Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  As I grow older and older, naturally these past experiences grow more and more numerous, and the instances of my recalling them grow more and more frequent, making the spaces between these instances grow shorter and shorter, and it occurs to me what is happening is I am gradually evolving into one of those pathetic old men you see walking down Broadway, compulsively muttering a constant stream of obscenities. I think there’s a name for that. If I were a better writer, I’d know it.

  Shit.

  I got in the elevator, went up to the sixth floor. There was no one in the corridor, and no light from under the door of Farber Kennelworth Development. Unless the bogus Marvin Nickleson had gone down in an elevator while I had come up in mine, he hadn’t been in today.

  But Farber and Kennelworth had. So he wasn’t them. Or they weren’t him. Or whatever.

  I took the subway home, which is always a bitch from the upper East Side, because you gotta go down to Grand Central, shuttle to Times Square, and then back up again.

  And the homeless are patrolling the cars in force these days. You can’t ride from one station to the next without hearing some person’s tale of personal woe. It’s as if they had it choreographed. The train will pull out of the station, the man who’d been working the car will disappear through the door at the front of the train, and the door at the rear of the car will slide open and the next performer will appear. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m your personal bummer from 79th to 86th Street, here to remind you of the pain and misery and suffering in the world.” And the guy knows he’s working a hard house, and his only chance is the people who just got on, ’cause the people who’ve been on since 42nd Street have already had three or four tales of woe, and compassion has shut down and numbness has set in, and unless this guy’s got a particularly good spiel, he’s not gonna move ’em.

  Needless to say, I was feeling like hell when I got home. Alice was on the computer again, natch, but for once I didn’t care. I didn’t feel like talking to her. I was so bummed out, I didn’t feel like much of anything.

  She stopped though, and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t have to ask, do I? A total washout.”

  “Total.”

  “Hey, it’s your first day, you know you’re right, it’s gonna work out.”

  “Sure.”

  I must have looked really gloomy, because Alice got up, put her hands on my shoulders and leaned against my chest. She was wearing a sweat suit. I find women in sweat suits incredibly sexy. Their bodies move around in them freely in particularly attractive ways.

  “Hey,” she said, “don’t look so depressed. What do you need, a pep talk?”

  A pep talk was not exactly what I had in mind. I hugged her a little tighter.

  “Stanley,” Alice said. “Tommie’s still up.”

  Ah, the simple joys of parenthood. Tough on a man who still has trouble thinking of himself as a grownup.

  Over Alice’s shoulder I noticed some checks lying on the desk next to the computer.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Alice looked. “Oh, I was just entering those checks.”

  “Checks?”

  “Yeah. Into the computer.”

  “What?”

  Alice turned around and pointed to the screen. “It’s ’Managing Your Money.’ A program. I enter all the data from the checkbook into the computer. Then when we do our taxes, we don’t have to add up the checkbook, the computer does it for us. Just call it up and print out all the totals and we’re done.”

  That sounded so good there had to be a catch to it somewhere. “Oh?”

  “Sure. Let me show you.”

  Alice picked up one of the checks. “All right. Look. I made ten bucks today for running off some form letters.”

  Alice bent over the keyboard. “So I type it in here in the proper blanks. Date. Amount. Name. Category. Then at tax time the computer calls it up. What do you think?”

  I thought her ass looked great in that sweat suit.

  “Terrific,” I said. “So you made ten bucks today. That’s ten better than me. What’s the other check?”

  “Oh, that’s a dividend.”

  Alice picked it up and began typing it in.

  “Oh,” I said.

  More small potatoes. Some five or six years ago one of Alice’s great uncles died and left her a hundred shares of National Fuel and Gas. As a result, four times a year we got a whopping thirty-one dollar and fifty cents dividend check. I can’t say it changed our lifestyle much, though for a while I got some mileage out of facetiously referring to Alice as “The Heiress.”

  I’d dismissed the check and gone back to admiring the contours of the sweat suit when it hit me.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said.

  Alice stopped typing and turned around. “What?”

  “That check.”

  “What check?”

  “The dividend check.”

  “What about it?”

  “You know what it makes you?”

  Alice frowned and looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Thirty bucks richer.”

  “Yeah, but what else?”

  Alice looked totally exasperated. “I give up. What?”

  “You’re a stockholder.”

  33.

  THE FIRST TIME I met Leroy Stanhope Williams he had a cast on his leg. Leroy was one of the first clients I signed for Richard. He was also the only one I ever kept in touch with. That was because, aside from being an agreeable and intelligent person, Leroy had one outstanding characteristic that made him invaluable to a person in my profession. You see, Leroy was a thief.

  I hate to say that, because it immediately conjures up petty images. And there was nothing petty about Leroy. He was a grand thief on a grand scale. He robbed only from the rich, and he gave only to himself. He stole mainly art objects. Leroy was a connoisseur and a collector. Unfortunately, coming from a background on the streets of Harlem, Leroy had no money. At least, no money of his own. And having developed a taste for fine art through an education which began in reform school and ended with a degree from NYU, Leroy had attempted to combine both worlds in order to change his life style. In this endeavor, he was entirely successful.

  Leroy was a black man some five to ten years my junior, with a high sloping forehead that gave him an intellectual look, and a speech pattern that did nothing to belie it. He dressed impeccably, tastefully, conservatively. He always looked like some foreign dignitary about to address the U.N.

  Leroy had done me some favors in the past. The last one had almost gotten him killed. This one, I hoped, at worst would only get him arrested.

  It was a quarter to five. Leroy and I were standing on the sidewalk outside the office building of Farber Kennelworth Development. I knew what time it was because Leroy had a watch, one that I’m sure cost more than my entire wardrobe. I didn’t know what the wind-chill factor was because no one had walked by with a radio, but you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Suffice it to say it was cold.

  Leroy blew out some frosty air, clapped his gloved hands together, bounced up and down in a manner that managed to be agitated and dignified at the same time, and said, “Would you mind explaining it to me again, why we are standing here in the freezing cold when there is a warm lobby not ten feet away?”

  “If the man I’m looking for comes out we don’t have to do this.”

  “Why can’t we wait for him in the lobby?”

  “We might miss him in the lobby.”

  “You really expect him to show?”

  “Quite frankly, it’s a long shot.”

  “It’s rather cold out for a long shot.”

  “I know. But if he were here and I missed him, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s perfectly clear.”

  “It’s perfectly clear, it just doesn’t make sense.”

&n
bsp; “Why not?”

  “You admit there’s only the slimmest chance the man might show up at all.”

  “This is true.”

  “If we were to wait for him in the lobby, and if by the very slimmest chance this man might show up, there is then an even slimmer chance we might miss him. Is that correct?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And the reason we are holding out for this minuscule chance is that, were it to occur, in that unlikely event you should never be able to forgive yourself?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hmmm,” Leroy said. “But for that to happen, since you know what he looks like, it occurs to me the only way for you to miss him would be not to see him at all.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if you didn’t see him at all, you wouldn’t know you’d missed him, would you?”

  We waited in the lobby.

  At five o’clock, people began to stream out. Of course, never having ventured beyond the doors of Farber Kennelworth Development, there was no way for me to recognize anyone who worked there. On the other hand, there was no way for them to recognize me.

  With the exception of the bogus Marvin Nickleson. I tried to spot him in the crowd. Naturally, I couldn’t. And though I was vigilant as hell, the thought occurred to me that Marvin Nickleson was a shrimp of a guy who could easily vanish in a crowd. And Leroy’s fine logic notwithstanding, I couldn’t shake the nagging fear that somehow he’d been there and I’d missed him.

  After a while the elevators began coming down with only stragglers.

  Leroy turned to me and said, “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think? Are they closed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what time was it when you went up and found them closed before?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t got a watch.”

  “That’s unfortunate. Well, approximately then. Would you say it was approximately now?”

  “More or less.”

  “Well. Shall we?”

  I hesitated. I was reluctant to go up because, of course, while we went up in one elevator, Marvin Nickleson might be coming down in another. But I didn’t feel like mentioning it to Leroy somehow.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We went up in the elevator and walked down the hall way to Farber Kennelworth Development. There was no sound from within and no light under the door.

  The lock, however, looked formidable.

  “Think you can handle it?” I asked.

  Leroy gave me a withering look.

  “Sorry. I withdraw the question. You want me to stand guard?”

  “I would prefer it if you were to stand casually next to me as if we were two legitimate businessmen about to enter our office.”

  I did that. At least I tried. As an experiment sometime, try to act casual. I never felt so self-conscious in my life.

  Leroy, however, had no problem. Humming softly, he fished two metal strips out of his pants pocket, inserted them in the lock as if they were a key, and seconds later the door clicked open.

  “After you,” Leroy said.

  I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Leroy followed, closing the door behind him.

  It was pitch dark. I pulled a flashlight out of my coat pocket and snapped it on. I hunched over and kept my hand around the front, shielding the beam.

  Leroy snapped the light switch on.

  I wheeled around. “What are you doing?”

  Leroy smiled. “You are an amateur. In the event someone were to walk down the hall and see the light on under the door, they would assume someone was working late. If they were to see the flickering beam of your flashlight, they would assume the office was being robbed.

  “With the light on we are relatively safe. Nonetheless, I have no real wish to be here. Have you any further use of my services?”

  “Only if the offices or files are locked.”

  “Then let’s see.”

  They weren’t. It was a small suite consisting of two offices, presumably those of Farber and Kennelworth, and the reception area. Neither of the offices were locked, nor were any of the desks or cabinets or files.

  Leroy excused himself, pleading a desire not to reside in jail. He also added the suggestion that I be brief.

  I tried, and I probably was, though it seemed an eternity to me.

  I did the offices first. I found nothing there. The desks yielded an assortment of papers and notes, which might have been interesting, but it wasn’t what I was after and I didn’t want to take the time.

  That left only the waiting room. There were two desks and the files. The files were a last resort. I’d tackle them if I had to, but there were twelve drawers full, and going through them was going to be a bitch. So I was rooting like hell for the desks.

  The first one was a washout. The top drawer, yielding lipstick, tissues, and a movie magazine, told me this was the receptionist’s desk and it wasn’t going to be here. I jerked the other drawers open and proved myself right.

  I took the other desk, jerked open drawers. Middle. Top right. Bottom right. Top left. Bottom left.

  Bingo.

  I reached in, pulled out a stack of account books. I grabbed the top book, opened it on the desk.

  And someone knocked on the door.

  I almost hit the ceiling.

  Jesus Christ! Who is that? And what do I do now? Do I open the door? Or do I sit tight and pretend no one’s here? How can I do that, they can tell the light’s on? So what? So they forgot and left them on. Or maybe one of the bigwigs is working in the back office with the door closed and doesn’t hear the knock. Yeah, that’s it. Just sit tight.

  For me inaction nearly always wins out over action. I sat tight. In fact, I barely breathed.

  The knock wasn’t repeated.

  Instead came a sound that sent chills up my back.

  The sound of a key being slid in the slot.

  The lock clicked back.

  The door opened.

  A maid with a cleaning cart stood in the doorway.

  I gawked at her. She looked surprised to see me. I couldn’t blame her. There I was, standing there with my topcoat on, hunched over a pile of the company’s account books, looking like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. You’re working late.”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought they’d all left. I’ll do the other office and come back. You gonna be long?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t you worry. I’ll just do the other office first.”

  She backed out and closed the door.

  Jesus Christ. What a victory. Ace private detective manages to bluff out cleaning lady—croaks out yes and no answers rather than confessing on the spot. What a guy.

  If I had indeed bluffed her out. If she wasn’t down the hall right now calling security. Come on you son of a bitch, get it and get out of there.

  You wouldn’t believe the job I did on those books. I would have put Evelyn Wood to shame.

  It wasn’t in the first, second, or third, but in the fourth it was right there on the first page. A list of all the stock holders of Farber Kennelworth Development.

  The name Charles Thompson jumped off the page. However, he turned out to be a minor holder with only fifty shares. No, according to the company books, the major stockholder, with in fact a controlling interest in Farber Kennelworth Development, was a Carlton Kraswell of Trenton, New Jersey.

  34.

  I HIT TRENTON at eight in the morning. I’d have liked to have been there earlier, but I’m only human and I slept through the alarm.

  I came in on Route 33 and passed a sign that said ENTERING TRENTON. I was thankful for the sign, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue. It didn’t look like a city much, just a street of small frame houses set close together. I followed the road aways u
ntil I came to a curve with an arrow that said, TO NEW YORK. That didn’t look good, so I hung a U-turn, worked my way back a bit and hung a right.

  I found myself on a village street with a few stores. There was a police car parked on the corner, so I stopped, got out, and gave the cop the address. He said, “Oh sure, that’s in the Hiltonia section, up by Sullivan Way.” He gave me directions to get there that I knew I could never follow, even writing them down. So I thanked him and asked him where I could get a map somewhere. He directed me to a 711 that sold ’em. Those directions included one light and one turn, and that I could handle and I got my map.

  It’s a good thing I did, because even with the map I got lost and made a wrong turn and wound up in the municipal district. A couple of turns later I saw a sign that said, GOVERNMENT CENTER, and I suddenly realized Trenton was a state capital too. So far as I knew, that had nothing to do with my investigation, but it struck me as an interesting coincidence that in the space of a week I’d been to two state capitals. It also struck me as evidence of how apolitical I am that I’d never been to either of them before, and didn’t even know one of them existed.

  I caught my bearings off the map, made only one more wrong turn, and found myself on Sullivan Way. I passed the Trenton Country Club. In the summer it probably looked like a million bucks, but now it was January, there was no snow on the ground, and everything looked bare and desolate.

  Or maybe that’s just how I felt. That I was a fool on a fool’s errand, I was just wasting my time, and there was no way this was gonna pan out.

  I came to a crossroad, checked my map and discovered I’d gone too far. I turned around and passed the country club again. It didn’t look any better this time around. I passed the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. I considered checking in for a refresher course on positive thinking.