The Procane Chronicle (6 page)

“That would be nice,” Janet Whistler said. She was attractive enough if you liked tall, rangy girls with slender figures and easy, natural movements. I didn’t mind them. She wore a loose gray-tweed coat that ended just above the black, over-the-calf boots that had to be laced all the way up to the top. Her hair was straight, brown, and shiny and fell halfway down her back and sometimes into her eyes so that she had to keep brushing it away. Her face had pleasant features, although some might have called them sharp. I thought of them as finely chiseled—except for her mouth, which was a bit on the wide side. Her eyes were a deep, dark brown and I don’t think she wore any makeup, but nowadays I have a hard time telling.

I crossed over to the typewriter, took its cover off for what must have been the first time in three weeks, rolled in a sheet of paper, and typed: “Received from Miles Wiedstein and Janet Whistler, One-hundred-thousand dollars ($100,000).” Then I typed in my name and the date, rolled the paper out, signed it, and gave it to Wiedstein. He read it, nodded, and handed it to the girl. I decided that he was twenty-four and she was twenty-three.

While she read it, Wiedstein said, “Mr. Procane told me to ask whether you were quite sure that you won’t be needing any assistance tonight?”

“I take it you’re the ones who’re in that on-the-job training program of his.”

Wiedstein smiled at that, a brief, even fleeting smile, but one that lasted long enough to show that there had been a concerned orthodontist somewhere in his childhood. Although his looks wouldn’t turn any heads, he was tall and seemed fit enough and the length of his light-brown hair wasn’t anything to fret about, regardless of your taste.

“He insisted that we ask you,” Janet Whistler said and handed the receipt back to Wiedstein. He stuck it away in the left-hand pocket of his double-breasted brown topcoat that had a sheepskin collar. The coat looked warm.

“Tell him that it was nice of him to ask, but that I won’t be needing any assistance.”

Wiedstein let his eyes wander over to the money that lay stacked on the poker table. “Your share’s ten percent of that, right?”

“Right.”

“Let me know when there’s an opening on your staff.”

“Dissatisfied with your present setup?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Yours just seems to be a pleasant business. Low risk and high pay.”

I looked at him for a moment or two and decided that his gray eyes weren’t set too far apart after all. His nose just had a wide bridge. “If you study hard with Procane,” I said, “we might do a little business someday.”

“We might at that,” he said and turned to Janet Whistler. “Let’s go.”

She smiled at me and I smiled back and together they moved toward the door. When he had it open, Wiedstein turned and said, “I’d be a little more careful about opening my door, if I were you, Mr. St. Ives. You never can tell who’ll be on the other side of it.”

“You mean thieves,” I said.

Both of them smiled again. “That’s exactly who I had in mind,” he said. “Thieves.”

When they had gone I went over to the poker table and counted out ten thousand dollars. It made an impressive looking stack. I counted it again to make sure that I wasn’t cheating anyone, especially myself, then looked at it some more and decided that it was far too much money for one night’s honest work.

By the time I took it downstairs and locked it away in the hotel’s safe, I had convinced myself that what I had to do that night wasn’t all that honest.

T
HERE WERE FOUR OF
us waiting for the phone to ring in Procane’s office-study that Sunday afternoon. Procane sat behind his desk. Janet Whistler, wearing a dark-green pantsuit, was in a chair in front of the desk, and Miles Wiedstein and I were in the chairs that flanked the fireplace. We were waiting for someone else to call and for the second time tell me where I should deliver ninety thousand dollars so that Procane could get his journals back and stay out of jail.

The phone rang at four-thirty and both Procane and I jumped. The ring didn’t bother either Janet Whistler or Wiedstein and I decided that they must have had a good night’s sleep. Procane picked up the phone, said hello, then listened, said just a moment, and handed the phone to me.

I said hello and a man’s voice said, “St. Ives?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s just like I told Procane this morning. I’m offering the same deal, just a different time and a different place.” He was using a distorter, but not a mechanical one. It sounded as if he had a couple of marbles in his mouth. In addition to that, he seemed to be trying to strain his voice through something—a handkerchief perhaps or even a washcloth. It made him difficult to understand and I was glad he hadn’t decided to pile on a Chinese accent. Some of them do.

“When and where?” I said.

“Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock—”

“Tomorrow at ten’s out.”

“Why?”

“A couple of homicide detectives want to talk to me about Bobby Boykins and how he got killed. You knew Bobby, didn’t you?”

There was a brief silence and then the voice said, “Okay, Monday’s out. We’ll make it Tuesday at ten.”

“Where?”

“West Side Airlines Terminal, you know where it is?”

“Tenth and Forty-second.”

“Okay, at ten o’clock you go upstairs to the men’s room. Go in the first crapper stall on the left. If it’s busy, wait till the guy comes out. Then go in, sit down, and wait. Have the money in that same Pan-Am bag. Just wait there until somebody comes into the crapper stall next to you. They’ll push an airline bag under the partition into your stall. At the same time, you’ll push your bag—”

“Not at the same time,” I said. “I’m going to look first.”

“Okay, you look first. Then you push the money over. Then you get the hell out of the men’s room and out of the terminal. And don’t get any funny ideas about hanging around outside and waiting for somebody to come out of the men’s room carrying a Pan-Am bag. By the time they come out of there, it won’t be in there anymore. You got it?”

“I’ve got it”

“Now I’ll tell you how I want the money.”

“All right.”

“In twenties and fifties. Nothing bigger.”

“All right.”

“And when you see those homicide cops tomorrow, St. Ives, I wouldn’t mention anything about where you’re going to be at ten o’clock Tuesday.”

“You did know Bobby Boykins, didn’t you?” I said.

There was a silence that went on for nearly ten seconds until it was broken by the click of the phone as he hung up in my ear. I put Procane’s phone down and then told him what the distorted voice had told me.

Procane was silent for a few moments and then he said, “What did he say when you mentioned Boykins?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you think he’s the one who killed him?”

“Possibly.”

“But you’re not going to tell the police?”

“I don’t have anything to tell them yet. I don’t even know if Boykins was involved. All I know is that Boykins’s dead body was found at a laundromat I happened to be visiting at three o’clock this morning.”

“There must be some connection,” Wiedstein said.

“Maybe. But Bobby Boykins was a small-time con man, not a thief. He wouldn’t know how to steal a hub cap, but he knew a lot of people who do.”

“You’re suggesting that he might have been the thief’s go-between?” Procane said.

I shook my head. “I’m not suggesting anything. But between now and Tuesday morning I’m going to nose around. I know some people who knew Boykins. They might have heard something. Whoever killed him worked him over when they really didn’t have to. He was an old man. When you get that old you don’t refuse to talk because you’ve learned that there’s no percentage in it. The only reason that could have kept Boykins from spilling everything he knew was that he also knew that as soon as he did talk, he’d be dead.”

Procane leaned back in his chair and looked at one of his paintings. This one showed a half-grown deer hesitantly leaving a sunlit copse. I decided that Procane liked to paint sunlight and that he did it very well. The deer was good, too. “It would appear that our simple transaction is becoming complicated, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

“Extremely so,” I said. “But murder never simplifies anything, although that’s why a lot of them are committed.”

“I never thought of it in just that way.” He paused, as if taking time out to give it a thought or two now. “I do believe you’re right,” he said after a moment. Then he shifted his gaze from the painting to me. “Are you still adamant about working alone?”

“Why?”

“You said that you might nose around in an effort to determine whether Boykins had any connection with the theft of my journals. I was wondering whether you would object if Miss Whistler and Mr. Wiedstein were to do the same thing, but perhaps from a slightly different approach.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind at all if they were hanging around outside the men’s room at the West Side Terminal Tuesday morning. If I don’t come out after twenty or twenty-five minutes, Mr. Wiedstein might even come in to make sure that I’m not lying dead on the floor of the first stall.”

“Yes, I was going to suggest something like that,” Procane said.

“Perhaps you should also mention the time element, Mr. Procane,” Janet Whistler said.

He looked at her and then at Wiedstein who nodded his agreement. Procane cleared his throat the way some people do when they think they have something weighty to announce. “It’s imperative, Mr. St. Ives, that the journals be returned to me by no later than Wednesday morning.”

“I can’t guarantee that,” I said.

“Yes, I know. But should the person who called here today want to postpone the transaction, I must insist that you press for the time that we’ve agreed on.”

“What if he stalls anyhow and I can’t get them back by Wednesday morning?”

The three of them exchanged looks that left me completely out of whatever it was that they had to say to each other. “If that happens, Mr. St. Ives,” Procane said, “then we’ll have to take certain steps that may or may not involve you.”

“I don’t think I quite understand that,” I said.

Procane smiled and I could see nothing but reassurance and confidence in the way he did it. “Let’s hope that you won’t have to,” he said.

There’s a bar on Forty-second Street just west of Ninth Avenue that’s called The Nitty Gritty. A few years ago it was called The Case Ace and before that, The Gung Ho. Back during World War II, somebody told me, it had been called The Hubba-Hubba, but I didn’t believe it. Although the name of the place changed every few years, the owner and the clientele stayed the same. The owner was Frank Swell and the clientele was composed of the losers who hang around that neighborhood. For the most part they were pimps and whores, thieves and shylocks, checkwriters and fences, and a varied assortment of down-and-outers who were always trying to borrow five till Friday. I’d never seen anyone lend them a dime.

Frank Swell didn’t like his customers and he kept changing the name of his place in hopes that they would go away. Sometimes when I felt depressed I would drop into Frank’s and after I left I invariably felt better because I knew that there was no real reason that I had to go back there unless I wanted to feel better again after I left. It had that kind of atmosphere.

At six o’clock that Sunday evening I was sitting at the bar listening to Frank Swell read off a new list of prospective names that he hoped might drive his customers away.

“Listen to these, Phil,” he said.

“I’ll take another Scotch and water first.”

“Sure.” He served me the drink and then started to read from his list. “The Chez When, The Third George, The Aquarius—that’s sort of timely.”

“Sort of,” I said.

“The Blue Apple, Greenbeard’s, The Triple Eagle, and here’s one I like, The Blue Blazer.”

“That’s class,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what I need. Something real classy, then these creeps maybe wouldn’t come around no more.”

“I’ve got one for you,” I said.

Frank Swell whipped out his ballpoint pen. “Okay.”

“Swell’s,” I said. “Just that”

He didn’t even write it down. Instead he shook his head, folded his list of names, and stuck them away in his shirt pocket. “Nah,” he said. “That’d just help em remember. I want one that they don’t like, one that’s too classy for em so they’ll feel uncomfortable, you know what I mean?”

I nodded and he looked around sourly. He was about sixty and he had owned the place for nearly thirty years. “Look at em,” he said, twisting his thick, gray lips into a sneer that was almost a snarl. I followed his glance. There were a couple of whores at the far end of the bar. Three of the booths were occupied by couples, and only one of them wasn’t fighting about something. There were two other men at the bar. One of them, a beer nurser, looked grim and gray and pale, as if he might have just got out of prison and didn’t much like what he had found. The other man was in his late thirties, had a round face that smiled a lot, and dressed in a manner favored by some minor Boston politicians that I had once known. He wore a pale-gray, almost-white homburg and a dark-gray cashmere topcoat with a black-velvet collar. They didn’t seem to go with his pastrami sandwich. His name was Finley Cummins and he stole for a living and he had nodded and smiled at me when I came in.

I turned back to Swell. “The usual bunch,” I said.

“You know what they are?” he said. “They’re the dregs of humanity, that’s what.” He liked the phrase and it must have been the dozenth time he had used it on me.

“I thought Bobby Boykins usually dropped in about this time,” I said.

Swell leaned his heavy arms on the bar. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up and his forearms were covered with thick hair that was turning gray. Just below his left sleeve was the fading red-and-blue tattoo of a shield that read, “Death Before Dishonor.” Swell shook his head after I mentioned Boykins’s name.

“Now there’s a case for you,” he said. “An old man like him who’s drawing social security and still trying to con the suckers with the pigeon drop.”

“He was still working it okay the last time I heard.”