That was a funny one, Louise. You are fairly familiar with Boone; it hasn’t changed so much in the last three years. The mayor is a decent old codger even though he has been a politician all his life. And he has the chief of police in the palm of his hand because the chief’s job is an appointive one. Topping that, one of the members of the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners is now the publisher of the Boone Democrat, a civic-pride and God-bless-our-green-little-city guy. The police chief isn’t any too well liked but that publisher certainly wouldn’t stand for monkey business in the police department, providing the mayor and the chief had so far forgotten themselves in the first place.
You know the mayor; old top-hat Yancey is still in office. With the exception of one term he’s been there ever since the First World War. The chief, a man by name of Tanner, used to be the sheriff of some downstate county before he drifted into Boone.
So I said to Evans dubiously, “I’ll have to take your word for that.” He glared at me.
“Do that!” he commanded. “I happen to know what I’m talking about. I’m not throwing this around” — pushed the heaped-up stack of hundred dollar bills nearer me — “for nothing! I will be arrested. Don’t ever doubt it.”
And the way he said it convinced me. If he had declared in the next moment that little men from Mars were perched in the snow out on my window sill, I would have turned to look, and they would have been there.
“All right. You will be. What do I do then?”
He handed me a little card from the wallet. On it was printed in fine English script the name and address of an attorney in Croyden. I had never heard of the attorney. The man’s telephone number was down in one corner.
“Get in touch with the party immediately. At once. Do you understand? Before you do anything else, call this number. If he isn’t in, the girl at the switchboard will find him for you when you mention my name.
“Tell him what has happened. Also tell him that I have retained you. But this is important: don’t tell him why I have retained you — what instructions I have given you. Merely let him know that I have been arrested and you know it. Is that clear?”
“It is. You’re in durance vile, shall we say. I’m wise to the game but I don’t know a thing if he tries to pump me.”
“Excellent. The boys said you were reliable.”
“And then...?” I inquired.
“And then come down and bail me out. If you can.”
“Now hold on a minute! They can’t hold you in jail for spitting on the sidewalk. Everybody does it.”
“No? Perhaps not. But they can for shoplifting. Or resisting an officer and attempting to commit bodily harm. Son, you should know cops, you’re in the business.”
“I do know cops. In this town I know them like you know the buttons on your shirt. And that’s why I don’t understand this. But go on, if it happens, what next?”
“If you can bail me out, do so. And stay right with me. That is also important. Don’t allow me to ‘commit’ a second offense; get a taxi and go with me to the railroad station. Put me on the first train for Croyden and stay with me until the train pulls out.
“Whatever you do, don’t leave me alone until I’m out of town. Do you fully understand those instructions? If I should ask you, or order you to do anything else, stay with me. Put me on that train!”
“Mister, I’ll stick to you like sap to a tree. But if I can’t bail you out?”
Evans smiled and I felt a kick in the teeth coming.
“In that event, Horne, you are to walk down the steps in front of the City Hall and spit on the sidewalk — or whatever it is. You are to do the same thing for which I was arrested. Do it before an officer and insist on being arrested.”
“Our city jail has but one cell,” I said in bemused reflection. That would put the two of us together. “Misery loves company.”
“I’ll need company! Son, I’m being framed; I want you in jail for the very same offense. I want to happen to you whatever happens to me. I want a witness.”
I could just picture that. I could see me spitting on the sidewalk, or dashing across the street in the face of a red light, or swiping bobby pins from the five-and-ten. Yes: it made a delightful, unbelievable picture.
“And that?” With a pointed forefinger I indicated the money on the desk.
“That,” he replied without emotion, “is yours. If you are forced to use it for bail, I’ll replace it. Have you any contacts in the City Hall? Trustworthy contacts that don’t wear blue?”
I said yes, there was the colored porter whom I remembered on his birthday and Christmas.
“All right.” He sounded as final as the act of getting up from a chair. “I’m staying at the Hotel Warth. I’m going there now. Keep your eyes open and don’t fail me. It may be at any time.” He reached behind him and pulled open the door.
His exit was as quiet as his entrance.
“Hey—!” I shouted after his vanishing figure. “Hey — aren’t you going to tell me what’s behind...”
The office door slammed in a sudden gust of wind and several sheets of paper from my stacks of manuscript skittered across the floor. I glowered at them darkly and listened to his barely heard footfalls descending the last few steps to the street. A remaining draft of cold, biting winter air swept across the office and played around my ankles. I walked to the window and put one foot up on the ledge, out of the draft.
There he went, Harry W. Evans, the gent who thoroughly believed our innocent gendarmery was an unscrupulous pack of rascals after his hide. That’s what big-city living does to a man. You distrust your neighbor, art a stranger to the man in the next block, and hate the cop on the corner. And he probably hates you because he has to look at you every day. Standing there, on one foot, I made a mental note to tell Yancey about Evans. Yancey likes jokes, old, new or incredible. Yancey is in Florida now for his annual winter vacation.
Harry Evans came out of my building and walked directly to the curb. Swift snowflakes pelted down on his hat and shoulders. They clung to his overcoat like a soft mantle and he would be well covered by the time he walked a few blocks to his hotel.
He stepped off the curb in front of the building and started across the street. The Studebaker sedan got him before he had taken half a dozen steps.
The snow was falling fast, already beginning to cover the tire tracks; twin, treaded tracks that showed no frantic skidding in an effort to stop. The sedan kept on going after knocking over Harry W. Evans.
Knocking him over and killing him deader than hell.
(“...I’ll do something I shouldn’t have done, according to some unheard-of ordinance...” He did. Boone has an ordinance prohibiting jaywalking.)
I called the attorney in Croyden a short while after that. In spite of the instructions (and after all, this hadn’t been covered in them) I first went downstairs to watch his body being put in the wagon.
The wallet had fallen from Evans’ inner pocket. I saw his name and the little golden symbol but it was so much Greek to me. It was not a fraternal emblem.
I walked across the street to Thompson’s for a cup of coffee. A little knot of gawkers stood in the window, watching the crowd in the street. The coffee tasted flat and lifeless; I said as much to Judy across the counter. She dismissed the complaint without batting a heavy eyelash.
“Same coffee we always have, dollink.”
Some of the people standing at the window began looking my way with silly questions written on their faces. I got out of there and went back to the office.
After a delay of several minutes the attorney came on the wire.
“It’s snowing here,” I said into the broken mouthpiece of the telephone after I had introduced myself by name and profession. In one brusque growl the attorney indicated he had never heard of me.