Lydia

by Howard Fast

  “No,” I said, “not right now, Lydia. How the devil you worked here eight months and carried it off, I don’t know. Maybe you never spoke much to anyone. That would help. God knows, I’m no expert on the American dialect, but it’s all wrong. The lard on the bread was wrong. The vocabulary is wrong. The accent is more Tidewater Virginia than Texas Coast. Your grammatical errors are not real; they’re constructed. You can’t be facially an idiot and have a brilliant set of motor responses. Barefoot—that’s the hill country, not the coast; and one foot over another—that went out with Girl of the Limberlost. It’s hard enough for anyone to be himself, much less someone else. Take can’t. You pronounce it cayint. I have been in Texas, and I notice things. That one word would blow the thing. A southern accent is not simple. When I was a kid, I hitchhiked through the South. I would match the accents from place to place, just to amuse myself—an endless variety of accents, constructions, local usages—”

  “Just you go, mister,” she said slowly, without excitement, without apparent anger. She was good, tough and hard and well-contained.

  “Just think about it, Lydia. I have a notion that you think cool and well—so think about this. Right now, you can’t fight me, and when you can’t fight something, if you’re a sensible person, you deal with it in some other fashion. I know you’re not what you’re pretending to be, and if I turn that knowledge over to the police, you are in a lot of hot water. So it makes more sense for you to talk about it than to order me out of here—which, mind you, you have every right to do.”

  She thought about it for at least a minute before she rose and picked up the coffee pot. Then she dropped that miserable accent without apology.

  “Do you want more coffee, Mr. Krim?”

  “Please.”

  “Do you really enjoy it warmed over?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She poured a cup for each of us.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.

  I rarely smoke, but I carry a pack. I offered her one and explained that they were stale. “Like coffee, like cigarette,” she said. I lit it for her, and she inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and thought about it some more. Then she took a long sip of her coffee and said:

  “I don’t know whether I like good people, Mr. Krim, and I don’t believe what is called the honest ones. But there are all kinds of people. What kind are you?”

  She was better with her mouth firm and tight. She was not very pretty, but she had a face that you didn’t get tired of looking at.

  “I told you before, as much as I know.”

  “Why aren’t you cynical with me?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “What did you mean before when you said that if you told the police about me, I’d be in a lot of hot water? As far as I know, it’s not a crime to say you come from Texas. It’s not even a crime to use a southern accent as poorly as you say I did—and I must tell you that no one else was aggrieved by it. I might lose my job, but that’s no crime either—is it?”

  “Stealing three hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of necklace just happens to be a crime.”

  “Do you think I stole it?”

  I looked at her for a while, and then I nodded. “Yes, I do. Did you steal it?”

  “If your mind is already made up—”

  “I asked you, Lydia. Do I continue to call you Lydia? Or shall it be Miss Anderson?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Then don’t call me Mr. Krim. My name is Harvey.”

  “You told me before. The difference is that I’m a housemaid and you’re a private detective.”

  “Don’t argue about it. If you don’t want to call me Harvey—don’t. Call me whatever you wish.”

  “All right. Harvey. No, I did not steal the necklace. But you don’t believe me.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Why? Can you prove I stole it?”

  “No.”

  “Intuition, Harvey?”

  “In part—but mostly logic. You have been working for the Sarbines eight months now. During those eight months you must have had countless opportunities to steal the necklace. But you waited until last Sunday night—and why? Because it had to be the perfect crime. Because it had to be an inside job—I think you’re too smart to fool with forced locks or jimmied doors or any of that nonsense. It had to be an inside job with a great many possible suspects, each of them with equal opportunity to lift the diamonds. Lieutenant Rothschild, at the precinct around the corner, said that this is an idiot crime. I don’t agree. I think it’s one of the smartest crimes I ever ran into, and I think you pulled it off because every bit of logic points to you.”

  She leaned back and grinned. She had a nice grin, a small-boy grin, open and satisfied and malicious. She took the dishes off the table. She returned the lard and butter to the refrigerator. Then she grinned again and said:

  “Really, Harvey, you should be ashamed. That’s freshman logic, first-semester logic. You establish your own premise, and then build a set of careful arguments, each relating to your original premise—and of course you prove your premise. And you do it so well. Did you ever think of teaching?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “No. That’s one thing I never thought of.”

  “You should, because you have a talent for it. But you’ll have to give up that clever little structure, because, you see, I never stole the diamonds. You can’t prove I did something that I did not do, can you, Harvey?”

  “It’s been done, but that’s not my line of work. I don’t even want to prove that you did something you did do. I’m not a cop. I’m not interested in you as a criminal. I’m interested in the diamonds and only in the diamonds.”

  “That sounds intriguing—for you to be interested or not interested in me as a criminal. Criminal is a very pompous word, Harvey. I am really not a criminal, and I don’t lie.”

  “Everyone lies, Lydia. You know that. Your job here was a lie.”

  “That’s different. You asked me a question, and I told you that my answer was the truth. That’s the kind of lying I don’t do.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t wash,”

  “You really are convinced that I stole it?”

  “Absolutely convinced.” I studied her thoughtfully as I said that. She was in no way perturbed, not angry, not even annoyed with me, and I asked her why.

  “You put us on a first-name basis, Harvey, so now I am involved. And you have such a need—”

  “For what?”

  “For fifty thousand dollars. What do you think it will do? What do you think it will change?”

  I shrugged. “It will buy whatever I want to buy.”

  “What do you want to buy?”

  “That takes some contemplation.”

  “And it’s much easier to contemplate with the money in the bank, isn’t it, Harvey? And since you’re so sure that I stole the necklace, do you also know where it is?”

  “I could make a good guess that it’s right here in the house.”

  “But the police searched the apartment, Harvey,” she smiled sweetly.

  “I know—”

  “But that’s only a fact. Your premise exists independently of the facts.”

  “Lydia, I’ll make you a proposition. Turn the necklace over to me and I’ll cut you in for half of the fee—twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  She whistled softly.

  “You can do a lot with that kind of money, Lydia.”

  “How do I know you’d keep your word?”

  “How does anyone know? Scout’s honor. I give you my word, I keep it.”

  She considered that, watching me meanwhile out of those dark-blue eyes. She seemed to be weighing me, appraising me, estimating me, and finally she admitted that she was torn between liking me and disliking me.

  “I suppose people react like that to you, Harvey. You have a generous streak. That was a real nice gesture, offering me half the loot. You could have offered me five thousand or ten thousand
—or you could get tough with me and threaten to turn me over to the cops and let them beat it out of me—”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t know—they might do that. I don’t know anything about cops, except what I read. But it wouldn’t help them. I didn’t steal the diamonds and I don’t know where they are, and that’s it. And I don’t really care whether you believe me or not.”

  “All right, we’ll do it the hard way. But my offer still stands—remember that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of forgetting it, Harvey, and—”

  At that moment, the service bell rang three times. Lydia started from her chair, explaining to me that she had to answer it.

  “No you don’t!” I said sharply. “That’s the doorman, signaling me that one of the Sarbines has just come into the house. Probably the wife. Now listen to me—I’m going to sit down in the living room. When you let her in, tell her I came a few minutes ago and that I’ve been sitting in there and waiting to talk to her. Nothing about my questioning you—understand?”

  “Right, Harvey. Only you puzzle me. Which side am I on?”

  “Both, right now. Do as I say.”

  I went into the living room, twenty by thirty-five feet of white woodwork, blue walls and gold trim, broken up with French furniture and status paintings. There was a large Braque and a good Picasso and a Miró, among others. It didn’t mean anything. You can hang paintings without owning them and you can hang paintings that you have already given away as tax deductions. There are people who make money by purchasing expensive paintings and then making posthumous gifts of them to museums and institutions, one of many tax dodges. In any case, we didn’t carry policies on any of this stuff. I made a mental note to try to find out who did carry such policies.

  The doorbell rang, and Lydia answered it. I heard Mrs. Sarbine’s voice, hard-edged and fretful, “Damn it, Lydia, I told you I don’t want you walking around this house barefoot. If you want to go on working here, you’ll just have to get out of that hillbilly routine.”

  In her outrageous, whining accent, Lydia explained that she had been alone in the house, not expecting anyone, but that now there was some man from the insurance company sitting inside.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t rightly know, Mrs. Sarbine. He say—”

  Mrs. Sarbine must have pushed past her impatiently, and a moment later she entered the living room, carrying a paper box from Bergdorf Goodman’s and another from The Tailored Woman. She set them down on an ivory-colored piano, gold-trimmed, and smiled at me and apologized for Lydia’s stupidity.

  “I really don’t know why I keep her. But you know what help is these days, Mr.—?”

  “Krim—Harvey Krim,” and I gave her my credentials to look at. Apparently she could read, but she didn’t bother to. She was a tall, good-looking blonde, big-boned, well-groomed, the kind of a woman a man looks at on the street, regardless of the man’s age or condition. She was an ownership type, who disdained to conceal her price. It took money to possess her, just as it takes money to own a Bentley or a diamond necklace. It would never occur to anyone that the process of mentation or contemplation could also be a part of her existence. She was measured by size, quality and covering.

  “You’re from the insurance company,” she said, smiling graciously and returning my credential unread.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Sarbine.”

  “Well, I think you should know that we haven’t received the check yet.”

  “I do know that, Mrs. Sarbine. It’s only three business days since the robbery, and it generally takes a week to ten days to process these things.”

  “I don’t see why it should, Mr. Krim. Won’t you sit down? Would you like a drink?”

  “No thank you to the drink. But you must understand, Mrs. Sarbine, that a quarter of a million dollars is a substantial sum, even to a company like ours. We feel that a certain amount of investigation is required.”

  “Do sit down.”

  I gave in and tried a small gold chair, with a bluesatin seat. The blonde poured herself a drink—scotch, neat—and sipped it like wine while she assured me that she did not, in any way, look down her nose at a quarter of a million dollars. “Still, one likes to feel that one can tolerate such a loss. I love beautiful things, Mr. Krim.”

  “I can see that,” I agreed, looking around the room and recollecting my brief sermon to Lydia on lying.

  “It’s not simply losing a necklace, Mr. Krim. Those diamonds had deep emotional meaning to me.”

  I nodded and watched her savor the scotch. I was sure they had had deep emotional meaning to her.

  “I get something from diamonds. They reach me, if you know what I mean?”

  I thought that I knew what she meant. But I pointed out that, with such a profound and meaningful relationship in existence, I was somewhat puzzled to know why she left the jewels around so carelessly?

  She had a long, supple stride. Liquor livened her. She poured herself a second drink, and you could almost watch the heat flow into her big, strong body. Yet I could not react to her sexually; curiously, she seemed to be without sex—lithe the way an animal is, but without sex.

  “Because they were alive?” she threw at me.

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “In a vault, they would be dead. Is that what your company would like, Mr. Krim—that I keep the necklace permanently in a vault?”

  “It’s too late to discuss what my company would like, Mrs. Sarbine. The necklace is gone. My interest is in who took it.”

  “That is very tiresome. I’ve been through all that with the police.”

  “I know. Let’s say that I am in somewhat of a different category. I’m no avenger, on a snort after justice. I want the property. I can understand that you wouldn’t want to guess with the police hanging onto every word. Would you guess now?”

  “I would not,” she replied, smiling.

  “You would not. Does that mean that if you wanted to, you could?”

  “Oh, come off it, Mr. Krim,” she said. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know something about insurance companies and so does my husband. Your company is so rich that when it bleeds, it bleeds gold. Don’t whimper to me about a lousy quarter of a million.”

  “No quarter of a million dollars is lousy, Mrs. Sarbine. When you talk like that, you’re practically subversive.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Yes and no. I just think you could tell me a good deal if you wanted to.”

  She hardened suddenly and the trifle of sweetness departed. Walking over to me, so close that I could smell the raw pungency on her breath, she said, “That’s enough, buster. Go home now. I don’t have to tell you one goddamn thing.”

  “No, you don’t,” I agreed. As I walked toward the door, she shouted:

  “Lydia, let the boy insurance salesman out!”

  Her back to the living room, Lydia opened the door for me. She was wearing shoes now and grinning maliciously.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS four o’clock or so on that Wednesday when I returned to my office at 666 Fifth Avenue, and walking over there from Park Avenue, I turned over in my mind what I now had—at least a dozen pieces of an increasingly intriguing jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces fitted together, others didn’t, and the whole was beginning to make a sort of crazy shape. But it was not the shape I wanted. I wanted a fine, clear frame around a diamond necklace, and instead the image of something else was beginning to form.

  I had just called Mazie Gilman on the intercom, and she had told me that she had a sort of dossier on David Gorman, when Hunter poked his head in through the door and asked sourly where was the necklace? Or had the brilliant Harvey Krim muffed it?

  “Give me to the end of the week, please, Mr. Hunter, sir?”

  “Go ahead and ride me, Harvey.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” I said, “but at the same time, I can’t help wondering what is the premium on brains right through this
marvelous and affluent and complex society of ours. Everyone in this goddamn company sits on his backside, dreams over the actuarial tables, and gives orders to someone else. Not one stinking creative act in your lives. If the fate of this company depended upon one of you composing a passable poem or a melodic piece of music, we’d go down the way the Roman Empire did. Do you know why I can talk this way?”

  “You tell me, Harvey.”

  “I will tell you. Because you need me. Because you stand to lose a bundle unless a little common sense is brought to bear on the problem, a little creative wit and original thought—and you can’t fire me because the aforesaid commodity is in such short supply. That’s why you have to stand there and listen to my insults and lack of decent white-collar respect. I tell you, Hunter, you make me sick. I swear to God you do!”

  He told me to go to hell and slammed the door. Aside from Lydia, it was the first really nice thing that had happened to me that day, but it didn’t last. I had won my victory over Hunter when they told him upstairs that he was not to fire me and when they agreed to pay my finder’s fee. This was just cheap melodramatics and kid boasting that would all wash down the drain if I didn’t turn up the necklace. And the more I brooded over it, the less likely did it seem that I would succeed.

  Mazie Gilman came in then, and informed me that I was not making life easier for anyone else on the staff by twisting Hunter’s nose. “How about a spoon of sympathy for the little people?” she asked.

  “There are no little people, only little minds.”

  She nodded and said she would think about that one. “Why don’t you get married, Harvey?” she suggested. “The world is full of nice girls, and it would improve your disposition. And you’d have someone all of your own to beat up when you get real mad.”

  “I don’t appreciate your humor and I have been married. What about David Gorman?”

  “You know that he is permanently deceased?”

  I was never sure about Mazie. She was one of those very stupid girls with a lot of common sense, so it made things confusing. I admitted that I knew he was dead.

  “Seventy-one, come July. He seems to be a nice, inoffensive little man, so it’s a shame. Born, Leipzig, Germany. Moved to Berlin at the age of twenty-two. Wrote three plays, one successful. Soldier in World War I. Became a director, then a producer. Very successful theatrical producer—”