Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  "The office is separated from the customer area by one of those double Plexiglas security partitions and a locked security door. The door operates by means of a buzzer at Harvey's desk. He didn't buzz anybody in or out."

  "Could the two thousand have been removed between the time the police searched and you were called in?"

  "No way. When the police couldn't find it in the office, they body-searched DeWitt and had a matron do the same with Chavez. The money wasn't on either of them. Then, after the cops left, Jack told his employees they couldn't take anything away from the office except Chavez's purse and DeWitt's briefcase, both of which he searched again, personally."

  "Do either DeWitt or Chavez have a key to the office?"

  "No."

  "Which means the missing money is still there."

  "Evidently. But where, 'Wolf'?"

  "Describe the office to me."

  "One room, with an attached lavatory that doubles as a supply closet. Table, with a desktop copier, postage scale, postage meter. A big Mosler safe; only Harvey has the combination. Three desks: Jack's, next to the back door; DeWitt's in the middle; Chavez's next to the counter behind the partition, where the till is. Desks have standard stuff on them—adding machines, a typewriter on Chavez's, family photos, stack trays, staplers, pen sets. Everything you'd expect to find."

  "Anything you wouldn't expect to find?"

  "Not unless you count some lurid romance novels that Chavez likes to read on her lunch break."

  "Did anything unusual happen this morning, before the shortage was discovered?"

  "Not really. The toilet backed up and ruined a bunch of supplies, but Jack says that's happened three or four times before. Old plumbing."

  "Uh-huh."

  "You see why I'm frustrated? There just doesn't seem to be any clever hidey-hole in that office. And Harvey's already starting to tear his hair. Chavez and DeWitt resent the atmosphere of suspicion; they're nervous, too, and have both threatened to quit. Harvey doesn't want to lose the one that isn't guilty, anymore than he wants to lose his two thousand dollars."

  "How extensive was the search you and the police made?"

  "About as extensive as you can get."

  "Desks gone over top to bottom, drawers taken out?"

  "Yes."

  "Underside of the legs checked?"

  "Yes."

  "Same thing with all the chairs?"

  "To the point of removing cushions and seat backs."

  "The toilet backing up—any chance that could be connected?"

  "I don't see how. Harvey and I both looked it over pretty carefully. The sink and the rest of the plumbing, too."

  "What about the toilet paper roll?"

  "I checked it. Negative."

  "The extra supplies?"

  "Negative."

  "Chavez's romance novels—between the pages?"

  "I thought of that. Negative."

  "Personal belongings?"

  "All negative. Including Jack Harvey's. I went through his on the idea that DeWitt or Chavez might have thought to use him as a carrier."

  "The office equipment?"

  "Checked and rechecked. Copier, negative. Chavez's type writer, negative. Postage meter and scale, negative. Four adding machines, negative. Stack trays—"

  "Wait a minute, Sharon. Four adding machines?"

  "That's right."

  "Why four, with only three people?"

  "DeWitt's office machine jammed and he had to bring his own from home."

  "When did that happen?"

  "It jammed two days ago. He brought his own yesterday."

  "Suspicious coincidence, don't you think?"

  "I did at first. But I checked both machines, inside and out. Negative."

  "Did either DeWitt or Chavez bring anything else to the office in recent days that they haven't brought before?"

  "Jack says no."

  "Then we're back to DeWitt's home adding machine."

  "'Wolf,' I told you—"

  "What kind is it? Computer type, or the old-fashioned kind that runs a tape?"

  "The old-fashioned kind."

  "Did you run a tape on it? Or on the office machine that's supposed to be jammed?"

  ". . . No. No, I didn't."

  "Maybe you should. Both machines are still in the office, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Why don't you have another look at them? Run tapes on both, see if the office model really is jammed—or if maybe it's DeWitt's home model that doesn't work the way it should."

  "And if it's the home model, have it taken apart piece by piece.

  "Right."

  "I'll call Harvey and have him meet me at Neighborhood right away."

  "Let me know, huh? Either way?"

  "You bet I will."

  "Wolf,' hi. It's Sharon."

  "You sound chipper. Good news?"

  "Yes, thanks to you. You were right about the adding machines. I ran a tape on DeWitt's office model and it worked fine. But the one he brought from home didn't, for a damned good reason."

  "Which is?"

  "Its tape roll was a dummy. Hollow, made of metal and wound with just enough paper tape to make it look like the real thing. So real neither the police nor I thought to remove and examine it before. The missing money was inside."

  "So DeWitt must have been planning the theft for some time."

  "That's what he confessed to the police a few minutes ago. He made the dummy roll in his workshop at home; took him a couple of weeks. It was in his home machine when he brought that in yesterday. This morning he slipped the roll out and put it into his pocket. While Maria Chavez was in the lavatory and Jack Harvey was occupied on the phone, he lifted the money from the till and pocketed that too. He went into the john after Maria came out and hid the money in the dummy roll. Then, back at his desk, he put the fake roll into his own machine, which he intended to take home with him this evening. It was his bad luck—and Jack's good luck—that the realtor came in with such a large check to cash."

  "I suppose he intended to doctor the books to cover the theft."

  "So he said. You know, 'Wolf,' it's too bad DeWitt didn't apply his creative talents to some legitimate enterprise. His cache-and-carry scheme was really pretty clever."

  "What kind of scheme?"

  "Cache and carry. C-a-c-h-e."

  " . . ."

  "Was that a groan I heard?"

  "McCone, if you're turning into a rogue detective, call somebody else next time you come up against an impossible problem. Call Sir Henry Merrivale."

  "What do you mean, a rogue detective?"

  "The worst kind there is. A punslinger."

  THE KILLING

  Martin Coe was a monolithic individual, with whisky-veined features and eyes as warm as frozen Alaskan tundra. In the month I had known him, he had never openly displayed emotion of any kind—until this very minute. Now, he leaned forward across the table, staring at me with incredulity. "What did you say?"

  "How would you like it," I repeated, "if your wife were suddenly to die?"

  He glanced around as if he were afraid someone had overheard us; but except for ourselves, two barmen, and three elderly men at a table across the room, the lounge of the Warm Springs Country Club was empty. Coe put his gaze back on me.

  "Just what are you suggesting, Foster?"

  "I was merely speculating."

  "I . . . don't care for that sort of speculation."

  "Don't you?" I asked him. "If Sondra were dead, you'd have control of her money. And of course, you'd be free to marry Angela."

  Coe's mouth dropped open.

  "Oh, yes, I know about Angela," I said. "A lovely young woman. So much more desirable than Sondra."

  He continued to stare at me for several seconds; then, jerkily, he raised his glass and drank half of his bourbon-and-water in a single swallow. He was trying to regain control of himself and of the situation, but I had the ball now and I intended to keep it.

  I said, "Fra
il, middle-aged women are forever dying, you know. Accidents, heart seizures, suicide—there are hundreds of causes. Or should I say ways and means?"

  Coe seemed to be having difficulty breathing. "Who are you, Foster? You're not the financial consultant you claim to be. And you didn't just happen to strike up a conversation with me four weeks ago."

  "Right on both counts," I said, and smiled.

  "Well? Who are you?"

  I shrugged. "Let's just say I'm an eliminator of problems, a remover of burdens."

  "A killer for hire. A professional assassin." His tone of voice said more than the words; it said that instead of being appalled or outraged, he was interested. Very interested.

  "I don't care for either of those terms," I said, "but I suppose they're accurate enough."

  "How did you get into a private country club like this? You can't be a member!"

  I laughed. "No, but I have friends who are. When I'm not working I lead a rather normal upper-class existence."

  "Am I to understand you're offering me your . . . services?"

  "You may presume so, yes."

  We watched each other for a time. Then Coe said, "You know what I ought to do, don't you?"

  "What's that?"

  "Turn you in to the police."

  "Is that what you intend to do?"

  "No," he said, his eyes fixed on mine.

  "I didn't think so. Of course, if you did call the police, I would simply deny everything. I have no criminal record, an impeccable background, and a high credit rating. Your word against mine, you see?"

  It was Coe's turn to smile now, but there was no humor in the cold wastes of his eyes. "You must have researched me pretty carefully," he said.

  "Oh, I did."

  "How did you get my name as a potential client?"

  "I have friends here, as I said."

  "Scouts, is that it?"

  "If you like."

  He took out a thin, expensive panatela, snipped off the end with a pair of gold clippers, lighted it with a thin gold lighter. Through a cloud of fragrant smoke he asked, "How much?"

  "I like a man who gets right down to business," I said. "Ten thousand. Half in advance, half after completion of the contract."

  "I'll have to consider it," Coe said. He was his old self now: calm, assured, coldly calculating. "I never make hasty decisions."

  "Take your time."

  "Tomorrow night, here, at nine?"

  "Fine," I said. "If your answer is yes, bring the five thousand in cash, small bills—and a complete floor plan of your house."

  My second drink and Martin Coe arrived simultaneously at nine the following evening. When the waiter drifted away with Coe's order for a bourbon-and-water, I said, "Right on time. To the minute, in fact."

  "I make it a policy to be punctual for appointments."

  "An admirable trait."

  "I also make it a policy never to hedge when I've made up my mind." He patted the breast pocket of his suit coat. "Five thousand dollars, I believe you said."

  "I did. You can give it to me a little later, in private. Did you bring the floor plan?"

  "Yes. In the envelope with the money."

  "Excellent."

  He leaned forward. "When will you do it?"

  "Whenever you prefer."

  "This coming Thursday night."

  "The sooner, the better, eh?"

  "Yes. Any time after eleven. Sondra is always asleep by eleven. And I'll be here from eight o'clock on, attending our monthly board meeting and socializing afterward, as I customarily do."

  I nodded. "You'll make sure your wife is alone in the house?"

  "Of course. Thursday is the houseman's regular day off, and I can arrange to have the cook away for the evening without arousing suspicion."

  "What about the dogs?" I asked.

  "You know about them, too, do you?"

  "Naturally."

  "I'll see that they don't give you any trouble. Anything else?"

  "Yes. Leave a door open for me."

  "Wouldn't it be better to break in?"

  "It would if I were going to make it look as though she surprised a burglar."

  "But you're not?"

  "No," I said. "Did you know that one out of every five falls in the home proves fatal?"

  Coe smiled icily. "That's an interesting statistic."

  "Isn't it?"

  "There's a service porch at the rear," he said. "You'll see just where when you look at the floor plan. I'll leave that door open."

  I nodded again and matched his smile with one of my own.

  A few minutes before midnight on Thursday, I parked my car in a copse of bay and pepper trees near the east boundary wall of Coe's estate. I pulled on a pair of thin, pliable gloves, then climbed the wall and dropped down on the other side.

  Moving cautiously, I made my way across the grounds. There was no sign of the three vicious Dobermans that normally ran free. Ahead, the house—a bulky two-story Colonial—loomed dark and silent against the night sky, no lights showing anywhere.

  I located the service porch, and when I tried the door it opened under my hand. I slipped inside, stood listening for a few seconds. Silence.

  Mentally, I again studied the floor plan Coe had given me. Then I took the pencil flashlight from my pocket, shielded the beam with my left hand as I switched it on, and moved through the back rooms to the vaulted gloom of the entrance hall. I paused there, at the foot of a curving staircase, to listen again. It might only have been my imagination but I thought I could hear, from somewhere above, the faint rasp of a woman's snoring.

  Pleasant dreams, Mrs. Coe, I thought, smiling. And I turned away from the staircase to enter Martin Coe's private study.

  It took me less than fifteen minutes to locate and open his wall safe, one of those vault types with a recessed dial. Inside, I found seven thousand dollars in cash, better than fifteen thousand in negotiable bonds, and another ten thousand or so in diamond jewelry.

  Three minutes after I had slipped all of these items into my overcoat pockets, I was once again moving quickly across the empty grounds. And wishing as I went that I could see Martin Coe's face when he came home from the club to find his wife still alive and his safe cleaned out. The cold ruthlessness of the man had rankled me from the beginning; it would be a pleasure watching him deal with having been both robbed and flimflammed.

  One can't have everything, though. I would have to settle for the satisfaction of a job well done and well paid for—a job worthy of the talents of one of the best confidence men in the business.

  You can steal anything from anybody with a little patience and the proper approach. My father had told me that just before he retired to the French Riviera in 1966, after thirty years of successfully practicing what he preached.

  It's a shame that more children don't listen to their fathers' advice in these trying times . . .

  BLACK WIND

  It was one of those freezing, late-November nights, just before the winter snows, when a funny east wind comes howling down out of the mountains and across Woodbine Lake a quarter mile from the village. The sound that wind makes is something hellish, full of screams and wailings that can raise the hackles on your neck if you're not used to it. In the old days the Indians who used to live around here called it a "black wind"; they believed that it carried the voices of evil spirits, and that if you listened to it long enough, it could drive you mad.

  Well, there are a lot of superstitions in our part of upstate New York; nobody pays much mind to them in this modern age. Or if they do, they won't admit it even to themselves. The fact is, though, that when the black wind blows, the local folks stay pretty close to home, and the village, like as not, is deserted after dusk.

  That was the way it was on this night. I hadn't had a customer in my diner in more than an hour, since just before seven o'clock, and I had about decided to close up early and go on home. To a glass of brandy and a good hot fire.

  I was pouring myself a
last cup of coffee when the headlights swung into the diner's parking lot.

  They whipped in fast, off the county highway, and I heard the squeal of brakes on the gravel just out front. Kids, I thought, because that was the way a lot of them drove, even around here—fast and a little reckless. But it wasn't kids. It turned out instead to be a man and a woman in their late thirties, strangers, both of them bundled up in winter coats and mufflers, the woman carrying a big, fancy alligator purse.

  The wind came in with them, shrieking and swirling. I could feel the numbing chill of it even in the few seconds the door was open; it cuts through you like the blade of a knife, that wind, right straight to the bone.

  The man clumped immediately to where I was standing behind the counter, letting the woman close the door. He was handsome in a suave, barbered city way; but his face was closed up into a mask of controlled rage.

  "Coffee," he said. The word came out in a voice that matched his expression—hard and angry, like a threat.

  "Sure thing. Two coffees."

  "One coffee," he said. "Let her order her own."

  The woman had come up on his left, but not close to him—one stool between them. She was nice-looking in the same kind of made-up, city way. Or she would have been if her face wasn't pinched up worse than his; the skin across her cheekbones was stretched so tight it seemed ready to split. Her eyes glistened like a pair of wet stones and didn't blink at all.

  "Black coffee," she said to me.

  I looked at her, at him, and I started to feel a little uneasy. There was a kind of savage tension between them, thick and crackling; I could feel it like static electricity. I wet my lips, not saying anything, and reached behind me for the coffeepot and two mugs.

  The man said, "I'll have a ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye bread. No mustard, no mayonnaise, just butter. Make it to go."

  "Yes, sir. How about you, ma'am?"

  "Tuna fish on white," she said thinly. She had close-cropped blonde hair, wind-tangled under a loose scarf; she kept brushing at it with an agitated hand. "I'll eat it here."

  "No, she won't," the man said to me. "Make it to go, just like mine."

  She threw him an ugly look. "I want to eat here."

  "Fine," he said—to me again; it was as if she weren't there. "But I'm leaving in five minutes, as soon as I drink my coffee. I want that ham-and-cheese ready by then."