All the same, in the three years he served as Benedetti’s assistant, Ron had learned more about the art of detection than he had thought existed, and at the end of that time, with the help of a good word from Inspector Fleisher, and a few favors collected in the State license bureau, Ron had gotten his license and gone into business for himself, using Benedetti’s methods as well as he could.
When he got the chance, that is. Opportunities for real challenging work were rare enough, and now, when what looked like a great one had come along, he was on the outside. It was frustrating.
Well, there was no law that said he couldn’t do some figuring on his own, just to keep in form. All it would cost him was the price of a newspaper, and he bought that every day anyway. Ron picked up the Courant, and brought the Benedetti method to bear on the case.
The professor had summed up his technique in two words: analyze and imagine. He likened a crime to a story, not an original idea in itself, but Benedetti put the detective, not the criminal, in the author’s place. “In theory, it is simple; like all good theories,” the professor had explained. “We are confronted with the ending of a story; that is, the situation as it stands now. This person is dead, that person is richer, etcetera. Remember, we must be as certain as possible that we know what the present situation really is, which is not always an easy task.
“Next, we know certain facts, or during the survey of the current state of events they come to light readily; the man’s wife hated him, his business partner had dinner with the Pope at the time of the crime. These we remember, but disregard for a time.
“Third, we postulate beginnings for the story, saying to ourselves, ‘Such a person decided to kill the victim,’ substituting the name of each person involved, in turn, for the phrase ‘such a person.’ Then, we create the middle of the story, the how and why of our living romanzo, eh? Some of the resulting stories, most of them, will be absurd, or (better still) impossible. But some will not.
“Then all that remains is to look again for facts that escaped our notice the first time, and try again and again, until we have one story that cannot be controverted by events, in short, until we have imagined the story of the truth.
“Of course, life laughs at theories, Ronald. Others besides the criminal will hide things and hinder you, you will find in life. The very presence of an investigator inevitably causes changes in the investigation. And of course, even the greatest of us is human. It takes true humility to cope with evil, amico, security within one’s self, and acceptance at the same time of one’s limitations.
“Still, my theory is a tool, a good one, to be used with patience, and talent, and humility.”
As far as the Hog case was concerned, though, with its multiple victims and myriad complications, Ron was aware (in all humility), that he needed a lot more facts before he could even begin to write a “living novel” of the crime. The newspaper accounts were not enough. Still, some interesting questions did present themselves.
For example, the two girls died on the fifteenth of the month, and Buell Tatham received the note on the seventeenth. Stanley Watson had died last Sunday, the twenty-fifth, and the note arrived yesterday, the twenty-seventh. Was this to be a pattern? Was there some ten-day cycle, natural or man-imposed, that governed Hog’s activities? For example, could he be a crewman on some ship that plied the nearby Great Lakes?
For another, it seemed apparent to Ron that Hog made intimate studies of his victims before he struck. He knew where those girls were going; he had to have found out the purpose of the girls’ trip beforehand, he certainly couldn’t have learned it after the crash, not with Buell Tatham there immediately afterward. And that can only mean, Ron thought, that he followed them around, eavesdropped on them—that he had those three girls and no others marked for slaughter that afternoon. Barbara Elleger had escaped through pure good luck, both for her and the police. She might be able to shed some light on the matter when she regained consciousness; any minute now, according to the Courant.
And how about old Watson? Sure, it was conceivable that a lonely old man might let a stranger in the house just to have someone to talk to, but what circumstances could explain his letting the stranger get behind him at the top of the stairs, as the medical examiners report said had to have happened. To Ron that could only suggest that Hog had taken the time and effort to make himself known to the old man.
It was disconcerting, frightening, that someone should go to such pains to set up the murders of strangers; to make the deaths look like accidents, then proclaim them murders.
The phone on Ron’s desk rang, but he ignored it, knowing Mrs. Goralsky would pick it up on the third ring. No need to seem eager.
“Gentry Investigations,” he heard her say. “Yes, yes, I’ll see if he’s in.”
Ron picked up the phone at the buzz of the intercom. “Yes, Mrs. Goralsky?”
“Mr. Harold Atler calling. Are you in? He says it’s urgent and confidential.”
“This is Atler of Atler, Pauling, Efter and Bass, the brokers? Hell, they could afford Sherlock Holmes. Put him on, Mrs. Goralsky.” After a click, he said, “This is Gentry.”
“Gentry, this is Harold Atler. Do you know who I am?” Atler’s voice had a tone of habitual command that immediately set Ron’s teeth on edge. It was an unfortunate fact of a private detective’s life that any client or prospective client who could afford to pay a fee of any size had that attitude as part of his basal metabolism.
Realizing, though, that one must work to eat and eat to live, Ron stifled his hostilities and said, “Yes, I do, Mr. Atler. How may I help you?”
“I want you to get over here right away, and I’ll tell you when you arrive. It’s a ... delicate matter.”
“I don’t do divorce work,” Ron cautioned him.
Atler was irritated, practically insulted. “What?” he said, then, “You don’t have to worry about that, Gentry, I’ve never been married. There’s a situation here I want assessed by a professional, but I don’t want the police, do you follow me?”
“Very clear, sir. I get two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. Is that agreeable?”
“My God, that’s a thousand dollars a week!” Money was a topic Atler could get emotional about.
“I don’t get work every day, Mr. Atler,” Ron told him, “And I don’t have enough loose capital to join you in the commodities market. Two hundred dollars a day.”
The remark about the commodities market seemed for some reason to do the trick. “All right, Gentry, consider yourself hired.”
“And expenses,” Ron reminded him.
“Yes, yes, how soon will you be here?”
“That depends on where ‘here’ is. Where are you?”
Atler became really flustered. A subordinate of his would have suffered mightily for an omission like that. “Sorry, Gentry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m on the campus of the university. Sumter Hall. Do you know where that is?”
“Very well.” Ron’s first encounter with the professor had taken place there.
“Room 119. Hurry.”
Ron got his coat, and stopped in the outer office to tell Mrs. Goralsky where he was going.
“He didn’t want to pay our price, huh?” she asked.
“Rich people always look for bargains. That’s how they get rich. He came around, though.”
“Does it sound interesting?”
“Well, it’s two hundred bucks, at least,” Ron said. “Even if it isn’t the Hog murders.”
THREE
PARKING ON OR NEAR the campus, Ron knew, would be impossible. Some things never changed. He tucked his car in a small space in a commercial area nearby and cut across a field of frozen mud that someday was supposed to become a students’ activity center. Gaining the main quadrangle, he couldn’t help smiling at the sight of bundled-up coeds chasing their breaths to their next class. No woman could help looking cute and innocent in a snorkel coat and mittens.
Sumter Hall was a squat, ugly building of n
ative limestone, with the bare skeletons of ivy vines clinging to its walls from ground to roof. Ron ignored the shoveled walks, and cut a diagonal path across the quad, his steps crunching on gritty week-old snow.
Ron liked the university and cherished the ivory-tower atmosphere most of all. It was a place where people scrambled more and changed less than anything else he could think of.
The sweltering heat inside of Sumter Hall was one thing that could use a little changing. The heat, and the smell of ozone and burning dust wafting from white-hot radiators, was like a brick wall after the near-freezing temperatures outside. Ron’s eyeglasses fogged over as soon as the door closed behind him. If he tried to wipe them he knew there was a good chance they’d snap in the middle and leave him blind, so he stepped to the side and waited patiently for the temperatures to equalize and the lenses to clear. That accomplished, he headed for room 119.
It was a faculty office, in the basement. Atler was standing outside the door, amid pieces of broken glass. He was well groomed, and well, if a little too conservatively, dressed. He gave Ron the impression of being ready to take off on a long business trip.
There was nothing wrong with the face under the broker’s carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, except an uncomfortably long upper lip. A mustache would have helped, but Atler had never considered growing one. He’d never even couple mustaches and himself in the same thought. Mustaches were frivolous. Actors and the like could grow mustaches, brokers were important.
The fellow walking down the hall toward him, the blond fellow with the glasses, he looked like a businessman, or would if he cut his hair a bit. Not like the sons of dead partners, who wore green suits to the office and talked (seriously) of buying marijuana futures, just in case, and kept bringing up the topic of retirement and similar ridiculous ideas.
This fellow wouldn’t be like that. Excellent-looking young man, probably on the business school faculty. Be a credit to any firm, probably—
But then he stopped, nodded, and said, “Mr. Atler? I’m Ron Gentry.”
Everything was a disappointment these days. Atler said, “Well, Gentry, what do you think?”
Astonishingly, the young man was grinning at him. Atler was about to put him in his place, until Gentry said, “About what, Mr. Atler? You were a little vague on the phone.”
“Oh ... ah ... yes, of course. There’s been a robbery.”
It irritated Atler to see that this snooper wouldn’t look him in the face, but instead kept gazing at the floor. “I thought that might be it,” he said. “What’s missing?”
Now Atler looked at the floor. He cleared his throat and said something. Unfortunately, he did both at the same time.
“What?” the detective asked.
“I said five thousand dollars!” Atler bellowed. When he heard himself, he looked up and down the hall to see if he had attracted any unwanted attention. “Cash?” Atler nodded.
“You kept five thousand dollars in an office in Sumter Hall?” To Atler, the young man sounded as though he felt he knew better, just like that Efter upstart. He wondered why young people these days were so cynical and mistrusting.
“See here, Gentry, do we have to discuss it here in the hall? Why don’t we go upstairs to the snack bar and get a cup of coffee?”
“Okay, just let me take a look around first.” Ron stepped gingerly across the broken glass, and nudged open the office door. It differed from a typical faculty office only in that it lacked the usual wall-covering blizzard of mimeographed memoes and bulletins. The usual gray steel desk, the green fake-leather swivel chair, and the two chrome and plastic kindergarten chairs for visiting students, were all present. All the drawers of the desk were standing open. He looked questioningly at Atler, and was told he found them like that. A quick look at the desk told Ron the drawer locks had not been forced.
Who is he trying to kid, Ron thought. This is amateur night, strictly page one from the Defective’s Handbook: “When broken glass is found outside the premises, then this burglary was in fact an inside job.” Surely Atler could have figured that out for himself.
“I’ve seen enough,” Ron said. “Let’s go get that cup of coffee.”
When Ron saw the price of a cup of coffee he was glad Atler had paid for it. The broker selected a table in a far corner of the nearly deserted coffee shop, and the two sat down.
“Well?” Atler demanded.
Ron took a sip from his Styrofoam cup. “I have a few questions first, all right?”
Atler was resigned. “If you must,” he said.
“Good. First of all, what was the money doing in that office? In fact, what are you doing in that office?”
Well, Atler thought, that one wasn’t so bad. He felt decidedly more like himself as he answered.
“Well,” he said. “The dean of the School of Business is an old friend of mine, and at his request, for the past five years or so, I’ve taught a course in applied marketing, for seniors, each fall semester. It’s for young people who are serious about getting out there in the real world. We need eager young people to preserve the free enterprise system that made this country great.” He gave Ron a look that dared him to make something of it.
Ron just smiled pleasantly and nodded. Benedetti had taught him, “Never, if you can avoid it, rush a witness. Listen to all he has to say, if there is time. A man’s words when he is stalling are often more revealing than what he would say if he cut straight to the point. Besides, amico, only the future can say what the point really is.” And because Ron believed that, and because he knew he was being paid by the day, he was content to listen.
Atler continued, though less confidently. Up to now, all he’d had to do was give Gentry a close paraphrase of a speech he’d delivered to the DAR last month. Now he was on his own.
“Now I’m no schoolteacher, I’m a trader, you understand. So the best I can do for the kids is this: I limit the course to fifty students, and each contributes twenty dollars to the class fund. Then, they study the market and tell me what to do with the money. I advise them, of course, but the decisions are all theirs. Do you follow me, Gentry?”
Ron assured him he did.
“Good. Then, at the beginning of the next semester, I liquidate everything and distribute the money, each student taking his share of the profit or loss.”
“Why cash? Wouldn’t checks be safer?”
Atler reddened. Ron knew they were getting close to whatever was bothering the broker.
“I ... er ... I wanted to impress upon them the idea that we deal with real things—real grain, real soybeans, and most of all, real money.”
“Fifty students at twenty dollars apiece is a thousand dollars the way I figure it, Mr. Atler,” Ron said. “The kids seem to have caught on about the real money.”
Atler beamed with pride. “They certainly did. Brilliant group, brilliant! Picked just the right commodities for the time period, coffee and meat by-products, just before the prices went through the roof.” The memory warmed Atler’s heart. He loved making money on the market; it was his only passion.
Ron sipped his coffee again with new respect. Four hundred percent profit was nothing to sneeze at. “Someone did a whole lot better than that, though,” he said.
“Somebody made a profit of over two thousand percent. Who knew that money was there, Mr. Atler?”
“You won’t get anywhere that way, Gentry.” Atler was brusque. “The entire class knew they were to get their money today. And of course, they’d have told their friends.”
“Of course. But you still haven’t told me what five thousand dollars was doing in the office overnight.”
To Ron’s great surprise, Atler’s long upper lip started to quiver, and his shrewd eyes moistened. Ron watched him struggle with himself, and, with great effort, bring himself back under control. “This is why I can’t have the police, Gentry,” he said at last. “And you must keep this in strictest confidence.” Atler wiped his brow and cleared his throat. Ron waited for the
revelation.
“I made a mistake,” Atler said. “There can be no excuse for what I did. You see, I had to take the money out of the bank yesterday, because today is Founder’s Day.”
Founder’s Day was one of those local half-holidays some communities have. It celebrated that long-ago January 28, when Cicero McCracken broke camp on the site that would later become Sparta. Public schools and banks were closed; the university and most businesses were open.
“... and I wouldn’t have been able to get the money. Foolishly, I had already announced today as the payment date. So I left the money here.”
“There must have been safer places to keep it,” Ron said.
“Of course there were! Haven’t I told you I made a mistake? I could have left it overnight in the safe at the firm’s office! I could have brought it to my apartment. There was no reason not to do either of those things, except I thought it would be more convenient to leave it in the office. The point is, Gentry—” Atler suddenly realized he had been shouting. He lowered his voice and began again. “The point is, I was careless with money. Harold Atler—careless! That would do irreparable harm to my reputation, Gentry, and I expect you to prevent it from happening. Now go to work!”
Ron downed the rest of his coffee, cool now, and crushed the Styrofoam cup. “I can find out who took it,” he told the broker, “and I can get back what’s left of the money, probably. I make no guarantees about what happens to your reputation.”
Atler found that despicable of him. No guarantees! Couldn’t this fool see what young Efter could do with this? They’d try to force him out of the firm. They’d been trying. He wasn’t ready to retire; sixty wasn’t old. His hair wasn’t even all gray yet. He’d show them. He’d—
“Did you hear what I said, Mr. Atler?”
“What? Oh, yes. Now see here, Gentry. I don’t expect guarantees, but I want the thief caught without the police knowing about it. I will deal with him when you find him.”
Ron said that was fine with him. “Now,” he said. “Who had keys to that office and desk?”
Hog Murders Page 3