by Ross Thomas
I smiled at him pleasantly and Demeter took his cigar out of his mouth and waved it around as if he wanted the floor. “Now wait a minute, Fastnaught … isn’t that a hell of a name? Fastnaught.” He chuckled a little in appreciation. Fastnaught rose and went over to the window and peeked out through the Venetian blind; maybe they had a view of the Capitol after all.
“Like I said,” Demeter went on, “everybody’s entitled to at least one vice. Now I’ve got cigars and Fastnaught’s got his little girls and St. Ives says he’s queer for punchboards. There’s nothing wrong with that. But what do you think the spade’s vice was?”
“You know what it was,” Fastnaught said, still peering out through the slats of the Venetian blind.
“Yes, I know, but St. Ives here, he doesn’t know.”
Fastnaught turned and stared at me. “Punchboards,” he said. Then suddenly he smiled and went back to the chair behind his desk. “Sackett had a habit. A hundred to a hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-day habit and it was getting bigger. That’s what his wife said. And he fed it, that’s the funny thing. He didn’t go out boosting department stores on Thursday night; he didn’t stick up any Safeways or gas stations. He just got up about noon and went down to work at four with his needle and his sweet grape soda and his candy bars in his lunch bucket. Now the Coulter Museum pays its guards about six bills a month so where do you think Sackett got the money to feed his habit?”
“How long had he been hooked?” I said.
Demeter waved his cigar around. “Two months; maybe a little more.”
“What’s his wife say?”
Demeter looked at his watch. “Well, at about eleven o’clock this morning she was telling Fastnaught here that she didn’t care whether the son of a bitch was dead or not because he’d gone off to work Friday and left her without a speck of heroin in the house. She ought to be screaming her head off by now because we got her locked away and she’s got a habit just about as big as her husband’s. Now just where do you think they managed to get two or three hundred dollars a day to keep the nasties away?”
“It’s not hard to guess,” I said.
“No,” Demeter said, “it isn’t, is it?”
It was quiet in the small green office for a while. Sergeant Fastnaught took out a stick of gum, unwrapped it slowly, folded it into thirds, popped it into his mouth, and chewed rhythmically while he studied the well-polished toes of his black shoes that he had propped up on one corner of his gray desk. Lieutenant Demeter swiveled his chair so that he had a view of the drawn Venetian blind. I admired the back of his neck and the way that his hair curled in tight little waves over his white collar. Demeter sighed, got out of his chair, and moved the two feet to the window where he peeked out through one of the slats in the blind.
“You want to know how Fastnaught and I figure it?” he said to the blind.
“How?” I said.
“We checked on the guard, Sackett, you know. He worked the four-to-twelve shift at the museum, Tuesday through Saturday. His wife wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us much. She didn’t even know the name of the pusher. The neighbors said that the Sacketts were quiet, sent the oldest kid to the first grade every morning and all. The two youngest aren’t old enough to go to school yet. The only thing they noticed, the neighbors, I mean, is that the Sacketts the past few weeks have just got quieter and quieter. They didn’t go out, not even on Sundays and Mondays when Sackett was off. You can do that on dope, you know. It’s not like booze. You can keep going through the motions of everyday living, wash the dishes, clean the house, go to the job, and all. Everything’s fine as long as you got your supply.”
“What was that doctor’s name?” Fastnaught asked. “The one who was hooked and kept on operating, three, maybe four or five times a day.”
“His name was Mager,” Demeter said. “Now there’s one who really had a habit, but he just kept on carving away and nobody ever suspected anything.”
“What happened?” I said.
“He scheduled ten operations for one day, woke up, and decided he couldn’t face it so he turned himself in. Right here. Well, not exactly here, it was down the hall. He’s down in Lexington still, I understand.”
“He was a hell of a fine doctor,” Fastnaught said.
“Uh-huh,” Demeter said. “Well, we checked out the guys that Sackett worked with at the museum and they hadn’t noticed anything different. Sackett had always kept to himself kind of and he just got to be more of a loner, they said. He did his work all right, but that just meant punching in every twelve minutes while he covered his area.”
“He was assigned to the African Exhibition?” I said.
“Right,” Demeter said. “It’s a pretty big exhibit. You get a chance to look at it?”
“No,” I said.
“You ought to drop by. They got some real interesting stuff although it’s a little weird in my opinion.”
“I liked the masks,” Fastnaught said. “They got some of the goddamndest masks you ever saw. Real Halloween stuff.”
“Well,” Demeter said, “Sackett asked to be assigned to the African exhibit. It wasn’t anything unusual. They change the guards around all the time. Some come off the day shift and go on nights. Some trade off from the midnight-to-eight shift with those who work the four-to-midnight. The museum closes at six and then the guard complement is reduced by forty percent. Sackett was assigned to the African exhibit because he was the first to apply for it. Fact is, he applied for it a month before it opened.”
“He’d been hooked by then?” I said.
“Probably,” Demeter said. “The way I figure it is that the bunch who stole this shield knew they couldn’t get into that place without inside help. It’s wired with the goddamndest alarm system you ever saw. Electric eyes all over the place. Pressure plates. You name it. So they picked Sackett, promised him a fat share, got him hooked on heroin, even got him to get his wife hooked, kept him well supplied, and the day after the exhibit opened they waltzed off with the prize piece.”
“How’d they get in,” I said, “through the front door?”
“I don’t think they ever got in,” Demeter said, and puffed some cigar smoke at the ceiling and cocked an eye at me to see how I liked his last statement.
“Why not?”
“The doors,” Fastnaught said. “They’re electrically sealed at six o’clock.”
“Except one,” Demeter said.
“That’s right,” Fastnaught said. “Except one.”
“It’s an emergency door that leads from the basement up a ramp to the loading area in the rear. It’s electrically sealed only one way. What I mean is that the door can be opened from the inside without touching off the alarm system, but it can’t be opened from the outside without all hell breaking loose. You follow me?”
I said that I did.
“The guards use the door to change shifts and it’s also got something to do with fire-department regulations. I figure that since Sackett had twelve-minute check-in intervals he could use one of them to carry the shield down to the ramp that led to the emergency door. A couple of punch-in intervals later he could carry it up the ramp, open the door, hand it to the thieves, and then make it back upstairs in time to punch in again. He’d give his buddies a half hour or so to get clear and then report the shield as stolen.”
“Did he report it?” I said.
“He reported it.”
“And there was no full-time guard on that emergency door?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to him? Sackett, I mean.”
“Me and Fastnaught were off. I was home in bed when it happened; God knows whose bed Fastnaught was in.”
Fastnaught chewed his gum a little more rapidly, making it pop on every third or fourth chew. “She’d just turned eighteen,” he said. “In fact, it was her birthday. I gave her a real nice present.”
“You don’t have to lie to us,” Demeter said mildly.
“When were you assigned to the thing?”
I said.
“Friday,” Demeter said. “When we came on our shift. We went looking for Sackett, but by then he’d disappeared. You know something, St. Ives?”
“What?”
“About all we’ve got on this is the Sackett woman.”
“Shit, she doesn’t know anything,” Fastnaught said.
“Well, I might go along with that, but maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t. But I didn’t say she was the only thing we’ve got. I said she was about the only thing.”
“What else is there?” Fastnaught said.
“Why, we’ve got ourselves a fancy New York-type go-between, Sergeant Fastnaught, that’s what we’ve got.”
Fastnaught took his feet from the desk and put them back on the floor. He leaned forward, his jaws moving rapidly on his stick of gum, and stared at me with his blue eyes. I noticed that they seemed a little bloodshot. “That’s right,” he said, “we have Mr. St. Ives.”
“Who’s going to be most cooperative,” Demeter said, and smiled at me in a happy, friendly way as if I’d just told him that the promotion had gone through after all and he would be Captain Demeter come next Wednesday morning.
I decided it was time to go. I got up and moved toward the door. “Thanks very much for the information, gentlemen. If you break the case before eight-thirty this evening, I’ll be at the Madison. After that, I’ll be in New York.”
“Did you hear that, Sergeant Fastnaught? Mr. St. Ives will be at the Madison until eight-thirty.”
“I figured the Madison,” Fastnaught said. “The Hilton’s getting too commercial.”
“If you hear of anything from the people—probably just some irresponsible kids who thought it’d be a good joke—anyway if you hear anything from the people who stole the shield of Komporeen, you’ll let us know, won’t you?” Demeter said, waving his cigar again. “Through no fault of your own, you’re sort of mixed up in a murder now, Mr. St. Ives, and we’d more or less like you to stay in touch, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” I said. “I always like to support my local police.”
“Well, that’s good to hear because I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other,” Demeter said. “Just one more thing.”
“What?” I said.
“You be careful,” he said, and then grinned at me around his cigar as if he had just told a very funny and extremely dirty joke.
“And cautious, too,” Fastnaught called as I closed the door behind me and went down the green and black marble hall, into the bronze-doored elevator, and out into the yellow sunlight. I walked around until I spotted the window with the lowered Venetian blind, and when I found it I was pleased to note that the only view it had was that of a parking lot.
CHAPTER FIVE
I WAS SURPRISED THAT it was a woman’s voice. She called a little before six, just after I had finished a second bottle of beer and an editorial in The Washington Star that took an extremely dim view of a Russian reply to a State Department note protesting the treatment of a couple of American tourists in Moscow. Not only didn’t The Star much care for the tone of the Russian note, but it also seemed to feel that the two tourists would have done far better to have spent their vacations at Grand Canyon or Rehoboth Beach.
“Would you please listen carefully to what I say, Mr. St. Ives?” the woman said, and it sounded as if she were reading the words and wasn’t at all used to it.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“You will fly back to New York tomorrow morning and stay in your room at the Adelphi Hotel until six o’clock in the evening. If you have not received a phone call by then, you can leave. If you are not called on Tuesday, then on Wednesday, at 11 o’clock in the morning, you will go to the first phone booth on the left in the lobby of the Eubanks Hotel on East 33rd. At exactly 11 o’clock you will be called. Do you want me to repeat it?”
“No,” I said. “I understand.”
There were no good-bys and when she hung up I went back to my chair and newspaper and beer, but I could no longer get interested in the danger of air pollution and the beer seemed flat. I tried to remember how many calls there had been during the last four years from nervous men in phone booths who had something that they wanted me to buy back for the persons from whom they had stolen it. Sometimes they whispered, sometimes they talked through their handkerchiefs, and a few had even attempted foreign accents. Each of them had his own complicated set of instructions, sometimes so complicated that they probably bordered on paranoia. Each of the schemes had begun as somebody’s daydream and each was wrapped in a curious childlike quality of “let’s pretend.” But if they seemed the product of a child’s fantasy, they invariably were enveloped in the unemotional and unpredictable cruelty that children often have.
My trade had one compensation, however, and I took it out of my wallet and admired it briefly. Then, tired of playing at Silas Marner, I put the check back, walked over to the phone, and dialed a number. When it stopped ringing I asked for Lieutenant Demeter. He came on briskly, barking “Robbery Squad, Lieutenant Demeter,” loudly enough for the phone to crackle.
“This is St. Ives. They just called. It was a woman.”
“Go on,” he said.
“They want me to go back to New York and wait for them to call. If they don’t call me at my place tomorrow, they’ll call me at a booth in a hotel on Wednesday.”
“How did she sound?”
“Like she was reading it.”
“She say anything about money?”
“No.”
Demeter sighed. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll get you some company tomorrow.”
“Who?”
“They’ll be wearing badges with New York Police Department on them. Or the FBI if you want. It looks like it’s interstate now.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean no?”
“Just what it usually means. I’ve been hired to buy back the shield. If I start moving around with cops or FBI agents in tow, there won’t be any buy. When I get the shield back you can have everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve guessed and between now and then I’ll keep you filled in, but until I get the shield back I work alone. If that doesn’t fit in with your plans, the museum will have to find another go-between.”
“That’s probably a damned good idea,” Demeter said. “I’d be all for it if the other side would, although I hear that they won’t so it looks like we’re stuck with you.”
“Get unstuck,” I said.
“What’d you say?”
“I said make up your mind.”
He was silent for a moment. “All right, St. Ives, we’ll go along. But if you’re interested in what I think, which you’re probably not, I think you’re making a mistake. The reason I think you’re making a mistake is because whoever you’re dealing with have already killed one guy. They could round it out to a couple and they’d still be way ahead after they got the money.”
“But not until after they got it,” I said.
“I hope you’re as bright as you think you are. I hope you’re even half as bright.”
“Not bright, careful.”
“Careful,” he said. “I almost forgot about that.”
“Anything else?”
“Just one item.”
“What?”
“The spade’s wife.”
“What about her?”
“She won’t be giving us any more information about Sackett.”
“Why?”
“She hung herself about an hour ago,” Demeter said, and banged his phone down in my ear.
I had just finished a steak that wasn’t quite as good as the menu had promised it would be and was waiting for the elevator when he appeared at my elbow wearing a mauve coat of Edwardian cut with eight brass buttons down its front, a cream-colored shirt whose six-inch-long points were filled by a scarlet neckpiece with a knot the size of a small piece of pie, and a smile so dazzling that it could have lighted up a fairly dim roo
m.
“Mr. St. Ives, I believe,” he said, bowing formally from the waist. There was a lot to bow: he was about two inches shorter than the elevator doors and not quite as wide. As he bowed I had the chance to admire his fawn trousers with their burnt orange windowpanes and the brushed green suede shoes that were topped by a pair of large silver buckles.
“I’m St. Ives,” I said.
“Permit me,” he said, and whisked out a small leather case from which he extracted an ivory card and handed it to me. It was engraved in a swirly italics script which read: Conception Mbwato.
Not only was Mr. Mbwato a very big man, he was also a very black man with skin the color and sheen of ripe eggplant. His accent was good BBC British and he didn’t offer to shake hands.
“How can I help you, Mr. Mbwato?” I said, looking up into his unlined face with its broad flat nose, wide, thick mouth, and curiously gentle eyes. Or perhaps they were just sad.
“I thought we might have a little chat,” he said.
“About what?”
“The shield of Komporeen.”
I nodded. “All right. Where would you like to talk? Here, my room, or in the bar?”
“I think your room would be by far the more preferable.”
“All right,” I said, “my room.”
When we got there, I made a motion toward the largest chair, which Mbwato lowered himself into with a sigh. “It was frightfully hot today,” he said. “Even for me.”
“You’re used to it?” I said.
Mbwato lit up the room again with his smile. “Indeed, Mr. St. Ives, I am used to it.”
I was sitting on the chair which went with the writing desk that held the phone. Mbwato crossed his legs and looked around the room as if he thought he might buy it. I lit a cigarette and watched him look. The silence was complete, almost final, as if neither of us would ever speak again, but somehow it was not uncomfortable.
“I am from Brefu,” Mbwato said as if that cleared up everything.
“In Jandola,” I said.
Mbwato shook his head. “Not in Jandola, Mr. St. Ives,” he said gently. “In Komporeen.”
