I rolled Max over on his back, felt his pulse and thumbed back an eyelid.
“That should have fractured his skull, but he’s only knocked out,” I decided. “He must have a steel plate in his head.”
Friday asked in a calm voice, “You plan a little violence on me now, Mr. Moon?”
“It’s your choice,” I told him. “We’re going to have a talk. If you like, I’ll slap you around until you feel conversational, but I’d prefer to skip further exercise.”
He let a slight smile form on his lips. “Sit down, Mr. Moon.”
Righting my chair, I resumed my seat and lit a cigar. “Let’s start with why you wanted me to go to Mexico.”
Thoughtfully he contemplated his bodyguard’s horizontal figure. Finally he said, “I’m going to be frank with you, Mr. Moon. Not because I’m afraid of getting slapped around, as you put it, but because my concern in this matter isn’t worth getting involved in a possible murder rap. I want you to understand I had nothing to do with Ford’s death and don’t know who killed him. But I do have a reason for not wanting anyone to delve too closely into Ford’s background. I was afraid you might turn up something that would louse up a business deal I have cooking. I’m not going to tell you what that deal is, because it’s still cooking. But if it comes to the point where the police actually accuse me of having Ford killed, I’ll sacrifice the deal in order to clear myself. That will lose me some money, and it still won’t solve your murder. I think you can understand why I don’t want to talk about it unless it becomes necessary to clear myself.”
I thought this over for a few moments. “I’m not a blabbermouth,” I said eventually. “Suppose you get me off your neck by explaining the deal, with the understanding that I keep it confidential?”
He shook his head. “You couldn’t keep it confidential. After our conversation at your place the other night, I had you thoroughly investigated, and my report is that you have an almost unreasonably rigid code of ethics. If I’d known it at the time, I never would have attempted to bribe you. However, I know it now, and I’m certain if I told you about my business deal, you’d feel morally obligated to report it to the police.”
“You mean the deal is illegal?”
“Not on my part. I suspect one of the other parties to the arrangement has done something illegal though, and if it ever came to light, my part of it would blow up too. I haven’t any actual knowledge of my associate’s illegal act. It’s only a suspicion, and you can’t be held liable as an accessory for concealing a mere suspicion. I myself haven’t done a thing I could be charged with, and I don’t have your moral compulsion to report suspected illegal acts of others to the police. Particularly when it would cost me money.”
When I merely sat looking at him for a time without speaking, he went on, “Your theory that no one but me would be able to contact a professional criminal like Thomaso is hogwash anyway. Anybody can contact any type of criminal he wants to hire simply by making the rounds of the slum taverns, keeping his ears open and dropping a few discreet hints when he runs into a likely prospect. If this Thomaso kid was a free lance and in the habit of hanging around the rattier bars, anybody might have hired him.”
Max, seemingly intent on disproving my estimate of how long he would be out, groaned again and sat up at that moment. He was still groggy, however, and he kept his eyes closed while he pressed both hands to the top of his head.
With his powers of recuperation he probably would be on his feet and raring to resume activities within another minute or so, I thought. And since it looked as though I had obtained as much information from Ed Friday as I was likely to get unless I planned to tie him up and hold burning cigarettes against his feet, I decided to take my departure while Max was still in a daze.
Rising, I said to Friday, “Thanks for nothing. You’ve been damn little help,” and walked out just as Max began to open his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
But actually what Ed Friday had told me had been of some help. Not much, but at least it gave me the glimmer of a new idea.
While it was possible that everything he had said was pulled out of thin air in order to stall me off until his bodyguard rejoined the conversation, it was equally possible that he had been telling the truth. I inclined to take a middle course and accept his story as embroidered truth.
Never having been quite happy about Friday as the engineer of Ford’s murder, I was inclined to believe his explanation that his attempt to steer me away from the case stemmed from concern that I might uncover something in Ford’s background which would upset one of Friday’s business deals. But I was equally inclined to doubt that the illegal act Friday mentioned was merely suspected by him. I believed that whatever the illegal act of his “associate” had been, Friday did not merely suspect it, but had proof of it. It seemed unlikely to me he would have gone as high as two thousand dollars to get me to refuse Ford’s case if he had only a vague suspicion that his business deal was in danger.
What particular deal he had been talking about, it was of course impossible to say, as his interests were so varied; it could be anything from stock-market shenanigans to a corporation merger. However, it was just possible Friday’s “business deal” was his backing of the Huntsafe Company. The possibility made it at least worth looking into.
Stopping at a drugstore, I phoned Madeline Strong.
“You just caught me going out the door,” she said. “I was on my way over to the jail to see Tom. Anything new?”
“Nothing concrete. I just developed the beginning of a wild new theory. Tell me, Madeline, where did your brother Lloyd live just before he died?”
“With me. We always lived together.”
“At the apartment you live in now?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “In our old family home over on Euclid. We were both born there, and after the folks died we just continued to live there. After Lloyd was killed, the place was too big for just me alone, so I moved here.”
“And sold the house, I suppose.”
“Well, it’s for sale, but there haven’t been any takers. It’s too big for what most people want nowadays.”
“Lloyd’s stuff still there? His papers and records, I mean?”
“Everything’s there. Except dishes and a few pieces of furniture I moved here. I’ve been meaning to have a household sale one of these days but just haven’t gotten around to it.”
“Forget your visit to the jail,” I said. “I want you to meet me at the house. What’s the address?”
“Fourteen twenty-one Euclid.”
“Suppose we meet there in twenty minutes?”
“All right,” Madeline said.
“Don’t forget the key,” I advised, and hung up.
When I arrived at 1421 Euclid, I understood why the place had been unable to find a taker. It was an attractive enough white frame building in apparently good condition and with a wide, tree-shaded lawn on all four sides. But it was big enough to serve as a hospital. From the outside I judged it contained at least twenty rooms.
On the front lawn there was a slim metal post supporting a horizontal bar from which hung a gold-lettered sign. The sign read, “C. Maurice Strong,” and the moment I saw it I suddenly realized where all Madeline’s money had come from, and why she had seemed so surprised that I didn’t know who she was the day I had asked her if she could afford my fee.
In the field of electronic invention, C. Maurice Strong was about second in line to Thomas Edison. Both he and his wife had died in an auto accident about four years before, I recalled, and I remembered that in the feature articles appearing in all the local papers after his death, the list of his inventions had been longer than his obituary. Just to mention a couple of random items, he owned about half the patents in the fields of radio and television, and once had received a citation from the government for turning over to it without charge his patents on radar and automatic gun control.