Wilks looked in the office door and said, “Now it’s only rough on Walty.”
Ed Lewis reported in half an hour later, and the three policemen brought in chairs and sat with Watly around the small table. The real estate agent had been begging for someone to listen to his story about the terrible business with Joan Simpson and when they were ready and Lewis had his pad set, Fellows said, “All right, Wady. Now you can talk.”
“It was a terrible thing,” Wady said nervously. He was halting in his speech as he began, but grew more fluent as he unfolded his story. “I met Joan Simpson first when I was working for the Masters Toy Company in Bridgeport. She was the boss’s secretary. I guess you’d call her his mistress.”
Fellows said, “And you worked under the name John Lawrence, right?”
He nodded. “I read you found that out, but I don’t know how. I mean how you knew Lawrence was Campbell.”
“And you were fired for playing around. You been seeing her all this time?”
Watly shook his head. “I never saw her after. I don’t mean she wasn’t a nifty dish back then when she was only about twenty, but, well, she had a setup and she didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t bother trying to see her after I left the company.”
“You married back then?”
Watly hesitated. Finally he nodded. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. That has nothing to do with it.”
“Nobody said it has.”
“I mean—I don’t want you to get wrong ideas about me. I know a husband isn’t supposed to fool around, but I can’t help it. I’m made that way. Please don’t get prejudiced against me because of that.”
“Go on with the story.”
“Well, I didn’t see Joan after that. That was, let’s see, back in April of '51. I had to get another job. I got one selling beauty preparations door to door. Lady Alma. I still do.”
“Calling yourself John Campbell or John Lawrence, or Raymond Watly?”
He wet his lips. “I call myself John Lawrence.”
“You introduce yourself to your customers as John Lawrence? Is that how the company has you listed?”
“No. They know me as Raymond Watly.”
“Which is your real name?”
“Raymond Watly. Raymond Kirk Watly.”
“We’ll straighten out this name business in a minute. First I want to know why you use the name Lawrence to your customers. Is that so they can’t make complaints against you?”
“No, no. I don’t do anything they’d complain about.”
“Then it’s so they can’t trace you.”
Watly was perspiring. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Chief. I don’t want you prejudiced.”
“I think you mean you don’t want us to get the right idea. What do you do, seduce your customers under the name of John Lawrence?”
“I—” He said, “Let me tell you the story, please.”
“You ever been arrested, Watly?” When Watly didn’t answer, the chief repeated the question.
“Can’t I tell you the story?” Watly pleaded.
“We’ll hear your story. I want to know your background. Have you ever been arrested?”
Watly nodded faintly.
“What for?”
“When I was about seventeen, I forged a check. The judge let me off with a warning. Then I was arrested for burglary, but I got let off. Then a couple of months later I was arrested for burglary again and got six months. When I got out, I got a job in a supermarket and then I got sent to jail for a year for embezzling eight hundred dollars.” He said with the desperate need to be believed, “but that was when I was a kid. Honest, I never did anything after that. I left town and started over. I’d learned my lesson, believe me. The draft rated me 4-F, and I changed my name to John Lawrence and got a job in a war plant and I made good money and did fine. That was way back in 1944, and I’ve been straight ever since.
“After the war I was laid off when they cut back and I got a job in the sales department of a refrigerator plant for a couple of years and after that—”
“What happened? Why did you leave them?”
“I got fired.”
“What for?”
“I got one of the girls in trouble.” .
“You ever been arrested on a morals charge?”
Watly shook his head vigorously. “No. Believe me. I never seduced young girls. I never got in trouble that way. I only got in trouble for being wild in my youth, but that’s over long ago. Listen, I’m square now. In fact, I’m chairman of our local United Fund drive. I’m an honest man. I’ve been chairman two years running and I’ve never touched a penny.”
“All right, Mr. Watly. Let’s get back to your getting fired.”
“Well, that was in 1947 and I got a job in the sales department of a bakery in a new town. I was still using the name John Lawrence. The next year, that was 1948, I got married. Of course I told my wife about myself and we got married under my real name and that’s what she called me, but I was still working with the other name. Then, in 1949 I quit the baking company— I didn’t get fired, I had a better offer. That was from the toy company where I met Joan. I had to work there under the name Lawrence, but when I got fired and got the beauty preparation job, my wife wanted me to use my real name and I did and I’ve used that ever since in my work. She wanted me to because we were going to have a baby and she didn’t want all that business and I was honest now and I thought nobody’d know I was an ex-con, so it’d be all right.
“Then, after the baby was born, I needed more money, so I took a part-time job for a while on the side, but then our other daughter was born and I quit the part-time
