Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  "Well, the place has never been broken into, has it?"

  "Not yet. But there's a first time for everything."

  McIntyre said to me, "This building used to belong to an import-export outfit that dealt in high-priced artwork. They installed a number of safeguards: steel shutters over the windows on the outside, iron gates that you can padlock across the doors and windows on the inside. How can anybody get in through all of that?"

  "It doesn't sound as if anybody can," I said. "But then, it didn't seem anybody could get into the Bank of England, either, and yet somebody did."

  "Exactly," Brinkman agreed. He lit another cigarette; his hands plucked and fidgeted in the air, like a magician doing conjuring tricks behind a screen of smoke. He was one of the most nervous people I had ever encountered; he made me nervous just watching him. "I don't want to take any chances, that's all. This shipment is important to us all -"

  "I know that as well as you do," McIntyre said. "Probably better, in fact."

  Brinkman gave him another irritated look. There was some sort of friction between these two; I wondered what it was. And why Brinkman, the boss, put up with it.

  I said, "I've been a cop of one kind or another for thirty years; if there's one thing I've learned in all that time, it's that there's no such thing as too much precaution against crime. The more prepared you are, the less likely you'll get taken by surprise."

  "That sounds like a self-serving statement," McIntyre said.

  "No, sir, it's not. It's a statement of fact, that's all."

  "Uh-huh. Well, if you ask me —"

  "That's enough, Orin," Brinkman said. "You've got better things to do than stand around here questioning my judgment or this man's integrity. So have I. Now, what did you want to see me about?"

  "One of the bills of lading on the shipment is screwed up." McIntyre sounded faintly miffed, as if he didn't like having been put in his place. It was what he'd tried to do to me, but the "Do unto others" rule was one some men never learned; he knew how to dish it out, but he couldn't take it worth a damn. "You want to talk here, in front of him"—he gestured in my direction—"or in my office?"

  "Your office." Brinkman looked at me. "This won't take long. Then I'll show you around."

  "Fine," I said.

  The three of us went out into the anteroom, and Brinkman and McIntyre disappeared into McIntyre's office. Miss Robbins was busy at her desk, so I went over and stood quietly in front of the wall heater. From there I noticed that, as McIntyre had said, there was an iron-barred folding gate drawn back beside the front door. When it was extended and bolted into a locking plate on the other side of the door, it would provide an extra seal against intruders.

  Brinkman was back in five minutes, alone. He fired another cigarette, hung it on his lower lip, did the conjuring trick with his hands and then led me off on the guided tour.

  II.

  The warehouse door off the anteroom led into a short corridor, beyond which was a section partitioned off with wall board: bathroom on the right, L-shaped shipping counter on the left. And beyond there was the warehouse itself, a wide, spacious area with rafters crisscrossing under a high roof, a concrete floor and white-painted walls. A cleared aisle-way ran straight down its geometrical center to the open rear doors where the warehousemen were unloading the drayage trucks. Built into the joining of the right-side rear walls, ten feet above the floor, was a thirty-foot-square loft; a set of stairs led up to it and its jumble of boxes and storage items.

  To the right of the aisle, down to the loft stairs, were perpendicular rows of platform shelving, with narrow little aisles between them; some of the shelves were filled with merchandise both packed and unpacked, the unpacked boxes showing gouts of either straw packing or excelsior. To the left of the aisle was open floor space jammed with stacked crates, pallets, dollies, bins full of more straw packing and carts with metal wheels—all arranged in such a mazelike way that you could, if you were careful, move among them without knocking or falling over something.

  Brinkman led me through the clutter to the nearest window. An iron-barred gate was drawn across it, firmly padlocked to an iron hasp, and through the windowpane I could see that the outside shutter was in place. When I'd had my look at the window, he took me to the rear doors and showed me that they had double locks and their own set of iron-barred gates. He also mentioned the fact that the walls and roof were reinforced with steel rods.

  The place was a mini fortress, all right. About the only way anybody was going to break in there was with blasting caps or chain saws.

  After we finished examining the security, Brinkman showed me some of the items in the big shipment from Europe and explained what the rest were. In addition to the Hummel figurines and the Murano glass, there were special flamenco dolls from Spain, crystal from Sweden and Denmark, pewter from Norway, Delft porcelain miniatures from Holland, intricate dollhouse accessories from France.

  Looking at all of that, I thought that this was going to be a pretty easy job. I could understand how Brinkman felt, why he was so nervous about the possibility of theft, but the plain fact was, he had very little cause for alarm. In the first place, there was the fortress-like makeup of the building. And in the second place, his merchandise may have been valuable, but it was not the kind that would tempt thieves, professional or otherwise. There are people around who will steal anything, of course, but not very many who were likely to get hot and bothered over Italian glass candy dishes or Delft miniatures. And where would you fence stolen flamenco dolls or French dollhouse accessories?

  I mentioned those facts to Brinkman, just for the record, but it didn't make him think twice about hiring me; he was bound and determined to have a night watchman on the premises for the coming week, as an added precaution, and nothing and nobody were going to make him change his mind. Nor did what I said reassure him much. He was a worrier, and there's never anything you can say that will reassure one of that breed. The more you tell them everything is going to be all right, the more fretful they get.

  Through all of the tour, the warehousemen continued to unload the trucks and wheel crates inside and stack them here and there. There were four of them, three part-timers and Brinkman's full-time "warehouse supervisor," a guy named Frank Judkins. Brinkman intercepted Judkins on his way in with a hand truck loaded with boxes and introduced him to me.

  He was a brawny guy in his forties, tough-looking—the kind you used to see, and probably still could, in longshoremen's bars along the waterfront. He had lank black hair that grew as thickly on his arms, and no doubt on the rest of him, as it did on his head; he also had vacuous eyes and a wart the size of a dime on his chin.

  He said, "How's it going, pal?" as he caught hold of my hand and made an effort to crush the bones in it, either by accident or to show me how strong he was.

  I've got a pretty good grip myself; I tightened it to match his and looked him square in the eye. "Pretty good, pal," I said. "How about yourself?"

  Judkins liked that; he laughed noisily. Some of his teeth were missing, and what remained were either yellow or black with cavities. He let go of my hand and stood there grinning at me like a Neanderthal.

  Brinkman said to him, "Everything going all right out here, Frank?"

  "Yeah. Almost done with the first load."

  "They'll bring the rest of the merchandise after lunch?"

  "Yeah."

  "Good." Brinkman told him I would be coming in at six to assume my night watchman’s duties. "You'll have everything off-loaded and inside by then, won't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "See to it that you do. I don't want this place open after dark."

  "Yeah," Judkins said. It seemed to be his favorite word, probably because it had only one syllable and required no mental effort to utter.

  Judkins grinned at me again and looked at my hand as if he wanted to shake it some more, to see if my grip was really as strong as it seemed. But I didn't have to put up with any more attempts at bone cr
ushing; Brinkman told him to get back to work and steered me away through the shipping area and into the office anteroom.

  Fran Robbins was on the phone when we came in. She said, "One moment please," into the receiver, took it away from her ear and put her hand over the mouthpiece, and tilted her head toward Brinkman. "It's the Consolidated chain," she said. "I think you'd better talk to them, Arth— uh, Mr. Brinkman. There's some problem about their order."

  "Damn," Brinkman said. "Okay, tell them just a second and put 'em on hold."

  She gave him her butter-melting smile. They had something going, all right; I could see it in her eyes. I wondered what those eyes saw in him. But then, de gustibus non est disputandam. Which was a Latin phrase I'd read somewhere that meant there was no accounting for taste. In this world, there was somebody for everyone; and Brinkman was obviously Miss Robbins' somebody.

  He turned to me as she spoke again into the telephone. "I think we've covered just about everything for now," he said. "Unless you have any more questions?"

  "No, I can't think of any."

  "I'll see you at six, then."

  "Right. Six sharp."

  "Your cheque will be ready when you get here," he said, and hurried into his office to take his call.

  I said good-bye to the Jill-of-all-trades, went out to my car and drove downtown to my office on Taylor Street. I checked my new answering machine first; there hadn't been any calls. Then I prepared one of my standard contract forms for Brinkman to sign, stipulating the payment we had agreed upon. And then, because I had no other work to attend to, and because I was going to be up all night, I went home to my flat in Pacific Heights and took myself a nap.

  At five o'clock I was up and dressed and ready to go, and at ten minutes to six I was back at the Brinkman Company, Specialty Imports. The drayage trucks were gone and the warehouse was closed. Miss Robbins and Orin McIntyre and the warehousemen were gone, too; Brinkman was there alone. I gave him the contract form to sign, exchanged a countersigned copy for my retainer check. After we got that taken care of, he took me out into the warehouse again and showed me what he wanted me to do "on my rounds." Which amounted to checking the doors and windows periodically, and making sure none of the straw packing and excelsior caught fire, because they were highly combustible materials. He also warned me not to let anyone in, under any circumstances; there was no reason for anyone to come around, he said, and if anyone did come around, it had to mean they were there to steal something.

  I assured him, with more patience than I felt, that I would do what he'd asked of me and that I was competent at my job. He said, "Yes, I'm sure you are," and fluttered his hands at me. "It's just that I worry. I'll call you later, before I go to bed, to check in. So it's all right for you to answer the phone when it rings." He paused. "You don't mind if I call, do you?"

  "No," I said, "I don't mind."

  "Good. It's just that I worry, you know?"

  He went away pretty soon and left me alone with his $300,000 worth of knick-knacks.

  It was some night.

  The warehouse was unheated, and Brinkman's office, where I spent most of my time, tended to be chilly even with the wall heater turned on. Time crawled, as it always does on a job like this; there was nothing to do except to read the handful of pulp magazines I'd brought with me, eat a late supper and drink coffee from the thermos I'd also brought, and listen to foghorns moaning out on the Bay. Nobody tried to break in. Nobody called except Brinkman at a little before midnight. And the only real night-watching I did was of the clock on the wall.

  Ah, the exciting life of a private eye. Danger, intrigue, adventure, beautiful women, feats of derring-do.

  Thirteen hours of boredom and a half-frozen rear end. Where have you gone, Sam Spade?

  III.

  I got home at seven-thirty, gritty-eyed and grumpy, and slept until two o'clock. When I got up I packed another cold supper, made fresh coffee for the thermos and put everything into a paper sack with some issues of Detective Tales and Dime Mystery from my collection of pulp magazines. Then I drove down to my office to find out if anybody else was interested in hiring me.

  Nobody was. The only message on my answering machine was from somebody who wanted to convert me to his religion; he was reading from some sort of Biblical tract, in a persuasively ministerial voice, when the message tape ran out and ended his pitch. I did a little paperwork and then sat around until five-thirty, in case a prospective client decided to walk in. It was a decision nobody made. And the phone didn't ring either.

  I pulled into the Brinkman Company lot and parked my car next to Brinkman's station wagon at two minutes to six. The weather was colder and foggier than it had been yesterday; the wind off the Bay made wailing noises and slashed at me as I hurried to the office entrance with my paper sack.

  The door was locked, as it had been last night; I rapped on the glass, and Brinkman came out and opened up for me. "I'm glad you're on time," he said. "I have an engagement at seven-thirty and I've got to rush."

  "Everything locked up, Mr. Brinkman?"

  "Yes, I think so. But you'd better double-check, make sure the windows and doors are secure."

  "Right."

  The door to Orin Mcintyre's office opened and McIntyre came out, carrying a briefcase in each hand. He seemed upset; he was scowling and his face was heavy and dark, like a sky full of thunderclouds.

  I said automatically, "How are you tonight, Mr. McIntyre?"

  "Lousy," he said.

  "Something wrong?"

  He looked past me at Brinkman—a look that almost crackled with animosity. "Ask him."

  "Don't make a scene, Orin," Brinkman said.

  "Why the hell shouldn't I make a scene?"

  "It won't do you any good."

  "Is that a fact?"

  Brinkman sighed, made one of his nervous gestures. "I'm sorry, Orin; I told you that I wish you'd understand that my decision is nothing personal; it's just a simple matter of economics -"

  "Oh, I understand, all right," McIntyre said angrily. "I understand that you're a fourteen-carat bastard, that's what I understand."

  "Orin —"

  "The hell with you." McIntyre glared at him and then switched the glare to me. "And the hell with you," he said, and went to the door and slammed out into the windy dusk.

  Through the glass I watched him walk across the lot to his car. When I turned back Brinkman said, "I suppose I can't blame him for being angry."

  "What, happened?"

  "I had to let him go. His work wasn't all it should be, and I really can't afford his salary. Besides, I've been thinking of promoting Miss Robbins, turning the bookkeeping job over to her. She's had accountant's training, and she can handle it along with her other duties."

  Uh-huh, I thought. The firing of McIntyre may have been for economic reasons, but I doubted there was nothing personal involved; I had a feeling Brinkman's relationship with Fran Robbins had had more than a little to do with it. But then, Brinkman's private life was really none of my concern. Nor, for that matter, were his business decisions, except as they pertained to me.

  So I just nodded, let a couple of seconds pass and then asked him, "Everyone else gone, Mr. Brinkman?"

  "Yes." He shot the cuff of his gray sports jacket and looked at his watch. "And I've got to be gone, too, or I'll be late for my appointment. I'll call you later, as usual. Around midnight."

  "Whatever you say."

  I followed him to the door and we exchanged good nights. When he'd gone out I closed and locked the door, using the latchkey he had given me. Imade it a double seal by swinging the barred gate shut across the door and padlocking it. And there I was, sealed in all nice and cozy until seven A.M. tomorrow.

  The next order of business was to shut off the ceiling lights, which I did and which left the anteroom dark except for the desk lamp glowing beyond the half-open door to Brinkman's office. I went in there and put my paper sack down on the desk, came out again and crossed to the door that l
ed back into the warehouse.

  A dull, yellowish bulb burned above the shipping counter, casting just enough light to bleach the shadows past the partitions. None of the overheads was on in the warehouse proper; it was like a wall of black velvet back there with all the windows shuttered against the fading daylight. I located the bank of electrical switches and flipped each in turn. The rafter bulbs were not much brighter than the one over the counter, but there were enough of them to herd most of the shadows into corners or behind the stacks of shelving and crates.

  I made my way through the clutter on the right side of the aisle-way, to the nearest of the windows. The barred gage was as firmly padlocked as it had been last night. There was a second window several feet beyond, to the rear; I had a look at that one next. Secure. Then I moved over to the shelving, down one of the cross aisles past several hundred unpacked crystal candleholders that caught and reflected the light like so many prisms. The single window on that side, too, was both shuttered and barred up tight.

  That left the rear doors. I went down there and rattled the gate and padlock, as I'd done at the windows, and peered through the bars at the double locks on the doors themselves. Secure. A team of commandos, I thought, would be hard-pressed to breach this place.

  To pass some time, I prowled around for fifteen minutes or so, shining my flashlight into dark corners, examining glass vases and tiny pieces of dollhouse furniture, poking through what few purchase orders there were on the shipping counter. Lethargy was already starting to set in; I caught myself yawning twice. But it was as much a lack of sleep as it was boredom. I had never been able to sleep very well in the daytime, and I hadn't had enough rest during the past two days; by the end of the week I would probably be ready for about fifteen hours of uninterrupted sack time. I could have curled up in a nest of straw right here and taken a nap, of course, but my conscience wouldn't allow it. I had never cheated a client in any fashion and I was not about to start now by sleeping on the job.