by Ross Thomas
“What’d he do?”
“Jake? I guess Jake probably killed a lot of people.”
“Does it bother him?”
“You mean does he feel guilty?”
She nodded.
“Jake never felt guilty about anything.”
Dill chose another route back to Anna Maude Singe’s apartment building. He took South Cleveland Avenue until it turned into North Cleveland just on the other side of the Yellowfork. He followed North Cleveland for a little more than two miles until he reached Twenty-second Street, and then cut east to Van Buren and the Old Folks Home.
Singe didn’t wait for him to open the car door for her. As she got out, she said, “All I’ve got is some California brandy.”
Dill took that for an invitation and said he thought California brandy had a lot going for it, especially the price. Up in her apartment Dill resumed his inspection of the large Maxfield Parrish print while she went for the brandy. When she returned with the bottle and two balloon glasses, Dill had almost decided the two figures in the painting were girls. He also noticed Singe had changed back into the striped nubby cotton caftan. From the way her breasts moved underneath the fabric, he was sure she was wearing nothing else. He took this for yet another invitation of sorts, and wondered whether he would accept or send regrets.
Singe sat down on the off-white couch, put the glasses on the free-form glass coffee table, and poured two brandies. While she did that, Dill took out his checkbook, quickly wrote a check for five hundred dollars to Anna Maude Singe, added “legal retainer” in the memo space, tore it out, and handed it to her.
She read the check, put it carefully down on the table, looked at him coldly, and said, “That was a pretty goddamned rude thing to do.”
He nodded. “Yes, I guess it was.”
“This isn’t my office. This is where I live—my home. Where I carry on my social life and also my sex life, such as it is. I was thinking that tonight I might even enrich both of them a little, but I guess I was wrong.”
“You accept the check?” Dill said.
She hesitated before answering. “What the hell is this?”
“You accept the check?” Dill said again.
“All right. Yes. I accept it.”
“Then you really are my attorney—retained at a modest fee, I’ll admit—and if I get into trouble with the law, you’ll come running, right?”
“What kind of trouble?”
“That’s another question, not an answer.”
“Okay. I’ll come running. What kind of trouble?”
“When I was overseas—”
“Abroad,” she interrupted.
He didn’t smile. “Right. When I was over there poking around, I developed a kind of instinct. I don’t know what else to call it. But I learned to depend on it. It was a kind of warning system.”
“Hunch,” she said.
“Okay. Hunch is good. But it kept me out of trouble a few times because I made sure I had both backup and a fallback position. Well, ever since I got here I’ve been getting those same faint signals.”
“You’re talking about Felicity and all that.”
“Partly.”
She drank a little of her brandy. “You said trouble with the law.”
“So I did.”
“So what’re we really talking about—plot, conspiracy, paranoia, what?”
“Let’s try paranoia,” Dill said. “At around five o’clock this evening I went up to my room in the hotel. A very large arm went around my neck in a chokehold. I passed out for about nine minutes. When I came to, I still had my watch, my wallet, and all my money.”
“What was gone?”
“The file on Jake Spivey.”
“What file?”
“I work for a Senate subcommittee. It’s investigating Spivey.”
“Your friend.”
“My oldest.”
“Does he know?”
“Sure he knows.”
She frowned. “You call getting mugged a hunch.” She shook her head. “No, of course you don’t. That was the two-by-four somebody slammed you across the nose with to grab your attention.” Her eyes widened, not much, but just enough to make Dill relax as he congratulated himself on his choice of lawyers. She senses it, he told himself, but she’s not quite sure just what it is. But neither are you.
“What else?” Singe said.
“What else,” Dill repeated, picked up his glass, and drank some of the brandy, noting that the California vintners still had a way to go before overtaking their French competitors. “Well, ‘what else’ includes an old reporter on the Tribune who already has the whole story on Felicity’s funny finances, except he’s holding back on it until he gets the word.”
“From whom?”
“He didn’t say and I knew better than to ask. Then there’s Felicity’s ex-boyfriend, the frightener and one-time football great.”
“Clay Corcoran,” she said.
“I thought he gave up on being jilted too easily, but Felicity’s tenant, the female one, more or less confirms his story. The tenant’s name is Cindy McCabe. She took off her halter to let me admire her bare bosom. She also claimed she’d once made a pass at Felicity, but got turned down.”
“Did you turn her down?”
“I’m afraid so. I was late for my next appointment, which I didn’t know I had at the time, but which turned out to be with Captain Colder, the bereaved fiance. Captain Colder gave me the key to a garage apartment where Felicity really lived.” Dill reached into his jacket pocket, brought out the key Colder had given him, and placed it on the glass table. “The apartment’s over on Fillmore and Nineteenth, not too far from here.”
“Across from Washington Park,” she said.
“You know it?” he said. “I mean did you know she had an apartment there?”
Singe slowly shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”
“And you were her lawyer, her confidante, her friend. Didn’t she ever invite you over?”
“Just to the duplex. I was over there quite a few times. I told her I thought it looked a little bare, even a little sterile. That it didn’t look like her. She said she wasn’t there much because she was spending most of her free nights with Colder.”
“Felicity tell you about Mrs. Colder?”
Singe nodded and looked away. “He committed her.”
“You know why?”
“Because she drank too much.”
“That’s not quite it. He committed her because she threatened to kill Felicity, not just once, but often.”
“Felicity never told me that,” Singe said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
Dill picked up the key Colder had given him. He held it up for Singe to see. “I want to use this tomorrow after the funeral. I want to go see where Felicity really lived. I want you to go with me.”
“You want a witness.”
“Right.”
“Okay. Fine.” She finished the rest of her brandy, put the glass down, and looked at her watch. “It’s late,” she said. “You want to stay here or go home?”
Dill didn’t answer for several seconds. “I think I’ll go home.”
She nodded and rose quickly, as if to speed the parting guest. Dill also rose. She stood looking at him, a bemused half-smile on her face. He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long greedy kiss that neither seemed willing to end. Dill’s hands went exploring and discovered a remarkable body. Just before they both reached the sexual terrain from which there could be no retreat, she tore her lips and tongue away, stepped back, and said, “Something’s happening, isn’t it?”
“You mean with us?”
She shook her head. “That’ll happen or it won’t. I mean something else, something lousy.”
“Yes,” Dill said. “I think so.”
She gave her head a small puzzled shake and then went with him to the door, where they kissed again. This time it was more definitive than before. Questions were asked and answered
. Needs and proclivities stated. Mild aberrations noted. When it was over Dill felt they knew and even liked one another much better. He smiled at her, and instead of murmuring something tender, asked, “Where did Felicity say she got all the money?”
Singe didn’t seem to expect anything tender. It was as if they had already gone past all that and were now approaching absolute intimacy. She frowned and said, “For the down payment on the duplex and everything?”
Dill nodded.
“From you.” She added a small wry smile. “She said you’d got rich.”
“Too bad she was lying.”
“Yes,” Anna Maude Singe said. “Isn’t it though.”
CHAPTER 17
Dill parked the Ford sedan in the basement garage of the Hawkins Hotel, got out, locked it, and headed for the elevator. As he passed the second large square concrete pillar a man stepped out from behind it and said, “How’s the neck?”
Dill stopped short. His right hand moved almost involuntarily to his neck. “Still a little sore,” he said.
Another man joined the first man. The second man was thin the way a knife is thin and about six feet tall. He looked short and frail next to the first man, who was well over six-three and built like a weight lifter who had given it up when he reached forty, which Dill guessed was three years back, possibly four. The weight lifter had thinning gray-blond hair, still blue eyes, and a wide happy mouth. The knifelike man had dyed black hair the color of coal, dead blue eyes, and a tight mouth that looked either sad or mean. Mean, Dill decided.
Both men wore rumpled summer suits of tan poplin. The weight lifter wore a blue shirt; the skinny man had chosen white. Neither wore a tie. The suitcoats were buttoned and seemed a trifle large. Dill assumed that the coats concealed the pistols, since neither man looked as if he’d bother with a jacket once the temperature rose above 80 degrees. As Dill had driven down Our Jack Street on his way to the hotel, he noticed that the First National Bank sign was claiming a temperature of 87 degrees at 1:17 A.M.
“Says his neck’s still a little sore,” the weight lifter said.
The other man nodded regretfully. “I’m sorry.” He studied Dill for a moment. “We don’t want any trouble, Mr. Dill.”
“Neither do I,” Dill said.
The lean man nodded toward the far end of the garage. “We’re down there in the van,” he said and started walking toward a large blue Dodge van that was parked head-out against the wall. Dill hesitated. The weight lifter smiled pleasantly and opened his coat. The pistol was there. Dill got only a glimpse of it, but it seemed to be a short-barreled revolver. The weight lifter nodded toward the van. Dill turned and fell into step behind the lean man.
When they reached the van the lean man slid the side door back, revealing a customized interior. Dill could see the small sink, propane stove, refrigerator, and the floor which was carpeted with tan shag. The walls were paneled with what seemed to be wood, although Dill suspected it was some kind of grained plastic. There were no windows in the rear of the van.
“You’ll find a nice comfy chair on your left,” the lean man said.
“Where’re we going?” Dill asked.
“Nowhere.”
The weight lifter touched Dill’s shoulder lightly and nodded at the van’s interior. Dill stepped up and into the van, turned left, saw first the chair, and then the man who was seated at the rear of the van behind a table. On the table were some glasses, a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, a Thermos bucket of ice, three bottles of Schweppes tonic, and the file on Jake Spivey. The last time Dill had seen the man behind the table had been in Genoa. In the Hotel Plaza on the Piazza Corvetto. There had been four persons gathered in the living room of the suite on the fifth floor. Suite 523, he recalled, surprising himself with his memory. There had been Dill, the then Mrs. Dill, Jake Spivey, and the man who now sat behind the table, Clyde Brattle.
Brattle smiled. “Well,” he said. “Ben.”
“Well, Clyde,” Dill said and indicated the contour swivel chair that was covered with a very good imitation leather, “This mine?”
“Please.”
Dill sat down in the chair and found it to be quite comfortable. The two men came into the van. The lean one sat down across from Dill in a twin contour chair. Dill couldn’t see where the weight lifter sat. On the floor maybe. Dill turned to look. The weight lifter was seated on a hinged stool that swung out and down from the kitchen unit. It was for sitting on while you scrape the carrots, Dill thought.
“Remarkably compact units, aren’t they?” Brattle said after Dill turned back.
“Remarkably.”
“That’s Sid across from you and behind you is Harley.”
“Harley and Sid,” Dill said.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Brattle paused. “Seven years?”
“Closer to eight. Genoa. Hotel Plaza. Suite five-twenty-three. Your suite.”
Brattle smiled in appreciation of Dill’s memory. “I believe you’re right. And how’s the charming Mrs. Dill?”
“She’s fine and we’re divorced.”
“Really. I didn’t know, or if I did, I guess I forgot.” He frowned. It made him look thoughtful, solemn, almost sincere. “I read about your sister, Ben.” Brattle paused exactly long enough. “I’m sorry.”
Dill nodded.
“Funeral’s tomorrow, I understand.”
“Yes.”
“I assume that’s the real reason you’re down here.” Brattle tapped the file on Jake Spivey with a forefinger. “And not because of this garbage.” He smiled warmly. “How is Jake, anyway?”
“Jake’s fine.”
“Old Jake.” Brattle shook his head, still beaming in evident appreciation of that old rapscallion Jake Spivey’s many endearing qualities. The head that Brattle shook was handsome in the way that busts of long-dead Roman statesmen are often handsome—but not too handsome. The features are never too regular. The expressions are never too remote. The blank eyes never betray anything. Dill had once spent a long rainy Spanish afternoon studying a roomful of such busts in Merida. He had seen on those long-dead faces what he now saw on the face of Clyde Brattle: worldliness, cool detachment, and utter cynicism. He felt it must have been a useful mind-set back in Roman times, what with the Visigoths on the way down from the east and the north.
Now fifty-five, Brattle could easily have passed for one of those banished Roman consuls who had served too long in some dreary distant province. There were that same faint curl of lip, that same thin haughty nose, and those same illusionless eyes of no particular color unless winter rain has color. The shortish hair finally had gone gray—gray-sky gray—but it was still thick, unparted, and combed with the fingers only, if at all. The voice was still that scratchy overeducated drawl from which any regional trace had long since been excised.
“What would you say to a drink?” Brattle asked.
“I’d say fine.”
“Good.”
Sid, the lean one, rose and silently mixed two vodka-tonics. He set one in front of Brattle and handed the other to Dill. Brattle took a swallow, sighed, and smiled. “I suppose you heard I was back,” he said.
Dill nodded. “They say you crossed at Detroit.”
“It’s rather tedious, as you well know, Ben, being on the dodge like this.” He looked at the man called Sid. “Mr. Dill used to be with Jasper, Sid.”
“No shit,” Sid said. “Who’s Jasper?”
“It’s a what, not a who,” came the voice of the weight lifter from his perch on the stool.
“You’re right, Harley,” Brattle said. “It was a what. The Ford White House set it up shortly after Mr. Nixon’s rather sodden farewell. How much do you think he’d put away that day, Ben? The best part of a fifth?”
“I don’t know,” Dill said. “I don’t know how well he could handle it.”
“So why’d they call whatever it was Jasper?” Sid asked.
“It’s my understanding,” Brattle said, “and Ben can correct me if
I’m wrong, that when the negotiations were going on for Mr. Nixon’s pardon, Mr. Ford was shocked to learn that, in his words, ‘Some Jasper’s made off with three million fucking dollars.’ From all that money that was floating around back then. The Committee for the Re-Election of the President. The CREEP money.”
“Sure,” Sid said. “I remember that. I always did wonder who got well off of that deal.”
“So they set up Jasper,” Brattle continued, “and brought some people in, outside people, untainted people, like Ben here, and set them off in pursuit of the missing swag. All extremely sub rosa. Not even Langley knew about it. Or the FBI. In fact, both were rather high up on the list of suspects, right, Ben?”
“Right.”
“So Ben here and a few other patriots spent the years of the Ford administration roaming over Europe looking for the Jaspers who’d made off with the three million fucking dollars. You had nearly a year in London, didn’t you, Ben, and then almost two years in Barcelona?”
“About that.”
“So what happened?” Harley asked from the van’s galley. “I never did hear what happened.”
“Nothing happened. Although you did come close, didn’t you, Ben?”
“Very close.”
“I like to think that Jake and I were of some help.”
“You helped, Clyde.”
“But not quite enough.” Brattle sighed. “They were dead by then—the Jaspers, I mean. There were three of them as I recall.” He looked at Dill for confirmation.
“Three,” Dill agreed.
“Two men and a woman. A messy combination when you think about it. Doomed to failure.”
“So who finally got the money—the three million?” Sid asked.
Dill looked at him. “The people who killed them.”
“Oh,” Sid said with a look of total understanding. “Yeah, well, sure. I can see that.” He nodded as if it all made perfect sense.
“And Ben here had a perfectly splendid three years or so in Europe.” Brattle looked at Dill and smiled. “They were good years, weren’t they, Ben?”
