by Parnell Hall
Tracy Garvin was in a foul mood as she walked to the post office. Men. Why did Steve Winslow have to dismiss David Castleton as just a horny young man? Maybe he was, but even so. Wasn’t the fact that the grandson of the man Steve had successfully sued was interested in the client who had sued him interesting? Shouldn’t it be a top priority? As if there were any other priorities. Not that there was anything else going on in the office at the moment.
Besides, as far as Tracy was concerned, there was something about David Castleton that just didn’t quite ring true. All right, maybe it was just sex. Maybe the guy did have the hots for her. Maybe he was looking for a one-night stand and was trying to give the impression he had more honorable intentions, and that’s why he seemed slightly off.
Still maybe not.
Yeah, Tracy had to admit, maybe she did have a lot of romantic notions. Maybe she was influenced a lot by the murder mysteries she read. But hell, what was wrong with that? As far as she was concerned, the Kelly Blaine case was interesting, and she couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
When Tracy got back to the office, Steve was in his inner office with the door closed. Fine. No need to report in. There was, as usual, no work to be done. She’d try Kelly Blaine again, then go back to her book. Tracy picked up the phone, punched in the number.
Once again, there was no answer.
Five rings. Six rings. Give it ten again, and then hang up.
On the seventh ring the phone was picked up.
It was a woman.
Speaking Spanish.
8.
STEVE WINSLOW LOOKED UP FROM his desk when Tracy Garvin came in the door.
“Yeah, Tracy?” he said.
“I got an answer at Kelly Blaine’s.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. An Hispanic woman. She spoke no English, and I speak no Spanish, but we still managed to communicate. One thing for sure—the name Kelly Blaine means nothing to her.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Maybe you got the number wrong.”
Tracy gave him a look.
Steve shrugged. “I’m sorry, but it happens.”
“I didn’t get the number wrong.”
“Well, maybe she gave it to you wrong.”
“Exactly,” Tracy said. “And if she did, that’s interesting.”
Steve smiled. “Tracy, everything doesn’t have to be a mystery. You gotta remember, the girl was really hassled. She’d just had a traumatic experience. It wouldn’t be that unusual if she just happened to juggle a couple of numbers.”
“Come on. You don’t know your own phone number?”
“Maybe it’s the area code.”
“What?”
“Maybe she’s got a seven-one-eight number but she didn’t give you the area code. So you’re dialing a two-one-two number and of course it’s wrong.”
Tracy shook her head. “No. Her address is Manhattan.”
“Where is it?”
“East Seventy-seventh Street. If that’s where she lives,” she added.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, the phone number’s wrong, what if the address is too?”
Steve smiled. “I think you’re really stretching.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough. You mail the letter?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think we should wait for it.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Well, it’s just across town. Why don’t I run out there?”
“Now?”
“Hey, like we got anything else going on here?”
Steve sighed. “No, we certainly don’t. All right, look, I’ll take a run over there.”
“I don’t mind doing it.”
“I know. But if she’s there, I should be the one to talk to her.”
Tracy bit her lip. “Oh.”
Steve grinned. “All right, you win. As you say, there’s nothing going on anyway. Put the answering machine on and close up the office. We’ll run over on the way home.”
They went out and hailed a cab on Broadway. Tracy started to give the cabbie the address, but Steve interrupted, saying, “Seventy-seventh and Third.” When he did, she grinned and he felt sheepish. And annoyed. From past experience, when on a case Steve was loathe to give a cabbie the exact address he was going to, in case someone wanted to trace his movements later. He’d done that now out of force of habit, though there was no need to, just calling on Kelly Blaine. Tracy Garvin’s grin told the story. As far as she was concerned, his fudging the address certified that however much he might protest to the contrary, he was treating the affair as a mystery and using all due caution.
Which pissed him off. As far as he was concerned, the Kelly Blaine affair was not a mystery. Just a mundane management/labor dispute, which never would have interested him at all if the woman hadn’t been naked. So here he was, seduced by sex, doing a lot of things he normally wouldn’t be doing.
Though really, of course, Steve’s feelings were just like Tracy’s. He wanted this to be a mystery. Anything to get out of the boring, deadly office routine. The problem was, unlike Tracy, he was realistic enough to know that it wasn’t. In all likelihood, Kelly Blaine would be home, receive the news that Milton Castleton’s grandson wanted to date her with predictably mixed emotions and be left trying to decide whether or not she wanted to do it. Which was entirely up to her, was none of Steve’s damn business and would put an end to this affair for once and for all.
They pulled up at Third Avenue and 77th. Steve paid the driver, and he and Tracy got out.
“What’s the number again?” Steve asked.
“Two-twenty-one.”
“Okay. That’s the uptown side of the street. Let’s go.”
“Bet you dinner she’s not there.”
Steve shook his head. “Bad bet. This time of the day, she’s probably out.”
“Okay. Bet you dinner she doesn’t live there.”
“On your salary?”
“I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that.”
“You picked a bad time. Aside from Kelly Blaine, business isn’t brisk.”
“No shit. I take it you’re ducking the bet?”
“I didn’t say that. You wanna bet, you’re on.”
“Deal.”
They walked up the block.
“Okay,” Steve said. “There’s two-eleven. Two-fifteen. Two-seventeen. It’s gotta be that building over there.”
It wasn’t. That building over there was 219.
Two-twenty-one was a parking lot.
9.
MARK TAYLOR RAN HIS HAND through his curly red hair. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” Steve said. “The girl gave us a phony address and phone number.”
“That I understand. What I don’t understand is, what’s it got to do with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The case is closed. You got a settlement. If she gave you the wrong address, what’s the big deal?”
“I don’t like to be played for a sucker.”
Taylor shrugged. “Well, there’s suckers and there’s suckers. You made sixteen grand on the deal. That’s not my definition of a sucker. A sucker is a guy who winds up out sixteen grand on the deal.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Maybe not for you. You’ve got Sheila Benton’s annual retainer to fall back on. You don’t have to sweat a rent increase—you just pass it along. Me, I’ve got to hustle for clients and foot my own bills. Lot of clients are deadbeats who disappear without paying— that’s a problem. A client who drops a hunk of change on me and then disappears is not a problem.”
“How about a client who pays you to do something illegal?”
“Hey, I don’t take that kind of work.”
“Neither do I. And that’s the problem.” Steve leaned back in his desk chair and ran his hand over his head. “This whole thing
stinks from the word go. I mean, Jesus Christ, the girl comes in here and tells me a story about this old lecher who hired her to type naked. In the first place, she’s not the type of girl to do that.”
He shot a look at Tracy, who was sitting in, taking notes. She looked about to jump in. Steve held up his hand. “And let’s not go off on a tangent about who is the type of girl to do that. The point is, she wasn’t. But apparently she did. She’s up here in my office in an old overcoat with nothing underneath it telling a fantastic story that’s so bizarre it really shouldn’t be true.
“But it is. I go and check it out and everything’s exactly as she said. Plus, while Castleton and Danby deny the specific allegations, no one denies the fact that she was typing naked. But, rather than contesting her charges in any serious way, Castleton gives me fifty thousand dollars to sweep it under the rug. Case closed.
“Fine so far. Then the grandson shows up trying to reach the girl, it turns out the girl’s a phony, and what the hell’s been going on?”
“You got your money, what difference does it make?”
“Like I said before, I don’t want to be played for a sucker, and I don’t want to do anything illegal.”
“What’s illegal about it?”
“Come on, Mark. It’s a perfect scam. The whole thing reeks of it. I mean, you strip away all of the trappings and what you have here is your plain and simple badger game. An attractive young woman places a wealthy man in a compromising position and then demands money. It’s blackmail, plain and simple.”
Taylor frowned. “Well, when you put it that way.”
“How else can I put it? If the girl was legit, it’s one thing. The minute she’s bogus, what else can you think.”
“The way I understand it, Castleton set up the situation. He advertised for secretaries. He paid them to take their clothes off.”
“Right. And this woman heard about it and said, ‘Wow, here’s a way to make a hunk of change.’”
“But you acted in good faith.”
“Tell it to the Bar Association.”
“Well, if Castleton paid fifty grand to keep this quiet, he’s not going to make a stink now.”
“Great, Mark,” Steve said irritably. “Now you’re suggesting I blackmail him to keep quiet.”
Taylor rubbed his head. “Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t mind him, Mark,” Tracy said. “He’s just in a bad mood today.”
“Right,” Taylor said. “So that’s what you think now? That it was just a badger game?”
Steve sighed. “I would, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“This is where the whole thing doesn’t make sense, and this is why I’m going crazy, and this is why I’m really in a bad mood today.”
“What’s that,” Taylor repeated.
“She didn’t get the money.”
“What?”
“The cash. The loot. The thirty-three grand. She didn’t get it. Castleton made the settlement out to me. I gave her a check for her share. Tracy called the bank this morning. That check hasn’t gone through.”
“So? That’s not unusual,” Taylor said. “If she deposited it at her bank, it could take five business days to clear.”
“But it won’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the address is phony, the phone number’s phony, you can bet the name Kelly Blaine’s phony, too. That’s almost a sure thing, because when I picked up her purse there was no wallet in it, just a change purse. You can see why. She didn’t want anyone to know who she was, and she didn’t have any driver’s license, credit card, what-have-you, in the name Kelly Blaine. And if Kelly Blaine’s an alias and she’s got no I.D. for it, there’s no way in hell she can cash that check.”
Taylor frowned. “That’s right.”
Steve shrugged. “So there you are. That’s what’s driving me crazy. Here’s a perfectly straightforward, simple scam that went off without a hitch except for one thing. The person who pulled it off didn’t get any money. I, on the other hand, am sitting on the whole fucking fifty grand.”
Taylor chuckled. “An embarrassment of riches. Well, that’s a new one. Okay, I get the picture. The only thing I don’t understand is, what do you want me to do about it?”
“I want you to have Kelly Blaine in my office by four o’clock this afternoon.”
Mark Taylor stared at him. “What?”
Steve grinned. “Just kidding. You can’t do that. That’s the problem. There’s absolutely nothing to go on. So forget finding the girl. I’ve had Tracy type up her description just in case your men should happen to bump into her. But that’s a slim chance at best. Yeah, run down the name Kelly Blaine, but I know you’re gonna come up empty. No, the only lead right now is Castleton. I wanna know how he got in this mess, and why he paid off so easily. Start to work on him. Also David Castleton—that’s the grandson. And Stanley Castleton—that’s the son, now running the business. Though, from what the grandson told me, he’s a figurehead and granddad is still the one pulling the strings.
“Also Phil Danby—that’s Castleton’s right-hand man. Milton Castleton, I mean. Go to work on him too.”
“You want these guys followed?”
“That isn’t necessary. Basically, I just want information. How you get it is up to you. Consider you got a free hand.”
“That’s pretty broad. What, specifically, do you want?”
“I want the dope on these guys. I want the dope on Castleton Industries. Look for anything that might give me a lead to my client. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Worse than that, ’cause the needle I’m looking for may not exist. Right now, I just want data. Somewhere in it maybe I’ll find a clue as to why this girl did what she did.
“One other thing. Maybe I’ll get a lead as to someone who might have been running her.”
“Running her?”
“Yeah. Suppose it’s a badger game like I said, but the girl isn’t the principal, she’s only a pawn in the game. Someone programmed her to set Castleton up.”
Taylor frowned. “Set him up for what? A settlement check he can’t cash?”
“That may not have been the idea, Mark. The idea may have been to put Castleton in an embarrassing position in order to gain some leverage. I may actually have scotched that plan by rushing in and getting an immediate settlement.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, either. The girl came to you. She sent you to Castleton. She agreed to the settlement. In fact, from what you said, she would have settled for less. If settling would have scotched the deal, why would she agree to it?”
“I don’t know, Mark. That’s the problem. The whole thing makes no sense at all. That’s why I need the information. First off, I’d like to find my client—which is probably next to impossible. Barring that, I want all the information I can get.”
“This is getting to be a bad habit with you,” Taylor said.
“What’s that?”
“Not knowing who your client is. Remember the Bradshaw case?”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“In that case I never met my client. All I had was an anonymous letter. Here, I’ve sat with my client, talked with her face to face, and I still don’t know who she is.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do. You got that description?”
Tracy passed over a sheet of paper. “Right here.”
Taylor took it, read the description, whistled. “Some plum assignment. My men will be falling all over themselves to be the first one to find her.” He cocked his head, grinned. “This is not a bad description, Tracy, but don’t you think ‘generously endowed’ is a trifle euphemistic?”
Tracy gave him a look. “You expect me to put ‘big tits’ in a memo?”
Taylor raised his eyebrows and fluttered his fingers in front of his mouth as if he had a cigar. “You can put ’em anywhere you like.”
Steve groaned. “Jesus Christ.”
“My Groucho that bad?” Taylor said.
“Frankly, yes. But not as bad as this damn case.” Steve shook his head. “And I’ve got a feeling it’s only gonna get worse.”
10.
MARK TAYLOR WAS ON THE PHONE when Steve Winslow and Tracy Garvin walked into his office late that afternoon. He grunted acknowledgment, motioned them to sit down and kept on talking. The conversation was unilluminating as far as they were concerned. It consisted of Taylor grunting, “Uh huh,” and scribbling notes on a pad. Finally he hung up.
“Okay. Thanks for coming up,” Taylor said. “I can’t leave here ’cause I got stuff coming in all the time.”
“On my case?” Steve asked.
“Sure. I got eight operatives out now.”
“Eight?”
“Sure. You said I got a free hand, so I’m using it. I got people going over newspaper files, I got people digging into Castleton Industries, I even got an operative primed for personal contact.”
“With whom?”
“I got a girl’s gonna make a play for David Castleton.”
“Oh yeah? They make contact yet?”
Taylor shook his head. “Too early. What time is it, five o’clock? No, she’s in place to pick him up when he leaves work. Which should be any time now.”
The phone rang. Taylor scooped it up, grunted a few times, scribbled a few notes and hung up.
“See,” Taylor said. “It’s been like this all afternoon. Little dribs and drabs. But it adds up to a lot of dope. Not that it’s gonna do you any good. As far as finding your client, I mean. But aside from that you should love it.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, this Castleton’s a character. Milton Castleton, I mean. The girl’s typin’ his memoirs, it’s gotta be one hell of a book.” Taylor flipped the pages of his notebook. “Milton Castleton, self-made man. Naturally. Born in Brooklyn in 1912 of poor but honest immigrants. Father ran a fruit stand. Mother took in wash. Fourth of five children. Never finished high school. Dropped out and joined the army. Got out just in time to get hit by the Depression.”
Taylor shrugged and smiled. “Which is when he came into his own. Wouldn’t you know it. Whole country’s going bust except for Milton Castleton. Sets himself up in business as guess what?”
