Practice to Deceive

by David Housewright

  “Are you involved with Cynthia Grey?”

  “I am,” I answered, not caring that it was none of her business.

  “What do you see in her?”

  “I’d tell you, Monica, but it would take me several hours to list her virtues, and I simply don’t have the time.”

  “Virtues? Did you know she was a stripper?” Monica asked, a little girl telling tales.

  “A very good one, too, I’m told.”

  “By whom? The Minneapolis Police Vice Squad?”

  She was annoying me now, dissing my main squeeze, as the kids would say. I tried to keep my growing anger to myself. “You’re a little old for this kind of schoolgirl nonsense, aren’t you?” I said.

  Monica came back hard. “She’s a fake, a fraud, a phony,” she vehemently insisted. “There’s not one thing about her that’s real, that’s honest.”

  “On the contrary,” I replied. “She’s easily the most honest person I’ve ever known.”

  “She’s a stripper! Probably a hooker, too!”

  “Maybe, in her youth,” I agreed. “Today she’s someone entirely different. Someone to be admired.”

  “Why? Because she dresses better than she did? Because she speaks better?”

  “Because she’s exactly the person she wants to be. How many of us can make that claim?”

  I unlocked my car door and slid inside, rolling down the window so I could hear Monica say, “She’ll never be as good a lawyer as I am.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I said out the window as I started the car, putting it in gear. “But there’s something that she is that you’ll never be.”

  “Oh, really? And what’s that?”

  “Tenth in her class.”

  THE RINGING TELEPHONE greeted me as I unlocked my office door. I rushed to it, not bothering to remove my jacket.

  “Taylor Investigations,” I spoke into the receiver.

  “Mr. Taylor?” a woman asked curtly.

  “Yes.”

  “I am calling for Mr. Carson Saterbak.” The name shook me; I was glad the caller couldn’t see my face. “Mr. Saterbak would like to meet you at his office at one-thirty P.M. Please, do not be late.”

  “Why does he want to meet?”

  She hung up, a loud click ending the conversation.

  “Sounds like a good reason to me,” I said to nobody.

  I glanced at my watch. If I kicked it, I could be there with ten minutes to spare.

  IT WAS HIM, all right. Amanda’s friend. I identified him from the portrait that hung above the sofa in his ostentatious lobby. It was a nice enough painting, I suppose: head and shoulders against a neutral background. But somewhat self-aggrandizing for my taste. I don’t think you should display a portrait of a company’s founder unless he’s retired or dead. At least that’s what I told the receptionist when I identified myself. She didn’t say whether she agreed or not. Instead, she told me to take a seat, that Mr. Saterbak would be with me in a moment. That was at 1:25. At 1:40 I was still sitting. I reminded the receptionist that I had an appointment. She told me she knew. I waited some more.

  I’ve met guys like Saterbak before. Some make you wait because it makes them feel important: “See, I can make you waste thirty minutes of your precious time.” Others make you wait to wear you down, believing it gives them an advantage in negotiations. Maybe it does. Only I had grown tired of the waiting game and decided to make a move of my own. At exactly 1:50 by my watch, I tossed my business card on the receptionist’s desk. She looked up.

  “Man calls me,” I said, “and tells me he wants to meet, tells me not to be late, then stands me up for twenty minutes? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Saterbak …” the receptionist began, but I wasn’t listening. I turned my back on her and went through the door into the long corridor beyond, stopping at the elevators and hitting the down button. The receptionist rushed into the corridor just as the doors opened.

  “Mr. Saterbak will see you now,” she told me.

  I waved good-bye and stepped onto the elevator.

  THE PHONE WAS ringing when I returned to my office. I let it, pulling a Summit Pale Ale from the fridge. My answering machine picked up. It was Saterbak’s secretary, beseeching me to return the call. I sat behind my desk, reviewing the latest edition of The Sporting News, a special issue on the opening of baseball season. I ran down the list of teams, starting with the American League. Baltimore looked good in the East, the Angels should run away with the West, and the Central was up for grabs. At least that’s what the pundits claimed. We’d have to wait one hundred sixty-two games to learn if they were right.

  The telephone rang again. This time I answered. “Holland Taylor Private Investigations. Holland Taylor speaking.”

  “This is Carson Saterbak,” a voice replied. The voice was angry. I said nothing and waited. Finally the voice said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “We had an appointment.”

  “I know,” I said. “How come you didn’t keep it?”

  Saterbak was almost sputtering with rage as he yelled, “I’m a busy man!”

  “Not me,” I said. “I have all the time in the world to waste.”

  Saterbak hesitated, then said, “I don’t like your attitude.”

  “I don’t care.” I told him. “You want to see me? I suggest you keep your appointments.”

  “Is that what all this is about? You want to teach me a lesson in punctuality?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Fine,” Saterbak said. “I’ve learned my lesson. Now, if you please, I will see you at exactly three-thirty. How’s that?”

  “I’ll be here,” I told him.

  “No, I meant at—”

  I hung up before he could tell me I was expected at his office. Then I took the phone off the hook.

  I went back to The Sporting News and managed to get through the National League East. But my concentration wasn’t there. My stomach was softly churning, and my head ached. It was as if my body wanted to tell me something. I tried to ignore it, but when a light sweat broke across my forehead I decided it would be a good time to start listening. I returned to the telephone and called Freddie.

  “AP Criminal and Civil Investigations. May I help you?”

  “How come you don’t use your name?” I asked him.

  “Huh?”

  “Sidney Poitier Fredricks Investigations, something like that?”

  “I used to be an AP, remember? At Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m sentimental. Besides, it puts me first in the telephone book.”

  “Now I hear you.”

  “So what do you want, Taylor?”

  “There’s an old Chinese proverb. I don’t remember the exact words, but what it says is, if you save someone’s life …”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re responsible for it.”

  After a few moments of silence Freddie said, “I ain’t Chinese.”

  CARSON SATERBAK POUNDED on my door like he was trying to knock it down. I made him do it twice, made him wait while I slid open my top right-hand drawer—the one with the 9mm Beretta in it.

  I bade him enter and in he walked. He was wearing a black lambskin jacket over a mohair sweater, black jeans, and black loafers with tassels. Yet he had the bearing of a man who wore a tie.

  “I’m Carson Saterbak,” he announced.

  I’d guessed as much but did not say so. Instead, I gestured at a chair in front of my desk, not rising myself, not offering my hand, not speaking.

  After a few moments of silence, Saterbak said, “I am by nature a patient man.”

  I did not reply, waiting to see if that were true, sipping coffee from my mug without offering him some. It was. He knew exactly what I was doing—trying to anger him into making mistakes—and the strategy didn’t bother him a bit. He smiled at me, then asked if he could have coffee. I nodded, and he went to t
he machine and poured himself a mug. His manner was smooth now, and indifferent, like a shopper with plenty of cash browsing the merchandise, not caring if he made a purchase or not.

  He returned to the chair and smiled some more. “You have been disturbing several of my friends these past few days,” he said at last. “I wish for you to stop.”

  Saterbak seemed intent on a reply, the way he stared at me after speaking, so I gave him one. “You want to hear my personal definition of success? Success is making a comfortable living, doing what gives you pleasure, and not taking shit from anybody.”

  He smiled, almost laughed. “We all take shit from somebody,” Saterbak insisted.

  “Yeah? Who gives it to you?”

  “Right now, you are,” he replied. Then he did laugh. When he was finished, he said, “It shouldn’t be this difficult.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to leave Amanda Field alone. I want you to stay away from Joan and Peter Dully.”

  “If I don’t, what are you going to do? Give me shit?”

  Saterbak set the coffee mug on top of my desk, went into his inside pocket. I flinched at the gesture, shooting my hand into the drawer. When his hand came out holding a sheet of paper, mine came up empty. Saterbak unfolded the sheet and began to read from it. The paper contained the facts and figures of my life right down to the limit of my credit cards. He told me what schools I’d gone to and what grade point average I’d acquired, when I married Laura and when she died, how much we paid for our home, my employment record, health record.… I let him read without interruption. If he was trying to impress me or frighten me, he was failing. I compile dossiers like this on people all the time; I wasn’t surprised that someone could do it to me. But I was angry. Not at the information. At the fact that I was now convinced Saterbak was responsible for stalking me, for trashing my house. Which meant he was also responsible for the telephone call to Amanda Field just thirty minutes before someone took a shot at her.

  I let that slide for now, waiting for Saterbak to finish his recitation. When he did I asked, “What about the guns?”

  That caught him off guard. “Guns?”

  “I own eight,” I said, then listed them by caliber. “Your report missed several names, too,” I added, reciting four.

  “Who are they?”

  “The men I’ve killed,” I replied. “I thought you should know. Keep your files up to date.”

  He stared at me and I stared at him. As conversations went, this one was going nowhere fast. And that did not fit my plans. I drank some more coffee, then asked, “Are we done playing now?”

  Saterbak smiled like a man who understood perfectly the grand scheme of things and liked his place in it. “Done,” he said.

  I studied him for a moment, then played my ace. “Brian Burke, two million dollars.”

  Saterbak did not reply.

  “Carl Defiebre, one million.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tim Lemke and Kennedy Slavik, one million dollars each.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Senator Doll, Peter Grotting, Phillip Jaeger, Katherine Moralas—half a million each.”

  “My God.”

  “And then there’s you and Levering Field.”

  Saterbak shook his head like he had a pain he hoped would fall out of his ears.

  “Aspirin?” I asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Would you like some more coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Saterbak replied, again.

  I didn’t get any, either. I didn’t want to leave my opened drawer.

  “So you have a list of names,” Saterbak pointed out. “Means nothing.”

  “C’mon Saterbak. You think you’re bulletproof? I could take you out with a spitball. A scam like yours works only if no one looks real close. A phone call is all it would take to convince the IRS to put Willow Tree under a microscope.”

  “Are you going to turn us in?”

  “I don’t work for the IRS,” I assured him.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “A little old lady in Fort Myers, Florida.”

  “One of Levering’s investors?” Saterbak guessed.

  “What were you thinking?” I wanted to know. “You and your rich friends hire Joan and Peter Dully to set up a dummy corporation in which to make dummy investments. I figure you paid them ten percent. That’s about their net worth.”

  Saterbak nodded.

  “You buy up all thirty-five limited partnerships at quarter of a million bucks a pop. Then you pretend the company goes bust and you’ve lost your investment, when in fact, you’re just putting the money back in your pocket. You report the paper loss to the IRS. Now you and your friends have a capital loss for the full amount of your investment plus a deduction that you can use to offset the gains from all of your other investments. The entire scheme was devised so you and your rich friends wouldn’t have to pay taxes on your sizeable investment incomes.”

  “Tax avoidance,” Saterbak said.

  “Tax fraud,” I said. “And it should have worked.”

  “It still can,” Saterbak insisted softly, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Maybe,” I answered encouraging him.

  Saterbak smiled. He was in control again. “How much do you make?” he asked.

  “Four hundred a day plus expenses.”

  “How does forty thousand dollars sound?”

  “It sounds like a number that came off the top of your head.”

  Saterbak smiled some more. “I’m open to negotiation,” he said.

  “Tell me something,” I asked, returning to the subject. “Levering Field didn’t invest his own money in Willow Tree. He invested other people’s money, people who might want to know what happened to it. Why did you let him?”

  “We were using Willow Tree to avoid paying taxes, as you said,” Saterbak confessed. “Levering was using it to fleece his clients.”

  “Why did you let him?” I repeated.

  When Saterbak didn’t answer, I asked, “Was it because of Amanda?”

  He sighed.

  “Levering thought you two were having an affair, but Amanda denies it.”

  Saterbak inhaled deeply, then spoke quickly, like it was his last breath and he wanted to get the words out while he could: “I’ve loved Amanda since we were sixteen years old. And I think she loves me. But she was married to that jerk and wouldn’t even consider having an affair. Never.”

  “If she loved you, why did she stay married to him?”

  The smile on Saterbak’s face was one of admiration. “Amanda is an old-fashioned girl,” he said. “Not long ago, people used to stay in bad marriages for the kids. Amanda is one of those people.”

  “So you remained friends.”

  “Sometimes you have to settle for what you can get,” Saterbak said.

  “But you and Levering weren’t friends.”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you let him in on Willow Tree?”

  Saterbak was on his feet now, pacing my office, his hands behind his back. I watched his hands while making sure mine never strayed far from the desk drawer.

  “He came to me with an offer. What’s the saying, an offer you can’t refuse? He told me that since I loved Amanda, I could have her. He said he was tired of being married to her, anyway; said she was boring. He said he would divorce her—clear the decks for me, he said—for one million dollars.”

  “He offered to sell you his wife?”

  “Nice guy, wasn’t he?”

  “Helluva human being,” I agreed.

  Saterbak kept pacing, but now his arms were folded across his chest. “I didn’t have a million dollars lying around,” he continued, “so I told him about Willow Tree.”

  “He was in to it for only seven hundred-fifty thousand,” I reminded Saterbak.

  “That was his choice,” he told me. “Apparently those were the only investors he was sure of.”

  “
The only ones he thought would soon die intestate.”

  Saterbak shrugged.

  “You people—”

  “Us?!” Saterbak shouted. “Your hands aren’t so lily-white. You tried to blackmail Levering.”

  “I tried to force him to give back the money he stole from my client!” I shouted back. “And that’s not the same thing.”

  “You threatened his life.”

  “I did not.”

  “That’s what Amanda said.”

  “I admit to making his life miserable, but I did not threaten him with violence,” I announced as if that absolved me of all sins.

  “He thought you were going to kill him. That’s why he asked me …” Saterbak stopped walking and talking simultaneously. I filled in the blank.

  “That’s why he asked you to supply him with the name of a killer, preferably an inexpensive one.”

  Saterbak looked at me like he was going to deny it. I didn’t let him.

  “I’ve been to the pony rides before, pal,” I insisted, tapping my chest.

  Saterbak defended himself: “He said you were trying to kill him, and I couldn’t very well tell him to go to the police.”

  “Course not,” I agreed.

  “I knew some people in Chicago.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  Saterbak sat down again. He looked defeated. I found his expression encouraging. But then he perked up, announcing, “You can’t prove any of this.”

  He was right, of course. “But I can prove what I need to prove,” I told him. “And the Dullys will probably prove the rest when the IRS leans on them. Joan is a woman who likes company. Do you think she’d be willing to go to jail alone?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Let’s start with some honest answers. Why did you have Levering killed?”

  “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “And when I was shot afterward …?”

  “I wasn’t involved that time, I tell you.”

  “Why did you try to have Amanda killed?”

  “Now, wait a minute!” Saterbak said.

  “The cops matched the bullets,” I told him. “Whoever shot Levering and me used the same gun on Amanda.”