o’clock. Did he leave the house soon after that?”

“Pretty soon. Maybe about two. He drove away in the Buick.”

“Did he give any indication of where he was going?”

“No. Not then. I told Mother Hogan that he didn’t, but she wouldn’t believe me.”

“Did he take anything besides the three bags and the Buick?”

“Well, he had clothes and things in the bags, of course. I don’t know what all. Clothes and toilet articles and things like that, I guess.”

“Do you know how much money he had on his person?”

“Yes, I do, the sneak. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve learned today that he drew out all the money in our joint savings account, besides cashing all our government bonds, and altogether he had about twenty thousand dollars.”

Lieutenant Elgin Necessary could not repress a low whistle, and for a moment he gave the impression of being erect in his chair, although Willie could not remember afterward that he had actually moved discernibly at all.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said. “You’re sure he had it on his person?”

“Of course I’m not sure. He’d hardly show it to me, after all, since he was running off with my share. He must have had it, though. Probably in one of the bags he packed.”

“With that much money, he must have planned to go somewhere to stay a while. He also must have planned in advance, as you must see. He evidently didn’t leave solely because of your quarrel.”

“That’s true. I can see it clearly, now that I’ve learned about the money.”

“How did you learn about it? Did the bank notify you?”

“They didn’t notify me, but I found out about it this morning when I went there to get a check cashed. Howard’s cousin works in the bank, you know.”

“I didn’t know, as a matter of fact.”

“He does. He works there as a teller. He was the one who told me about Howard’s drawing out the money and cashing the bonds.”

“He did this on Friday?”

“Yes. Sometime Friday.”

Necessary looked down at his hands, which were lying in his lap. They were very large hands with knobby knuckles. One of them picked the other up and began to rub it with a massaging motion, as if it were in pain.

‘Well,” Necessary said, watching the performance of his hands, “it seems pretty apparent that your husband planned to go away without your knowledge and that he made certain preparations in advance. Maybe he left a little earlier because of the quarrel, but he would have gone anyhow. That’s the way it looks to me. Are you certain you can’t think of where he may be?”

“Oh, I know where he is.”

He looked up from his hands, and again she had that queer impression of sudden sharp straightening of his body, although nothing actually moved except his head. On the contrary, he stopped the one small motion he was making, the one hand dropping the other and lying down quietly beside it in his lap.

“What’s that? You know where he is?”

“Yes. He’s in Dallas, Texas. At least he was there yesterday.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know where he went.”

“I meant I didn’t know where he went immediately after leaving, but now I know he’s in Dallas, or was yesterday, because I received a letter from him in the afternoon mail.”

“Is that the letter you’re holding?”

“Yes. I’d just finished reading it when you came. Would you care to see it?”

“It’s none of my business, really. You needn’t let me see it if you don’t want to, but it would be kind if you would, and maybe it would definitely settle this business.”

“I want you to read it. You’ll see that he has simply gone away and doesn’t intend to return.”

He took the letter and read it with an odd feeling of reluctance and shame, as if he were committing in her presence some kind of obscenity. In order to read the typed words, he put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, which he took from the breast pocket of his seersucker coat. He looked, she thought, like a rather seedy high-school teacher who had probably once dreamed of becoming a scholar and moving up into a university, someplace like that, but had now resigned himself to being no more than he was, if not less. At the same time, however, he conveyed an impression of shrewdness that was brought into focus, like the words on the paper, by the glasses and the manner in which he peered through them. After a couple of minutes, he returned the letter to her and the glasses to his pocket.

“Isn’t it rather unusual to write a letter like this on a typewriter?” he said.

“Do you think so? Why?”

“It’s a personal letter. Usually, it seems to me, such letters are written by hand.”

“That’s so, of course, usually. Howard, however, never wrote anything at all by hand if he could avoid it. His handwriting was simply atrocious, hardly legible, and I think it embarrassed him. He had a kind of obsession or something about it. As you can see by the letter, he never even signed his own name unless it was on some kind of paper that required it.”

“Yes. I see. Where do you suppose he came upon a typewriter to use in this case? I mean, hotel and motel rooms are not equipped with typewriters, are they? When you come to think of it, a typewriter is not something that’s readily available unless you have one of your own or know someone who will loan you one.”

“Howard had his own, of course. I told you that he never wrote anything by hand if he could avoid it.”

“Did he take it with him?”

“Yes. It was a Royal portable, and he had it when he left. I remember seeing it.”

“You said he took three bags. You mean he took two bags and the portable typewriter?”

“No. I don’t think so. I’m certain not, now that I think about it. He took three bags and the portable.”

“Four pieces of luggage altogether?”

“Yes. That’s right. Four.”

“I just wanted it clarified. You neglected to mention this before.”

“I didn’t think it was particularly important. Is it?”

“No. It explains how he was able to type the letter, that’s all.” Necessary stood up, started to cover his head with his straw hat and then, evidently remembering where he was, jerked it away and hid it behind his back. “Thank you for helping me, Mrs. Hogan. You’ve been very considerate.”

“Not at all. I hope everything has been explained satisfactorily.”

“It seems clear enough. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“You are obligated to make investigations if they are requested, I suppose, however silly. May I offer you something before you go? A drink or something?”

“No, thank you. I’d better get along.”

He walked to the door ahead of her and turned there to say goodbye. He was reluctant to leave and would have liked to stay for the drink she had offered him. Although it was against regulations to drink while on duty, he had broken regulations before under lesser temptation. He didn’t really know why he felt compelled to decline and leave. Perhaps it was because he was aware of a total inability to be detached in her presence. Talking to her and listening to her, watching her all the while as she sat primly with her small stern just catching the edge of the sofa, he had felt a strong impulse to take her in his arms and comfort her with kisses. He had not felt like this in the presence of a girl, or a woman, for much longer than he cared to think about, and it disturbed him. It was far too late for such emotion, almost adolescent in its poignancy, and it had been, in truth, always too late for him, even thirty years ago. Now, outside on the lawn, he yielded to another impulse, turning to wave to her as she stood in the doorway to watch him leave. She waved back and smiled, and he went on across the lawn to the drive and his car.

Driving downtown, he thought that it all seemed obvious, although a bit queer in spots. It was obvious that Mrs. Howard, Senior, was a stupid and probably vindictive bitch who was getting excited about very little, which was what he had guessed in the beginning, and that Mrs. Hogan’s son Howard had simply gathered up all available cash and deserted his wife, which made him in Necessary’s book a damn fool who didn’t know a good thing when he had it. Necessary was vastly relieved that the case could be closed so quietly and quickly—that there was, in fact, no case at all so far as he was concerned in his official position. He hoped, just as soon as he could get Mrs. Howard Hogan, Senior, off his tail, that it would never be necessary to think of her again, although it would be quite a while, he conceded bleakly, before he would forget, case or no case, Mrs. Howard Hogan, Junior.

THIRTEEN

 

It was about five o’clock when the phone rang. Mrs. Tweedy, who was just leaving, answered in the downstairs hall. She called up the stairs to Willie, who was in her room getting ready to go out to the Club to meet Quincy, and Willie took the call on the upstairs extension.

“Hello,” she said.

“Is this Mrs. Howard Hogan?” a voice asked.

It was a woman’s voice, but it did not sound like the voice of any of Willies friends or any voice that Willie had ever heard before.

“Yes,” Willie said, “it is.”

“This is Gertrude Haversack speaking.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve called to ask you to come and see me.”

“I think you must have the wrong person. I’m Mrs. Howard Hogan, Junior. Perhaps you want Mrs. Howard Hogan, Senior.”

“No. Not at all. You’re the person I want, Mrs. Hogan.”

“Have we met before?”

“No, we haven’t. You’ve probably seen me around town, but I doubt that you’d remember me.”

“In that case, why should I come and see you?”

“I think it’s time we became acquainted.”

“Do you? That’s very flattering, I’m sure, but I’m not so sure that I agree with you. Is there any particular reason why we should know each other?”

“I think so.”

“I’d be interested to know what it is.”

“Because I’m Howard’s mistress. Or was.”

It was a sneaky and devastating verbal punch. Not the light jab that old Howard had actually been crawling into bed with someone named Gertrude Haversack, which was in Willie’s opinion a minor aberrance that she could accept with no great sense of shock, but the thundering right cross of the changed tense. What did it mean? Did it mean only that Gertrude Haversack, whoever she was, had been Howard’s mistress but had now ceased to be for any one or more of the various reasons that women routinely cease to be mistresses or wives or whatever they were? Or did it mean, perhaps, that Gertrude had ceased necessarily to be a mistress because Howard had necessarily ceased to be a lover by reason of being dead and disposed of? But this was not possible. It simply was not possible for anyone except Willie and Quincy to know the truth about Howard. Standing silently with the phone in her hand, thinking with a kind of fierce intensity in the sudden and thunderous roaring of the live wire between her and Gertrude Haversack, Willie needed considerably more than the sporting ten seconds to recover from the blow she had received. Having recovered, however, she began to feel angry at Gertrude Haversack for playing such a damn dirty trick on her, even if inadvertently.

“Are you there?” Gertrude Haversack said.

“I am,” Willie said. “I damn surely am.”

“Do you agree now that you should come and see me?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I have something to tell you that you will be interested to hear.”

“I don’t think so. You are certainly a liar with something on your mind, although I can’t imagine what it is, and if you have anything to tell me you had better tell it now, on the telephone, for I’m going to hang up if you don’t.”

“You better hadn’t.”

“Tell me whatever it is you have to tell.”

“Not on the telephone.”

“Goodbye, then.”

“You’ll be sorry if you don’t come.”

“Will I? Why?”

“Because, if you don’t, I’ll have to go directly to the police.”

There was that sneaky punch again. Only this time Gertrude Haversack didn’t even bother to set Willie up with a jab first, damn her. She just hauled off and threw the bomb without any preliminary. Again Willie stood clutching the phone while the live wire roared in her ear, and it was a favorable reflection on her toughness that she was able to recover quickly from such an attack for the second time in as many minutes.

“What in the world do the police have to do with it?” she said.

“With what?”

“I’m not sure. Whatever you’re talking about.”

“You know as well as I what they have to do with it.”

“I really haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. Are you certain that you do yourself? Could it be that you’re crazy or something?”

“It could be, but I’m not.”

“In my opinion you are.”

“You’ll find out if I am or not when you come and see me.”

“I’ve already said that I won’t come.”

“I heard what you said, but I think you will.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“I’m sure that you’re not such a fool as to let me talk to the police without finding out first what I have to tell them.”

“The truth is, I’m becoming rather curious about you. It might be rather interesting to meet such an accomplished liar.”

“I’ll be expecting you, then.”

“When?”

“I’m not far away. You could be here easily in fifteen minutes, but I’ll give you half an hour.”

“That’s very considerate of you, but I happen to have a previous engagement and can’t possibly come that soon.”

“I’d advise you to break your engagement, whatever it is. I have a strong feeling that I should go to the police directly anyhow, and if you’re not here within half an hour I’ll go.”

“Where do you live?”

“On West Olive Street. The Cibola Apartments in the 700 block. Apartment 310.”

“Well, I may come and I may not. I’ll think about it.”

“Do as you please. As I said, you’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

“Whether I don’t or do,” Willie said softly, “it may be you who is sorry in the end.”

She hung up and wondered what to do, but all the time she knew that she was going to see Gertrude Haversack simply because she did not dare to refuse. She couldn’t imagine what was on the woman’s mind, but it was clearly related to Howard, whatever it was, and for a breathless moment or two of terror Willie wondered if she and Quincy could have been observed in the act of disposing of Howard, by Gertrude Haversack herself or someone else who had told her about it, but this seemed so fantastic and remote a possibility that it was surely absurd to become excessively disturbed about it. She must go and find out what this development was all about, of course, for the suspense and uncertainty would be unbearable if she didn’t, but she wished desperately that there was time to talk with Quincy first, and perhaps there was, on the telephone, if she could only catch him at home or at the Club without delay. She dialed his home number, but there was no answer, and then she dialed the number of the telephone in the bar at the Club. The bartender said Quincy wasn’t there, but might be outside, and went to look. After a minute or two he came back and said Quincy wasn’t there at all, inside or outside, and so he hadn’t arrived yet, and there was nothing for Willie to do but go ahead to Gertrude Haversack’s without talking with him.

She drove in the station wagon to West Olive Street and along the street to the 700 block, and in the middle of the block, standing flush with the sidewalk and rising four stories above it, was the buff brick Cibola building. Parking at the curb about fifty feet beyond the building, she walked back and into a small lobby with a self-service elevator standing idle in its shaft behind closed doors. She entered the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor, and she was, while rising in the shaft, surprisingly detached and oddly curious. At this time, she was more interested in seeing what kind of woman old Howard had been sleeping with, or more exactly what kind of woman had considered sleeping with old Howard a pleasure, than she was in the vastly more serious question of what Gertrude Haversack knew that she thought might concern the police.

In the third-floor hall, she looked right and left and then walked right, and Apartment 310 was the third door down on the side overlooking the street. She pressed a little button set into the wall beside the door and stood listening to the buzzer inside the apartment. In order to establish a kind of imperious position, which might be a psychological advantage, she kept her finger on the button constantly until the door was opened suddenly by Gertrude Haversack, who was, Willie thought, just about the type you would picture in connection with sleeping with Howard, Willie herself excepted. She was taller than Willie and heavier, although her figure wasn’t bad in an ample sort of way, and she had medium brown hair, braided and wrapped around her head, and a rather long face which, like her figure, wasn’t bad or really good, and it was in fact the kind of face you’d expect to see on a woman who would make a good thing out of understanding another woman’s husband. Willie wasn’t sure, actually, that such a woman could be expected to have a certain kind of face, but if she could be, at any rate, the face would surely be like this one. It was the face of a woman who would try to make adultery seem like spiritual therapy.

“Are you Gertrude Haversack?” Willie said.

“That’s right. I recognize you, Mrs. Hogan, even if you don’t me. Please come in.”

Willie walked past her directly into a small living room, and there on a little table at the end of a sofa was a picture of Howard with his shirt open at the throat and a smile on his fat face that was plainly meant to be virile but only managed on him to look foolish. It was a shock, nevertheless, to see the picture, and Willie turned her back to it, pretending that she hadn’t even seen it, and faced Gertrude Haversack, who had closed the door and come back into the room a couple of steps.

“Please say whatever you have to say,” Willie said, “for I’m in a hurry.”

“Well, you may as well sit down and be comfortable,” Gertrude Haversack said.

“No, thank you. I don’t intend to stay that long.”

“I’ve just made some tea in the kitchen. Will you have a cup?”

Willie, who might have been seduced by a Martini, was not even tempted by tea. She shook her head and began to tap the carpet with the toe of one shoe to demonstrate her impatience.

“I don’t care for any tea. I didn’t come here on a social call, as you know. I’ve come only out of curiosity because
I’m
sure you must be out of your mind.”

Gertrude Haversack shrugged and sat down in a chair facing Willie and crossed her legs. She took cigarettes and paper matches out of the breast pocket of her blouse and lit one of the cigarettes with elaborate slowness, as if she thought this would irritate Willie, which it did. She blew out a cloud of smoke and waved it away with a languid motion, her hand flapping back and forth on a limp wrist.

“Suit yourself, of course. I’m prepared to be congenial, but it really makes no difference to me if you prefer it otherwise.”

“Why did you ask me to come here?”

“As I told you on the phone, I was Howard’s mistress. ‘Mistress’ is such an absurd word, though, to call oneself. I don’t like it at all, do you? Maybe you’d rather I called myself his girl. I like that much better.”

“I don’t care in the least which you call yourself, for you are probably a liar in either event.”

“Why should I lie about it? What’s to be gained?”

“That’s what I’m waiting to find out.”

“I was his girl. I’ve been his girl for almost a year, and you may as well accept it.”

“To tell the truth, I couldn’t care less. It may be true, I admit, for there’s no accounting for the tastes of some men.”

“You needn’t be insulting. It won’t help you. Do you realize how sick Howard had become of you in the last year or two?”

“I wasn’t greatly concerned about it.”

“I guess you weren’t. You were probably too concerned about other men. Howard said you were always getting laid by someone. He said you were no better than a whore.”

“Is that so? Well, at least I was a better whore than the one he took up with.”

Gertrude Haversack flushed angrily and bit her lower lip, and Willie had the satisfaction of knowing that she had finally scored. She owed this bitch a jolt or two, that was certain, and she might be able, before this was over, to think up something exceptionally unpleasant to do to her later.

“You might be interested to know that we were going away together,” Gertrude Haversack said. “We had it all arranged. Last Friday he got together all the money he could, which amounted to about twenty thousand dollars, and Saturday evening he was coming by to pick me up. I was all ready to go, all packed and everything, and I kept waiting and waiting for him, but he didn’t come, and finally I decided something had happened to change the plans, and that he would call me his first chance to explain what it was, but he didn’t call either. The next day, Sunday, I waited again to hear from him, and then, in the afternoon, a friend who knew about us called to tell me that she’d heard from someone or other that he’d left town suddenly Friday night. That’s the story that’s going around, that he left last Friday night and won’t be back, but it’s a lie. He didn’t leave then because we had planned to leave together on Saturday, as I said, and he had made all the arrangements, even to getting all that money together, and he would never have gone off without me like that at the last moment. No one knew we planned to go except him and me and this one good friend of mine, and what I want to know now is what happened to him.”

“In my opinion,” Willie said, “you have simply made all of this up, and what you have in mind to gain from such a fantastic lie is more than I can see. Do you just want to make trouble for me?”

“I wouldn’t mind making trouble for you.”

“Even if what you say is true, which I doubt, it’s obvious that he merely decided to go without you. Chances are he never had any intention of taking you in the first place. As I’ve recently learned, Howard could be very deceptive. I’m beginning to think he probably told lots of women lies in order to get what he wanted from them.”

“You’re only trying to be vindictive. He was happy with me, which he never was with you, and he wanted us to be together the rest of our lives. We were going to Mexico to live, at least until we got tired of it, and he was going to get a Mexican divorce while we were down there.”

“He may be going to Mexico, at that. I had a letter from him today from Dallas, Texas. Isn’t that on the way to Mexico, more or less?”

“You had a letter from him?”

“That’s what I said. From Dallas, Texas.”