Fear is the Key

‘Where?’

‘If I knew that it wouldn’t be lost.’

‘We are aware of that,’ the judge said dryly. ‘But if we could localize the area we could notify the appropriate police stations where it might have been handed in. When did you first notice you no longer had your passport and where were you at the time?’

‘Three days ago – and you know as well as I do where I was at the time. Sitting in the dining-room of the La Contessa Motel, eating my dinner and minding my own business when Wild Bill Hickock here and his posse jumped me.’ I gestured at the diminutive alpaca-coated sheriff sitting in a cane-bottomed chair in front of the judge’s bench and thought that there could be no height barriers for the law enforcement officers of Marble Springs: the sheriff and his elevator shoes together couldn’t have topped five feet four. Like the judge, the sheriff was a big disappointment to me. While I had hardly expected a Wild West lawman complete with Frontier Colt I had looked for something like either badge or gun. But no badge, no gun. None that I could see. The only gun in sight in the court-house was a short-barrelled Colt revolver stuck in the holster of the police officer who stood behind and a couple of feet to the right of me.

‘They didn’t jump you,’ Judge Mollison was saying patiently. ‘They were looking for a prisoner who had escaped from the nearby camp of one of our state convict road forces. Marble Springs is a small town and strangers easily identifiable. You are a stranger. It was natural –’

‘Natural!’ I interrupted. ‘Look, Judge, I’ve been talking to the gaoler. He says the convict escaped at six o’clock in the afternoon. The Lone Ranger here picks me up at eight. Was I supposed to have escaped, sawed off my irons, had a bath, shampoo, manicure and shave, had a tailor measure and fit a suit for me, bought underclothes, shirt and shoes –’

‘Such things have happened before,’ the judge interrupted. ‘A desperate man, with a gun or club –’

‘––and grown my hair three inches longer all in the space of two hours?’ I finished.

‘It was dark in there, Judge––’ the sheriff began, but Mollison waved him to silence.

‘You objected to being questioned and searched. Why?’

‘As I said I was minding my own business. I was in a respectable restaurant, giving offence to no one. And where I come from a man doesn’t require a state permit to enable him to breathe and walk around.’

‘He doesn’t here either,’ the judge said patiently. ‘All they wanted was a driver’s licence, insurance card, social security card, old letters, any means of identification. You could have complied with their request.’

‘I was willing to.’

‘Then why this?’ The judge nodded down at the sheriff. I followed his glance. Even when I’d first seen him in the La Contessa the sheriff had struck me as being something less than good-looking and I had to admit that the large plasters on his forehead and across the chin and the corner of the mouth did nothing to improve him.

‘What else do you expect?’ I shrugged. ‘When big boys start playing games little boys should stay home with Mother.’ The sheriff was halfway out of his seat, eyes narrowed and ivory-knuckled fists gripping the cane arms of his chair, but the judge waved him back impatiently. ‘The two gorillas he had with him started roughing me up. It was self-defence.’

‘If they assaulted you,’ the judge asked acidly, ‘how do you account for the fact that one of the officers is still in hospital with damaged knee ligaments and the other has a fractured cheekbone, while you are still unmarked?’

‘Out of training, Judge. The state of Florida should spend more money on teaching its law officers to look after themselves. Maybe if they ate fewer hamburgers and drank less beer –’

‘Be silent!’ There was a brief interval while the judge seemed to be regaining control of himself, and I looked round the court again. The schoolgirls were still goggle-eyed, this beat anything they’d ever had in their civics classes before: the dark-blonde in the front seat was looking at me with a curious half-puzzled expression on her face, as if she were trying to work out something: behind her, his gaze lost in infinity, the man with the broken nose chewed on the stump of a dead cigar with machine-like regularity: the court reporter seemed asleep: the attendant at the door surveyed the scene with an Olympian detachment: beyond him, through the open door, I could see the harsh glare of the late afternoon sun on the dusty white street and beyond that again, glimpsed through a straggling grove of palmettos, the twinkling ripple of sunlight reflecting off the green water of the Gulf of Mexico … The judge seemed to have recovered his composure.

‘We have established,’ he said heavily, ‘that you are truculent, intransigent, insolent and a man of violence. You also carry a gun – a small-bore Lilliput, I believe it is called. I could already commit you for contempt of court, for assaulting and obstructing constables of the law in the course of the performance of their duties and for being in illegal possession of a lethal weapon. But I won’t.’ He paused for a moment, then went on: ‘We will have much more serious charges to prefer against you.’

The court reporter opened one eye for a moment, thought better of it and appeared to go to sleep again. The man with the broken nose removed his cigar, examined it, replaced it and resumed his methodical champing. I said nothing.

‘Where were you before you came here?’ the judge asked abruptly.

‘St Catherine.’

‘I didn’t mean that, but – well, how did you arrive here from St Catherine?’

‘By car.’

‘Describe it – and the driver.’

‘Green saloon – sedan, you’d call it. Middle-aged businessman and his wife. He was grey, she was blonde.’

‘That’s all you can remember?’ Mollison asked politely.

‘That’s all.’

‘I suppose you realize that description would fit a million couples and their cars?’

‘You know how it is,’ I shrugged. ‘When you’re not expecting to be questioned on what you’ve seen you don’t bother –’

‘Quite, quite.’ He could be very acid, this judge. ‘Out of state car, of course?’

‘Yes. But not of course.’

‘Newly arrived in our country and already you know how to identify licence plates of –’

‘He said he came from Philadelphia. I believe that’s out of state.’

The court reporter cleared his throat. The judge quelled him with a cold stare, then turned back to me.

‘And you came to St Catherine from –’

‘Miami.’

‘Same car, of course?’

‘No. Bus.’

The judge looked at the clerk of the court, who shook his head slightly, then turned back to me. His expression was less than friendly.

‘You’re not only a fluent and barefaced liar, Chrysler’ – he’d dropped the ‘Mister’ so I assumed the time for courtesies was past – ‘but a careless one. There’s no bus service from Miami to St Catherine. You stayed the previous night in Miami?’

I nodded.

‘In a hotel,’ he went on. ‘But, of course, you will have forgotten the name of that hotel?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact –’

‘Spare us.’ The judge held up his hand. ‘Your effrontery passes all limits and this court will no longer be trifled with. We have heard enough. Cars, buses, St Catherine, hotels, Miami – lies, all lies. You’ve never been in Miami in your life. Why do you think we kept you on remand for three days?’

‘You tell me,’ I encouraged him.

‘I shall. To make extensive inquiries. We’ve checked with the immigration authorities and every airline flying into Miami. Your name wasn’t on any passenger or aliens list, and no one answering to your description was seen that day. You would not be easily overlooked.’

I knew what he meant, all right. I had the reddest hair and the blackest eyebrows I’d ever seen on anyone and the combination was rather startling. I’d got used to it myself, but I had to admit it took a bit of getting used to. And when you added to that a permanent limp and a scar that ran from the corner of my right brow to the lobe of my right ear – well, when it came to identification, I was the answer to the policeman’s prayer.

‘As far as we can discover,’ the judge went on coldly, ‘you’ve spoken the truth once. Only once.’ He broke off to look at the youth who had just opened the door leading to some chambers in the rear, and lifted his eyebrows in fractional interrogation. No impatience: no irritation: all very calm: Judge Mollison was no pushover.

‘This just came for you, sir,’ the boy said nervously. He showed an envelope. ‘Radio message. I thought –’