Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Without saying anything about these suspicions,” Curtis added. “We could still be wrong, I think. There could still be some other explanation.”

  “I doubt it,” Fairchild said. “But we will, of course, keep an open mind.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Curtis.”

  “Good afternoon, Inspector.”

  The instant Fairchild was gone, Curtis crossed to the telephone, and called the station. Helen Farrelly answered, in her quarters, and Curtis said, “Helen, would you unlock the office and let Morgan Pallifer in there and tell him to call me at the Heritage in Brisbane?”

  Yes, she would, and everything was fine there, no trouble, and five minutes later the phone rang.

  “Curtis.”

  “Morgan here.”

  “Morgan,” Curtis said, “I want you to spend some time today and tomorrow morning with Manville.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “I want you to listen to him, because I want you to be able to do him by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do him?”

  “I mean talk like him. Talk enough like him on the telephone so that a man who’s never met him will believe it’s him.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard. We’re both American.”

  “Yes, but there’s the sound of the voice, the tone, if one person was going to describe it to another. Your voice is a little higher-pitched. Anyway, you can do it. And tomorrow at one you’ll call my office in Singapore, and ask for Margaret.”

  “Margaret, yes.”

  “Margaret will patch you in to a call to Brisbane, to a police inspector named Tony Fairchild.”

  “I get it. I’m calling from Singapore.”

  “And you’re George Manville. And on that last night on the Mallory, you slept like a baby, heard nothing, saw nothing, left the ship in Brisbane the ordinary way next morning. And you didn’t see Kim Baldur that morning, but you didn’t think about it. And you’re happy to be working for Richard Curtis again, and you’ll give Inspector Fairchild the number in Singapore— Margaret will tell you—where he can call you back if he needs any more.”

  Morgan Pallifer laughed. “I’ve never delivered anybody’s last words before,” he said.

  19

  Andre Brevizin entered the offices of Coolis, Maguire, Brevizin & Chin at exactly ten-thirty Monday morning, as was his wont, and Angela Brother, the firm’s excellent receptionist, raised two fingers as she said, “Two calls.”

  “Good God,” Brevizin said. “Before I even get to my office? My papers? I’m not sure I like the pace you’re setting, Angela.”

  “They’re both interesting,” Angela promised.

  “At this hour? Try me.”

  “The one is from a police inspector, Tony Fairchild. He rang at nine this morning, he wants to meet with you sometime today.”

  “A police inspector? As a client, or as a policeman?”

  “As a policeman. You can help with his enquiries.”

  “We’ll see about that. And the other?”

  “Richard Curtis.”

  It took a second for the penny to drop, and then Brevizin said, “Angela! No!”

  “Yes. He would also like an appointment. I promised to call them both.”

  “Yes, indeed. What do we know about this policeman? What’s his name again?”

  “Tony Fairchild. I’ve put notes on your desk. He’s something high up in criminal investigation. He’s the one who captured Edders and Petersen, remember? The stock fraud people.”

  Some of Brevizin’s friends had been caught up in the Edders and Petersen swindles; Brevizin remembered it well. Had some client of his now been doing something iffy in the market? “We’ll talk to him second,” he decided. “This afternoon. Richard Curtis first. Let’s try for eleven-thirty, after my tea.”

  * * *

  Richard Curtis was as Brevizin had imagined him; a tough man, exuding power and energy. He dressed casually but well, and his eye and handshake were firm. Brevizin, in his enquiries over the weekend, had heard a few faint hints of shakiness in the Curtis empire, but nothing drastic and nothing solid. The man himself seemed solid enough, and not at all shaken.

  They sat together where on Friday Brevizin had talked with George Manville, and Curtis got immediately to the point: “I believe you had a conversation last Friday with a friend of mine, George Manville.”

  Brevizin smiled amiably. “A friend of yours?”

  “We’re friends now,” Curtis said, taking no offense. “And I believe we’ll stay friends. This little flurry is over.”

  “Flurry.”

  “George told you what we’re doing on Kanowit Island?”

  “The destination resort, yes.”

  “And his technique for reshaping the land.”

  “Yes,” Brevizin said. “I won’t claim I understood it, but he did tell me.”

  “Fine.” Curtis sat back and spread his hands. “It is George’s technique, more than anyone’s, I’ve never denied it, and it’s brilliant, and I’ve never denied that. And I pay well for it. George is a top man, and he gets top wages, or any one of my competitors would steal him away in a minute.”

  Curtis paused, as though Brevizin might want to comment on that, but Brevizin merely continued to smile at him, so he went on, saying, “I’m afraid George got greedy, decided he wanted more than top wages, he wanted to be a partner, to own a piece of me. I don’t work that way, Mr. Brevizin. I’ve had operations with partners, where each shared the same financial risk, put the same amount in the pot, took equal shares out. Expertise is not enough. Expertise does not get shares, it gets wages. You, for instance, are very well known in corporate legal circles in Australia. George chose well.”

  “Thank you,” Brevizin said.

  “You bring great expertise to your clients,” Curtis said, “and in return they pay you very high fees.”

  “They do.”

  “But they do not give you pieces of their companies.”

  “Point taken,” Brevizin said.

  “That’s what this whole thing has been about,” Curtis said. “George made his demands, I turned them down. He didn’t know how to get at me, force me to agree, and he concocted this little scheme. I told you he’s brilliant, which doesn’t mean he’s practical. He thought he’d play hardball with me by running down my reputation, and continue to smear me until I came around. Spread rumors that I’d gone bust, for instance, I don’t know if he gave you that one.”

  Brevizin smiled, and waited.

  Curtis shook his head, waggled a hand. “I’m sorry, no,” he said, “I wasn’t asking you to repeat your conversations with a client. I’m merely saying this is the sort of rumor he was trying to spread within the industry, and he might have done it with you. No matter. The point is, the rumors got back to me, as they will, and as he wanted them to.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I can play hardball, too,” Curtis said, and he looked as though he very well could. “I don’t need my reputation smeared, I don’t need him spreading wild stories about what a desperate man I am—you wouldn’t believe the things that have come back to me—”

  “I might,” Brevizin said, “but as you say, no matter. You decided to play hardball as well.”

  “I cooked up a charge against him,” Curtis said, almost defiantly, as though challenging Brevizin to say he’d been wrong. “Industrial espionage.”

  “Well, well,” Brevizin said. “You do surprise me, Mr. Curtis. On Friday, Mr. Manville insisted the charges against him were made of whole cloth, and I said then I found it improbable that a reputable businessman like yourself would lie under oath in an affidavit about such a thing. And now you yourself tell me you did.”

  “Because I knew I could undo it at any time,” Curtis said, “and because I knew no one would ever be able to prove I lied. Because it was the one way to bring George Manville to heel.”

  “I’d wondered about that announcement over the weekend,” Brevizin said,
“retracting the charges. I’d wondered if you’d been forced to reverse yourself, but you say no.”

  “George gave up his rebellion,” Curtis said, “as I’d thought he would. He’s back in Singapore now, at my main office, where I’m headed this afternoon. It was always more ego than greed, in any case, with George, and we’ve worked out a compromise. A clearer demonstration of the value I place on him. Change of title, better staffing. The truth is, Mr. Brevizin, I think I was taking George too much for granted, there was wrong on both sides, and it won’t happen again.”

  “Then the story he told me last Friday…”

  “Was a pack of lies. Well, no,” Curtis amended himself, “it was half a pack of truth plus half a pack of lies. We were in dispute, that’s true. He is the creator of the technique we used on Kanowit Island, that’s true. I did knowingly falsely accuse him and deliberately put him in a very difficult position, that’s also true. But the rumors of my poverty and desperation, well—what did Twain say? ‘The report of my death was an exaggeration.’ ”

  “And the girl he told me about? Kim Baldur?”

  Curtis made a sour face. “Yes, I’m afraid George did hook up with those Planetwatch people for a while. Trying to get at me any way he could, of course. Those people are insane, I really believe they are. They’re likely to say anything.”

  “Some of my clients have crossed their path,” Brevizin said, “and I must say their reaction is much the same as yours.”

  “It takes a very particular kind of person, it seems to me,” Curtis said, “to believe it’s your job to rescue something as large as a planet.”

  Brevizin laughed. “I must repeat that,” he said, “to one or two friends of mine.” Manville, he was thinking, had been very glib and plausible last Friday, and Curtis is being very glib and plausible today, with utterly opposed stories to tell. Either could be lying, anything could be the truth, but Brevizin found himself leaning more toward Curtis’s version, for two reasons. First, the fact that Manville was unquestionably back working with Curtis again, something he’d be unlikely to do if he really believed Curtis was trying to kill him. And second, the fact that Curtis’s story didn’t have any melodrama in it.

  “But now,” Curtis said, “as to why I’m here. George was very impressed by you, so that’s why you’re the one I’ve come to.”

  “Thank him for me.”

  “I will. What’s happened is, we’ve had another problem, out of the blue. The captain of my yacht had been using it, when I wasn’t around, for smuggling. We don’t yet know what, or who he was dealing with, only that he thought he was about to be exposed, and last Friday he killed himself. Here, in Brisbane. The ship is here—”

  “The Mallory.”

  “Of course, George would have mentioned the ship. The investigation into Captain Zhang is just getting underway; in fact, I had a conversation yesterday with the policeman in charge, Inspector Fairchild.”

  Brevizin smiled and nodded. “I’ve heard the name,” he said.

  “My ship has been used,” Curtis said, “without my knowledge or permission. In an ongoing criminal enterprise. I don’t know what legal ramifications this could hold for me or the ship, in Australia. In some countries, the ship would be impounded. Now, I must get back to Singapore today. I would like to retain your firm to represent my interests in connection with the Mallory, for so long as she remains here.”

  “We don’t do criminal work, you know,” Brevizin said.

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Curtis told him. “I should think it would mostly be negotiating with the proper authorities. If a criminal lawyer is eventually needed, I’d be happy to accept your recommendation.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So that’s why I’m here,” Curtis said.

  Brevizin said, “Mr. Curtis, are you also here to undo the things Mr. Manville said to me on Friday?”

  Curtis beamed. “Of course! He and I both went pretty public before we settled down. I’ve made his reputation whole again, but he can’t quite do the same for me. Rumor is hard to kill. Yes, I would definitely like you to squelch the rumors anywhere you find them. If you’re afraid this would be a conflict of interest, I’ll have George phone you from Singapore tomorrow. We are of one mind now.”

  “No, I understood that from CNN,” Brevizin said. “Well, you know, I must say I quite enjoyed the image of you as some sort of rampaging freebooter. But, as usual, reality, though less enjoyable, will have to do.”

  “Then you’ll accept me as a client?”

  “I had not actually accepted Mr. Manville as a client, expecting to see him back here today, so there is no conflict of interest. Yes, of course, I’ll see what needs to be sorted out with the Mallory, and if I happen across any rumors about you I’ll laugh them to scorn.”

  “Thank you,” Curtis said, and as they both stood, he said, “You might call Inspector Fairchild, see how he’s coming along.”

  “I’m sure I’ll speak with him,” Brevizin said.

  20

  Tony Fairchild was making notes to himself, in the tiny crabbed writing he’d learned as a boy, when there’d never been enough money for food, much less for paper. These days, he wrote in small memo pads appropriate to the size of his penmanship, because he was well aware that his writing looked ridiculous on something the size of, say, a legal pad, where a lonely Tony Fairchild paragraph would be a tiny forested island in a great yellow sea.

  He was writing notes to himself about Captain Zhang, and George Manville, and Kim Baldur, and Richard Curtis.

  He was writing mostly questions, not because there weren’t any answers but because there were far too many answers, and they didn’t fit together. Usually, it was the policeman’s job to get the principals in an investigation to open up and tell their stories; this time, only dead Captain Zhang had ever shown the slightest inclination to keep his mouth shut.

  If only the stories jibed in some way, in any way at all. Being a self-made man from a poverty-stricken family, who’d never gotten a boost up from a bloody soul, Fairchild was naturally anti-Curtis in his sentiments, naturally assumed that the richest man in the room was always the biggest villain, and yet this time the rule didn’t seem to hold true.

  For Kim Baldur to be telling the truth, Curtis would have had to overreact to a truly astonishing degree at the presence of Planetwatch next to his Kanowit Island property. Fairchild had had people look into Curtis’s history, and had found plenty of pugnacity there, any number of lawsuits and lawyers, but absolutely nothing extra-legal, if you didn’t count the normal businessman’s corner-cutting. Curtis’s struggles a few years ago with the Chinese authorities, after Hong Kong had been returned by the British, had been monumental and had ultimately got him nowhere, but even then he’d limited himself to the courts. Oh, there’d probably been a bribe or two here and there along the way, but that too was only business.

  So Fairchild thought it most probable that Curtis was being maligned here, though he wasn’t entirely certain why, and that was one of his biggest questions. What did Kim Baldur hope to get out of all this? Why would she tell these stories if they weren’t true?

  Baldur was clearly under the control of that fellow Diedrich; could he be the one behind it? Fairchild hadn’t taken to Diedrich at all, had found him hyperbolic and melodramatic and probably basically untrustworthy, but could it possibly be that Baldur was merely parroting stories Diedrich had fed her, with no other reason than that Diedrich, who had an acknowledged antipathy to Curtis, was hoping to make some extra trouble for the man along the way? It seemed a very strange thing to do; and yet.

  Sergeant Willkie stuck his carrot-topped head in at the office door: “Sir, a Mr. George Manville on the line, from Singapore.”

  Fairchild looked at the small clock on his desk: eleven-fifty. That would be nine-fifty in the morning in Singapore, which would be about right. Curtis would have briefed Manville first, of course. He said, “Sergeant, tell them I’m in the loo, I’ll call
right back within five minutes, and get a phone number. Once you’ve got it, say, ‘Oh, here he is,’ and put me on.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Fairchild put down his pen. Much would depend on what Mr. Manville had to say for himself. Had he left the Mallory in mid-ocean, with Kim Baldur? Had the two of them kicked around Brisbane together for the latter half of last week?

  There was just one verifiable point in the opposing stories: Baldur claimed to have left the ship with Manville, Curtis claimed that Manville had left the ship alone. One story had to be false, one storyteller a liar.

  Sergeant Willkie’s head appeared again: “He’s on the line, sir.”

  “Very good.” Fairchild picked up the phone: “Fairchild here.”

  “Good morning, Inspector.” It was an American voice, of course, mid-range, but with some faint tinge of accent in it, as though the speaker had been away from home a long time. Which was probably true, Manville being an engineer whose work history was almost exclusively around the Pacific Rim. “George Manville here,” the voice went on. “Mr. Curtis says you want to talk to me.”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Manville. Mostly it’s about Captain Zhang Yung-tsien. You knew him on the Mallory, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t say I knew him. We said hello once or twice.”

  “Didn’t you have your meals with him? I understood you’d been a few weeks on the ship, out at Kanowit Island.”

  “Oh, sure, I ate with the officers, but they mostly gabbed together, you know, and I don’t talk any of that. I had my own people I worked with, didn’t have much to do with the crew.”

  “Ah. You remember Kim Baldur.”

  “The idiot from Planetwatch. Oh, yeah, I remember her.”

  “Were you together with her in Brisbane at all?”

  “Together with her?” The disgust in the man’s voice certainly sounded genuine, “I was never together with that piece at all. Why would I be together with her?”

  “Well, did you leave the ship together?”

  “I never even saw her that morning, she wasn’t around for breakfast. Still in bed, I suppose. I was up and out, soon as we docked. I had things to do.”