by Ross Thomas
“What time?”
“Any time before three,” I said. “If you make it before two, we can have lunch.”
She ignored the invitation. Perhaps that’s the form for widows of four weeks. “Will you recover the shield tomorrow?” she said.
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“Is it probable?”
“Again, I don’t know. I have no idea whom I’m dealing with. The trip down the Jersey Turnpike may be just a dry run to find out how well I follow instructions. Or they may be in a hurry for the money and want to get rid of the shield. You’ve got to remember that it’s not something that they can carry around in their hip pocket or unload at the corner pawnshop. There’s an extremely limited market.” I started to tell her about the fifty thousand that I had been offered by Conception Mbwato, but I decided not to because it was all too complicated and there was no point in listening to questions for which I had no answers.
“I’ll call Mr. Spencer to arrange for the money,” she said.
“When you get through with that, would you also call Lieutenant Demeter and fill him in on what’s happened?”
“I didn’t think that you wanted to involve the police.”
“I’m not involving them; I’m just staying in touch with Demeter because I said that I would.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll call him.”
“What time shall I expect you tomorrow?”
“After two.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
When Frances Wingo hung up in my ear, I decided that we probably would never be close friends, but there seemed to be an excellent chance that we might become polite enemies if either of us wanted to go to the bother. I thought—or brooded—about this during the time it took to find a can of tomato soup and run it through the electric opener. I then poured the soup into a pot, added a half can of water, and placed it over one of the two burners that the Pullman kitchen offered. While the soup heated, I looked up a number in the phone book and dialed it. When a man’s voice said, “Albert Shippo and Associates,” I asked for Mr. Shippo.
“I’m Shippo.”
“My name’s Philip St. Ives. I’d like to see you.”
“What about?”
“Johnny Parisi suggested that I call. He thought you might have something I could use.”
“Parisi, huh?”
“Parisi,” I said.
“You a wholesaler?”
“No.”
“Well, I tell you, I don’t do much retail any more, but if Parisi said to call, then I guess it’s okay. You wanta come over?”
“This afternoon all right?”
“Anytime,” Shippo said. “I’m not doing anything anyway except sitting here trying out a new cure on my athlete’s foot.”
“I’ll be there at two-thirty.”
“Two-thirty, three-thirty, it don’t matter,” he said. “I ain’t going nowhere.”
A few minutes after I got through talking to Shippo, the soup was heated so I took it off the burner, poured it into a bowl, found a box of crackers and a bottle of beer, and laid my solitary midday meal on the hexagonal table that had been designed to comfortably accommodate six at poker.
Albert Shippo and Associates’ office was at East 24th Street on the eighth floor of the George Building, which was as unimpressive as its name. There were two elevators, but only one of them was working under the captaincy of a shabbily dressed old man with a face the color and texture of a worn peach pit and pure white hair that hung down to his shoulders. He jerked the handle when I said “eight,” and when the door didn’t close, he kicked it with a scuffed cowboy boot. The elevator responded, grudgingly, it seemed, and we creaked upward.
At the second floor, he turned to look at me. “Don’t get any ideas, rube. I ain’t one of them just because of the long hair.”
“I didn’t think that you were.”
“Some folks get the wrong idea. I rode with Bill, you know. Madison Square Garden, nineteen-ought-nine.”
“Bill?”
“Bill Cody, you dumb shit. William Frederick Cody. Buffalo Bill.”
“You were in his Wild West show, huh?”
“Damned right I was. We all wore our hair long like this from Bill on down. Now folks think I’m one of them Village punks, but I ain’t. I’m part Indian, too. Chickasaw on my mother’s side.”
“You must have some great memories,” I said as the elevator croaked to a stop at the eighth floor.
“They ain’t so hot,” the old man said.
Eight-two-nine was the number of Albert Shippo and Associates and it was down the hall, past the skip-tracer, the direct mail firm, the manufacturer’s representative, and three empty offices. Albert Shippo and Associates was lettered on the pebbled-glass door and another message on a typed card that was stuck to the glass with Scotch tape read KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING. I knocked and a voice said come in. Inside there was a scarred golden oak desk positioned in front of the single window with a dark green shade. The window needed washing. There were four metal filing cabinets and two chairs. One of the chairs, also golden oak, was in front of the desk. The other one was behind it and contained Albert M. Shippo and, as far as I could tell, all of the associates.
“You the guy who called?” the man behind the desk said.
“Yes.”
“Sit down,” he said. “I’m Shippo.” He was about forty-five with a double chin and a smooth bald head which he drew attraction to with a set of mutton-chop sideburns that fanned out over plump cheeks well below the lobes of his ears. Thick black horn-rimmed glasses covered his eyes, which seemed disappointed when they looked at me, but they may have looked at everything like that. He had a small pink mouth below an ordinary pink nose, and the upper lip of the mouth formed what they used to describe as a perfect Cupid’s bow. Below his double chins was a white shirt collar that seemed too small and a blue and white striped tie that was too narrow.
I sat down and looked around the office. There was a black telephone on the desk, but no calendar on the wall. In fact, there was nothing to indicate whether Shippo had moved in that morning or six years before.
“Like I said over the phone, I’m a jobber and don’t do much retail business any more,” he said. “But since Johnny Parisi told you to call—well …” He let the sentence fade away as if it were just too much trouble to complete.
“I don’t know if you got my name right,” I said. “It’s St. Ives. Philip St. Ives.”
Shippo nodded. “I got it okay.”
“You called Parisi about me six or seven weeks ago.”
“I make a lot of calls. Some guy calls me and says, ‘Hey, Al, whaddya know about so and so?’ and I say, ‘I don’t know nothing about so and so,’ and the guy says, ‘Can you find out?’ and I say, ‘Okay, it’ll cost you ten bucks.’ Or twenty or thirty or whatever I can hit him up for. So I call around and find out what I can and then I call the guy back and say, ‘So and so’s okay’ or ‘So and so’s a bum who owes everybody in town.’ But that ain’t my main business. Like I said, I’m a jobber.”
“Of what?” I said.
“High-class art. Say a guy wants to go into business for himself. You know, he’s got a full-time job but he wants to get into something he can run out of his home. I put him in business. Direct mail. Let the post office do the hustling, I say.” He reached into his desk drawer, took out a sheet of paper, and slid it across the desk to me. “This has been one of my hottest numbers. About a thirty-percent return on this one and that’s goddamned high in the direct-mail business.”
I picked up the letter-sized sheet of paper and looked at it. It was a Xeroxed copy of a handwritten letter and was addressed to “Hi, Friend!” In the upper right-hand corner was the blurred picture of a nude man and woman. The body of the letter read:
I’m Sally and that’s Bill you see there with me. We’re a liberal minded young couple and we don’t mind showing you the things we enjoy doing together and with
our friends. I’m blonde and cute. Bill is tall and very well endowed. I measure 36-24-36.
We went to Mexico City last month with some girl friends of mine and visited one of those little known exotic night spots you hear about for mature minded people. Because of their unusual nature, these places are illegal here and mighty hard to find down there. But I’m sure you’ve heard about them and all the wild things that go on inside.
We took some photos of each other with another couple that was there. Some of us girls by ourselves and the rest show us couples in almost every position possible. These aren’t any of those phony nudist photos. These are the real thing.
I’ll sell you a whole set in black and white for $8.00 or four sets in color for $12.00. I’ll include some very special shots they took of me and Betty together. Send me the money and I’ll rush them right back to you.
It was signed, “Sincerely yours, Sally.”
I tossed the letter back on the desk. “Business pretty good, huh?” I said.
“Getting better all the time,” Shippo said. “I furnish the whole thing: the letter, the photos, and the sucker list. They mail out the letter once they get copies Xeroxed and then sit back and wait for the dough to roll in. They make money, I make money, and a lot of lonely people get their jollies. You want a set of the colored shots? I can let you have them for fifty bucks.”
“It said twelve in the letter.”
“I might throw in a little information,” Shippo said.
“Fifty is still steep.”
Shippo leaned back in his chair which squeaked, placed his fat hands on the bare desk, and smiled at me with yellow teeth that seemed too large and square for his small mouth. “That’s a nice suit you got on,” he said. “I know suits. I figure you’re worth fifty.”
“You remember my name, now?”
“St. Ives,” he said. “It ain’t a name you forget or if you do, you remember it when somebody brings it up. Fifty bucks?”
I nodded. “Fifty bucks.”
“Let me get you your pictures first.” He moved over to one of the files, took out a nine-by-eleven-inch manila envelope, peeked inside to make sure that it was the right one, and then sat back down in his chair. I took out my wallet, found two twenties and a ten, and pushed them over to him. He handed me the envelope. “You want a receipt?” he said.
“Just information. Such as who asked you to call Parisi about me?”
Shippo took the three bills and folded them lengthwise. Then he folded them in half, then folded them again, and tucked them into his watch pocket. “That was a couple of months back, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?”
“Yep, I remember now. It was a couple of months back.”
“In June,” I said.
“In June.”
“Now we have when, let’s try for who.”
Shippo looked around his desk as if he wished that there were some papers to shuffle. There weren’t so he opened a drawer and brought out a bottle of Old Cabin Still and two smeared glasses that looked like they had once contained Kraft cheese spread. He poured them half full and then moved one of them over to my side of the desk. “I always have a drink about this time of day,” he said. “Doctor says it’s good for my blood pressure. I got high blood pressure.” He picked up his glass and drained it, sighed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink up,” he said. I picked up the bourbon and took a swallow out of politeness and then put the glass back on the desk. I don’t care much for bourbon.
“Funny thing the way your name came up, you know,” Shippo said. “Guy I hadn’t seen in five, maybe six years calls up and wants to know if I know anybody who might give him a once-over on a Philip St. Ives, so I tell him that I know lots of people and he says, no, not those kind, he needs somebody who’s got a good reputation, like his word is his bond, who’s respectable and all. So I say how about my good friend Johnny Parisi, is he good enough for you? And the guys says, you know Johnny Parisi? And I tell him that Johnny and me have been friends for a long time.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing. He just wanted me to call Parisi and find out about you.”
“Find out what?”
“Find out if you were okay, A-1, and would do what you said you would do. You wanta know what Johnny said about you?”
“No,” I said. “I want to know Who asked about me.”
“Oh, him. He was only good for thirty bucks, but what the hell, it only took a couple of phone calls.”
“All right,” I said. “Who?”
“A guy name of Frank Spellacy, but you gotta understand that he was only calling me about you for a friend of his.”
“Where can I find Spellacy?” I said.
“In the phone book. Manhattan.”
“What’s he do?”
“You mean for a living?”
“For a living.”
Shippo shrugged. “What does anybody do? Me, I think of myself as an art dealer who provides a service for lonely people and believe me, they’re a lot of lonely people around. But you know what those creeps from the post office said I was? They said I was a hard-core pornographer. So I said to hell with them. I don’t use the post office no more. I send everything out by messenger if it’s close by, and Railway Express if it ain’t.”
“They must have hated to lose your business,” I said.
“You mean the post office?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nah. They got so much business they can’t take care of it now.”
“You don’t have any idea of what Spellacy does?”
“He dabbles in this and that.”
“Such as?”
“Well, five or six years ago he was running a securities firm.”
“You mean a boiler room.”
“You call it a boiler room. Me and Spellacy called it a securities firm. I was helping out in the afternoons and we were doing pretty good until there was a misunderstanding and, well, Spellacy had to liquidate. I didn’t hear nothing about him for a couple of years. I think he was out of town.”
“He must have drawn a short sentence.”
“His lawyer wasn’t too hot,” Shippo said. “You gotta have a top lawyer if you wanta survive in the business world which, when you come right down to it, ain’t nothing but a jungle, like Jimmy Hoffa said. Now there’s probably one of the most unappreciated men in the country. And look what they done to him.”
“History will justify him,” I said. “But let’s get back to Spellacy. You don’t have any idea of what he’s doing?”
“He did mention something about real estate, come to think of it. He said he’s got some big development going out in Arizona.”
I got up. “Thanks for the information.”
Shippo didn’t stir, other than to wave his hand. “Glad to oblige.”
I was heading for the door when he called me back. “Hey, your pictures.”
I went back to the desk and picked up the envelope. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s what I really came for.”
On the way to the elevator I looked at the photographs. They were the usual assortment of duets and threesomes and, if I’d had more time, I might have grown interested. When the elevator came with its ancient pilot, I got on and stood at the back.
“You like dirty pictures?” I said.
“Who don’t?” the old man said.
“Here,” I said, and handed him the envelope.
He accepted the envelope, slipped out the first picture, and cackled. Then he placed them under his stool. “I’ll save ’em till I get off,” he said. “How come you don’t want ’em?”
I tapped myself on the chest. “Bad heart.”
The old man turned and grinned at me evilly. Then he ducked down for the envelope, took another peek, and shook his head in admiration. “You’re right about one thing, rube.”
“What?”
“They’re sure as hell dirty.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE T
ALL BLACK YOUNG man who leaned casually against the front fender of the Chrysler that was illegally parked in front of the George Building wasn’t trying to be inconspicuous. Not with a lemon-colored suit and a shirt the shade of a ripe tangerine. When it came to the selection of a tie, he had deserted the citrus family for neckwear that had the luster and sheen of dark purple grapes. The oyster-white raincoat that was draped over his right forearm also helped to set him apart from the rest of the pedestrians, most of them in shirt sleeves. And then, too, it hadn’t rained in New York for almost three weeks.
I gave him only a glance as I came out of the building and turned left, headed for a bar or a drugstore and a phone book to look up the number and address of Frank Spellacy. I had taken just five steps when he caught up with me on the left, the raincoat still draped over his right forearm.
“Mr. St. Ives?”
I stopped and turned. “Yes.”
“Mr. Mbwato was wondering whether he could give you a lift.” He had a voice similar to Mbwato’s, though not nearly so deep. It was a nice tenor with all of the African edges smoothed away and if I had closed my eyes, it could have been David Niven asking, ever so politely, whether I could possibly use a ride.
“Not today, thanks,” I said, and started to turn away but stopped when the oyster-white raincoat dug into my side with something that could have been a gun or a pen or even an unusually stiff forefinger. I decided that it was a gun.
“Come on,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”
“Isn’t it just?” the tall young man said, and smiled gently. “But you see, I have my instructions and when I don’t follow them through to completion, Mr. Mbwato becomes most upset.”
“That’s a gun under your coat, not just your finger?”
“I’m afraid it’s a gun, Mr. St. Ives.”
“I could yell. For a cop.”
“There is none to hear.”
“I could just yell.”
He smiled again and looked to be genuinely amused. “What response do you think your fellow New Yorkers would make? A sidelong glance? A derisive smile? Come now, Mr. St. Ives.”
“I could run.”
“Then I would surely shoot you. Probably in the leg,” he added thoughtfully.
