You Could Call It Murder

by Lawrence Block

  You Could Call It Murder

  Lawrence Block

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  A New Afterword by the Author

  A Biography of Lawrence Block

  One

  IT STARTED at the Tafts, at dinner. All through the meal I had the distinct impression that something more than food was in the offing. The food itself was certainly excellent enough—a fine rare rib roast flanked with roasted potatoes, an excellent red Bordeaux to complement the roast, broccoli au gratin, chef salad with roquefort dressing, all followed up by berry pie, rich strong coffee and snifters of Drambuie. When casual acquaintances invite one in for that sort of meal there’s little cause for complaint, but I couldn’t help thinking that something was a little out of line.

  Perhaps it was the conversation—carefully casual, almost elaborately inoffensive. Perhaps it was the air of repressed urgency that permeated the large dining room. Whatever it was, I was not at all surprised when Edgar Taft called me aside.

  “Roy,” he said. “Could I talk to you for a minute or two?”

  I followed him through the living room to his study, a heavily masculine room with pine-panelled walls and a hunting motif. We sat down in large brown leather chairs. He offered me a cigar. I passed it up and lit a cigarette.

  “There’s something I wanted to discuss with you, Roy,” he said. “I’ve got a problem. I need your help.”

  “I thought the dinner was too much to waste merely for the pleasure of my company—”

  “Cut it out,” he said. “You know I like getting together with you. So does Marianne. But—”

  “But you’ve a problem.”

  He nodded. He stood up abruptly, then began to pace the floor of the study, his eyes troubled. He was a large man, with strong features and firm gray eyes. His hair was iron-gray, his shoulders broad. He was a few years past fifty, but good looks and an almost military carriage took years off his appearance.

  He wasn’t the sort of man you’d expect to have a problem. Or, if he had one, you’d expect him to solve it himself. He had a great deal of money and he’d made it all by himself. He made his first small fortune years ago as a wildcat well-driller in Texas, doubled that speculating in the stock market, and pyramided those profits by buying control of an unknown electronics corporation, speeding up research and making profits hand over fist. Now, officially, he was retired—but I was relatively certain he had his hands in pies here and there. He was too dynamic to put himself out to pasture.

  He turned to me suddenly. “You know my daughter?”

  “I met her once,” I said. “A tall girl, blonde. I don’t remember her name.”

  “It’s Barb. Barbara.”

  I nodded. “It must have been four years ago when I saw her last,” I said. “She was in that awkward stage between girl and young woman, very careful not to trip over her own feet or say the wrong word. But very pretty.”

  “She’s older now,” he said grimly. “But still in that awkward stage. And much more beautiful.”

  “And a problem?”

  “And a problem.” He ducked the ashes from his cigar, then turned again to face me. “To hell with it, Roy. I might as well come right out and say it. She’s missing.”

  “Missing?”

  He nodded. “A missing person,” he said. “Whatever that means, exactly. A week ago I got a letter from some old bitch who’s the dean of women up at Radbourne. That’s a little college in New Hampshire, the place where Barb was going. Letter said Barb had been missing from school for a few days. They wanted to check, find out if she was home, let us know she wasn’t there.”

  “But she wasn’t here?”

  “Of course not. I got worried as hell, thought somebody might have snatched her, thought she could have gotten smacked by a car or God knows what. I made a few phone calls to the college and had them check things out. She cashed three big checks the day before she took off, cleaned out her checking account. From there it wasn’t too hard to figure.”

  “I see,” I said. “You assume she left on her own?”

  “Sure. Hell, she must have. Cleared out with her money and a suitcase full of her clothes. Those checks added up to a little over a thousand dollars, Roy. Not enough to retire on, maybe. But enough to go about as far as she would want to go. You can go around the world on a thousand bucks.”

  I put out my cigarette. “Why would she want to go?”

  “Damned if I know. Hell, maybe she had reasons. She wasn’t doing too well in school, according to what they told me. Barb was always a smart kid but she’s never been much of a student. She was failing a course or two and not breaking any records in the others. Or it might be some guy—some sharp little bastard who figures on marrying her and cutting himself in on my money. That’s why I’ve been sitting on my hands, figuring I’d hear from her, get a call or a wire saying she’s married.”

  “But that hasn’t happened.”

  He shook his head.

  “How old is she, Edgar?”

  “Twenty. Twenty-one in March.”

  “That makes marriage less likely,” I told him. “It’s December now. You’d think she’d wait until she’s twenty-one to marry without consent, especially with only three months to wait.”

  “I thought of that. But she’s impulsive. Hard to figure.”

  I nodded briefly. “Is the school investigating?”

  “Not their job. They checked around town but that’s alL”

  “And you haven’t called the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked at me. “A batch of reasons,” he said. “First off, what cops do I call? Radbourne’s in some town called Cliff’s End. I think it’s a ghost town when the college closes shop for the summer. They’ve got a three-man Mickey Mouse police force straight out of the Keystone Cops. They can’t do a hell of a lot. Neither can the New York cops—she isn’t here in New York, or if she is there’s no way to know about it. The FBI? Hell, it’s not a kidnapping. Or if it is, it’s a hell of a funny one.”

  He was right.

  “That’s not all,” he went on. “I’m rich, Roy. Every time I spit one of the tabloids finds room for it. I don’t want this in the papers. Maybe it’s perfectly innocent, maybe Barb just took off for a week or so and nothing’s wrong. But as soon as I yell for the police, Barb’s got herself an ugly reputation for a long time. I don’t want that.”

  He paused. “That’s why I called you,” he said. “I’m scared to pick out an ordinary private detective. I’ve used plenty of them in my business and I know which ones you can trust. Even the big agencies have operatives who talk too damned much. And you never know when one of their boys is going to hit a situation with blackmail potential and open up shop for himself. I need a friend, somebody I can trust all the way.”

  “And you want me to find her?”

  “That’s it.”

  I thought about it. It’s no easy matter to turn up a missing person, harder still when that person could be almost any place in the country, not to say the world. The needle in the haystack analogy had never fit more perfectly.

  “I don’t know what I can accomplish, Edgar. But I’ll be glad to do what I can.”

  “That’s all I want,” he said. He sat down at his desk and opened a drawer, took out a checkbook. He uncapped a pen, filled out a check in a hurry, tore it from the book and handed it to me. “This is a retainer, Roy. Anytime you want
more dough, all you have to do is ask for it. I don’t care what this costs me. The money doesn’t make a hell of a difference. I just want to have Barb back, to know that nothing’s wrong with her.”

  I took the check, glanced at it. It was made payable to Roy Markham in the amount of ten thousand dollars. It was signed Edgar Taft. I folded it twice and gave it a temporary home in my billfold.

  “That enough?”

  “More than enough,” I said honestly. “I—”

  “You need more, just yell. Don’t worry how high your expenses go. I’m not going to worry about them. Just do what you can.”

  “I’ll need information.”

  “I’ll give you what I can, Roy.”

  “Pictures would help,” I said. “For a starter. It’s been awhile since I saw Barbara.”

  He was nodding. He opened the same desk drawer again and took out a plain white envelope. He passed it to me. “These are the recent ones,” he said. “All within the past two or three years. She doesn’t take a good picture but they’re not too bad.”

  I opened the envelope, took out a handful of snapshots. The girl in the photographs was a prettier one than I remembered. She was becoming a very beautiful woman. Her forehead was broad and intelligent, her mouth full, her hair long and light and lovely.

  “These will help,” I said.

  “What next?”

  The next question was harder. “How do you get along with her, Edgar? Are you . . . close? Friendly?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “I know that. Are you on good terms?”

  He frowned, then looked away. “Not good terms,” he said. “Not bad terms either. I’ve spent a lot of time making money, Roy. Almost all my time. It’s the only thing I know. I’m not highly educated, don’t read books, can’t stand high society and fancy parties. I’m a businessman and it’s all I know. I suppose I should have learned to be a family man somewhere along the line. I didn’t.”

  I waited.

  “I never spent much time with Barb. God knows she had everything she ever wanted—clothes, money, a trip to Europe last year, expensive schooling, the works. But not too much closeness, damn it. And it shows.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t get along,” he said. “Oh, we don’t throw rocks at each other or anything. But we don’t get along. She thinks I’m a dull old man who pays the bills. Period. She’s a hell of a lot closer with Marianne than with me. But she doesn’t take Marianne into her confidence either. She keeps a lot to herself.”

  He paused. “Maybe that’s why I don’t have any idea where she is now. Or what she’s up to. Maybe that’s why I’m a lot more scared about this business than I should be. Hell, I don’t know. She’s a funny kid, Roy.”

  “Has she ever been in trouble?”

  “Not ... not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He thought it over. “It means what I said,” he said finally. “She’s never been in any real trouble. But she travels with a pretty fast crowd, Roy. A bunch of kids like her, kids with more money than they should have. You know, when I was a kid my old man had a pot and a window and that was all. A pot to crap in and a window to throw it out of. That’s supposed to turn a kid into a criminal, right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “With me it worked the other way. I looked around and I told myself that, dammit to hell, I was going to have better than this for myself. I never got through high school. I dropped out and took a job working twelve hours a day six days a week. I banked my money so I’d something to work with, some capital to play around with. Then I looked for the right long shots and backed them all the way. I started with nothing and I came out of it with a pile.”

  “And it’s the other way with Barbara?”

  “Maybe. Hell, I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say. Her crowd has too much dough. She gets a big allowance and spends every penny of it, wouldn’t dream of saving a nickel. She knows there’s more waiting for her. She drives her car too damn fast. She goes out with guys who drink too damn much. She stays out too late. Maybe she sleeps around. They say all college girls sleep around. You know anything about it?”

  ‘They’re too young for me.”

  He didn’t smile. “Sometimes I worry,” he said. “Maybe I don’t worry enough. I can’t talk to her about it, can’t talk to her about a damn thing. Whenever I try talking to her she goes off the handle and we have a little fireworks. We yell at each other for awhile. Oh, to hell with it. I want you to find Barb, Roy. I want you to bring her back here. That’s all I can say.”

  I asked several more questions but his answers weren’t of much help. He didn’t know the names of any of her friends at Radbourne, didn’t know of any man or boy she had been seeing on a steady basis. I suggested that his wife might be able to help.

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “I’ve been over this with Marianne a dozen times already. I know everything she knows.”

  “That’s not too much.”

  “I know it,” he said. “Hell, I know it. Will you do what you can?”

  “Of course.”

  We shook hands on it, more or less to seal the bargain that had already been made the moment I took his check. The interview was over. He led me out of his study into the living room. Marianne was waiting for us.

  She was a sweet, frail woman with quiet gray hair and trusting puppy-eyes. She was the sort of person whom no one swore in front of. I had always had the impression that she was much stronger inside than anyone suspected.

  “Roy’s going to help us,” Taft said.

  Marianne smiled. “I’m glad,” she said softly. “You’ll find Barb, won’t you, Roy?”

  I said I would try.

  “Of course you’ll find her,” she said, blandly dismissing the possibility of failure. “I’m so glad you’ll be helping us. Call us as soon as you find Barb, won’t you?”

  I told her I would. I thanked her for dinner and told her very truthfully that it had been a marvellous meal. Then Edgar Taft walked me out of the house and down the long sloping driveway. His car was parked in front.

  “No car,” he said. “How come? You don’t like to drive in New York?”

  “I had a car for awhile,” I told him. “I got rid of it.”

  He looked at me. “It would be in New York and I would be in San Francisco,” I explained. “Or it would be in San Franciso and I would be in London. It never quite managed to catch up with me. So I decided I would get along without it.”

  “You still do that much travelling?”

  I nodded. “I like to keep on the move,” I said. “I still maintain my brownstone in the east sixties but I’m hardly ever there. Right now I’m staying at the Commodore.’

  “I called your office—”

  “You called my answering service,” I said. “My office is my suitcase. I’ve only been in New York a week. And I guess I won’t be here much longer.”

  “Well,” he said. “Hop in. I’ll run you down to the station.”

  The Taft home was in Bedford Hills, a wealthy estate section in upper Westchester County. The house was a huge Dutch colonial with a view of the Hudson. Ancient trees shaded the rolling lawn. I got into the front seat of his Lincoln and we drove off.

  We talked about odds and ends for part of the trip. Then, as we were nearing the railroad station, he asked me where I was going to start.

  “There only seems to be one place,” I said. “I’ll have to begin at the college. Radbourne. What did you say the name of the town was?”

  “Cliff’s End. Cliff’s End, New Hampshire.”

  It sounded desolate enough. I asked him if any trains went there. He said he didn’t know, that Barbara always drove up. She had a red MG sports roadster. The license number was written on the back of one of the snapshots he had given me.

  “Keep in touch with me,” he said at the station. “Call me collect once a day. After dinner’s the best time to catch me. Hell, Barb might turn up any minute.
I wouldn’t want you wasting your time.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Do your best, Roy.” He checked his watch. “The next New York train should be through in fifteen minutes or so. Luck.”

  I shook hands with him. His grip was firm. Then I walked to the railway platform and looked back, watching the Lincoln drive off. I lighted a cigarette and waited for the train to come.

  The platform was empty of others. I stood smoking and thought about Edgar Taft and his errant daughter. Something refused to jibe, something was inconsistent. I couldn’t pin it down offhand—I could only realize for certain that things were not entirely as they seemed to be.

  Which, in American terminology, was the way the ball bounced, the way the tootsie rolled. Sic friat crustulum, as they might put it in Rome. Thus crumbles the cookie.

  The train came and I boarded it. It was a rolling antique but its seats were comfortable. I sat in one of them, took a paperbound book from my back pocket, and read some verses of Catullus until the poor old train managed to haul itself into Grand Central.

  I closed the book, left the train. I walked upstairs and into the Commodore lobby, then took an elevator to the fourteenth floor. It would have been the thirteenth floor, but for a rather bizarre American custom of eliminating that floor from the overall scheme of things.

  The bellhop brought me a pint of scotch and a bottle of white soda. I put some of each into a glass and worked on the mixture, with a half dozen pictures of Barbara Taft spread out in front of me. I looked at the pictures and tried to figure out a way to find the girl.

  It would not be easy.

  She had a car and she had a sizeable bankroll, and with either of the two she could put a great distance between herself and the town of Cliff’s End. I wondered if she was simply taking a week or two off. Edgar Taft had said she was a girl who ran with a wild crowd; if that were so, it didn’t seem unlikely that she might decide to run off from school on a lark.

  And, if that were so, why was he so worried?

  There were more questions than there were answers. I took a hot bath, and let muscles loosen up and tension float away. I dried off, combined a little more scotch with a little more soda, and got into bed. The bellhop had also brought ice cubes, for no good reason. I prefer the British custom of taking liquor at room temperature, a source of never-ending amusement to Americans. Ice kills the taste.