by Jack Lynch
“No, that was Mrs. Shank. When she brought part of the set up.”
“Oh. Did you two get it on last night, after you left us?”
“Did we what?”
“You know. Slap and tickle and what all that leads to.”
“No, we didn’t do what all that leads to.”
“You didn’t sleep together?”
“If we had it wouldn’t have been any of your business, but it so happens that when we got out to the beach we found…”
I paused. I didn’t know if I wanted to tell her about it or not.
“Go on. You found what?”
“We found that Henry Catlin had been killed.”
“Oh, how awful.” She turned back to the set. “It was because of these, I bet.”
“I don’t really know.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, somehow.”
“What doesn’t?”
“That the rest of us are to get rich for something so many men have been killed over. I’d almost rather the set didn’t exist. Being poor isn’t all that bad.”
“Is your father going to share some of his proceeds with you?”
“Said he’d split fifty-fifty. And he will, once he’s promised. I’m sorry about the other evening. He’s not really greedy, you know. He’s just never had much. None of us have.”
“What do you plan to do with your share of it?”
She flushed slightly and lowered her eyes. “Oh, you’d think me goofy, I’m afraid.”
“No, Brandi. My opinion of you has changed quite a bit since that first night I saw you. You have a lot of good instincts. All you need is a little more experience. I won’t think you goofy.”
“All right, then. I want to go back to school. It was a bad experience for me before, school was.”
“Why was that?”
“It was the boys, mostly. Early on, when my chest started to develop, they made such awful remarks. Then, later, in high school, I never had a decent relationship with a boy. They only wanted to get me in the dark somewhere to grope and feel me up…”
She was staring at the carpet now. She was hurting, and I hadn’t wanted that. I took her hands in mine and gave them a little squeeze.
“It’s okay, Brandi. Boys are jerks. They aren’t all intentionally mean. Lots of times they just don’t know how to handle things. Watching girls develop is a thing of wonder to them. And they have all these strange juices coursing through their own bodies at that age and it’s like you’re a pent-up bundle of contradictions, saying and doing lots of things you don’t always mean. I think going back to school is a fine idea. It won’t be like before. You’ll see.”
She looked up and smiled briefly. “You bet it won’t. I learned a thing or two workin’ in the Vancouver hotels, being a cocktail waitress. First fellow who groped me, I carefully set aside my trayful of drinks and knocked him to the floor. I had a gymnasium teacher once who taught me a vicious punch. She said I’d find it useful from time to time.”
I had to laugh. “What is it you want to study?”
“That’s the really goofy part. Anthropology, I think, or something akin to it. I want to learn more about where we all come from. What sort of folks we were long ago. What all brought us to where we are today. I’d like to be able to help us all point ourselves in the direction we ought to be going for the future. I figure the only way to do that is to go back. Way back.”
“There’s nothing goofy about that, Brandi. In fact it’s the plainest statement of common sense I’ve heard all week. I wish you great luck with it.”
“Thanks. Of course, that’s all after I send myself off to one of your smart Yank fat farms.”
“You’re not fat.”
“It’s nice of you to say, but I’ll be the judge of that, thank you.”
She wanted to go back out and do some more hiking up and down the hills. She and Bowman and the Duchess were meeting her father and Jack later for dinner. She left and I closed up the conference room.
As the day slipped away I was beginning to feel boxed in. Now I had to consider the possibility that Elmo and Fudge would bust in during the session that evening. That wouldn’t do at all. I have a working arrangement with an outfit in town named World Investigations. They are a large outfit. Sometimes they ask me to lend them a hand when they’re long on business and short on personnel. In turn, when I figure I need some backup I pick up the phone and give them a call. I did that now. I asked for four men, and apologized for the spur of the moment request. An hour later the four men were in place. Two of them were down the hall by the elevators. Another was up at the other end of the hall by the stairwell. A fourth man was down in the lobby, dressed to look like a newsdealer who’d stepped inside a moment to get warm. He had access to a phone at the lobby porter’s desk. They were all large and seasoned men. I told them about the two men from New York who were apt to show up.
I should have felt a lot more confident with them in place. It didn’t work out that way. I went into the conference room and stared some more at the chess set. It was dark out and I had the lights on by now. The pieces twinkled and gleamed and made me think about Harry Shank and Henry Catlin and a marine captain dead these many years out in Asia. The set had me spooked.
I went out and phoned the World office back and asked them to send over two more men and told them where I wanted them. If I got a $40,000 commission out of all this I could easily afford them. I was hoping their added presence would bring me some peace of mind. It didn’t, but I tried not to show that when the clients came trooping in a little after seven-thirty.
Edward Bowman was clad in gray again. It seemed appropriate. The Duchess wore a dated suit of forest green. She was tired from the day’s campaign on the sidewalks and in the stores, but her eyes glittered. Brandi was radiant as well.
Battersea and Jack were half pie-eyed, as I’d expected them to be. Those two shouldn’t have been sent out on any beer route together. We were making small talk out in the reception area when Erica arrived, cool and distant, dreaming her own dreams.
I unlocked the conference room door and took them in to show off the chess set. They were somber as they regarded it, even Brandi, who’d seen it all before.
“What’s that bloody thing?” Jack asked his friend, blinking.
“It’s what we all came home from the war with,” Battersea told him. “Only we didn’t know it at the time.”
Bowman was regarding the set soberly. He looked up. “Where’s Catlin, by the way? Didn’t think he’d let his pieces out of his sight until he got paid.”
“He’s no longer a part of this,” I told them. “He had an accident.”
“What sort of accident?” the Duchess asked.
“He was shot in the head, just like Harry,” Erica told them. “He’s dead. He was that way in my bathtub when we got home last night.”
“Poor devil,” said Battersea quietly.
“Do you know who did it?” asked Bowman.
“No, but whoever it was went back and removed his body while I was seeing that Mrs. Shank got out of town safely.”
The Duchess turned back to the chess set.
“I suppose it was because of this,” she said quietly.
“It would seem that way,” I told her.
The phone rang out on Ceejay’s desk. I went out to answer it. It was the World lookout in the lobby. He described two men on their way up. They sounded like Elmo and Fudge. I felt a great sense of relief. I told the others to stay in the conference room and went out to alert the men in the corridor. I waited with the two at the elevator. This time I had my .45 out when the car arrived and the door opened. Elmo and Fudge looked out at us warily.
“It’s the two I told you about,” I said to the World men.
Elmo and Fudge didn’t have time to resist even if they’d felt like it. The World men had them out of the car and leaning against the wall in search position very quickly.
“What’s the matter with you, Bragg?” Elmo demanded.
“You gone crazy?”
“No, I just didn’t like the way you came in here the last time.”
The World men lifted a magnum revolver off of each of them. During the pat down they also found a .32 caliber automatic in a holster strapped to one of Fudge’s legs.
“Me, I think he’s crazy,” Fudge said to his partner. He turned his head to address me. “You have any idea what’ll come down on you if anything happens to us, jerk?”
“No, I’ll just sit and tremble about it. I know how mean and tough you two can be when you have the advantage on somebody. I’ve also seen you turn tail and run when somebody shoots back, like up in Washington the other night.”
“We were outnumbered up there,” said Fudge.
“No, you weren’t. There were just the two of us. Me and the guy who got away.”
Elmo’s head turned. “You the one who got Peek?”
“No, the other man did that. I’m the one who shot the legs out from under the fat guy in front. I never saw a couple of guys move faster than you two did after that. Do you practice that? Carrying off your wounded like that while you’re running away?”
Fudge turned his head toward Elmo. “We gotta do something to this jerk before we leave town.”
“Why don’t you just shut up for a while?” Elmo told him.
The World men handcuffed them and herded them down the hall and over to my office. I went in and lifted the whiskey carton off the footlocker, slit the duct tape and spilled the money out onto the top of my desk.
“Jesus Christ,” said Elmo. “Where did that come from?”
“From an air freight office,” I told him. “It’s the money Buddy Polaski stole. Or at least as much as he shipped out here.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Elmo asked.
“Give it back to you.”
Fudge looked at Elmo. “He’s not only a jerk, he’s a stupid jerk.”
I smiled. “Not really. I just try to run a business out of here. It’s not a great business, but it’s mine and I make enough from it to keep food on the table and gin in the refrigerator. Only I can’t very well carry on my business with a couple of guys all weighted down with guns busting in and banging me around. So after you were here the other night I decided I had three options. One, I could kill you.”
A grin spread across Fudge’s face. “What?”
“I’ve had to do that before, sonny. To men bigger and meaner than you two are. But that wouldn’t really let me go on about my business because New York would only send out somebody else. Not so much because of what I might do to you two. You’re just workaday pugs. But they’d still want the money Buddy Polaski ran off with. Or else I could turn you over to the San Mateo County authorities and let them put you away in state prison for a few years, but that still would leave New York in the position of having to send somebody else after the money. So I just decided to do a little legwork for you and find the money. Like I said, it was at an air freight office. It was flown out about the same time that Buddy Polaski came out, but on a different flight. Does it look like about the right amount to you?”
The two of them stared at the money a minute.
“It looks about right,” Elmo said quietly.
“Good. Then you don’t have to hang around town any longer. You can take the money now and fly back to New York. There’s no rush about it. Anytime tonight will do. And don’t come back here. And that is not an idle threat.”
“Fuck you,” said Fudge.
I just looked at him a moment. I bet myself he’d been big for his age all his life. He’d probably been bullying people for about as long.
“Take his cuffs off,” I told the World men.
They hesitated, then did as I said. “How are your wrists?” I asked Fudge.
He rubbed them a moment, then planted himself like a dummy. “Fine.”
I’d had a lot of tension building up in me all day long. I guess I put it all into the punch. I caught him on the left cheekbone. I could feel it crunch and spread out some under my fist. Fudge went down like a bag of sand, his eyes rolling back into his head. He didn’t move at all.
“Jesus Christ,” Elmo said again. He stared down at his partner for a moment, then raised his head. “I never seen anyone who was able to do that to him before. Where did you learn to hit like that?”
“In an alley. In Seattle.”
Elmo shook his head. “He’ll be more scrambled than ever, now.”
I turned to one of the World men. “There’s a bathroom between the two offices over on the other side of the suite. Get some water and bring him around, then get them out of here. Let them take the money with them. Take the ammunition out of their guns and give them back to them when they’re on the street outside. Then go back to what you were doing before. If these two try to come back, do whatever you want with them.”
I turned to Elmo. “You seem like an intelligent man. You know that I am very serious about this.”
He looked at me gravely. “I know.”
I turned and went back to the conference room. Fifteen minutes later the attorney arrived.
NINETEEN
Lansberry was a tall, no-nonsense individual with graying hair and cold eyes. He was accompanied by a man with a sharp-featured face and medium build named Smock. After introductions were made Smock went directly to the set. He put a small bag on the table nearby.
“Mr. Smock is familiar with the background of the Mediterranean Chess Set,” said Lansberry crisply. “He will examine the set to authenticate it and make sure each and every piece is genuine. Then I am to telephone my client. He is in New York this evening. He is prepared to make you an offer as soon as I notify him it is indeed the Mediterranean set.”
“What happens if he makes a bid and these people accept?” I asked.
“We have made arrangements to have the set transferred, with your permission, to a bank vault. My client has major holdings in the parent corporation of one of the banks here, so that these rather irregular arrangements are possible. Formal transfer of ownership can take place Monday morning. If a price has been agreed upon, we will be prepared to issue checks within the hour. Or, one or all of you might prefer a partial payment and deposit of the remainder, or your entire share, in some other country. I’m not sure how the Internal Revenue Service might view these proceedings, but there is no need for them to have any part in things if you don’t want them to.”
My clients seemed to think that wasn’t a bad idea.
“I’ve sort of been riding shotgun on these things,” I told Lansberry. “I think I’d like to tag along and see that they get into the vault safely.”
“Certainly, Mr. Bragg. We’re using one of the local armored truck firms, but if you would feel better about it riding along…”
“I would.”
“So be it.”
Smock had taken off his coat and was busy examining the individual chess pieces. He wore a jeweler’s scope like the one Mr. Minzer had, and he’d taken several small vials from his bag. He’d also opened out several sheets of typewritten notes that he referred to from time to time. It was no cursory examination. He went over each of the pieces very thoroughly.
Lansberry had hardly glanced at the set since arriving. He was all business. Dealing with a fortune in jewels might have been an everyday occurrence, for all the interest he showed.
The phone on Ceejay’s desk rang again. I went out to answer it. The lookout in the lobby was on the line again. He said another man was on his way up, and described him. I hung up and went back to the doorway and called Erica over. I led her back out to Ceejay’s desk.
“That was the lookout downstairs. He said somebody else is on his way up. From his description it sounds like Bryan Gilkerson.”
“It probably is. I had a drink with him after I left this afternoon. He’s still after the story, you know. I suggested he stop up here this evening. I did owe him a favor for taking me in, after all. And now that it’s almost finished I didn’t
see that there would be any harm to it.”
“Maybe there isn’t. I’d still rather you hadn’t invited him, until it was all over and done with. You don’t really know Bryan all that well…”
“I think I do, Peter.” She was staring at me levelly, her voice calm and controlled. “He’s the ‘other arrangements’ I made for my trip. It’s why I can’t meet you somewhere.”
I just looked at her. Part of it was starting to fall into place. Not all of it. But it explained some of Erica’s behavior. It was a funny moment, but then Erica was a funny sort of a person. I’d known that all along.
“Bryan doesn’t have the money to run off places like that. I guess it’ll be your treat.”
“With Catlin gone, there’s so much money for the rest of us, what difference does it make?”
“Not much, I guess.”
The World men who had been at the elevator came in with Bryan Gilkerson. I sent the World men back out. Bryan stood hesitantly just inside the office.
“I guess so long as you’re here, Bryan, you might as well get a look at what this is all about. Come on in.”
He and Erica followed me back into the conference room. I made introductions again, then showed Bryan the chess set. He stared at it solemnly for several moments.
“I never knew there were such things,” he said quietly.
We were all staring at the set again in the silent room. That’s when the Duchess must have seen something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and gasped. I spun around. Elmo and Fudge stood again just inside the conference room.
Fudge looked awful. His cheek had ballooned out and turned purple.
“Everybody just stand still,” Elmo ordered sharply.
They had their guns leveled at us and I knew they would have more bullets in them. I wondered what had happened with the World men. Fudge’s left eye was nearly closed and he moved hesitantly, but he did move, and made directly for Brandi. She gaped at him with her mouth open. When he got to her Fudge touched her shoulder and turned her so that she was standing just in front of him. He wasn’t at all rough with her, just very deliberate. It made him even more menacing. He held his large revolver to the back of Brandi’s head. When he spoke, the swollen cheek slurred his speech some.
