3 Favor

by Parnell Hall

  So either MacAullif was wrong, or I didn’t have the whole picture yet.

  I realized one thing sitting in my car. It didn’t matter whether MacAullif was right or wrong. The point was, I had held out on him, and by doing so I had put his daughter in jeopardy. I had taken the responsibility on myself.

  It was up to me to do something about it.

  12.

  I GOT UP AT six A.M., showered, shaved, put on my suit and tie, drove in to Atlantic City, took out my camera and shot every crack in the sidewalk I could find. I had six rolls of film in my briefcase. I shot ’em all.

  By nine o’clock, I was all finished and sitting in my car when a pudgy girl carrying a paper bag came down the street and unlocked the Photomat. She was still turning on the lights when I walked in and set my six rolls of film on the counter.

  The girl looked at me, and then somewhat ruefully at the paper bag, which I assumed contained coffee and doughnuts, probably jelly. She gave me what I considered to be a somewhat insincere smile, reached under the counter, took out a stack of film envelopes, and counted out six of them. She folded the envelope flap receipts over, tore them oft and stapled them together. She picked up a pen.

  “Name?”

  “Minton Agency.”

  She nodded, scrawled “Minton” on the top envelope, and set the envelopes and the six rolls aside. She handed me the six receipts.

  “You got anything going back?” I asked her.

  She had. Thirteen rolls. She gave ’em to me, too, no sweat. I’d figured she would. I have a friend, Fred Lazar, who runs a detective agency in Manhattan, so I knew how the system works. All the operatives come in and drop off their film all day long, and the one that’s heading for the office picks everything up. They never bother with the receipts. They just ask for the pix for the agency. I’d picked up film for Fred Lazar a couple of times myself. So I figured if it worked in Manhattan it would work here.

  It worked like a charm. I didn’t even have to pay. I signed the name Robert Fuller in the account book.

  Pudgy didn’t care. She was thinking about her doughnuts. She was already diving for the bag as I went out the door.

  I got in the car and drove back to the hotel. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but somehow I didn’t want to be sitting looking at these pictures in the car.

  I double-locked the door, since the maid hadn’t been there to make up the room yet. I went to the table, dumped the packets of film out of the plastic bag, and started going through them.

  It took a while, what with there being thirteen rolls. Of course, most of them meant nothing to me. The first few rolls I examined featured businessmen in suits and ties, usually two of ’em talking together. They obviously didn’t know they were being photographed. That figured. Somehow I couldn’t figure the Weasel going, “Say cheese.”

  One man featured prominently in several rolls. I dubbed him the King. He was a stout, middle-aged man, with dark hair, gray at the temples, and an aristocratic bearing. He wore a gold chain with a gold medallion around his neck. His face was plump and his skin was smooth like a baby’s, but his eyes were hard.

  The only other man who stood out was the one I dubbed the Bear. He was only on one roll, and the only reason I noticed him was because he was so ugly. He was a fat man, with dark, bushy hair and thick, dark stubble—not a beard—just stubble. He looked like something you wouldn’t want to meet on a camping trip.

  The eighth roll was the one I wanted.

  The pictures were not good. They’d been shot through the gap in the drapes, so the curtains had cut off an inch on either side of the shot. But the middle was all too clear.

  I looked at the picture in my hands, shook my head, and let out a sigh.

  Barbara MacAullif Dunleavy was sitting on the bed with her head and shoulders propped up on the pillows. Her tank top was still on. But her shorts and panties were not. Her knees were drawn up and her legs were spread wide. The tree surgeon, naked as a jay bird, was kneeling between them, performing cunnilingus.

  I thought of MacAullif. I thought about calling him now. “Yeah, I got something. I got some shots of your daughter getting her pussy licked.”

  Poor Barbara. Done in by a half-inch gap in the curtain. She’d remembered to pull the drapes, but had forgotten to make sure they crossed.

  Absurdly, lines from Wordsworth sprang to mind. “Not in utter nakedness, and not in entire forgetfulness” seemed rather apt. “Trailing clouds of glory” was a bit of a stretch, however.

  I looked through the rest of the shots. Some were better than others, but all of them were essentially the same.

  I put the pictures back in the envelope, marked it with an X so I could tell it from the others, and looked at the rest of the rolls. None of the others were Barbara.

  I put the packets of photos in the plastic bag, and shoved it into my suitcase.

  All right, I thought, what the fuck do I do now? I mean, I’d retrieved the photographs, that was good, but the threat of the Weasel still remained, and I still wasn’t any closer to the root of Harold’s problems.

  I got in the car and drove over to the Dunleavy house. There was no sign of the Weasel. The station wagon was also gone, so Barbara was out. What I didn’t know, of course, was whether the Weasel was following her.

  I had to do something. After all, if the Weasel got some more photographs, all the good I’d accomplished would go right down the drain.

  MacAullif didn’t want me talking to Barbara or Harold, but he hadn’t said anything about talking to the Weasel.

  I drove back to Atlantic City, parked my car, and went up to the Minton Agency. The antisocial secretary was still typing a letter. I wondered if it was the same one.

  This time I didn’t bother waiting for her to glance up. “Joe Steerwell,” I said.

  She didn’t glance up then.

  “Not in yet,” she grunted, and went on typing.

  I got back in my car and drove out to the Weasel’s house. It was a two-story affair out in Margate. I went up on the front porch and rang the bell.

  There was no answer. I hadn’t expected any. The blue Chevy wasn’t parked in the driveway. I rang the bell a few more times just to be sure.

  As I was coming down off the front porch, a fortyish woman with teased red hair and too much lipstick came out on the porch next door.

  “You looking for Joey?” she called.

  “Yes,” I said. “You seen him?”

  “He’s not home.”

  I could have guessed that. But I smiled anyway, as if she had imparted some useful information.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yes, he went out early this morning.”

  “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  “Could be any time now. That’s the way he is. In and out, in and out, all day long.”

  “I’ll try back later,” I said.

  “I’ll tell him you were here,” she said.

  I knew she was going to say that. She was a busybody, the type of nosy biddy that makes my blood boil. She was trying to find out my name.

  I didn’t give it to her. I smiled, nodded, said, “Thanks” and hopped in the car and drove off, leaving her disappointed.

  I figured I was doing good works and all, as far as MacAullif was concerned, and had he known he’d have no reason to complain. But seeing as how it was getting on toward noon, I figured it was time for me to obey the prime directive.

  I drove to Harold’s office, parked the car, and put a quarter in the meter. I stood and watched the front door.

  Some fun. Right, MacAullif. Ninety percent of surveillance is just hanging around. They also serve who only stand and wait.

  Harold came out at 12:30, and this time he came out alone. He also went in the opposite direction that he usually went for lunch. I stuck a quarter in the meter and tagged along behind.

  Harold went down Atlantic Avenue a few blocks and turned on St. Charles. He went into an office building. This time I hit the lobby just as th
e elevator door closed. I was in time to see there was no one else in it. The elevator indicator stopped on three.

  Next to the elevator was a stairs. I sprinted up them, and pushed the door open a crack, just in time to see Harold walk down the hall and into an office.

  He was out in five minutes.

  I had a moment of panic when I thought he was headed for the stairs, but he rang the elevator instead. I ran down the stairs and was waiting across the street when he came out.

  He went back past his office building to the restaurant where he’d gone the day before.

  I left him there having lunch and walked back to the building I’d tailed him to. This time I took the elevator. No reason to wear myself out.

  I walked down the hallway to the door where I’d seen Harold go in. On it was emblazoned, “FREDERICK NUBAR, INVESTMENT COUNSELOR.”

  I went through the door and found myself in a small waiting room. Two men were sitting in chairs reading magazines. A young secretary was sitting at a desk. Behind her was a closed door.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Yeah, I’d like to see Mr. Nubar,” I said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but I’d like to make one.”

  “Then you’ll have to wait. These gentlemen have appointments.”

  “That’s fine,” I told her.

  “May I have your name?”

  “Phil Collins.”

  She gave me a look, then smiled and wrote it down.

  I’d already sat down and picked up a magazine before it dawned on me I’d given her the name of a rock singer.

  I was halfway through my second issue of People magazine when the door behind the desk opened and a man in a suit came out. He went on out the front door. A moment later another man appeared in doorway of the inner office, and stood there talking to the secretary.

  It was the Bear.

  I waited until he’d gone back into his office and one of the men who was waiting had been ushered in, before I got up, smiled at the secretary and said, “I don’t think I can wait, after all. I’ll be back.”

  I got to my car just in time to see Harold return from lunch and go into his office, and just in time to realize I hadn’t called Rosenberg & Stone.

  I did, and went through the usual bullshit. Richard was out to lunch, but Wendy and Cheryl got on extensions and gangbanged me. It was too bad. Richard would have been mollified by learning that Floyd Watson fell in the casino, but Wendy and Cheryl couldn’t have cared less. They gave me another picture assignment, tremendously urgent I was sure, and I finally got off the phone.

  When my ears stopped ringing, I got in my car, turned on the air- conditioning, and gave some thought to my problem.

  I needed to find out about Frederick Nubar. But I didn’t know how to do it. Tailing him was no good. That’s what I would have done if I hadn’t known his name. I’d have followed him to his address, looked it up, and found out who he was. But I knew his name. And I knew what he did: he was an investment counselor. I knew who he was, but I didn’t know who he was, that was the thing.

  There was one way to find out. I could go back, masquerade as Phil Collins, and keep my bogus appointment. But that would be risky as hell. Investment counselor. What the hell was an investment counselor? What could I say to him? Why was I there?

  I didn’t know.

  I thought about it some more, and finally it came to me. There was only one thing to do. And it was something I’d never done before, and something I’d never dreamed of doing in a million years. But it seemed the only thing to do, so I did it.

  I hired a private detective.

  13.

  “MY RATES ARE TWO hundred bucks a day, plus expenses.”

  I wished mine were. Jesus Christ.

  His name was Mike Sallingsworth. He ran the Sallingsworth Detective Agency. I’d picked it out of a phone book. I didn’t know if it was a good firm. As far as I was concerned, it had one basic thing going for it.

  It wasn’t Minton’s.

  Mike was about seventy. He had a thin face with a shock of white hair perched on the top. It gave him a somewhat whimsical look. He was wearing a light cord suit that looked old and faded, and a thin tie of the same vintage. His jacket was open and I could see the strap of his shoulder holster. I wondered when the last time was he’d pulled his gun. Or whether he was still waiting for his first.

  I also wondered how much work there was for an emaciated, seventy-year-old gumshoe in Atlantic City.

  “That’s too high,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Those are our rates. Take it or leave it.”

  I wondered what he meant by “our.” It was a small, one-room office, and he seemed to be the only one in it. I assumed it was the equivalent of the editorial “we”—the investigative “our.”

  I pulled out my I.D. and laid it on his desk.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m a visiting fireman from the City, and I need a little help. I need some information. If you can get it for me, fine, but I can’t spring for any two hundred dollars. I can’t write this off on expenses. It’s coming out of my own pocket.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t been retained in this case. I’m doing it as a favor.”

  He stared at me. “You’re down here from New York on a case with no retainer?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You out of your mind?”

  “Yes. But that doesn’t affect our relationship. If you can get the information, I’m willing to pay for it. But none of this two-hundred-dollars-a-day shit. I can go fifty bucks, tops.”

  He looked at me. Chuckled. Shook his head. “What is it you need to know?”

  “Frederick Nubar,” I told him.

  “No shit.”

  “None. I need to know about Nubar. All I know is he’s an investment counselor.”

  He chuckled again. Thought for a moment. Grinned. “O.K.,” he said. “Twenty bucks.”

  I took a twenty out and laid it on his desk. He picked it up, folded it, and stuck it in his pocket.

  He cocked his head at me. “Investment counselor is a euphemism,” he said. “For your information, Frederick Nubar is a loan shark.”

  “Loan shark?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The worst kind of loan shark. The kind that breaks heads.”

  14.

  I WENT OUT, SAT in my car and thought things over. I had the picture now. Harold Dunleavy had gambled and got in over his head. Then he’d gone to a loan shark and borrowed God knows how much money to cover his debts. He couldn’t meet the payments and was in serious danger of bodily harm. He’d fallen in with a crooked blackjack dealer who was helping him milk money out of the casino to pay off the Bear. The blackjack dealer was attractive enough that Harold was set on dumping his wife and kid for her and had hired a detective for that purpose. Meanwhile, his wife, abandoned and bored, had taken up playing doctor with a tree surgeon.

  My task, should I choose to accept it, was to get the loan shark off Harold’s back, set Harold on the straight and narrow, extricate him from the clutches of the blackjack dealer and reconcile him with his wife, after first ridding her of the attentions of the tree surgeon, at the same time forestalling the private detective and preventing him from reaching Harold’s ears with reports of his wife’s transgressions.

  It was a task, I felt, that called for the wisdom of a Solomon. I didn’t feel I had the wisdom of a Solomon. At the moment, I felt I had the wisdom of a game show host.

  I went to a pay phone and called MacAullif.

  “Harold’s in hock to a loan shark.”

  “What?”

  “That seems to be the root of your son-in-law’s problems. He’s in deep with a loan shark, an ugly fucker named Frederick Nubar with a reputation for breaking heads.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “No, it’s just surmise. But it stands to reason. I tailed Harold to Nubar’s office. I wouldn’t imagine it was just a social c
all.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes. There’s every indication this afternoon Harold paid Nubar off to the tune of anywhere up to seventy-five hundred dollars. And from the way Harold’s acting, that would appear to be just a drop in the bucket.”

  “You’re kidding. Where the hell would Harold get seventy-five hundred bucks?”

  “Cheating at blackjack.”

  “What!?”

  “Harold’s in collusion with a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos. He put in four and a half hours at the table last night. He made seventy-five hundred. From the way he’s acting, he must be pretty desperate. He’s concentrating as if his life depended on it, which it may. The dealer’s cheating for him.”

  “You can’t cheat at blackjack. The cards come out of a shoe.”

  “Yeah, but they get shuffled before they get put in the shoe. The dealer’s stacking the deck somehow. Harold sits there concentrating like a Buddhist monk until the cards get down near the end of the deck. Then if they’re lying right, he bets the big one.”

  “What makes you think he’s in deep?”

  “Because he started last night with virtually no stake money and had to build up gradually.”

  “So?”

  “If he were doing it for fun and games, he’d hold out enough stake money to play the next day. Apparently he’s in so deep to this loan shark, he’s forking over every cent he gets.”

  “Why wouldn’t he hold out on him?”

  “Nubar isn’t the type of guy you hold out on. Maybe he’s got a spy in the casino telling him how much Harold’s knocking down. Or maybe Harold’s just too scared to think straight. I don’t know.”

  “Wait a minute. Wouldn’t Harold be splitting the take with the blackjack dealer?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the blackjack dealer’s a cute little blonde number that’s apparently Harold’s current outside interest. I tailed him back to her place last night.”

  MacAullif sounded skeptical. “They left together?”