They converged upon me.
“You’re under arrest!” said Lew Kaverman, a city detective captain.
“For what?”
“For shooting down Waxy Walters in cold blood! He came to at the hospital and told us who did it!”
Keever’s private door opened, and he appeared therein. He looked as if he were in the last stages of delirium tremens, and he had to brace himself against the door jamb to stand up. Fatly gloating, Durbin peered over his shoulder.
“Tell me!” screamed Keever. “Tell me it isn’t so! You didn’t shoot that man Walters, did you? Tell me that it wasn’t you!”
“Why, I couldn’t do that, boss — that would be telling a falsehood. Sure I plugged the guy.”
Keever collapsed. He fell backwards against Durbin, who lost his balance and fell down, Keever on top of him. Kay appeared then with a wet towel. I went over to help, but Kay stopped me with the most venomous glare I ever saw outside a zoo.
“You’ve done enough damage around here!” she said. “Why did you have to shoot somebody, tonight of all nights?”
“All in the line of duty,” I said, but not smartly. Kay’s look had seared my insides. I let Shelton pull Keever off the squealing Durbin, who got to his feet with the assistance of two cops. Beyond, in Keever’s private office, District Attorney Gordon Kress watched gloatingly.
He was accompanied by Phil Sutton, Sam Price and a man I vaguely remembered from the party. He would be Jake Jervis, I knew, the large-scale ticket operator.
Keever’s blood pressure finally went down to a point where he could stand up. Shelton helped him to his desk. He also helped me, explaining that Waxy Walters had tried to shoot me first But Keever’s glare in my direction was still murderous. It took extra chairs to provide seats for all of us, including Brockley. He was getting his own share of dirty looks from Jake Jervis and Phil Sutton.
“Maybe we can get somewhere now,” said Gordon Kress, who obviously regarded the affair as his own show. “I brought Sutton over here to give you a chance to make a statement in his presence, Keever. Did he or did he not give you that check in consideration for your favorable opinion in the Acme Auto Insurance matter?”
Keever was beginning to regain his composure. He eyed Kress in deadly earnest. “I never saw a check for ten thousand, much less one given me by Sutton. How about that, Sutton? What have you got to say?”
Sutton seemed to enjoy being the center of attraction. He took his time before he said: “Sure, sure, Mr. Keever, you never saw the check!”
Then he deliberately winked.
Keever paled. Sutton had sealed his doom as surely as if he had said: “Sure, I gave you the check, and you cashed it!”
I thought for a moment Keever was going to have a stroke. I didn’t want that to happen, because that would mean my job for sure. So I spoke up.
“Sutton, you’re putting on an act. You know Keever didn’t cash the check. Brockley here did. Isn’t that right, Brockley?”
One thing is certain — I had put the fear of God in Brockley. He was afraid of Sutton, of Jervis, of his shadow, but most of all he was afraid of me. Maybe the news of my shooting Walters accounted for it. Anyway, he said meekly: “Yes, I cashed the check, all right.”
The district attorney didn’t believe him. He asked coldly: “Why?”
“Because Mr. Sutton told me to.”
“And why did he want you to cash the check?”
“To frame Mr. Keever, I guess. The teller at the bank was in on it, too. He’d lost some dough at a gambling joint Sutton owns a piece of, and I guess he had to do it, like I did.” Brockley looked to me and said almost tearfully: “I had to do what Sutton said. He really owns my place, not me!”
“Sure. And he owns the ticket business, too.”
Brockley nodded. Sutton was very red in the face. He snarled: “The man’s lying! Why would I frame Keever? Why, that would be framing me, too!”
I turned to Jake Jervis. He had been almost dead drunk at the party, but he was cold sober now and studying Sutton intently.
“Mr. Jervis, I won’t ask you to incriminate yourself. I know what your racket it. Let’s just say it’s a business, and let’s also say that Mr. Sutton wanted a partnership in your business. Is that right?”
Jervis eyed me perhaps ten seconds, then he nodded almost imperceptibly. “That’s right. Sutton wanted to buy a partnership in my business.”
“I was sure of that. But you didn’t want to sell any part of that business to Sutton, did you?”
Again Jervis eyed me several seconds in silence. Then he said: “No. I didn’t need Sutton, and I didn’t need his capital.”
“Of course you didn’t. You own one of the best rack — let’s say most profitable businesses in the state. There was no point in sharing it with somebody else. Unless you had to, for some reason.
“That was to be Sutton’s big argument. He had to convince you that you couldn’t operate without him. He had to convince you that he and the attorney general, Mr. Keever, were like that.” I held up my crossed fingers. “Of course that would take a lot of doing. Every crook in the state knows that nobody can get to Keever, that he’s perfectly honest.
“So Sutton had to blast his good name and connect himself with him in the eyes of the whole state. He took advantage of the favorable opinion rendered by Keever in the insurance case. So he framed the check deal. He was careful, not going too far. The thing was to be a nine-days’ wonder, not a frame for keeps.
“After Keever’s reputation was thoroughly ruined, the teller would suddenly remember that it wasn’t Keever at all who cashed the check. The teller’s identification was the only thing against Keever — nobody could ever prove he got the money, for he didn’t.
“Sutton would dramatically end his damning silence. He would admit that Brockley cashed the check, and Brockley would come forward to testify. Other people in the bank at the time would remember Brockley and Keever would be cleared. In the meantime, Sutton would have managed to close his deal with Jake Jervis.
“Everything was done to impress Jervis. That explains why Sutton drove over to Brockley’s place to pick me up. He wanted to impress Jervis by bringing me into his party. I was Keever’s chief investigator — didn’t it all go to show? As an added inspiration, Sutton phoned Kay’s apartment house and left the apartment number.
“He knew she’d be trying to find me as soon as the scandal broke. And he knew I’d want him to go and talk with Keever. He pictured us going out in great haste together, Jervis taking it all in and believing the charges against Keever when he read the papers the next morning.
“Jervis would yield and accept Sutton as a partner because the public scandal would convince him that Sutton was right with the attorney general’s office. Jervis would be frightened by the prospect of having attorney general heat put on him and baited by the prospect of wider operations owing to cooperation from Keever.” I turned to Jervis. “I’m asking you, Mr. Jervis, if that isn’t what happened?”
Jervis gave me another long stare.
“Son, I won’t say another word without my lawyer.”
“You don’t have to. The entire scheme’s plain once you see through it. I got the idea from a remark Brockley made, that he phoned Sam Price tonight because it helped to be on friendly terms with a big shot. Even being seen with Price, he said, made him look important.
“Of course Brockley’s just a little shot. But the same thing applies to the big boys. They’re always trying to compromise the public officials they’ve bought or want to buy. For a long time I thought it was stupid of racketeers to be seen publicly with politicians. Now I know their game. They want to scare off all the possible competition by flaunting their protection that way.”