by Ed Lacy
“It was deposited on April 5.”
“Then we paid out the money on the sixth or seventh. Take some time, at least twenty minutes,” he said, getting his secretary on the intercom phone, giving her the information. Then he leaned back in his big chair and gave me a happy look as he said, “As it happens I'm a rabid detective story fan. Read a book a night, best way I know to relax. Only thing I liked about F.D.R., he was a detective fan too. Now I've always wanted to ask a real detective...”
Damn if this character didn't tell me about a dozen screwy plots, asking me this and that as though it was a quiz program. I couldn't come up with a single correct answer and he looked disappointed. Finally I said, “Look, in a book or a movie the crime is rigged because the writer invents all the angles—usually in favor of the crook.”
“Nonsense, these books prove crime doesn't pay.”
“No, sir, the writer, like most other people, thinks he can outsmart the police. He's showing off, saying this is how I could do the crime if I wanted to—despite the righteous ending tagged on the last page. In a real crime, you have to run down a thousand dead leads, like I'm doing, to get to the one that will break the case.”
“But then you have the use of the finest labs, many men, to facilitate your work, whereas the private eye has only his wits,” he said as if letting me in on a secret.
I went along with the game, trying not to laugh at this big executive who sounded like a comic book reader. “Let me give you a tip, labs can help but there's still nothing been invented good as a stoolie. This honor among thieves is strictly for the birds—and the books. You'll always find guys anxious to sell out for a ten-buck bill. And to process a clue in the lab takes time, but one word from a stoolie is the fastest short cut to the solution,” I said, wondering how soon I'd luck up on a guy or two in the know and out on parole, get me a couple of stools.
“Stoolies?” the bank man said, disgust on his fat face. “That seems an ugly, unfair way to—”
His secretary came in and placed a slip of paper before him. She was one of these tall, classy-looking babes, especially in the legs. Big boy picked up his phone and went into a long conversation with somebody—probably in the legal department. This somebody kept advising him not to give out the information. My detective fan kept countering with, “I'm not questioning your knowledge of the law, Maxwell, but we are helping the police.... Sure, but it's part of the bank's duty to the public.... Of course I don't want a lawsuit. All right, I'll come down to your office.”
He stood up as he told me, “Our legal boys lean toward the conservative side, naturally. They say we could find ourselves in a lawsuit and at the wrong end of some publicity by giving you this information. You wait here. I'll be back in five or ten minutes.” He gave me a popeyed stare as he walked out.
He was okay, the slip of paper was still on his desk. The check had been dated April 2 and signed by an Edwin Wren of Wren & Company, a depositor in the bank's midtown branch. The name hit a tiny bell and I leafed through my notebook—Wren & Company was one of the electrical companies Rose Henderson was exposing. And my hunch began to grow cold, it was like adding pies and snakes—it couldn't be What possible connection could there be between Owens and Rose? Yet here it was, unless the bank had made a mistake, and I had to chance that they didn't. Anyway, I sure couldn't ask.
My banker who was having a romance with private eyes waddled back in while I was thinking this over. “Sad news,” he said happily, sitting behind his desk. “Our lawyers advise against giving out the information. I'm sorry. I think it's nonsense but I'm not a legal eagle.” He raised the slip of paper high, neatly tore it in quarters, and dropped it in his basket, winking at me like a kid as he did so.
“Tough, but rules are rules,” I said, rolling with the gag and winking back. “Thank you for your time.” I headed for the door.
He called out, “Be sure to tell the department they'll require a court order to secure the information.”
I nodded, considered asking if he was sure about the signer of the check, and walked out. Hell, I couldn't put him on a spot.
It was noon when I hit the bricks and the street was jammed. I dropped into a drugstore and found Wren & Company in the phone book—they were in the mid-fifties on the West Side. It was hot and I was thirsty and figured I'd have lunch first, but when I saw the mob scene at the soda counter I took a subway uptown. Could be Mr. Wren didn't go out for lunch till after one.
He had his own remodeled building, three floors high and not very wide. It was smaller than I'd expected, didn't look like money till I got inside. The office was brightly lit and had huge two-tone photos of the N.Y.C. skyline for wallpaper. A large mobile made up of switches, chimes and the other electrical gadgets they manufactured was hanging from the ceiling, turning slowly in the air-conditioned breeze. The receptionist wasn't any Miss America but her expensive suit matched the rest of the office—not loud and in good taste. When I asked if Wren was in she gave me a practiced small smile as she asked, “Have you an appointment?”
I shook my head, told her my name as I flashed my tin.
She didn't get ruffled. “Oh, dear, is this about a traffic ticket or something?”
“It's about something that isn't a traffic ticket. Wren in?”
“I'll see.” She had one of these streamlined switchboards on her ebony desk, shaped like a silver airfoil, and she phoned in, then told me, “Mr. Wren will see you in a moment. Have a seat, please.”
There were a couple of standard leather chairs and a free-form table made of some shiny metal, a bunch of trade magazines on the table. I sat down and glanced at one of the mags, put it down. The receptionist turned to a typewriter and went on with a letter she was doing. I watched her legs under the table. At first I thought they were fat, but she must have been a dancer—they were solid and strong, something like Rose's.
Legs are legs and what good would they ever do me? Yet I was so intent on them it took me a moment to realize somebody was watching me. There were two doors leading from the reception room and one of them was open and a heavy-set, short guy was staring at me. He was wearing wrinkled gray pants, open white shirt with a dark blue tie hanging loosely around his fat neck. He had a good tan on his face but strictly the kind-that comes from a sun lamp. His eyes were sunk in deep dark pockets, a ragged thick gray mustache seemed to support his thin nose, and his head was a polished bald dome rising above a few gray patches over his big ears. He was holding a pencil in one hand and a pair of heavy-framed glasses in the other. He looked more like a working foreman than a boss, yet I knew he was Wren.
We stared at each other for a second and he seemed annoyed. “All right, come in,” he said in a weary voice, and walked back into his office, moving with the clumsy grace of a guy who has taken on weight in his middle years.
His office was a sloppy mess—the same modernistic walls and furniture—but his desk was covered with papers and blueprints, and there was another desk at right angles piled high with books and magazines. I shut the door and found him already sitting behind his desk. There was a container of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich in front of him. The coffee had spilled, staining the papers under it. He motioned toward a black leather and chrome chair and as I sat down he started on the sandwich, mumbling, “I never have time for lunch.”
“Are you Mr. Edwin Wren?”
He nodded.
“I'm Detective David—”
“I know who you are.” He leaned back in his swivel chair, rocking slightly, and watched me as he chewed his sandwich thoroughly. He looked the perfect picture of an overworked small businessman.
I let him work me over with his eyes, then he washed the food down with the cold coffee, tossed the container in the wastebasket, spilling some on the gray rug. He hid his mouth with a pudgy hand as he belched. “Goddamn coffee, worse than the cigarette habit, kills a man's stomach.” He brushed crumbs from his mustache, said, “You're just a kid with a badge.” His voice wasn't nasty, just
weary.
“Which would you rather see, my birth certificate or my badge?”
“Aren't you overdoing things, Mr. Wintino?” he asked, putting on his glasses. They were powerful lenses and made his eyes look large and soft, what they say a cow's eyes look like.
“I don't know, what am I overdoing?”
“I commend your thoroughness in tracing me, but as the Data men told you yesterday, we haven't broken any laws and the whole business of this silly girl writing a—”
“I'm not here about that,” I cut in, surprised the Data lads yelled to a client. “I'm here to ask about a $4000.75 check you made out to a Francis Parker on April 2.”
The eyes got even bigger behind the glasses. The only sound in the office was the slight squeak of his chair as he rocked. I like catching a guy off balance, watching him rolling a mental log. But when he asked, “And why is the Police Department interested in that?” his voice was almost asleep. He fumbled in a desk drawer, took out a large pipe and a pouch, packed the pipe.
“You tell me, Mr. Wren,” I told him, trying to sound just as casual. “I traced the check to you through a bank account under the phony name of Francis Parker. His picture has been in the papers—you certainly know that Parker is a retired cop who was murdered a few days ago.”
Wren puffed on his pipe and nodded. The tobacco had a nutty smell that wasn't bad at all. He said, “I barely glance at the papers but I did see a minor headline about a shooting. Still, exactly why are you here, why is a business check of mine official police business?”
“I'm doing this on my own time, Mr. Wren, so I would appreciate if you'd stop fencing. An ex-cop is murdered, we find four thousand in cash in his house and a bankbook. You gave the dead man the four grand. You read about the killing. Why haven't you come forward to tell us about the money, the phony name?”
“Because I had hired this ex-cop to do some work for me. He did it and I paid him. That was some six or seven weeks ago. I still fail to see how that is any concern of the police.”
“What sort of work did he do for you?”
Wren lit his pipe again before he said, “Detective work. We'd heard rumors of Miss Henderson's article and we wanted to learn who the author was, where she lived, various details. Frankly at that stage we didn't even want a known private agency on the case. One night I met this retired policeman in a bar, we got to talking over some beers. It occurred to me he was the man for our job. I hired him on the spot.”
“He didn't have a license for private work.”
Wren smiled. “That didn't seem to upset either of us.”
“And he found Miss Henderson for you?”
“Yes.”
“You paid him four grand for that? What the hell was the seventy-five cents for?”
Wren puffed hard on his pipe, said over the smoke, “I'm afraid the entire transaction ended on a sour note. Mr. Parker—he insisted he be called and paid under that name, to avoid taxes I suppose, although I never asked him—anyway, Mr. Parker located the writer within a few days. We had agreed upon payment of one thousand dollars plus modest expenses, if any. I then suggested to Mr. Parker he start—let's use the word harass—that he start harassing Miss Henderson. He refused. The truth is he turned about and bluntly threatened me with outright blackmail: he wanted four thousand dollars or he would sell his story to Miss Henderson and this lousy Weekly Spectator. I had no choice, I paid.” Wren slipped me a quick smile. “Mr. Parker was not without a sense of humor, he insisted seventy-five cents be added for 'expenses'—three subway fares and three phone calls. I am aware what I am telling you leaves me open to more blackmail, but I have confidence in your honest young face.”
“Cut the sarcasm. The word 'honest' has a hollow ring coming from you,” I said. I didn't know enough about Owens to figure him for blackmail or not. Maybe he saw this as the last chance to dig into the cracker barrel.
Wren stared at me, those large soft eyes behind the glasses twin pictures of pity. “Pretty strong language, young man.”
“Your clowns have been giving Miss Henderson a strong pushing around, a real bad time.”
“My handling of Miss Henderson may not have been entirely ethical but it wasn't dishonest. You should pay more attention to your choice of words. The young lady is fired with ideals and a chance to make a name for herself. An act is dishonest or 'wrong' only when it is something not being done by the majority. To put it clearer, wrong is perversion and a pervert is somebody out of step. However once he is in step, or the others are in step with him, it ceases to be perversion or wrong. Do you follow me?”
“Should I? What's all this talk add up to?”
“Simply that I take objection to your slur about my honesty. We're businessmen who—”
“Who Miss Henderson says are breaking the law.”
He shook his head. “That's her opinion. It's true that by... uh... monopolizing this particular item we will keep the price up, but at the same time we would be able to control the quality, keep that up too.”
“Okay, you're public benefactors. What has this to do with the check?”
“Don't be so brash, young man. I want you to see the whole picture, including the check. What we are doing is being done all the time and by the most respected people. To give you a broad example: there's a strict control on diamonds, the supply is kept down to keep prices pegged high. The whole world knows that. If you should discover new diamond mines, be in a position to undersell, and refuse to join the syndicate, they would ruin you. At the risk of sounding cynical let me remind you that most of the people in this syndicate have titles and are considered the height of respectability in their various countries.”
“Let's get back to the check.”
“This bears upon it indirectly,” he said slowly, as if he'd been waiting all day for a good listener. “I'm merely proving Miss Henderson is wrong, that what we are doing is neither criminal nor even wrong. Let me ask you this: suppose tomorrow you hit upon a new soft drink that sweeps the country. You can make this sugar water for a penny, market it for two cents and thus make a neat profit. However since you control it, if you find you can sell it for ten cents, make a 900 per cent profit, which would you do?”
“Sell it for a dime. Mr. Wren, all this talk is getting us away from Parker and why you didn't come to the police.”
“On the contrary, if I can make you understand that Miss Henderson is a crackpot, out to make her own type of fast dollar, then you can understand why I had to pay off Mr. Parker. Why I haven't gone to the police and don't want any publicity about the matter, if it can be helped. I had a business deal with a man, weeks later he is shot. That obviously had nothing to do with me. Once I paid off, I was done with the matter, I never saw him again.”
“There are three other concerns in this, do they all...?”
“I handled this myself.”
“Why?”
Wren lit his pipe again. “A good question. I met up with this former cop, I made the deal. When it turned sour I took full and sole responsibility. There's also the matter of pride. I didn't—and don't—want the others to know I'd been taken in.”
“So you shelled out four grand, just like that?”
“Not just like that,” he said, pointing his pipe at me. “This goes down as a business expense, taxes will absorb most of the loss. I got the information I wanted but I paid more than I expected. That's it in a nutshell.”
“If you report this as a tax loss, what about the phony name of Parker, which he was using to escape taxes?”
Wren shrugged. “I don't fool with taxes. If he wanted to, that was his business.”
“Where is this bar and when did you meet him?”
“See here, Detective Wintino, I resent this questioning, as though I was a suspect or something. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
“I never said you were a suspect, and a dead man isn't a mole hill. I'm asking you these questions because it may lead to somebody, and so on, until we h
it the right one.”
“Then I can be of little help. We first met at some bar on Sixth Avenue, I don't remember exactly. I'd dropped in for a quick beer and we started talking about some show we were watching on the TV. I can probably recognize the place if I pass it again. That was around the middle of March. After our first meeting, due to the nature of our business, we thought it best to meet on the street, usually at the corner of Fifty-fourth Street and... As you can see all this has nothing to do with any shooting and it would be darn embarrassing, to say the least, if it came to light. I certainly want to co-operate with the police but I don't wish to make an ass of myself, or to hurt my business. I expect intelligent co-operation from you. If I'm not involved don't drag me in.”
“That isn't up to me to decide.”
“I believe you said you're doing this on your own time. Same situation when you invaded the Data office. I don't know what you fancy yourself, but common sense has to be a factor in things too. I once had a minor business deal with a man later found dead. That's all there is to it. Period.”