A Handy Death (8 page)

“And he's served so much of it, so far?”

“Well, he went in in late December, 1968, and this is late October … A few months less than four years. Incidentally, when Louis Gorman became Chief Assistant District Attorney, he served notice on the parole board that when, as, and if Dupaul ever became eligible for parole, he, personally, would oppose it vigorously. That was before Raymond Neeley died, of course. Now he's pushing for the murder charge for all he's worth.”

Ross looked surprised.

“Where did you get that information about Gorman's statement to the parole board?”

Steve Sadler grinned. “That's off-the-record information, Hank. From friends in the trade, so to speak.”

Ross knew enough to drop the matter. All professionals had their inner sources of information, much as the police department did, and it was enough that they had them without the need to discuss them. Instead, Ross pursued another angle.

“Why the extreme vindictiveness on Louie Gorman's part? Directed, it seems, solely against Billy Dupaul?” Ross shook his head. “I know there are people that Gorman doesn't like—myself being number one on the list, probably—but in general I wouldn't call him a vindictive man.”

Sharon cleared her throat.

“Maybe I can help you there, H. R. I was—”

Ross grinned at her. He said, “You were just a little girl back in those days. What would you know of the affair? Or remember?”

“I wasn't all that young, but thank you kindly all the same,” Sharon said, and smiled back. “After all, this Billy Dupaul was just nineteen when he went to prison, but you can be sure he remembers everything that happened, even if he was a bit fuzzy about what happened the night he got drunk. And I was older than Billy Dupaul at the time.”

Ross raised both hands in mock surrender.

“I won't ask how much older. All right; what do you know of Louie Gorman and his grudge?”

“I was working for Mechles and Hutton in those days,” Sharon said. “The story went through every law office in town, I guess; if you'd have been in the country you would have heard it, too. Louie Gorman didn't have too many friends, certainly not among his help, and they passed it on. Probably with a good deal of pleasure.

“One day, it seems, after Judge Demerest appointed him as Defense Counsel for Dupaul, Mr. Gorman mentioned to his wife that he, personally, thought the boy was guilty as the devil. They were at dinner, or in the sanctity of their bedroom—anyway, in the privacy of their home—when he said it, but his wife belonged to a bridge club, and I imagine she was so used to being held down at home that she took the opportunity to be a fountainhead of knowledge with her bridge-playing cronies, so she passed it on. And one of the women there passed it on again, and it went from lip to lip as these things do, and it finally reached a gossip columnist who used it as a fill-in. Without names, of course, but too easily recognizable. Well, Billy Dupaul saw it and recognized it. And showed up at Gorman's office, steaming at the ears, and demanding an explanation.”

Ross was listening intently. Sharon smiled impishly and went on.

“Of course, if Mr. Gorman had simply denied the entire story, that probably would have been the end of the matter, but that wouldn't have been like Mr. Gorman. Instead, he refused to make any comment to the boy at all. He simply said that his private opinions were his own, and that in any event they never entered into a case, nor had the slightest effect on the thoroughness of his defense—”

“You know?” Ross said musingly. “I believe he meant it.”

“Maybe so, but Billy Dupaul, even though only nineteen, wasn't buying that argument. To him, a defense counsel
had
to believe his client was innocent, whether he was or not—”

“Which simply proved that Dupaul was innocent regarding the law,” Steve said with a broad smile. “Whether or not he was of the shooting.”

“Anyway,” Sharon continued, “Billy Dupaul not only fired Gorman on the spot as his attorney, in front of the entire office staff, and using the then-current teen-age vocabulary in doing it, but he also used physical force on him.”

“Physical force?”

“He slapped him,” Sharon said. “In front of everyone. And Mr. Gorman has never forgiven him.”

“Slapped him?”

“The story was that he said, ‘You're too little to hit, and too big to forgive, so take this.' And he slapped him a few times.”

“In front of his entire office?”

“Everyone. He dragged him from his office to do it.”

“Well, I can understand Gorman being irked, to say the least. Though I can see Billy Dupaul's point, too. Luckily, I've been able to take my slaps at Louie in court, rather than physically.”

Ross grinned.

“The one I really pity, though, is Mrs. Gorman. I can imagine what went on when Louie got home that day.” He became serious. “All right. We have a defense to handle. Steve, I want you to take over most of the other cases we have pending; dole them out to the boys in the office you think can handle them best. I worked over the weekend to bring them up to date, so as to be free for the Dupaul case. And I'll be available for consultation, of course.”

Sharon was noting the footage on the recorder meter, making notes.

“And, Sharon, I'll want Steve's summary typed up from the tape by one of the girls, with the memoranda on the points I raised to be inserted as they came, noting the meter footage. You know what I want.”

“Right, H. R.”

Steve said, “Where do you plan to start, Hank?”

“Well,” Ross said, “they're transferring Dupaul from Attica down to the Tombs either this afternoon or tonight, and by the time they finish booking him in and getting him settled, it'll be too late to do much with him today, so I'll see him tomorrow. I think I'll work with Mike Gunnerson in the meantime.”

Sharon frowned. “In what direction, H. R.?”

“In a direction nobody bothered to turn before,” Ross said, and came to his feet. “I'm going to start with the assumption that that flimsy, ridiculous, and unprovable story that Dupaul gave the jury in his first trial was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Steve looked at him a moment and sighed.

“Good luck, Hank,” he said. “You'll need it!”

CHAPTER

5

Hank Ross pushed past the old-fashioned, large PX telephone switchboard that took up a good part of the space in the outer office of “Michael Gunnerson, Private Investigations,” one flight down from his own more commodious space, receiving an admiring glance from the shapely brunette seated there with much leg showing, and opened the door to Mike's private office. The large detective was just finishing a cup of coffee; he crumbled the cardboard cup and tossed it in the general direction of the wastebasket. The collar around his thick, corded neck was open, his necktie askew. He looked up at his visitor and nodded somberly.

“Hello, Hank.”

“Hello, Mike. You're losing your aim.” Ross bent down, retrieved the crumpled cup, and put it in the wastebasket. He straightened up. “You also look busy. And tired.”

“I am. Both,” Gunnerson said, and stared morosely at the man facing him. “And it's all your fault, you know.”

“
My
fault?” Ross raised his eyebrows and pulled a chair from its place against the wall. He dragged it beside the desk, seated himself on it by straddling it, and studied the man across from him. “How my fault?”

“You're hooked into this Dupaul case, aren't you?”

“You know I am.”

“And you certainly don't expect to get the man off without a good deal of help, do you?”

“You mean, without
your
help?”

“That's what I mean.”

“And you're so right,” Ross said with a smile. “But what's that got to do with your being so tired even before the case has started? So far, all you've done is put a man up in Queensbury checking on background.”

“Maybe it hasn't started for you,” Gunnerson said, and gestured wearily toward the stacks of papers that covered both his desk and the reference table behind him. “It certainly has for me. These are copies of the transcripts of the two Dupaul trials. Homework.”

Ross's smile broadened.

“I seem to be about the only one who hasn't read those transcripts.”

“Then you're either smart or just plain lucky,” Gunnerson said gloomily. “They certainly won't prove encouraging.”

“Why?” Ross asked, honestly wondering. “Steve Sadler gave me a rough breakdown of their contents, and it seemed to me there were plenty of holes in the prosecution case. I'm speaking of the first case, the Neeley affair, which is the only one we're interested in.”

“You think so? But then, you didn't read the transcript,” Gunnerson said. He frowned across his desk and tented his thick, hairy fingers. “Hank, if on top of everything I read in those transcripts, this boy was also involved in any way with that attempted prison break up at Attica the other day, and it looks like he was, then he ought to be put away for life in my estimation. For sheer stupidity, if nothing else.”

Ross smiled at him, a cool, gentle smile.

“Let me ask you a question, Mike. And if he wasn't involved in that prison riot? And if the story he told in court at the time of his first trial was the truth?”

“The truth? That weak yarn? Come on, Hank!” Gunnerson shook his head. “When, after he tells this heartrending story about how the pretty lady wanted him so bad but, before he could figure out if he'd had too much fruit juice to hack it, along comes the big bad husband, and then the gun the lady fobs off on him just happens to be his own? Man! He ought to be writing for television serials!”

Ross studied his friend's disgusted expression a moment and then leaned over the back of the chair. His voice was calm but deadly earnest.

“Mike, listen to me. If we're going to work together on this, then we have to have a basis of understanding. If we're not going to be at each other's throats arguing all the time. And, of course, if we hope to win the case.”

He paused. Gunnerson was watching him closely. Ross nodded.

“And that basis of understanding must be to assume—completely, blindly, if you will—that the boy is innocent. Not of shooting Neeley, but of any intent to do more than save his life and that of the woman with him. In other words, that the story he told in court that day was the truth. Now,” Ross said, leaning back again, “starting from that assumption, where are we?”

“Out in left field without a glove,” Gunnerson said sadly. Suddenly he grinned, a wide-mouthed, big-toothed grin. He sat up in his chair. “All right, Hank, I'll go along with you. We'll assume that Dupaul's story was the true one, and that all the others—mainly Neeley's—are lies. It might be worthwhile at that. At least investigating it from that angle should clear some of the air, because, right or wrong, at least you'll know where you stand on the case. If you know what you also stand to lose.”

“I'll take the chance,” Ross said. “Do I have much choice?”

“Not a great deal,” Mike said, and rubbed his crew-cut, grizzled head. “And you have one expert on your side, too. Good old Sherlock. He said, ‘When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'” He grinned. “What he failed to say, of course, is that whatever remains may also be garbage.”

“Bite your tongue!”

“Consider it bitten. Now,” Gunnerson said, “let's start all over. If Dupaul was telling the truth—”

Ross raised an admonishing finger.

“You're forgetting our basic precept, Mike. Dupaul
was
telling the truth.”

“Pardon me. I meant
since
Dupaul was telling the truth, Neeley really walked into that apartment carrying a suitcase. He put it down and went to a dresser where he fumbled around and finally came up with a gun. Now, where did the gun and the suitcase disappear to?”

“Obviously they left the apartment with the woman.”

“And why would she take them?”

“Equally obviously, to discount the story she knew Dupaul would tell—the true story of what happened.”

“But, continuing to play Devil's Advocate—” It was clear Gunnerson was enjoying himself “—why would she want to discount Dupaul's story? Remember,” Gunnerson said, raising a finger for emphasis, “Dupaul was telling the truth. Neeley was there with a gun and he was going to kill the two of them. Dupaul was honestly convinced of that. Dupaul, therefore, saved the woman's life. Now, why would she be so ungrateful as to remove the only evidence that would—or could—get her benefactor off the hook?”

Ross shook his head stubbornly.

“Let's make a small modification in our basic premise that we believe Dupaul was telling the truth. We now believe Dupaul was telling the truth
as he saw it!
It will probably make a difference.”

“Fair enough,” Gunnerson agreed equably. “Still, why would the woman walk out with anything except herself? I can certainly understand her taking a powder from a murder scene to save herself a bucketful of grief, but why bother to load herself down with a lot of useless garbage like a suitcase and a gun? For ballast—?”

“Mike—”

“Let me go on. All right, maybe she'd take the gun. They come in handy sometimes. But even then, as the prosecutor said, why not the gun she gave the kid? At least she knew that one was loaded. And why the suitcase? She could have been seen with it. After all, a dame traipsing around lugging a suitcase in the middle of the night makes for easy identification. Not to mention guys offering lifts in cars, among other offers. Why didn't she leave the thing where it was? Plus giving Dupaul a chance to save his neck?”