The buried motive, p.3
The Buried Motive, page 3
“Quite a layout you’ve got here,” I laughed, indicating the glass and the brass and the vast expanse of glittering silver about us.
Luke Owen smiled boyishly. “You know, I’m glad you like it. A lot of the people around here don’t seem to go in for this kind of thing. You know?”
I was staggered at the thought of that. “You get a surprise a day, don’t you?”
“Sit down, Mr. Madigan,” Luke Owen said after pumping my hand and showing me his was at least eight inches longer than mine, and about that much tougher. He indicated a real tipsy piece of bent iron that looked like the bottom of somebody’s mangled coat hanger with part of the coat still on it, and I sat in it trying to get a position for my bottom that wouldn’t ruin me for life and make me a candidate for a Persian harem keeper’s job. Surprisingly enough, once I got sat in the monstrosity, I was comfortable as hell.
Taffy draped herself in one and looked cool and collected and only the slightest bit the worse for her previous night’s roll in the hay. Luke Owen grinned some more, apparently enjoying cooling his teeth in the open air, and then he lifted a box of toy cigars from a glass table, and let me paw out one of the baby smokers. I lit it, and fanned the air with some heavy blue haze, and we coughed affably at each other while Taffy tapped her fingernails on the iron arms of her chair, and then Luke Owen looked up into the silver ceiling that was a direct pipeline to God, and he said: “I’ve got a job for you.”
I nodded. “That’s fine. But I don’t know operation one about husking wheat or whatever the hell you do with it.”
Luke Owen laughed amiably. “How long’s it been since you were on a farm? Man, we’ve got machines for all that stuff. Expert machines. Do better than men.” He let his teeth have some more air, and Taffy let her skirt slide up a bit on her tanned, smooth leg, and I sank back into the bent coat hanger and lipped my toy cigar and waited for the pitch.
“What I want you for,” Owen went on, his voice smooth and cultured, and loaded with gentility, “is this. I want you to stalk me a killer.”
I tried to look nonchalant and I squinted through the heavy cloud of smoke in front of me. I was so smooth about it I practically choked on it. “Killer?” I was an amateur at the bluff. And he was an old pro.
“The killer of Royal Blaine,” Luke Owen nodded.
“I guess you don’t know the story around town, Mr. Owen. I’m Gotham’s most favored candidate for that position.”
Luke Owen shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
I nodded. “I appreciate your vote of confidence. And, just between you and me and a Bible, if there is one around here somewhere, I didn’t do it. But how come you’re so interested in Blaine?”
Luke Owen’s eyes narrowed just that much.
“Do you want to hire out or not?”
Taffy stretched herself languidly in her chair. “Of course he will, dad. You know that.” She smiled at me prettily, showing her dimple and her teeth.
I blew some more smoke. I was hell on wheels with those toy cigars. “Okay, Mr. Owen. I’ll take a shot at it.”
“Good. Somebody may take one at you, too, you know.”
“On one condition.”
Luke Owen’s eyes narrowed. “I never buy conditions.”
“On condition you tell me why you’re really interested in who killed Blaine.”
“Isn’t every man his brother’s keeper?” Luke Owen asked.
“I’m just a lawyer,” I said, remembering my story. “I haven’t got a license to practice private detecting.”
Luke Owen grinned. “I’ll get you one.”
Taffy lounged gaily in the chair of her choosing. “Dad can do it,” she said with a smile. “He can do anything.”
I looked down at my feet and I saw shoes that needed shining. I didn’t like this job one bit, but the Greeks had a word for it. Money.
“Got any clues?” I asked Owen.
He glanced at his daughter. She opened the purse she had in her lap and pulled out a piece of cardboard. She handed it to me. In pencil, scribbled in a bold, rolling hand, was the name Bramley Rashor.
I stared at it a long moment. “Where’d you get this?”
Luke Owen smiled, his mustache hiding the sneer on his lips. “I managed to remove it from the body of the deceased early this morning.”
I pushed my lips out and nodded reflectively. “You work fast.”
Luke Owen’s gray eyes cooled on me. “Know him?”
“Never heard of him,” I said out loud and stared at the card again. I lied in my teeth, of course. He was the man I’d come halfway across the United States to find, dead or alive.
The way things were going, it seemed to me Rashor knew all about me, and the fact Blaine had called for me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have killed Blaine. I was in a miserable spot: I had to lure a killer out into the open, and try not to get myself knocked off in the process.
I was going to like it here in Gotham. I was going to love it. If I lived long enough.
Chapter 3
So now I was a hired dick. I didn’t like the job, I didn’t like my client, and I didn’t like the case. But who was I to howl? I might as well play footsie with a hard guy like Luke Owen, as go it on my own in a country as hostile as Mau Mau Africa.
Owen clued me to everything he knew about Blaine and the mysterious Bramley Rashor, and to tell the truth it wasn’t much. Taffy kept smiling with her eyes half closed, and I kept my mouth shut and looked as wise as the old owl who sat in the oak.
I pulled out my picture of Bramley Rashor and asked Luke Owen if he’d ever seen the man before.
He gazed at it a moment and then slowly returned it. “I’ve never seen him. At least I don’t think so. Who is he?”
I put the picture in my wallet. “A friend of Royal Blaine’s. I’m supposed to contact him to get Blaine’s legal matters straightened out.”
“Oh,” said Luke Owen. I didn’t like the sound of his voice. I got the distinct feeling I’d been had; he did know Rashor.
He briefed me on Royal Blaine. The stogie-smoking little creep had come to Owen and asked if he could rent part of his land to park his trailer on. Owen had rented him the trailer spot for ten bucks a month. Blaine’s story had been that he was doing a series of magazine articles on wheat and needed to get close to the soil to do a proper job.
“Hell, didn’t he even show you any credentials?” I asked.
He looked at me surprised. “Of course not. Anyway, why should I be suspicious of him? He seemed too ridiculous to be a danger to anyone.”
“Um,” I said, knowing how far from ridiculous the little guy really was. “He give you any trouble?”
Luke Owen looked at me closely, annoyed by the tone of my voice. “How do you mean, Madigan?”
“I mean, did he lean on you?”
Luke Owen ran a finger through his trim mustache, and smiled at me with amusement. “Of course not.”
“Dad,” said Taffy Owen, breaking in on our little give-and-take, “what about Mr. Madigan’s room?”
I stared at her. “I’ll bunk down at one of the fleabags in town,” I said. “You don’t need to put me up here.”
“Nonsense.” Luke Owen, raised his big hand like a cop at the corner. “You’ll stay here. I like the people who work for me to be around close. Taff, take him to the servant’s quarters.” He grinned at me. “I trust you won’t be offended.”
I went up with Taff to a big high-ceilinged room that would make Grand Central Station look like a clothes closet, and I had to laugh. Ashamed? I sat on the bed and bounced up and down a few times, pronounced it triple A, and promptly hung up my tie. That was all the luggage I had with me.
Luke Owen was half asleep in a big butterfly wing chair when we got back to the living room, but he smiled a forty-thousand dollar smile, and went on about whatever imaginative business he had, and Taffy took me onto the grounds to show me the lay of the land. I remembered the railroad tracks, and the red barn, and the trailer site a mile beyond, but the rest was all new to me. There were chicken pens, duck ponds, and various other farm accessories, and a smell that you don’t get much of in a big city except around the local slaughterhouse. It was all bucolic as hell, and the only thing that saved me was the fact that Taffy was the most pleasant farmer’s daughter I’d ever run into.
We were heading down toward the red barn when I thought I heard gunfire. It sounded just like Korea.
“I’m flipping my stack, Taff,” I said. “I’m dreaming up gun fire. Could this be possible?”
Taffy laughed. “Sure. It’s probably Biff.”
“Biff?” I ran through my catalogue of characters met and disliked. No Biff.
“My brother,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you about him?”
“Gun nut?” I asked.
“Sort of.” We went in through the entrance to the big red barn. A leathery young guy about my height lay stretched out on the barn floor, covered with straw and other refuse, firing a rifle at the opposite wall. He had about two dozen bottle caps lined up, tilted against the edge of the wall. He was slowly, methodically, picking them off one-two-three—not wasting a shot.
I stood there unhappily. I wanted to get to know Biff. I wanted him to like me. He could fire that baby in his arms, and I don’t mean just expertly. That rifle was part of him.
Pretty soon, without looking around at all, or noting us in any way, he said, “Who’s with you, Taff?”
Taffy laughed. “See? He’s got eyes in the back of his head. It’s a friend of ours, Biff. Cash Madigan.”
The leathery young man picked off three more bottle caps. Ping. Ping. Ping.
“Don’t soft-soap me, Taff. We don’t have a friend. What’s his angle? Financial, emotional, or just a rube?”
I didn’t like Biff already. And that wasn’t good. Because I knew I’d better, to live very long. I decided he was a fine fellow. I decided also never to turn my back within rifle range of him. He just happened to impress me that way. I’m a very psychic guy.
“Dad’s hired him to find out who killed Mr. Blaine.”
Ping. Ping. Ping. “Oh? The grapevine’s already figured that one out. It was your lover boy there, Taff. Cash Madigan.”
I stared at Taffy and she looked up at me, annoyed. She stepped over to Biff and leaned over him. “Get up, Biff, and meet Mr. Madigan.”
I heard a chuckle. Then two more pings. “Pretty formal title, Taff, for a guy you’ve already rolled in the hay…”
The rifle clattered on a stone. Taffy had him by the wrist, and she was sliding his wrist up his back toward his neck. The leathery young man, cursing a blue streak, came writhing around. His face was dark with anger when he got to his knees, kneeling there, glaring at his sister.
She let his arm go and stepped around in front of him, as nice as pie. “Up, Biff. And meet Mr. Madigan. Mr. Madigan, Biff Owen, my baby brother.”
I stuck out my hand and got hold of a cold fish. Not flabby, by a long shot. Tough. A frozen carp. Biff’s two eyes were split in the middle by his nose, and his nose was narrow and razor thin. His eyes were so close together they seemed to be going steady. He had a way of looking at you that made you want to get on the other side of him and watch his back departing. His mouth was thin and flat and full of danger. He was built for snarling and knifing and back-shooting.
But, like I say, I loved him like my girlfriend’s brother. What a target shooter!
“Hi, Biff,” I said, turning the old affability up about sixty thousand candlepower. “Glad to know you. You’re quite a hand with that shooting iron.”
“I sure am,” he snapped in a surly tone, and stooped over to hoist the rifle up off the floor. He inspected it carefully, and turned his burning blue eyes on his sister. “It’s okay, Taff, and it’s a good thing for you it is. Otherwise…”
He let the unvoiced threat hang in the air.
“Act your age,” Taffy said abruptly, and for a moment there I thought I’d better break them apart. They were going for each other’s throat. It’s nice to be part of a big family. There’s so much more friendliness and camaraderie around a big family. And blood.
“See you around,” Biff said finally, eyeing me up and down and measuring me for a burial plot, “provided I can’t avoid it.”
He was still pinging away in there when we walked away. I wiped the sweat off my face. “What’s his problem?”
Taffy looked at me. She shrugged. “His bark’s worse than his bite. He’s really a wonderful guy.”
“Why does he keep it so well covered?”
She shook her head. “He’s been that way now ever since he came home from college. There’s no telling.”
“He must have gone to the wrong college.”
She gave me a glare. “I mean he really has been different in the past few years. Nobody can figure it out.”
I sighed. “If I were your old man, I’d put a muzzle on that bird.”
She shut her mouth grimly. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
The rest of the afternoon was routine, with chickens and ducks and egg candlers and all those things that make farm life so dull and profitable—despite the cries of the politicians. I found out one thing for sure: I’m not the rustic type.
I forewent dinner at the Owen mansion and picked out a little beanery down on the highway near where Blaine’s trailer had been parked. My scheme was to buddy up with some of the noodlers down there to get a clear line on Rashor, if anybody had seen him. And there was also my job on Blaine. According to my contact with Royal Blaine, he wasn’t the type to keep to himself. That was probably the reason he got himself humped. I figured I’d start in the immediate neighborhood and then spread out toward town later on. I had to find him. Tell you why.
I’ve got this crazy job in an outfit called Whitby and Gatling. The Whitby and Gatling Surety Corporation. This is strictly double talk to any normal American citizen, so I’ll elucidate.
A Surety Corporation is a bonding company. In other words, a bank president wants to be sure his tellers don’t suddenly decide that all the money in the coffers belongs to them. So he has his tellers bonded by a surety company. Essentially, the bank president is betting the Surety Company that the employee is a dishonest lamster who’ll blow with the ghelt the first week in July. The Surety Corporation bets the employer that his charges are as honest as Abe Lincoln—or Andy Jackson, in case the client’s a Democrat.
Say the bank employee dusts to Norway with a sack full of the long green. The Surety Corporation loses its bet, and pays off to the bank president. But the Surety Corporation isn’t in this racket just for the boils. He sends one of his boys to Norway after the embezzler, as they’re known in the trade, and tries to bring him back. If the Surety boy gets back the money, the money goes to the Surety Corporation—it’s theirs by law now, since they’ve already paid off the bank president to the tune of the bond. There’s one slight catch, however. If the amount of money recovered by the Surety boys exceeds the amount they’ve paid to the bonded company, the difference is split between the two.
Nice little business. Lively at times, too. I’m no ordinary hired hand. I’m supposedly the trouble-shooter. When we get a big egg laid in the central office, I come in with my wide blue eyes and my shoulder holster, and I’m off into the sunset like a big bird.
The reason I’d come to Gotham was as follows: The Treasurer of a New York small parts firm in Long Island took off with the company’s entire payroll one Friday afternoon. The tune went something like $200,000 for the two-week amount—and that’s some tune. So I was called in and told I was on the Rashor case. Bramley Rashor being the magician who pulled this disappearing money act.
I started out tracking down some dead leads in Manhattan, and suddenly got a note from Royal Blaine, the stoolie, out in the prairie country. He told me to come to Gotham quick, that he had a couple mouthfuls to spill about Bramley Rashor. I hotfooted it to the boss, got his permission, drew out some expense money, and went to Gotham, where I met Blaine just where I’d intended to—except that my stoolie was a dead duck with not breath one left to waft me in the way of information.
The friendly joint on the highway was called Ray’s Truck Café. There were trucks stacked a mile deep around the place. There were semis, and trailers, and flatbeds loaded to the sky, all big highway-benders going West, with a couple of pickups tucked in between them just for laughs.
The Café was full of smoke and fried grease and loud talk. A faded woman in a white apron was waiting on the booths along the side of the room. A juke box was going, over in the corner, spilling out noise and green and red and yellow lights and a lot of rock and roll. Guys in leather jackets lined the stools and sat in the booths and grinned and laughed and cussed and lit cigarettes. It was the god-awfullest mess you’ve ever set eyes on.
I lowered myself onto one of the broken stools and a skinny girl with black hair and tired eyes took my order, which was a minute steak medium well done, with a plate of French Fries and tossed green salad on the side. She nodded and scratched her chest and yelled: “One cowhide, burn it; plate of parlez-vous and a weed patch on the fender.”
The next time she came by I leaned out and asked her if they sold newspapers around anywhere. She looked at me as if I had three heads instead of the usual two and shook hers. “Hell no, mister.” Then she glanced down behind the counter. “One of the Chi drivers left one here on his way through. Take it if you got need for it.”
She slung a paper over at me. I opened it up. It had catsup smeared over it, and grease, and some coffee drops, but I didn’t care. There I was in the left hand column. No picture, but my name in headlines. I was the first arrest in the Blaine case; I was also excused on lack of evidence and not held. Not one word about Taffy Owen. My, how that hush money helped.
Finally my meat came, and my potatoes and my salad. The girl’s description of them fit better than mine. Except for the meat. It was still bleeding. I’d seen steers hurt worse than that and still get well.
