“Who?”
“The prosecutor. That smug son of a bitch-”
“Skip that. What about Bradshaw?”
Kemper shrugged. “He was blackmailing Marilyn.”
“Not you?”
“No, just Marilyn.”
“About her father’s death?”
Kemper shook his head. “No. About me.”
“What did he have?”
“Photostat of the motel reservation.”
Steve sighed. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, “I’m just a little too pissed off to have to drag this out of you. Go on and tell me what happened. What was his approach? Did he contact you or Marilyn?”
“That’s just it,” Kemper said. “He hit on Marilyn. By the time I found out about it, it was too late.”
“You need a prompter? Go on. What happened?”
“Well, you understand, this is what Marilyn told me, after the fact. Bradshaw called her up. Cold. Out of the blue. Calls her on the telephone. Calls her by name. Identifies himself as ‘a friend.’ Says he has something he thinks she should have. Marilyn tries to ask questions but the guy’s evasive and mysterious. All he’ll tell her is he has something she forgot. She’s about to hang up on him when he tells her he has something from the Sand and Surf Motor Inn.”
Douglas Kemper grimaced. “And that’s where she made a mistake. That’s where she should have called me right away. But she didn’t. Instead, she agreed to meet the guy. So she goes to his apartment. He told her to go there, and like a damn fool she goes. I mean, in a building like that. It could have been a shakedown, it could have been anything.
“When she gets there Bradshaw whips out a photostat of a registration form from the Sand and Surf Motor Inn. It’s the card I signed, registering us as Mr. and Mrs. Sampson. Then he goes through the usual bullshit spiel about how he’s a really nice guy but he happens to be hard up and really needs the money, and if she’d just give him ten thousand dollars and-well, you know the rest.”
“No, I don’t know the rest. Let’s go through it. She drew out ten thousand dollars from her bank account and paid him off, right?”
“Right.”
“Did you know it?”
“No.”
“You hadn’t seen her in the meantime?”
“No, I hadn’t. We couldn’t meet that often. It’s kind of awkward, you know, and-”
“Yeah, sure. So you hadn’t seen her and she hadn’t told you, and she paid off the guy, and then what?”
“I saw her the next day and she told me about it. I couldn’t believe it. If she’d only come to me. She’d done everything wrong. Taking ten one thousand dollar bills out of her bank account. On a cash withdrawal of that size, they note the serial numbers. I knew it. She didn’t. She didn’t realize what she’d done. A blackmailer never quits. Giving Bradshaw that ten thousand dollars was just giving him a stranglehold over her. The motel reservation was nothing. It wasn’t even solid evidence. Against me, maybe, but not her. But that ten thousand dollars would fry her.
“That’s when I stepped in. I contacted Bradshaw and arranged to buy those bills back.”
Steve stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. I contacted Bradshaw and made a deal. It wasn’t that hard. Bradshaw was always willing to deal. That was part of his game. He was most agreeable. He would be delighted to return me Marilyn Harding’s ten grand in return for small bills. The only catch was, he wanted twelve thousand.”
“So you brought Marilyn’s bills back?”
Kemper grimaced. “I thought I did.”
“And you put them in an envelope and sent them to me. Along with the letter.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Marilyn was in trouble, big trouble. I wasn’t sure I could deal with it alone. I knew she needed help, and a special kind of help. This wasn’t something you could take to the cops. Or to any regular lawyer. Then I thought of you.”
“Why me?’
“I know Sheila Benton. I met her a long time ago through Marilyn. Happened to run into her just before she left for Europe. She told me about her case. What you did for her. Not so much in court. She said you did other things. Discreetly. Confidentially. Things no one would ever know about. She said you were a genius. I figured that’s what Marilyn needed. So I typed the letter and sent you those bills as a retainer. But I had to be very discreet. Very below board. I didn’t want to implicate Marilyn by mentioning her by name. I knew if you were as quick as all that, you’d immediately trace the serial numbers of the bills and find out who’d withdrawn them from the bank. You’d find out it was Marilyn, and you’d start protecting her.
“Only I hadn’t figured on Bradshaw.”
“He switched the bills?”
“Of course. As soon as I offered to buy them back, Bradshaw knew what I was after. So he played me for a sucker. He charged me twelve grand, and instead of Marilyn’s ten grand, he sold me ten bills he’d drawn out of the bank himself.”
“Which you promptly mailed to me,” Steve said. “Making my life a living hell ever since. Tell me something. Did you mention my name?”
“What?”
“To Bradshaw. When you called on Bradshaw. Did you mention me?”
“Yeah. As a matter of fact, I did. I told him you were my lawyer, and if he made any more trouble he’d hear from you.”
Steve shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Little presumptuous, don’t you think? You hadn’t even consulted me.”
“Yeah. At first I was bluffing. But that’s when I decided to. Hire you, I mean.”
“Great. And when was this?”
“Monday.”
“The seventh?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s when you met Bradshaw and bought back the bills?”
“Right.”
“Then why did Marilyn go see him on Tuesday, the eighth?”
“’Cause she didn’t know I’d got the bills back. I hadn’t been able to talk to her.”
“You hadn’t told her you were going to do it?”
“No. I hadn’t figured it out at the time. When I was talking to her, I mean. I only told her she made a mistake giving ’em to him. She was worried about it, and she went to Bradshaw to try to straighten things out herself.”
“That’s on Tuesday?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Bradshaw was nice as could be. He was sorry she’d upset herself, but there was nothing to worry about. I’d been there the day before and bought the bills back, hadn’t I told her? Relax, everything was going to be just fine, and if she didn’t believe him, why didn’t she talk to me.
“Which it turned out she couldn’t do, because when she met me on the boat I was with my wife and we never got a moment alone.”
“All right. That’s Tuesday. What about Wednesday?”
Kemper grimaced. “Just what you’d expect. Bradshaw made another pass at Marilyn. The son of a bitch. He’d just told her everything was straightened out to let her think she was off the hook. To give her one peaceful day. To
