Strange Embrace (15 page)

So Buell had killed him.

Johnny lit one cigarette from the butt of another, and waited.

The phone rang.

Johnny snatched it up. He said hello and waited for Lennie Schwerner’s voice. But the voice that answered was not that of the bearded boy. It was Haig’s.

“A little complication,” Sam Haig said apologetically. “Sorry to bother you. This is probably just a waste of time, but I had to check it out with you.”

Johnny held his breath. Everybody was apologizing to him, he thought. Everybody was worried about wasting his time. What was so damned important about his time?

“Got a call from your director,” Haig went on. “Ernest Buell. He said some nut called him on the phone and threatened to blackmail him for killing Tracy and the James girl. He arranged a meeting with the nut and called us. We went down to Topp’s on Times Square and picked the nut up. He’s nuts, all right. A beatnik. He’s got a beard looks like hell.”

Johnny’s brain was whirring in circles. He felt as if his head were going to come off.

Haig was talking again.

“So I had to bother you,” he said. “This nut, his name is Leonard Schwerner. He came up with this story that he’s a friend of yours. That you know him. That you sent him with a phony story for Buell, for your own reasons. We have to follow up everything. You know that. So I called.”

Johnny closed his eyes. He had found, over the years, that some blows were easier to take with your eyes closed. Often, when things got rough, you could make them less so by closing your eyes. It sometimes helped.

This time it did not.

“You still there, Johnny?”

“Yeah,” he said hollowly. “I guess so.”

“You don’t happen to know this Schwerner character, do you? I feel like an idiot asking, but—”

“I know him.”

“No kidding. I thought he was completely nuts. But this story of his is garbage, right?”

“Wrong.” Johnny took a deep breath. He swallowed. “Lennie Schwerner is telling the truth,” he managed to force out. “I sent him to Buell. I arranged the whole thing, Sam. The kid is not nuts.”

There was an extraordinarily long pause.

“You get yourself down here,” Haig said.

“Where?”

“My office,” Haig said. “I got Buell here and I got Schwerner here and I want you here. Fast.”

I
T COULD HAVE BEEN COMIC.

High comedy, say. Or low comedy. Whichever way you played it, it had all the ingredients of a thoroughly hysterical scene. The famous director Ernest Buell, furious as a cuckolded husband in a French bedroom farce. Lennie Schwerner, bearded and bedraggled, trembling like the would-be beggar in
Three-Penny Opera
under the wrath of Peachum. Haig, mad as hell, and Johnny, trying to explain things so that they made sense.

It could have been a riot. All the potentials were there and with the right direction it might have been the funniest event since Charlie Chaplin’s debut. There was only one thing wrong.

Direction was completely lacking.

It went every which way, so it turned out tragic instead of comic.

The curtain rose with Johnny storming into Haig’s office at headquarters. Buell was sitting on one side of Haig’s desk, glowering. Schwerner sat on Haig’s other side and looked very small. An incongruous handcuff shackled him to his chair.

“Hold him,” Johnny snapped.

“Don’t worry about it,” Haig said, tapping Lennie on the shoulder. “He’s not going to run very far. He’d have to carry the chair on his back, and…”

“Not him, damn it. Buell!”

Haig stared.

“Buell did it,” Johnny said. “He killed Elaine and Tracy. He set me up for a mugging. He’s not entirely sane, Haig. He’s off his rocker. Now, Sam, hear this—”

Johnny explained it all, carefully, patiently, and at length. He went over the entire case, giving in detail everything he had managed to piece together to show that Buell had to be the killer. Johnny filled in the psychological background, told how Buell both hated and loved the play, how he felt the same way about Elaine. By the time he was finished, all three of the men in the room regarded him with something approaching awe.

Buell spoke first.

“That’s nice,” he said. “You know, I thought you liked me, Lane. Some people hold it against a man that he’s spent time in a mental hospital. That never showed in your attitude toward me. I’m glad I’ve found out how you really feel.”

Something was wrong. Buell did not sound like a man who had just been accused of double murder and quadruple insanity. In fact, he seemed calmer now than Johnny had ever known him to be.

“It’s not a nice thing to find out,” Buell went on conversationally. “I was beginning to enjoy working with you. You’re a good producer. You handle people well. But now I won’t ever be able to do a show with you. It’s a shame, in a way.”

“Look—”

“You look,” Buell said. His voice hardened. “You’ve just given me grounds for seven different kinds of a slander suit. You’ve defamed my character to hell and back.”

“You killed them, Buell. Admit it.”

“The hell I will.” Buell sighed. “When Elaine was killed I was home all night with my wife. We had guests. Respectable people. They will so testify, Johnny.”

“But—”

“When Tracy was killed,” the director went on, “I was with my analyst. I’ve never claimed to be in perfect mental or emotional health, Lane. I’m not. I have my ups and downs, as you know. I go to an analyst regularly. I’m trying to straighten myself out. It’s not easy.”

Johnny swallowed.

“I’ve been hot and cold toward the play, of course. I’ve been moody. But not so moody as you make out.” He looked away. “And I must admit to rather strong feelings regarding Elaine James. She could have been a great actress, Lane. I was enthusiastic about her.”

“How enthusiastic?”

“I—I kissed her feet, Lane. Yes. Is that what you want me to say? It’s one of the few damned things that’s saving you from a slander suit, you know. It wouldn’t do me any good to have it brought up in a courtroom. I suspect the damned press would have a field day with an item like that. You can be pretty goddamned glad I kissed her feet, you son of a bitch.”

“Ernie—”

“I suppose I loved her. A strange sort of love, I admit. A worshipful love. I wanted to get past that strange reserve of hers. I wanted to reach her. But I didn’t kill her, Lane. I did not cut her throat. And you’re a rotten bastard to think so.”

He stood up and walked out of the room.

Johnny turned his head to watch Buell go, then winced at the sound of the door slamming. He fumbled the pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, shook a cigarette free and stuck it into his mouth. He lit it without turning to face Haig. He took a deep drag that seared his throat.

He turned around slowly.

“You’re just letting him go?” he croaked. “First you should check him out. He…it could all be cleverness, understand. He’s very clever. And now he’s getting away and—”

“Johnny.”

He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Johnny, we checked Buell’s alibi. We checked it a long time ago. We checked him out thoroughly the morning after Elaine James was killed. He was completely in the clear on that one, home with some friends all night. We checked him again when Tracy was killed. That second check was purely a matter of form, just routine. We learned he was on a psychiatrist’s couch while somebody was giving Tracy the closest and last shave of his life. Buell was at a business appointment before that and home for dinner after that.”

“Uh—”

“So he didn’t do anything,” Haig said. “He was completely clear. You came up with a nice fresh suspect. One that us dumb cops never would have thought up. You worked up a pretty little theory and you played it to the hilt. That was real smart, Johnny. It was a bright thing to do.”

“Hold on, Sam. You heard how it went together. All right—it was wrong. But at the time—”

“It looked good?”

“Damn good.”

Haig heaved a sigh. “That’s great,” he said. “That’s dandy. I’m not knocking your theory, Johnny. You and Bristle Face worked it up nice. It made sense.”

“Then—”

“Then you should have called me,” the cop said. “Jesus, suppose you were right. You think we couldn’t have gotten more out of Buell in a grill room than this kid here could get over a beer or two at Topp’s?” He turned on Lennie. “You’re a real smart kid,” he said. “You thought this Buell character was a lunatic. So you were going to sit down and play checkers with him. That was pretty clever. Suppose he took out a gun and shot a hole in your head? Where would you be then?”

Lennie’s face fell. “He wouldn’t have come on like that,” the boy said. But his tone was uncertain.

“Of course not,” Haig said. “He would do what any intelligent person would do. That’s what he did. He called me first. Then he went down to Topp’s with us behind him. And then we picked you up, you damn fool and now you’re chained to your chair like a monkey.”

Lennie hung his head. Johnny felt monumentally sorry for him at that particular moment. And it wasn’t the kid’s fault. Johnny was to blame—he had to indulge his flair for the theatrical approach instead of using his fat head. And because of that, because of him, Schwerner was in trouble.

“You know what I could do with you, kid?” Sam Haig was rubbing it in. “Buell’s slander suit would be only the beginning. Attempted extortion would go on top of that. For that you go to prison. I’ve got half a mind to toss you in the Tombs overnight to cool off. Might put some sense in your head. It—”

“Leave him alone, Sam.”

Haig turned. “You’ve got something to say?”

“Just leave him alone,” Johnny blurted. “None of this mess is Lennie’s fault. All he did was come to me with some information. I took the ball and ran with it. I got him to phone Ernie and set up the meeting. So don’t blame him, Sam. He was just following my instructions.”

“Then you weren’t very bright, Johnny.” Haig’s voice was relentless. “You could have called me. I’d have told you Buell was clean and that would have been that. Or I’d have run a check on him again for the hell of it, just to make sure. Instead, you took your act on the road and got stranded. You didn’t do it right, Johnny.”

“I know.”

“I don’t try and tell you how to run your plays, Johnny. I don’t pick your cast or read over your script or get in your way. I wait until your show opens, and then I buy a pair of tickets—”

“When did you last buy a ticket?”

Haig sighed. “I take the tickets you send me,” he amended, “and I see the show. That’s all. Why are you trying to handle my job for me, Johnny?”

“I don’t know.”

“No reason at all?”

“It’s just the way my mind works,” Johnny said honestly. “I hardly even considered calling you. I just looked for a way to trap Ernie, to catch him.”

Haig glared for several seconds. “I ought to jail both of you,” he said. “But the hell with it. The city’s too busy rehabilitating drunks and tapering off junkies. I can’t be bothered.”

He picked up a key from his desk, leaned over and unlocked Lennie’s handcuffs.

“You know,” he told Johnny, “I’d like to take this kid and hang a murder rap on him. But no jury in the world would listen twice.”

Haig looked, suddenly, as though he were going to start laughing. “You could pin anything on a bum like this one,” he said almost affectionately. “Anything from arson to sodomy. Anything but this particular murder. You know why?”

Johnny asked why.

“Because he doesn’t own a razor,” Haig said. “Ain’t that a hell of a note?”

Everything, Johnny thought, was getting to be a hell of a note. Anything and everything.

He loaded Lennie Schwerner into a cab, although the kid insisted that the subway would be fine. Johnny gave the driver a buck and told him to take the kid home.

“I’m sorry,” Lennie said for perhaps the thousandth time. “Like I blew it.”

“You did all right,” Johnny assured him. “I was the one who blew it. And don’t let what Haig said get you down. You’re okay. I think he likes you.”

“He digs me like the plague.”

Johnny took a breath. “When you give up the Zen kick,” he said, “why don’t you give me a ring?”

“What for?”

“Because you don’t sound too enthusiastic about insurance. You might like the theater business.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be an actor.”

“There are other sides to show business. There’s the whole production end. A smart kid can find a place for himself. And talent has nothing to do with it.”

“You serious?”

Johnny nodded. “Go think about it,” he said. “Go home, get in a full lotus posture and meditate. Clap one hand or something. In a week or so give me a ring and let me know if you’re interested. I might be able to find you something.”

“You’re serious,” Schwerner said, his voice strangely airy. “You’re actually serious.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But—”

“Go think about it. I’ll see you.”

He turned and sidled away from the cab, watched it pull off with the boy still turned around in his seat, staring back at Johnny. He waited on the curb until the cab was around the corner, then pitched the cigarette he had been smoking into the gutter and stepped out to snare a cab for himself. The first half-dozen had fares. Then an empty stopped for him and he got into the back seat and gave the cabby his address.

If they gave awards for stupidity, he thought, he would have one coming. Or maybe a dozen.

He thought about Ernie Buell, accused of two killings. Johnny had managed to lose the services of one of the best directors on Broadway, to lose the man permanently. Ernest Buell would never work for Johnny again—for which Johnny could hardly blame the man. In all probability Ernie would never even speak to him again, and he couldn’t blame Ernie for that either.

And the theory had seemed so perfect…

Proving, Johnny decided, that things were seldom as they seemed. He stared glumly through the cab window at the night. Night? Sure, night already—and how exactly had that happened? He wasn’t sure. It seemed to him as though time lately had discovered a way of going slowly one moment and then speeding up. How many days since he had found Elaine’s body? He couldn’t even remember.