First Gravedigger (5 page)

“Mr. Speer said the chair was a real find,” Mrs. Percy chattered on. “You know, at first I thought he was talking about the table—the early American writing table, remember? But when I showed him the chair, he got downright excited.”

I'll bet he did. The old bastard probably peed his pants. He had a Duprée and what he needed to hang me all in one swell foop. He'd gone there to find out if I was cheating him out of a valuable writing table; the chair had been a complete surprise. It was an opportunity handed him on a silver platter, and Amos Speer had never been one to pass up an opportunity. Or a silver platter. Mrs. Percy ran down eventually and I was able to say goodbye and hang up.

I'd been so cool, so sure of myself. And I'd botched it. At times the old man seemed omniscient—the man you couldn't fool. I sat there for almost an hour, trying to think of a plan. But all I did was succeed in starting a good, strong depression. Why didn't he send for me? When I couldn't stand it any longer, I reached for the phone.

June Murray answered. I had to clear my throat before I could say, “Is he there?”

“Mr. Speer won't be in today,” June said formally. “Who's speaking?”

She knew damn well who was speaking. “It's Earl, June.”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Speer wants to see you Monday morning, nine o'clock sharp. Don't be late.”

“Yes, teacher,” I said and hung up.

So I was to have the weekend to panic, maybe to dig myself in a little deeper. The old crock must really be enjoying himself. I needed something objective to concentrate on, to get myself clicking again. Alice Ballard's glassware collection.

By two o'clock I'd finished. I took my listings in and dropped them on June's desk. She raised a carefully shaped eyebrow at me.

“The Alice Ballard estate,” I said. “The final listings.”

June pretended to be surprised. “But didn't Mr. Speer tell you? Yesterday he assigned Mr. Wightman to finish the evaluation.”

I turned and left without a word.

One more thing happened that day. Another of Speer's agents dropped by my office to tell me something. Her name was Robin Coulter, and the first time we'd met she'd looked at me with what I thought were bedroom eyes but what turned out to be just an accident of facial structure; she even looked at the pencil sharpener that way. She was married; but I hadn't thought that meant much and made my move. Mistake. Robin had never let me forget it. That Friday afternoon she came into my office and shut the door behind her.

“Aren't you afraid of losing your virtue?” It wasn't often I got in the first dig.

“Oh, I don't think you're any danger,” she smiled with a deliberately artificial sweetness. “No danger at all.” Unspoken:
any more
.

I pointed to a chair.

She shook her head. “I'm not going to stay. I just wanted to tell you I'm going to the Mercer auction next month. Mr. Speer decided yesterday.”

It didn't hurt a bit. Not a bit. By then I was so numb nothing could have made an impression. For the past five years I'd been representing Speer's at the Elizabeth Mercer Gallery in New York. Mercer's was a smallish gallery that dealt imported furniture exclusively. Only museums and other dealers were invited to Mercer auctions; occasional exceptions were made, of course, but basically the auctions were in-profession affairs. No one from Speer's except me ever went to Mercer auctions—they were my special province, hands off, don't touch. Of course I knew by then I wouldn't be going any more, but myohmyohmy! How pretty little Robin did love telling me so!

She was looking at me with those falsely inviting eyes, waiting to see if I was going to pretend to be a good sport and offer my congratulations. Like hell I was. “Don't get mugged,” I said.

She smiled, knowing she'd scored. “It was a surprise to me, Earl. A delightful surprise—but I wasn't expecting it. You must have done something really dreadful. What did you do, Earl?”

“I exposed myself to Speer's wife. Want to see how I did it?”

Robin laughed. “I knew you'd fall back on sexual insult when everything else failed. You think you're so sharp, Earl. But you're not. You're not sharp at all. You're clumsy.”

I kicked the door open. “Get out of here.”

She left. I slammed the door behind her and stood in the middle of the room for a minute, not knowing what to do next. I decided to get the hell out. Robin Coulter's crowing had been the last straw.

I drove home in angry fits and starts, gunning the engine, taking chances. I was scared. I was good as the next guy in a one-on-one situation, but Amos Speer was mobilizing an army against me—the antiques world, lawyers, police. It wasn't enough that he'd stolen a five-hundred-thousand-dollar Duprée from me; he wouldn't be satisfied until I was in jail for stealing from
him
. If I was going to protect my own ass, I was going to have to do something dramatic and I was going to have to do it that weekend. By the time I got home I was so full of hostility and anxiety and resentment I couldn't think straight. I just wanted to hole up and lock out the world for a while. That's when I found Charlie Bates lolling against my door.

I haven't mentioned Charlie Bates for a while—remember Charlie? Charlie the loser, Charlie the deadbeat, Charlie the suicidal jellyfish. Charlie Bates. Sprawling in the hallway outside my door, breathing out whiskey fumes and self-pity, babbling
Hi, Earl, it's your old buddy Charlie Bates come to visit
.

Go screw yourself, Charlie Bates.

CHAPTER 3

“How'd you get past security downstairs?”

“Gave the man my last ten bucks.”

“Well, get out of the way so I can open the door.”

It took Charlie two attempts to roll over onto his knees. He struggled awkwardly to get to his feet while I unlocked the door. I didn't offer to help.

Charlie staggered toward the sofa while I went to the kitchen for a bottle of scotch and some glasses. I guess I was still hoping that Charlie's bellyaching might give me the boost it usually did. I emptied a couple of ice cube trays into a bowl and then poured myself a quick one. Charlie had a head start on me and I wanted to catch up as fast as possible.

I put everything on a low table before the sofa and sank into my leather chair. Charlie helped himself to a drink, babbling away a mile a minute. He was reciting a long list of woes with an easy assumption that I would be fascinated by this latest installment in his life story. Charlie Bates thought friends were made to be leaned on.

“I've had it, Earl,” he was saying. “This is the end. This time I mean it. There ain't no reason to keep going. Nothing matters no more. I'm gonna do it. Nobody cares whether I live or die. I'm gonna do it.”

I made a noncommittal sound, listening not so much to what he was saying as to the way he was saying it. Charlie had never even learned good English; he still talked like the slum kids we both once were.

“Earl, you're the only friend I got left. You gotta help me.”

“How?”

“Get me a gun.”

“Don't be an ass.”

He protested, insisting he'd really reached the end of the line. He told me a long, rambling tale about how he'd just missed the chance of a lifetime. He said he could have had the East Pittsburgh franchise for a new fast foods chain but he just couldn't get up the capital. “Story of my life, Earl,” he moaned. “Just one missed opportunity after another.”

My mind began to wander—which often happened when I tried to listen to Charlie Bates for more than five minutes. Charlie's remark about missed opportunities had reminded me of one I thought Amos Speer had missed. Once when I'd been on a trip to Speer's London office, a woman who worked there had made a point of showing me what a few rare books had sold for that year. She knew about books and claimed we were passing up a gold mine by not handling them. When I got back to Pittsburgh I tried to talk Speer into it, but he was having none of it. Rare books involved a whole new set of rules, he said, and rare books specialists were a breed apart. I pointed out he already had one such specialist on the payroll and named the woman in London. But Speer was adamant about it, and so Speer Galleries still passed up the rare books market.

It was a mistake I wouldn't make if I were running things. Me, running Speer Galleries. What a laugh. I'd really thought I had a chance. I'd even made a good go at getting the funds I'd need to buy in. I stared at a chair across the room. It wasn't the Hepplewhite Charlie had once put his foot on; that had long since been sold for a nice profit. In its place stood a Phyfe lyre-back that could only appreciate in value. On the other side of the room was an eighteenth-century country cabinetmaker's attempt at fashioning a Philadelphia Chippendale side chair that I'd be glad to find a buyer for—heavy, thick-ankled imitator of its betters that it was. But in my bedroom sat a magnificent Seymour barrel-back of inlaid mahogany. I'd paid seven hundred for it and could get fourteen or fifteen thousand easy. It was a chair I should never have bought; I doubted I'd ever bring myself to sell it. Assuming I'd still be in a position to deal after Monday—an assumption that was growing more foolish by the hour. Amos Speer, bless his venomous soul, would soon see to it that my “career” as a dealer came to an abrupt and inglorious end. Maybe I could pick up Charlie's fast food franchise.

Charlie himself had started a new chapter in the ongoing saga of his boring, repetitive troubles. “You don't know the worst of it,” he babbled. “Earl, I even owe the mob money. They're after me right now.”

Whee.

“All that stuff about them breaking your legs if you don't pay? That ain't no joke, Earl. They really do that. They're looking for me right now—they're gonna bust me up and then I'll have a hospital bill on top of everthing else.”

I idly thought the mob must be slipping if they'd lend Charlie Bates money. I went into the kitchen to make some sandwiches.

Amos Speer, Amos Speer, Amos Speer. I sliced a round loaf of corn rye bread and thought about murder.

It was the only solution I could see. If Speer had already notified the police, I would have heard from them by now. No, Monday was the day the world was going to collapse. Speer was saving for himself the pleasure of telling me exactly what he was going to do to me. Monday morning, nine o'clock sharp, June Murray had said. That was my deadline. Accent on dead.

I took the sandwiches into the living room—Welsh cheese for me, baloney for Charlie. Amos Speer must be damn sure of himself to leave me the weekend to flounder through. Or sure of me. I tried to visualize the scene in which I killed Amos Speer. I tried it with a gun, a knife, the ubiquitous blunt instrument. None of them played. I could not see myself facing that old man and committing myself to an act that violent. I couldn't do it. At the last minute I'd chicken out, I knew it. It seemed to me murder must be a terribly intimate thing, the closeness between killer and victim like no other closeness in the world. I tried to think of myself putting my hands around Amos Speer's neck and squeezing. The thought sickened me.

If hit men just advertised in the yellow pages I'd have no problem. And there was a lot to be said for long-distance weapons like bombs. Plant the bomb and then detonate it by radio control—nothing intimate about that. I could handle that. I could push a button. But it was a little late to be thinking about bombs now.

Charlie was talking about suicide again, his mouth full of baloney in more ways than one. It was a surefire sympathy-grabber—announce you're going to do away with yourself and you're an instant object of concern. Suddenly everybody cares! Because I'd heard it all so many times before I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. I had my own problems.

“Listen at me, Earl,” Charlie said when he'd eaten the last sandwich. “I'm through. This time I'm really up against it—there just ain't no way out. I'm gonna do it. Nothing matters no more.”

“Sure, Charlie. We've all got problems.”

“Dammit, Earl, I mean it! Nothing matters. Why keep going?”

“Drink up, Charlie. At least die happy.”

Charlie made an angry gesture that knocked over my glass. “Hey! What'd you do that for?”

“I'm telling you I'm gonna kill myself and you sit there making jokes? D'you hear what I'm telling you?”

I got some paper towels and cleaned up the mess. “Charlie, it's the same tale of woe you've been singing for the last fifteen years. What's so bad this week that wasn't there last week?”

“Nothing. And thass what's wrong—nothing ever changes. I'm going nowhere, I owe more money than I can ever pay. I'll never get out from under. And it's always gonna be like this—nothing's gonna change for me. There ain't nothing to get up for in the morning, no reason to keep going. I don't even miss my wife no more.”

“Number one, number two, or number three?”

Charlie got that hurt-puppy look. “Aw, Earl.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I didn't mean anything. As for the money problems, Charlie, let me teach you three magic words that'll put you in clover.”

“What?”

“Stick 'em up.”

And then Charlie Bates dropped his head into his hands and began to cry.

Great. Just what I needed—a blubbering suicide on my hands. “Oh, for crying out loud, Charlie, cut it out! Come on—stop it!” He pulled out a dirty handkerchief and blew his nose. “Charlie, have you ever taken a good look at yourself? Have you? Just look at you. You're always so
hangdog
.”

“I know,” he snuffled.

“You're so defeated-looking you tell every stranger you meet that you're a loser. Even before you open your mouth.”

“I can't help it.”

“And when you do open your mouth, it's always to complain about something.”