Trust

by George V. Higgins

  “I think I’d better sleep on this tonight too,” Simmons said.

  “I’d recommend that,” Roth said. “I’d put that trace on, too.”

  16

  Shortly after 10:30 in the morning of the last Wednesday in November, Earl Beale used a telephone booth outside the train station in Gloucester to call Allen Simmons on his private line at his offices in Boston. Earl had awakened in his bed at the Harbor Cove Motel an hour before to a double dose of audible bad news; rain thrummed steadily on the metal casing of the window-unit air conditioner and blood pounded in his head through vessels that had tightly constricted as he slept and his body burned up the booze he’d had the night before. At first he had trouble remembering whether he had spent the night alone, and was about to search for his wallet. Then he recalled that the spike-heeled woman from the dim pink neon barroom, shockingly late-fortied in the unforgiving glare of the sodium streetlamps, had passed out still leaning on his arm six blocks away. Gradually he remembered easing her down slowly, allowing her to fold herself into a fetus crouching on the soapstone step before a doorway, and that led him to the explanation for the abrasions on his right hand—he had used it to fend off the brick-walled buildings that encroached on his unsteady walk back to the motel.

  Getting those things sorted out he had recognized that no coffee ever made would supply what he needed. He had pulled on his clothes and raincoat and gone out into the rain, finding a bar where fishermen whose teeth were missing lamented through gray stubble and accents from ports near Lisbon the North Atlantic weather, engine trouble, absent fish, cranky Coast Guardsmen, and torn nets, they drank PM rye whiskey with beer chasers for their lunches during breakfast and commuting hours for people who worked on land, and they showed tolerant contempt for the shiftless drunk he was. He drank three shots of Mr. Boston rum and put the fire out with glasses of ginger ale.

  “Mister Simmons, all right?” he said, when the secretary answered, the sound of his own voice reminding him of how the dust had felt on his fingers when he’d searched under Penny’s bed: furry and threatening. She said, “Just a moment, please—I’ll see if he’s come in,” and put his call on hold.

  In the office, Allen Simmons sat at his desk. Sidney Roth sat on the couch, a yellow pad before him, his head bowed down by earphones wired into a double phone jack on the wall behind the couch. Next to him a man in a brown suit and tie perched up close to a black metal console, staring at its seven dials; it was wired into the wall jack. He had a spiral notepad and a red felt-tip pen. Two men in dark gray uniforms, also wearing earphones, pushed test-panel buttons on a Uher reel-to-reel recorder wired into the speakerphone next to Simmon’s left hand. One of them had a notepad and a pencil in his hand. He nodded to Simmons, who switched on the speakerphone. “Simmons speaking,” he said.

  The echo effect of the room on the receiver’s microphone caused the speaker to reverberate, making Roth and the two guards wince. The phone lines up to Gloucester and the tinny hangover still resonating dully between Earl’s eardrums amplified reverberations. “Jesus,” Earl yelled into the handset while the rain ran down the booth, “turn that goddamned gadget off and use a goddamn honest phone. I don’t need your showing off.”

  “Sorry,” Simmons said, making the sound waves crash again. He picked up the handset, and the speakerphone shut off. “Here I am again.” Roth and the two guards relaxed.

  “You said I should call you back,” Earl said. “Okay, I’m calling. Let’s hear it. What you got to say?”

  “Me?” Simmons said. “I don’t have anything to say. I said what I had to say yesterday.” The man at the console leaned forward intently and began making notes, tapping each of the seven dials in order, left to right. When he reached the last one he stood up from the couch and took his notepad from the office, walking silently, opening and shutting the door without making any noise.

  “You son of a bitch,” Earl said. “I know what you’re tryin’, do, and it’s not gonna work. I won’t be on this long enough. So either you either talk to me now, or else I hang up.”

  The man in the brown suit took the handset from Simmons’s secretary and spoke into it “Herbie,” he said, “take this down.” He read seven digits off. “My guess is that’s in Gloucester,” he said. “Could be Marblehead. Wife’s family used to have a summer house up that neck of the woods. Think I remember that exchange.” He paused. “Yeah, hanging on.”

  In Simmons’s office, Simmons said into the phone, “Earl, you can hang up anytime you want. The way I left it with you last night was that you said you had something to think over. You accept my offer of twenty-five thousand dollars, today, the way I outlined it, and I get all the pictures, and all the negatives. Or, you turn it down. Take it and you get it. Turn it down, do whatever you like. This is our last conversation.’

  “You fucking bastard,” Earl said. “You must think I’m fucking stupid. You give fucking Penny fifteen thousand fucking dollars for a fucking long weekend, and that’s it, it’s over with, like you just bought a dinner. And then you got the fucking nerve to tell me, knowing what I’ve got, and what I can do to you, you got the fucking goddamned nerve to offer me just ten lousy fucking more? I could wreck your fucking life. I oughta blow your fucking car up. I could do that, you know. Fucking asshole big shot—who the fuck you think you are?”

  Simmons did not say anything. “Hey,” Earl said, “answer me, you fuck. I asked you who the fuck you think you are, you fuck.”

  “Earl,” Simmons said, “any horse that had you for his ass’d break his leg, so someone’d shoot him fast. You know what Penny says about you? Do you know what she thinks? I asked her once about you, just, oh, who the hell you were This was when you first showed up. I was curious. And she said: ‘Oh, Earl’s kind of fun. Fun to have around. But there are times he’s a champ, a real champion asshole. Someday’s he’s gonna bore me, and I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get a whole big barrel of Preparation H, and rub it on, all over him, and he’ll shrink and disappear.’ That is what she said.”

  “You’re a fucking liar,” Earl said. “Penny did not say that.”

  The man in the brown suit opned the door from the outer office and entered silently. He went to the couch and displayed his notepad to Roth. It read: “Gloucester number. Opposite train station. Friends on force there on their way. Will folo and ID.” Roth read and nodded. The man in the brown suit mouthed, “That okay? No arrest?” Roth nodded. He wrote on his notepad: “Just follow—no arrest.” The man in the brown suit left the room as he had come.

  “Okay,” Simmons said, “have it your way, then. But now we both agree on at least one way Penny talks, because you just told me what she told you that I gave her for last weekend. And I tell you: I did not.”

  “You’re a fucking liar,” Earl said. “You’re fucking lying to me. She left a fucking note for me. Fifteen thousand fucking dollars. That’s the only way she went, the only way you made her go. You gave her five more thousand’n you usually do. Regular ten plus five more. That was why she went.”

  “I did not,” Simmons said. “I have never given Penny ten thousand dollars at one time, any time she went with me. I haven’t given her a dime, until just this past weekend. Not once, Earl, not until then, did a dollar pass between us. From my hand to hers. And that is the truth, my friend. You can count on that. So, if she told you otherwise, otherwise than that, well, I guess she lied to you. Didn’t you see what she got?”

  “Whadda you mean, you bastard?” Earl said. “I know she got that money. The time you went Barbados there, the times you went San Juan? Las Vegas, all those fucking trips? She got ten big ones every time, and five on top for this one.”

  “Earl,” Simmons said, “believe me, it didn’t happen. Do you seriously think I could disguise large cash payments of that size, without my wife finding out? Nonsense. Penny was on the payroll here. She was a consultant. She got five thousand bucks a month, whether I called or not. Winter, summer, spring, and fall, sixt
y grand a year. To be at my beck and call. I did tip her the five extra, because it was Thanksgiving and she told me you had plans. ‘An early Christmas bonus’: that was what I said to her. I appreciated her loyalty, her loyalty to me. And to you, too, if you’ll believe that. She’s a very loyal girl.”

  “Bastard,” Earl said. “Bastard. You’re just making all this up. I’m gonna kill you, doing this. Fucking goddamned bastard. You mean Penny always had money, and she got more every month? Just like she had a job or something? She wasn’t flat broke like she told me, summertimes and stuff? It was like she had a job?”

  “It wasn’t like she had a job, Earl,” Simmons said through a large smile. “She did have a job. It wasn’t maybe one you’d look for in the newspaper, or through an agency, but it was still an honest job. Salary for service. Same as any other job. You know what we called it, Earl? On the corporation books? ‘Physical therapy’, okay? For the tense executive. We have several Pennies. Some for us and some for clients. Yours just happened to be mine. And selected friends of mine, but I screened them carefully.”

  “You son of a bitches,” Earl said. “The fucking pair of you. She’s got this job, she doesn’t tell me, she says she’s got no money. And all the time, and all the time, she’s getting fucking money every goddamned fucking month.”

  “She was, Earl,” Simmons said. “Up till now she was. She, when I hired her, well, I was pretty damned specific. I didn’t say to her: ‘And, oh, I’d like my picture taken. A few keepsakes to show my wife. Think you could arrange that, too? Have someone just show up and do it, while you’re entertaining me?’ That wasn’t in the job description, those extra services. I wasn’t planning a wedding here. She says now of course that she didn’t know. Had no idea what you were doing, and I would expect no less from her—she is such a loyal girl. But, you see, I don’t believe her. She’s just too damned loyal, to too many men at once. And when those loyalties get crossed, well, she doesn’t tell the truth.”

  “Bullshit,” Earl said, “fucking bullshit. Fucking goddamned bullshit. All your fucking fancy phone is good for’s talking bullshit. Think you’re a big fucking deal. Your kind aren’t worth shit.”

  “So, right after you called me,” Summons said, “I fired her. She used to have that job, okay? Had it until this week. But now she doesn’t, anymore. That’s why the twenty-five. If you take it, you can tell her, it’s her severance pay. If you don’t, then you can tell her, well, you turned it down.’

  “Asshole,” Earl said, “you asshole. I am gonna ruin you.”

  “Right, Earl, right,” Simmons said, as the man in the brown suit returned. He took his notepad to the couch and showed a page to Roth. It read: “We have a man in place. Will stay till our men on way get there. In contact by radio.” Roth nodded. He lifted his yellow pad and semaphored to Simmons. When Simmons looked up, Roth mimed cutting his own throat. Simmons nodded. “Now look, Earl, I’ve got to go. I mean, I really have to. And your vocabulary, well, it seems limited. So what is it? Yes or no. You want the cash or not?”

  “Go fuck yourself, you asshole,” Earl said. He slammed the handset into the cradle and stood trembling in the phone booth, watching the rain slide down the glass. By the time he finished collecting his gear at the motel and stowing it in the car, two of Simmons’ security men, both dressed in plainclothes, had a description of the Pontiac Le Mans Earl had parked outside the room. One of them radioed the data back to the Boston office. “Green metallic, ‘sixty-seven, boss,” he said. “Massachusetts K for kilo seven-sixer, three, three, three. And we might speed things up a little—there’s a Hertz sticker, the back bumper. Might as well go right to them. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.”

  In the early afternoon the secretary to the northeast regional sales manager of Kimberly Hospital/Surgical Suppliers in White Plains, New York, responding to a visit from a private investigator, confirmed that the company employed Edmund R. Cornell of Suffern, New York, as an institutional sales specialist. “I know he’s all right,” she said. “He was yesterday, at least, because he was here all day. And I saw him in the parking lot, too, now I think of it. Just before he headed out for Wilmington this morning. He should be back tomorrow.” She said he had seemed to be in good spirits, “nothing bothering him except the normal bills and stuff,” but declined to divulge further information without a written statement of the nature of the investigation and approval from her superiors. “Company policy.”

  The private detective was understanding and polite. “Miss,” he said, “I know that. But that’s not why I’m here. If I wanted to I couldn’t tell you what the deuce this is about. All I know is that our firm’s affiliated with an outfit that handles security, New England. Mostly Boston, all right? We refer back and forth. And one of their clients has got information that someone by the name of Edmund R. Cornell rented a car up there some time ago, and there’s another guy driving it that he doesn’t think, well, he don’t know, but he thinks he knows this other guy, and his name isn’t Edmund Cornell. So that’s what he, they, asked me to find out. If you got such a guy, and he works here, and the bills rental cars to this company. And you have told me those things, so now I’ve done my job and I thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said primly.

  “Now maybe,” the detective said, “I can return a favor. If your Mister Cornell does rent cars, and he rented this one up in Boston back the day before Thanksgiving, well then, he didn’t give it back, all right? So if he’s back, and the car isn’t, and Hertz says if it’s been stolen, well, they sure don’t know about it, maybe if those cars that Mister Cornell rents get billed back here to you, your boss might appreciate it if you let him know all this. Because right now you’re telling me that Mister Cornell was in here today, but my people up in Boston there are saying that the car that’s rented out to him was driving up around there then, when you say he was in here. Right in your parking lot. Somebody’s gonna have to pay for that car—that would be my guess. Mister Hertz is nice people, but when someone keeps one of his cars, he expects to get his money. And he’ll most likely come here first.”

  17

  Late in the afternoon of the last Thursday in January, 1968, Penny Slate used the Newbury Street entrance of the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and swept through the lobby into the bar facing Arlington Street, her trotteur mink coat open on her white turtleneck sweater and black pants, her black leather satchel bag swinging from its shoulder strap. She carried a bag logoed “Bonwit Teller,” and when the waiter eyed her narrowly as she looked for a table at the window, she recognized him from the old days—his and hers as well—in the bar at the Holiday Inn. She disrupted his efforts to place her by draping the coat open as she sat down, displaying the initials and the Saks label, and saying, “I’m expecting my husband. A dark Dubonnet with a twist on the rocks, please.” The waiter frowned and went away, distracted but not giving up.

  Allen Simmons arrived at 4:45, rejecting the maître d’s suggestion that he check his double-breasted camelhair overcoat before entering the bar. “I’m meeting a lady,” he said. “If she isn’t here then I’ve got the wrong place. Or else the wrong lady. So just let me look around, won’t be a minute,” and he marched down to the window tables.

  He stood over the empty chair opposite her and gazed down. She smiled and opened the palm of her right hand at the chair. “I assume,” he said, “that means you’ve got them.”

  She inclined her head slightly to the right and looked at him with merry eyes. “So much of life is trust, Allen,” she said. “I’m assuming you have something, too.”

  He pulled the chair out. Then he removed his overcoat and folded it once, dropping it on the window ledge. The maître d’ came swiftly down the two steps from his station at the desk and pounced on it. “I’ll just have a busboy take this to the checkroom, sir,” he said, “and bring the check to you.” Simmons, sitting down, raised an eyebrow at his departing back, clasped his hands at his waist, and smiled at Penny. “When I was a litt
le boy,” he said, “I hated it when teachers picked me to go to the blackboard. I always got beaten up on the playground after school because I could do the problems. They knew it, and they approved of me getting beaten up, so they did it more. I couldn’t fire the teachers, and it never occurred to me to slash their tires or something. So I learned how to make the chalk screech, and after that they stopped calling on me. Parts of me never grew up.”

  “Good training for business,” she said.

  “Speaking of which,” he said, as the waiter delivered her Dubonnet. The waiter studied her again, and she dismissed him with raised eyebrows. The busboy delivered a claim check for Simmons’s coat.

  “I have it right here,” she said. She patted the small Bonwit’s bag.

  Simmons smiled. To the waiter he said, “Pernod and water, I think, please.” He returned his gaze to meet hers. He patted the left breast of his suit coat. “As good as your word,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s nothing, really. You know what a fan I’ve always been of early-morning drives in the winter to New Hampshire. So very stimulating. Up while it’s still dark and off into the country for some lovely conversation at a quiet little jail with a lovely bunch of guys. It’s really very nice.”

  “But you didn’t encounter any problems,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, “if you mean: After I saw the problem and tried to deal with it, and didn’t, and then figured out a way to deal with it and solve it, that I didn’t have a problem—right, I didn’t have a problem. But before: ‘I didn’t have a problem’? Well, you could say I had a problem.”