by Steve Brewer
Jesus Christ. I tried to think back to all the pictures I’d looked at. The pictures of the King and the Bear. There’d been a lot of pictures of the King, but very few of the Bear. But the thing was, had they ever been together?
I couldn’t recall.
I left Sallingsworth with the bottle and drove straight home. But I must admit, if I could have been certain the cops weren’t following me, and it hadn’t been the middle of the night, and the post office hadn’t been closed, I would have loved to have swung by and asked if they had a package for one Stanley Hastings at General Delivery.
25.
I WOKE UP THE next morning wondering what the fuck to do. The problem, of course, was I was afraid I was being followed. And as I’d told Sallingsworth, I can’t spot a shadow to save my life. And if the cops were following me, I couldn’t think of anything that was safe for me to do. I certainly wasn’t going to drive by the Dunleavy house. And it was a little early to check out the casino—I couldn’t imagine Tallman being there in the morning. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to lead the cops to Tallman or not.
When you came right down to it, I finally realized, even if the cops weren’t following me, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
I thought about it, and the way I saw it, all I could really do was hang out and wait for Minton to get back from Las Vegas and get me off the hook. That would probably pull the cops off my tail, and then I’d be free to operate.
I thought about it some more and decided, hell, it’s a nice day, I’m going to the beach.
I put on my swimming suit, which Alice had thoughtfully packed for me, along with a pair of tennis shoes and a t-shirt, got in my car, and drove downtown.
I pulled into the garage at Tallman’s Casino—God bless free parking—left all my valuables in the glove compartment, locked the car and put on the code alarm.
I walked through the casino, resisting the one-armed bandits, and went out the back door to the Boardwalk. I strolled along the Boardwalk till there was an opening down to the beach. I wondered if this stretch of beach was reserved for Tallman’s guests only, if someone would challenge my right to be there, and kick me off.
No one did. I pulled off my shirt and my shoes and socks, stuffed my ignition key into the toe of a shoe, and walked down into the water.
It was great. I waded out into the surf, playing “Wave, wave, don’t get my knee,” a game I play with my son Tommie, when we vacation at the seashore. By the time I got up to “Wave, wave, don’t get my chest,” a big one came and hit me in the face, and I was all the way in.
I tried riding the waves for a while, but they weren’t really big enough, and I wound up scraping a lot of skin off my stomach. So I waded out just beyond where the waves were breaking and stood there, bobbing up and down as they rolled by me before crashing onto the shore.
I wondered if I was being followed. It was a happy thought. I could imagine the cops, even now, calling back to Major Crimes: “Send me a bathing suit. Yes, damn it, a bathing suit.”
I stayed in the water for some time.
And did some thinking.
What I thought about mostly was what would happen when Minton came back. He would exonerate me, which was good, but in doing so, he’d probably pull Harold Dunleavy right into it. I wondered if Harold had been stupid enough to give his right name. I figured he hadn’t. If he had and it was in the agency records, the cops would have followed up on it and found him, and, when confronted with Harold Dunleavy, even that stupid secretary would have picked him over me.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that Harold Dunleavy’s name was not in the agency records. But that led to another unsettling thought: in all probability, there was noname in the agency records. Because if there had been, Barnes and Preston would have sprung it on me. They’d have popped in the door saying, “Julius Gottsagoo,” just like they’d confronted me with “Phil Collins” and “Robert Fuller,” the other aliases I’d allegedly used.
I couldn’t imagine a firm keeping no records at all. After all, they would want to be paid for their work.
So, thinking along those lines, I came up with my worst-case scenario: Minton would return from Vegas. He would take one look at me and say, “No, that’s not the guy.” Then he would reach in his jacket pocket, pull out his notebook, and say, “I have it right here. The man who hired me is Harold Dunleavy, of Absecon.”
I stayed in the water until I started to shrivel up like a prune. Then I went back, got my car, and drove back to the hotel.
There was a cop waiting for me.
“Barnes wants to see you,” he said.
I was sure that he did. That probably meant Minton was back in town. That figured.
What didn’t figure was why a cop was waiting for me at the hotel. If Barnes was having me followed, he wouldn’t need to send a cop there to wait for me. He’d just have one of the boys on the job pass on the message. So it appeared Barnes was taking me at my word and leaving me alone.
Unless that’s what he wanted me to think, and that’s why he’d done it.
It’s hard when you start double-thinking yourself.
The cop drove me out to Major Crimes. He took me inside to the same room where they’d kept me before. He didn’t chain me to the wall, though, which I found encouraging. He went out and left me alone.
A few minutes later Barnes and Preston came in, escorting a bald, fiftyish-looking gentleman in a wilted suit. I figured he was Minton, and I figured right.
The cops didn’t talk to me, they talked to him.
“Now, Mr. Minton,” Barnes said. “I know you’ve already seen the picture, but we want to be absolutely sure about this. So, please, take a good look at him.”
“I’m sure,” Minton said. “There’s no question about it.”
“We want to be sure there’s no mistake.”
“There’s no mistake.”
Barnes and Preston looked at each other. They did not look happy. I knew how they felt. With the secretary and Miss Busybody already having made the identification, this had to be a real kick in the ass.
“You’re absolutely sure of the identity of the man who hired you?” Barnes said.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Minton said. “Yes, I’m absolutely sure.”
“And can you tell us what name the man gave you?”
“Of course,” Minton said. “I have it right here.”
It was just as I’d imagined it in my worst-case scenario. Minton reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook.
“I keep all my appointments in here,” Minton said. “So there’s absolutely no question of mistake.”
He riffled through the pages.
“Here we are,” he said, pointing to it. “I have it written right here. And it’s just as I told you. The man who employed me was one Stanley Hastings, the man standing right there.”
26.
I BELIEVE I’VE already mentioned that I’m not the world’s greatest detective. I would even go so far as to say I’m not in the top ten. If the truth be known, I need all the help I can get. And I must admit, I am not very good at complex and baffling crimes. Simple crimes are a little bit more in my line. And even then I’m not too good at figuring them out. Usually, what it takes for me to crack a case, is for someone to tell me who did it.
I have to admit, Minton’s statement came as a bit of a shock. And my initial reaction was the one you would expect: total panic. I once again felt the feeling of cold, clammy fear, the feeling I had felt when I learned Miss Busybody had identified me. I must say it was worse this time, because it was so unexpected. Not that Miss Busybody’s identification hadn’t been unexpected—it had—but this had the added kick of being the reverse of what I’d expected. Instead of exonerating me, Minton had stuck my neck in the noose.
But he’d done something else, too. And as soon as I got over the initial shock and calmed down somewhat, I realized what it was. He’d d
one the thing that I always need done for me in a case like this.
He’d told me who did it.
Minton was lying. Miss Busybody and the stupid secretary could have been mistaken, but not Minton. Minton was lying. And if Minton was lying, he had to have a reason. And the only reason that made any sense was that he was guilty. That he was the murderer.
So actually Minton had done me a favor.
Although, at the present time, I wasn’t in any position to appreciate it.
All three men were looking at me.
“Well,” Barnes said. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Do you admit you hired this man?”
“Absolutely not.”
“He says that you did.”
“He’s lying.”
Barnes and Preston looked at each other. They shook their heads. Laughed.
“Sure,” Barnes said. “He’s lying. His secretary’s lying. And Steerwell’s next-door neighbor is lying.”
“No,” I said. “They’re mistaken. He’s lying.”
“I see,” Barnes said. “Everyone’s wrong but you.”
“That’s right.”
“And I suppose this entry in Minton’s notebook is a mistake, too,” Barnes said, with elaborate sarcasm. “He probably meant to write some other name, but accidentally wrote the name Stanley Hastings instead.”
“May I see the notebook,” I said.
“Why?”
“I’d just like to see it.”
Barnes thought that over. “You can’t touch it, but you can look.”
He took the notebook from Minton, turned it around, and held it open for me to see.
“Just as I thought,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s a loose-leaf notebook.”
“So what?”
“The pages are not dated.”
“No. The dates are written in pen.”
“Exactly.”
“So what?”
“The page with my name on could have been written at any time. It could have come from the back of the notebook. Minton could have taken a page from the back, dated it, written my name on it, and then stuck it in the book in the proper sequence. It could have been done an hour ago.”
Minton smiled, a cold, thin smile. “You don’t quit, do you?”
“No I don’t, Mr. Minton. Now you claim I came to your agency and hired you?”
“You know you did.”
“Fine. And just what did I hire you to do?”
Minton smiled and shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“What?!”
“You came to me and said you wanted to hire a private detective for a routine surveillance job. I told you my rates were two hundred dollars a day plus expenses. You griped about the price a good deal, but eventually you agreed to pay it. As soon as we’d agreed to terms, I assigned the case to Steerwell and turned you over to him to discuss the details.” Minton turned to Barnes. “You understand, this was just routine. I no longer do my own legwork. I’m an administrator, and my main job is fixing fees. I have a number of operatives working for me, and I farm the work out to them on an hourly basis. In routine cases of this kind, I don’t concern myself with the specifics of the case, I leave it to the operative, in this case, Steerwell. Of course, my operatives are well trained, and in the event a routine assignment should develop into something more, the operative would report to me, and if the situation warranted, then I would personally involve myself in the case. At least to the point of adjusting fees.”
God, he was good. Smooth and oily enough to make your flesh crawl, but good.
“Are you trying to tell me,” I said sarcastically, “that you go ahead and fix fees without knowing the specifics of a case?”
“Certainly not,” Minton said. “If I might have my notebook back.” He took it from Barnes and referred to it. “Now in your case, what you requested was a simple surveillance, one man, eight hours, in this case eight o’clock to four o’clock. It was a straight shadowing job, nonelectronic, no extras.” He looked at me and smiled. “At least, that is what you kept stressing in the meeting when you were attempting to get me to reduce my fees. If you’ll recall, as I told you, two hundred is a flat minimum, and all those things would have been extras, anyway.”
“You son of a bitch,” I murmured. It was as much in awe as in anger. God, he was cool.
Minton opened his mouth, but Barnes jumped in quickly. “I think that’s all, Mr. Minton. You’ve been very cooperative, and I wouldn’t want you to wind up getting into a squabble with the suspect. Why don’t you leave us to sort these things out?”
“Certainly,” Minton said. “If I can be of further assistance.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Barnes said.
Preston stepped aside, and Minton went out the door. The cops watched him go, then turned to face me.
I wouldn’t want you to get the impression I was getting any braver. The fact is, I was scared shitless. Minton had left me up the creek without a paddle, and my chances of getting back down again appeared slim.
But the thing is, when you’re totally fucked, you got nothing left to lose.
Which is why I couldn’t resist.
I spread my arms wide, palms up, shrugged my shoulders, cocked my head, and smiled.
“Well,” I said. “Here we are.”
27.
“WELL, WHAT DO WE do with him now?”
“That, of course, is the question,” Barnes said.
“I guess we should talk it over.”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you suppose we should talk it over with him?”
“I don’t know if he wants to talk to us.”
“Well, he certainly wanted to talk to Minton.”
“Yeah, well, that’s only natural,” Barnes said. “After all, he employed him. You always want to talk to the guy you hired. Find out if you made a good investment. If you’re getting your money’s worth. It doesn’t mean he’ll want to talk to us. He didn’t employ us.”
“Well, he’s a taxpayer, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he’s from New York.”
“That’s true.”
“So he probably won’t talk to us.”
“We could ask him.”
“I suppose so.”
“Does this mean we have to read him his rights again? I’m getting mighty sick of it.”
“I’m getting mighty sick of it, too.” Barnes turned to me. “Mr. Hastings, would you like to do us all a big favor and stipulate that your rights have been read? I’d hate to drag Preston through it again.”
God, these guys were good. It was psychological torture of the worst kind. A third degree would have been a relief compared to it. Anything rather than their inane, jovial banter.
“All right, look, guys,” I said. “I know you’re having a good time. But frankly, this is a little hard for me to handle. I don’t do murders. I do broken arms and legs. Then this thing comes along. The witnesses blow an identification and suddenly I’m a murder suspect. Then I have to wait a whole day for the guy to come who can get me off the hook. And then, for some reason that I cannot fathom, he screws me instead. Now, I would just love to play macho with you boys, and keep up the bright, snappy patter. But I happen to be a card-carrying coward, and the truth is, I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So do whatever the hell it is you guys gotta do, because I am not the swiftest thinker in the world, and I have to adjust to being kicked in the face here.”
Preston looked at Barnes.
“Emotional isn’t he?”
“I’ll say.”
“It would appear we are going to have to continue this conversation without him.”
“It would appear so.”
“Why don’t we do so, and then on the off chance his thought process should catch up with him, he can feel free to chime in.”
“O.K.,” Preston said. “So what have we got?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s too stupid, even for him.”
“Exactly. If an educated person were going to try to lie his way out of it, he would come up with something more convincing than an implausible flat denial.”
“I agree.”
“So why is he doing it?”
They both looked at me.
I said nothing. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to say nothing. It was simply that by then my brain was Jell-O. I just gawked at them.
“O.K.,” Barnes said. “Ridiculous as it sounds, let’s suppose for a moment that this guy is telling the truth.”
“I find that hard to swallow.”
“So do I. But let’s just take it as a premise. O.K., if this guy is telling the truth, what does it mean?”
“It means Minton is lying.”
“That’s one thing. Now, why would Minton lie?”
“Because he’s mixed up in it, of course.”
“Of course. Which would make sense. He is Steerwell’s boss. And there are those pictures Steerwell took.”
“The ones our friend here took.”
“Allegedly took. Do be fair, Preston. But leave that for a while. What about the other witnesses?”
“What about ’em?”
“The other witnesses can’t be lying. Well, the secretary could, because she works for Minton, but not the next-door neighbor. That’s too much to swallow. Unless you can find some way to connect her with Minton. But once you connect her with Minton, you get her coincidentally living next to Steerwell, and—it’s just too much, it’s too much, forget it.”
“I agree.”
“So, if this guy is telling the truth, and those witnesses aren’t lying, then it must be as he says. They’re mistaken.”
