“Gracious, Harris, anybody would think I was marrying you for mink. But about moving to Florida—I’d have to think about that. With all the dear friends we have here.”
Well, she had one more dear friend there than she’d had yesterday. Marian Forsyth would have arrived in Thomaston this morning.
I’d hardly hung up when the phone rang. It was Fitzpatrick at last. “Well, Mr. Chapman, how’s the fishing been?”
“Not too bad,” I said. “I released a six-foot sail today.”
“Fine, I’m glad to hear it. But you want to come down in January some time and hit ’em off Palm Beach when they’re schooled up. Magnificent fishing.”
I smiled. Fitzpatrick was one of the good ones. He’d probably never fished in his life, but he’d talked to a fisherman before he’d called me.
“But I’ll get right to what I called you for,” he went on easily. “The owner of that piece of highway frontage dropped by today and we talked about it a little. Now he didn’t say so in so many words, but I’ve just got a hunch he might be open to an offer.”
“Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully. “It’d take a lot of cash to swing a deal like that— What kind of financing did you say it had on it now?”
“One of the Miami banks has a first mortgage for a hundred and fifty thousand. But I could almost guarantee that if you wanted to refinance, you could get two.”
“And he’s asking three seventy-five?”
“That’s right. But as I say, you can always try with an offer.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m coming back to Miami tomorrow for a few days, and I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Good. Ah, where’ll you be staying, Mr. Chapman?”
“Clive Hotel,” I said.
* * *
We fished with indifferent success until shortly after noon the next day, and came in. I checked out of the motel around two-thirty and drove to Miami. The Clive was a large hotel on Biscayne Boulevard and very convenient to everything downtown. The doorman called the garage to send a man after the car. I followed the boy in to the desk, and when I asked for my reservation the airmail Special from Webster & Adcock was waiting for me. I slit it open and looked at the check for twenty-five thousand dollars. This was just the first trickle, to break the dike.
After I’d registered, I stepped over to the cashier’s window and cashed three more of the traveler’s checks. There was no use letting them go to waste, and I was going to need plenty of cash before I was through. We went up to the room. It was one of the expensive ones, looking out over the waterfront park and the bay. As soon as the boy was gone, I put through the call to Coral Blaine. I was always jittery while that was hanging over my head. And it was time, too, to give her the first little nudge.
“I’m back in Miami, angel,” I said. “At the Clive Hotel, if you have to reach me for anything the next few days.”
She was in a kittenish mood tonight. “I just hope you’re behavin’ yourself
“I am,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m working. That real-estate deal with Fitzpatrick.”
“Darling, you’re supposed to be on vacation.”
“I’m never on vacation when there’s money to be made. You know that, honey. Oh, say, I saw Marian Forsyth on the street this afternoon. Did you know she was in Miami?”
“You couldn’t have. Dear, she’s right here in Thomaston. Don’t you remember, I told you—”
“Sure. I know you said she’d told Bill she was coming back Saturday. But I could have sworn this was her. She went past in a car.”
She became considerably cooler. “Maybe you just miss her, Harris. Or you’re thinking about her.”
“Cut it out, Coral. You know better than that. The only thing I’m thinking about her is that I don’t trust her. But you’re sure she’s there?”
“Of course, dear. I saw her myself, just this morning.”
”Well, you watch out for her. She’s probably spreading lies behind my back. By God, what does she want, didn’t I offer her half a year’s pay?”
“Darling,” she said wearily, “you’ve been more than fair with her. But do we have to talk about Mrs. Forsyth?”
“Of course not, honey. And I’m sorry. It was just somebody that looked like her. Let’s talk about the future Mrs. Chapman.”
When we’d hung up, I got Fitzpatrick’s card out of the wallet and called him at his home. I caught him in. “Chapman,” I said. “You remember—?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Chapman. How are you?”
“Just fine. I was hoping you could help me out with something. I want to open an account in a local bank, and wondered if you could recommend one. I thought you might have connections—”
“I sure have. The Seaboard First National. Go in and see John Dakin. He’s the Assistant Cashier, and a good friend of mine. I’ll call him as soon as they open in the morning.”
“Thanks a million.”
“You given any more thought to that piece of frontage we were looking at?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I drove up that way this afternoon, when I came up from the Keys.”
“You’re at the Clive now?”
“That’s right.”
“I’d be glad to drive down and talk it over with you a little more. Unless you’re busy, that is.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not doing anything this evening. I might be in the dining room, but I’ll leave word at the desk.”
“Fine,” he replied. “I’ll see you in about forty-five minutes.”
The dining room was just dim enough. He was one of the people they’d be certain to question afterwards, or at any rate one of the shrewdest. I couldn’t take too many chances with him. The other time I’d been wearing the dark glasses except for the few minutes in his office when I first met him, he wouldn’t get much of a look at me here, and this was the last time I’d see him. I took a table for two along the wall, and was just finishing the soup when he came in. I stood up and we shook hands. “I forgot to ask if you’d had dinner.”
“Yes, thanks, I’ve had mine.”
“Well, have a drink, anyway.” I beckoned the waiter over. He ordered a bourbon and water. When the waiter returned with it, I said, “Would you take this knife away and bring me a new one? It looks dirty.”
“Yes, sir.”
We talked real estate in general for a few minutes. The waiter brought my entree. I’d ordered roast beef. There was gravy on it.
“No, no,” I said. “I don’t want that gravy on it, waiter. Would you change that, please?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
He departed. “I don’t know why they ruin meat that way,” I said to Fitzpatrick. “All that damned grease to give you indigestion.”
“Yes,” he replied easily. “I know exactly what you mean.”
We’d just resumed our conversation when the waiter came back with the new order of roast beef. I looked at it, and then at him, and shook my head. “We don’t seem to get together at all. I don’t like to create an international incident, but I’m positive I said all outside slices, well-done.”
”Yes, sir.” He was silently raging now, but he took it away again.
I addressed Fitzpatrick. “Sorry to create a fuss, but by God, the prices you pay, the least you can do is get what you order.”
He smiled. “Not at all. If more people had that attitude, service would be a lot better than it is.” Fitzpatrick was a smooth article.
I ate some of the dinner, ordered coffee for myself and another bourbon for Fitzpatrick. While we were waiting for it to come, I took one of Chapman’s pill-bottles from my pocket, shook out a pill, and swallowed it with some water. I had no idea what it was, but it probably wouldn’t hurt me. Then I stuck a cigarette in the holder, and lit it with the butane lighter. Fitzpatrick, I thought, should be able to give them a pretty good description of Chapman.
The drinks came. “All right, let’s get right to the point,” I said. “I want to
make an offer on that piece of frontage, but there’s no use wasting your time and mine. Three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. What do you think?”
He lit a cigarette. “Ethically, of course, I couldn’t say, even if I knew. We represent the seller, and the only price we know anything about is the one he tells us. But let’s put it this way; I’ve been in the business a long time and I never saw anybody get hurt making an offer.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I’m on vacation, of course, and all I have with me is traveler’s checks. I can’t give you a check on my bank at home, but I called my broker in New Orleans on Friday and told him to send me some money. It just came.” I took out the Webster & Adcock envelope and dropped it on the table. “As soon as I open that account in the morning, I’ll give you a check for five thousand dollars to submit with the offer. Could you have one of your men pick it up here at the hotel?”
“Of course. We’d be glad to.”
“Good. Tell the owner if he’s really interested in a deal he’d better let me know tomorrow, because if he does accept I’ve got to raise the balance of a hundred and seventy thousand dollars cash to complete the transaction, and nobody’s got that lying around in a banking account. I don’t want to call off my vacation to go home and raise it, but it happens I can swing it by liquidating securities in my account with Webster & Adcock, and I can do that by telephone. It’ll take a few days for my deposits to clear New Orleans, of course, before the bank here will honor any checks on the account, but it’ll still be the simplest way to handle it.”
He nodded. “That would be fine all round.”
I stood up. “Okay, then. You can have somebody pick up my check here at the desk around ten-thirty in the morning. And call me right away when you hear from the owner.”
I went back up to the room. All this jockeying around with offers was a nuisance, and it was going to cost us five thousand dollars, but for purposes of verisimilitude it was absolutely essential. I mentally went over our timetable. We were right on schedule, and doing beautifully. It was time now to start lining up the girl.
I went out and took a cab, and told the driver I was alone in town and wanted to see some of the night life. He had nothing better to offer than a cheap night club. I had a drink, and departed in another cab. The driver of this one had a more sophisticated outlook, or fewer scruples. He looked over my identification. I voiced some preferences. He drove me back to the hotel, and I gave him my room number.
It was around ten-thirty when she knocked on the door.
Ten
She wouldn’t do at all; I could see that within the first ten minutes. She was dark and rather pretty, particularly with her clothes off, but she was a good-natured, somewhat unimaginative girl with no particular tensions or any animosity toward anything or anybody. I didn’t like flying in the face of psychiatric dogma by saying there was such a thing as a well-adjusted prostitute, but that was exactly what she was. She was lazy, the hours were good, and she earned considerably more than the average nuclear physicist. And she’d lived around Miami for years, and was crazy about it. She was out.
I completed the transaction with her, more as a gesture of conformity than from any particular interest in her, gave her the fifty dollars she asked for, added ten more for no reason that I could think of, and she left. I’d have to try again tomorrow.
I awoke around seven, went through that first terrible instant of remembering that left me sick and shaking, and then tried to appraise it clinically to see if it was any better or worse than on preceding mornings. It appeared to be about the same. Well, it would go away in time.
I had coffee and orange juice sent up, and put in an hour’s practice on the signature. From now on, it was dangerous. The traveler’s checks didn’t mean anything; nobody ever bothered to look at the signatures unless they’d been reported stolen. But now it was banks, who were notoriously touchy on the subject. Then I reminded myself for the hundredth time that I was being silly. I was overlooking the point of the whole thing, the real beauty of it.
The only thing I was going to forge, aside from a receipt which would be filed without even a glance, was the endorsement of a check. And who ever looked at that unless there was some question it was the payee who had cashed it? It was just as she had pointed out to me the first time. As far as anybody in the world knew—except the two of us—I was Harris Chapman. I acknowledged receipt of the check, told the man who’d sent it to me that I’d cashed it, and that was the end of the line. And as for getting the money out of the bank—that was the real honey of the deal; I wouldn’t be trying to copy a signature, because it would be my own. Not my name, of course, and it would be only my version of Harris Chapman’s signature, but it would be what was on the signature card, because I’d opened the account. No, if we ended in disaster, it wouldn’t be this forgery thing that tripped us.
It went off without a hitch. I arrived at the bank shortly after it opened, and inquired for Dakin. He was at one of the desks behind a railing at one end of the main lobby, a nervous, self-consciously hearty, and overworked man who couldn’t have described me ten minutes later if I’d been wearing a monocle and a sharpened bone through my nose.
“Oh, yes. Yes. Mr.—” His eyes swept toward the memo pad to verify his old friend’s name. “Mr. Fitzpatrick called. Glad to have you as a depositor, Mr. Chapman. And we know you’ll like Miami.”
I filled in the form, signed two copies of the signature card, endorsed the check, and gave it to him. He carried it off to one of the tellers’ windows and returned with my deposit receipt and a check-book. He assured me it wouldn’t take over three or four days for it to clear New Orleans. I went back to the hotel, wrote out a check for five thousand dollars, borrowed an envelope from the cashier, and left it at the desk to be delivered to anybody from Fitzpatrick Realty.
Up in the room again, I got out the list of securities, opened the Herald to yesterday’s closing stock prices, and made a rough outline of what to sell. It would just about clean out the account; there’d be less than twelve thousand dollars left in it. I put through the call to New Orleans.
“Hello, Chris? Chapman—”
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Chapman. I see Warwick opened at two and a half again this morning, so we may not—”
“Never mind that,” I cut in brusquely. “It’s chicken feed. I’m on my way now on that deal I told you about—oh, incidentally, the twenty-five thousand dollars was here when I checked in at the Clive last night. Thanks a million. I opened an account and deposited it this morning. The deal’s going through at my price, beyond any shadow of doubt, and I’m going to need a hundred and fifty thousand dollars within the next few days. You got my list handy, and a pencil?”
“Yes, sir. But you’re not going to—?”
I paid no attention. “Sell the Columbia Gas, the PG &E, that DuPont Preferential, Champion Paper Preferential, and the AT&T— That should be pretty close to a hundred thousand. Now, let’s see—”
“But, Mr. Chapman, those are all good, sound issues. I hate to see you sell them.”
“What?” I asked absently. Then I did a take, and barked into the phone. “Goddammit, Chris, I’m not interested in being on the defensive. There’s no way to stand still in this economy; you keep going ahead, or you’re eaten alive by ducks. Let’s face it. The bull market’s dead, and I’m not interested in making four cents in dividends and giving three of them to the Government. I want to make money, and right now Florida real estate’s the place to make it; not in the stock market. When the market starts to move again, I’ll get back in, but for now I’m going to put that money to work.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it. We went on with the list.
“All right,” I concluded. “The largest block in there is a thousand shares. You can unload it all in an hour without even a ripple. Get the check off to me as early as you can this afternoon, registered airmail, care of the Cl
ive Hotel, so I’ll have it by the time the banks open in the morning. It’s going to take several days to clear. Got it?”
“Yes. I have it all.”
“Fine,” I said. “G’bye.” I hung up, and breathed softly with relief.
That much of it was past now; the Chris phase was complete, and he’d never suspected a thing. It called for a drink, in spite of the hour. I was just pouring it when the phone rang. It was Fitzpatrick.
He was in high spirits. “Well, Mr. Chapman, it looks as if you’ve got yourself a deal. I talked to the owner a few minutes ago, and I think he’s about ready to accept.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m raising the money now.”
A woman’s voice cut in on the line. “Mr. Chapman, I’m sorry to interrupt. This is the hotel switchboard—”
“Yes?” I asked.
“We have a very urgent long-distance call from Thomaston, Louisiana.”
“Oh.” I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I mean—put it on.”
“Harris! Thank God they located you.” It was Coral Blaine. “I’ve been trying for over an hour, but I’d forgotten what hotel you said. This whole place is in an uproar—”
“What is it?” I broke in.
“We’ve got to have the combination of that old safe, and you’re the only one who knows it. Barbara says you’ve got it written down somewhere in your office, but we can’t find it.”
I could feel the whole thing caving away beneath us, but I had to try. “Get hold of yourself!” I snapped. “What old safe are you talking about? And what’s happened?”
“Harris! The one that was moved out of here about six months ago when you bought the new one. It was stored in the warehouse, remember? And just before you left you told Mr. Elkins to sell it to the junk yard—”
Someone knocked on the door.