There was a moment’s hesitation, a frown, then the face lit up in a smile as the man replied, “Yeah. That’s me.” The smile faded at the sight of the silencer-equipped automatic.
“I just wanted to be sure,” the gunman said as he pulled the trigger, adding, as the victim fell, “Old Duke wouldn’t appreciate my making a mistake.” A quick check to be certain the man was dead, a quiet closing of the door—from the time of his knock, it had taken less than a minute.
***
“What’s with that one?” the police lieutenant, who had just come out of his office, asked the desk sergeant, tilting his head toward the occupant of a chair across the room as he spoke.
“He’s been mugged.”
“He file a report?”
The sergeant nodded. “Yeah. He’s writing out a description of what happened—not that he can remember much. He got tapped on the skull from behind. When he woke up, he’d lost damn near everything but the clothes on his back. His suitcase, wallet, watch—even his pocket change. About all they left him were his keys and a handkerchief.”
“So he’s from out of town?”
“Yeah. Seattle. On a business trip. Just got in tonight. I let him call his wife.” The sergeant caught the look on the lieutenant’s face and quickly added, “Collect,” before continuing. “All he got was an answering phone, so the operator wouldn’t even let him leave a message. He did finally run down his attorney… name of… ,” the sergeant consulted his note pad, “Charles Whitney. The lawyer’s got an ex-partner living near here who’s due to come by and pick this guy up. Guess he must be worth something to make lawyers jump through hoops like that.”
***
His head still ached. The watered-down drinks he’d had on the flight back hadn’t helped much. He had given up any thought of accomplishing anything in New York, but instead had boarded the first flight back to Seattle, even though it was getting in at an ungodly hour of the morning.
He had even stopped wondering why Denise hadn’t been home, and assumed she’d gone off to visit her mother in Bellingham. But it was still a good feeling to finally get home. He unlocked the door and headed right for his room. The bedlam that ensued was something he could only inadequately describe to his attorney.
***
Charles Whitney would have made most of his other clients wait—might even have refused to see them first thing in the morning without an appointment. But Manly sounded even more harassed than in his call from New York the evening before, and he was well worth giving special attention to anytime.
When he stepped into Whitney’s office, the appearance of the conservative businessman matched the barely controlled tone of his voice. Appearing as though he’d slept in his fifteen-hundred-dollar suit, with an ill-fitting bandage patch on the back of his head, and just generally looking like something a sick dog might have dragged in, Manly sat down heavily in one of the chairs and started talking without even noticing Whitney’s hand outstretched for a handshake.
“They were screwing. Right there in my bedroom. And she acted like a banshee. Kept screaming over and over again, ‘You can’t be here.’ And he was just about as crazy as her. He…”
“Slow down, slow down.’ Whitney held out a hand to stem the flow. “Let’s start at the beginning. All I know is that you were mugged last night in New York, that they stripped you of your money and luggage, and that my ex-partner was going to pick you up at the police station and have you stay overnight at his house. The next thing I hear is your call this morning. You’re in town and you want to see me right away. Now let’s move on from there. What happened between last night’s call and now?”
The interruption gave Manly a chance to gather his thoughts. “I decided to just take the next plane back to Seattle instead of staying with Howard. He was kind enough to loan me the money for a ticket back when he saw I was too distraught to sleep, and I wanted out of the city as soon as possible. I caught a night flight out and it brought me into SeaTac at about four this morning. I didn’t bother to call Denise, because I’d only gotten her answering phone last night and thought she was probably visiting her mother.
“Well, she wasn’t. She was in bed with my business partner.”
Whitney suppressed a smile. “So they were upset at your arrival. That’s not surprising.”
“It was more than that. She was out of her mind. She started saying crazy things like ‘You’re dead. You can’t be here.’ Her bedmate was terrified.”
Whitney didn’t try to hide his smile at that juncture. “They were probably both afraid you were going to shoot them.”
Manly shook his head. “They know me better than that. I’ve never fired a gun in my life. Never owned one. And I’m no child. I know these things happen and neither of them would be worth going to prison for. Naturally, I want a divorce, and I have good grounds for it—which is why I’m here now. Get the process started. There is one other thing though.”
“Yes?”
“I immediately closed my account at the bank this morning, and I discovered that Denise had already withdrawn a hundred thousand dollars.”
Whitney couldn’t help but ask, “You keep amounts like that on deposit?”
For the first time since his arrival, Manly smiled. “I always have a lot of cash on hand. Most of my investments are in safe and sane certificates of deposit. When they mature, they go into my savings account until I’ve found satisfactory investment rates in other CD’s.”
Whitney shrugged. “So she was figuring on leaving you, and that was kind of an advance nest egg.”
“I would believe that, except that she left twice that amount behind, and the withdrawals were on two separate days, fifty thousand each. Besides, she took both of the withdrawals in cash. Why would she do that?”
The phone broke in. Whitney excused himself while Manly continued to ponder the strange bank situation. The conversation lasted several minutes, with Whitney sounding incredulous at what he was hearing.
His first words after he hung up were, “Did you say Denise kept saying you were dead?”
Manly broke out of his reverie long enough to nod.
“I think she meant exactly that. That was Howard. He says the police found your wallet, watch and suitcase—on a dead man registered in an expensive hotel under your name.”
Now, Manly looked puzzled.
“He was shot by a professional—a hit man—using a silencer. And the police know the hood who was killed—the guy carrying your ID. He was a none-too-bright, small timer who was certainly not the kind who anyone would waste a professional hit on.”
Comprehension arrived slowly. Manly nodded, thinking aloud. “The two withdrawals were payment—payment for a hit man to kill me.”
“Seems like a lot, but she probably didn’t know enough to bargain. I’d be willing to bet that’s exactly what the money went for.”
“But can we prove it?”
“That would be up to the District Attorney to decide. The circumstantial evidence is pretty overwhelming, what with the bedroom scene you witnessed, along with the fact that you have that enormous life insurance. Double indemnity too, wasn’t it? And she’s going to have a tough time explaining what she did with all the cash she withdrew. Or why she left a lot of money in the bank. It’s pretty obvious she figured you wouldn’t be around to get any of it. But there’ll still be a dilemma for the courts.”
“What’s that?”
“What will they charge her with? She paid to have you killed, but you’re still alive. Hiring a hit man to kill someone—and succeeding—is murder-one in this state and could mean the chair, but she didn’t succeed. At the very least, the State should be able to get a conviction on an attempted murder charge for her paying to have you killed.”
Whitney became thoughtful. “It should be more than that, though. After all, a man is dead because she ordered a hit. In a sense, the bullet missed you and killed an innocent bystander. Of course, he wasn’t all that innocent. Hmm! This could b
e a very interesting case.”
For the first time in their many years of acquaintance, Whitney saw anger in Manly’s face and heard rage in his voice. “Murder or attempted murder, I want you to get in touch with the DA immediately and see to it that she’s put away. And you get me a divorce and make damn sure she doesn’t get a single, solitary cent.”
Whitney didn’t try to call his client back as he headed for the door. He knew Manly needed to simmer down considerably before there would be any point in talking to him and getting down all the necessary details.
He was reaching for the phone to call the District Attorney when the door reopened. It was Manly. He now seemed much calmer as he asked, “Just in case she isn’t convicted, do you know of any way of finding out whom she hired?”
MONEY IN THE BANK
I couldn’t believe the way the bills were piling up. Phone, electricity, rent. I was beginning to feel more and more like the descriptions of down-and-out private eyes who are supposed to show the seamy side of this business. Only there aren’t any guns. I wouldn’t touch the damn things for love nor money.
And I’m not an alcoholic like the gumshoes they keep writing about. Not by any stretch of the imagination. When I have the money to splurge, I’d rather spend it on some gourmet eating to make up for all the fast food I usually have to settle for. But, lately, it seems like I’m never more than one step ahead of the creditors, and scratching even to buy Big Macs.
The whole private-eye business is really pretty dull, but as long as there’s business, then it’s easy enough to put up with the dullness. I never did mind staking out errant spouses, which is mostly what my business consisted of. Getting paid by the hour for sitting in my car, listening to the stack of New Orleans jazz CD’s I accumulated during more affluent days, compares very favorably with coal mining. Sure as hell, no one can really call it hard work.
Once in a while I did step over the line into something shady, but never very far over the line, and I’d always been careful. After all, a private investigator’s license is a meal ticket. Maybe not much of a meal ticket, but it beats the hell out of peddling encyclopedias door to door.
And while I’m sitting there wondering how I’m going to reduce down the pile of bills to something manageable, Mary’s voice comes over the intercom. “A Mr. Sylvester Toomy to see you, Mr. Banks.”
I froze. Sylvester Toomy was about the last person I ever wanted to meet. I’d been diddling Louise Toomy, and I figured real quick he’d found out what was going on. And though I’d never met him, I was sure he was built like a boxcar and had the temper of a wounded water-buffalo.
It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Louise hadn’t already been wearing thin. I was getting fed up with all her calls and yackety-yak trying to arrange another get-together. In fact, I was even beginning to feel sorry for a husband who had to put up with a wife like Louise, because she was fast becoming a pain in the ass. The souring of the affair made it all the worse having her husband suddenly dropping in on me.
So what does Mary do? She shows him in without even waiting for me to answer her message. Maybe she figured I needed a client to pay her the week’s salary. But, more likely, she’s just dumb and doesn’t know any better. And I was in no position to expect her to be Secretary of the Year, since I was barely paying her minimum wages.
Toomy (Louise told me his name is Sylvester and she calls him “Silly”) is bigger than a boxcar. He’s at least a foot taller than my five-four, with shoulders damn near as broad as he’s tall. I sure can’t picture anyone calling him Silly. I know I never would. If the office had been on the ground floor instead of the sixth, I might have gone right out the window. I was toying with the idea, anyway, when he reached a massive paw across the desk, saying “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Banks.”
Even though he wiped his hand on his pants after the handshake, I’m not sure he’d noticed how mine was dripping wet. I kept on sitting because I didn’t trust my legs to hold me up. Then my first feeling of relief, when I realized he wasn’t going to strangle me right off, changed to a bleak awareness of the irony of the situation. I was sure he suspected his wife of playing around, which I figured was what he’d come to see me about. I had a tough time envisioning how I was going to go about catching myself in the act, especially since any remote idea I might have had of repeating it was now gone forever.
But it turned out Toomy wasn’t soliciting my services for wife surveillance. In fact, it was something about as far removed from marital infidelity as you can get. It was more in the line of business-partner infidelity.
“I know the son of a bitch is stealing me blind.”
My blood pressure was gradually returning from a super high to my standard high, as I listened to his mostly incoherent ramblings. Adopting my best professional manner, which involved a series of penetrating questions, I finally got the story reasonably straight in my mind.
Toomy was the working manager of Lowe Enterprises, a construction company—something I already knew from pillow talk with Louise—and Jed Lowe was his partner. I’d met old Jed a couple of times. Not socially, since he wasn’t in my league, but at Chamber of Commerce meetings and the like, where I was always on the lookout for business. I’d found out long ago how he had the reputation for being a skinflint. Still, I couldn’t quite picture him out-and-out screwing a business partner. But who am I to decide such things?
Actually, I found out later Jed was what you might call the senior partner. Real senior! Not only was he eighty or so years old, but he also owned eighty-percent of the company. In fact, buying into companies was pretty much Jed’s specialty, and he owned a whole bunch of local businesses run by junior partners. With the kind of booming economy we’ve been having for the last few years, about everything besides private investigating has been showing big profits. All of which made me wonder why Jed would be bothering with penny-ante book juggling when he was probably worth a fortune. But it really wasn’t my place to wonder.
Toomy filled me in on what was happening—in no uncertain terms and mostly incoherently. He said his accountant and Old Jed were cooking the books and showing a hell of a lot less profit than what was really being produced, leaving him on the short end. He wanted me to “pin the thieving bastards to the wall.”
Somehow I managed to calm him down enough to get a thumbnail description of what he thought was going on. “I know business has been improving over the last five years,” he insisted. “I’ve been working my tail off all that time, and working one hell of a lot more now than I was five years ago. I’ve been out hustling up contracts, and we’ve got twice the number the company had when I first went into the business with that old fart. I keep going over the books, and it just looks like we’re spending more and taking in less than we ever did before. You know, it just doesn’t make sense, but I can’t figure out what’s going on. That’s why I want you to check into things. I want you to find out how those two piss-ants are pissing on me.”
Talk about the blind leading the blind! For someone whose expertise consists of copying motel registers and finding people in the wrong beds, company finances might just as well be readings off a brain scan. I’m sure a financial ledger must have frightened my mother when she was carrying me, because I never got much beyond addition and subtraction. I could usually bluff my way through multiplication back in my school days, but long division just left me with a mushy feeling in my head and a pain in my stomach.
On the other hand, I didn’t have to know much more than addition to realize those bills on my desk needed a lot of subtraction. I accepted the job, especially when I saw the roll of cash my two-hundred-dollar retainer came off of. I was sure I’d be able to work my way through that wad somehow. Without telling Toomy, I decided if worse came to worst I’d hire an accountant to look over the books. Maybe I could find one cheap, and charge it up to expenses. Anyway, Toomy was pleased to have me accept. He grinned like a Smiley Face (I could see now, why his wife called him ‘Silly’), and he sig
ned the agreement with a big, child-like scrawl.
Once the agreement and money were safely in my desk, we went over the scenario. The first thing I was going to do was to drop by the company to inspect the books—what a laugh!—and to interview his accountant. My cover would be a loan officer checking out the company before providing a big chunk of money for some spec houses. That was even more of a laugh.
So, wearing my best suit—since I own only two, maybe I should say my better suit—I showed up the same afternoon at Lowe Enterprises. I’d told Toomy I would give his case immediate and special attention—not mentioning, of course, how his was the only case I had. And, right from the moment I stepped into the company office, it looked like a very good case indeed.
Lita Summers turned out to be as succulent as a platter of lobster tails and drawn butter. Long blonde hair, big blue eyes, and with a nice set of teeth showing to perfection when she smiled. A bit on the plump side, maybe. Built for comfort and not for speed, but then I’ve always been strong on being comfortable. I wondered if maybe old Jed wasn’t sampling the product rather than pocketing any cash. I know I would’ve probably done both, or at least tried to do both.
Lita wasn’t only a looker. She knew accounting. At least she gave me that impression. Within two minutes, my head was swimming with assets and liabilities and accounts receivable and accrual balances and more numbers than I’d run into since high school math—which I never passed, of course. It didn’t take more than a half hour of fancy finance and a dull headache to convince me how none of this would get me anywhere, so I desperately tried another approach, asking this juicy morsel if she’d like to talk things over at dinner that evening. It really surprised me when she accepted right off.
I’ve done pretty well with the ladies in my time, but I’ve had my share of turndowns, too. So I was prepared for a ‘thanks but no thanks’, which explains why I was so surprised when I hardly had to try. Not only that, but she was even an inch shorter than me. It looked like a great evening ahead, especially since I was for sure going to charge it all up to Toomy.
Mayhem, Mystery and Murder Page 24
