Trio for Blunt Instruments

Eighth Avenue we flagged a taxi with room for four. It was ten minutes to ten when it rolled to the curb at a marquee on Park Avenue in the Seventies.

Jay’s apartment, on the fifteenth floor, was quite a perch for a bachelor. The living room was high, wide, and handsome, and it would have been an appropriate spot for our talk, since it was there that Sue McLeod and Ken Faber had first met, but Jay took us on through to a room smaller but also handsome, with chairs and carpet of matching green, a desk, bookshelves, and a TV-player cabinet. He asked us what we would drink but got no orders, and we sat.

“All right, ask your questions,” Maslow said. The twisted smile.

He was blocking my view of Heydt, and I shifted my chair. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I looked it over on the way, and I decided to take another tack. Sue told the police, and it was in her signed statement, that she and I had arranged to meet there at the alley at five o’clock, and she was late, she didn’t get there until five- fifteen, and I wasn’t there, so she left. She had to tell them she was there because she had been seen in front of the restaurant, just around the corner, by two of the staff, who know her.”

Their eyes were glued on me. “So you weren’t there at five-fifteen,” Jay said. “The body was found at five-fifteen. So you had been and gone?”

“No. Sue also told the police that Faber had told her on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that she thought she was pregnant and he was responsible. He had told you that, all three of you. She said that was why she and I were going to meet there, to make Faber swallow his lies. So it’s fair to say she set the cops on me, and it’s no wonder they turned on the heat. The trouble-”

“Why not?” Maslow demanded. “Why isn’t it still on?”

“Don’t interrupt. The trouble was, she lied. Not about what Faber had told her on Sunday he had told me on Tuesday; that was probably his lie, he probably had told her that, but it wasn’t true; he had told me nothing on Tuesday. That’s why your names in his notebook had checkmarks but mine didn’t; he was going to feed us that to put the pressure on Sue, and he had fed it to you but not me. So that was his lie, not Sue’s. Hers was about our arranging to meet there Tuesday afternoon to have it out with Faber. We hadn’t. We hadn’t arranged anything. She also-”

“So you say.” Peter Jay.

“Don’t interrupt. She also lied about what she did when she got there at five-fifteen. She said she saw I wasn’t there and left. Actually she went down the alley, saw Faber’s body there on the ground with his skull smashed, panicked, and blew. The time thing-”

“So you say.” Peter Jay.

“Shut up. The time thing is only a matter of seconds. Sue says she got there at five-fifteen, and the record says that a man coming from the kitchen discovered the body at five-fifteen. Sue may be off half a minute, or the man may. Evidently she had just been and gone when the man came from the kitchen.”

“Look, pal.” Maslow had his head cocked and his eyes narrowed. “Shut up? Go soak your head. Who’s lying, Sue or you?”

I nodded. “That’s a fair question. Until noon today, a little before noon, they thought I was. Then they found out I wasn’t. They didn’t just guess again, they found out, and that’s why they took her down and they’re going to keep her. Which-”

“How did they find out?”

“Ask them. You can be sure it was good. They were liking it fine, having me on a hook, and they hated to see me flop off. It had to be good, and it was. Which brings me to the point. I think Sue’s lie was part truth. I think she had arranged with someone to meet her there at five o’clock. She got there fifteen minutes late and he wasn’t there, and she went down the alley and saw Faber dead, and what would she think? That’s obvious. No wonder she panicked. She went home and looked it over. She couldn’t deny she had been there because she had been seen. If she said she had gone there on her own to see Faber, alone, they wouldn’t believe she hadn’t gone in the alley, and they certainly would believe she had killed him. So she decided to tell the truth, part of it, that she had arranged to meet someone and she got there late and he wasn’t there and she had left-leaving out that she had gone in the alley and seen the body. But since she thought that the man she had arranged to meet had killed Faber she couldn’t name him; but they would insist on her naming him. So she decided to name me. It wasn’t so dirty really; she thought I could prove I was somewhere else, having decided not to meet her. I couldn’t, but she didn’t know that.” I turned a palm up. “So the point is, who had agreed to meet her there?”

Heydt said, “That took a lot of cutting and fitting, Archie.”

“You were going to ask questions,” Maslow said. “Ask one we can answer.”

“I’ll settle for that one,” I said. “Say it was one of you, which of course I am saying. I don’t expect him to answer it. If Sue stands pat and doesn’t name him and it gets to where he has to choose between letting her go to trial and unloading, he might come across, but not here and now. But I do expect the other two to consider it. Put it another way: if Sue decided to jump on Faber for the lies he was spreading around and to ask one of you to help, which one would she pick? Or still another: which one of you would be most likely to decide to jump Faber and ask Sue to join in? I like the first one better because it was probably her idea.” I looked at Heydt. “What about it, Carl? Just a plain answer to a plain question. Which one would she pick? You?”

“No. Maslow.”

“Why?”

“He’s articulate and he’s tough. I’m not tough, and Sue knows it.”

“How about Jay?”

“My God, no. I hope not. She must know that nobody can depend on him for anything that takes guts.”

Jay left his chair, and his hands were fists as he moved. Guts or not, he certainly believed in making contact. Thinking that Heydt probably wasn’t as well educated as Maslow, I got up and blocked Jay off, and darned if he didn’t swing at me, or start to. I got his arm and whirled him and shoved, and he stumbled but managed to stay on his feet. As he turned, Maslow spoke.

“Hold it, Pete. I have an idea. There’s no love lost among us three, but we all feel the same about