once a few years ago.”
“Just once. After that I worked for your opponents.”
He thought that was funny; he had a fine sense of humor, Yank-'Em-Out did. He also had his own teeth, the bastard, and a fine head of dark brown hair with only a little gray at the temples-Grecian Formula, I thought; has to be-and a strong, lean body and not many more wrinkles than I've got. He had to be at least seventy, but he looked ten years younger than that. He looked prosperous and content and healthy as hell.
But he lived in a house with bars on its windows and a vicious dog prowling its rooms, and sat in a garden with a plastic bubble over it, and told guests to be sure to lock the gate after they entered. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, he lived in fear-and that is a damned poor way for any man to live.
He swallowed some of his drink, put the glass down on top of my card-deliberately, I thought-and pointed his cigar at me. “Annie says you're here about Harmon Crane.”
“That's right.”
“Michael Kiskadon hired you, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“I'm not surprised. Well, sit down. I don't mind talking to you, although I don't see what you or Michael hope to accomplish this long after the fact.”
I stayed where I was; I liked the idea of looking down at him. “He wants to know why his father committed suicide,” I said.
“Of course he does. So do I.”
“I understand your theory is that Crane shot himself because he was no longer able to write.”
“Yes. But obviously I have no proof.”
“Did he ever communicate to you that he had writer's block?”
“Not in so many words,” Yankowski said. “But he hadn't written anything in weeks and it was plain to anyone who knew him that he was despondent about it.”
“Did he ever mention suicide?”
“Not to me. Nor to anyone else I know of.”
“So you were surprised when you found him dead that night.”
“Surprised? Yes and no. I told you, he was despondent and we were all worried about him.”
“This despondence… it came on all of a sudden, didn't it?”
“No, it was a gradual thing. Did someone tell you otherwise?”
“Kiskadon seems to think his father was all right up until a few weeks before his death.”
“Nonsense,” Yankowski said. “Who told him that?”
“He didn't say.”
“Well, it wasn't that way at all. I told you, Harmon's mental deterioration was gradual. He'd been having trouble working for more than three months.”
“Had he been drinking heavily for that long?”
“More or less. Harmon was always fond of liquor, and he always turned to it when there was a crisis in his life. The writer's favorite crutch. Or it was in those days, before drugs became fashionable.”
“You seem pretty positive about all this, Counselor.” He shrugged, and I said, “Do you also have a clear memory of the night of Crane's suicide?”
The question didn't faze him. “As clear as anyone's memory can be of a thirty-five-year-old incident,” he said. “Do I strike you as senile?”
“On the contrary.”
He favored me with a lopsided grin. “Aren't you going to sit down?”
“I'd rather stand. Aren't you going to offer me a drink or one of your cigars?”
“Certainly not.”
We watched each other like a couple of old pit bulls. I knew what he was thinking and he knew what I was thinking and yet here we were, putting on polite conventions for each other, pretending to be civilized while we sniffed around and nipped at each other's heels. It was a game he'd play for a while, but not indefinitely. If you cornered him, or if you just bothered him a little too much, he would go straight for your throat.
I said, “About the night of the suicide. Crane called and asked you to come to his house, is that right?”
“It is.”
“And he was very upset, barely coherent.”
“That's right.”
“Drunk?”
“Very.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“Words to the effect that he needed to talk.”
“He didn't say about what?”
“No.”
“Did he sound suicidal?”
“No. If he had I would have called the police.”
“Instead you went over there.”
“I did.”
“And met Mrs. Crane and Adam Porter.”
“Yes. They had just returned from dinner.”
“Did they seem worried about Crane?”
“Not unduly. Not until I'd told them of his call.”
“Then he hadn't given either of them any indication he might be considering suicide?”
“No.”
“What happened after you told Porter and Mrs. Crane about the call?”
“She became upset and called Crane's name. When there was no answer we all went upstairs and found the door to his office locked. We shouted his name several times, and when there was still no response we broke in.”
“You and Porter.”
“Yes.”
“Whose idea was it, to break in?”
“Adam's, I think. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. Was there anything unusual about the office?”
“Unusual? The man was lying dead across his desk.”
“I think you know what I mean, Counselor. Anything that struck you after you looked at the body and found the suicide note.”
He sighed elaborately. He had put on his courtroom manner like a sweater; I might have been a jury, or maybe a judge. “We were all quite distraught; Amanda, in fact, was close to hysterics. The only thing I remember noticing was that the room reeked of whiskey, which was hardly unusual.”
“Had Crane been dead long?”
“Less than an hour,” Yankowski said, “according to the best estimate of the police coroner. He must have shot himself within minutes after he telephoned me.”
“Why do you suppose he'd call you to come talk to him and then almost immediately shoot himself?”
He gave me a reproachful look. “You've been a detective almost as many years as I practiced law,” he said. “Suicides are unstable personalities, prone to all manner of unpredictable behavior. You know that as well as I do.”
“Uh-huh. Were you a close friend of Crane's, Counselor?”
“Not really. Our relationship was mostly professional.”
“Then why did he call you that night? Why not someone close to him?”
Yankowski shrugged. “Harmon had no close friends; he was an intensely private man. I think he called me because I represented stability-an authority figure, the voice of reason. I think he wanted to be talked out of killing himself. But his personal demons, coupled with whiskey, drove him to it anyway. He simply couldn't make himself wait.”
