State’s Evidence Read online

  “I wish someone would kill me,” Teresa Blair said then, so softly I didn’t think I’d heard her, a prayer of sorts. She sighed deeply and sank to the couch. She was still wearing the clothes she had worn to court. She seemed not to have slept. I stayed on the floor across from her, not knowing where to look or what to think. “Why are you here?” I asked finally.

  “I’m trying to find Gus.”

  “So am I.”

  She nodded as though she understood, that and everything else about me. Maybe she did. It wasn’t going to make any difference. “Do you think your brother knows where Gus is?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure he didn’t take Gus. But so much has been happening because of James I thought he might know who most likely had done it.” She paused. “You said ‘brother.’”

  “I talked to your father,” I said. “I know you and Mary and James are Tony’s children. I know you and James work for Tony, somehow or other, but I don’t know exactly what you do. Do you kill people, Teresa? Is that what you do for dear old dad?”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment. “You don’t need to know that, you know.”

  “Don’t I?”

  We looked at each other atop the question. Then I didn’t want to look at her anymore.

  “Not to find Gus you don’t need to know that,” she said finally.

  “Is that all that’s left?” I asked.

  “That’s all.”

  “I think I need the whole story,” I began after a silent sigh. “First, someone just fire-bombed Wadley’s Restaurant. The feds tell me Wadley is your father’s chief rival for the top mob slot in El Gordo. True?”

  “True.”

  “So who tossed the bomb?”

  “James, probably.”

  “Why?”

  “To start something. A war between my father and Wadley. And maybe incidentally to warn Wadley that he’d better give up Gus if he was the one who took him.”

  “Why would James want to start a war between Tony and Wadley?”

  “So James could finish it,” she said sadly. “So he could show Tony that only he was fit to take over the business.”

  “That would also give him a good motive to shoot little Tony,” I said.

  “Yes. It would.”

  We both looked at the body on the floor. Strung up like a roped calf, it hardly seemed capable of the crimes we were speaking of. “James wants to inherit the business,” I said. “He’s been doing the shit work and now he wants to be top dog. Is that why you left home? Because he was out of control?”

  Teresa Blair nodded. “Tony knows James is the better man, but it might not look right to the rest of the family to pass young Tony over without giving him a chance. James and I, we’re like the idiots in the attic. No one really wants to acknowledge we exist. No one except Tony. But Tony still hasn’t made up his mind, so James decided to force the issue. I was afraid he might even decide to go after Father, or try to keep me from saving him from the murder charge.”

  “Is Tony dying?”

  “He thinks so, but he won’t go to a doctor. So no one knows. I guess if he wants to die he will.”

  “Are you sure James wouldn’t have grabbed Gus? To make sure of starting a fight between Wadley and your father?”

  She shook her head. “He’d think about it but he wouldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “He just wouldn’t. Tony would kill him.”

  “Which leaves us one other possibility.”

  “What?”

  “That night on Oswego Street. The guy who Tony ran down. Phillip Vincent. Who was he? Why did Tony kill him?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I shouldn’t tell you this. It will hurt Tony, maybe Gus, too. But I don’t care anymore. Not about anything, anything but Gus.” She walked to the sedan opposite me and sat on it and crossed her hands over her breasts, as though the gesture would protect her.

  “Phillip Vincent used to live in Vegas,” she said. “He was a pit boss at the casino where my husband worked. He was called Johnny McCall then, and he was the main witness against Frankie at his tax evasion trial. Vincent helped them send Frankie to jail. He helped them kill him.”

  “Who’s ‘them’?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re all dead. Dead like Frankie.”

  She began to cry, making sounds as anguished as the other sounds that had been uttered in that house that night. “I think I know who has Gus,” I said, over the noise of tears.

  23

  “Hello? Anyone here? Teresa?”

  The voice came from behind us, the queries floating in innocent musicality down the long hallway that separated her from where we were. In another moment footsteps followed her questions.

  “She shouldn’t see her husband the way he is,” I told Teresa Blair. “Why don’t you go over to her place with her? I have to call the cops and let them do their thing in here. Then I’ll come get you. If we want to find Gus, we should be out of here by eleven.”

  “Should I tell her about Wayne?”

  I shook my head. “Leave it to the cops. In fact, it might be best if you were out of sight when they came over to her place. Explain to her that you don’t want to deal with the police tonight. You’re afraid they’ll arrest you for what you did in court.”

  “Okay.”

  “And tell Davy I’ll be by to see him later. You know. After he learns about his dad.”

  Teresa Blair nodded, then turned to watch Kathryn Martin enter the living room with a tentative but expectant smile on her face. “I thought it was you,” she said. “How are you, Teresa?” She was still pert, wearing sandals and slacks and a pencil behind her ear.

  Teresa Blair smiled only briefly, her thoughts necessarily on the dead man lying out beyond the fence. “I’m fine, Kathryn. How are you?”

  Kathryn Martin shrugged and frowned. “We’re okay, I guess. Coping. Glad you’re back. You are back, aren’t you?”

  Teresa Blair looked at me before she answered. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not for long, probably. It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Things. Mr. Tanner, here, for one.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, and perhaps she wasn’t, either. Mostly I wanted them out of the house. I also hoped Mrs. Martin wouldn’t notice James Blair on the floor behind me, but in the next instant she did.

  “Who’s that?” Her eyes ballooned, and looked at Teresa and then at me.

  “James Blair,” I said. “He and I had a little fight. I tied him up for safe keeping.”

  “I thought I heard noises over here. It sounded like someone was being murdered.” Her laugh was uneasy. “Say. You haven’t seen Wayne, have you?” She looked at both of us again, and we both shook our heads, afraid of speech more than anything. “He was supposed to come see Davy tonight,” Kathryn Martin went on. “He hasn’t shown up. Davy’s kind of upset.” She paused, still waiting for us to say something. “I suppose I should have expected something like this,” she concluded lamely.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Just that I met your husband the other day. He didn’t seem like such a bad guy.”

  Kathryn Martin’s face softened and her eyes skipped over the mess in the room. “He didn’t used to be a bad guy,” she said in dream words. “In fact, I suppose that’s why I married him. He was such a nice guy. I wonder what happened?”

  “It’s hard to be a nice guy sometimes,” I said.

  Teresa Blair walked over and put her arm on Kathryn Martin’s shoulder. “You got any coffee over at your place, Katie?”

  “Sure.”

  “Am I invited?”

  “You know you are.”

  “Let me get my cup. We’ll leave James and Mr. Tanner to their little spat.”

  Teresa Blair trotted back to the kitchen
and returned with a large brown mug with orange flowers on the sides and linked arms with Mrs. Martin and left by the front door. James Blair remained a silent package of flesh. I made sure he was breathing, then found a telephone and sat in the chair beside it, thinking first of calling Tolson but then of making another call, the one I had thought about making when I was up in the Federal Building, the one I didn’t have to make then but had to make now that I had seen Teresa Blair again.

  I looked at my watch. It was after seven. Probably too late. Probably too tricky to work. But then if I learned what I was afraid I would learn, why then that would be a sign of some kind. Wouldn’t it? Sure. I glanced at the body on the floor, and at the ghost of the woman who had just left, then picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Mr. Blair’s office.”

  “Is Mr. Blair in?”

  “No. He isn’t expected till morning. May I take a message?”

  “Perhaps you can help me. Are you Ms. Hendrickson?”

  “Mrs. Hendrickson. Yes.”

  “Good. Mr. Blair has listed you as the person who would have the information I need in the event he wasn’t available himself.”

  “Just who are you, please?”

  “My name is Wickersham. I’m executive secretary of the San Francisco regional office of the International Air Line Pilots Association. We are running a survey of the various complaints lodged by air travelers in this region over the past year, to see if the follow-up service initiated by the carrier subsequent to the complaint adequately met the problem.” I paused. Listening to Agent Lucas an hour earlier had trained me superbly in bureaucratese. “You are Mr. Blair’s secretary, am I right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I wonder, Mrs. Hendrickson, would you have records of his air travel available to you at this time?”

  “Why, yes. Some of them, at least.”

  “Then perhaps you could check to see if Mr. Blair made a flight to Seattle this past October. Halloween, it was. Do you have that information?”

  “I believe I do. One moment.”

  During the time she checked the only sound in the room came from the reflexive inhalations of James Blair. In a minute Mrs. Hendrickson came back on the line and cleared her throat in my ear. “Mr. Blair did fly at the end of October. But not to Seattle.”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “Portland.”

  “Ah. Just a moment. Yes. On the form it lists where the luggage deplaned, you see, and unfortunately that didn’t occur until Seattle. Now, it appears that the luggage in question might have belonged to a woman. Was Mr. Blair accompanied on that flight, by any chance?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “By whom?”

  “By his wife.”

  “Yes. Thank you. It was her luggage that was missing, I believe. That confirms our initial data. Now, do you know if Mrs. Blair’s luggage was ever recovered?”

  “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “Very well. Mr. Blair will receive a form from us shortly, so he can describe fully his complaint and his reaction to the follow-up. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Hendrickson.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You’re certainly working late this evening.”

  “Well, it’s tax season, you know. Mr. Blair is an accountant.”

  And an assassin.

  My head ached fearfully, so badly I could hardly see. I tried to put the pain and the rest of it out of my mind, then took some deep breaths and called Ray Tolson. His first question was about Gus Quilk. When I told him I hadn’t found him yet, the only scrap of interest fell out of his voice.

  “I turned in my resignation today,” Tolson said before I could tell him about either Martin or Blair. “Effective tomorrow.”

  “So you aren’t looking for Gus Quilk anymore?”

  “Oh, we’re looking. But even if we find him alive, I won’t use him against Fluto. I can’t put a kid through that, even a kid as lost as Gus.”

  “I don’t think he’d have helped much anyway,” I said. “From what I can learn, he was shucking you.”

  “Probably. In any event, as my last official act I’m going to court tomorrow and ask Judge McMinn to dismiss the case against Fluto. If Tony takes a fall, it’ll be someone else who brings him down.” Tolson’s voice was as exhausted as his patience.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “Private practice, I guess. Hell, the next time you’re in town I’ll probably be defending Fluto myself. That’s usually the way it shakes out.”

  “Usually,” I agreed, “but not this time.”

  “No. I hope not, anyway.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Yeah. So why’d you call?”

  “To report a crime.”

  “What kind?”

  “Murder.”

  “Who?”

  “Man named Wayne Martin.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “James Blair.”

  “Our James Blair?”

  “Our James Blair.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Blair’s house.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Same place.”

  “Where’s Blair?”

  “He’s here, too. Unconscious at present.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yep”

  “This have anything to do with Fluto?” Tolson asked, the culmination of his increasingly strident interrogation.

  “A little.”

  “Enough so I can use it to make a case against Fluto in court tomorrow?”

  I thought about it. “No,” I said.

  Tolson paused. When he spoke, the animation was again missing from his words. “Then it’s not my problem, I guess. I’ll make some calls, get the lab boys moving and all the rest. Stay where you are. Don’t touch anything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You sure you’re out of it.”

  “Yes. I … yes.”

  “Then I guess this is it.”

  “I guess so. Drop in when you’re in town the next time.”

  “It may be a while,” I said.

  “Yeah. I understand. Thanks for your help. If I didn’t play square with you, I’m sorry. I did what I thought I had to do.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  When the cops came, I played dumb, said it had all been an accident, my stumbling onto Blair and the dead man. I knew enough to keep both the uniforms and the detectives off my back, and for most of the time I just watched the lab men do their thing with flashbulbs and tape measures and evidence bags and the like. When James Blair came to, they read him his rights. He didn’t say anything to them or to me, but when the cops started to take his ropes off, I suggested they leave them on. They looked at me, then they looked at Blair, then they looked at the mess in the room and left them where they were. Then Wayne Martin was taken to the morgue and a cop went over to tell Kathryn Martin about her husband. They finished up at ten and they let me go at ten thirty. After the last car had disappeared around a bend, I got out of mine and went over to the Martin house and rang the bell. Teresa Blair answered the door.

  “How are they holding up?” I asked.

  “Okay,” she said. “Kathryn had pretty much ended her attachment to Wayne already, you know. And Davy, well, he seems to be waiting for you, oddly enough. He says he has a question he wants to ask.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In his room.”

  “Show me.”

  She led me down a hall past two doors and stopped in front of the third. I tapped on the door and said who I was. Davy’s small voice told me I could come in.

  He was lying on his bed, which was rumpled like his hair. The comforter was decorated with the logos of professional football teams. On the floor were a thousand cars, the size of mice. The books on the shelf were about sports and war. The globe on the stand had a light bulb inside it, and blue mountains. “How’s it going, Davy?” I asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Can I
sit on the floor, here?”

  “Sure.”

  I tried to think what I could possibly say to him, how I could explain death and violence and murder and what caused them and what came after and how to survive it all and how to keep believing in anything. But I hadn’t even begun to speak when he interrupted my thoughts. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked at me carefully. I was certain he would detect it if I lied, but I wasn’t certain I would. “Did my mom shoot my dad?” he asked.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Remember? Scott said she told him she would, if he ever came back here.”

  “No, Davy. She didn’t shoot him.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I repeated. “Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Want to go back to the kitchen?”

  “Sure. I think Mom probably needs me.”

  “I think she probably does.”

  I followed him down the hall, hoping he was as strong as he seemed, wondering how you could tell. We all made small talk for a few minutes, dancing around death the way death is always danced around. Then I looked at my watch and told Teresa Blair we’d better go. Kathryn Martin asked her where we were going. Since she didn’t know, she didn’t say anything.

  “San Francisco,” I said. “We have to be at the Jack Tar Hotel by midnight.”

  24

  It seemed crowded in the car, I guess because of the answered questions and abandoned responsibilities that lay on the seat between us. We stopped only once along the way. For Tootsie Rolls and a phone call.

  I didn’t bother wondering whether Charley Sleet was on duty—Charley was always on duty. I found him in the Central Station. We made some small talk and then we quit. “What’s up, Marsh?” he asked.

  “I need to stage a bogus raid, Charley.”

  “Where?”

  “Jack Tar.”

  “Who’s in the room?”

  “Not sure. A woman. A kid. And one, maybe two, guys.”

  “Armed?”

  “Yep.”

  “Likely to shoot first?”

  “I don’t think so.” For a brief instant I envisioned Conway Grinder’s head with a hole blown through it. “But no guarantees.”