His shoulders sagged, and his head fell a little forward. He pressed the heel of his right hand against his forehead. “I got a little drunk. A guy says crazy things when he’s drunk.”
I sat watching him, thinking of the mayor he had threatened to kill. A threat to kill doesn’t usually mean much before the fact. After the fact, it takes on significance. And this was after the fact, because the mayor was dead. Charming Danny Devore, the bachelor, glamour boy, the smooth idol of metropolitan politics. Hard as it was to realize, he was dead from the slugs of a .38.
“How about the gun?” I said. “Your gun was found in the study by the body, and it had your prints on it.”
“Does a man commit murder and leave the gun behind?”
“Who knows? Murderers do idiotic things sometimes. Besides, one question doesn’t answer another. How did the gun get there?”
“I’ve already said — I’ve said a thousand times — it was stolen from my room. It had to be, I hadn’t even looked at it for weeks.”
“You never even missed it?”
“No.”
“Okay, let it go. How about the witness? This guy Richert happened to be passing Danny’s place about the time of the murder. He saw you come out the front door and go down the drive. To make it practically perfect, he just happens to be one of the district attorney’s special investigators.
Hal shook his head, and began to pound his clenched fist into his palm. His voice, paced to the pounding said, “He didn’t see me, Sol. He couldn’t have seen me, because I wasn’t there.”
“You think he’s lying?”
“Not necessarily. Look. He saw this guy from a distance, and in bad light. Maybe he really thinks it was me, but you know how those things are. If there’s other evidence, like the gun, it’s easy to go along with it. It would be easy for Richert to convince himself that I was the guy.”
“True enough. Now, tell me where you were that night, if you weren’t out there shooting Danny Devore.”
His clenched fist relaxed, the fingers falling open. “I was with a girl,” he said.
“At the time of the murder?”
“I was with her all night.”
“Then why the hell haven’t you said so? What’s this girl’s name?”
He shook his head, tiredly. “I can’t tell you, Sol.”
“Why the hell not? Listen, you’re on a short road to the hot seat, and you haven’t got time for chivalry.”
He just shook his head again, turned away from me and looked blankly into a corner of the cell.
“You got an idea of protecting her honor? You actually got a corny idea like that? Listen to me, Hal. So you were with the gal. Who cares? These days they’re doing it in headlines all over the world. You get everything but photographs.”
He laughed his short, ugly laugh. “You’re not thinking well for a lawyer. Like I said, I’m in a frame. It was built by an expert. I’m in it because someone wants me in it, and he wants me to stay there. What do you think would happen if he learned there was a witness who could get me out?”
“She’d get protection,” I said.
“Protection? From that outfit out there?”
“You’re making it tough for me, Hal.”
He lifted his shoulders, still staring at the corner. “I’m sorry, Sol. I told you right at the start that it’s a dry run.”
I went over to the grill and rattled the bars. Behind me, Hal continued to look into the corner. Maybe, in his mind, it was a symbol of the tight one he was in. “Thanks for coming, anyhow, Sol.”
“Save it,” I said. “And don’t go contacting any other lawyer. It’s the first real case I’ve had in a century, and I’m damned if I’ll be cut out.”
I went down the long hall and out into the free air. For a minute I stood on the curb, breathing deeply. Then I crawled into my car and drove back to my office.
The office was in a building where the rents were possible for a youngish lawyer with the soft dew of college hardly dry behind his ears. It was on the second floor. If you wanted to get up there, you walked because there was no elevator. Down the hall, you found a door with a pane of frosted glass. And on the glass, in imitation gold leaf, you read the words: Solomon Burr, Attorney-at-Law.
If you pushed the door open and walked in, you were met by the rapid-fire clatter of a second-hand typewriter bouncing under the agile digits of a gal who was by no means second-hand. Her name was Kitty Troop, and she was my secretary. She presented, among other things, the impression of bustling activity under the pressure of many cases pending in court. This was a ruse. Actually, she saw your shadow on the glass and had her novel dog-eared in the likely event that you were a false alarm. Being a clever gal, she kept a clean sheet in the machine at all times, ready for the act at the first sign of any stray character who might turn into a client. If you looked over her shoulder, you saw that she was typing: The sly, quick fox jumped over the lazy, brown dog.
But you didn’t look over her shoulder.
You were busy looking at other things. She showed you first some nice teeth in a smile between the merest hints of dimples. Then she stood up, and you saw a figure that made you forget all your troubles. When you got your breath back and asked if Mr. Burr was in, she replied in a voice that was as soft as a fog that Mr. Burr just happened to be free at the moment and would give you a few minutes. Then she walked over to Mr. Burr’s private door, giving you a reverse view from seams to ash-blond bun. By that time, you didn’t give a damn if Mr. Burr was the lousiest shyster in town, with the highest fees on record. You were ready to give him your case, just so you could come back for the scenery.
If Kitty was on her toes, she knocked on the door and counted slowly to five. Then, when she opened the door, you saw an alert, clean-cut guy busy as hell with a lot of legal papers and stuff. If she forgot and opened the door without knocking, chances are you got a brace of elevated shoes and a pretty good view of a fairly standard profile. It was profile because this guy was watching the spider who lived in a web up by the ceiling. The spider’s name was Oliver Wendell Holmes. The guy’s name was Solomon Burr.
This was all on a slow day, which most of them were. As yet, no one had mistaken me for a revised edition of Clarence Darrow. Though there were those exceptional months, I found myself unable to meet with any consistency the world’s constant demand for cash. Catch me toward the first, and I could be had for the rent. How Kitty paid her rent, I don’t know, since she was paid herself only now and then.
Today, when I walked in with the stale air of the municipal dungeons still in my nostrils, the small reception office was crowded. That is, there was one other person besides Kitty in it. A girl. She sat on the edge of a chair so straight and stiff that she managed to give the impression of being coiled like a spring. Dark red hair between a tiny hat and a face that retained its prettiness under strain; dark green suit, attractively filled.
“This is Miss Wanda Henderson,” Kitty said. “She wants to see you.”
“How do you do, Miss Henderson,” I said. “Come right in.”
I pushed open the door to my inner sanctum, and she did a tricky job of uncoiling while rising on the perpendicular, preceded me into the office, and sat down on the edge of my fancy chair for clients with a rigidly balanced bending. She sat with knees and ankles clapped tightly together, hands clutching a green leather purse in her lap. She seemed afraid to relax for an instant. Wanda Henderson was no scarecrow, far from it. As I said, not even the distortions of strain destroyed the basic lines of her face, not even the deep shadow of fear in her eyes.