I edged sideways along the wall, anxious to avoid a crossfire if Oster were foolhardy enough to resist. But the boys were trained and highly efficient and in the single blink of an eye they had Floyd Oster by each arm and were hustling him toward the street so that his toes barely touched the stairs.
I followed them down and watched as they bundled him into a car and hauled him off. For all his bravado, I had a feeling that Oster would quickly melt under heat. Ira Madden’s celebration was probably premature.
Suddenly it hit me that I was hungry. I had been cruising around the city all day, working, talking, ignoring the inner man, so I blew myself to a steak, with a large stein of beer.
Renewed, I sallied forth to take possession of Judge Bolt’s last will and testament from his clerk, Andy Stock.
It was an old prewar building on Lex. A palsied self-service elevator took me to the fifth floor. The radio was playing some heavy classical music. I rang the bell and waited. I rang again and waited some more. I tried the knob and it turned and the door opened.
The music was appropriate — a volcano of sound from Richard Wagner. It fitted the scene. Somebody had taken a carving knife to Andrew Stock and opened his throat from ear to ear.
I almost lost my expensive steak.
No more problems for Mr. Stock, no worry about a new job; his life and his career and his dream were over. He had joined his late employer. I did not bother calling a doctor. There would be no point in wasting a doctor’s time. What Andrew Stock needed was a mortician.
I saw his briefcase resting on the dresser. I anchored it with my elbow and maneuvered the zipper, leaving no prints. I had no reservations about lifting the document. A quick look informed me that, following a few specific bequests, the judge had divided his residual estate equally between wife and daughter. I refolded the will and tucked it away in my inside breast pocket.
Then I used Andrew Stock’s telephone and called Sergeant Wienick. On hearing the latest bulletin, he had a few choice Anglo-Saxon words for me.
They had done what had to be done, all the technicians, the photographers, the fingerprint men, then the assistant medical examiner, and finally the basket boys for hauling the remains to the morgue.
Now Sergeant Wienick and I were on our way in a police car to see Carol and Clive Denby. I needed some information about the judge’s insurance policy. Neither of the Denbys, I knew, would give me the right time, but with the sergeant to back me up they would probably cooperate.
Apparently the lid was off and Wienick had instructions. “Well, Counselor,” he said, “I spoke to the lieutenant, long-distance, and he told me to work with you in concord. So here it is. Ballistics finished their check. It locks it up for Mrs. Bolt. The bullets that killed her husband match the gun we took from her car, the grooves, the rate of pitch, the whole bit, micrometer accurate.”
“I had no doubt they would.”
“It doesn’t worry you?”
“A little.”
“And you know what else we found?”
“What?”
“A shoe box stuffed with money, large bills, fifty grand. The FBI thinks it’s union money, they think the judge got it from Ira Madden.”
“What clued them in?”
“They’ve had Madden under surveillance for over a year. They bugged his phone, heard incriminating talk. It led them to Floyd Oster and they picked him up.”
“I know.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Who told you?”
“I was there.”
He took it in stride. “Cash,” he said. “Crazy. They must have been spreading it all over the lot. Even that Andrew Stock. Thirty-five hundred in brand-new fifties stuffed into a shoe in his closet. What’s with the shoes these days? Don’t these people trust banks?”
I had nothing to say to him. But my mind was racing. All the little jigsaw pieces were falling into a discernible pattern.
The Denbys greeted us without enthusiasm. In her nasal voice, Carol Denby opened fire at once. “I heard on the radio that you arrested my stepmother. Is that true, Sergeant? Did you really?”
“It’s true,” he said.
“Good,” she snapped with grim satisfaction. “I’m not surprised. I never trusted that woman from the first moment I met her. A vain, greedy piece of baggage after my father’s money. I’m sorry only about one thing, that they’ve abolished capital punishment in this state. I hope you put her away for life at hard labor. A little sweat and humility would do her good.”
Clive Denby said, “If Laura’s guilty, we want to see her punished. Is there anything we can do to help, Sergeant?”
“Jordan, here, has a few questions.”
I got a look of poorly veiled disapproval. “Isn’t this a little irregular, Sergeant? Jordan represents the accused. He wants to exonerate her and you two most certainly would be working at cross-purposes.”
“We just want to nail down all the facts, Mr. Denby.”
He shrugged in a gesture of long-suffering forbearance. His eyes focused on me.
I said, “I understand you recently wrote a new life insurance policy for your father-in-law.”
“Eight, nine months ago.”
“For half a million dollars?”
“That is not an unusual amount for a man in his position.”
“And you knew, of course, that his estate was named as the beneficiary?”
“Of course I knew.”
“Were you also aware that under the terms of his will both his wife and his daughter would share equally in the proceeds of that policy?”
“He had so informed me.”
“I take it that the policy was in force at the time of the judge’s death?”
“Oh, yes. My father-in-law was meticulous about paying premiums. There were no arrears.”
“Does the policy also contain that lovely clause providing double indemnity in the case of death by accident or violence?”
“It does.”
Wienick’s pursed lips emitted an awed whistle. “You mean the five hundred grand becomes one million because somebody put a bullet through the judge’s skull?”
Accurate, but indelicate, especially in front of heirs, but par for the course with Wienick.
“That is true, Sergeant.” I turned back to Denby. “Is the policy nullified by suicide?”
“Yes. It is a standard provision in such contracts. Self-destruction cancels the policy.”
“So if the judge knocked himself off, your wife gets nothing. Zero. She’s out in the cold.”
Carol Denby gasped. “That’s a terrible thing to say. Only a deranged man would take his own life.”
“So.” I cocked an eye at her. “You yourself told me that your father must have been unbalanced when he married Laura.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Wienick broke in. “Hold on here, Counselor. Let me get this straight. Are you intimating that nobody killed Judge Bolt, that we’re whistling up a tree, that the man was a suicide?”
“I am not intimating,” I said. “I am proclaiming it outright. The judge was not a homicide victim. He took his own gun, pointed it, pulled the trigger, and blew out his own brains.”
Carol Denby gave a stricken cry, her hands a bowknot of distress at her throat.
Her husband said, his face simulating a look of lofty contempt, “This man is demented, Sergeant. He has rocks in his head. He is utterly irresponsible.”
Wienick’s narrowed eyes searched mine. “How do you figure it, Counselor?”
“Judge Bolt,” I said, “was frightened unto death, scared spitless. He knew that he was under investigation for accepting a bribe. He knew too that he was guilty and that—”
“My father?” Carol Denby shrilled. “A bribe? What are you saying?”
“We found fifty thousand dollars cash in a shoe box,” Wienick snapped. “Where the hell do you think he got it?”