Mark Taylor squirmed uncomfortably.
The waiter returned, set the drinks on the table, and departed.
Mark Taylor downed the rest of his first drink, and picked up his second. He swirled the ice around in the glass. He looked at the ice, rather than at Steve.
“Well, what’s the matter?” Steve said.
“I can’t get away with it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, in the first place, you haven’t said anything about the letters.”
“But no one is going to ask you about any letters.”
“They’re going to ask me to tell them everything I know about the case.”
“Exactly. That’s just the point I was trying to make. They’re going to ask you what you know about the case. What I’ve just told you is all you know.”
“I know about the letters.”
“What letters?”
“You know what letters,” Taylor said, irritably. “The Bradshaw letters.”
“See, that’s just what I mean,” Steve said. “You don’t know those letters came from Bradshaw. As a matter of fact, there is fairly good evidence they did not.”
“That’s not the point. The police are going to ask where I got that list of numbers.”
“And you’ll tell them you got it from me.”
“And then they’ll want to know where you got them.”
“And you’ll tell them you don’t know.”
“But I do know,” Taylor said. “Tracy copied them off the ten one thousand dollar bills that came in the first letter.”
“And how do you know that?”
“You told me so yourself.”
“Exactly. That’s hearsay. You don’t know where the list of numbers came from. What I told you is of no evidential value, and they can’t force you to testify to it.”
“Aren’t there some cases where they can?”
“Yes,” Steve said. “If they indict me and proceed against me on a criminal charge, anything I may have told you regarding the case could be received in evidence as an admission against interest.”
“Indict you!” Taylor said. “You’re kidding, of course?”
“Only half. I’m sure Stams would love to get me, if he could just figure out what to charge me with. But the point I’m making is, you don’t know that the letters have anything to do with the list, so you don’t need to say anything about them. It won’t be that hard because nobody knows about the letters, so nobody’s going to ask you.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“I saw that ten thousand dollars with my own eyes.”
“Did you compare the numbers on the bills with the list?”
“No.”
“There you are. Ah, here are our salads.”
“I’m rapidly losing my appetite,” Taylor grumbled.
The waiter served them and withdrew.
“Snap out of it, Mark,” Steve said. “You got nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t like it, Steve.”
“I’m not asking you to like it. I’m asking you to do it.”
Taylor sighed. He took a big pull of bourbon. “O.K. You win. But you’re going to have to protect me on this.”
“Of course,” Steve said. “No problem. Now that we got that settled, what have you got on the murder?”
Taylor shook his head. “Not much. You pulled me out of the office before I could get a line into headquarters. All I know is the desk sergeant got a complaint from a woman in the building that there was a fight going on next door. A patrol car went out to investigate, and the officers were the second ones to discover the body.” Taylor frowned. “I wish to hell you hadn’t found that body.”
“You and me both. So what about your line into police headquarters?”
“I got a friendly reporter feeding me stuff. Most of it is just routine, but this guy is friendly with one of the sergeants, so he gets the inside track on the police report.”
“Think he’d have anything yet?”
“Hell, he’s overdue now.”
“Might be a good time for you to check in with your office.”
“It might for a fact,” Taylor said.
The food arrived while Mark Taylor was still on the phone. He returned to the table, sat down, cut off a huge slice of steak, and popped it in his mouth.
“O.K., Steve I got the dope.”
“From the reporter?”
“Yeah.”
“Any visitors in your office?”
“You mean cops?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“That’s strange. Well, what’s the dope?”
“The police place the time of the murder at 5:30 P.M.”
“5:30! How can they do that?”
“The desk sergeant got a call from Margaret Millburn, the woman across the hall, reporting an altercation in Bradshaw’s apartment. That call was logged at 5:28. Now the desk sergeant didn’t want to send a radio patrol car if it was just a family row or something like that. You know how it is with these 911 calls. Over half of them are just cranks. So the sergeant got the guy’s name and address from her. When he hung up, instead of dispatching a cruiser, he called information, got Bradshaw’s number, and called him up.”
“And got a busy signal?”
“Exactly. The desk sergeant called him at 5:31 by the police clock. That clock is accurate. Bradshaw’s phone was found on the floor with the receiver off the hook. The police theory is that the phone was knocked off the table during the struggle in which Bradshaw was killed. That fixes the time of death rather neatly. Bradshaw was alive at 5:28, because one obviously doesn’t have a fight with a dead man. He was dead at 5:31 because the phone was knocked off the hook. There’s no word from the medical examiner’s office, but it’s a good bet the autopsy surgeon will fix the time of death between 5:15 and 5:45.”
“I see,” Steve said, thoughtfully.
“Now then,” Taylor went on. “The police have picked up Marilyn Harding and are holding her for questioning. Her lawyer, a Mr. Fitzpatrick, is down there causing quite a stir, and has apparently advised her not to say anything. At any rate, she’s clammed up and won’t give the police the time of day.”
Taylor sawed off another bite of steak. “Now, here’s the strange thing. The police have uncovered something that’s making them absolutely ecstatic. I have no idea what it is. Even my reporter can’t get a line on it. But whatever it is, Sergeant Stams is prancing around like his wife just had a baby, and Harry Dirkson himself has been called in. That’s got the reporters puzzled. If Marilyn Harding isn’t going to sing, they don’t need the District Attorney to listen to her lawyer’s solo. So they must have something else they’re working on that clinches the case against the Harding girl, or is somehow of more importance.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed as he digested that information.
“So,” Mark Taylor said, “even though you can’t tell me certain things about the case, I can still make certain deductions.”