That got a rise. 'No?' Pigeyes asked. Skeptical, you might say.
'No. Here's how it ran. Archie is a tout, but he's an actuary to start. Clever with computers. Does his number runs. Let's say there are some gentlemen, we'll call them Valpolicella and Bardolino, V & B, who just always seem to get certain Mid-Ten games right. Let's say Archie notices. The nature of the world is that Archie is supposed to keep such thoughts to himself. V & B are making suckers out of the suckers, and Archie's getting a break on his street tax.
'But let's imagine Archie's got a buddy - a real good-type close intimate friend.' I hit Pigeyes's peepers to make sure he got it. 'Archie clues him on this info. The friend, a certain hotshot partner in a certain big law firm, starts betting what V & B do, winning big. So far so good?'
Pigeyes somewhere had acquired a photo of Bert and he withdrew it now from the many layers of his coats.
'Good-lookin here? We sayin he's that way?'
'How you talk, Gino. Let's not get too personal, okay? Just remember, you're the one who told me about Archie. Pecker tracks in the porthole, didn't you say?'
He and Dewey liked that one. Brushy covered her eyes.
'Anyway, Bert, which is what I'll call this lawyer hypothetically, he tries to be discreet, but these guys at the Russian Bath are always in each other's pockets and heads, they've got to know everyone's action. One thing leads to another. And pretty soon everybody there realizes that Bert, or Kam Roberts as he's called when he's putting down money, is hitting big on certain games. Now he's not about to explain why. Everybody sweating there is in Archie's book. It's bad business to favor one customer. And the reasons for doing so are highly personal. So Archie and Bert start this little thing like it's Kam Roberts who's got inside stuff. But it isn't. It's Archie all along.
'Sooner than Archie hoped, V & B hear about what's going down at the Russian Bath and they know sure as shooting the info ain't from any Kam flippin Roberts. It's their proprietary confidential trade-secret business-time information and Archie's peddled it, denting their odds, and they let it be known that Archie is about to literally have his private parts fed to some mutt. Archie scoots and V & B start hunting, which brings them pretty quickly to Bert's door. They give Bert the choice - twenty-four hours to dig up Archie or he's the one who's dog food. So Bert scrams too. Until one of his intrepid partners who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy arranges what we might call an amnesty. High-priced. Could be, hypothetically, that Bert is repaying his profits at interest rates that exceed the ceiling on usury.'
Brush, when I glanced her way, was sunk back in her desk chair regarding me with an uneasy eye. It troubled her, I suspect, to see me lying with such elan.
'And?' Pigeyes asked me.
'And what?'
'And where's this crumb Archie? Today?'
'I'd look in the sanitary canal. Watch what comes out of the treatment plant. That's the way I hear it. V & B found him. He's got something around his neck besides his tie. And if your people on the street are half as good as they used to be, Gino, you've heard the same thing.'
Whacking a guy, making him dead, is not something anybody owns up to, but word spreads. It has to. It's the way those guys keep everybody in line.
Lucinda knocked. 'Mr Gold,' she said.
'Tell him five minutes.'
'He wants to talk to you right now.'
'Five minutes,' I repeated.
Lucinda stepped to the phone and pressed a button. She held out the extension. It's been this poor woman's lot for years to protect me from myself.
'We are not amused,' Martin said when I put the handset to my ear.
'I'm busy.'
'So I hear. What, pray tell, are you and the nice policemen discussing?'
'Detective Dimonte had some questions about Bert.' I smiled at Gino when I mentioned his name.
'We're not talking high finance?'
'Bert,' I said.
'Did Bert do something else that was naughty?'
'Never kid a kidder, Martin. I'll be up in one minute. We're just about done.' I put the phone down without allowing further comment.
Gino was waiting. 'So this Kam Roberts thing was strictly an act?' he asked. 'Exactly.'
'Except there's a Kam Roberts.' Pigeyes sneered.
'No. There's a certain young man who's used Bert's bank card a few times. That doesn't make him Kam Roberts.'
'No? Who is he?'
'Friend of Bert's.'
'Another one? Good-lookin's real frisky, isn't he? He's two-timing the other guy?'
'Hey, Gino, call it what you like. But remember, I used to ride with you. I've seen you stop off with three different gals on the same shift.''
He was flattered, of course, by the memory. He stole a glance toward Brushy, hoping she was impressed. Someday I'd have to tell Pigeyes about Nueve.
'Anyway, there's this young man,' I said. 'Bert's piling up a lot of credit on the card, so he's got plenty to share. Now it could be, hypothetically, this young man, he's got a connection to the U. Maybe he's the one who let a certain middle-aged lawyer into the refs' room the other night so Bert and the middle-aged lawyer could confer outside the watchful eye of the law in the hopes of straightening some of this out.'
'That so?' Gino asked.
'Could be,' I said and rested on a chair arm to see how it had gone down. Better, it seemed, than I might have thought. I was trying like hell for Bert's sake and my own, vamping like crazy, and when it came to Gino, there was no end to my daring. But I still thought I'd gone over the top. The whole thing was too much, too curious, way too lame. I didn't know what I'd do if, for instance, they wanted to quiz the young man from the U. And there wouldn't be any smart answers if Gino ever started matching the games the guys at the Bath called Kam's Specials with the ones officiated by Friday night's referees.
But the great thing with people is that you never know. After two weeks of riding my fanny, chasing me everywhere, and spooking my dreams, Gino seemed to have run out of gas. Not that he believed me particularly. He knew better than that. But he was clearly afraid the prosecutor's office would toss him out on his keester because he was nowhere near beyond a reasonable doubt. Bogus or not, I'd touched all the bases; it was a comprehensive defense. And my history with Gino was enough to make a conscientious deputy PA think twice anyway. Pigeyes didn't come to these conclusions peaceably. When he looked at me, his eyes were stilled by a hatred entirely void of goodwill, like black being the absence of color, but I could see he knew I had him beat.
He turned to Dewey, who shrugged. Go figure. They both got to their feet. 'Great to see you again, Gino.' 'Yeah, really,' he offered.
Lucinda peeked in, beckoning, and I followed her out, departing with a cheerful wave as Brushy started with Gino and Dewey toward the door. Lucinda had a note: 'Bert's on the phone.' I picked up in my office.
'Listen,' I said. 'I've settled your problems. Those guys won't be looking for you anymore.'
The line gathered static. I could hear from the gray roar behind him that Bert was on a pay phone somewhere near a highway.
'Humor, right?' he asked.
'Don't ask me how. You're done. D, o, n, e. I've got it squared with the coppers too. What you oughta do is get down here. You'll probably need to answer some questions about Jake.' Mathigoris from TN security would want to go over the whole thing many times. The memo, the checks. Jake telling Bert to keep it strictly hush-hush. 'And what about -'
‘I covered both of you. Go rent a tux and get over here. It's GH Night.'
'God,' he said softly. I could tell that in the instant of relief the terror suddenly had hold of him. He'd been flying combat again. Now he was on the ground, torn up by what he'd been through, the great concussions of noise and the light that had rattled the plane and trailed him through the sky. 'God,' he said again. 'Mack, man, what can I say?'
'Just come back,' I repeated.
This was getting exciting, everything falling in place. My phone rang
again. 'I'm waiting,' Martin told me.
XXVIII. HOW MARTIN SOLVED THE CRIME
Martin was dressing. He had on his tuxedo pants, striped in satin along the seam, and his wing-collared tuxedo shirt, into which he was nimbly inserting the studs, little diamond jobs that glimmered in the pearly light of the late-winter afternoon. In an hour or so my partners, all similarly dressed, would stroll down the avenue to the Club Belvedere, share a drink or two and some canapes, and then over dinner get a report on financial results and the size of their share. It promised to be an excruciating evening in every regard.
Martin did not speak at first. Standing, he worked over the shirt for some time. Every now and then he stopped to examine a small blue note card on his desk, reading it to himself. It was, I suspected, his GH Night speech. Rah-rah from the managing partner. Picking up his pen, he made a few corrections. I said nothing either. The large corner office, fully lit from the long windows, was quiet enough that you could hear the whirring of the gyroscope device that powered one of his clocks. I was tempted to play with some of his toys, the shaman stick or the coffee-table games, but I took a seat instead in a wooden sidechair painted up in Southwestern shades. I'd brought along my briefcase.
'I've been too fucking good to you,' Martin said at last. He didn't talk dirty and this was meant to be shocking. He wanted me to know he was pissed, that our partnership agreement didn't include a search warrant for his drawer. He continued fooling with the shirt.
'How much trouble is Bert in?' he asked in a moment.
'Now that I've had a little chat with the police, probably none.'
He glanced my way briefly to be sure I was serious. 'How'd you arrange that? This policeman an old friend?' 'You could say.'
'Very impressive.' He nodded. I was sorry, frankly, he hadn't been there to see it. In a law firm it took all types, and I was one of the best bullshitters in town. It was like having a guy in the bullpen who could get away with throwing spitballs. Witnessing that performance would have rewarded Martin's faith in me, all the time he'd spent telling our partners I might come back yet.
'I've been doing a lot of impressive stuff,' I said. 'I was in Pico Luan over the weekend.'
Martin's eyes stayed with me for the first time. Standing there, his figure was framed by the black iron circle of the enormous arc lamp that cut the space over the desk.
'Are we forestalling one another with humor?'
'No, I'm demonstrating my investigatory powers,' I told him. 'I'm telling you politely to cut the crap.'
I took one of the dupes of the International Bank signature form from my briefcase and threw it on the desktop, where Martin studied it at length. Finally, he sat down in his tall leather chair.
'What are you going to do?'
'I'm done doing. Mr Krzysinski has been informed.'
The last stud, which Martin still had within his thick fingers, caught his attention somehow. He considered it briefly, then let it fly at the windows. I heard it bounce but couldn't see where it went.
'Carl's up there with that document and the memo you were hiding, and Tad and he and everyone else are trying to figure out why Jake Eiger would do something like this.'
Momentarily Martin covered his whole face with his broad hand, blackly pelted on its back. From the hall I could hear through the closed door the phones, the voices of the workday.
'Well, that's not going to take very long, is it?' Martin asked finally. 'The motive is hardly elusive. Jake's planning for his future. He knows that Tad doesn't like him and that sooner or later, when Tad's alliances on the board are firm, Krzysinski is going to be opening the bays and dropping Jake without a parachute, golden or otherwise. So Jake provided one for himself. That's the explanation, isn't it?'
'Seems right,' I said.
Martin looked at me through one eye as he canted back in his chair. 'What else is Carl saying?'
'I covered your butt, if that's what you're asking. Which is more than you deserve. You were fucking around with me, Martin.'
He made some move to deny it and I challenged him.
'I can give you a hundred examples. I don't have to ask who Glyndora called for advice on how to get me out of her apartment last week, do I?'
'No.' He laughed suddenly, and I did as well. I was being a good sport, but a mood of disclosure was also beginning to lighten the air. I suppose it made a great story, the way I went running down the stairs like a little elf, trying not to stumble on my you-know-what.
'Didn't want anybody messing with your girl, huh?'
Martin rolled his jaw. He looked again through one eye. I wasn't sure how he'd take this assault on his secrets, whether it would make him frantic or if he would get up and try to throw me out of the room. But I guess he knew himself well enough, because he seemed to accept this with a faint resignation.
'Don't let me stop you,' I said. 'You were about to explain.'
'My personal life? That's before the flood.' It wasn't quite a rebuff. He was looking out the broad windows toward his city and its life, and his tone suggested worlds, universes of emotion suppressed. God, I thought, to have been a fly on the wall for that romance, to have observed these two characters surmounting the many barriers to get into each other's pants. Glyndora must have stuck out all her prominent parts and dared him to touch them - a way to put him in his place. I'd seen that routine: You think you're tough? I'm tough. I'm the best-looking woman in four city blocks. I'd wear you out. I'd get you up four times a night, I'd screw you dry and tell you I needed more, I'd be so much you'd want to unhitch it and put it in my trophy case. You didn't have wet dreams as a puppy 10 percent as good as me. And you won't dare touch it. Cause I ain't gonna have it.
She probably laid it on thick. And he accepted the World Championship Challenge of treating her kindly. Glyndora'd stomp and sulk and he must have signaled in a hundred ways that he thought she was valuable and would never change his mind. He must have worn her down until she had to succumb to the fantasy that everything she rejected before it refused her might, instead, fold her in its embrace. And Martin visited that shadow zone where not much matters, where pretense and power, every one of his bets which was always on the future, had to surrender to the pure sensation of the present. I'll bet until ten minutes before they were screwing it was no more than daily titillation for each one of them, a dirty movie that was always shuttered in their minds.
'But what happened?' I said. 'You know. With you and her. Can I ask?'
'It didn't work out,' he said. His hand skirted the air. 'We were kidding ourselves.' The remark hung there, with all its potent sadness - the American predicament. Martin had these kids, this wife - and there was the Club Belvedere, clients who'd snigger that he'd taken up with a colored girl. But the result probably suited Glyndora. It would have been a lot to ask of her, to be herself in his world.
'I am very fond of Glyndora,' he said then, impaled on whatever the remark conjured and concealed. He looked at me. 'Do you believe in reincarnation?'
'No,' I said.
'No,' he said. 'Neither do I.' He was quiet then. Martin Gold, the most successful lawyer I knew, wanted to be somebody else too. It was touching, though. Loyalty always is.
We were silent some time. Eventually Martin started talking about what had happened in a depleted, reflective tone. He had not been fooling with me, he said. Not intentionally. I gave him far too much credit. Circumstances had mounted. Combined. His honesty as he spoke was beguiling. You so rarely got Martin to talk straight from the heart.
'Glyndora came to me with the memo and the checks as soon as they'd cleared. Early December, I think. Around then. It looked odd to both of us, of course, business checks negotiated offshore, but I didn't feel any great concern until I started doing the research - talking to Bert, Neucriss, the banker down there in Pico. No Litiplex registered anywhere. No records upstairs. I was shocked when I saw where it pointed. I never perceived this in Jake. He'd lie to the Pope for the sake of his vanity, but I was stu
nned to learn he was a thief. And it was gruesome, of course, imagining the consequences.'
Martin, like any man with an empire, was accustomed to problems - big ones, situations that could bring him and everyone who depended upon him to doom. Like TN walking out as a client, or Pagnucci making a move. He got used to it, accustomed. He learned to walk the highwire, sailing along with gumption and a parasol. This thing with Eiger was a problem too. He left Glyndora on alert for more checks and took some time to ponder the common good.
'At which point,' he said, 'Glyndora's life began coming apart.' 'Bert and Orleans?'
He emitted a sound, the old wrestler's grunt, a little eruption of surprise, self-consciously controlled, when he was snatched for the takedown. He peered, his squat face immobile, engraved by shadow in the dwindling light.
'You know, Malloy, if you'd done half as good a job around here in the last few years as you did looking into this, you would have made my life a great deal easier.'
'I'll take that as a compliment.'
'Please,' Martin answered.
'What's he like?' I asked. 'This son of hers?'
'Orleans? Complicated fellow.'
'He's her heartbreak, I take it.'
Martin made various ruminative gestures. It seemed he had tried to be good to Orleans as a boy.
'Very bright individual. Mother's son, that way. Very capable. But not steady. Temperamentally. Nothing you could do about that. She thought she was going to prohibit him from being the way he clearly was. And he wasn't willing to be prohibited.'
'She found Bert an upsetting development?'
'Not Bert as Bert. It's a situation she's never wanted to confront squarely.' He made a sad face.
'Yeah,' I offered. I got it. But I felt for Bert. In all likelihood, he'd been largely beside the point with Orleans from the start.