I interrupted.
“The male voice on the phone, Miss Potts,” I said. “Young? Old?”
She stared at me for a few seconds.
“Middle,” she said, then continued reading her notes.
“Mr. Tabatchnick asked the purpose of the call. The man asked if he was handling the Kipper estate. Mr. Tabatchnick said he was. The man asked his name. Mr. Tabatchnick stated it. The man then said he had valuable information in his possession that would affect the Kipper estate. Mr. Tabatchnick asked the nature of the information. The caller refused to reveal it. Mr. Tabatchnick said he assumed then that the information would be available at a price. The caller said that was correct. His exact words were: ‘Right on the button, baby!’ Mr. Tabatchnick then suggested the caller come to his office for a private discussion. This the man refused to do, indicating he had no desire to have his conversation secretly recorded. But he said he would meet with Mr. Tabatchnick or his representative in a place of his, the caller’s, choosing. Mr. Tabatchnick asked his name. The caller said ‘Marty’ would be sufficient. Mr. Tabatchnick asked his address, which Marty would not reveal. Mr. Tabatchnick then said he would have to give the matter some thought but would contact Marty if he or his representative wished to meet with him. Marty gave a number but the call had to be made within twenty-four hours. If Marty did not hear from Mr. Tabatchnick by five o’clock, Tuesday afternoon; February 6th, he would assume Mr. Tabatchnick was not interested in his, quote, valuable information regarding the Kipper estate, unquote, and he would feel free to contact other potential buyers. The conversation was then terminated.”
Miss Potts closed her steno pad with a snap, and looked up.
“Will that be all, Mr. Tabatchnick?” she asked.
He raised his heavy head. “Yes, thank you.”
She drifted from the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
He stared somberly at me.
“Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “Impossible to say, sir. Not enough to go on. Could be attempted blackmail, or attempted extortion, or just a cheap chiseler trying to make a couple of bucks on a fast con.”
“You think I should communicate with this man and arrange to meet him?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I think I should. He said you or your representative.”
“I don’t like it,” Leopold Tabatchnick said fretfully.
“I don’t like it either, sir,” I said. “But I think it wise to meet with him and try to find out what this ‘valuable information’ is he thinks he has.”
“Mmm…yes…well…” Tabatchnick said, drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop.
Then he was silent a long moment, and I had the oddest impression that he knew something or guessed something he hadn’t told me, and was debating with himself whether or not to reveal it. He finally decided not to.
“All right,” he said finally, bobbing that weighty head slowly, “you call him and arrange to meet. Try to find out exactly what it is he’s selling. Refuse to buy a pig in a poke. And don’t commit the firm for any amount, large or small.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Inform him you will deliver his terms to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Inform him that only I can authorize payment under these circumstances.”
“I understand, sir.”
“And endeavor to ascertain his full name and address.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, suppressing a sigh. Sometimes they still treated me like a mailroom boy.
3
WHEN I CAME OUT of Mr. Tabatchnick’s fish-lined sanctuary, I stopped at Thelma Potts’ desk to get the telephone number of the mysterious Marty, then proceeded down the main staircase.
Mr. Romeo Orsini was holding court on the third-floor landing, surrounded by aides, most of them women. He was in his middle sixties, tall, erect, with thick, marvelously coiffed snow-white hair. He carried himself with the vigor and grace of a man one-third his age, and his pink complexion, dark, glittering eyes, hearty good health, meticulous grooming, and self-satisfaction produced the image of the perfect movie or TV lawyer.
Romeo Orsini specialized in divorce actions, and was enormously successful in obtaining alimony and child support payments far in excess of his clients’ most exaggerated hopes. It was also said that he was frequently the first to console the new divorcée.
I was hoping to slip around his group on the landing without being noticed, but his hand shot out from the circle and clamped on my arm.
“Josh!” he cried gaily. “Just the man I wanted to see!”
He drew me close and, not for the first time, I became aware of his cologne.
“Heard a joke I think you’ll appreciate,” he said slyly, grinning at me.
My heart sank. All the jokes he told me involved small men.
“There was this midget,” he began, looking around his circle of aides. They were preparing their faces to break into instant laughter, several of them smiling already.
“And he married the tallest woman in the circus,” Orsini continued. He paused for effect. I knew what was coming.
“His friends put him up to it!” he concluded, followed by guffaws, giggles, roars, and thigh-slapping by his assistants. To my shame, I laughed as loudly as any, and finally broke free to continue my descent, cursing myself.
On the ground floor, I was confronted with the bristling presence of Hamish Hooter, the office manager.
“See here, Bigg,” he said.
That’s the way Hooter began all his conversations: “See here.” It made me want to reach up and punch him in the snoot.
“What is it, Hooter?” I said resignedly.
“What’s this business about a private secretary?” he demanded, waving a sheet of paper in my face. I recognized it as a memo I had forwarded the previous week.
“It’s all spelled out in there,” I said. “I’ve been typing all my own correspondence up to now, but the workload is getting too much. I can’t ask the secretaries and typists to help me out; they all have their own jobs.”
“Dollworth didn’t need a secretary,” he sneered.
“Dollworth was a notoriously poor record-keeper,” I said. “He admitted it himself. As a result, we have incomplete histories of investigations he conducted, no copies of letters he may have written, no memos of phone calls and conversations. Such records could be vital if cases are overturned on appeal or reopened for any reason. I really have to set up a complete file and keep it current.”
“I can’t believe you’re so busy that you can’t handle it yourself,” he said. Then he added nastily, “You seem to have plenty of time to gossip with Yetta Apatoff.”
I stared at him. He really was a miserable character. What’s more, he looked like a miserable character.
He was of average height, but with such poor posture (rounded shoulders, bent back, protruding potbelly) that he appeared shorter. He had an extremely pale complexion, with small, watery eyes set too far apart. His lips were prim, and his nose looked like a wedge of cheddar. He had jet-black, somewhat greasy hair, and he was, I was happy to note, going bald in back. He combed his slick locks sideways in an attempt to conceal the tonsure.
His voice was high-pitched and reedy, somewhere between a whine and a yawp. He also had the habit of sucking his teeth after every sentence, as if he had a little fiber of celery in there and couldn’t get it out. Let’s see, what else… Oh yes, he had eyes for Yetta Apatoff (hot, beady eyes), and that alone was enough to condemn him as far as I was concerned. I knew they lunched together occasionally, and I could only conclude that she accompanied him out of pure kindness, as one might toss a peanut to a particularly disgusting, purple-assed orangutan in the zoo.
“So I gather I’m not getting a secretary,” I said.
“You gather correctly,” he said, sucking his incisors noisily.
I looked at him with loathing. But if I couldn’t outwit that beast, I’d turn in m
y Machiavelli badge. I spun away from him, marched down to my office, slammed the door.
The first thing I did was call Marty’s number. I let it ring ten times, but there was no answer. So I gathered up my notebook, stopwatch, and coat, and started out on a routine investigation.
Yetta Apatoff was at her desk, but she was busy with an elderly couple who were trying to explain something to her in heavily German-accented English. Yetta waggled her delicious fingers at me as I went by. I waggled back.
I spent the morning establishing that a young client could not have robbed a camera store in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue at 40th Street at 12:06 P.M. and travel nineteen blocks in time to be positively identified at an electronics trade show at the Coliseum on Columbus Circle at Eighth Avenue and 59th Street at 12:14.
Three times I traveled from the Bus Terminal to the Coliseum by taxi, three times by subway, three times by bus (making the return trips by cab in all cases). I used the stopwatch and timed each northbound run to the split second, keeping very careful notes.
I completed the time trials at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I had a hamburger and dialed Marty’s number from a pay phone. Still no answer. I was getting a little antsy. Marty had said the deadline was 5:00 P.M.
Yetta Apatoff was on the phone when I entered the TORT building at approximately 3:20. She smiled up at me (a glory, that smile!) and still speaking on the phone, handed me a small sheet of paper. Another memo. This one was from Mr. Teitelbaum’s secretary. I was to call her as soon as I returned.
I went into my office, took off my coat, dialed Marty’s number. Still no answer. I then called Ada Mondora, Teitelbaum’s secretary. She said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, but was busy with a client at the moment; she’d buzz me as soon as he was free.
Then I took off my jacket, sat down at the typewriter, and began to bang out a report on the time trials.
My office, on the first floor, was not quite as small as a broom closet. There was room for one L-shaped desk, with the typewriter on the short wing. One steel swivel chair. One steel armchair for visitors. One steel file cabinet. A wastebasket, a coat tree, a small steel bookcase. And that was it. When Roscoe Dollworth, with his explosive girth, had occupied the premises, this cubbyhole seemed filled to overflowing. I provided a little more space, but the room was still cramped and depressing. No windows. If I succeeded in obtaining a secretary, my next project would be larger quarters to accommodate the secretary. My ambition knew no limits.
I had almost finished typing my report when Ada Mondora called and said I could come up now. I put on my jacket, went into the men’s room to make myself presentable, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“Hi, Josh,” Ada said in her bass rumble. She was pushing fifty and sounded as if she had smoked Coronas all her life. “He’s been trying to reach you all day. You can go right in.”
“Thank you, Ada.”
I went through the approved drill: knocked once, opened the door, stepped in, closed the door gently behind me.
Ignatz Teitelbaum was six years older than the day he hired me, but you’d never know it. Apparently he had reached a plateau, a certain number of years (seventy? seventy-five?), and then just didn’t age anymore. He would go to his grave looking exactly as he did at that moment, the skin leathery, the blue eyes bright, the voice vigorous.
“Sit down, young man,” he said to me.
I chose the club chair closest to the desk. The light from the student’s lamp fell on me, but his face was in shadow.
“A client,” he said abruptly. “Yale Stonehouse. Professor Yale Stonehouse. A very litigious man. You are familiar with the term?”
I murmured wisely.
“Well,” he said. “Professor Stonehouse would sue, at any time, for any reason—or none at all. He sued plumbers and electricians who did repair work in his apartment. He sued his landlord. He sued department stores. He sued cabdrivers and the companies that employed them. He sued newspapers, magazines, manufacturers, hotels, the bus company, the telephone company, Consolidated Edison, the City of New York, the Boy Scouts of America, the makers of Tootsie Rolls, and a poor fellow who had the misfortune to jostle him accidentally on the street. On one occasion, Professor Stonehouse sued the United States of America.”
“Did he ever win, sir?” I asked.
“Rarely,” Mr. Teitelbaum said with a wintry smile. “And when he did, the damages granted were never sufficient to cover the cost of bringing the suit. In one case I recall, the bench awarded him one cent. But Professor Stonehouse didn’t care—or said he didn’t. He insisted the principle involved was all that counted.” Mr. Teitelbaum paused to sigh heavily. “I am not certain Professor Stonehouse was completely sane. He was eccentric, certainly.”
“Was?” I repeated. “Is the gentleman no longer our client? Or is he deceased?”
Mr. Teitelbaum ignored my questions and continued:
“As I said, we attempted to dissuade him from this unwarranted litigation, but he insisted. His suits, ah, provided good experience for some of the younger, newer members of the firm. In addition to the suits, we also handled the legal end of several investments Professor Stonehouse made in real estate and certain other properties. He was, I would say, well-to-do. Exactly how prosperous he was I had no way of knowing, since this firm did not prepare his will nor play any part in his general investments and estate planning. On the one occasion when I asked him if he had executed a will, he replied in hostile tones that it had been taken care of. His reaction to my question was such that I never cared to pursue the matter further. I merely assumed he had a will prepared by another attorney, a not uncommon practice.”
Then he was silent. And I was silent, wondering where all this was leading.
Ignatz Teitelbaum laced his crinkled little fingers on the desktop. He looked down at them, and wiggled one at a time. He seemed surprised that they could still move. Staring at his hands, he continued his story in a quiet, dreamy voice…
“Yesterday, Professor Stonehouse’s wife came to see me. She informed me that her husband had, after dinner one evening, simply walked out of their apartment without saying where he was going and never returned. Not to this date, he hasn’t.”
“Did he leave a note, sir? Did he take any clothes with him? Had he withdrawn any large amounts from his bank accounts? Did he give any hint of his intention to leave?”
Mr. Teitelbaum raised his head slowly to stare at me.
“I asked Mrs. Stonehouse those same questions. Her answers to all were negative.”
“Mrs. Stonehouse went to the police, I presume?”
“Of course. They checked hospitals and the morgue, accident reports, things of that nature. They spoke to the Professor’s associates at New York University. Stonehouse was retired, but was sometimes invited as a guest lecturer. His specialty was British maritime history of the seventeenth century. No one at the University had seen him or heard from him for months. The New York Police Department has listed Professor Yale Stonehouse as a Missing Person. I have some, ah, contacts in the Department and was able to speak to the investigating officer. It is his opinion that the Professor disappeared of his own free will and will reappear eventually for reasons of his own.”
“Does the investigating officer have any evidence for that belief, sir?”
“Not that I was able to determine. Apparently the officer was basing his judgment on his experience and percentages in the analysis of the behavior of missing persons.”
“Do you know, sir, if the investigating officer checked airport, bus terminals, and railroad stations?”
“He did, yes. No record of reservations in the Professor’s name. But that is hardly conclusive. Reservations could have been made under another name, and tickets can frequently be purchased for cash without any reservations at all, as I am sure you are well aware.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But the investigating officer also showed a photograph of Professor
Stonehouse to employees at airports, bus terminals, and railroad stations. No results.”
“Did the Professor own a car, sir?”
“He did. It was still garaged the day after his disappearance.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, sir, that seems to cover it. Can Mrs. Stonehouse offer any reason at all for her husband’s absence?”
Mr. Teitelbaum made a vague gesture.
“She believes the Professor went for a walk and perhaps stumbled and fell or met with an accident that resulted in amnesia, and that he is now wandering the city with no knowledge of his identity.”
“Ummm,” I said. “Possible, sir, but not likely.”
“No,” he said, “not likely.”
“How old was—how old is Professor Stonehouse?”
“Seventy-two.”
“And Mrs. Stonehouse?”
“I would estimate in her late fifties. Perhaps sixty. Their children, a young daughter and young son, are thirty-one and twenty-eight respectively. The Stonehouses were married relatively late in life.”
“Are the children married, sir?”
“No, they are not.”
Then we sat in silence again. I mulled over what I had just heard. I had no ideas about it at all. The Professor’s disappearance was simply inexplicable.
“May I ask a question, sir?” I said finally.
Ignatz Teitelbaum nodded gravely.
“What is our interest in the Professor’s disappearance, sir?”
“Mrs. Ula Stonehouse wishes to retain us as legal counsel,” he said tonelessly. “Her problem is threefold. First, she would like us to employ a private investigator to look further into her husband’s disappearance. I believe I persuaded her that this would be a useless expenditure. I cannot imagine what a private investigator could possibly accomplish that officers of the Missing Persons Bureau have not already done. Do you agree?”
The Tenth Commandment Page 3
