The Silent Salesman

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “In one check?”

  “No. As I understand it, John split his time and therefore is paid by two departments.”

  “How much from each?”

  “Well, the gross amounts, from the sales side nearly seven hundred, from the research side a little over five.”

  “Who writes the checks on the science side?”

  “The checks?”

  “Who signs them? How are they drawn?”

  “John’s employer. Henry Rush.”

  “His employer? I thought Loftus was—”

  “John was under a personal service contract with Henry Rush. That is the logical basis for Rush’s involvement in the compensation side. How he is secured, I don’t know. But John signed the contract and presented me with Rush’s compensation arrangement. He was explicit how he wanted things.”

  “So Pighee brought the compensation contract. You didn’t negotiate it directly?’

  “I never said I did.”

  “No,” I conceded. “You didn’t. How did it come about?”

  He sighed, but answered. “When he started working in the lab, about two years ago . . . wait”—he checked the date on the contracts—“twenty-two months ago, he came to me and told me that he would be working with substances which were dangerous.”

  “He said that?”

  “He did.”

  “What kind of substances?”

  “I don’t know. From what happened, obviously things that were explosive.”

  “He said ‘substances’?”

  “As far as I can remember.”

  “Could it have been disease substances? Like bacteria or viruses?”

  “I don’t know. But those things don’t blow up, do they?”

  “But he didn’t specify?”

  “No. Except that they were dangerous, potentially dangerous. And he said he’d taken steps that if anything happened to him Linn would be taken care of.”

  “And his sister?”

  “She gets regular money as well. He brought me these papers from Henry Rush. For me to hold. When the accident happened, Rush started fulfilling his obligation immediately. We’ve had no cause for any complaint.”

  “Do you know from personal experience whether Rush paid Pighee’s salary before the accident?”

  “I didn’t handle John’s money before the accident. He did all the accounts himself.”

  “And the documents he presented you with included a waiver of any direct claim against Loftus Pharmaceuticals or its insurers?”

  “They did.” He pointed out where.

  “Was this the only document he brought you? The only contingency business?”

  “No.”

  “Well?”

  “He made a will.”

  “Anything unusual in it?”

  “He made specific bequests—the bulk of his assets to his wife, and the remainder to his sister.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said he wanted his sister to have any long-term royalties as an income.”

  “Royalties?”

  “Yes.”

  “Royalties from what?”

  Weston smiled for the first time. “I don’t know. But John had plans.”

  “But surely anything he invented, or discovered, while working for Loftus would belong to Loftus.”

  “Maybe that was part of the reason for the personal service contract.”

  “But surely, if he works in their labs . . .”

  “Maybe he was intending to make a hit record. I wouldn’t have put anything like that as beyond him.”

  I shrugged. “Did he leave other instructions?”

  “An envelope.”

  “Oh?”

  “An envelope,” Weston said, with a sigh, “which was only to be opened if he died.”

  “You’re joking.” I laughed.

  But he wasn’t.

  “What’s in it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Haven’t you opened it?”

  “Of course not. He isn’t dead.”

  “Is it here?”

  “I can get it,” he said. “But it can’t be opened.”

  “I just want to see it,” I said. “I want to feel it and hold it up to the light. Like a Christmas present. There’s no law against that, is there?”

  He got the envelope, which was kept in the firm’s safe.

  It was a thick brown envelope, sealed with impressed wax. As Weston had said, it read, “Not to be opened before I am dead.”

  Signed and dated. It was fat with its contents. I couldn’t resist. I ripped it open.

  “Heyl” Weston was outraged.

  “I never was very good at waiting till Christmas,” I said.

  “You’ve committed an offense,” he said.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it was open when you brought it to me,” I said. “And you got huffy when I told you you shouldn’t have peeked.”

  I poured the contents of the envelope on the table.

  It was another envelope. On the outside it read, “To be delivered immediately to Marcia Merom, 4901 Washington Boulevard.”

  That was interesting, but I was in no mood for half measures. I ripped the second envelope open.

  It was full of money. Twenty-two thousand dollars. In used hundred-dollar bills.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I let Weston put the money back in the envelope, and I signed a paper saying that he had given me a pile of documents, as per Linn’s instruction, and that I had opened the envelope before either of us realized it was prohibited territory.

  He agreed to let it go at that because he was as suspicious of used hundred-dollar bills as I was. Quite apart from any other considerations. And I agreed to let him go, back to his day off. We parted on better terms than we had met on.

  The existence of the envelope wouldn’t leave my mind as I drove back to my office. “Not to be opened before I am dead.”

  It added to my worries. John Pighee had seemed able to anticipate the need for various contingencies that, from what I knew of his situation, most people just wouldn’t have thought likely enough to allow for. Which meant only that there was a lot about his situation that I didn’t know.

  As I walked up the stairs to my office, I could tell something wasn’t right. I had no door.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I asked as I walked in. But I could see what was going on. I had left my daughter working at my desk. But now, in her place, I found my door and a sweat- soaked Raymond McGonigle.

  “Hi, man,” he said.

  Sam appeared at the living-room door. “Ray’s fixing your door,” she said. “You knew it stuck in the doorframe, didn’t you? Well, Ray’s going to fix it. We found some tools in a box in the other room. Isn’t that great?”

  “Yeah, great,” I said, and walked through to the other room. Why don’t people leave things alone? Especially my things.

  Sam followed me. “Isn’t it great?” she asked. “I knew you’d be pleased.”

  “Linn’s asleep?”

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “Doors are hard to hang. Has your friend ever ‘fixed’ a door before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Go find out. Then bring me your charts.”

  She left without question. I called the only “Bartonio, Jos.” listed in the phone book. John Pighee’s sales supervisor.

  I reminded him who I was. He was still concerned about John Pighee. I told him there’d been no change in his medical condition.

  “Gee, that’s a shame,” he said.

  “There was a question I missed asking on Friday.”

  “Shoot.”

  I John Pighee was on your staff part-time?”

  “Right.”

  “Was he being paid part-time? What was the arrangement about his money?”

  “Ahh,” Bartonio said. “Well, he was still on nine-sixteenths time with my department, though to tell you the truth he wasn’t really pulling
that much weight. He was only getting about a third to half of the orders he had before he shifted, so his commissions were down. But we have an income-leveling plan for salesmen, and he was drawing on the basis of nine-sixteenths of his last two years’ commissions, plus nine-sixteenths of his base salary. So he hadn’t quite felt the full impact of his change.”

  “If he was only doing a third to half of the work, why was he on nine-sixteenths rates?”

  “Because that was the original arrangement about his time. We got four mornings and two afternoons a week. But really because the rest of his money was on research rate and those guys don’t come close to making the kind of money a good salesman can touch.”

  “Let me get this right,” I said. “Pighee was also pulling seven- sixteenths research salary?”

  “A technician’s salary, I think,” he said. “I didn’t handle that side of it but that was my understanding.”

  “But he’d have been on the official payroll with two departments?” “That’s right. So that he came under the full-employment terms for insurance and pension and that sort of stuff.”

  “And you’re also sure that Pighee would have taken a cut in pay to go into this arrangement?”

  “Oh, yeah. No question. But John had interests which overrode money. That’s a sign of a guy who knows where he’s going.”

  Sam was waiting for me when I hung up.

  “What was that about. Daddy?”

  “I was taking the opportunity to check some facts. To confirm what I thought was pretty clear.”

  “And did they check?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see your handiwork.”

  She had analyzed the Pighee financial situation in detail. On the surface it showed what my superficial figures had. No cut in money. The opposite. And no unusual expenditures. Except about $1,500 a year to Mrs. Thomas. I wondered if she got some used hundred- dollar bills to supplement her monthly check.

  But a look at the deposit records showed when Pighee’s rearrangement had come. November of 1975, there were two credit entries adding up to what had been deposited on October, 1975. Payment suddenly by Loftus and Rush, instead of by Loftus alone.

  Sam had laid the figures out well, made me pretty charts, and I told her so.

  “What does it all mean. Daddy? What has happened? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “It means we may have a police matter on our hands,” I said.

  “Police!” she said. “What’s it got to do with the fuzz?”

  “They can find out quickly what I could only find out slowly, if at all.”

  “But the police . . .” she said, as if involving them were somehow not within the scope of fair play.

  “Go remind Ray which end of the door goes at the top,” I said. She left without saying anything. Which surprised me.

  Then I followed her to my office. “Are you an insured builder?”

  I asked Ray. Then I remembered that the building was coming down in two and a half months. With luck he would still be inside it.

  “Aw, come on, man,” Ray said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “Take a breather,” I said. “Answer a question for me.”

  He stopped mutilating my door for the moment.

  I asked, “How much work did John Pighee do around the labs? How much time did he put in?”

  “I don’t really know,” McGonigle said. “My hours are so funny.”

  “Try and remember. Was he usually there? Sometimes there? Always there?”

  “Usually,” he said.

  “Usually in the morning? Afternoon?”

  “I don’t remember him in the morning much. Except maybe weekends sometimes. But he was there most afternoons and he seemed to do a lot of night work.”

  I nodded. “Is there any record made of the hours he worked?” “There’s no punch clock, if that’s what you mean. If he stayed late, he’d have had to sign out, but that’s all.”

  “Signed out?”

  “If you go in or out after six, you have to use the main gate and sign the log.”

  “Even if you’re a regular employee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and walked back to the phone in my living room. I called my friend at the police department, a graying lieutenant named Jerry Miller.

  “Who’s there?”

  I told him.

  He said, “What’s the occasion? Trying to sell tickets to the detectives’ ball?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Jerry.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said. “Tell you what. Why don’t you cut the stuff about how sorry you are, how’s Janie, when am I going to make captain, and get down to what you want from me. The answer is no.”

  “I want to come in tomorrow and tell you about some things I’ve come across.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a quantity of used hundred-dollar bills.”

  “A quantity? How many?”

  Two hundred and twenty.”

  He was silent. I knew I had his attention. ‘That must have been some poker game, Albert” he said.

  “They’re not mine,” I said.

  “Whose are they?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “First I wondered if you—”

  “Oh,” he interrupted. “Just a little something else first.” But he didn’t say no.

  “All I wanted to know was whether you have any connection with the security people at Loftus Pharmaceuticals.”

  I could practically hear him raise his eyebrows.

  “I want access to some logbooks they keep. I’m trying to reconstruct the movements of a man who worked there—works there. Sometimes he stayed late and when he did that he had to sign out I want to go through the books and find out how often it happened. That’s all. I can go now, I can go tonight, I can go tomorrow, but the sooner I have it the sooner I come to talk to you.”

  “Loftus Pharmaceuticals, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can turn someone up.”

  We hung up. I waited by the phone, listening to Ray scraping my door to sawdust in the other room. Nothing else happened for twenty minutes. So I made myself something to eat. Baked beans and caviar, which seemed to be the only thing in the house, besides beer.

  At twenty past six Sam came in and announced, “The door is back up.” At the same time the phone rang.

  “Yeah?” I said. Into the phone.

  “I’ve got a contact with one of the main-gate guards. He’s on duty now. His friend says that he’ll call him, but that you’ll have to go down and do whatever work you want to do on the premises. You can’t take logbooks away. That O.K.?”

  “I’ll go down now,” I said.

  “Guy’s name is Russell Fincastle. He’ll know your name.”

  “O.K. Thanks, Jerry.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said sternly. “Tomorrow.”

  I gathered my notebook and headed for the outer world.

  “How do you like it. Daddy?” Sam asked, but not confidently. The door was back in place. With a two-inch gap at the bottom. I looked at her scientific friend. Then I tried the door. It opened easily. Just by turning the handle and pulling.

  “At least it doesn’t stick now,” I said. And left. I pulled the door closed behind me. It hit the frame and flew open again.

  “You can close it, Daddy,” Sam rushed forward to assure me. “If you lift it and pull it gently.”

  Russell Fincastle was short and lean, and young. I introduced myself and he shook hands with me left-handed. He showed me two heavily taped fingers on his right hand.

  “Rough job here, then?” I asked.

  He laughed modestly. “Broke them playing ball,” he said.

  “Ball?”

  “Basketball. Thought I’d just stunned them the way you do, hit them on the ends, but both bastards were fractured.”

  “That’s bad luck. Where do you play?”

  “Summers in the park. Winter the Indu
strial League. Semipro. And a little cash from it hurts me not a bit.” He looked at me coolly.

  “Ah,” I said. “A little cash. What’s the rate for looking through your logbooks, then? Five do it?”

  “Ten would do it better,” he said.

  “I’m sure it would, and twenty better still, but five’s my limit.”

  He just nodded. I pulled out my wallet. Found four ones. Fished through my pockets and turned up ninety-eight cents.

  He laughed, which was just as well. “Bargain day,” he said. And he showed me the current log.

  “I’m interested in January, this year.”

  “January?”

  “Yeah. You keep them that long, don’t you?”

  “Well, yeah. Hell, that’s O.K., I suppose.” He pulled out a big book from below the counter level of the guard’s window.

  “Who exactly has to sign these things?”

  “Everybody who goes in or out after six, or anytime on weekends and holidays.”

  “Everybody? There are no other points on the premises where people go in and out?”

  “Not after six.”

  “Would Sir Jeff have to sign out?” I asked.

  “If I was on duty,” he said.

  I started on the first of January, since I didn’t know the exact day of John Pighee’s accident. Everyone said it was seven months ago and that meant January.

  I found John Pighee’s name, signed in at 1:15 and out at 6:30 on January 1st. There were eight other names in the book for January 1st. Which seemed pretty busy going for New Year’s Day. Which is the day after New Year’s Eve. But on the second of January there were thirty-one names. Not including Pighee’s.

  “A lot of people come in and out out of hours,” I said to Fincastle.

  “That’s what I’m in business for,” he said.

  “Is there any way of telling where inside the perimeter they are?”

  He showed me the column of squiggles that indicated where people said they were going or said they had been. “R 3” for Research Three. Which made a certain amount of sense.

  In the first three weeks of January, Pighee’s name was in the book twelve times, half of them signing out after midnight. He was there each of the three Thursdays and never on Monday, with each of the other nights being represented at least once. His timings were not regular; he had signed out as early as, 6:15 p.m. and as late as 3:30 a.m.

  The first day of the fourth week was Thursday, January 27th. He had signed in at 7 p.m. but had not signed out. I managed to hypothesize that that was the night of the accident.