by Ross Thomas
“Christ, if you’re working a ninety-thou deal, you gotta be flush.”
“It all comes out of my pocket, Finley. You know that.”
“A hundred.”
I shook my head.
“Seventy-five.”
“Fifty,” I said.
“Let’s see it.”
I took two twenties and a ten from my billfold and handed them to Cummins. He stuffed them into his topcoat pocket. “You ever hear of a guy called Jimmy Peskoe?”
“The name’s familiar. He was a safe man, wasn’t he?”
Cummins nodded. “One of the best. Or he was until they sent him up to Dannemora about ten years ago. He just got out. Well, somehow he hears about this safe and he goes in and opens it up, but there ain’t no money in it so he just grabs whatever there was. Then when he finds out what he’s grabbed he gets all nervous. He done a bad ten years up there, I hear. So he sells it to Boykins for six thou. At least that’s what Boykins said. But, shit, he lied a lot. That worth fifty to you?”
“It might be if I could talk to Peskoe.”
“I ain’t stopping you.”
“Where could I find him?”
“I ain’t information.”
“Another ten for Peskoe’s address.”
Cummins gave it to me with a proper show of reluctance. It was a hotel over on East Thirty-fourth. He watched me write it down and when I was done, he said, “Was what you wanted to buy back really worth ninety thou?”
“At least three people thought so,” I said.
Cummins turned that over for a moment. “Boykins and the guy who was putting up the ninety thou are two. Who’s the third one?”
“The guy who killed Boykins,” I said.
Neither the ambulance nor the cops had arrived yet, but a knot of people were already gathered in front of the cheap hotel on East Thirty-fourth when I got out of the cab. They were looking down at the smashed, sprawled body of a man. One of them was a skinny individual in his fifties who was coatless. I guessed he was the hotel clerk because he stared at the body and kept saying, “He was Mr. Peskoe and he was in eight-nineteen.”
I turned to a tall, stooped old man in a thin black sweater who was picking his long nose and staring at Peskoe through thick bifocals.
“What happened?” I said.
The old man inspected something that he’d found in his nose and wiped it on his sweater. “Suicide, that’s what. Some drunk probably.” He looked at me, sniffed, and then stretched his mouth into a tight line of disapproval. “Lot of drunks around nowadays. In high places, too. Washington. Albany. Everywhere.” He kept staring at me suspiciously so I looked away, over his shoulder, toward the entrance of the hotel.
If it hadn’t been for the old man’s suspicion, I might not have seen the man and the woman who hurried from the entrance and headed up Thirty-fourth Street, away from the body of Jimmy Peskoe. But I didn’t have any trouble recognizing them. The man was Miles Wiedstein. The woman was Janet Whistler.
8
TWO HOURS LATER JANET Whistler didn’t smile or nod when I came into the Adelphi’s lobby and walked over to where she sat in a brown club chair. She wore a long belted coat of dark-green leather and the same pantsuit that she had worn earlier in the day. She was smoking a cigarette and as I approached she snuffed it out with the air of someone who has smoked too many of them while waiting too long.
“I think we should talk,” she said.
“My place or the bar? They’re both private.”
She hesitated just long enough for me to decide that a proper upbringing could still do occasional battle with the liberation movement. “The bar,” she said.
It wasn’t difficult to find a table because they were all empty. We chose one near the door and when Sid came over from behind the bar she ordered a bourbon and soda. I asked for a Scotch and water that I didn’t particularly want or need.
“Where’s Wiedstein?” I asked after we had tasted our drinks.
“He’s picking me up here later.”
“What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Working with Procane.”
“I like it.”
“That doesn’t tell me what it’s like.”
She started unbuttoning her leather coat and then shrugged out of it before I could help. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before,” she said. “But then I haven’t done much.”
“College?”
“Three years.”
“You want me to guess?”
“Don’t bother. It was Holyoke.”
“Then what?”
“I drifted. A little modeling, mostly in Paris; some acting out on the Coast and here.”
“How did you hook up with Procane, answer an ad?”
“Procane’s analyst recommended me. I was seeing him, but not professionally. He told Procane that I had all the attributes of a cunning thief. We met, talked it over, and that’s how it happened.”
“What’s Procane’s problem?”
“Does he have to have one just because he’s seeing an analyst? That’s a terribly old-fashioned attitude.”
“I’ve been told that I’m rather out of touch.”
“Didn’t you ever feel the need just to talk to someone? A person like Procane might feel that. Or perhaps he’s just afraid of heights. Don’t you have some secret doubts or fears that you’d like to talk to someone about?”
“Probably,” I said. “Most people do.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean you’re crackers, even if you do wake up some mornings and wonder why you’re doing what you do, which I think is really a silly sort of a business.”
“The hours are good,” I said.
“Is it that or are you afraid that you couldn’t hack it anymore at what you used to do? You wrote a column, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“And now you’re doing something that’s just a little shady, something that has just a bit of a smell to it.”
“Some people think it’s glamorous.”
“But what do you think?”
“That its demands are just about right for someone without too much ambition.”
“Like you?” she said.
“Like me,” I said and smiled to show that I wasn’t taking any of it very seriously.
She swallowed some more of her drink and said, “Someday we’ll have to talk about what made you run out of ambition.”
“All right. Someday we will. But you wanted to talk about something else. What?”
“Jimmy Peskoe,” she said and then watched me carefully.
“What about him?” I said.
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s dead.”
“So?”
“We think he’s the one who stole Procane’s journals.”
“We?”
“Miles and I.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Miles found someone Peskoe was trying to sell the journals to.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “That’s not important. He’s reliable. He says Peskoe was willing to sell them for ten thousand dollars.”
“But he didn’t buy?”
“No.”
“Did he know what they were?”
“Not really, but Peskoe said he should get a hundred thousand for them.”
“Why didn’t Peskoe do it himself?”
“He was too nervous.”
“Not too nervous to be a thief though.”
“That takes a different kind of nerve.”
“Why didn’t the guy buy the journals from Peskoe?”
“Simple,” she said. “He didn’t have the money.”
“And you say Peskoe’s dead?”
“That’s right.”
“When?”
She looked at her watch. “A couple of hours ago. He jumped, fell, or was pushed from his hotel. Room eight-nineteen of the Joplin Hotel. It’s on Ea
st Thirty-fourth.”
“You were there?”
“Just after he jumped. Or was pushed or—”
“Fell,” I said. “What did you do?”
“It happened just before we got there so we went over to look at him. We didn’t know who it was then. A few seconds later the desk clerk came out and said it was Peskoe and that he was in eight-nineteen. He kept saying it over and over. So we went into the hotel and lifted the key to eight-nineteen, took the elevator up to the tenth floor, walked back down, and then went through Peskoe’s room. The journals weren’t there.”
“Did you find anything else?” I said.
Her eyes had brightened when she told me about it. She must have liked the excitement. Searching Peskoe’s room had taken nerve, I had to admit, although I didn’t much want to for some reason, probably because she thought I was in a silly business. I was almost beginning to agree when she said, “We didn’t find anything. What else could there have been?”
“Six thousand dollars,” I said and felt a bit smug.
“What six thousand?”
“The six thousand that Bobby Boykins paid Peskoe for the journals.”
The excitement went out of her eyes and it was replaced by a kind of thoughtful reappraisal. At least that’s what I interpreted it to be when she said, “You’re not quite as indolent as you look, are you? Maybe you’d better tell me about what you’ve been up to.”
So I told her about the unsuccessful approach that Bobby Boykins had made to Finley Cummins and how Cummins had furnished me with Peskoe’s name for a price and how Peskoe was lying dead on the sidewalk when I arrived at the hotel on Thirty-fourth Street.
“What do you call these people you talk to,” she said, “ ‘contacts?’ ”
“I just think of them as friends and acquaintances.”
“It didn’t take you long.”
“It doesn’t when you know where to ask. You found out about Peskoe and it didn’t take you long either.”
She shook her head. “We’re in the business.” She said it seriously and I didn’t laugh at her perhaps because she really felt that there was honor among thieves, especially the kind who had spent three years at Holyoke.
“It doesn’t matter how we found out,” I said, “because all we know is that Peskoe probably stole the journals from Procane and probably sold them to Bobby Boykins who got killed before he could collect on them for ninety thousand dollars. We don’t know who’s got the journals now. Whoever has them probably killed both Boykins and Peskoe.”
Something was bothering her so she decided to ask me because there was no one any wiser around. “Why would they kill Peskoe?”
“You found out that Peskoe was trying to peddle the journals to at least one other person besides Boykins. And I found out that Boykins was trying to sell a share in them to at least one person. God knows how many others the two of them approached, maybe half a dozen. So maybe one of the ones that they approached decided to cut himself in without putting up any cash. So he killed Boykins and took the journals. And maybe Peskoe knew who it was—or at least could figure it out. So Peskoe jumped out of his window, or fell, or was pushed.”
“Mr. Procane isn’t going to like this at all,” she said.
“Is that where Wiedstein is now—telling him?”
“Yes.”
“He should have waited.”
“Why?”
“Then he could have told Mr. Procane how much I don’t like it.”
9
DETECTIVES OLLER AND DEAL didn’t much like it Monday when I wouldn’t tell them the name of the person who had handed me ninety thousand dollars to deliver to a laundromat at three o’clock in the morning.
“What have you dreamed up, St. Ives,” Carl Oller said, “some kind of go-between’s code?”
“Nothing so fancy,” I said. “It hasn’t got much to do with morals and ethics. It’s just how I make a living. If I talk too much, I’ll be out of business and then I’ll have to go look for an honest job and I’m too old for that.”
“You’re not even forty,” Frank Deal said.
“I feel old.”
We were in one of those small, brown interrogation rooms at Homicide South and I’d already been there for an hour. Deal and Oller had taped my statement first, a brief, bare, formal one that was studded with facts, and now they were asking the informal questions, the ones that I didn’t have to answer unless I wanted to, and I was being choosy.
“You know what we could do, don’t you?” Oller said. “We could charge you with failure to report a felony.” He said it in a tone that didn’t carry much conviction, probably because he didn’t believe it either.
“No you can’t,” I said, “because you’re not sure that one’s been committed. All you know is that I was delivering ninety thousand dollars to a laundromat and happened to stumble across a dead body. I don’t have to tell you where I got the ninety thousand. And I don’t even know whether Boykins was supposed to get it. Maybe he was, but I’m not sure.”
Deal took a package of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket and shook one out, lighting it with a wooden match that he struck beneath the table. He inhaled some smoke, blew it out, and then carefully wiped some imaginary dirt from the top of the table with his right hand.
“Bobby Boykins was working on something big,” he said. “Big for him anyhow. We heard that around. He’d come into a little money and he was trying to parlay it into a big score.”
“I don’t see how that affects me.”
“If you’ll tell us who your client is and what he wants to buy back, then we can probably connect up with who killed Boykins and why.”
I shook my head. “You expect me to say no to that, don’t you?”
“We don’t know what you might say,” Oller said. “That’s why we keep asking you dumb questions. We figure you might come up with some smart answers.”
Oller stood leaning against the wall to my right. He wore a dark blue suit. Its shiny elbows and narrow lapels meant that it was at least five years old. His coat was open and his white shirt bulged out over his belt. He wore a red-and-blue tie that had a small dark stain on it just below the knot. He dressed like a man who had too many kids and not enough money.
“Anything else?” I said.
Deal brushed some more imaginary dirt from the top of the table. “There’s not too many rules in your business, are there?”
“Not too many.”
“I was just wondering if you got any rules about how you’re supposed to feel when some poor old guy gets killed who didn’t mean two hoots in hell to you or anybody else. You got any rules about that, St. Ives?”
I stood up. “No, I haven’t got any rules about that”
“That’s all we’re trying to do, you know,” he said. “Just find out who killed some poor old bastard who didn’t mean a shit to anybody. We’re not trying to put you out of business or anything.”
I started toward the door and stopped. “You get some proof that Bobby Boykins was supposed to collect that ninety thousand dollars and maybe I can help you.
“Maybe,” Oller said as if he didn’t like the word. He looked at Deal. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Someday we’re gonna get a call from somebody who’s been shot or stabbed or both and probably stuffed into some car trunk. And then we’re gonna go out and open up the trunk and guess who it’ll be?”
“Him,” Deal said.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I think St. Ives is gonna get one of these go-between deals and he’ll be delivering a little bag full of money somewhere, maybe trying to buy back some jewelry, and he’ll run into some hardnose who’s decided that he’s got a big need for both the jewelry and the money. That’s when they’ll call us in.”
Deal leaned across the table toward me, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. When he spoke, he spoke to Oller, but he looked at me. “There’s one other thing,” he said.
“What?” Oll
er said.
“When we start looking around for who killed St. Ives, you know what I hope?”
“What?”
“I hope that everybody we talk to is gonna be just as nice and cooperative as he’s being here today.”
Oller smiled. “Yeah, that would be nice, Frank, wouldn’t it?”
Outside I caught a cab and gave the driver the address of a restaurant on Lexington between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth. The restaurant wasn’t crowded and I ordered a martini and a club sandwich. The first drink went down so well that I ordered another one and when the sandwich came I asked for a glass of milk. By the time I’d ordered coffee, the young executive crowd had moved into the place. They wore colored shirts and bright, wide ties and suits whose jackets had lots of buttons and nipped-in waists. Although their clothes were a little gaudier than those of the late fifties and early sixties, their look of desperate confidence remained much the same. I decided it was the look of men who’re sure that they have to be back at the office by two, but who are never quite sure why.
There was no desk waiting for me, so I called for the check, paid it, went outside, and leaned against a light pole trying to decide what to do with the rest of the afternoon. A cab came by and I hailed it and got in. The driver had to ask twice before I could think of somewhere I wanted to go. But after I told him the Joplin Hotel on East Thirty-fourth, I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to go there at all.
You would expect to find the Joplin Hotel down near the railroad station, if New York had been a smaller town. It was the kind of place whose twelve stories had been built to accommodate the old-time commercial traveler who didn’t have a draw, depended solely on commissions, and wasn’t quite sure what an expense account was.
You could almost predict what the rooms would be like from the looks of the lobby. They would be small with one window that stuck in the summer and refused to close all the way in the winter. They would have a steam radiator that clanked a lot around five in the morning. There would be a sink in one corner, but all that came out of the hot-water faucet would be some choking gasps. There would be a chair and a floor lamp with an orange shade and a forty-watt bulb. There would be a narrow bed with a thin mattress, springs that shrieked, gray sheets, and a pillow not much thicker than a magazine. If there were a television set, it would be the coin-operated kind that got only one channel.