Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen Max

News of the Whisperer's arrest spread quickly.When Noonan, the men he brought, and I returned to the city hall with the gambler and Jerry who had come back to life, there were at least a hundred people watching. None of these people seemed very happy.Noonan's men—a bunch of ragged thugs—moved about nervously, pale.But Noonan was still the most spirited man west of the Mississippi, and despite his bad luck in the torture of the Whisperer, it didn't affect his good mood in the slightest. No matter what tricks they use, the Whisperers never give in.He said that he would not speak to anyone except his lawyer, and he would not show any weakness.Although Noonan hated the gambler so much, he didn't throw him in jail, nor handed him over to the "Bone Breaking Team".The Whisperer killed the chief's younger brother, and the Chief hated him deeply, but the Whisperer was an important figure in the drug town after all, so it's not good to be rough on him casually.

Noonan finally got tired of playing games with his prisoner and sent him up to hide—the cell was on the top floor of the town hall.I lit another Commissioner's cigar, and read carefully the testimony he had received from the woman in the hospital, which I already knew from Dinah and McSwain. The Chief wanted me to come to his house for dinner, and I lied and declined, pretending that my wrist—now bandaged—would disturb me.It's actually just a little burn. Whilst we were talking about this, two plainclothes brought in a red-faced kid who stood behind the Whisperer and took my bullet for him.A bullet broke one of his ribs and he slipped out the back door while we were all busy.Noonan's men caught him in a clinic, but the chief couldn't squeeze anything out of him and had to take him to the hospital.

I stand up and prepare to leave. "Thanks to Brand for tipping me off this time, I hope that she and Rolf will not be involved." The chief took my left hand again—for the fifth or sixth time in the past two hours. "If you just want to take good care of her, it's absolutely fine," he assured me, "but you can tell her that if she can help arrest that bastard, then she can ask for whatever she wants." I said I would pass it on, and went back to the hotel, thinking only of the clean, white bed.But it's nearly eight o'clock, and it's time to take care of my stomach.So I went into the restaurant of the hotel to settle the matter.

I light my cigar and stop when I see a comfortable leather chair in the lobby.The move brought on a traveling railroad auditor from Denver, and we chatted for a while and found out we both knew someone who lived in St. Louis.Then there was a burst of gunfire from the street. We ran to the door and deduced that the gunshots were coming from near City Hall.I left the auditor and headed for it. I was about two-thirds of the way down the distance when a car was coming at me, very fast, with bullets coming out of the backseat. I turned back into an alley and put the safety on the pistol.As the car passed me, an arc lamp happened to illuminate two faces in the front row.The driver's face means nothing to me.The top half of the other face is hidden by a pulled-down hat, and the bottom half belongs to the Whisperer.

The alley I was in was opposite another alley, leading to another block, with lights on far away at the end.Between the lights and me, someone was following the Whisperer's car, hiding his body among shadows that might have been trash cans. The look of this man made me forget the Whisperer for a moment, because he had bow legs. A car of policemen roared by, firing bullets at the first car. I crossed the street and rushed into the alley where the bandy-legged guy seemed to be hiding. If he's the guy I'm looking for, I'm sure he's unarmed.Thinking this way, I walked straight in the middle of the muddy alley, all my senses focused on those shadows.

After walking about three-quarters of a block, another shadow jumped out of one shadow—a figure fleeing in a hurry was exposed in front of my eyes. "Stop!" I yelled, and hurried a few steps towards him. "Stop or I'll kill you, McSwain!" He ran forward a few strides before stopping and turning his head. "Oh, it's you," he said, as if it didn't matter who brought him back to the cell. "Yes." I admitted, "Why did you all run out?" "I didn't know anything. Someone blew up the top floor and I fell out of the hole with the others. Some of the prisoners evaded the police and I ran behind a group of them. Then we separated. , I was thinking of going up the hill through town. I had nothing to do with the whole thing, I just took advantage of it."

"The Whisperer was just caught this evening," I told him. "Damn it! That's it. Noonan should have known he couldn't knock that kid down—at least not in this small city." We're still standing in the alley where McSwain stopped running. "Do you know why he was arrested?" I asked. "Well, for killing Tim." "Do you know who killed Tim?" "What? Of course it's him." "It's you." "Huh? What's going on? Are you an idiot?" "I'm holding a gun in my left hand," I warned him.

"But, come to think of it—didn't he tell the woman the Whisperer did it himself? What's the matter with you?" "He didn't say 'whisperer'. I've heard women call him 'Tarrell Max' but never heard a man call him that. Men call him 'whisperer'. Tim wasn't talking about Max , but Max—the first half of McSwain—and he died before he could finish. Don’t forget the gun in my hand." "But why should I kill him? He's after the Whisperer's—" "I haven't figured that out yet," I confessed. "But you and your wife are divorced, and Tim's a playboy, right? Maybe there's something between you, and I'll find out. Start me up." What is suspicious is that you didn't ask that girl for more money."

"Stop it," he begged. "You know it doesn't make sense. Why am I still hanging around after that? If I did, I'd be like Whisperer trying to get an alibi." "Why? Because you were a cop at the time. The job required you to be around - to see if everything was going well, and then take care of it yourself." "You know damn well that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense. For God's sake, stop talking." "I don't mind how absurd that sounds," I said. "At least it will be of some value to Noonan when we get back. He must be devastated by the Whisperer's escape, and this news will give him some points." My heart."

Kneeling in the muddy alley, McSwain cried, "Oh, God, no! He'll strangle me with his own hands!" "Stand up and stop screaming!" I yelled, "You want to tell me the truth now?" He wailed: "He will strangle me with his own hands!" "It's up to you. If you don't want to tell, I'll tell Noonan. But if you tell me everything, I'll find a way to help you." "What can you do?" He asked desperately, and cried again with snot and tears, "How can I believe that you will find a way?" I risked a little truth to him.

"You once said that you had a premonition of what I would do when I came to the drug town, then you should know that my trick is to separate Noonan and the Whisperer, making Noonan think that the Whisperer killed Tim. But if you don't want to play with me, It's okay, let's go play with Noonan." "You mean you won't tell him?" he asked eagerly. "You promise?" "I can't promise anything," I said. "Why should I promise? You're in the palm of my hand. Tell me or Noonan? Make up your mind, I don't want to stand here all night." He decided to tell me. "I don't know how much you know, but it's true that like you just said, my wife fell in love with Tim and made me homeless. You can ask anyone, was I a good person before that? I Always like that, I give her whatever she wants. But for me, most of what she wants is hard to get. I just can't do it, and if we could, we wouldn't fucking Became like that. So I made her move out and signed the divorce papers so she could marry him. I thought he meant it. "It didn't take long before I heard that he was pursuing that Myrtle Jannison. I couldn't accept it. I gave him a chance to be with Helen, above board, and now he actually abandoned her to go after that Myrtle, I absolutely can't take it. Helen didn't do any tricks, I met him by the lake that night just by accident. I saw him go downhill to their summer house and followed. Good place to speak clearly. "I think we both had a little drink. We got into a pretty heated argument anyway, and he finally got excited and drew his gun. But he didn't dare to shoot. I grabbed the gun and it went off in the scuffle. I swear to God it wasn't what it seemed and I didn't mean to kill him. Both of us had guns in our hands when the fire went off and I was thrown into the grass and I can still hear him moaning and talking Just at that moment someone came - a woman came running from the hotel, it was Myrtle Jannison. "I wanted to go back and hear what Tim said, so I knew where I was, but I didn't want to be the first to be there. So I listened to him screaming while I waited for the girl to come to him. But It was so far away that I couldn't hear what he was saying. When she found him, I ran to him just in time to hear him trying to say my name before he died. "I never thought she'd hear Whisperer's name until she approached me about suicide letters, two hundred dollars, and diamonds. All the while I was hanging around, pretending to arrange jobs—I was a cop— — trying to figure out where I was. Then she found me and I knew I was safe. That was the way it was until you brought it up again.” Stamping in the mud, he added: "A week later, my wife died—accident, haha, accident! She crashed her Ford in front of Highway 6, just off Tanner. On the long slope, he died there." "Does Loch Mock belong to the county?" I asked. "No, it belongs to Giant Rock County." "That's not Noonan's precinct. What if I take you there to the sheriff?" "No. The sheriff there is Senator Keefer's son-in-law—Tom Cook. Might as well stay here, and Noonan can get me through Keefer." "If things are as you said, at least you have the opportunity to go to court and have a fair debate with them!" "They're not going to give me a chance. If there was a fair chance in the world, I'd go for it—it's not going to happen to them." "We're going back to the police station," I said. "Keep your mouth shut."
Noonan was staggering up and down, cursing the six officers.These people, though standing around, would rather be elsewhere. "I found this guy hanging around outside," I said, pushing McSwain forward. Noonan knocked the former detective to the ground, kicked him several times, and told one of the officers to take him away. Someone called Noonan.I took the opportunity to sneak away and walked to the hotel without even saying good night. Suddenly there was gunfire from the north. Three men passed me, tiptoeing and sneaking. Not far ahead, another man saw me and went straight to the side of the street, leaving a lot of space for me to pass.I don't know him, and he probably doesn't know me either. Another gunshot was heard not far away. I got to the hotel just in time to see a battered black RV driving down the street, going at least fifty miles an hour, with the curtains drawn and the car full of people. I grinned at the car.The drug town covered with a lid began to boil.I feel more like a local, because even remembering the very bad parts of this upheaval still can't stop me from getting a solid twelve hours of sleep.