In the lobby of the new police station, you can find three large framed photographs. One is of our governor, which is only fitting, while the other two bear a remarkable resemblance to Cliffie himself. In fact, they are of Cliffie. Both show him in his khaki uniform and campaign hat. One of them depicts him in a crouch aiming his Magnum right at the viewer. It’s a pulp-magazine cover pose. The other shows Cliffie standing next to the gallows where prisoners were hanged. The picture remained even after the legislature voted against capital punishment a few months ago. Cliffie didn’t want to deprive his fans of any thrills.
The woman at the front desk was Marjorie Kincaid, a buxom middle-aged woman with a tinted black beehive hairdo and a sweet, somewhat mannish face. She was supposed to hate me-that was an official order in this department-but if nobody was looking she always had a quick grin for me. Marjorie and my mom had been friends in school.
“How’s your dad?”
“Not very well, Marjorie.”
“I always told your mom she got the best one. We used to double-date all the time. I got Hank.” She made a face. “He fell off the wagon again last month.”
“I’m sorry, Marjorie.”
“I know it’s not his fault. I went through that program with him, where they teach you that it’s a disease and everything. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Well, why don’t you serve him some coffee and then you two can really get cozy?” A familiar and unwelcome voice.
There are times when I think Cliffie has superpowers. He can just appear, like one of those invisible avengers who can pop in and out of visibility in comic books.
Marjorie swiveled in her chair and started typing. Maybe I’d have Jamie come over here and get a few lessons.
“I’d like to see Harrison Doran.”
“No can do, McCain. I told you it’d be at least tomorrow.”
“I take it you haven’t talked to your cousin.”
“What cousin?”
“Your cousin the district attorney?”
“What about him?”
“I called him about twenty minutes ago. He said you have to let me see him. By law.”
“Bullroar.” Cliffie always watched his language in the presence of a woman.
“Go call him.”
His face was flushed now. He was so mad I wondered if his campaign hat would start spinning around on his head. “You wait here.”
I knew better than to talk any more to Marjorie. I went over and sat on one of the new scotch-plaid couches and smoked a cigarette.
An attorney named Dix Tolliver came in and nodded at me. He looked as if he’d just spotted a pile of doggie excrement. He was one of the Brahmins, a second-generation Brahmin in fact. He always dressed as if he was about to appear before the Supreme Court. I wondered how many gray flannel suits he owned. While he waited for Marjorie to finish up her phone call, he said, “So I guess that whole story about Doran being a rich boy from Yale isn’t true?” The patrician nose sniffed the plebian air. “And he already had a warrant out for his arrest back East?”
I tried not to look surprised. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he knew something vital about my client that I didn’t know. And saying anything could be dangerous. If, for instance, I said, “Yeah, but it’s a minor matter” and he said, “You mean killing a family of six is a minor matter?” where would I be then?
Fortunately, Marjorie hung up and distracted him. He was here to see a detective on another matter. She spoke into an intercom and before you could say kiss my ass a detective appeared. The men shook hands and joked a bit like the golfing buddies they were and then disappeared into the innards of the station. Face it. I was just jealous I didn’t get that kind of treatment.
Cliffie would be damned if he debased himself by telling me that I had the legal right to see Doran. He sent a uniformed cop named Winslow to guide me back to one of the interrogation rooms.
“I assume you’ve got the room bugged?”
“That supposed to be funny?” Winslow, all khaki and malice, said as he scratched at his cheek as we moved along the hallway. He had a boozer’s nose.
He opened the door for me then stood aside to let me pass. A long narrow room with a long narrow folding table and six folding chairs and several cheap chipped glass ashtrays. Woolworth specials. Despite the air conditioning, the room smelled of used old sad griefs.
“We’ll bring him in. You have fifteen minutes.”
“The DA said I have half an hour.”
“Around here, the chief makes the rules.” He made sure to slam the door.
Harrison Doran looked five years older when Winslow followed him into the room. The leg irons and the handcuffs clanked and clinked. His expression was mournful. His jail suit was gray and two sizes too big for him. Winslow slammed him into a chair. Doran’s eyes were downcast. He hadn’t looked at me once.
“Fifteen minutes.” He managed to slam the door even harder this time.
“We don’t have much time.” His head still hung down, his long, lanky blond hair covering his forehead. “Did you hear me, Doran? We don’t have much time.”
The eyes were crazed when I finally saw them. “I wanted a real lawyer. I know who you are, man. I need a real lawyer. I mean I don’t mean any offense, but when I heard you tell Sykes you were my lawyer, I couldn’t believe it. Molly said she’d help me, but-” His shrug reinforced his words. “I need a major lawyer.”
“The kind Joan Baez could get you?”
“You can kiss my ass, you hack.”
I stood up. “Okay, moron. I just paid my dues. Be sure and mention that to Molly.”
“Molly. She’s an idiot.”
I wondered what kind of sentence I’d get for picking up one of the folding chairs and beating him about the head sixty or seventy times.
Then he started sobbing. Everybody was crying this morning. He brought his silver-cuffed hands to his face and wept. I sat back down and smoked a cigarette. I pushed the pack across the table. When he saw it, he snuffled up some tears and said, “How am I supposed to light it?”
“Take a cigarette. I have a match.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Sure you did.” Then I just said it. “Look, I think you’re a showboat bullshit artiste and you think I’m a hayseed lawyer. Right now neither of those things matter.”
He manipulated his hands around the cuffs to get a cigarette in his mouth. It was like one of those tricks contestants on game shows have to perform to win a refrigerator. I gave him a light.
“Man, you really tell it straight. ‘Showboat bullshit artiste.’ Wow.” He was blinking at seventy miles an hour.
“Anybody hit you while you’ve been in here?”
“No.”
“How many times did they talk to you?”
“Three times. Always with that moron Sykes. He yelled at me so much, I was surprised he had a voice left.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, man. You kidding? I’m a smart guy.”
“Yeah, Yale, wasn’t it?” Then: “Sorry.” Then: “Harrison Doran probably isn’t your real name, is it?”
“No. It’s Elmer Dodd.”
“You’re kidding me. Elmer Fudd?”
“Gee, I never heard that one before.”
He exhaled smoke in a long wavering stream. “I grew up on a farm in Ohio and ran away and joined the Navy when I was sixteen. When I got out, I tried working in a grocery store, but I couldn’t cut it. I just saw my whole life in front of me, you know? I couldn’t deal with it.” He still snuffled up tears once in a while. “So this chick I knew got me interested in this theater group-this was in New York-and I really got caught up in acting. I mean I’m good looking. That helped. But I also had a little talent.” A quick smile. “That didn’t help. Hundreds of people have a little acting talent. So I started inventing roles for myself to play in real life.”
“Like Harrison Doran, political activist?”
“Yeah, it’s like a drug. Pretending you’re somebody else. You don’t have to be you, you know what I mean? People give you places to live and feed you and you can pretty much have any girl you want. But I never had this happen before.”
“There’s a warrant out for your arrest in the East. What’s that about?”
“I got a gig as a disk jockey in this real small station. I started banging the owner’s mistress. He tried to hit me with a whiskey bottle one night. I beat the shit out of him. But he was a big man in town, so the cops put it all on me. And I ran.”
A knock on the door. “Five minutes, McCain. The chief talked to the DA, and the DA said he didn’t say anything about you having a half hour.”
Elmer Dodd smiled. “So you like to make up stuff, too?”
Winslow went away, footsteps slapping down the hallway.
“What were you doing at Bennett’s at three in the morning?”
He shook his head. “Molly’d gone home. I don’t remember much; I mean I was really shit-faced, man. I took her car. I’d seen Bennett’s place before. I remember being so mad I wanted to tell him off. That’s another thing I have a problem with. My temper. I’ve got a bad one. But then I always get depressed, too. I guess I might as well tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“There was this girl I was in love with, and she left me after she found out I was just making up my past. And I went kind of crazy. They put me in a mental hospital for three weeks. I still have a lot of trouble with depression, I guess.”
I tried not to think about how the DA would characterize Elmer Fudd here: a bunco artist with a bad temper who’d spent time in a mental hospital and was seen at the murder victim’s home at three in the morning. Not to mention two violent confrontations with Bennett. A lawyer’s dream.
“Do you remember seeing Bennett?”
“I didn’t make it that far. I remember tripping over something when I was walking up the driveway. That’s how I got this gash on my arm. I must have passed out. It was about four o’clock when I woke up. I was in the same place. I obviously didn’t make it up to the house.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t kill him?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m really in trouble, aren’t I?”
This time I heard Winslow before he got to the door. The knock was louder this time. “Your five minutes is up.”
“I timed it. I’ve got two minutes left.”
“Not according to my watch.” He opened the door. “C’mon, McCain. You’re lucky you got to see him at all.”
Elmer Dodd rose up out of his seat and reached out for me, his handcuffs clacking. “You’re not going to leave me like this, are you, man?”
“I’ll be back.” There wasn’t anything more to say. I saw the kid in him now. Scared and desperate. The tears were back.
“Get out of here, McCain.” Winslow put his hand on my shoulder and I brushed it away.
“I’ll bet you don’t wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, do you?”
Believe it or not, some people don’t find me amusing.