Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner Page B

help.”
    “That shows what an optimist you are. Sometime when you haven’t anything else to do, get Professor Borchard’s book Convicting the Innocent , and read the sixty-five cases of authenticated wrongful convictions that are set forth in that book. And, believe me, that’s just scratching the surface.”
    “I don’t have time to read.”
    “You will.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    I said, “Unless you show a little savvy you may be spending the long afternoon hours in a cell.”
    “That’s a cheap, shoddy attempt to frighten me.”
    “It is,” I admitted.
    “Why are you doing it if you don’t want money?”
    “I want information.”
    “Yet you tell me that I shouldn’t give out information, that I should see a lawyer.”
    “ If you’re guilty.”
    “What else do you want to know, Mr. Lam?”
    “Garvanza,” I said. “Ever hear your husband mention that name?”
    This time there could be no mistaking the little start that she gave; then her face was a poker face once more. “Garvanza,” she said slowly. “I’ve heard that name somewhere.”
    “Your husband ever talk with you about a Garvanza?”
    “No, I don’t think he did. We discussed business very infrequently. I am not certain whether he knew a Mr. Garvanza or not.”
    I said, “When I mentioned Meredith, you wanted to know whether it was a man or a woman. On the Garvanza question you popped right out with a denial without asking whether it was Mr. Garvanza or Miss Garvanza or Mrs. Garvanza.”
    “Or the little Garvanza baby,” she said sarcastically.
    “Exactly.”
    “I’m very much afraid you and I aren’t going to get along at all, Mr. Lam.”
    “I don’t see any reason why not. I think we’re doing fine.”
    “I don’t.”
    “As soon as you get over the act of righteous indigna-tion that you’re using to cover up your slip when I mentioned Garvanza’s name, I think we’re going to be real chummy.”
    The slate-colored eyes studied me for four or five seconds which felt like as many minutes; then she said, “Yes, Mr. Lam. He knew Gabby Garvanza. I don’t know how well. I’ve heard him speak of Mr. Garvanza, and when he read in the papers that Gabby Garvanza had been shot down in Los Angeles he was very, very much worried. I know that. He tried to keep me from seeing it, but I know that he was. Now I’ve answered your question. Where do we go from there?”
    “Now,” I said, “you’re beginning to talk. Garvanza never called on him at the house here?”
    “I have heard him mention Mr. Garvanza’s name. And I know that he knew Gabby Garvanza. Offhand, I don’t know exactly when Garvanza was shot. Let me see, that was on the Thursday before my husband disappeared. He was reading the paper, and all of a sudden he gave a startled exclamation, a half-strangled cry.
    “It was at breakfast. I looked up at him and thought he might have something stuck in his throat. He coughed and reached for the coffee cup as though to take a swallow of liquid, then kept on coughing, putting on an act of having choked over something he’d eaten.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I played right along. I got up and patted him on the back a few times, told him to hold his head down between his knees, and then, after a while, he quit coughing and smiled at me and said that a piece of toast had gone down his windpipe.”
    “You knew he was lying?”
    “Of course.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “After he’d left for the office I folded the newspaperover in just the position it had been in when he’d been reading, and looked for the item that had alarmed him. It must have been the one about a Los Angeles mobster, Gabby Garvanza, being shot. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why that would have made any difference to George, but I remembered it. The paper said Garvanza would recover.
    “I knew something was really bothering him all Sunday night and all Monday. When he told me he was going to the mine Tuesday I felt