She allowed herself to be helped from the car and led into the building. She stared at, without seeing, and listened to, without hearing, the man at the desk; and between the man and the woman who had interrupted her day of great expectation, she walked, without thought, into the next room.
The silence was heavy as they raised the covering and her indrawn breath, as she looked down at the face, was light as a gently closed door. The hair was not tangled with sunshine as she remembered it, but shadowed with years and now with death... Her voice was soft as she asked, more of the body than of the two detectives, “A gunshot wound? How did it happen? Why was he shot?”
Lt. Forster cleared her throat. Lt. Barker answered with hesitation, “He was caught while robbing a jewelry store. Do you know him, Mrs. McCartney? Can you identify him for us?” he asked.
“No,” she said quite clearly, as she looked down upon the shadowed hair and the shadowed beard that, in no way, revealed a shadowed cleft in the chin.
“Are you quite sure, Mrs. McCartney?” persisted Lt. Barker. “Are you absolutely certain you don’t know this man?”
She turned away. “I never saw him before in my life.”
Back at the desk, they showed her the slip of tablet paper found in the pocket of the dead man, and Mrs. McCartney looked at the jagged writing briefly. “I haven’t the slightest idea how he got my name and address,” she announced. “Maybe he found it somewhere. Maybe he robbed my son,” and she nodded with resolution. “Perhaps so. No one would have my name and address — no one but my son. So this man picked it up — or stole it.”
“But, Mrs. McCartney...”
She started for the door, then she turned. “What will happen to him? I mean now... about the burial...” she said hesitantly.
“If we can’t get an identification,” Lt. Barker said, “we’ll try, of course, but if no one identifies him and if we can’t find out who he is or where he came from — then, well, then the county will have to bury him.”
“Oh, no,” she gasped. “Oh, no,” and quickly she returned to the desk, opened her pocketbook and took from it several bills, all that she had. She unsnapped her coin purse and emptied the coins. “For his funeral,” she said, refusing to listen to their protests, their arguments, refusing to wait for a receipt, refusing to listen. “I am in a great hurry,” she said, now impatiently. “I must get home to my son.”
Roseanne McCartney then hurried out the door and into the car, eager to leave this building, the body and the telltale slip of paper; eager to return to her home with the key under the mat and the rocking chair in the parlor and the letter from her son on the table.
Pocket Evidence
by Harold Q. Masur
Many a fowl is ambushed via a concealed blind.
There is a cynical little caveat which says: If you can’t stand the time, don’t commit the crime.
U.S. District Judge Edward Marcus Bolt failed to heed this in junction. He had committed a crime and when he was found out, the prospect of serving time in a federal penitentiary unhinged him completely. Tossed off the bench, disbarred, disgraced, disavowed by his colleagues, ego mutilated, deprived of his sumptuous young bride, all this was more than he could stomach — so the judge put the muzzle of a gun against his temple and squeezed one off.
It ended the judge’s problems, but created some new ones for his widow, Laura Bolt. Tall, blonde, with innocent blue eyes and teeth perfectly capped for her career as a fashion model, she suspended her work when she married the judge but resumed it after his death. Now she sat alongside my desk, pale, apprehensive, tremulous.
“The man wants his money back,” she told me.
“What money?”
“The money he claims he gave my husband.”
“The fifty thousand dollar bribe?”
“I guess so. He called me on the telephone and said he’d paid Edward fifty thousand dollars to perform certain services and Edward failed to deliver.” She gave me a look of forlorn appeal. “I came to you, Mr. Jordan, because you were Edward’s lawyer and you were very helpful after his... er... accident.”
I let the euphemism pass. I had indeed been Judge Bolt’s lawyer — for maybe like about thirty minutes. At the time he retained me, he’d been presiding over the trial of Ira Madden, president of Amalgamated Mechanics. Madden was charged by the government with embezzling one million dollars from the union treasury and although the indictment failed to state as much, they suspected he had squirreled it away under a numbered account in a Swiss bank.
Then, while still presenting its case, the Justice Department started an investigation of rumors that one of Madden’s lackeys, a man named Floyd Oster, had reached the judge with a fifty thousand dollar bribe — and that exact sum was found taped under a fender of his Honor’s car and identified by serial numbers as a recent withdrawal from one of Madden’s accounts. In a panic, the judge got through to me with an SOS, summoning me to his home, but he must have been very close to the brink because he surrendered to impulse before I got there and finished himself off.
It resulted in a mistrial. Now the government was preparing to bring Ira Madden back into court again. Floyd Oster, the bagman, was himself under indictment for bribery. There had been sundry other complications which I managed to straighten out for the widow. Now, apparently, she needed my help again.
I said, “Tell me exactly what happened, Mrs. Bolt.”
She swallowed and drew a breath. “I got the call late last night. A man phoned and said, ‘Listen to me, lady. I’m only going to say this once. We paid the judge fifty grand. He promised to help us on something, but he chickened out and shelved himself before he could deliver. We want our money back. Do you read me, Mrs. Bolt? Fifty grand. Have the cash ready day after tomorrow and we’ll be in touch. Just stay away from the law or you’ll wish you’d never been born.’ ”
“Bluster,” I said. “Empty threats.”
“No.” Her voice rose on a hysterical note and she leaned forward, gripping the edge of my desk. “Something terrible happened on my way here to see you. I left my apartment and when I stepped off the curb to cross the street, a car suddenly started and came racing straight at me. I thought, this is it! They know I called you and they’re punishing me. I’m going to be killed or maimed. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. And then, at the very last instant, the car swerved and roared past me.” Recollection drained her face, leaving it bone-white.
“Could you identify the driver?”
“I don’t know; it happened so fast.”
I brought her a newspaper clipping from one of my files. “Look at this picture. Does it resemble the man you saw?”
She studied it, brow crimped. “I... I’m not sure. Is it that man Floyd Oster?”
“The same. From what I know of this particular insect, he’s our most logical target.”
“Doesn’t he know I haven’t got the money, that the police are holding it as evidence?”
“He couldn’t care less. He knows you have the judge’s insurance.”
She was on the verge of tears. “But they’re not entitled to that. It’s my only security.”
She seemed unaware of her assets. With that superbly extravagant figure, she had all the security she would need for a long time to come. “Relax, Mrs. Bolt,” I said. “It’s in my hands now.”
She managed a weak smile. “Would you need a retainer?”
I never refuse payment. She seemed eager to write a check, as though the transfer of money would guarantee success. After she left, I sat back and gave it some thought.