Killing the Goose (20 page)

“Then,” Bill said, “she was really killed by mistake, Pam? It could be, of course.”

“Or, anyway, too soon,” Pam said. “Before she got around to being right.”

They thought of that one.

“Of course,” Dorian said, “maybe whoever it was—Mr. B.—just hired somebody. Maybe he has a faithful old retainer who stabs people out of devotion.”

Bill looked at his wife with interest.

“Beck has a faithful old retainer,” he said. “Two of them, by count.”

“Would they stab somebody?” Dorian asked with interest. “Either—or both.”

Bill said he should think so. Pam shook her head.

“I don't believe in faithful old retainers,” she said. “Not the stabbing kind, for love of the mahster. Or even the massa.”

“If you come to that,” Jerry said, “you don't really believe in murder. You don't think anybody would. But they do. So do retainers, for all we know.” He paused. “Not that I think Martha would, for us,” he said.

They tried to think of fat Martha murdering for the Norths, and were unsuccessful.

“Maybe,” Pam said, then, “she was blackmailing
both
Mr. B. and Mr. C. at the same time, because both of them were there, or something, or had threatened Ann or something. And while she was blackmailing Mr. B. or Mr. C., the other one—the one she wasn't actually blackmailing at the time—followed her to the store and killed her.”

They were thinking of that, and that they had now about all the reasonable combinations, when Hugo came and stood behind Weigand. Bill looked around.

“Telephone, Captain Weigand,” Hugo said, adhering to his custom of promoting all good customers by at least one grade.

Bill followed Hugo to the telephone booth wedged into a corner of the small, secure cocktail lounge. Hugo waved the detective on and Bill, not quite hesitating as he entered the booth—but not avoiding a thought of the final condition of the booth in which Mrs. Pennock had done her telephoning—went in and closed the door behind him. He said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” John Elliot said. “I see he got another one.”

The voice was familiar to Bill Weigand; much too familiar. It was infuriating.

“You mean
you
got another one,” Bill said. “And you seem to think it's part of a game. We'll teach you about that, Elliot.”

“When you catch me,” Elliot commented, with truth. But his voice was not flippant; it was merely reporting the obvious. “But I'm still not the one you want to catch. I haven't killed anybody. And I think you know it, Weigand.”

“I don't know it,” Weigand said. “You're a killer, Elliot, or the damnedest fool I ever met. You're acting like—like a perverted school boy.”

“I know,” Elliot said. “It must seem that way. But I'm not a killer.
Or
a fool. I know something you don't know and I've got to work on it.”

“If you didn't kill Ann Lawrence and the McCalley girl you're a damned fool to hide out,” Weigand told him. “Because we'll catch you anyway.”

“You haven't so far,” Elliot reminded him. “And why don't you include Mrs. Pennock?”

Weigand was triumphant.

“Because I wanted you to mention her,” he said. “Because you couldn't have known about her unless—”

Elliot broke in.

“Unless I listened to the radio,” he said. “I did listen to the radio. It's part—”

He stopped there for a moment. Then he went on.

“It was on the radio half an hour ago,” he told Weigand. “Didn't you know that, Lieutenant?”

Weigand hadn't. He would know why it was on the radio and somebody would wish it hadn't been. But meanwhile, he was inclined to believe Elliot, because a lie would be too easy to check.

“All right,” Weigand said. “You heard it on the radio. And you called me up to tell me how smart you are. Is that it?”

Elliot said it wasn't.

“And incidentally,” he said, “I'm not anywhere around now, so that roundup of the neighborhood won't work. I just took a chance you'd be at Charles. Knowing your methods, Sherlock.”

“One trouble with you, Elliot,” Weigand said, “is that you haven't grown up. One trouble.”

“And one trouble with you, Weigand, is that you can't see your nose on your face. Or your hand in front of your eyes, or whatever it is. Or a murderer who's sticking out a mile.”

“I can talk to him,” Weigand said. “On the telephone. And get him, eventually.”

Elliot said they weren't getting anywhere.

“All right,” Weigand said. “Where do you want to get?”

“Damn it all, man,” Elliot said. “I'm trying to help. I wasn't sure before; now I'm sure. It's one of two. In about an hour I'm going to ask a couple of questions. Then I'll know—then I'll hand it to you.”

His voice was serious. It would be easy to believe him.

“Elliot,” Weigand said, “you're still being a fool. Maybe you're telling the truth. If you are you don't know what you're getting into. Just on the chance you're telling the truth—for God's sake show some sense. Don't go around asking questions of murderers. Don't—”

“I can take care of myself, Lieutenant,” Elliot said. “Thanks all the same.”

“Mrs. Pennock thought she could take care of herself,” Weigand said, and his voice was harsh. “She's in a bin at the morgue, Elliot.”

There was a slight pause.

“She didn't know what she was up against,” Elliot said, but his voice momentarily sounded less sure. “I know what I'm up against.”

Weigand said nothing. He listened to Elliot breathing on the other end of the phone. But before Elliot spoke again, Weigand knew he had lost the round.

“And,” Elliot said, now with no hesitancy, “she wasn't evenright. She thought she knew something she didn't know. This time it's different.”

With him it was different, he meant. He believed it again. There was nothing to say to convince him. Weigand's voice was weary when he answered.

“Right,” he said. “With you it's different, Rover boy. You'll catch a murderer for the dumb cops. Or he'll catch you, and then we'll have to catch him for that, too. What do you want from me—a testimonial?”

“No,” Elliot said. He paused, apparently searching for words. He spoke more slowly.

“Listen,” he said. “I'm not a fool, whatever you think. I know it's—risky. If I could prove anything—but I can't. Not now. I could just give you a theory. You'd think it was a crazy theory. It wouldn't make sense. But I can—trick him. I think I can.”

“I think you're a fool,” Weigand said, driving it in.

“You don't know how it is,” Elliot said. “I know what I can do. In this case. With this—this guy. Something nobody else could do. Because of—well, say special circumstances. And there's no use trying to talk me out of it.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “It's your neck. If you're telling the truth. And I'll say this—I don't get the game if you're not.”

He had not meant to say that much. There was something in the earnestness of the other's voice which had brought it out.

“It's my neck,” Elliot said. “And I'll take care of it. And—I'll be seeing you. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Any time,” Weigand said, with marked politeness. “Any time at all, Mr. Elliot. Just drop in. And bring your murderer.”

“Maybe I will, Lieutenant,” Elliot said. “Maybe I'll do just that. Or maybe I'll just let you hear about it, as I did about Mrs. Pennock. On the radio.”

Suddenly, it seemed to Weigand, there was a jeer in the end of it. It was as if Elliot were laughing at him, about something; had been laughing at him all the time. And Weigand started talking with contained violence before he realized that part of the cause of his fury was that Elliot had, at the end of that sentence, hung up the receiver.

Weigand went back to the others and he was both exasperated and uneasy. He was being played for something—and he didn't know just what. There was a game going on, under his nose, and he didn't know the rules. And there seemed to be nothing he could do about it, except to catch Elliot and shake it out of him. And so far, he hadn't caught Elliot. He felt as if he were “it” in a game of blind-man's buff. Over another round of drinks, he told the others of Elliot's call, and of his own confusion. His confusion did not lighten; it remained after they had left the bar for a table. It persisted through dinner.

They had finished and were no longer talking much when Detective Stein appeared, excited interest in his quick, mobile face. Stein did not wait to be spoken to.

“I think we've got him, Lieutenant,” he said. “The auditors found it; a baby could have found it.”

“What?” Weigand said, not bothering to sit down. It didn't sound as if it would be worth while sitting down.

Stein told him, quickly and precisely. Alfred Pierson, who had brought Ann Lawrence's account into Estates Incorporated, and continued to handle it, had milked it almost dry. By substituting securities at first; finally merely by hypothecating securities. He had, in short, brought it down from a great deal to almost nothing, and he had done it with amazing rapidity. Ann's pleasantly adequate fortune had, within four years, turned liquid and flowed into Pierson's pockets. What remained were real estate holdings of no liquidity whatever; what remained was a series of tax liabilities.

They looked at one another as Stein finished. So there it was—there was motive, all wool and a yard wide. At least a yard wide.

“It's uncanny,” Pam North said, in a bemused way. “It's just as I suspected. And he was in love with her, too.”

“Or,” Weigand pointed out, “he wanted to marry her to keep the truth in the family. And—where is he now, Stein?”

He was around, Stein said. He had gone out to lunch about one and come back a little after three. By that time it had begun to become clear, but they said nothing to him. He had gone out again a little before five, but this time he had not gone alone. A small, almost invisible, man had gone with him.

“I took a chance on that,” Stein said. “I couldn't reach you. You'd just left the precinct after the checkup on the Pennock kill. So I took a chance. O.K.?”

“Right,” Weigand said. “Who's on him?”

“Krenke,” Stein said.

Weigand was relieved and said, “Right,” again. Krenke was no Hanson; Krenke would be right along with Mr. Pierson, wherever Mr. Pierson went. And Krenke would be keeping in touch.

Weigand decided he was right not to have sat down. It was a time to stand up and get going. The fog, he decided, was lifting. Or a corner of it was lifting. He and Stein and Mullins left the Norths and Dorian sitting over coffee and went away from there. Weigand's Buick snarled at intersections between Charles's and the headquarters of the Homicide Squad.

Krenke had kept in touch. It had not been difficult. The reports he had managed to telephone in between a little before five o'clock and ten minutes ago told the story of an easy chase. Pierson had stopped for a cocktail, alone. He had gone home—home being an apartment in the Murray Hill district—and had stayed until about seven-thirty. Then he had gone to a Long-champs and had a couple more cocktails and dinner. Then he had gone home again. He was home now; Krenke was in the lobby of Mr. Pierson's home.

They got going again. They went fast until, off Madison, they turned east toward the street number Krenke had given them. Then, so unexpectedly that the others started forward in their seats, Weigand slowed the car. He slowed it until it crept. He pointed.

Walking ahead of them on the sidewalk at their right, and only a door or so away from the apartment house, they saw a short, broad-shouldered youth, poorly dressed but moving with a kind of angry swagger. They crept behind him for a moment, watching. He turned into the entrance of the apartment house.

Weigand looked back quickly. A heavy man, well dressed and at peace with the world, was sauntering after the youth with the air of one before whom time stretches comfortably. But when the youth turned into the entrance, the heavy man quickened his pace, as if time had suddenly shrunk. Weigand touched Mullins beside him and indicated with a movement of his head. Mullins extended his right hand from the window and made a downward gesture. The heavy man, who had been going wherever Franklin Martinelli went, slowed down. He sauntered again and crossed the street diagonally. On the other side he began to look at street numbers.

Weigand edged the car up to the curb and switched off the ignition.

“What the hell?” Mullins inquired, with interest.

“I wouldn't know, Sergeant,” Weigand told him. “I really wouldn't know. But we might find out. Right?”

“Yeah,” Mullins said. “I'd sorta like to know, sorta.”

They left the car and Detective Stein in it. Stein whistled lightly as they walked toward the apartment house entrance and the heavy man who was still looking at addresses on the other side of the street, started and turned. He beamed a surprised beam and crossed to the car. Stein held the door open for him and he got in, still surprised and beaming at meeting a friend in so unexpected a fashion.

One of the elevator indicators showed its car stopped at the eighth floor. The other car waited. As they moved toward it, the indicator of the first car moved to the left as the car descended. Weigand and Mullins got into the waiting elevator.

“Mr. Pierson,” Weigand said. “Alfred Pierson. Eight, isn't it?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy in the elevator said. “Is Mr. Pierson expecting you?”

“Oh, yes,” Weigand said. “I'm sure Mr. Pierson is expecting us.”

“Eight-C,” the boy said. “To your left.”

Weigand rang the ball. The door opened instantly, as if somebody had been standing just inside it. The somebody was Alfred Pierson, who said, “Yes?” with a rising inflection. Then he saw Sergeant Mullins. He said, “Yes,” again, without the rising inflection. He stepped aside.