by Ross Thomas
“And the next time you need a car, Mr. St. Ives, be sure to call Hertz.” I promised that I would and hung up.
I hadn’t reported the car as being either missing or stolen so I assumed that Spencer’s gray-clad private troopers had tidied things up when they got through shooting at me. I also assumed that they had collected the bodies, picked up the spent shell cases, and even policed the area for old cigarette butts before driving the rented Ford to Silver Spring and dumping it there. I wondered what they had done with Mbwato and whether anyone would ever come looking for him, but a billion dollars could hide almost anything, even a dead body as large as that of the colonel from Komporeen who, when alive, may have been the world’s most accomplished liar. I spent a few moments speculating about how much the Dutch-British combine would pay Captain Ulado for the shield in Rotterdam and whether he would spend some of it in Corfu or Acapulco, and if, while spending it, he would ever think about the children with distended bellies who went around eating mud, straw, twigs, and chalk. I felt that if he did think about it, it wouldn’t bother him much, no more than it would have bothered Colonel Mbwato.
I called down for some breakfast and The Washington Post and when they came I read a brief story about how the caretaker at the Manassas National Battlefield Park last night had reported hearing a series of gunshots near the statue of Stonewall Jackson, but after investigating, police said that they had found nothing. I was pouring my third cup of coffee when someone knocked at the door. It was Lieutenant Demeter wearing a green sport shirt and light gray slacks.
“My day off,” he said as he came in the room, looked around with his cop’s eyes, and selected a comfortable chair.
“Coffee?” I said.
“Sure. Black.”
I handed him a cup and then went back to my chair. “Haven’t found it yet,” Demeter said, and sipped at his coffee.
“What?”
“The shield.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t seem much interested, St. Ives.”
“I’m not any more. The Coulter Museum has decided that it no longer needs my services, such as they are.”
Demeter nodded and placed his cup and saucer on a table. “That’s what the Wingo woman told me last night. I gave her a call because I was trying to find you. She was kind of shook up, said that you gave her a rough time—almost accused her of being in on the whole thing.”
“Just talk,” I said.
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Demeter said. “That’s what I figured. Reason I was calling you yesterday, I wanted to tell you about your two little pals.”
“What pals?”
“The kid and his girl. The thieves.”
“What about them?”
“They got a lawyer.”
“So?”
“Well, he’s not just a lawyer, he’s about the best that money can buy. A whole lot of money.”
“Who?”
“Wilfred Coley.”
“That’s a whole lot of money,” I said.
“So I was wondering who was going to pick up his tab.”
“Ask Coley,” I said.
“He won’t say.”
“You’re asking me?”
“That’s right, St. Ives, I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know,” I lied. It would be Spencer, of course, still tidying things up.
“I think you do,” Demeter said.
“I’m out of it, Lieutenant, all the way out.”
Demeter leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He looked relaxed, rested, and unhurried. It was his day off and he had no place better to go. “It should be real interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“Watching Coley work on you.”
“Me?”
“At the trial. You’ll be a key witness for the prosecution.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“He’ll cut you up into little pieces. Little, bitty ones.”
“He’s good, I understand.”
“He’ll turn you inside out and every way but loose. But, of course, you’re smart. You won’t tell him anything but the truth. Just like you’re telling me. Oh, you might leave out a little—like the two spades and their curling iron. You might leave that out.”
“It never happened,” I said.
“Course not. So you might as well leave it out. And then you might leave out about the shield.”
“What about it?”
“That you know where it is.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“The Wingo woman said that you told her and Spencer that you knew where it was, but that you’d tell only Spencer, Did you?”
“Ask him,” I said. “I don’t know where it is.”
Demeter unclasped his hands from behind his head and waved his right one at me in what he must have hoped was a reassuring gesture. It wasn’t. “Don’t worry about me, St. Ives. By the time this thing goes to trial, that shield will have been almost forgotten. It’s murder now and nobody’s going to be too worried about what happened to a brass shield. Nobody but me anyhow. But I can’t prove anything. I can make some guesses, some pretty good ones, I think, but they’re still just guesses and I’m not even sure that I’d prove anything if I could. You know why?”
“Why?” I said.
“Because you didn’t make anything out of it, did you?”
“No.”
He nodded his head and smiled in a well-satisfied sort of way. “Nobody made anything, did they?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
He smiled again and if the dog in the manger had a smile, it must have been very much like the one that Demeter wore. “That’s what I thought. The hot-shot, big-time, New York City go-between. You had it all there, I bet, right in your hands and you didn’t make a dime, did you? Not a dime.”
“No,” I said.
He nodded again, almost happy now. “Like I said,” Demeter went on, “I think I got most of it figured out. You take the two spades with their limey accents and their curling iron, add somebody with enough money—and enough interest—to hire Coley to defend the kid and his girl, throw in the fact that the Wingo woman’s husband had a hell of a big habit that he had to feed, and somehow it all hangs together. A little loose maybe, but together.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
“I bet. There’re still a couple of pieces missing, of course. But it’s not bad, not bad at all. You want to know what my picture looks like?”
“No,” I said. “Not much. Not at all, in fact.”
He nodded thoughtfully, picked up his cup of coffee, drained it, put it back down, and rose. He moved easily, I noticed, as though he had had a good night’s sleep. He probably didn’t even dream. “Just a couple of more questions, St. Ives. Just a few more off the record, like they say. Only you and me now. Nobody else. Like I said, I can’t prove anything and I’m not sure I want to prove anything, not if I might have to go up against a billion dollars.”
“What questions?” I said.
“What you did there at the end for nothing, it didn’t turn out the way you thought it would, did it?”
“No.”
He moved slowly to the door, his head bent forward as if deep in thought. Then he turned and stared at me once more with his beany black eyes. “But you could have made a buck or two. I mean it was lying around and you could have skimmed some off?”
“Yes,” I said. “I suppose so.”
He paused at the door as if deciding how to phrase the next question and when he said it, he said it slowly and carefully as if counting each word. “Then if it wasn’t for money, why did you go ahead and do it, I mean, a guy like you?”
I looked at him for a while before answering. He seemed to be in no hurry. “Cotton candy and hungry kids, perhaps,” I said. “Or sick kittens and lost puppies.”
Demeter nodded slightly, as if he thought that he might understand
, but wasn’t really sure. “Well, I guess that’s an answer,” he said. “As much of one as I should expect.”
“That’s all it is,” I said. “Just an answer.”
I never did think up a better one, not even after Demeter left and I stood there for a long time with my hand on the phone trying to decide whom I should call in Rotterdam. Or whether I should call anyone at all.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1969 by William Morrow & Company, Inc.
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-5967-2
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