The Union Club Mysteries (12 page)

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Jennings said, "Extraordinarily expensive, this white-collar crime. I don't know how many billions of dollars a year it costs us."

His words rang a little hollowly in the august confines of the Union Club library. It was a mild evening and the city was sufficiently alive so that few were so at a loss for something to do as to come to the Club—except for the four of us, of course.

Baranov said, "I don't think anyone cares much about white-collar crime. The prevailing attitude is 'as long as no one gets hurt.'"

"Yes, I know," said I indignantly, "so that some poor slob who holds up a liquor store at gunpoint and gets away with fifty dollars has the book thrown at him. And some junior-executive smoothy who cleans up fifty thousand by rifling the public sits on the jury that throws the book and is considered a leading citizen."

"The gun makes the difference, doesn't it?" said Baranov with a scowl. "Your 'poor slob' can maim or kill. How do you equate that with money?"

"Hold on," I said. "Take your smoothy from behind his desk, put him in the slums, deprive him of any real chance in life, surround him with people with money who don't give a damn for poor slobs and what do you think the smoothy will do? Or, conversely, take the poor slob, clean him, educate him, change his color or heritage if necessary, and put him behind a desk in a cushy job. He won't need any guns, either.

Baranov said, "It's always society according to you bleedingheart—"

For once we had forgotten the existence of Griswold, who, without any assistance from us, actually had his eyes open. His bushy eyebrows curled low and he growled in his deep voice. "What makes you think those two classes of crimes are eternally separate? One can lead to the other. In one case I remember, it did, though I doubt that it would interest you."

He paused to sip at his scotch and soda, and I said, "Even if it didn't interest us, you'd insist on telling us, so go ahead."

The person in question [said Griswold] was named Thomas Appleby and he had a number of qualities, some endearing, some not, all of which collaborated to bring on his violent death.

He was an outgoing person, an extraverted one, a gregarious one. He was short, plump, rubicund, friendly, talkative, unselfconscious. He was what Santa Claus might have looked and acted like, if he had shaved himself clean, cut his hair and gotten into a shirt, jacket and pants.

Appleby had his little vanities. He was an accomplished jokester and could tell his stories with verve and excellence, and being aware of this accomplishment, he practiced it continually and smugly.

He could hold the most unlikely audience enthralled and he rarely failed to get a laugh, usually a big one, from every person in the place. He had an uncommon memory for funny stories; never forgot one; and could continue without repeating, for hours—and sometimes did.

He seemed to pick them up as a mop gathers dust or as a magnet collects pins, and at any given time, he would have a favorite which he would tell as soon as he had a new audience. In fact, he would look for a new audience so he could tell it, and a lot of his gregariousness might have been the result of his steady search for new audiences.

To those who knew him, his favorite story at any time was called "the Appleby story" and anyone who happened to be trapped when there were a couple of new people in a group might hear it ten times—and even Appleby's appeal faded with repetition.

Another of Appleby's little vanities was that of loving to lean back with an air of importance and beginning a story with "I'm in the government, you know, and I heard this one from a Senator—"

Actually, he was a minor clerk in an obscure branch of HEW, but this particular little vanity hurt no one but himself.

He liked to eat and he managed to consume everything in sight without slowing his ability to talk. He liked his coffee sweet, his asparagus with hollandaise sauce and his pork well done. He avoided liquor and was automatically drawn to any group of strangers, since any group of strangers was a new audience.

All this, of course, and many other facts arose out of the investigation that followed the events of the day of his death. Having gotten out of work a couple of hours early, he walked into a rather dingy coffee shop in one of the lesser hotels of midtown.

It contained a counter in a series of U-shapes and, about one of them, four or five men huddled in ruminative quiet.

Appleby might have found himself a seat at one of the other U's, where there were only two people, widely separated, but he was not interested in empty seats. He headed for the crowd in a straight-line approach.

The story of what then happened came from one of the two people at the other U's, the nearer one, who, it seemed, had a large bump of curiosity, no trouble in hearing Appleby's penetrating voice, and a photographic memory with which to repeat it all.

Appleby slipped into a seat and said cheerfully, "Good afternoon! Good afternoon! Not that it's so good. Damn cold day outside and they're not serving coffee out there and I figure they are in here."

The others looked at him without much friendliness showing, but that meant nothing to Appleby. He did not recognize unfriendliness. He glanced up and down at the menu that he plucked out of its position between a cruet stand and a napkin holder.

He didn't seem to come to an immediate decision. He turned to the person at his right and said, "Heard any good jokes lately?"

The person addressed seemed surprised. Then, with an obvious effort, he said, "No. Nothing much to joke about these days."

Appleby shrugged. "Listen. Jokes don't hurt. They can't make you feel worse, and they might make you feel better."

"Some jokes you hear," said a man who sat hunched over his cigarette and who glowered at Appleby, "make you feel a lot worse."

"Maybe so," said Appleby, "but I work for the government and that makes me an expert on feeling rotten and, I tell you, jokes help. And some of the best jokes I've heard came from strangers. I was once sitting at a counter, like now, and I asked my neighbor for a joke and he handed me a good one. He didn't tell it well—but I can always improve it."

The person at the right took the bait. "What did he tell you?"

"You be the judge," said Appleby, "and tell me if it's a good one. Here it is: Moses came down from Mount Sinai and he had the tables of the law under his arm. He called the elders into conference.

"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I have some good news for you and some bad news. The good news is that I was able to hold the boss down to
ten.'
"

Here Appleby, whose voice took on a Charlton Heston quality, but with more authority, when he spoke as Moses, paused to make sure that his listeners allowed smiles to cross their faces.

He then said, "'But the bad news is that the adultery bit has got to stay.'"

There was an appreciative chuckle and Appleby seemed satisfied to have gotten that much out of an unpromising group. He said to the man behind the counter, "A cup of coffee please, and a cheese Danish." He turned to the man on his left and said, "I shouldn't eat too much, anyway."

"Looks like you already did," said the man on his left with a small snort.

Appleby made it his business to acknowledge hits at himself because it kept his audience in a good mood, which was important. He laughed and said, "You got me. I'm disappointed you noticed. I've been holding my stomach in to make sure you wouldn't."

The coffee made its appearance, and the counterman, as scowling and unfriendly as the men about the counter, said, "Here's cream. You want sugar?"

Appleby had just begun to reach but stared instead at the counterman's open hand, which had within it two little paper packets of sugar.

Appleby hesitated. "Well, why not?" He took one of the packets. "Just one," he said. "I'll try the real thing for once.—Now that's what I call service. Usually, you have to look all over the place for sweeteners and here this guy actually brings it to you. Very thoughtful. Very cooperative. Like Moskowitz's maid. You ever hear the story of Moskowitz, who thought his wife was fooling around?" That, as it turned out, was that month's Appleby story.

"No," said one of the group. "How does it go?"

"Well," said Appleby, "Moskowitz was convinced his wife was fooling around and one day at work he could stand it no more. He had to
know.
So he called home and the maid answered.

"'Listen,' he said, 'I'm convinced my wife is fooling around, so tell me, is she right now upstairs in the bedroom with another man?'

"'I must tell you the truth, sir,' said the maid.'She is. And I must also tell you that I disapprove intensely of such behavior.'

"'Good,' said Moskowitz. 'I am glad you are a moral person. You know where I keep my gun?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'Then go get it. Take it to my bedroom and shoot that cheating bitch of a wife of mine between the eyes. Then shoot the man who is violating the sanctity of my home right in the heart. Then return and report to me.'"

Appleby paused to sip at his coffee. He was holding the audience against their will, he knew. He was in top form, his voice catching every nuance of expression in the conversation of the two characters.

He said "After a pause, the maid was back at the phone. 'Sir,' she said, 'mission accomplished.'

"'You shot my wife?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'And that no-good deceiving man?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'And they're both dead?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'And what did you do with the gun?'

"'Sir, I threw it in the swimming pool.'

"'You threw it in the swimming pool???—Say, what telephone number is this?'"

There was a pause of about half a second while the situation sank in, and then there was a simultaneous roar of laughter, which went on for quite a while. The counterman was laughing as hard as the others. Appleby chuckled complacently at his own success, finished his Danish and coffee, and left.

That is the end of the story, except that two hours later, Appleby was found in his apartment, strangled. Nothing was taken. Nothing was damaged. His clothing was disarranged somewhat as though it had been searched, but his wallet was in place, his watch was on his wrist, his ring was on his finger. No known possession was missing.

The police began a routine investigation, which soon revealed the session in the eating place, which, as it happened, was a haunt of unsavory characters, but nothing had happened which seemed to indicate murder as a possibility. Nor did anything that took place at the coffee shop seem to supply a motive.

It was not a particularly important killing, they thought, and they might have put it on the back burner to simmer, but fortunately, they called me in first. As soon as I heard the story, I thought I could guess what happened as, no doubt, you three can.

"No, we can't," I said in a quiet voice, "and you know we can't. Either you come across or we strangle
you!"

"Idiots!" muttered Griswold. "Appleby liked his coffee sweet and when the counterman offered him sugar, he said he would take the real thing for a change. That meant he used sugar substitute ordinarily, and it was what he was reaching for at the time. The fact that the counterman offered sugar—a most unusual thing, as Appleby himself pointed out—made it seem as though he were trying to steer his customer away from substitute.

"This instantly brought to my mind the fact that the most common white-collar crime there is—one of which almost everyone is guilty of at one time or another—is helping one's self to those little pink packets of sugar substitute. We've all done it.

"Appleby must have helped himself to several of the pink packets. He would have been stopped ordinarily perhaps, but everyone was laughing at his joke and so no one noticed. Afterward, when they realized the packets were gone, they were certain he had taken them. After all, this stranger was a government man—he had said so himself—and, to all appearances, he had deliberately distracted them so that he could walk off with the packets. They had to be recovered and they were. And he was strangled to keep him from talking."

Baranov said, "How do you guess all this?"

"Because it makes sense. Because it supplies a motive. Suppose that coffee shop served as a place for drug distribution. How innocent to keep heroin in little pink packets that looked exactly like those that hold saccharin. Who would suspect it? Who would give it a second glance? As long as no one gets hold of some by mistake, it was foolproof. And when Appleby walked off with some, it meant panic.