Who Murdered Garson Talmadge (4 page)

Chapter 3

I had not been back to the Long Beach Police Department since the day I had been taken there as the accused in what the press called, “Justice on the Courthouse Steps.”

On the way over from the jail, I had tried to sort out why I was ignoring my instincts that told me not to get involved. I hadn’t known Clarice was married to Garson Talmadge while we were bumping uglies. Still, under whatever conditions, when you’d done the joe buck with a man’s wife you owed him something.

I had another reason for taking the case. You’ll think me silly, but I’ll tell you anyway. I liked Clarice. Not just because she had a full load of the B’s: brains, beauty, and big boobs. I just liked her, as a person. She was plain spoken and, generally speaking, more candid than most people, male or female.

I walked around the corner after parking on Broadway, and pushed through the door. When I got close to the front desk, the uniformed officer looked up. “I’d like to see Sergeant Fidgery,” I said. “My name is Matthew Kile.”

“I’ll let him know, Mr. Kile. Top of the stairs, take a seat. He’ll meet you up there.”

While waiting for Fidge, I was shocked to see how little the place had changed since I left the force. The decor was still grays and light browns with old florescent light fixtures lined up a foot or so below a white acoustical tiled ceiling that wasn’t exactly white any longer. The air was the same, too, a stale mixture of sneaked cigarettes smoked in out-of-sight places, further flavored by the unforgettable aromas of farts and barf that somehow leeched in from the locker room and the drunk tank.

“Hello, Matthew,” Fidge said, as soon as he stepped into sight carrying the coffee mug that he held more often than he wore pants, at least that would be my guess and I really didn’t want to find out. Fidge talked with his hands and the coffee mug did its part without giving up its content. “Come on,” was all he said before turning and starting down the hall without looking back.

At six-three and two-twenty I was neither short nor thin, but Fidge was six-five and over two-sixty, maybe more for he looked a bit softer around the middle, but over the years which of us don’t? In the old days, the two of us had been known as the department’s thundering herd. Fidge and I were more than friends. Over time our minds had culled out our case failures and hard times, while retaining the shared laughs and accomplishments. We were tight.

I strode up beside Fidge just before we turned into his office. We used to share one. Now he had a single. “I didn’t get a chance to ask you at the scene, how’s your wife?”

“Just fine, Brenda keeps asking when you’re coming by. You know, she comes from a big family so when she cooks there’s always plenty.”

“Sure. New haunts. New habits. The kids?”

“Brock’s good. Betty, well, if you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to a fifteen-year-old practicing trumpet every night, you haven’t really lived.” We laughed.

“Hug them all for me, will you? Tell Brenda I’ll be there for Sunday breakfast. If that’s not okay, let me know.”

“Sunday it is, let’s say nine-thirty?” I nodded. “Coffee Matthew?” he asked while approaching the pot to refill his cup.

“No thanks.” Then I said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll take a cup, black.” Fidge smiled and brought it over to me.

We stood sipping around stern looks over the rims of our cups. I sat first. Fidge spoke first. “Have you been by lockup to see your neighbor?”

“I just left there. Grungy place.”

“It’s a jail, Matthew. You’ve been there plenty of times. But then, lately you’ve mostly been hanging out in bookstores and attending black-tie dinners.”

“Not to mention dining on cold leftovers alone at my computer.”

A picture of Brenda, Betty, and Brock, their eleven-year-old son, in his Little League uniform, sat on a gray soft-top table under the window. For me, the Fidgerys personified the modern Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family. I told Fidge that once and he said the Adams Family seemed the better comparison.

“How’re your daughters?” he asked.

“The girls are doing great. Rose, the older one is getting married soon. You’ll get an invitation. Amy is trying to decide between an average-sized guy with a Bill Gates’ brain and a muscle-bound athlete with one earring and several tattoos, who rides a Harley.”

Fidge smiled and shook his head. “You’ve got to be shitting bricks. I know that craziness is ahead for me and Brenda. Betty is already eyeing the men folk in her world. Last Sunday I asked God why he let hormones grow up ahead of brains. How do we get these youngsters to understand the only really important thing about high school is graduating? That the rest they think is so important won’t mean squat in the big picture of their lives?”

“One of life’s easy questions, with no easy answer, at least I don’t have one for you.”

“And Helen?”

“Ah, my ex. No easy answer there either. Last year she came close to remarrying, but didn’t. The girls are her life right now, along with keeping track of my doings. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the woman was listening to my life on the upstairs extension.”

“Sounds like she still cares.”

“If she did, she would have stood with me during my trial.”

“Your attorney should have gotten her there.”

“I told him to leave her alone, that coming or not was her decision.”

“She was hurt. Confused. Angry. For that matter, so was I, but I also understood why you sent that guy to hell; your ex didn’t. But she ended up writing while you were inside, didn’t she?”

“For the first couple years, she did. Then she stopped. I couldn’t figure her then. I still can’t. Hey, I feel silly sitting in your office while you stand.”

Fidge didn’t move. After taking another drink of his coffee, he said, “You know I can’t discuss this case with you.”

“I understand, Fidge. I just came by so we could sit and look at each other, but you aren’t even sitting. Listen, I don’t believe Clarice did it. I got nothing except instinct working here, but, like I said, unless he died of an overdose of bed banging, killing’s not her style.”

“Oh, you got firsthand knowledge about that, Matthew?” Fidge unhooked his top button to free his moose-sized neck from his deer-sized collar.

“You know what, Sergeant Fidgery, You’re a dirty old man.” We exchanged more grins. “I just can’t see her bumping off her old man,” I said, feeling myself slipping deeper into the brand of cop and street vernacular spoken in my modern-noir novels. “If she plugged ‘im, it woulda been in the heat of passion or anger, and she would’ve been looking him straight in the eyes. She’d have no interest in pillows to muffle the shot. She’d wanna hear it. She’d wanna smell the cordite. Even then, I can’t see her doing it.”

Sergeant Fidgery wedged his thumbnail between his two front teeth. He must have gotten whatever he was after because his eyes crossed when he looked just before licking his nail.

“People aren’t as predictable as the characters in your novels, Matthew. You told me once that characters have to act consistent with their personalities.”

“Their true personalities,” I retorted, “which might be very different from the ones they show the world.”

Fidge ignored my cleanup of his comment and continued. “That’s swell in those books of yours, but not necessarily in real life. Real folks often act outside the mainstream of their lives. They go off the deep end and kill or rob and run. Hell, you know that. You were a damn good cop long before you started writing. Bottom line: This guy Talmadge was a respected, retired businessman. Somebody’s gotta pay and the bill’s got his wife’s name on it.”

“Fidge, shady businessmen are like politicians and madams, they get respectable only after they get dead.”

Fidge held up his mug in a silent offer of more coffee. I shook him off and waited while my former partner refilled his cup from a pot sitting on a hot plate atop another gunmetal-gray table butted into the corner. He carried his cup to my side of his desk, slid his backside over its top edge, leaned toward me, and spoke low. “It’d be like old times to discuss this case with you, but damn it, you know I can’t, really can’t.”

He circled back around his desk and before finally sitting down, placed his cup randomly among the brown rings commemorating the countless cups that had sat near him before this one.

“No problem, Fidge, we won’t talk about it. I’m just saying she didn’t do it. Women like her see their bodies as tools and marriage as an investment. For them, no man is worth prison. They don’t ever see themselves as jilted or betrayed. They just move on, seduce a new honey, and figure the next one’ll be a better deal.”

My ex-partner smirked like he’d known a few, or maybe like he had fantasized knowing just one.

“Fidge, that scene just didn’t add up. You got her using a pillow for quiet. You got her using a scarf to avoid prints, and showering after the shooting. You have her planning it down to tossing a cup of coffee against the bedroom door to illustrate her shock at finding her husband dead. Then you see her as leaving the deadbolt latched till you arrive and telling you it had been locked all night. That’s half smart, half super stupid. She would’ve unlatched the dead bolt before you arrived, and said, ‘Gee, that’s odd, Sergeant Fidgery, it’s usually locked. My husband must’ve let someone in after I went to bed.’ Come on, Fidge. I admit you got a nice bundle of circumstantial, but you’ve also got contradictions galore. I doubt they’ll dance together in front of the grand jury.”

Fidgery hooded his eyes and again gave me his case-closed shrug.

A year or so before I shot my way out of the department, we had a case where an older husband was killed. His wife, a real looker, a graduate of Plastic Surgery U., had been a suspect, but Fidge refused to believe anyone that angelic could kill. Well, she had done it and Fidge endured being razzed until the trial ended and she was found guilty. After that he figured every good-looking female suspect was Lynette Squeaky Fromme.

I had gone in expecting to get his views on the zigzag footprint and the open glass slider, but Fidge had decided Clarice had done it so I left discussion alone. Instead, I said, “You know one of the side effects of all that coffee you drink is irritability.”

He gave me the finger again. I said, “What’s this thing with your finger? You trying to recapture your adolescence?”

“Saves time while capturing the sentiment.”

“Maybe you should try decaffeinated coffee or no-caffeine soda?”

We went mum on the Talmadge case after that and relived a few wing dings from the old days.

I walked out of Fidge’s office, and got to the stairwell with my hand on the rail to start down to the ground floor when I heard my name. “Matthew.” I turned to see Fidge standing in the hall just outside his office. “Come back here!” While he waited, he used his thumbs to pull up on the front of his trousers.

I went back in while his trousers went back down to their original position.

“Your nympho neighbor needs a good attorney. We got lots more. A damn good attorney, Matthew. Now get the hell out of here. I got work to do.”

Chapter 4

The gossip gaggle in my condo development had long ago decided that Clarice had boffed the entire building’s population of husbands. I knew two things about that: it was at least partially true, and Clarice enjoyed the rumors. She loved tantalizing the old prunes. I didn’t know whether they were envious of the body Clarice had, that they didn’t, or the sex Clarice was getting, that they weren’t, probably both. One thing was certain. They would all do the witness dance for the D.A.

I had lied to Fidge. It hadn’t been a big lie, only a tactical one. Clarice and I had spent more time together than I had confessed, but I hadn’t lied for the reason you’re thinking. We had no ongoing affair. Not that I didn’t want to, but Clarice was married. Yeah, I know, you can call me provincial and you’d likely be right, but I prefer principled.

Garson Talmadge was a cold man who, from what I determined, cared deeply only about money. He had neither strong passion nor compassion for anything or anybody standing between him and his next profit. For him, people were tools.

So you don’t get the wrong idea, let me confess I also like money, more than most people I’d guess, but far less than Garson Talmadge. Of course, I admit that money is something about which one can be more principled after they have an adequate supply.

Clarice, on the other hand, was all about passion and compassion, well at least passion. Not that she didn’t like money, she did. That was why she married Garson. She had made her deal with him and from what I’d seen, she was holding up her end. On some level, she cared for him. She cooked for him. And she gave him all the sex he could handle. Because her desires far exceeded his, they had also agreed that she could venture into the beds of other men. Garson asked only that she not flaunt doing so. That part was hard for if Clarice was breathing, Clarice was flaunting. No doubt their arrangement was certainly a nonstandard plank in marital vows, but in their case it could also be seen as pragmatic. Garson wanted a trophy wife, and Clarice wanted to be assured she would be taken care of after his demise. This was a marriage of convenience. Still it appeared to me to be going smoothly until someone punched Garson’s ticket.

Let me get back to my coming clean about my clandestine relationship with Clarice. First, I should admit, having visited her warm places that one time, I was eager for a return visit. People go where they are invited and return to where they were made to feel welcome, and Clarice had made me feel very welcome. I enjoyed my time with her. She was more intelligent than the building biddies thought, much more so, and she had a quick wit. She considered my standard about no married women to be based on some boyhood notion of honor. I didn’t agree. We let that be and focused on being friends, sharing time now and again after Garson went to bed. She continued trying to entice me, but I held to my principle while enjoying her enticements, all the while wishing I’d change my mind. But, principles don’t really exist if one abandons them when the going gets tough, or, in this instance, the temptations get great.

I know what you’re thinking, this guy shot somebody he figured deserved to die, but he won’t have sex with a willing married woman who held a hall pass from her husband. What can I tell you? Life is rarely neat, and often confusing.

* * *

When I got to the bottom of the stairs after leaving Fidge’s office, with my hand on the banister to pivot off the bottom stair onto the first floor, I heard someone holler, “Hey, Mr. Kile.”

This time the voice didn’t belong to Fidge, but to the desk sergeant. “Mr. Kile,” he repeated, lifting the hinged end of the front counter and coming toward me. “Chief of Detectives, Richard Dickson, has instructed me to escort you to his office.”

Not wanting to look chicken, I followed the sergeant into the elevator. “Chief Dickson’s office is on the third floor,” the sergeant said. The door closed in the middle, making that hollow sadistic sound that elevators make just before the floor turns to mush.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not a wimp. I just don’t like elevators so I avoid them whenever it’s practical. I can handle airplanes, and heights are manageable when I walk up. But every time I get in an elevator I feel like Jimmy Stewart in the Hitchcock movie
Vertigo
. It’s a bullshit condition, and I know it has no foundation in fact. Still, I’ve fought that sense of panic all my life, with off-and-on progress.

The sergeant pushed the button for three. “I’m a big fan, Mr. Kile. I really enjoy your books.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. Call me Matt.”

My mouth went dry as the elevator groaned and moaned. That sensation grew into nausea when the box-on-a-cable staggered passing the second floor. Actually, this time was not so bad. Most often the clammy panic came as soon as the doors closed. A bright green number three appeared above the door just as a dollop of sweat gathered on my forehead. The elevator navigated its up-and-down bounce, stopped, and, to my relief, proved that its doors, once closed, would again open.

We walked to the end of the hall where the desk sergeant knocked on the wood panel framing the fogged glass that read: Captain Richard Dickson, Chief of Detectives.

Behind his back, Chief of Detectives Richard Dickson’s name was “Two Dicks.” Politics and the Peter Principle had danced in the street the day Dickson made CD.

A long quiet minute passed before a guttural voice leached through the door. “Come in.”

While the sergeant reached for the door, I swiped at the sweat run gathering speed as it worked through my sideburn. We walked inside.

The Long Beach Chief of Detectives had a wooden desk, an upgrade from the soft gray-top in Fidge’s office. The room had one window. The blinds were drawn. The walls were crowded with pictures; the most prominently placed being one showing the ambitious man smiling and shaking hands with the chief of police. Another showed Dickson shaking hands with the mayor. In the next, Dickson stood before the U.S. flag, shaking hands with our local congressman. In it, Dickson was illustrating that he had political connections, while giving the congressman the opportunity to display a tough-on-crime image. On the side wall were a dozen or so photos of smiling Dickson standing with a gaggle of civic, religious, and business leaders. There was also a picture at some black tie gala in which I thought Clarice was standing a few feet behind Dickson, but the woman was far enough in the backdrop, that I couldn’t be certain it was she.

The last picture I glanced at had him holding a shiny shovel with a small dollop of dirt at a groundbreaking somewhere. Well, you get the idea. The walls were further adorned with plaques and awards—probably for coddling criminals. One thing conspicuously missing was family pictures. Even single men had families, but there were no pictures of Dickson’s parents or siblings, if he had any. Siblings, I mean. He had to have parents, or so I assumed.

I had to give credit where credit was due. The man was tall and fit and gussied up in a black pinstriped double-breasted suit with a matching blue tie and pocket hanky. He looked more politician than cop. While a detective, the man had solved crimes at an alarming rate, and quickly advanced through the ranks to become the city’s first ever unmarried chief of detectives. He was also known as a lady’s man, with his picture often featured on the society page escorting one or another of Long Beach’s wealthy young widows. No way could Dickson be confused with the overweight, rumpled detectives chewing on soggy cigar butts with whom the fictional Phillip Marlowe had regularly matched wits.

“That’s all, Sergeant,” Dickson said, looking up after having made us wait long enough to establish his importance. “Kile, stay.”

His order for me to stay sounded like the commands I had been trying with Asta, and I didn’t obey any better than Clarice’s chihuahua.

“Listen, Dickson, if you got something to say, be polite or you can go to hell.” After I said it, I heard the office door latch shut. I hadn’t planned for that, but, given how the rank and file felt about Dickson, the desk sergeant hearing it was more good than bad.

Perhaps that had been Asta’s meaning when she turned and walked out of the room after I had ordered the little thing to stay.

“Thank you, Mr. Kile,” Dickson snarled, before patting his neatly trimmed mustache as if it were a loose glue-on. “That segues into why I wanted to see you. Sit.”

No real cop said words like “segue,” so I now had one more reason to dislike the jerk.

“I hear just fine standing.” I shifted into a sarcastic parade rest stance, my hands together against the small of my back. I also decided that tonight I’d try a different tone with Asta. I had read somewhere that a relationship can be built on mutual understanding so maybe Dickson and I had a future. But for now and as far ahead as I cared to look, I didn’t like Two Dicks, never had, and I knew it cut both ways.

Color rose to Dickson’s cheeks and his eyebrows arched above his shit-brown eyes. “Citizen Kile, you’ve been washed up around here since you stopped catching murderers and became one. Except for that play-school badge you carry, you’re no longer a detective. You’re a writer and not a very good one at that. You’re a civilian.” His pointing finger hovered between us. “So stop thinking you can just waltz in here whenever you have a notion to talk to Sergeant Fidgery or any of my detectives.”

“Okay. I heard your message. Now hear mine.” I moved out of the imaginary line from Two Dick’s finger. “I used too much muscle for you and the other do-gooders so caught up in protecting the rights of the crud that you’ve forgotten about protecting the honest folks.”

“Get lost, citizen.” The pointy finger again.

“Not yet. Got one more thing to say.” I leaned my thighs against his desk.

“Spill it and then blow.”

“And then blow? You been watching old gangster movies, Two Dicks? Okay, here it is in noir gangster speak, lemme give it ta ya straight, see, ‘cause this ain’t just about you and me, see. I came to talk with Sergeant Fidgery for good reason. I knew last night’s victim, Garson Talmadge, also the dame you’re trying to pin it on, his wife, Clarice Talmadge. And here’s a flash. She didn’t do it. They’re my neighbors, see. It’s Sergeant Fidgery’s job to talk to folks like me. I came down of my own volition to answer his questions about the two of ‘em. So don’t get your nose out of joint toward Fidge—Sergeant Fidgery.”

Dickson glared at me. His moment of silence gave me an opening and I took it. Often it is good strategy to say something you aren’t sure of as if you are. If you’re right, people will often not correct you. It works better than just asking a question to which yes or no is an equally correct answer. I framed the first part of what I said next in that spirit. “You know the accused, Clarice Talmadge. Certainly you agree she would not commit murder.”

“I’ve never met the woman.” Dickson had corrected my statement which strongly suggested he didn’t know Clarice. However, it could also mean he had something to hide and, as an accomplished interrogator, understood why I had phrased my question as a statement and so he had disagreed. I still figured he knew her. After all, he had a pecker and Clarice collected’em.

I took the picture down from his wall and dropped it on his desk. “There you are.” I pointed. “There she is.” I pointed again.

He picked up the picture. “If that’s the woman Sergeant Fidgery booked in, she wasn’t with me. She’s in the background like a lot of other people who were there that I didn’t know.”

“I understand that now you wouldn’t want to know her. Not with her being arrested for murdering her husband. It wouldn’t exactly be tidy for an ambitious chief of detectives.”

“Believe what you will, writer, I could care less.”

“I will, Two Dicks.”

“All right, you’ve had your say. Get lost. If I see you around this department again, I’ll have you arrested.”

We spend a full minute exchanging screw-you looks. Then I walked out.