Enough! (A Travesty and Ordo) (4 page)

I kept dragging out my other money, most of it
in twenties and tens with a few fifties sprinkled here and there. The eight-sixty from various pawnshops, the six hundred from the
bad checks, the four-fifty from the nostalgia shops, the two seventy-five from
the checking account. And another envelope; tossing it to him, I said,
“My former savings account. Two thousand seven hundred
sixty-three dollars and eighty cents.”

“It’s an amazing thing,” he said,
placidly counting, “but most everybody’s worth more than they
realize.”

“Fascinating,” I said, and pushed
across the pyramid of loose bills. “Here’s another twenty-one eighty-five.”

The waiter, returning, placed my drink where
my money had been and said, “How does a person get to be your
friend?”

I picked up the drink. “Put this on his
bill,” I said.

“I should think so,” the waiter
said, and left.

I sipped and Edgarson counted. Then I sipped
some more and Edgarson counted some more. Then I sipped some more and Edgarson
said, “I make that six thousand four hundred and forty-eight dollars so
far.” The bills, upon being counted, had disappeared into his clothing,
and now he shoved my eighty cents back across the table to me, saying, “We
don’t want to mess with change. But we would like to see some more
greenbacks.”

“Out of my green sack,” I said,
delving down inside my shirt and bringing out the swag. Propping the sack like
a dildo in my lap, I loosened the drawstrings and started pulling out more
cash.

This time I also did some counting, since I
hadn’t had a chance yet to find out how much I’d made from my first excursion
into major crime. Sorry, second excursion; I was forgetting Laura. “Two
hundred,” I said, and flipped a stack of twenties across the table. “One eighty,” and a stack of tens. And so on and
so on and so on.

And yet the bottom of the sack was reached too
soon. I’d needed thirty-six hundred dollars, but my
total profit from the bank job was only two thousand, seven hundred eighty.

Edgarson noticed it, too. “Nine thousand,
two hundred and twenty-eight dollars,” he said at last. “I make you
seven hundred and seventy-two dollars short.”

“I can’t rob another bank,” I said.
“You’re just going to have to bend your principles in this case, or by God
I’ll kill us both.” I clutched at the toy gun beneath my coat, letting
Edgarson see as much of it as the bank teller had seen. “I’ve gone through
enough today. I can’t go through any more.” My voice was rising, and it
was by no means entirely fake.

Edgarson made calming patting motions in the
air. “Take it easy,” he told me. “Take it easy, Mr. Thorpe,
there’s no reason to get upset. Why, if I can’t make allowances here and there,
what sort of fella would I be?”

I could tell him what sort of fella he was,
but I didn’t. I merely sat there and glared at him and clutched the inscribed
handle of my pistol.

“Now,” he said, and it seemed to me
that through his professional calm I detected just the slightest hint of
uneasiness. “Now, I think you’re being honest with me,” he said,
“and you really can’t raise any more money than this, and I think it just
wouldn’t be fair of me not to accept this nine
thousand dollars and call it square.”

I relaxed somewhat, but my hand remained on my
gun. “All right/’ I said.

He took out that envelope again and extended
it to me. “Here you are, my friend.”

I finally released the gun, and used that hand
to take the envelope. Having peered at the negative and seen vaguely that it
was the right one, I said, “And this is the only copy, right? I shudder to
think what would happen if you suddenly came back with another one.”

“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “you
wrong me. There aren’t any more negatives, and there aren’t any more prints.
And once I put in a false report, I couldn’t very well go back and call myself
a liar, now, could I?”

That made sense. “All right,” I
said.

“Speaking of which,” he said,
withdrawing two larger envelopes from an inner pocket, “here’s the report
I won’t be turning in. You might want to keep it yourself. This other one’s the
report I will turn in, if you’d like to take a look at it.”

I would, but I glanced through the truthful
one first. “Agitated manner…hurrying in a guilty fashion…
seeming nervous and upset…” This Edgarson wasn’t a subtle writer, but
he got his message across.

The false report made for pleasanter reading.
Making sure which was which, I gave him back the false one and put the truthful
copy in one of my moneyless pockets.

Edgarson signalled for the check, then said to
me, “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

My hand strayed toward my pistol. “What
was that?”

He did his air-patting gesture again.
“Nothing to get upset about,” he assured me. “You just happened
to mention you were in some sort of marital difficulty with your wife, so I’d
like to suggest you have a talk with one of the staff people at my agency. It’s
surprising sometimes just how—”

“What?” I couldn’t believe it.
“You’re sitting there and hawking your goddam detective agency at
me?”

Very earnestly he said, “You can’t do
better than Tobin-Global, Mr. Thorpe. Seventy-four years of reli—”

“Stop talking,” I told him. “Do
us both a favor, Edgarson, and stop talking.”

The waiter provided a welcome interruption by
showing up with the check. While Edgarson gathered pieces of my money with
which to pay it, the waiter gave me a look and said, “I get off at
three.”

“Tell him,” I said.

Edgarson paid, and the waiter went away, and I
said, “I want to come along with you when you turn in the report.”

He frowned. “That might not be wise,
having the two of us seen together.”

“I’ll wait outside. But I want to know
for sure you’ve gone straight to your agency and turned in that report.”

Shrugging, he said, “If it will ease your
mind, Mr. Thorpe, come right ahead.”

*

Tobin-Global Investigations was in the Graybar Building, back of Grand Central. I rode up in the
elevator with Edgarson and paced the corridor while he went inside. He was gone
about three minutes, and then he came back, smiling, flashing his jacket pocket
where the envelope no longer protruded, saying, “All done, Mr. Thorpe.
It’s turned in and your worries are over.”

“I have to be sure,” I said. “I
want to be able to sleep nights.”

“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “I’m not
any kind of trouble for you at all. Now, a man in my job has to turn in his
reports, and I just turned in mine, and I wouldn’t dare tell a different story
later. Not where there’s a murder mixed in.

“So I’m safe from you.”

“Absolutely.”

“Good,” I said. “Now I wonder
if I could ask you a favor.”

He seemed doubtful. “Yes,
sir?”

“Sooner or later the police will come ask
me about last night, and I’d like to try on you what I plan to tell them and
see what you think of it. From a professional point of view, I mean.”

Relieved, expansive, he said, “Well, I’d
be happy to, Mr. Thorpe. That’s a very good idea.”

So, standing there in the corridor with him, I
told him the story: “I took Laura to a press preview late yesterday
afternoon, and then to dinner, and then home. At dinner, she told me she was
worried because she believed her husband had hired somebody to murder her.”

He frowned at that. “Oh, now, Mr.
Thorpe,” he said, “I don’t think you ought to start making things up,
you’ll just create suspicion. It’s better to tell a simple straightforward
story.”

“Well, wait a minute,” I said.
“Listen to the way this one works out, and see what you think.”

Shrugging, he said, “If you insist, Mr.
Thorpe, I’ll listen.”

“Fine. Anyway,
at dinner Laura told me there’d been somebody hanging around and she was afraid
it was the hired killer. Well, of course I didn’t believe her,
I told her she was imagining things. Then, when I took her home, she pointed
out a man loitering on the other side of the street and said that was the one
she’d meant.” I gave Edgarson a long slow look up and down. “I think
I could give a pretty clear description of that man,” I said.

His brows were coming down in an angry straight
line over his eyes. “Just what the hell is all this?”

“To get on with the story,” I said,
“I volunteered to go upstairs with Laura to her apartment and stay with
her a while, but she said no, she’d rather be alone because she was going to
try phoning her husband and maybe settling their differences once and for all.
So I said good night and went home.”

“I don’t know what you think you can gain
with a story like that,” Edgarson told me, “but if you tell it to
anybody you’ll just make trouble for yourself, not for anybody else.”

“You told me you entered that apartment
last night,” I reminded him. “I know you moved the body, because you
found that envelope under it. Are you absolutely sure you didn’t leave any
fingerprints, any traces of yourself at all? If you’re certain, then you’re
probably safe, it’ll just be your word against mine.”

“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “you’re
a grade A son of a bitch, do you know that?”

“Of course,” I said, “I could
tell a simpler story.”

If it weren’t for the pistol he knew to be in
my pocket, I think he would have tried taking a poke at me. “You’d goddam
better,” he said.

I smiled at him. “And you’d goddam better
give me back my nine thousand dollars.”

*

It was good to be home again, my possessions
once more about me. And it was very good to have been able to do Edgarson in
the eye. If I hadn’t been able to even the score with him somehow it would
surely have rankled in my mind a good long time, but as it was the expression
on his face as he’d handed back fistful after fistful of green paper was a
memory I would treasure always.

After a leisurely shower and shave, and a nice
lunch of chicken breasts in grape sauce (left over from Kit’s last visit), I
sat at my desk to tot up the results of the day’s activities and to learn that
Edgarson had stiffed me for two hundred thirty dollars. I chuckled indulgently;
let him save face if he wanted. Even with that petty larceny, and the
incredible interest the pawnbrokers had charged me for the two-hour use of
their money, my bank robbery had left me nearly twenty-four hundred dollars
richer than when I’d gotten up this morning. My checking account was healthy,
Edgarson was no longer a threat, and surely it wouldn’t be impossible to
replace that R left behind at the bank. Life, all in all, was not unpleasant.

And what did the evening hold in store? A screening, a dinner for two? Checking my calendar, I saw
that today’s notation read, “Dinner, Laura, 7:30.”

Well. Well, it looked as though I had an
unexpected free evening. Wonder what Kit’s doing tonight?

I had nearly finished dialing Kit’s number
when it suddenly struck me that I had better keep that original date with
Laura. It was noted on my calendar, why wouldn’t it also appear on hers? At
seven-thirty tonight I’d better be in the lobby of Laura’s apartment building,
ready for our date, ringing her doorbell.

TWO

The Affair of the Hidden Lover

Somebody buzzed to let
me in.

Laura?
Laura
, I
thought, and I wasn’t sure myself whether I was thinking of Laura Penney or of
the 1944 Otto Preminger movie. Either way it was the dead girl come back to
life, and a nasty shock. Gene Tierney moved in the shadowy recesses of my mind,
and I felt uncomfortably like Dana Andrews as I pushed open the door and
crossed the pocket lobby to the pocket elevator.

When I emerged on the
fourth floor a man wearing an open black overcoat and a dark gray suit was
standing in Laura’s open doorway. A cop, obviously.
He
looked like Dana Andrews, so what did that make me? Clifton Webb?

I know nothing
, I reminded myself.
I am here
to pick up my dinner date, and I have no idea who this man is
.

I stopped, just into the vestibule, frowning
and looking around as though thinking I might have gotten off at the wrong
floor. In fact, I held the elevator, in case I should want to reboard.

The policeman, a black-haired fortyish Dana
Andrews with cold eyes and blue chin and dandruffy shoulders, said, “Can I
help you?”

My outer self remained bewildered. “I’m
looking for Laura Penney.”

“Would you be Mr. Thorpe?”

So she
had
made a note. “Yes, I am,”
I said, and released the elevator door, which grumbled shut behind me. “Is
something wrong?” My hands hid themselves in my topcoat pockets.

“Come in.”

I crossed the threshold as he stood to one
side, watching me. I tried not to look at the spot where I’d last seen her, but
my eyes insisted, and it was with great relief that I saw nobody there. To
cover my eyes’ indiscretion, I turned my head left and right, looking at
everything in the room, continuing to fail to understand the situation.
“Where is Laura?” I turned to the policeman, who was closing the
door. “And who are you?”

“Detective Sergeant Bray,” he said.
“I’m a police officer. There’s been an accident.”

“An accident?
Laura?”

“Did you know Mrs. Penney well?”

“Did I know her? For God’s sake, man,
what’s happened?”

“I’m sorry to break it to you this way,
Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “but I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“Dead!”

“Come along,” he said, taking my
elbow. “Come sit down.”

I permitted myself to be moved, as though too
stunned to act from my own volition, and when he’d seated us, me on the sofa
and himself to my right in the chrome-and-leather chair, I said, “An
accident? What kind of accident?”

“Frankly, Mr. Thorpe,” he said,
“there’s some question about that. When was the
last time you saw Mrs. Penney?”