"I'm booked on suspicion of murder."
He shrugged impatiently. "That's just a catch-all. You could have been booked in transit to Pittsburgh, or any one of a dozen charges. What they probably mean is accessory after the fact. You took Lennox somewhere, didn't you?"
I didn't answer. I dropped the tasteless cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. Endicott shrugged again and frowned.
"Assume you did then, just for the sake of argument. To make you an accessory they have to prove intent. In this case that would mean knowledge that a crime had been committed and that Lennox was a fugitive. It's bailable in any case. Of course what you really are is a material witness. But a man can't be held in prison as a material witness in this state except by court order. He's not a material witness unless a judge so declares. But the law enforcement people can always find a way to do what they want to do."
"Yeah," I said. "A detective named Dayton slugged me. A homicide captain named Gregorius threw a cup of coffee at me, hit me in the neck hard enough to bust an artery- you can see it's still swollen, and when a call from PoliceCommissioner Allbright kept him from turning me over to the wrecking crew, he spat in my face. You're quite right, Mr. Endicott. The law boys can always do what they want to do."
He looked at his wrist watch rather pointedly. "You want out on bail or don't you?"
"Thanks. Idon't think I do. A guy out on bail is already half guilty in the public mind. If he gets off later on, he bad a smart lawyer."
"That's silly," he said impatiently.
"Okay, it's silly. I'm silly. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. If you're in touch with Lennox, tell him to quit bothering about me. I'm not in here for him. I'm in here for me. No complaints. It's part of the deal. I'm in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they don't want to take to the cops. How long would they come if any bruiser with a police shield could hold me upside down and drain my guts?"
"I see your point," he said slowly. "But let me correct you on one thing. I am not in touch with Lennox. I scarcely know him. I'm an officer of the court, as all lawyers are. If I knew where Lennox was, I couldn't conceal the information from the District Attorney. The most I could do would be to agree to surrender him at a specified time and place after I had had an interview with him."
"Nobody else would bother to send you here to help me."
"Are you calling me a liar?" He reached down to rub out his cigarette stub on the underside of the table.
"I seem to remember that you're a Virginian, Mr. Endicott. In this country we have a sort of historical fixation about Virginians. We think of them as the flower of southern chivalry and honor."
He smiled. "That was nicely said. I only wish it was true. But we're wasting time. If you had had a grain of sense you'd have told the police you hadn't seen Lennox for a week. It didn't have to be true. Under oath you could always have told the real story. There's no law against lying to the cops. They expect it. They feel much happier when you lie to them than when you refuse to talk to them. That's a direct challenge to their authority. What do you expect to gain by it?"
I didn't answer. I didn't really have an answer. He stood up and reached for his hat and snapped his cigarette case shut and put it in his pocket.
"You had to play the big scene," he said coldly. "Stand on your rights, talk about the law. How ingenuous can a man get, Marlowe? A man like you who is supposed to know his way around, The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. I guess you're not in any mood to be helped. So I'll take myself off. You can reach me if you change your mind."
"I'll stick it out for a day or two longer. If they catch Terry they won't care how he got away. All they'll care about is the circus they can make of the triaL The murder of Mr. Harlan Potter's daughter is headline material all over the country. A crowd-pleaser like Springer could ride himself right into Attorney General on that show, and from there into the governor's chair and from there-"I stopped talking and let the rest of it float in the air.
Endicott smiled a slow derisive smile. "I don't think you know very much about Mr. Harlan Potter," he said.
"And if they don't get Lennox, they won't want to know how he got away, Mr. Endicott. They'll just want to forget the whole thing fast."
"Got it all figured out, haven't you, Marlowe?"
"I've had the time. All I know about Mr. Harlan Potter is that he is supposed to be worth a hundred million bucks, and that he owns nine or ten newspapers. How's the publicity going?"
"The publicity?" His voice was ice cold saying it.
"Yeah. Nobody's interviewed me from the press. I ex pected to make a big noise in the papers out of this. Get lots of business. Private eye goes to jail rather than split on a pal."
He walked to the door and turned with his hand on the knob. "You amuse me, Marlowe. You're childish in some ways, True, a hundred million dollars can buy a great deal of publicity. It can also, my friend, if shrewdly employed, buy a great deal of silence."
He opened the door and went out. Then a deputy came in and took me back to Cell No. 3 in the felony block.
"Guess you won't be with us long, if you've got Endicott," he said pleasantly as he locked me in. I said I hoped he was right.
9
The deputy on the early night shift was a big blond guy with meaty shoulders and a friendly grin. He was middleaged and had long since outlived both pity and anger. He wanted to put in eight easy hours and he looked as if almost anything would he easy down his street. He unlocked my door.
"Company for you. Guy from the D.A.'s office. No sleep, huh?"
"It's a little early for me. What time is it?"
"Ten-fourteen." He stood in the doorway and looked over the cell. One blanket was spread on the lower bunk, one was folded for a -pillow. There were a couple of used paper towels in the trash bucket and a small wad of toilet paper on the edge of the washbasin. He nodded approval. "Anything personal in here?"
"Just me."
He left the cell door open. We walked along a quiet corridor to the elevator and rode down to the booking desk. A fat man in a gray suit stood by the desk smoking a corncob. His fingernails were dirty and he smelled.
"I'm Spranklin from the D.A.'s office," he told me in a tough voice. "Mr. Grenz wants you upstairs." He reached behind his hip and came up with a pair of bracelets. "Let's try these for size."
The jail deputy and the booking derk grinned at him with deep enjoyment. "What's the matter, Sprank? Afraid he'll mug you in the elevator?"
"I don't want no trouble," he growled. "Had a guy break from me once. They ate my ass off. Let's go, boy."
The booking clerk pushed a form at him and he signed it with a flourish. "I never take no unnecessary chances," he said. "Man never knows what he's up against in this town."
A prowl car cop brought in a drunk with a bloody ear went towards the elevator. "You're in trouble, boy," Spranklin told me in the elevator Heap bad trouble It seemed to give him a vague satisfaction A guy can get hisself in a lot of trouble in this town."
The elevator man turned his head and winked at me. I grinned.
"Don't try no thing, boy," Spranklin told me severely. "I shot a man once. Tried to berak. They ate my ass off."
"You get it coming and going, don't you?"