Pandora by Holly Hollander

the floor with his stick like he wants to kill it. I hate it. I hated it then, the first time. He makes me think of a cougar in a nature film I saw once; this cougar had pulled loose the trap that had caught it and it was trying to get away, to go somewhere far off in the woods where horrible things didn’t happen, and it was dragging that damned trap with it all the time. When I close my eyes, the thump of Blue’s stick makes me think maybe there really is a trap on his crippled leg, one that neither of us can see.

“I’ll grant that,” Blue said, still talking about the old lady’s being gone. “Certainly if she wasn’t out, various tricks could have been used to get her out of the house—burglars have developed a whole bagful of them, from a telephone call warning the victim of some imaginary natural disaster to theater tickets supposedly sent by a business contact. Even if she wasn’t away, she could have been drugged, or silenced by threats. It’s the gun itself I can’t accept. If it had been a rocket launcher or a recoilless rifle, it might be possible; but a weapon that size would have to be transported in a large truck, or towed behind one. Did you notice how you spoke of ‘guys,’ even though only a few minutes ago you told me you felt sure the killer had worked alone? That was because you realized instinctively that several people would be required to arrange something like this. A gun crew. The thing’s preposterous.”

Just then the phone by my bed rang. When I hung up, Blue was back in my chintz chair, smiling. “My father’s on his way home,” I told him.

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“That was Bill. He took Elaine someplace and dropped her off. My father just called from O’Hare. He’s going to get a bite to eat there while Bill drives over to pick him up.”

“That shouldn’t take long,” Blue said. “An hour and a half at the outside, if they don’t get stuck in traffic.”

“You’ve been wanting to meet him, haven’t you?” My hands were already smoothing out the sheet, even though I knew it was silly.

“I’d like to get a retainer from him if I can.”

“It would be useful, wouldn’t it? Like the stuff you told Sandoz so he’d let you stay in my room at the hospital.”

Blue shook his head. “I need the money. The money would be useful, if you want to put it that way. I’ve been looking at your bookcases—Fleming, Chandler, MacDonald. You’re fond of mysteries.”

“I’ve got Poe and Van Dine and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle here on the other side,” I told him. “Historical grounding. And I have a soft spot for Ellery Queen, even if he’d be older than my father if he were real.”

Blue sniffed. “You ought to find a detective your own age. But I was going to quote Chandler to you, and I still will. He wrote, ‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.’”

I interrupted to say, “You’ve read him too—harder than I did.”

“I’ve had more time. Chandler was concerned with honor and not with money—that word tarnished is an indirect reference to knightly armor. This though Marlowe was born in the Depression, when even such a man, honorable, intelligent, brave, and tough, might have a difficult time earning a living; and though Raymond Chandler was concerned with honor, Philip Marlowe was concerned about money. He had to be. If you’ve read those books with any insight, you know that he’s a creature of the thirties, and the earliest forties, before the Second World War broke the back of the crash of twenty-nine forever. The real Philip Marlowe died in nineteen forty-one, not on a battlefield but in a thousand defense plants.”

“You’re not a private eye.” I believe in getting right to the point. After all, if I didn’t my supply of enemies might run out.

“I’m not a private detective because I couldn’t possibly get a license. I can call myself a criminologist and offer my services as a consultant because I have a degree in criminology. I earned that degree in prison.”

“You did time?”

Blue nodded emphatically. I think he wanted to make sure I couldn’t say later that I hadn’t known. “Five years and some odd months. I should have told you sooner: you are consorting with a felon.”

“You used to be a lawyer.”

He looked surprised. “That’s correct. How did you know?”

“Just a hunch. When we went out to Garden Meadow, you were going to see somebody who’d been a judge. Later Sandoz said you looked like a lawyer, and just then you sounded like one.”

“I was disbarred, of course.” Blue leaned back in the chintz chair and closed his eyes, his stick lying across his lap. “The career I planned …”

For about as long as it takes to open a package of gum, everything got perfectly quiet. Downstairs someplace I could hear Mrs. Maas running the sweeper.

“I never wanted to go into politics,” Blue said at last. “Or to go on the bench. But I was going to be a bigger trial lawyer than F. Lee Bailey or Clarence Darrow. Now here I am.”

“Perry Mason!”

Blue opened his eyes and looked at me. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’re as big a sucker for mysteries as I am. You wanted to be Perry Mason.”

“I suppose so.”

“Well, what happened? Tell me about it.”

“It isn’t very complicated. A certain man—a professional criminal—wanted me to defend him. I took the case, even though I felt sure he was guilty of worse crimes if he was innocent of the one he had been charged with. I needed the money, and after all everyone is entitled to counsel, guilty or innocent.

“At the trial I did the best I could for him, but it became increasingly clear that he would be convicted. He asked me to bribe the judge—not to find him not guilty, which would’ve been impossible anyway since it was a jury trial, but to give him a light sentence.”