“There’s no supposition about what he’s done. He went to the Alcazar Arms at eight fifteen tonight and throttled Ruby Rose Reading to death, Angel Face.”
And that was the first time I heard myself called that. I also heard the good-looking one remonstrate: “Aw, don’t give it to her that sudden, Coley, she’s a girl after all,” but it came from ’way far away. I was down around their feet somewhere sniffling into the carpet.
The good-looking one picked me up and straightened me out in a chair. Cobblestone said, “Don’t let her fool you, Burnsie, they all pull that collapsible concertina act when they wanna get out of answering questions.” He went into the bedroom and I could hear him pulling out bureau drawers and rummaging around.
I got up on one elbow. I said, “Burns, he didn’t do it! Please, he didn’t do it! All right, I did know about her. He was sold on her. That’s why he couldn’t have done it. Don’t you see, you don’t kill the thing you love?”
He just kind of looked at me. “You go to bat for the thing you love too,” he murmured. He said, “I’ve been on the squad eight years now. We never in all that time caught a guy as dead to rights as your brother. He showed up with his valise in the foyer of the Alcazar at exactly twelve minutes past eight tonight. He said to the doorman, ‘What time is it? Did Miss Reading send her baggage down yet? We’ve got to make a train.’ Well, she had sent her baggage down, and then she’d changed her mind, she’d had it all taken back upstairs again. There’s your motive, right there. The doorman rang her apartment and said through the announcer, ‘Mr. Wheeler’s here.’ And she gave a dirty laugh and sang out, ‘I can hardly wait.’
“So at thirteen past eight she was still alive. He went up, and he’d no sooner gotten there than her apartment began to signal the doorman frantically. No one answered his hail over the announcer, so he chased up, and he found your brother crouched over her, shaking her, and she was dead. At fifteen minutes past eight o’clock. Is that a case or is that a case?”
I said, “How do you know somebody else wasn’t in that apartment and strangled her just before Chick showed up? It’s got to be that!”
He said, “What d’you suppose they’re paying that doorman seventy-five a month for? The only other caller she had that whole day was you yourself, at three that afternoon, five full hours before. And she’d only been dead fifteen to twenty minutes by the time the assistant medical examiner got to her.”
I said, “Does Chick say he did it?”
“When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you’d have their heads examined if any of them ever admitted doing anything. Oh, no-o, of course he didn’t do it. He says he was crouched over her shaking her trying to restore her!”
I took a deep breath. I said, “Gimme a swallow of that gin. Thanks.” I put the tumbler down again. I looked him right in the eye. “All right, I did it! Now how d’ye like that? I begged him not to throw his life away on her. When he walked out anyway, I beat him up to her place in a taxi, got there first, gave her one last chance to lay off him. She wouldn’t take it. She was all soft and squashy and I just took a grip and pushed hard.”
“And the doorman?” he said with a smile.
“His back was turned. He was out at the curb seeing some people into a cab. When I left, I took the stairs down. When Chick signaled from her apartment and the doorman left his post, I just walked out. It was a pushover.”
His smile was a grin. “Well, if you killed her, you killed her.” He called in to the other room, “Hey, Coley, she says she killed her!” Coley came back, flapped his hand at me disguestedly, said, “Come on, let’s get out of here, there’s nothing doing around here.”
He opened the door, went out into the hall. I said, “Well, aren’t you going to take me with you? Aren’t you going to let him go and hold me instead?”
“Who the hell wants you?” came back through the open door.
Burns, as he got up to follow him, said off-handedly, “And what was she wearing when you killed her?” But he kept walking toward the door, without waiting for the answer.
They’d had a train to make. I swallowed hard. “Well, I... I was too steamed-up to notice colors or anything, but she had on her coat and hat, ready to leave; that’s about all I can tell you.”
He turned around at the door and looked at me. His grin was sort of sympathetic, understanding. “Sure,” he said softly. “I guess she took ’em off, though, after she found out she was dead and wasn’t going anywhere after all. We found her in pajamas. Write us a nice long letter about it tomorrow, Angel Face. We’ll see you at the trial, no doubt.”
There was a glass cigarette-box at my elbow. I grabbed it and heaved, berserk. “You rotten, lowdown — detective, you! Going around snooping, framing innocent people to death! Get out of here! I hope I never see your face again!”
It missed his head, crashed and tinkled against the door-frame to one side of him. He didn’t cringe, I liked that about him, sore as I was. He just gave a long drawn-out whistle. “Maybe you did do it at that,” he said, “maybe I’m underestimating you,” and he touched his hat-brim and closed the door after him.
The court-room was so unnaturally still that the ticking of my heart sounded like a cheap alarm-clock in the wondering how it was they didn’t put me out for letting it make so much noise. A big blue fly was buzzing on the inside of the window-pane nearest me, trying to find its way out. The jurists came filing in like ghosts, and slowly filled the double row of chairs in the box. All you could hear was a slight rustle of clothing as they seated themselves. I kept thinking of the Inquisition, and wondered why they didn’t have black hoods over their heads.
“Will the foreman of the jury please stand?”
I spaded both my hands down past my hips and grabbed the edges of my seat. My handkerchief fell on the floor and the man next to me picked it up and handed it back to me. I tried to say “Thanks” but my jaws wouldn’t unlock.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
I told myself, “He won’t be able to “hear it, if my heart doesn’t shut up.” It was going bangetty-bangetty-bang!
“We have, your honor.”
“Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?”
The banging stopped; my heart wasn’t going at all now. Even the fly stopped buzzing. The whole works stood still.
“We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Some woman screamed out “No!” at the top of her lungs. It must have been me, they were all turning their heads to look around at me. The next thing I knew, I was outside in the corridor and a whole lot of people were standing around me. Everything looked blurred. A voice said, “Give her air, stand back.” Another voice said. “His sister. She was on the stand earlier in the week.” Ammonia fumes kept tickling the membranes of my nostrils. The first voice said, “Take her home. Where does she live? Anybody know where she lives?”
“I know where she lives. I’ll take care of her.”
Somebody put an arm around my waist and walked me to the creaky courthouse elevator, led me out to the street, got in a taxi after me. I looked, and it was that lousy dick, Burns. I climbed up into the corner of the cab, put my feet on the seat, shuffled them at him. I said, “Get away from me, you devil! You railroaded him, you butcher!”
“Attagirl,” he said gently, “Feeling better already, aren’t you?” He gave the old address, where Chick and I had lived. The cab started and I couldn’t get him out of it. I felt too low even to fight any more.