The Procane Chronicle

by Ross Thomas

  The lobby had a high ceiling, a few worn chairs, a sagging sofa, a television set that didn’t work, and the fiftyish room clerk who yesterday had stared down at the body of Jimmy Peskoe and repeated over and over that he had lived in room eight-nineteen.

  The room clerk didn’t move anything but his pale eyes as I approached the counter that he leaned on, supporting his chin in the palm of his right hand. When I stopped in front of him, he said, “You don’t want a room.”

  “No.”

  “You wanta ask some questions about the guy who did the jump out of eight-nineteen. Peskoe.”

  “I could tell you that I was his brother.”

  “You could tell me that.”

  “But you wouldn’t believe me.”

  The clerk moved his eyes up and down, as if assessing how much I had paid for my $150 topcoat They were pale-blue eyes that I thought had a hurt look about them, as if they had seen too much—or perhaps not enough, and never would now that they were stuck behind the reception counter of a cheap hotel.

  “No,” the clerk said, “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “What if I said I was just nosey?”

  The clerk seemed to think about that. He made his fifty-year-old face go into a frown. His gray upper teeth bit down hard on his thin lower lip. The only thing in his face that wasn’t working was his tiny nose so he used his left hand to pull on that a couple of times. “You’re not a cop,” he said. It wasn’t a question so I didn’t say anything.

  “You could be a reporter,” he said. “You sorta look like a reporter—or what a reporter thinks he oughta look like. You know, when guys get your age they’ve pretty well made themselves look like what they are.”

  I thought about telling him that he looked like a philosopher, but decided not to. “I used to be a reporter,” I said.

  “But you’re not anymore?”

  “No.”

  “How much do reporters make nowadays, about three hundred?”

  “About that,” I said. “Some make more; a lot make less.”

  “I didn’t think you was a reporter,” he said. “You wanta know why?”

  “All right. Why?”

  “Because nobody’s gonna send anybody who’s making three hundred a week down here to ask questions about a nobody like Peskoe, that’s why.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  “What was to like? He stayed in his room. Eight-nineteen.”

  “How long did he stay here?”

  The clerk yawned and didn’t try to cover it up. The yawn gave me a good look at the inside of his mouth. His teeth were gray all the way back, except where they were black. Or the fillings were. His tongue was mostly yellow. There didn’t seem to be much pink in his mouth. When he was through yawning, he said, “You know how I got this job?”

  “How?”

  “My wife kicked me out. So I checked in here because it was cheap. Then I got fired from my job and got behind in my rent so they let me work nights. For a while I tried to find another job, but who wants to hire anybody fifty-three years old?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What kind of work did Peskoe do?”

  The clerk was still wrapped up in his own problem. “I get my room and sixty-six bucks a week. Twenty-five of that goes for alimony. That leaves me forty-one a week and with withholding and social security that leaves me about thirty-five a week. Did you ever try eatin’ on thirty-five a week?”

  “It sounds tough,” I said and pulled a twenty from my billfold and smoothed it out on the counter. It lay there for all of two seconds before disappearing into the clerk’s pocket.

  “Peskoe was here for a month,” he said. “He didn’t do nothing. I mean he didn’t work. He just stayed in his room most of the time. He didn’t have no visitors. He didn’t get no calls or no mail. He just stayed in his room except when he went out to eat. Once in a while he’d go out at night. But not a lot”

  “Did he drink?” I said.

  “Nah. Maybe a pint a week.”

  “Then he wasn’t drunk when he went out the window.”

  “He wasn’t drunk.”

  “Did he seem depressed?”

  The clerk looked at me curiously. “You with an insurance company?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve heard if it’s suicide, you guys don’t have to pay off. On life insurance, I mean.”

  “I’m not with an insurance company.”

  The clerk seemed to believe me. He nodded a couple of times and then looked around the lobby. “You ask if he was depressed. He lived here, didn’t he? We haven’t got no happy guests. None I know of anyhow.”

  I brought out a package of cigarettes and offered the clerk one. He took it and I lit both of them. “What do the cops say?” I said.

  The clerk shrugged. “Fell or jumped.”

  “Not pushed.”

  A crafty look went halfway across his face before it stopped and changed into greed. “Why would anyone wanta push a guy like Peskoe out of a window?”

  I inspected the tip of my cigarette. “Maybe he owed them a little money and he wouldn’t pay it.”

  That made sense to the clerk because he nodded a few times. “Maybe he owed you a little money, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And maybe he owed quite a few people a little money and maybe as long as he was alive there was a little chance that he might pay it off, huh?”

  “Not a little chance,” I said. “A big one. Peskoe was a safecracker. One of the best. Now do you understand?”

  He started nodding his head again. “Now I get it,” he said. “Now it makes sense.”

  It didn’t, of course. But he was just smart enough not to want to seem stupid. “Did you notice anyone around just before Peskoe jumped or fell?”

  The clerk lowered his eyes and started moving his finger back and forth across the surface of the counter. “Like I said, I make about thirty-five a week take-home and—”

  “Here,” I said and slid a ten across to him.

  He pocketed the bill and then looked around the lobby. It was still empty, but he seemed to like the conspiratorial nonsense. “I ain’t telling you anything I ain’t already told the cops.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “There were two guys who went up just before Peskoe went out the window.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. They coulda gone to eight or five or three. I don’t know.”

  “They go up together?”

  “They went up together.”

  “What’d they look like?”

  He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I don’t know, I swear to God I can’t remember. I saw em go up, but I didn’t pay no attention. It’s just like I told the cops, who pays attention in a place like this? All I know about em is what I didn’t notice.”

  I sighed. “Okay. What didn’t you notice?”

  “I didn’t notice em come back down.”

  10

  THE NEW BATCH OF twenty-dollar and fifty-dollar bills amounting to ninety thousand dollars was delivered to me at 8 A.M. Tuesday at the Adelphi by Miles Wiedstein who this time accepted a cup of coffee while I counted the money and gave him another receipt. By 10 A.M. I was pushing my way through the entrance of the West Side Airlines Terminal’s men’s room, the blue Pan-Am bag slung over my left shoulder.

  The first stall was occupied so I waited in front of it. A well-dressed man came out of the third stall down and saw me waiting. “Here,” he said, holding the door open. “I’ll save you a whole dime.”

  I shook my head. “I like this one,” I said, pointing at the first stall.

  “Christ, fella, a stall’s a stall.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s some kind of mental block. I can’t go unless I use the first stall.”

  The man slammed shut the door he had been holding open. “You got a real bad problem there, don’t you, sonny?” he said and walked out of the room before I could rem
ind him that he hadn’t washed his hands.

  I stood there in front of the first stall, trying not to listen to the sounds and trying not to think much about why I was in a business that required me to stand there and listen to them at ten o’clock in the morning. Finally, at six minutes past ten the toilet in the first stall flushed and a small man of about sixty with a large nose came out zipping up his pants.

  “I tried to hurry,” he said apologetically. “I heard what you said about not being able to go except in the first stall. I’m like that at home, except that I can’t go on the first floor. I gotta go upstairs.”

  “We both have a problem,” I said and went through the door that he held open for me, thus saving another dime toward early retirement.

  Once inside, there was nothing to do but sit down and wait. I waited four minutes until the stall next to me lost its occupant. Fifteen seconds later I heard its door open and close. I held the airline bag on my lap and kept my eyes on the space where the partition that separated the two stalls ended a foot above the floor.

  I counted to thirty-five slowly and then a blue airline bag, this one from United, was kicked into my stall. I didn’t see the foot that kicked it. I bent down and picked it up. I put my own bag on the floor. I unzipped the United bag and looked inside. There were five eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch ledgers. I took out the first one and opened it at random. The entry was March 19, 1953. Written in blue-black ink in a precise, but somehow childlike hand was all the information that I would need to steal seventy-three thousand dollars from a Pittsburgh jewelry fence who talked too much to a girl in Manhattan. Everything was there: the time, the date, the method, and a virtual guarantee that the Pittsburgh fence would never complain to anyone. If it had been March 19, 1953, I might have been tempted.

  I put the ledger back and took out another one and flipped through some pages. It was the same kind of information, but covered the five years from 1960 to 1964. I started to look at the rest of them, but there were three hard raps on the wall that separated the two stalls. I chose one more ledger at random and quickly flipped through its pages. This one was a complete blueprint of how I could have stolen myself fairly rich if it had been 1955 to 1959.I put the ledger back in the United bag just as three more raps sounded on the stall partition. They were not only louder, but also more impatient. I zipped up the United bag and then used my left foot to kick the Pan-Am bag that contained the ninety thousand dollars under the partition and into the next stall. Then I rose quickly, opened the door, and walked out of the men’s room.

  Miles Wiedstein stood to my right about six feet away, his right hand deep in the pockets of his topcoat. He looked at me and I nodded. To my left was Janet Whistler with her right hand tucked away in the large purse that she cradled in her left arm. I assumed that both of them had guns of some kind, but I wasn’t interested enough to ask.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Wiedstein.

  “Did you get them?” he said and fell into step with me.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I didn’t read every word, but what I did read convinced me that they were worth the ninety thousand—if Procane wants to stay out of jail.”

  Janet Whistler was on my left now as we went down the stairs. “Shouldn’t we wait to see who comes out of the men’s room?”

  I shook my head and kept on walking. “You can, but I won’t. If the guy I gave the money to comes out and sees me, he may start shooting. Not right now, but later today. Or early tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure you got them?” Wiedstein said again.

  “There’re five of them,” I said.

  Wiedstein nodded, but he still looked worried. Janet Whistler touched my elbow. “We have a car waiting,” she said.

  We went out the Forty-second Street entrance and into a waiting Carey limousine. All three of us got in the back seat and Wiedstein gave the driver Procane’s address and then pushed the button that raised the glass partition. The car moved off and I settled back in the seat, the United bag on my lap, my arms clasped around it.

  “Maybe I should have a look,” Wiedstein said.

  I turned my head and gave him what I hoped was a polite, but apologetic smile. “I’d better hold on to them until I can hand everything over to Procane.”

  Wiedstein stared at me for several moments before nodding thoughtfully. “Then you’re assuming full responsibility,” he said.

  “That’s my job,” I said.

  “He doesn’t trust us, Miles,” Janet Whistler said.

  “That’s too bad,” Wiedstein said and then none of us said anything else until we were in Procane’s office-study and I had handed him the United bag that had been kicked my way twenty-six minutes before.

  Procane wore an old bluish tweed sports jacket, a pair of gray-flannel slacks, a dark-blue polo shirt open at the throat, and black loafers. He looked pink and well barbered and his hands shook only a little when I handed him the bag. He carried it over to his desk, unzipped it, and took out the five journals. He looked at me. “Did you check them?”

  “Yes.”

  “How carefully?”

  “Enough to know why you wanted them back.”

  He nodded at that and then sorted through the journals quickly until he found the one he wanted. He opened it and started turning the pages. His face grew pinker. He looked up at Wiedstein and shook his head. Wiedstein flushed and said, “Goddamn.” Janet Whistler grimaced, crossed over to Procane, and put one hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?” she said. Procane handed her the journal that he had been looking at. She flipped through it quickly and then tossed it on the desk. She said, “Shit.”

  Procane turned and walked slowly around his desk. His hand trailed along the edge of its top as if he needed support. He pulled out his high-backed chair and lowered himself into it carefully, the way an old man lowers himself into a wheelchair. The pink on his face had deepened into a dull red. He reached into a pocket, took out a vial, opened it, shook out a pill, eyed it thoughtfully, and popped it into his mouth. Then he looked at me.

  “It is not your fault, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

  Both Janet Whistler and Wiedstein turned to stare at me. From their expressions, they didn’t seem to agree with Procane. He saw their looks and said, “It is not his fault. Definitely, it is not his fault.” He sounded as if he were also trying to convince himself and not having too much luck.

  “All right,” I said, “whose fault was it?”

  The three of them glanced at each other, once more exchanging some private information that they didn’t seem to think was any of my business. Or they may have been taking a vote because Procane said, “Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mr. St. Ives. This may take a while. Would you like a drink?”

  “I have the feeling I’m going to need one.”

  “Give Mr. St. Ives a drink, Janet,” Procane said.

  “Scotch and water, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Janet Whistler went over to a table that had some bottles and mixed a drink. She looked up once, but apparently both Procane and Wiedstein gave her a silent message that it was too early in the morning for them because my drink was the only one she mixed. After she handed it to me she found a chair near the desk. Wiedstein continued to stand, leaning against the wall near one of the oils that showed how Procane’s Connecticut farmhouse looked on a sunny winter’s day after about two feet of snow. I thought it looked nice and cozy.

  All three of them were still gazing at me so I felt a little self-conscious about the drink, but not so much that I didn’t take three deep swallows. After that I lit a cigarette, leaned back in my chair, smiled as pleasantly as I could at Procane, and said, “Okay, let’s have it. Who fucked up what?”

  The dull red on Procane’s face had subsided to a faint pink. He ran his right hand through his ginger hair and then brushed his knuckles over his moustache. He looked around as if searching for something else to fool with, picked up the ledge
r that he had leafed through, looked at it for a moment, and then let it drop to his desk. It fell with a faint crash.

  He looked at me and his lips worked as if they were practicing what he intended to say. “I should have taken you into my confidence, Mr. St. Ives. Because I didn’t, I am in quite serious trouble.”

  “The ledgers are genuine, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they’re genuine. Did you have the chance to read much in any of them?”

  “I read all about the Pittsburgh fence. I read about a few others, too. As receipts for a thief, they’re extraordinarily detailed. And your planning would have to be described as meticulous, but writing it all down would have to be called dumb.”

  Procane’s face took on a deeper shade of pink, but it disappeared quickly. “Writing it all down is part of the planning,” he said. “It helps me to examine each one objectively, discover possible errors, make needed changes. When I’m sure that I’ve planned as well as I can, I write everything down in here.” He put his hand on the ledger. “Then I let it cool for a few weeks or even a month and reexamine it. It gives me a fresh perspective.”

  “It also cost you one hundred thousand dollars,” I said. “But that’s not what you’re complaining about.”

  “Something’s missing,” Wiedstein said.

  “What?”

  “Four pages.”

  “From where?”

  “From this journal,” Procane said, again indicating the volume that he had let fall to his desk with the faint crash.

  “That’s the current one, right?” I said.

  He nodded. “It covers 1970 to 1974.”

  “I noticed that it takes you about four pages to outline a single job,” I said.

  He nodded again.

  “So four pages means that the plans or recipe for one theft are missing.”

  Procane didn’t even nod this time. He simply looked at me and for a moment I almost thought that I was being let in on his system of silent communication. I stared back at him and my throat began to grow dry so I drank the last of my drink.