Mom Among the Liars Page 4

  “Did you know who she was when you saw her walking along the street? What she did for a living?”

  A little sigh came rasping out of him. “Had a good idea. Something about the look of her. Way she walked. The paint on her face. She was a whore. Am I wrong about that? Hope I’m wrong, poor woman. No sort of life for anybody.”

  “You were close, I’m afraid,” Ann said. “But I take it you never had occasion to … make use of her services?”

  Stubbins produced the thin cackle again. “Alas, even if I had the means, it’s been many years since I had the means—if you follow my drift. But I thank you for asking the question, most flattering of you.”

  “How did you get involved with her then?”

  “Damned if I know. Used to see her on the street off and on—already told you that, didn’t I?—never exchanged a word with her. Not even the ritual ‘have a good one’—so pervasive in this part of the world, you know. Until last night.” He stopped talking and a shudder came over him. Because of what he remembered? Or was it just a sudden chill?

  “What happened last night?”

  “It starts when I’m fast asleep. Suddenly I’m awake, somebody’s pulling me by the shoulders, telling me to wake up. It’s her. This Chinese woman—Korean woman—Pulaski? ‘You can’t stay out here,’ she’s saying to me, ‘you’ll catch your death of cold.’ It’s raining, you see. Rain like ice, cold as a witch’s tit. Pardon the expression, madam. ‘Come in to my apartment,’ she says, ‘I’ll give you a cup of coffee.’ I have some small difficulty understanding her—her English isn’t very good, Chinese accent—Korean accent, I suppose—not that I’d recognize the difference. But soon she had me by the arm, leading me into the house. Titania leading Bottom to her bower, that sort of thing. Went up some stairs, into the bower. Big room, Oriental decorations. Pictures of birds and fish and bamboo trees. Big bed, dragons on it. Drapes were pulled shut, only light from a couple of lamps on the mantelpiece—lamps had dragons on them too. She sat me down, nice comfortable easy chair, cushions trimmed with beads. In Xanadu did Kublai Khan—”

  “How was she dressed?” Ann said.

  “Dressed? Dear young lady, what do I know about how women are dressed? Nicely dressed—yellow and pink kimono, bit of jewelry too. Pearl necklace, earrings, ring on her finger with a big green stone.”

  “Did you get the impression she had dressed up for you, or was this what she ordinarily wore at night, even if she wasn’t expecting a visitor?”

  “Didn’t get any impression one way or the other. How should I know what she ordinarily wore at night? Don’t go out much in genteel female society these days. Lead a rather retiring life.”

  I spoke up, a little sharply. “She came out to your alley in the cold rain, wearing nothing but a kimono?”

  “No, no. Had a raincoat too. Took it off when she got into the apartment.”

  “So what happened then?” Ann said.

  “Asked me if I’d have a cup of coffee. Naturally I accepted the offer. Never turn down a free cup of coffee, a principle with me. Or any of the hard stuff either. She went out in the kitchen, came back with a cup of coffee, said there was only enough coffee in the pot for one cup, said she could make more later if she wanted any for herself. Kind young woman. Very kind. Pretty little thing too.”

  “She came back into the room with your coffee?”

  “Yes, put it on a little table—Chinesey sort of table—next to the chair. She sat down on the bed—crossed her legs—facing me. She turned down the sound on the television—”

  “Television?”

  “Didn’t I say? Had the television on when I got there. Watching some movie.”

  “What movie?” Roger said. Usually, when he sat in on an interview with Ann or me, he listened pretty much in silence. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut when the subject was movies. They were the passion of his life. Sometimes I thought he had seen every one that was ever made, including the ones that were made fifty years before he was born. I used to tell him what a shame it was that he had wasted his childhood and adolescence on such a frivolous hobby, but Mom always came to his defense. “Better he should’ve taken drugs and drank whiskey and ruined his eardrums with this loud music?”

  “Old movie,” Stubbins said, scrunching up his nose in thought. “Remember seeing it years ago, when it first came out. Those three crazy brothers—one of them had a mustache, one of them had an Italian accent, one of them didn’t talk—”

  “The Marx Brothers,” Roger said. “Which Marx Brothers movie was it?”

  “Never remember the names of them. They’re at the racetrack. The one that doesn’t talk with the blonde curls, he’s the jockey, galloping on the horse—”

  “A Day at the Races,” Roger said. “It’s got that hilarious scene in it where Chico is selling ice cream—” He broke off, blushing, as if he had suddenly remembered where he was. You do a lot of blushing when you’re twenty-three.

  “So she turned down the television,” Ann said.

  “Yes, just the sound, didn’t turn off the picture. Got very upset actually. Said she’d seen this movie before. ‘All reruns,’ she said. ‘On television are nothing but reruns.’ Then she started talking.”

  “What about?”

  “What about? Difficult for me to remember exactly. Men. Yes, she talked about men. Rather bitterly, yes. They use you, and then they betray you. But she wasn’t going to let them get away with it, she said. She told him she was going to expose him to the world.”

  Ann leaned forward a little. “Sounds as if she wasn’t talking about men in general. Was she talking about some specific man?”

  “Could be. Who knows? Didn’t mention any names. Tell you the truth, wasn’t listening so carefully by then. Head beginning to spin a bit. Getting dizzy. Voice going in and out, room swaying up and down like water. Then I heard the noise.”

  “What noise?”

  “Rapping noise. Rap, rap, rap.”

  “Somebody knocking on her door?”

  “Yes, that was it. She got up from the bed, went across the room. I saw the door opening, somebody coming in. Heard her calling out—angry. ‘Rerun! Had enough rerun! No more!’ Odd thing for her to say, I thought. Somebody comes to visit her, first thing she does is complain about television shows. Was it somebody who worked for a television network? Producer, writer? Last thought I remember having. Next moment I was out like a light.”

  “Can you describe the man who came into her room?”

  “Can’t even be sure it was a man. Could’ve been a woman. Or a small child. Never got a real look at this person at all.” He looked puzzled for a moment. “You suppose—this was the one that killed her?”

  “It seems very probable,” Ann said.

  “Didn’t kill me though. Let me sleep there all night. How come?”

  “Maybe because he—or she—saw you were out like a light,” I said, “and knew you couldn’t make an identification.”

  “What time was it when this person got there?” Ann asked.

  “Time? Yes, I can tell you that. Eleven thirty-five.”

  “You don’t have a watch, do you?” I said, sharp again.

  “No, no, no. Once I did—dear dead days beyond recall. What ever happened to that lovely watch? Inscription on the back of it too. Hope it found a good home. No, I saw the time on her clock—big clock on the mantelpiece, gold numbers, Oriental designs all over it. Clock said eleven thirty-five.”

  “Now tell us what happened when you woke up,” Ann said.

  “First thing I noticed, terrible headache, somebody jumping up and down on my head. Then the light coming through the windows, coming around the sides of the drapes, lamps weren’t turned on any more. Staring into that dead television screen—then I heard the screaming. Lot of words I couldn’t make out, didn’t sound like English. Little old lady, Chinese lady, in the doorway, screaming her head off.”

  “What time in the morning was this?”

  “Didn’t n
otice, didn’t look at the clock. They told me later, though, it was seven o’clock.”

  “Did you say anything to the old Chinese lady?”

  “Korean actually. Found out later it was the mother, the Pulaski woman’s mother. No time to say anything to her. She ran out the door, heard her running down the stairs. Then I realized I was on the floor, next to the easy chair. Tried to get up—then I saw her. The woman—stretched across the bed, sheets all bunched up around her. Knew right away she was dead. Seen plenty of dead people since I moved onto the street.”

  “Could you tell the cause of her death?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Face all blue and bloated, eyes bulging out. Policemen told me later she was strangled. Didn’t examine her at the time, got the hell out of there. Down the stairs, out to the street—right into the arms of the policemen. They put me into the police car—here I am.”

  We looked at him a while in silence. There isn’t much to say after you hear a story like that.

  He spoke up again, hesitantly. “Thing I’ve been wondering about. Over and over, going through my head. Do you think—Was there some kind of drug in the coffee she gave me? Come to think of it—Why only one cup? Why didn’t she drink any of it herself?”

  “You think you were drugged?”

  “Knockout drops, something like that? Happened so fast, you see. One minute I’m wide awake, next minute—”

  “Why should Edna Pulaski want to give you knockout drops?” I said. I’m afraid I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  “Don’t know, don’t know.” He shook his head, looking very troubled. “Can’t believe it really. Such a kind lady. Why should she bother to be so kind? Most people aren’t. Hold their nose, throw a quarter in the hat, run in the other direction. Can’t blame them actually. Kind lady like that—can’t believe she’d want to hurt me.”

  “Do you have any reason to think,” Ann said, “that anybody else was in the apartment when Edna Pulaski brought you there?”

  “She said there was nobody else in the house.”

  “Could somebody have been hiding there? Did you hear any noises—from a closet or the bathroom maybe? From the kitchen?”

  “Didn’t hear a thing. Isn’t a very big apartment, you know.”

  “Until last night,” Ann said, “you and Edna Pulaski never said a word to each other?”

  “Never. Told you that already.”

  “You never knew her at any time in your past life? Because if you did, Mr. Stubbins, I promise you the district attorney’s office will find out about it. If they dig up any past connection between the two of you, that’ll be the end of our case. You’ll go to prison, maybe even the gas chamber.”

  “No connection. Assure you. Word of honor.” He drew himself up a little. “Gentleman and scholar.”

  Ann said nothing for a moment. Then she said, “What is your past life, Mr. Stubbins? Where do you come from? How did you get—What did you do before you came to Mesa Grande?”

  Stubbins’s red eyes shifted away from Ann’s gaze. His voice lowered to that hoarse mutter again. “Didn’t do anything. Didn’t come from anywhere.”

  “You must’ve had a home once. A job. A family. If you tell us something about yourself, we might be able to use it in court, the information could help you.”

  “There’s nobody!” His voice got louder, and his eyes flashed up at us. “No name! Irrelevant! Don’t ask me about him, no more questions about him—” He lowered his head again, and it was clear we weren’t going to get anything else out of him.

  Ann sighed and got to her feet. Roger and I stood up too. “Just one more question,” Ann said. “For the record. Mr. Stubbins, did you kill Edna Pulaski?”

  His head was up again, and the eyes were full of pain. “Wouldn’t do it. That pretty little thing. Didn’t kill her. Never killed anybody in my whole life. Except—”

  He stopped and shifted his eyes away.

  “Except who?” Ann said.

  “Except what’s-his-name,” Stubbins murmured. “Killed him all right. Doesn’t matter though. Nobody ever goes to jail for that.”

  * * *

  We took the underground passageway that connected the jail to the courthouse. While we walked, I sounded off. Frustration makes it hard for me to keep quiet.

  “What do you think?” I said. “Is there one chance in a million that he’s telling the truth? I haven’t heard such a crazy whopper in twenty years! Here’s this madam, this hardboiled flesh peddler, and all of a sudden, out of the kindness of her heart, she feels sorry for a homeless old man on the street and takes him into her house to rescue him from the cold! My God, it’s like a bad Christmas special on TV! God bless us every one!

  “And what’s the first thing she does when she gets him into her room? She sits down on the bed cross-legged and tells him—a complete stranger—about her unsatisfactory love life, and how a man has betrayed her, so she’s going to get even by exposing him. And at that very moment, there’s a knock on the door, and her murderer walks in—but our hero can’t describe this murderer because he, very conveniently, is knocked out by a mickey in his coffee.

  “You’ve pulled some rabbits out of your hat before, Ann, but this time you’re going to need a genuine miracle.”

  “Maybe the implausibility of his story is the best thing that’s going for him,” Roger said. “I mean, would anybody invent such a fantastic story if it wasn’t true?”

  “An old bum whose brain has been turned to mud by alcohol—or malnutrition—or misery—why not? It’s probably been a long time since he could tell the difference between fantasy and reality.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact, Dave. Don’t we have to give him the benefit of the doubt? You and Ann have told me plenty of times that every defendant is entitled to his day in court. He’s presumed to be innocent until he’s found—”

  “That’s a beautiful ideal,” I said. “Until you run across a disaster area like Harry Stubbins—”

  “Gentlemen.” Ann broke into our argument with one quiet word, but it was enough to make us both shut up. “Not much use in fighting about this, is there?” she went on. “Our job right now, I would think, is to do something. We need facts. We need evidence. We need to start digging. Roger, why don’t you spend the morning looking into a few things—find out if any of the TV stations really did show that Marx Brothers movie at eleven-thirty last night, find out how long Stubbins has been living in that alley and whether anybody has seen him hanging around Edna Pulaski, see if you can come up with anything about Stubbins’s background.

  “We’ll go right up to Grantley’s office, Dave. He loves to hear the sound of his own voice. Shouldn’t be too long before he tells us everything they know.”

  We took the elevator at the end of the underground passageway and stopped at the second floor, the DA’s floor. Ann and I got out, and Roger stayed in the elevator to go on up to the fourth floor.

  Ann and I started along the corridor, hoping the assistant DA would be waiting for us as he had promised. Consideration for the public defender’s convenience isn’t a high priority in our city administration. Not too many of our clients are regular voters.

  * * *

  Grantley was there. His office wasn’t as spacious as McBride’s, his desk wasn’t as big, the wall paneling wasn’t as oaky and the chairs as large and leathery. But it was snazzy enough compared to what Ann and I had to live with.

  And the room was filled with Grantley’s style and personality. The walls were decorated with prints of modern paintings: landscapes that looked like geometry, portraits of women with two noses, that sort of thing. It would never have occurred to McBride to put up such pictures in his office. His walls were covered with photographs of himself grinning at political celebrities—presidential candidates, congressmen, state legislators, many of them long forgotten. Whenever people like that passed through town—usually on the campaign trail—McBride made sure to get his picture taken with them.


  “Come in, come in, so glad you could spare’ the time,” Grantley said, rising up from his desk, going around to shake hands with us. “Please make yourselves comfortable. I’d send the girl for coffee, only there is no girl today, is there? We’re all on our own. This working on Sunday is a real burden, isn’t it? That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing, Ann, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  His words were accompanied by an earnest look on his face, letting us know that our interests were what he cared for most in the world. This was Grantley’s peculiar form of camouflage. I had enough experience with him by now to discount it completely. He could play just as dirty as Marvin McBride; he simply covered it up more smoothly. That’s what they teach you at Harvard.

  “Well now.” Grantley settled back in his chair, beaming at us. “You’ve had a chance to talk to your new client, have you? Poor old fellow. How do people manage to fall so low in the world? And he’s going to fall even lower before long, I’m afraid.”

  “Why so?” Ann asked.

  “What I mean is, he’ll end his days in a prison cell, won’t he? If not worse. We’ll go for first degree, of course, but I grant you the jury may feel a certain sympathy for him and recommend something less than the death penalty.”

  “You’re convinced it’s an open-and-shut case, are you?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. No case is open and shut, is it? You can never be absolutely sure what juries are going to do. But I will say one thing—we don’t often get a murder in which the guilty party is waiting for us patiently at the scene of the crime.”

  “That doesn’t bother you just a little bit? If Harry Stubbins killed the woman in the middle of the night, why wouldn’t he get out of there as fast as his legs could carry him? Why take a snooze right next to the body, and stay there for seven hours, as if he wanted to be found there in the morning?”

  “Naturally we don’t believe Stubbins meant to fall asleep by the body. He’d been drinking all night. And he was exhausted from the strain of strangling her. He intended to get out of there right away, but he passed out.”