A Fine and Private Place

The Queens eyed each other.

“That stupido Tebaldo,” Marco said, shaking his head. “I shoulda fired him the day I hired him. Hey, did you hear that? I’m a poet and I don’t know it.”

“Tell me something, Marco,” Inspector Queen said. “You know that shoe of yours we borrowed today? The one with the crepe sole?”

“Keep it,” Marco said grandly. “You can have the other one, too. I’ve got more shoes than Macy’s and Gimbel’s put together.”

“Do you know there’s a deep gash almost half the length of the sole?”

“What d’ye mean do I know? Course I know! Happened-when was it? Well, it isn’t important. Few days ago.”

“Oh?” The Inspector looked puzzled. “Happened how?”

“I was taking a special girl friend o’ mine sailing in Larchmont-keep one of my boats there. She was coming in from upstate and I was at Grand Central to meet her. What do I do but step on a gobboon of chewing gum some slob ‘d spit on the floor. Made me madder ‘n hell. So I went downstairs to the men’s room and I took the shoe off and borrowed a knife from the attendant, and while I was digging the gum out from the ripples the blade slipped and, zippo!-sweetest little gash you ever did see. Practically surgery. Oh, you did see it. That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before about snipping the button off your jacket and slicing into the sole of your shoe?” the Inspector growled.

“You didn’t ask me,” Marco said, in a huff again. “Nobody asked me. Nino, gimme another drink. I’m getting good and teed off answering all these stupid questions.”

“No,” his brother said.

Something in his voice made Marco blink cautiously. He decided to laugh. “Y’know Nino won’t touch the hard stuff? A little vino once in a while and that’s it with him. That’s my brother. Nobody ‘11 ever catch him crocked. Too smart. Hey, Nino?”

“I think,” Importuna said to the Inspector, “my brother’s answered enough questions.”

“I’m almost through, Mr. Importuna.”

“I don’t want to seem uncooperative, but if you’re going to keep this up, I’ll have to demand that one of our attorneys be present. I should have insisted on it from the start. You can see Marco’s condition, Inspector. This has been a very bad day for us all-”

“What about my condition?” Marco cried. “What’s wrong with my condition?” He tottered to his feet and began to wave his bony fists. “Next thing they’ll be calling me a drunk. Why, I’ll take any old test they wanna throw at me… “

Importuna nodded curtly, and Peter Ennis jumped forward once more to help him with the now bellicose man. While they were cajoling him and easing him back to the chair, the Queens took the opportunity to commune out of earshot.

“With Marco himself snipping that button off,” Inspector Queen muttered, “and slicing into his shoe accidentally, there goes the frame-up theory, Ellery. The button simply fell out of that hole in his pocket, and the shoeprint in the cigar ash showing the cut is a legitimate clue. With these admissions of his, they both place Marco in that library of Julio’s for real.”

“With every cock-eyed thing that’s happened so far, is it all right with you if I wonder?” Ellery had transferred his yanking and hauling from nose to lower lip. “Look, dad, there seem to be ifs all over this case. Let’s try to clear some of them up. Do you want to tackle Marco, or shall I?”

“I’d better do it. Importuna’s set to throw his weight around. It’s harder for him to give me the heave… Feeling a little feisty, Mr. Importunato? I don’t think-the way things look for you right now-you can afford it.”

Marco twitched. The sallow skin was beginning to show a greenish undertinge.

“Take it easy, Marco,” his brother said. “Just what do you mean, Inspector Queen?”

“It’s very simple. We know now that Marco was not framed; he’s knocked that theory out by his admissions here. But we did find his button and shoeprint in Julio’s library. In my book that places your brother Marco on the scene of the crime legitimately. So before the district attorney gets into the act, if Marco has an explanation I’d strongly advise him to give it.”

“He does not have to tell you anything,” the multimillionaire said harshly. “In fact, I’m growing very tired of this-”

“Nino.” Marco Importunato raised his head from his trembling hands. “I think I’d better.”

“I’d rather you kept quiet. At least until I can get Emerson Lundy up here.”

“Why should I yell for a lawyer, Nino?” Of a sudden he was hysterically sober. “As if I were guilty? I have nothing on my conscience! If these people think I could kill Julio… My God, Julio was jamiglia… blood brother. It’s true, Inspector Queen, that I was in Julio’s library last night. And we did have a quarrel. But-”

“What time was this, Mr. Importunato?” the Inspector asked casually, as if Marco had said something trivial.

“I don’t know exactly. It was before 9 o’clock, because I do know it wasn’t quite 9 when I left him.” The man’s blood-streaked eyes sought the Inspector’s. “Left him,” he said. “Alive and well.”

“What about the condition of the room? The broken furniture, the knocked-over lamps-”

“I don’t know a thing about that. When I walked out of Julio’s library everything was in place. We didn’t have a fist fight, for the love of Christ! It was just an argument, Inspector. Some hot talk between brothers. Julio and I argued a lot. Ask Nino. Ask anybody.”

“Marco, I want you to keep your mouth shut,” his brother said. “I order you! Do you hear me?”

“No,” Marco said hoarsely. “They think I killed Julio. I’ve got to convince them I didn’t. Ask me more questions, Inspector! Go ahead, ask me.”

“About what was this particular argument last night?”

“Business. We’ve always had a family rule that all important investment decisions of Importuna Industries have to have the unanimous agreement of Nino, Julio, and myself. If one of us says no, it’s no deal. We don’t usually have trouble agreeing. But recently Nino proposed that we set up a new corporation and buy 19,000,000 acres of Canadian Arctic land-our top geologist thinks there’s a good chance that particular area is one big oil deposit-no, Nino, I’m not going to shut up!-a bigger field than Texas and Oklahoma. And we could buy it for $1.50 an acre, so the investment isn’t very big. After checking the reports I agreed with Nino it was a good gamble. But Julio wouldn’t go along. So we didn’t have the necessary three-man agreement and we had to drop the deal. Nino was put out about it, and so was I. But-murder?” His head kept wobbling like an infant’s or a very old man’s. Whether it was a conscious expression of negation or simply a weakness of the neck muscles brought on by the sour-mash whiskey he had consumed they could not tell.

“All right,” Inspector Queen said. “So you dropped into Julio’s apartment last night and you and Julio had a fight about his turndown of the deal?”

“Not a fight! An argument. There’s a difference, you know!”

“I’m sorry, an argument. Go ahead, Mr. Importunato.”

“I thought maybe he’s in a different mood tonight, maybe I can change his mind. But no, he was still dead set against it-he’d got it into his head that either some-body’d bribed our geologist to con us out of a bundle or that, even if oil was found, it would be an economic disaster trying to handle a production and pipeline setup across thousands of miles of frozen wasteland. Anyway, one word led to another, and we wound up yelling Italian curses at each other.” Marco raised his tear-swollen face. “But Julio could never stay mad very long. All of a sudden he said, ‘Look, fratello, what are we arguing for? The hell with it, so we’ll blow 28, 29 million bucks. What’s money?’ and he laughed, so I laughed, and we shook hands across the desk, and I said good night and walked out. And that was it, Inspector Queen. I swear.”

He was sweating heavily now.

“You mean Julio gave his consent to the deal, Marco?” Nino Importuna demanded. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t get the chance.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Importuna,” the Inspector said. “You didn’t come to blows, Mr. Importunato? Throw things? Break anything?”

“Julio and me? Never!”

“Mr. Importunato,” Ellery said; his father gave him a look and stepped back at once. “Did either you or your