Bertha Cool horned in on the conference. Her diamonds caught the rays from the spotlight, and made blood-red scintillations as she moved her hands. “I’m in on this, too,” she said.
“Now listen,” the D.A.’s man said, obviously worried and pretty much on the defensive, “we don’t want to put any charges against this boy. For all we know, he’s just a nice kid that hasn’t done a thing in the world, but we’re trying to find out whether he’s the man who went into Jed Ringold’s room the night he was murdered. If he isn’t, that’s all there is to it. If he is, we’re going to charge him with murder.”
“So what?” Bertha Cool asked truculently.
The D.A. man looked at her and tried to outstare her. Bertha Cool pushed her face toward him, and, with her eyes glittering belligerently, demanded again and in a louder voice, “So what? You heard me, you worm. Go ahead and answer.”
The D.A.’s officer turned to the lawyer. “There isn’t any need for a habeas corpus, and there isn’t any need to take him before a magistrate because we don’t want to charge him.”
“How did you get him down here if he wasn’t arrested?” Bertha asked.
He tried ignoring her question, and said to the lawyer, “Now the clerk at the hotel takes a look at this guy’s picture and says he
thinks
this is the bird. All we want to do is to take him into the hotel. The clerk takes a look at him. Now that’s reasonable enough, ain’t it?”
For a fraction of a second, the lawyer hesitated. Bertha Cool reached out with an arm and shoved him to one side as easily as though he’d been just an empty bag of clothes. She pushed her face up in front of the deputy from the D.A.’s office and said, “Well, it isn’t all right, not by a damn sight.”
A little group had gathered. Passengers from one of the airliners that had come in, a few of the ground crew, and a couple of aviators. The red spotlight was out of my eyes now, and I could look around and see their faces grinning. They were getting a great kick out of Bertha Cool.
Bertha said, “We know our rights. You can’t identify a man that way. If you’re going to charge him with murder, you lock him up. You put him in a line-up, and you be goddam certain there are two or three other men in that line-up who have the same build and physical characteristics as the man you’re looking for.
Then
you bring the clerk in and let him look at the line-up. If he picks Donald, that’s an identification. If he picks somebody else, that’s different.”
The D.A.’s man was bothered.
The lawyer said, “As a matter of law, officer, you know that’s absolutely correct.”
“But we don’t want to cause this bird a lot of trouble. It may be just a flash in the pan. If he isn’t guilty, what’s he making such a squawk for?”
I said, “Because I don’t like the way you did this. I told you I’d come down with you voluntarily tomorrow morning, go into the hotel, and talk with anyone you wanted; that I couldn’t leave tonight, that if you brought me down in that plane tonight, you’d have to put me under arrest.”
“Aw, nuts,” one of the officers said.
“What did you do?” I demanded, raising my voice. “You and two highway police grabbed me and gave me the bum’s rush out to a car. You threw me in and dragged me down here without any charge being made against me. That’s kidnaping. I’ll have the federal men on your neck. I’m not going to be pushed around, that’s all. Wait until tomorrow morning, and I’ll go to your damned hotel.” There was a moment of silence.
I turned to Bertha and said, “You know where this plane came from, and you know a lawyer up there who has pull with the sheriff. Get him on the phone, have him get the sheriff out of bed, and get a warrant for kidnaping issued against this officer.”
“Listen, punk,” one of the officers said, “it isn’t kidnaping when you arrest a man for murder.”
“What do you do with him when you arrest him for murder?”
“We take him down to jail and throw the book at him, and if he acts rusty, we throw something else at him.”
“Swell,” I said. “Take me to a magistrate, and if he says so, you take me to jail, but don’t detour me to any hotels. The minute you do that, that’s kidnaping— Get the point, Bertha?”
The lawyer grabbed at it. “That’s right,” he said. “The minute they try taking you any place except in accordance with the statutes in such cases made and provided, it’s kidnaping.”
Bertha whirled to face the officers. “All right, you,” she said. “You’ve heard what the lawyer says.”
“Aw, dry up,” one of the officers said. I could see the district attorney’s investigator was getting little beads of perspiration on his forehead.
Bertha said, “And don’t think you’re going to strong-arm your way out of it simply because you’re in your own county. The kidnaping took place in another county, and if you knew how some of these other counties hate the guts of you men from this part of the state, you’d know what’s going to happen.”
That was the bombshell that did the work. I could see the D.A.’s man cave just as though his knees had buckled. He said, “Now, listen, there’s no use losing our tempers and yelling at each other. Let’s be reasonable. If this man’s innocent, he should be as anxious to prove it as anyone.”
I said, “That’s better. What do you want?”
“We want to find out whether you were the man who had the adjoining room in that hotel on the night of the murder.”
“All right, let’s find out.”
“Cripes, brother, that’s all we were trying to do.”
I said, “Let’s find out in a fair way.”
“What do you think’s a fair way?” one of the officers asked.
I said, “I’ll go down to the jail. You get five or six other people that are generally of my build and complexion, and have them dressed just about the same. While we’re doing it, let’s do it right. How many people saw this man who went to the hotel?”
“Three.”
“Who were they?”
“The night clerk, a girl who runs a cigar counter, and some woman who saw him standing in the door.”
“All right, get those people, put them side by side in three chairs, and tell them not to make any comments until after the whole line-up has filed past. Then ask them separately if anybody in the line-up was the man they saw there the night of the murder.”
The D.A.’s man lowered his voice. “Now, listen,” he said, “you sound like a good egg. Let me give you the low-down. The old gal that was in the upper corridor saw this man standing in the doorway. She had her glasses off. She could see him all right but—well, you know how it is, brother. She wears glasses during the daytime, and she didn’t have them on. A slick lawyer could crucify her on that. The minute we run you into the hoosegow, the newspaper men are going to be on the job. They’ll take flashlight photographs of you, and there’ll be big headlines. ‘Police Arrest Private Detective on Suspicion of Murder.’ Then in case the identification falls down, we’re sunk. Now, if you are guilty, go ahead and rely on all your constitutional rights. More power to you. We’ll send you to the gas chamber just as sure as hell. If you aren’t guilty, for God’s sake, have a heart and co-operate.”
I said, “I’m not guilty, but you know what’s going to happen. That pinheaded clerk has identified a photograph of Donald Lam as being the man who came in and got the room. You tell him you’re going to get Donald Lam and bring him in. You come through the door dragging me in, and that clerk’s going to say, ‘That’s the guy,’ before he even gets his eyes focused.”
The D.A.’s man hesitated.
“Of course he is,” Bertha Cool said indignantly. “I saw his picture in the paper. He looks like just that sort of a nitwit, a long, thin drink of water, all mouth and Adam’s apple. What the hell can you expect of a goof like that?” Somebody in the outskirts of the crowd gave a belly laugh. One of the cops turned around and said, “Beat it, you guys. Go on. Get out of here.”
No one paid any attention to him.
I said, “Wait a minute. There’s one other possibility.”
“What’s that?” the D.A.’s man asked.
“Is there anyone who saw this man who went into the hotel who doesn’t know that you’ve picked on me, who hasn’t seen my picture?”
“That girl at the cigar counter,” the D.A.’s man said.
“All right. We go up to her apartment. You call her out. Ask her if she’s ever seen me before. If she says I’m the guy, we go to jail, and you book me. If she says I’m not, you turn me loose, the newspapers don’t blow the works, and we forget the kidnaping charge.”
He hesitated, and I went on quickly. “Or you can take the woman who stood in the doorway. You can—”
“Nix on her,” the D.A.’s man said hastily. “She didn’t have her glasses on.”
I said, “Suit yourself.”
The investigator reached his decision. “Okay, boys,” he said. “Has anybody got the name and address of that girl?”
“Yeah,” one of the men said. “Her name’s Clarde. I was talkin’ with her right after the shootin’. She gave me a description of the man. It fits this guy to a T.”
I yawned.
My lawyer said hurriedly, “Look here, Lam, that’s rather an unfair test you’re giving yourself. The officers drag you up there. She looks at you, and you alone. She knows you’re suspected—”
“It’s okay,” I said wearily. “I was never in the damn joint in my life. Let ’em get it out of their system.”
“And you’ll co-operate so we can keep it absolutely on the QT?” the D.A.’s man asked.
“I don’t give a damn what you do. I want to go to bed and get some sleep. Let’s get it over with.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now listen, Donald, I think that other way was the best. You go down to the jail and—”
“My God!” I shouted at her. “You act as though
you
thought I was guilty, both of you.”
That quieted them. Bertha looked at me in a dazed sort of a way. The lawyer was a good guy in his place, but he’d shot his broadside. When he made his demand and passed over the papers, he didn’t have anything for a follow-up.
“And just so there won’t be any mistake about it,” I said, “Mrs. Cool and my lawyer are going to ride right in the same car with us.”
“Okay,” the D.A.’s man said. “Let’s get started.”
While we were screaming through the streets, making time behind the siren and red lights, the D.A.’s man did a lot more thinking. He said, “Now, listen, Lam, you know the position we’re in. We don’t want a false identification any more than you do.”
“Personally,” I said wearily, “I don’t give a damn. If she identifies me, I can spring an iron-clad alibi for the whole damn night. It’s just the principle of the thing, that’s all. If you’d played fair with me, I’d have come down and gone to the hotel with you in the morning. I didn’t like that bum’s rush, that’s all.”
“Well, you’re sure rusty when you get rusty. How the hell did you get that woman and the lawyer tipped off so they were waiting at the airport?”
I yawned.
“Any leak out of your place, Bill?” the investigator asked one of the officers.
The officer shook his head. “It looks fishy to me,” he said.
The D.A.’s investigator stared at me. “Say, listen, suppose you tell me about your alibi first. Maybe we could check on that, and we wouldn’t have to bother getting this girl up out of bed. Why didn’t you tell me about that sooner? I could have used a telephone and maybe saved you a trip down.”
“To tell you the truth, I didn’t think of it. The way you folks gave me the rush act—and you know how it is. Try thinking where you were every minute of the time two or three nights ago, and—”
“Well, where were you? What’s the alibi?”
I shook my head. “We’re down here now,” I said, “and it’ll be easier to get this girl out of bed than to get all of my witnesses out of bed.”
“How many are there?”
“Three.”
He leaned over and whispered something to one of the officers. The officer shook his head dubiously.
Bertha Cool looked at me with her forehead puckered in lines of worry. The lawyer looked smugly down his nose as though he’d actually done something.
We hit the city, and went screaming through the streets. The intersections whizzed past. The distances of city blocks dissolved under the wheels of the speeding automobile. That siren certainly flattened out traffic. In no time at all we were at the door of the apartment house where Esther Clarde lived.
I said to Bertha Cool, “Come on. I want a witness.”
One of the officers stayed with the car. The other one came along with us. The lawyer also got in on the party. We sounded like an army on the march pounding up the stairs. It was a walk-up, and the D.A.’s investigator, putting me in the lead, kept prodding me from behind. I think he thought he was going to leave Bertha Cool behind, but he reckoned without Bertha. She hoisted her two hundred and fifty-odd pounds up those stairs, keeping her place in the procession.
We got up to the third floor. One of the officers pounded on Esther Clarde’s door. I heard her voice saying, “Who is it?” And the D.A.’s man said, “The law. Open up.”
There was silence for four or five seconds. I could hear Bertha’s breathing. Then Esther Clarde called out, “Well, what do you want?”
“We want in.”
“Why?”
“We want you to look at a man.”
“Why?”
“We want to see if you know him.”
“What does the law have to do with that?”
“Nuts. Open up. Let us in.”
“All right. Wait a minute. I’ll let you in.”
We waited. I lit a cigarette. Bertha Cool looked at me with a puzzled expression in her eyes. The lawyer looked as important as a rooster in a hen yard. The officers fidgeted, exchanged looks.
Esther Clarde opened the door. She had on that black velveteen housecoat with the zipper up the side that she’d worn the night before. Her eyes looked a little sleepy. She said, “Well, I guess it’s all right. Come on in and—” She saw me and jerked the door shut. She yawned and said, “Okay, what is it?”
The investigator from the D.A.’s office jerked his thumb at me. “Ever see this guy before?” he asked.
The lawyer corrected meticulously, “Any of these men before. After all, you should be fair—”
Esther Clarde shifted her expressionless eyes over my face, looked at the lawyer, pointed her finger at him, and said, “You mean this guy? Is he the one?”