Everybody Wanted Room 623

by Cecil Murphey

  “I’ve come to talk to you about the diamonds.”

  “Is that a big surprise? Is it, Jason? I could have guessed that one myself.” He looked at me and grinned, and then he turned toward her again. “Have you come to rob me? You think I have them in my suitcase or my closet perhaps?”

  She stared at him. “I don’t want the diamonds. I wouldn’t know how to get rid of them. I only want money.”

  “How much money would you like me to give you?”

  “Five million dollars. That really isn’t much money for you. Give it to me and you’ll never see me again. And you’ll never see my partner again either. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “Who is your partner?”

  A confused look passed over her face. “I thought you knew. Never mind who he is; I’ll take care of him.”

  “You’ll shoot him?”

  “If necessary. Five million dollars can encourage me to do a lot of things.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I suppose it’s all right to tell you,” she said. “Especially if we’re going to be partners. My name is Janet Grand.”

  “And what do you know that would make it worth my giving you five million dollars?”

  She said she had been in the car with the policeman when the courier was shot. “I know there was a mix-up and you ended up with diamonds and my friend ended up with paste.”

  “Hmm, is that how it is?”

  She said she knew that Stefan had the jewelry or at least the proceeds from the sale of them. “Just give me five million dollars and you’ll never see or hear from me again.”

  “No.”

  “Think it through seriously. I can give you a day or two to get the money. That’s not a large amount. I mean, it’s not when you think how much you’ll make off the deal, even if you have to discount them to someone.”

  “That’s quite true. It’s not a large amount, but I plan to return the stones.”

  “What? Are you insane? The insurance has already paid off—”

  “I have had a change of heart.”

  “You haven’t asked what I can give you for five million dollars.”

  “No, I haven’t, but I assume this is more than a robbery.”

  “That’s correct, and you know, of course, when you try to return the diamonds, they’ll pin the courier’s murder on you.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought about that. I had nothing to do with his death—”

  “I know that fact and you know it, but you can’t prove it. I can prove it.”

  “Really? How is that possible?”

  “I was there when he was murdered.” She told Stefan and me that she sat in the car. Until then she had not known anything about the theft. “But I was sort of dating that man. I don’t even know his real name, but he liked me to call him Mastermind.”

  “Maybe he was trying to impress you.”

  “And he did. He wasn’t a very nice man to be around most of the time, but he spent money on me and promised there would be a lot more in the future—a lot more.” She shook her head. “But it never happened, and I have expensive tastes.”

  “So what do you know? What did you see?” Stefan asked.

  “He shot the courier, and he grabbed what he thought were the real diamonds.”

  “Thank you for clearing this up, Janet.”

  “He’ll kill you if you don’t give me the money.”

  “Really? Is that something you know or something you hope?”

  “He sent me today as his courier.” She laughed. “Sounds like an important job, doesn’t it?” She leaned closer to Stefan. “Let’s keep it simple. You give me five million and—”

  “I will give you nothing. Not a cent. Not a diamond.”

  “The Mastermind won’t like this. He’ll kill you and get everything.”

  Stefan stared. Never had I seen his eyes so hard and so determined. Finally he spoke quietly. “I am in God’s hands.”

  She swore many angry words, but he said nothing more.

  “You think God will protect you?”

  “I am in His hands.”

  As if she had not heard, she asked, “Will God protect you if I shoot you?” she raised the gun.

  “You won’t kill me, because if you do, you won’t find the diamonds. Neither will he.”

  “You think you’re rather smart, don’t you?”

  Stefan stared at her and said slowly, “No, not really. If I had been smart, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in such a nefarious deed. But as it is, I’m in God’s hands.”

  “Will God protect you if he comes after you?”

  “God will be with me because the Lord is with me now and won’t forsake me or—”

  “Whatever that means,” she said. Vile words streamed from her mouth once again. “I suggest you rethink this visit. I can call you later tonight if—”

  “No, don’t bother. I won’t change my mind.”

  “Maybe you’ll think about it and decide to be sensible.”

  “No.”

  “I have one more proposition to offer you.”

  “I might as well hear it before I escort you from the room.”

  “I can give you a sworn statement about my partner, including the gun that fired the bullet that killed the courier. The gun still carries his fingerprints on it.” She laughed. “But of course I’ll have disappeared by the time you are ready to use the evidence.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want me to clear you of murder charges and keep you out of prison again?”

  “My friend here, Jason Omore, once said something to me—something I’ve never forgotten.”

  “And I suppose I must listen to a sermon.”

  “Just this. At one point I wanted to do something morally questionable to achieve a moral objective—”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Forget the background. Jason’s words were simple. He said we must never use the devil’s tools to achieve God’s work. He was right.”

  “Rather stupid reasoning—”

  “No. This is the end of the discussion.” Stefan stood up, took her arm, and led her toward the door. “I am not afraid. If you have a conscience, you’ll turn over the evidence. If not, I won’t buy my freedom from you. You or your Mastermind friend may kill me, but I will do the right thing.”

  “Don’t be too sure—”

  “You will never get the diamonds or the money. Never. I assure you of that.”

  Jason said, “That’s how I remember it.” He again wiped tears from his face.

  “I’m sorry you had to relive that,” I said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No,” he said and then added, “Wait. Come back in the morning. I do have something I should very much like you to do.”

  “What is that?” Ollie asked. “Did he give you the diamonds?”

  “To me? Why should he have done that? Oh no.”

  “Okay, then tell us,” Ollie said.

  “Is not tomorrow satisfactory?”

  “Tonight. Now. Right now is more satisfactory,” Ollie said.

  As he turned away from Ollie, Jason winked at me.

  Twenty-Two

  “Before I say more, I wish to have each of you wait for the morning light,” Jason said. “My heart is very, very heavy over the loss of my friend, and it is most painful for me to speak.”

  “Why don’t you take a short walk?” Burton suggested. “What you have to say may be important information.” He nodded toward the detective and said, “He wants to clear this up as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, to be alone with my sorrow is a good idea, even for a brief time,” Jason said. “I should like perhaps an hour.”

  Burton took Ollie’s arm and mine, and we returned to the room. Once inside, Ollie picked up the phone and called the desk. He asked if we could have four sandwiches brought up. “Anything,” he said and hung up. “So we wait.”

  I looked at Burton and tried to read his expression, but his face was inscrut
able. He had learned something from that older couple, but he wasn’t ready to tell me. And obviously he wasn’t ready to tell the detective, who was his friend. I felt thoroughly confused.

  Within fifteen minutes a waiter brought us sandwiches. Ollie started to dismiss him, but Burton handed the man a generous tip. All the sandwiches were chicken salad with fries on the side. The three of us ate while we waited for Jason.

  Both men seemed to relax while they ate. Ollie lamented over a time when he and Burton had ordered hamburgers and fries at the Varsity—the original fast-food place—located near the Georgia Tech campus. It’s supposed to have the longest counter in the world. I tried not to listen, but it was something about Ollie putting sugar in the saltshaker. He did it while Burton went to the restroom, and the other two students at the table eagerly waited for Burton to become the butt of the joke.

  “But you got the best of us,” Ollie said and turned to me. “Can you believe this part? That guy ate every single fry with all that sugar on them. At one point he sprinkled on even more sugar. The rest of us watched and were ready to laugh at him.”

  “I believe I also asked for a second serving—and ended up eating half of yours,” Burton said.

  “I’ve never figured out how anyone could put sugar on fries, not know the difference, and enjoy them.”

  “Oh, I didn’t sprinkle sugar on the fries,” Burton said.

  “But I saw you. All three of us watched you!”

  Burton shook his head. “I figured out what you did, Ollie. Sugar and salt are white, but they don’t look exactly the same. Before I got to the table, I spotted the goofy expression on your faces. Just as I started to sit down, I watched Damon’s eyes—he sat next to you—and he kept looking at the saltshaker. I caught on quickly. You didn’t notice, but I grabbed a saltshaker from the table behind us and put the other in my pocket.”

  “Hey, he’s smart.” Ollie roared. “That’s good! That’s very good. All these years and I never knew.”

  “You always said I was smarter than you are,” Burton said.

  “But I didn’t mean it,” Ollie said. “Yet maybe you are. Maybe you are.” He smiled, but something about his expression wasn’t quite true.

  Before I could figure out what was going on between them, Ollie launched into another story, but I stopped listening. I wanted to talk to Burton. Surely he had learned something from that couple in 624, and I felt increasingly anxious about it. I walked over to the window and looked out into the darkening evening as I tried to figure out how to get Burton alone.

  Nothing came to mind. When I finally turned around, Ollie’s back was to me, so I signaled Burton with my thumb, pointing to the door. He gave me the barest shake to indicate he didn’t want to talk just then. I cocked my head and gave him my most quizzical expression.

  Ollie must have noticed something and turned toward me.

  Burton smiled at me and said to Ollie, “She grows on you, doesn’t she?”

  “Whatever,” Ollie said. But what was supposed to sound indifferent carried a warm tone. He could be a nice man if he tried. And I wish he tried more often.

  Exactly one hour later, Jason returned. To his credit, Ollie offered him the remaining sandwich. Jason took it and said, “To refuse a gift is to refuse a person. I shall eat it later, if I may. My heart does not desire food now.”

  Characteristically, Ollie said, “Okay, whatever works for you.”

  “You wish to know the rest of what I have to say,” Jason said. The words came slowly at first, as if he had to force each one to the surface. “I shall tell you everything that I know.”

  The morning of the day that Stefan Lauber died, he and Jason met again for their regular study time together. Stefan asked questions about heaven—questions he had never asked before.

  “I have not been there,” Jason said and laughed, “so I can tell you only what appears in the Bible.” For perhaps twenty minutes, he answered the things that troubled his friend. To most of the questions, he responded by turning to places in the Bible that provided answers.

  “Of this you can be sure,” Jason told him. “God will reward us by our deeds—by the things we have done after we have believed.”

  “And God does not hold our sins and failures against us—those we did before we believed?”

  “God has promised us that it is like a marred sheet of paper that has been totally erased.”

  Jason said he felt those words brought comfort to Stefan.

  “I believe that,” Stefan said, “but I needed your assurance. I did many terrible things earlier in my life.”

  “But has not God forgotten them?” Jason said.

  “But I still remember—”

  “If you remember them, are you not doing a wrong thing? Why would you wish to remind God of things he has chosen to forget about your life?”

  Instead of speaking, Stefan laughed before he hugged his friend.

  After that they had prayer. When Jason got off his knees, Stefan said, “Wait. There is one thing.” He handed Jason a large envelope. “My Bible is inside, and a letter.”

  “Why are you giving me your Bible?”

  “I want you to have it,” Stefan said. “I have another Bible here in my room, so I can read that one.”

  “This I do not understand.”

  Stefan put his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “You have become the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. Ever. If something should happen to me—”

  “Oh no, surely the woman did not mean—”

  “She meant every word. Will her friend kill me? I don’t know, but I will not change my mind. I must do what God wants me to do. I must return the diamonds.”

  “Where are they?”

  As if he had not heard the question, Stefan said, “If something happens to me, inside this envelope is a letter. It tells my conversion story. At my funeral—”

  “Oh, do not say such—”

  “At my funeral, you must read the letter.”

  Jason began to protest, but Stefan hugged him. “Shh. This is not the time for protests from you. If I am still alive on Friday morning, you may return this envelope.”

  “Yes, I shall be most pleased to return this to you, but do not think of such thoughts—”

  “If I am alive, you will return it.”

  Despite the continued protests, Stefan persisted and Jason agreed. “But I shall pray for our holy God to keep you alive.”

  “I would like to live, but I have made arrangements for myself and for all my funds to be used for the kingdom of God if I am not here.”

  Jason’s voice cracked, and he couldn’t talk anymore. I walked over to him and squeezed his hand. I had known Stefan only well enough that I had some sense of the African’s loss.

  “Where is the envelope?” Ollie asked. “Do you still have it?”

  “Why would I not have it?”

  “Would you get the envelope and bring it to us?” Ollie asked in a tightly controlled voice.

  “It is for the funeral, is it not?”

  “Bring it to me. Now. Here. To this room.”

  Jason looked at me and then at Burton as if to ask, “Should I?”

  Both of us nodded.

  “I shall do so,” he said. “But one request: May I please hand it to you beside the lake? Outside I feel more—more at peace than I do in such a place as this.”

  “Whatever! Whatever! Just bring it.”

  As soon as he was gone from the room, Ollie said, “This is an interesting development, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Burton said. “It’s just as Julie said. We needed to ask the right questions.”

  The evening sky changed from crimson to ultramarine and finally to a dusky rose, and soon it would become a flat gray. In the metro area, the sky never becomes dark enough to see the fullness of the stars that look down at us. The three of us walked down toward the lake. The cicadas and the frogs seemed to compete in a cacophony of off-key notes. Despite that, the noise was so
ft enough not to distract.

  We stopped by a small corner with chairs. A lamppost provided enough light to read.

  Within minutes Jason found us. Without saying a word, he handed Ollie a large sealed envelope.

  Ollie tore it open. He moved a few feet away to the lamppost where he could read and scanned the one-page letter. He could have read it where he stood, but I think he wanted to make certain none of us saw the contents.

  I got up, walked over, and stood next to Ollie—more than anything just to show him we were in this together. Immediately I saw what the single sheet of paper was. “It’s the same thing Lucas read,” I said. “May we give it to him after the funeral? I’d like him to have a clean copy.”

  Ollie handed the single sheet to me and pulled out the Bible. It was large, mahogany colored with a cover made of skin.

  “That is the skin of the zebra that covers the pages of the Holy Bible,” Jason said. “Did I not give the Bible to him myself after his baptism?”

  “A Bible,” Ollie said. “This doesn’t lead us anywhere.” He almost tossed it aside, but he paused to flip idly through it as if he might find paper inserted between the pages. The Bible opened near the end, and at about the same time, both of us spotted a small key taped in the center between two columns.

  “Ah, what is this?” Ollie untaped the key.

  Jason walked over and watched Ollie carefully remove the key. “Do you not see where my friend placed it?” Jason said. He pointed to the underlined text—Romans 6:23.

  “Guess that fits,” Ollie said. He held the key to the light. He squinted to read the words. “It’s the key to a safe-deposit box,” he said. He turned it over and squinted again. He had to stare at it for several seconds before he said, “Bank of North Georgia.”

  “They have only half a dozen branches,” I said. “So that shouldn’t be a big task for the police.”

  “Where’s the closest?” Ollie asked.

  “Burton and I both live on the Southside, so I have no idea,” I said.

  “The bank? Surely it is the bank in Tucker,” Jason said. “Would that not be correct? That is where I went with him on two occasions.”

  “Did you see what he did there?”