“I should’ve figured you’d be here, Sam,” he said. “I could’ve brought your book back.”
He borrowed my textbooks on criminology and police procedure. He knew all about crime scenes and how to set them up.
“You able to beat Cliffie to the punch tonight?”
He smiled. “Well, I got here before he trampled all over everything. I’ll give all the evidence to Theresa at the hospital, same as I did with Muldaur’s stuff.”
Theresa was a lab tech and a girl he dated.
Since Cliffie hated to send anything to the state lab-feeling apparently that it robbed him of his authority as el comandante-Theresa was the best we could do locally.
“I’ll call her.”
“Sure.”
The press was here now. A rumpled, sleepy reporter with a microphone and a heavy tape recorder slung over his shoulder wandered from one neighbor to the other asking all the usual obvious, stupid questions. I’m waiting for the wife of a recently murdered man to say to a reporter, “How does it feel to have your husband murdered?
I’ll tell you, It feels great. He was an arrogant, overbearing jerk and I want to thank whoever killed him. I can finally live like a normal human being now that old Ralph is gone.” Just once.
The crowd grew. The ambulance team took the body away. Doc Novotony yawned a lot.
Cliffie gave the radio guy one of his Dick Tracy Crime Fighter speeches-th case was going to be wrapped up within forty-eight hours and you had his word on it-and then said (honest), “Some people thought that Reverend Courtney was sort of a snob and thought he was better than the rest of us because he was from back east, but I felt that deep down he was just a regular guy. Let’s not forget that he was a Cubs fan.”
Maybe they’d let him give the graveside remarks.
I had to appear before Judge Ronald D.
K. M. Sullivan that morning. Don’t ask what the initials stand for. Local lawyers insist that they translate to Duly Krazy Mick. And that would certainly apply. D.K.M. has two modes-ccfused and very, very, which is to say extremely, pissed off. He has been known to hum, whittle an apple and eat it, do deep breathing exercises, and flip coins while you’re making your case before his bench. He berates you for the color, cut, and cleanliness of your suit. He reminds you when you need a haircut. He has advised young women to wear more uplifting bras and young men to wear toupees because the sunlight streaming through his courtroom windows is brilliant when bounced off a bald pate. His nose runs, his eyes collect pounds of green stuff in the corners, and the last time he brushed his teeth we were bombing Berlin. He is, as near as anyone can guess, somewhere between two hundred and four hundred years old. Like those turtles.
He said, “And what offense against humanity has Mr. Larkin committed today, Mr.
McCain?”
“He’s been charged with obstructing justice.”
“Obstructing justice?” He made it sound as if he’d never heard the words before.
“He is alleged to have struck an officer who was trying to arrest Mr. Larkin’s lady friend.”
“And why was the officer trying to arrest Mr.
Larkin’s lady friend?”
“Because allegedly his lady friend had kicked the officer in the crotch area.”
“And for what reason had his lady friend kicked the officer in the crotchtal area?”
The crotchtal area? Crotchtal? D.K. More always tried to make things sound a little more dignified than they are. Hence, crotchtal area. And by the way, all the things he makes me explain?
Most judges read the charges before they have you address the bench. But D.K.M. saves time by having you do all his prep for him.
“She kicked him in the crotchtal area because he called her a name.”
“And what name would that be, Mr. McCain?”
“He called her a hooker.”
“A what?”
“A hooker. It’s slang for prostitute.”
“Ah, a strumpet.”
“Something like that.”
“So the officer of the law calls the lady friend of Mr. Larkin a strumpet and she kicks him in the crotchtal area and when the officer of the law tries to arrest her Mr. Larkin steps in and strikes the officer of the law in the face?”
“That’s correct, Your Honor.”
“Good. Now I understand. And by the way, Mr.
McCain, you really need a haircut.”
I wanted to kick him in the crotchtal area.
I didn’t get in to see Judge Whitney until much later that morning. And when I did get to her chambers, I found two men and two women I’d never seen before. They had the taint of fussiness about them, a certain archness that stamped them as her kind of folk, not mine. One of the women was a nice-looking redhead. Which reminded me of Kylie Burke. I wondered how she was doing.
Her world had to be coming apart. No matter that she was too good for him. She’d always been so clearly gaga over him that it was painful to watch.
The Judge was giving orders like a field commander. “Then, Rick, you know how I want the tent set up. And Randy you know how I wanted the cake to be made-eight tiers. And Darla I want the food to be as colorfully arranged as Michele’s flowers-in fact, you two should get together and see if there’s some way you could coordinate some things.”
Maybe a gardenia sandwich, I thought.
All this was for Richard Milhous Nixon, of course.
I had seen the Judge a-flutter and a-twitter before but these had been on separate occasions. But I’d never seen her both a-flutter and a-twitter at the same time. This was something to behold.
Oleg Cassini had become her designer of choice and so on her four-trips-a-year to New York City she stocked up on Cassini duds the way factory workers stocked up on Monkey Wards work clothes. Today, she wore a handsome tan linen suit with matching pumps. Her short hair looked freshly washed and combed. And she strode the length of her office with runway elegance. She was all crazed, nervous energy, terrified that she’d make less than a good impression on old Milhous.
That’s why you have to be careful about being a-flutter and a-twitter at the same time. It can really make you crazy-y’re like an engine with the idle running too fast.
“Now, does everybody know what they need to do?”
Cowed, terrified, they glanced at each other and then looked back at the Judge. They nodded like frightened puppies who’d just pooped on the new carpeting.
“Good, because I don’t need to tell you, there’ll be hell to pay for anybody who screws up.”
I felt sorry for them. God, I felt sorry for them.
She waved them dismissively away. They left with great hurried relief.
“So,” she said when the last of them had closed the door, “this thing is getting worse and worse.”
She went over to her desk, poured herself some brandy, plucked a Gauloise from her cigarette case and lighted it with a small aluminum box that somehow produced fire.
“They’re connected,” she said, exhaling a gulf stream of blue smoke. “Muldaur and Reverend Courtney.”
“I sure think so.”
“But how?”
“Not a clue. Not so far.”
“I don’t want these ridiculous murders hanging over our heads when Dick gets here.”
A chic sip. She was a damned good-looking woman and knew it. “You have one of your famous lists?”
“I have one of my famous lists.”
My crime instructor at the university said that a good detective always writes down names and incidents and then begins to connect them, like children’s puzzles where eventually the connected lines draw a picture. In this case, the picture of a killer.
“The night Muldaur was murdered, both Sara Hall and the now-deceased Reverend Courtney just happened to show up. I find that strange. I mean, why would they be way out in the boonies like that?