Murder is the Pay-Off (20 page)

Carlson was out of the car and caught him. “Blake!” He held him up, looking anxiously at his blood-smeared face. There was a gash down from his temple, the blood still dripping from it. His eyes were blurred and bloodshot, but there was no alcohol on his breath. Shock was all Gus Blake was drunk with. Carlson put his arm around him and led him to the car. He opened the rear door.

“I’m okay.” Gus crawled in and sank down on the seat. “Just a blowout. Tires no good.”

“Take it easy,” Swede Carlson said. “Give us a light, bub.” The driver handed back a flashlight. “And some iodine and bandages.” Carlson took the first-aid kit. “Wait a minute. We can save this till we get to the house. Get movin’. No—hold it a second.”

He was looking intently at Gus. “You ought to be dead, but you aren’t. We’ll have a look at you at the place. Right now brace up, fella. What’d you head out here for? Anythin’ I ought to know before I walk in on it?”

Gus felt his head with both hands. He was still dazed, but things were gradually falling back into place. Then suddenly they all seemed to snap together. He opened his eyes, shut them, and opened them again. He’d had a wreck. He was still alive. He wished in some dull and painful way that it had all been as simple as that. What did they call it? The will to death, the unconscious desire to die and be finished with it? If that was what he had been trying to do, going sixty over the lousy road back there, he should have succeeded. But he hadn’t. He was still here. Swede Carlson was here. Everything was the same. Janey and Orvie were still here, too. His stomach turned dark brown again and he licked his dry, dirt-caked lips. They tasted of salt and grit. He got his handkerchief out and spit the stuff out of his mouth.

“I’m okay,” he repeated. He tried to think. “I was following a guy, trying to catch up with him. Vanaman. You know Vanaman, a lawyer in town? He was supposed to be in New York making a speech tonight. Read about it in the
Gazette.
I saw him up toward Batestown, past the race track, headed this way. I thought I’d better snap out of it. He could be mixed up in it. I’m a newspaperman, see?”

He put his head in his hands again. It was splitting apart.

“He was going seventy-five, but the light got him at Newton’s Corner. I saw him turn off this way. I figured Wernitz’s place was the only one down here, but I didn’t make it. He’s up at the house now, I think. Why don’t we go? I’m okay.”

Carlson nodded to the driver and leaned back as the car went along the lane, thinking it over. Vanaman had showed up tonight instead of in the morning as he’d expected him to. Vanaman was a lawyer in Smithville. John Maynard and Hugo Vanaman, both lawyers, both doing business for Doc Wernitz, one on either side of the tracks, the left hand purposely vague about what the right hand was doing. So he was here now. Carlson glanced at Gus Blake leaning back in the corner. The idea he’d had that Gus had got his stuff about Wernitz from Vanaman didn’t seem to hold water. But you could let that go for the moment. If Gus had met him on the highway north of the race track and he was here now, it meant he and John Maynard hadn’t so far got their heads together. It would seem to indicate Vanaman wasn’t as interested in talking to Maynard as Carlson had earlier got the idea Maynard was interested in talking to him.

And why the present rush? He’d been on the phone to Vanaman in New York at seven o’clock that morning. Vanaman had heard about the murder. Regretted it deeply. He was still staying on to make his speech. It was important to him. He’d be in Smithville at ten Sunday morning and meet the police and Maynard, but not till then. He’d been very firm about it. And something had happened to change his mind. It was seven-fifteen now.

Making seventy-five down the expressway, he could get here, New York to Smithville, in three and a half hours if he really stepped on it and wasn’t caught.

The car stopped at the farmhouse, and Carlson saw Vanaman through the kitchen door. He was arguing heatedly with the policeman on guard.

“Sure, I know you’re Vanaman. I know you and I know all about you. I still say you can go in and look at Wernitz’s papers and all the stuff you want to as soon as the chief says you can. That’s orders. I’ll call him again. You hold your horses, mister.”

Gus Blake got himself stiffly out of the car and tried his feet on solid ground.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” His head ached and his voice didn’t sound like much, but he was all right. He crossed the barren yard to the door.

“Hello, Vanaman,” Carlson said.

The lawyer whirled around. His black hawk’s eyes crackled as irritably as his sharp voice. “Chief Carlson, I demand—”

As he saw Gus Blake the change in both his face and manner was abrupt and startling.

“Why, it’s Gus Blake! Why, my dear fellow, what’s happened to you?” He pushed past Carlson and held his hand out. “You’ve been in an accident. Good God, we must—”

Gus ignored the outstretched hand. “Look, Vanaman. I don’t need a lawyer. I’d have to sue myself and I can’t afford it. I’m okay, it’s just a scratch. Where’s the bathroom, and where’s that iodine?”

He went out into the back passage.

“Able fellow, Blake.” Mr. Vanaman was presumably speaking to Carlson, but his voice was raised enough for it to carry through the flimsy walls. “First-rate newspaperman. A brilliant piece of reporting oh the Wernitz murder. My wife read it to me over the phone this afternoon.”

“Why d’you come back so fast? Thought you weren’t gettin’ here till tomorrow.”

“No specific reason at all,” Vanaman said briskly. “I just decided in general I ought to be here. Wernitz was my client, as you know. I wanted to do anything I can to help.”

Carlson eyed him bleakly. “That’s fine,” he said. He wondered. It couldn’t be the thousand-dollar reward the
Gazette
was offering. Presuming Mrs. Vanaman had read that to him, too. Vanaman didn’t need a thousand dollars that bad. His clients were not as respectable as those of some other Smithville lawyers, but they got in trouble oftener and Vanaman also operated the bonding company.

He glanced around at Gus coming back from the bathroom, and back at Vanaman.

“I was just telling the chief that was a brilliant piece of reporting you did, Gus.” The lawyer exuded a lavish and even, it seemed, respectful cordiality that was as surprising to Carlson as it obviously was to Gus. “Brilliant,” he repeated. He turned back to Carlson. “If it’s agreeable to you, I’d like to check through Mr. Wernitz’s desk and safe. I handled most of his affairs. I’ll be able to tell you if anything’s missing, and I’d like to be fully prepared for our conference tomorrow. I’ll bring my records out, and if Maynard brings his, we ought to be able to give you a good picture of our end. Does that fit in with your thinking?”

Carlson nodded. “That’s okay. You can spend the night here if you want to. So long as my man’s in here with you and you don’t take anything away you didn’t bring in.”

Vanaman shrugged and smiled. “Very good, Chief.”

“I’d like to ask you some things about Wernitz. How well did you know him?”

“Personally, not at all,” Vanaman said instantly. “You’d better ask Gus about that, not me. The details in the
Gazette
were all news to me. I made some effort to find out more about the man and got told off quick. Mr. Wernitz made it clear that business was business. So I did as I was told and kept my mouth shut. I was well paid and that was the end of it.”

“You’ve been in this house a good deal, I guess?”

“Twice before tonight. I came in the other back door, went into his office, and back out again. I came once when he’d got some bad seafood and was afraid he was going to die. The other time was last week when he called me out here to tell me he was shutting up shop and leaving Smithville.”

“Did he tell you why he was leaving?”

Vanaman’s bright nervous eyes focused obliquely on the floor for a moment. “I could regard that as a privileged communication,” he said. He glanced over at Gus Blake propped against the kitchen table. “It’s off the record. It’s one of the reasons I was in New York. Mr. Wernitz was a—a curiously timid man. As long as the coin-machine business stayed reasonably small, he was all right. But it was getting too big, and getting too much publicity, to suit him. In May alone, he paid $49,500 to the county in license fees.”

The bright hawk’s eyes shot from one to the other of them.

“I imagine you know this is big business now. The pinball and slot-machine take in this county last year was something just under three million dollars. Wernitz operated most of the machines. And Smith County is small pickings. I don’t know if you’ve read the Crime Commission’s report that the slot-machine gross is three billions a year in this country. Well, now that the race track’s moved in the next county, it’s just a step before the big operators will move in here. We had an offer—perfectly legitimate, no threats or broken windows or anything of the sort— and Wernitz decided he’d made enough money and he’d be safer out of the business. He was right on both counts. He had—I may say, very large investments, he could live luxuriously if he wanted to. I was to arrange the sale of his machines, which I did, and the check’s deposited to his account. It had nothing to do with his murder, Chief Carlson. I’m sure of that. It was done very quietly—and for precisely that reason.”

“He wasn’t selling any of his other interests in town?”

“Certainly he wasn’t. That was the point of his retiring. He was even planning to come back here in the spring. He didn’t actually say that, but I understood it.”

Mr. Vanaman’s thin lips smiled. “As you can easily find this out, I might tell you he held a mortgage on a house here in town that he was letting ride for exactly that purpose. It was the—the only evidence of malice I ever saw in him.”

“Malice?” Swede Carlson said. “Whose house is it?”

“The malice was directed to ward, a certain lady who’s made a great deal of public noise on the subject of slot machines. Wernitz was naturally opposed to publicity, in spite of the odd fact that he—”

Hi checked himself abruptly, glancing obliquely over at the kitchen table, not directly at Gus Blake. “I mean, he felt the less said about the machines the better. Of course, the lady in question is not aware Mr. Wernitz held her mortgage.”

“She had to sign it, didn’t she?” Gus asked.

“Of course. But she is a very busy lady. She signs her name a great deal. I’m quite sure her husband felt she’d prefer not knowing. And I’m very sure he preferred almost anything to having her, or his son, or his brother-in-law, know he was in debt to the extent that he was. Of course, as long as Wernitz operated the machines and the husband I’m referring to issued the county licenses, things went along very nicely. Don’t misunderstand me. The husband is a very honest man. He could probably have made a great deal of money if he hadn’t been. Or perhaps his connection with Mr. Maynard made it impossible. They are all very high-class people.”

“Uh-huh,” Swede Carlson said. “Okay, Vanaman. We’ve got things to do.” He nodded to the policeman. “Look after Mr. Vanaman, George. He doesn’t want to take anything away he didn’t bring with him, so he won’t mine leavin’ his briefcase out here in the hall, I expect.”

Outside, he beckoned to his driver. “You stay here along with George, bub. Watch the old one-two.”

They got in the car. “I’m not sayin’ George wouldn’t resist a blandishment or two,” he said. “I’m just sayin’ I wouldn’t trust my own Aunt Sally, in this deal.” He switched the engine on and looked at Gus. “Better?”

“It smells better out here, if that’s what you mean.” Gus wiped his hand on his pants leg. It still felt clammy from Mr. Vanaman’s parting grip that got home before he could side-step it. “What’s the angle here, Vanaman and I’re such good friends? I only know the guy by sight and reputation. Give his regards to my charming wife. What’s she been doing—playing the slot machines? Or is the guy going to need the press? If he is, I should have told him I’m like Wernitz. I’m getting out of Smithville, too.”

“Nuts,” Swede Carlson said. He turned the car down the cedar lane.

“Or did Aunt Mamie slug Wernitz? Is that what he’s driving at?”

“Shut up and let me think a minute.” He slowed down turning into the country road. The ambulance and Fire Department truck had gone. Bub must have given the word. The countryside was silent and unpopulated as an abandoned graveyard.

“Listen to me, now,” Swede Carlson said. “Things have been happenin’ while you been off nursin’ your hurty feelin’s today. So brace yourself, fella. I’m goin’ to let you have it straight. You don’t know what’s goin’ on closest to you. Your wife waited up last night to tell you, but you came in with Connie Maynard so she was too hurt, or too mad, to say anythin’. Don’t ask me why women do the things they do. Or men, either. If the city cops would report to the county cops, or vice versa, you wouldn’t have barged off this morning before anybody could tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“That the Wernitz killer was in your house last night-while you were gallivantin’ around with the Maynard girl. I said listen to me, Blake.”

They were in town
when he finished. “So that’s it, fella,” he said. On the whole Gus had taken it better than he’d thought at first he was going to. “You can tell me to keep my big nose out of your private life, and that’s okay. But right now your private life’s got mixed up with the public’s. My job’s to find out who killed Wernitz and see he damn well don’t kill anybody else. Turnin’ off the light in the basement’s a dead giveaway. It’s a pattern he’s thought up, it worked once, he tries it again. He’s slugged twice and I don’t want him tryin’ that again, either. Okay. So why was Connie Maynard in such a blisterin’ hurry to get back to your house right after it happened? I got to know that, and I got to know what there is in your house anybody wants that bad. And one thing more you can tell me. I figured you got your dope about Wernitz in the evenin’ paper from Vanaman, but I guess now you didn’t. Where’d you get it?”

Gus came up out of the dregs of something that hurt worse inside than all his cuts and bruises hurt on the outside. The evening paper. It seemed a million light—or dark—years away. It was less than twelve hours since he’d barged out of the office and driven up one country road and down another, trying to get rid of the gnawing rat toothed thing eating his insides out. And not a lot more than twelve hours since he wrote the brief history of Doc Wernitz for the day’s paper. It seemed a long time ago as he tried to pull it back.