Harry Lipkin, Private Eye

by Barry Fantoni

Other Related Interests: Ethiopian history

  Motive: Raising funds for a new synagogue

  Conclusion: An honest Joe

  Proviso: At least on the surface

  Suspect: Maria Lopez

  Occupation: Maid

  Other Related Interests: The Atlantic Florida’s penthouse

  Motive: Paying for her brother’s bail and her father’s pills

  Conclusion: No one had easier access to Mrs. Weinberger’s rooms

  Proviso: Maria had my prayers

  I was back at the start with a sheet of paper that told me I was out of time and out of ideas. The only card I had left was a night at Mrs. Weinberger’s place and the hope her gonif got to work while I was there. But I’d been in the game long enough to know the odds of that happening were slim. I needed a trap and I needed bait worth biting.

  I called Mrs. Weinberger. It was time to book myself in.

  · THIRTY-THREE ·

  Harry Prepares Mrs. Weinberger

  Ring. Pause. Pause. Ring. Pause. Click.

  “Mrs. Weinberger’s residence.”

  “Hello, Lee. It’s your favorite flatfoot.”

  “Sir?”

  “Slang for gumshoe. Put me through to Mrs. Weinberger.”

  “Please hold.”

  Click. Buzz. Click.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Weinberger? Harry Lipkin.”

  “Good morning!”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Well …”

  “Not too early?”

  “Er … No. I wasn’t expecting you to call, that’s all.”

  “Not interrupting anything, am I?”

  “Drying off, Mr. Lipkin. My first dip of the day.”

  “Alone?”

  “Why? Shouldn’t I be?”

  “I thought Maria helped you dry off.”

  “She does. Later. Not my first dip. Is there a reason for you to ask?”

  “I don’t want anyone to hear what we are saying.”

  “I am always alone at this hour, as the sun rises and while the day is still fresh. I read a book about meditation once that says the first hour of the day is the most important. When the mind is empty, we can fill it with fresh thoughts.”

  “You want me to call back?”

  “No need. I am almost dry. Have you some news, Mr. Lipkin? Is that the purpose for your call? I do hope so.”

  I left a pause.

  “Not news, exactly. More of a carefully thought-out plan.”

  “Well. I suppose that’s something.”

  “Sure is. In this game, something’s always better than nothing.”

  I let her think it through. Then I said, “We talked about me staying over. You remember?”

  “I recall it very well.”

  “I should like to come this evening.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If it’s possible.”

  “So soon?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  “Tonight is fine.”

  I gave it to her firmly. “Mrs. Weinberger. Everything I say from now on must go no further. Is that understood?”

  “Of course.”

  “We have to bait a trap, Mrs. Weinberger. You follow me?”

  “I think so.”

  “The thief must be tempted.”

  “Tempted? In what way, tempted?”

  “Think of a mousetrap. You put out some cheese. The mouse comes out of his hole and, before he knows it, he takes a bite and snap. Curtains.”

  She made a shuddering sound.

  “I hate mice, Mr. Lipkin. Mice and spiders. And snakes. In New York we had mice. Isaac had to call in the pest control people it got so bad. I’d be watching television or doing something and from the corner of my eye I would see this little dark thing scurrying across the floor. Luckily we have very few here.”

  I sighed.

  “But you do have a thief.”

  “I am fully aware of it. Not a minute passes without the thought of my precious belongings being taken from under my very nose.”

  “The strategy I have worked out will be risky.”

  “I am prepared.”

  “You will have to put on display a genuinely valuable piece of jewelry. One with a million-dollar price tag. I shall leave the choice to you.”

  “I’ll go look in my safe.”

  “It has to be an item no robber in the world would pass over.”

  “I have many such pieces.”

  “One will do.”

  “What time shall I expect you?”

  “I plan to arrive at your place after supper.”

  “I have a better plan. Come before, Mr. Lipkin. We can have supper together.”

  · THIRTY-FOUR ·

  Harry Details His Plan over Supper

  Mrs. Weinberger’s dining room overlooked the ocean. The two large windows were half open. The air was refreshingly and naturally cool. I could see tall sails of boats in the distance and a few people on shore below. The night was quiet and still. I could even hear the sound of waves gnawing sand.

  Mrs. Weinberger was standing in front of the table. To one side. Like a waiter in a hundred-dollar-a-head restaurant. Food was laid out like they do for a buffet. Silver dishes. Crystal glass. Folded napkins. Help yourself.

  “Since you told me to be discreet,” she said, “I have told Mr. Lee to take the evening off.”

  “Very sensible,” I said.

  “For tonight, I shall be Mr. Lee.”

  Mrs. Weinberger gestured to one of the two dining chairs facing each other.

  “It’s just a light supper,” she said. “And my table is one hundred percent kosher.”

  I sat down.

  “Can’t beat the real thing.”

  Mrs. Weinberger gave me a contented smile. Then gave herself one to keep it company.

  “We won’t stand on ceremony, Mr. Lipkin,” she said, handing me a plate. “This is, after all, something of an intimate occasion.”

  “Whatever you say,” I said.

  I began digging around. I ended up with some spiced pickled prunes and a blintz. I didn’t fancy either. They just happened to be nearest to me. I was never less hungry. The sleepless night. Maria’s devotion to her brother and the selfless way she showed it. I couldn’t even eat much of the little I took.

  Mrs. Weinberger made up for me. She ate all the avocado crunchies, half a baked kosher salami, a lot of the chopped chicken liver, four salmon pancakes, a big spoon of potato salad, two spoons of roasted eggplant salad, and just a little lime Jell-O salad.

  “Girls like me,” Norma Weinberger said when she was through eating, “we have to watch our waistline.”

  I looked at it. Her waistline. It was covered by a white full-length sleeveless evening number with a Mandarin collar. The silk was spun through threads of silver outlining willow trees and dragons. A laced slit hem crept down to her ankles. Apart from her wedding ring, Mrs. Weinberger wasn’t wearing jewelry. I wondered why.

  “No jewels?” I asked. “I couldn’t help noticing.”

  “I have put everything I have of value in my safe,” she said. “Smart, don’t you think so, Mr. Lipkin?”

  Not only was it a million miles from smart, it was as close to being as dumb as you could get. But I didn’t say so. Insults wouldn’t change it and there was work to do.

  I tried again.

  “Mrs. Weinberger. Think of it this way. I’m the thief. I want to rob you. But you have locked your jewels up tight.”

  The lady across the table looked hurt. She’d made a dumb move. But I couldn’t help Mrs. Weinberger’s feelings. Not if I was going to do the job she was paying me for.

  “I didn’t think of it like that,” she said. “I’ve been very foolish.”

  “It is a mistake anyone can make.”

  “But I didn’t mention what I did,” she added quickly. “About locking my treasures away.”

  “Are you absolutely certain of that?” I said.

  “Not
to a soul.”

  “Not to Mr. Lee? Or Maria? It is very, very important.”

  “Only to you.”

  “Then we are still in business,” I said.

  She gave me a small smile. Like she’d been a real good girl and finished her homework and brushed her teeth and tidied her room.

  I let her smile on for a short while and then pulled her back to the job in hand.

  “Did you think about the bait?” I asked.

  “Oh, that,” she said with a lot of the smile still on view. “I chose an emerald necklace. Mr. Weinberger’s last gift. Almost priceless. Will that be sufficient?”

  “Just dandy,” I said. “Leave it outside your bedroom. On that antique wall table you got under the antique mirror. Leave it like you forgot it. The way you left all the other things that got stolen. My guess is whoever is robbing you goes around when you are asleep and pockets what you forgot to put away.”

  “And where will you be?” she asked.

  “In your bedroom. Where else?”

  Her cheeks flushed borscht red. “My bedroom? Why my bedroom?”

  “Because you can’t get Maria to make me up a bed.”

  She shifted her voice up an octave.

  “Whyever not? I have six guest rooms full of beds. That’s what they are there for.”

  I gave it to her slow and clear.

  “Mrs. Weinberger. If Maria makes me up a bed in a guest room everyone will figure I am staying. No thief is going to put on a striped sweater and a black mask and get their swag bag out if they know I’m on the premises. What we have to do is make them think I have gone home. But I will still be here. Undercover. As soon as they bite, I’ll be right there. Big bear hunter. Bang. One dead grizzly.”

  She touched the back of my hand. Briefly.

  “That’s very brave of you, Mr. Lipkin. Very brave. If it is the gardener, and I am not saying it is, well, Steve is terribly strong. I have seen him chop logs.”

  “I can handle myself,” I said trying hard not to picture Steve with a chopper.

  “But my bedroom.” Norma Weinberger put her palms to her cheeks. “Really, Mr. Lipkin. I don’t know. Honestly. If someone were to discover us. The shanda. I would never live it down.”

  “I won’t be actually sleeping in your bed,” I said. “Not actually with you. I shall be sitting up all night looking through a gap in the door.”

  She looked relieved. I would have preferred a look of disappointment. Old men lose their hair. Their teeth. Their patience. But not their vanity. I told myself to stop being a nebbish and carried on with the plan. Same as before. A word at a time.

  “Since the whole house knows I am having supper with you we will have to fake my leaving. Make it look like I have driven home. But I’ll come back into the house.”

  Mrs. Weinberger rolled her napkin and pushed it into a silver ring.

  “What you are suggesting will not be easy,” she said. “Going out and then coming back. It will be almost impossible.”

  “Why is that?” I asked. “This is a house, not Alcatraz.”

  My client placed the rolled napkin beside her plate. I was asking her to do something she had never done before. Would never do again. It needed nerve. She was beginning to show some. Her reply was clear and firm.

  “Mr. Lee locks all the doors and the main gates and turns on the alarm before he retires. Even on a night off. I don’t see how you can leave without Mr. Lee noticing. Even less so reenter.”

  “I will tell you how,” I said. “You get Mr. Lee out of bed. Tell him to fetch my hat. I put on my hat. You say how much you enjoyed our evening together. I say thank you. Mr. Lee lets me out. You wave me good night. I drive to the end of the side road and pull in out of sight. Mr. Lee goes back to bed. You go to bed. Then after ten minutes, by the light of the moon, you slip out of your room, turn off the alarm, open the front door, open the main gate, and I creep back in.”

  There was a long pause while Norma Weinberger went over it.

  “How certain are you that this plan of yours will work?” she said finally. “I’ll be perfectly candid with you Mr. Lipkin, I have my doubts.”

  “Let me reassure you, Mrs. Weinberger,” I said. “For a detective, slipping back after hours is a regular routine.”

  Her expression moved from total doubt to ninety percent doubt.

  “Is that so?” she said.

  I pushed it home.

  “Sure. It’s a caper that runs smooth as a Brooklyn egg cream. I first used it on the Greek kidnap case back in sixty-five. Let myself out through the door and climbed in through the first-story window. I used the tree outside the bedroom. It never fails.”

  Norma Weinberger’s hand once again reached for mine. But this time her touch was firmer. I felt the cold of her wedding ring against my knuckle. I felt a tenderness under her grip. Her gentle grip on old Harry’s paper-thin skin covered all over in age stains and raised-up veins.

  “I shan’t let you down again, putting all my jewels away. So silly of me.”

  “You will do just fine.”

  The elderly, dignified, and elegant widow of the late Isaac Weinberger let out a tiny sigh.

  “From my heart,” she said. “You have my complete trust.”

  Acid from a pickled prune headed back up my esophagus.

  “Something you should know, Mr. Lipkin,” she added softly. “My trust. I don’t give it often.”

  “Something I don’t get often,” I said.

  Her tender grasp tightened.

  The sky outside had turned indigo. A vast sheet pricked all over with stars. Lights were clearly visible along the highway and in homes dotted around the hills nearby. And there were lights in the cabins of the sailboats and from the beach where people were spending time drinking and eating in the open.

  I saw myself looking at another long and sleepless night.

  · THIRTY-FIVE ·

  Harry Waits in the Dark

  While Mrs. Weinberger got herself ready for the night I dragged an easy chair from her lounge and positioned it behind the bedroom door. I pushed the door shut but left a gap of a couple of inches between the frame and the edge of the door with the hinges. That way I would be out of sight but have a clear view of the table and the bracelet.

  I sat down and got myself comfortable.

  During the furniture shifting Mrs. Weinberger had changed into a silk night robe of the same vintage as her evening dress. Dior’s idea of a kimono but without the high collar. She didn’t get into bed. She sat on top surrounded by cushions, pillows, and bolsters. She looked like someone prepared for a flood. Or an attack by Apaches.

  After a while my client called over.

  “Any sign of anyone yet, Mr. Lipkin?”

  I put my finger to my lips.

  “Mrs. Weinberger. No talking. It will give the game away. The idea is to make out you are alone.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Lipkin,” she more or less whispered. “I am a little scared.”

  “Try to sleep,” I said. “You can’t feel scared if you are sleeping.”

  “I don’t feel sleepy.”

  “Make yourself.”

  “How?”

  “What do you normally do when you can’t sleep?”

  “I read. After a couple of pages I drop off.”

  “Then find a book and read. And no more talking.”

  It was around eleven-thirty when Norma Weinberger turned off the reading light above her bed. It had been the only light in the room. A small soft pool that fell over her shoulders and arms and the paperback in her hands. It was enough for me to work with should I need to. But with the light off and the drapes pulled tight the room was now in total darkness. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. I loosened my tie and took off my shoes.

  Half an hour dragged by.

  A clock somewhere chimed midnight. The moon moved over the house. It shone through the tall windows of the passage leading to the lounge that led to the pool that led to the building beyon
d where all Mrs. Weinberger’s staff, except for Rufus Davenport, spent the night. And it shone on the table and the emeralds. It didn’t matter that I was sitting in the Styx. I could see the passage. That was what mattered.

  The longer I sat the harder it was to keep from sleeping. The chair was big, soft, and snug. The air of the early hours sweet and soothing. Once or twice I dozed off, waking with a sudden jerky jolt. All shaky and with a dry throat. Now and then I thought I heard a noise. As if someone was walking tiptoe out of range. Or maybe it was the rustle of their clothing. But houses you never slept in before are always full of sounds you can’t name. Bats in the attic. Doors not shut tight. Pipes with air in them as well as water.

  Shortly after the clock chimed five I got out of my chair and stretched. I could hear Mrs. Weinberger’s breathing. It was deep and regular. With just an occasional hint of a snore.

  I crossed the room without bumping into anything and made it into the connecting bathroom. Just inside the door I found the light and gave it a tug. A discreet neon bar flickered alive over the sink. I ran cold water from a gold-plated faucet in the shape of a dolphin and threw some over my face. I rinsed out my mouth and turned off the faucet. Then I dried my face with a hand towel and killed the light.

  The next move was to go back to my chair. But I didn’t make it.

  Mrs. Weinberger was standing right in front of me. Her tone was surprisingly calm.

  “The necklace is still on the table, Mr. Lipkin,” she said.

  I stood in silence.

  Norma Weinberger moved to the window and pulled open the heavy drapes. Very pale gray light fell into the room. Soft sea-lit light. The kind of gray-white dawn light that comes only when you live close by the ocean. She then crossed the room to her bed and fiddled around with the covers.

  “The thief will not come now,” she said. “They need the dark. Now there is nothing for a thief to hide in. Is that not so?”

  I nodded.

  “There are still a few hours for us both to get some much-needed rest before the world wakes,” she said. “Do you sleep with one pillow or two?”

  “One is plenty,” I told her.

  “But where will you sleep? I don’t recommend the chair.”