Read Anatomy of a Murder Online

Authors: Robert Traver

Anatomy of a Murder (57 page)

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
12.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“Prosecutions,” the Judge repeated, smiling broadly. “I've known for years, of course, as you doubtless have, that murder juries invariably ‘try' the victim as well as the killer. Did the rascal deserve to be slain? Should we exalt the killer … ? But this is the first time in my legal career that I've seen a dead man successfully prosecuted for rape. This is a new one. Quite incidentally, I may add, you seem also to have acquitted a man called Manion.” He paused. “I—I guess you're just an old unreconstructed D.A. at heart.”
“Thank you, Judge,” I said, smiling with pleasure. “I never thought of it that way. It was a pleasure and privilege to work with you. If I may now say so, sir, without being suspected of polishing apples, you're a judge in the high tradition of our own Judge Maitland.”
“Thank you,” the Judge went on. “That is high praise indeed; I have heard much of your Judge Maitland and his good works. I also want to tell you that I am keeping your set of requested instructions as a model. As I hinted before they are among the best I have ever seen.”
I flushed with mingled pleasure and embarrassment and turned
and motioned Pamell to join us. “Judge Weaver,” I said, “I want you to meet the man who was most responsible for those instructions—and for that matter, for much else that happened at this trial —my new law partner, Parnell McCarthy.”
The Judge pumped Parnell's hand warmly. Parnell, grown suddenly white and drawn, kept staring at me uncomprehendingly. “It always delights my heart to meet a real lawyer, Mr. McCarthy,” the Judge said, still pumping away at Parnell's limp hand. “I wish you much pleasure and success in your new partnership with still another good lawyer. You two should make quite a pair. You should complement each other nicely.”
“Thank you for the compliment, Your Honor,” Parnell punned absently, still glancing at me questioningly.
The Judge finally spotted Smoky Madigan and his clattering mop. He lowered his voice. “I may add, Mr. Biegler, that I've decided to give your man over there a break.” He stood musing a moment. “Perhaps we can blame it all on our friend William Hazlitt.” He paused and blinked his pale blue eyes. “Well, gentlemen, good luck and good night,” he said. He turned suddenly away and was gone.
Parnell stood biting his lower lip, his glasses heavily misted. “Did you mean it, boy?” he said in a small voice.
“Did I mean what?” I said gruffly, knowing.
“About—what you said about you and me after bein' partners?”
“Why sure, damn it, Parn, of course I meant it. That is if you'll have me. I'd consider it a privilege and high honor, my old friend. If you'll be my law partner I've already picked out the new firm name: McCarthy and Biegler. I'm figuring to order the new stationery and formal announcements Monday. As for the rest, I've already drawn all the agreement we'll ever need; I hold it here in my empty hand. Everything fifty-fifty, the good and the bad. Just say the word, pardner.”
I thrust out my hand and Parnell took it. His lips worked and tears welled up in the old man's eyes. A solitary drop hung trembling on the tip of his nose. “C'mon, Maida,” I called out in the hollow and echoing courtroom, “we're all going out and celebrate the big case and our bigger new partnership. Here come the Manions now.”
“It's nice I got
two
bosses now to fire me,” Maida said, laconically joining us. “Are we all going out and watch you play a drum solo for us at the Halfway House?”
“You guessed it, Maida,” I said, patting her gently on the fanny.
“You run find a phone now, like a good girl, and tell ‘em to chill up a batch of champagne—lots of it. I didn't dare ask 'em to before. Wait! On second thought go use Mitch's phone.”
“I see,” Maida said. “Poetic justice rears its ugly head.”
 
During the long hectic evening, during which it seemed a gay and sparkling Parnell must have toasted and been toasted in at least two cases of orange pop, the Lieutenant several times tried to draw me aside and bring up the subject of my unpaid fee. I kept brushing him off and finally silenced him by agreeing to call upon them next morning at their trailer in Iron Bay. After all, the winner of the big murder case, the junior partner in the new law firm of McCarthy and Biegler, the champagne-glowing candidate for Congress, yes, the best non-union drummer in the U.P.—surely this man had no time for the mundane and paltry … .
“What time will you plan to be at our trailer?” the Lieutenant insistently inquired. “We want to be sure to be up.”
“Oh, ten or eleven or thereabouts,” I answered airily. “Don't worry —I'll be there.”
“Bring a form of promissory note,” he said. “Don't forget, now. We'll be up and waiting for you.” He frowned. “I want to get this thing off my mind.”
“We'll be there,” I promised, and then on an impulse I moved swiftly over to the telephone booth and closed the door and found a coin and phoned Thunder Bay. “Bing-bong,” the phone went. “Mary,” I said when she answered. “I know that by now you must know the result of the trial but I wanted you to hear it from me.” There was a silence and I continued awkwardly. “I know it's late but I just wanted to talk to you is all. Didn't have the nerve to call you before.” The silence continued. “Is everything all right, Mary? I'm sorry … I—I guess maybe I shouldn't have called.”
When she spoke her words came rapidly. “Thank you for your call, Paul. I've been sitting up waiting for it—sitting here alone in the moonlight. Of course everything is all right but it wouldn't have been if you hadn't phoned. I'm almost too happy and relieved to talk—over the trial, now over your call.”
“Mary?” I repeated questioningly. “Mary? Mary?”
“Good night, Paul,” Mary said. “Please come and see me soon.
Please
do … .” The phone clicked softly in my ear.
Parnell stood eyeing me skeptically as I floated dreamily from the phone booth to rejoin the party. “Ordering the stationery for our
new partnership, no doubt,” he said, crowding and bumping his way into the booth I had just vacated.
“More champagne!” I crowed, moving over and pounding the bar with my benumbed fist. “Boy, oh boy, oh boy!”
 
It was nearly noon before Parnell and I threaded our way into the Manions' trailer court on the outskirts of Iron Bay. I had slept the sleep of the drugged, and anyway thoughtful Parnell and I did not want prematurely to disturb the reunited lovers … . A tall silver-haired man with a drooping tobacco-stained silvery mustache, like a character out of Owen Wister, emerged from what appeared to be an office trailer and crunched across the dirty white gravel to the side of our car, shaking his head.
“We only park trailers here, folks—this here ain't no motel. Sorry,” he said.
“I'm looking for Lieutenant Manion's trailer,” I said.
“Sorry, boss, you're jest too late—they pulled out last night about three A.M. Seems like they was in a kind of a hurry.”
The thumping pall of silence ticked like a time bomb. “Did—did they leave any message?” I said in a small voice.
“Well, yup, if you can call it that. just as they took off the man leaned out an' tole me if anyone comes lookin' for him to tell 'em he'd had an irre—what the hell—an irresistible impulse to get the hell out of here. Said you'd understand.”
“Anything else?” I murmured.
“Yes, they was movin' when the woman called back for me not to deliver the message I jest now delivered. Said that was too cruel, I think she said. I kinda think mebbe she was bawlin' some.”
“Was that all?”
“That was all, boss, an' I hope it makes some sense to you folks 'cause it sure don't make none to me. Oh, yes—he was a kind of a sassy fella—he also called me Buster.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I'm afraid I understand—even to the part about Buster.”
Parnell took over. “I trust,” he said dryly, “I trust, sir, that the gentleman paid you up in full?”
The proprietor turned and spat a stream of tobacco juice on a bed of frostbitten limp-stemmed dahlias. “Never fear about that,” he said. “Old George Roebuck allus gets paid in advance. You see, folks, my motto is: ‘Never trust a stranger—an' treat everybody as strangers.' As the fella said, if you don't never trust nobody you don't
never get stuck. Sorry I can't help you.” He spat again and, his message delivered, crunched back to his trailer.
I thoughtfully lit a cigar. “A pragmatic philosopher,” I mused after him. “Just another representative of the vast gentle breed that shall one day inherit the smoking cinder of the earth.”
Parnell was silent for a time. Finally he spoke. “In a way, boy—don't you see?—the Lieutenant used you and you used him. He got his freedom and you got whatever it is you've got.” He paused. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe in a certain sense you two are just about square. Maybe, as Maida said, maybe this is a kind of poetic justice.”
I slowly nodded my head. “Anyway I've got a new partner,” I said. “A new partner and a big headache.”
“Headache?” Parnell said sharply.
“Headache, pardner,” I said. “What'll I ever tell Maida? Lord, Parn, I'll never be able to face her.”
“What'll you tell Maida!” Parnell snorted. “What'll we ever tell her? As your new partner, lad, I share in the headaches, too. Fifty-fifty you said.”
I smiled wanly. “Yes, Parn, I guess you can share the new wealth.”
Parnell cleared his throat and stirred restlessly. “Well, boy,” he said, “let's be on our way an' not settin' around here mopin' all day. I'm anxious for you to get runnin' and lose this Congress race and get that bug out of your bonnet so we two can settle down and practice law like we belong.” He shot me a tart sidelong glance. “Though I must say, boy, I'm gettin' a little worried lately about your drinking' … .”
“Get the goddam money and trust no one,” I mused aloud, slowly putting the car in gear. “What a beautiful soaring philosophy of life.” I shook my head and smiled. “Well, at least we got a German lüger out of it, partner.” I grunted. “Maybe the Lieutenant intended I should play Russian roulette with it. But I guess they can only do that with revolvers.”
Parnell patted my knee and spoke softly. “Forget this graspin' trailer man and his peasant motto, boy. Forget the Lieutenant, too, just put him totally out of your mind. Don't you see?—he's gone to prison anyway, locked away forever in the squalid prison of
himself
… . You'll never see or hear from him again, of course, so forget him, simply expunge him from your memory. I knew something like this would happen, boy, and I think you knew it too, if you'd only let yourself think … . Now let's speak of it no more.” Parnell sat
suddenly erect and stared straight down the whirling, leaf-strewn road. “Let's to the future, lad, you and me together—maybe makin' a little money, surely havin' a barrel of fun, practicin' our profession together, occasionally helpin' bastards and angels alike, between whom, always remember, our Lady Justice has never distinguished.”
I nodded my head and stepped on the gas.
Parnell reeled down his window and turned to me. “Now supposin' you drive us up along the shore line toward a village called Thunder Bay? 'Tis a beautiful autumn day, lad. We'll have our Sabbath dinner at a nice little hotel I know up there, overlookin' the lake.”
We drove along in silence. I observed Parnell watching me out of the corner of his eye. He fidgeted and cleared his throat.
“Let's have it, Parn,” I said.
“In fact, boy, she's expectin' us, she is that. You see, she and I been in touch.”
“Who's expecting us?” I said, suddenly knowing and feeling very glad.
“Why our Mary, of course, lad,” he said softly. “I meant to save it as a surprise but I guess maybe you've had enough surprises for one day. The sweet child invited us to dinner for today when I phoned her the result of the trial last night as I'd promised. Miss Maida will be waiting there for us.” The old man smiled privately. “But I thought maybe I'd already told you. My, my, I must be getting forgetful.”
“No, Mr. McCarthy, you hadn't told me,” I said, stepping hard on the gas. As the battered old car leapt forward I began to feel free as a bird; a curious sense of relief and release came over me. And expectation. We sped along, finally shedding the last scars of town, and at length climbed a long granite-girt hill. Gaining the top we seemed breathessly to hang in mid-air. Spread out far below us was the tremendous expanse of the big lake: beautiful, empty, glittering, cold and brooding, gull-swept and impersonal; always there, always the same—there for the grateful and the ungrateful, there for the bastards and the angels, there for the just and the unjust alike.
“Amen,” Parnell murmured huskily, spreading his plump hands and shaking his head in awe. “Sometimes, lad—sometimes when I behold a sight like this I—I just want to stretch out my arms an' soar like a bird. Can you understand a silly arthritic old man thinkin' much less sayin' such a thing?”
BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
12.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Pickers 3: The Valley by Garth Owen
Polished Off by Barbara Colley
Pirate Code by Helen Hollick
Immaculate Deception by Warren Adler
If the Shoe Fits by Amber T. Smith
Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Vasilievich G Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
My Sweet Folly by Laura Kinsale
Alyzon Whitestarr by Isobelle Carmody