The Girl With the Long Green Heart (10 page)

I worked that job as roper. I was the mooch’s friend, helping set up the phony abortion. I remembered how I sat with him in the waiting room, how he bit his nails and how his sweat smelled, cold and rancid. And the “doctor”—Sweet Raymond Conn, dead of a heart attack while awaiting trial—the doctor coming out to the waiting room with horrible eyes to tell us that something had gone wrong, that our little girl was dead as a lox.

Instead of operating, Conn had worked on the girl with makeup. He led the mooch inside, I followed, and Peggy was all spread out on a long white table with waxy cheeks and pale flesh and dead staring eyes. I was terrified that she would blink. She didn’t, and not six hours later she scrubbed off the deadish makeup and I took her to bed.

I hadn’t seen her since the trial. She drew one-to-five, no previous record and her lawyer did a good job for her, and she was on the street within six months. God knows where she is now, or what she’s doing.

So I had no reason to sweat because Evvie was busy earning her keep. Anyway, I didn’t own her. One roll in the rack, one sweet time that sealed a bargain and made the gears mesh more perfectly, that was all it was. No burning passion, no eternal flame of love.

I flew to Chicago in the morning with no luggage but a briefcase with a batch of letters in it. The cab from O’Hare Airport to the downtown train station happened to pass through the suburb where Gunderman’s unwitting correspondent hung his hat. It was a coincidence worth taking advantage of. I made the hackie stop while I dropped the letter in a mailbox, then rode on to the train station.

The Central had a train that went to New York by way of Toledo, Ashtabula, Cleveland, and Albany. It left around eleven-thirty in the morning. We had enough of a stopover at Toledo for me to duck into the terminal and drop the letter in a mailbox and get back to the train on time. In Cleveland, I left the train and had dinner at a downtown restaurant and mailed another two letters. The next train that went on to Buffalo made too many stops. I passed it up and caught another an hour and a half later, mailed my Buffalo letter and took a ride out to the airport.

There were no more planes that night, by the time I got there. I took a room at a motel across from the airport and left an early morning call. I got up, showered, and called Toronto. Nothing was new, Doug told me. I made my plane and was at La Guardia an hour and twenty minutes later. I took the limousine into Manhattan, mailed the last two letters, rode back to the airport and caught a luncheon flight for Toronto by way of Montreal.

All of this was a lot of travel with not much to do. Detail work, moronically simple, automatic, and fairly expensive. I believe in details. They are almost always worth the trouble.

We had bought seven hundred sheets and envelopes of stationery, used seven, and thrown away the other six hundred ninety-three. All this to keep a crooked printer from figuring out too much of our angle. I had trained and planed around two thousand miles because I didn’t believe in remail services, and because there was a bare possibility that Gunderman noticed postmarks on his mail. I didn’t regret a dollar of the expense or a minute of the time invested. When you’re pulling the string on a big one, you want the whole superstructure to be just right.

I took my time dropping over to the Barnstable office. When I got there it was past five and our secretary was gone for the day. Doug was sitting at his desk looking busy.

“Everything done?”

“Done and done,” I said.

He got a bottle from his desk and made drinks for us. “Your friend in Olean is starting to get warm,” he told me. “Three calls for you today, one in the morning and two this afternoon. I had the girl tell him you were out of town the last time he called. Before that she just said you weren’t in.”

“Good.”

“You were right on one thing, incidentally. He didn’t ask to talk to me. And he didn’t really want to give his name to the girl, either. He did, but he was reluctant about it.” I nodded.

“So everything’s moving, Johnny.”

“Except for the detective agency.”

“I’ve got an angle on that, Johnny.”

“What is it?”

“Watch,” he said. He looked very pleased with himself. He picked up the phone and dialed the operator. He told her he wanted to place a person-to-person call for Mr. Wallace J. Gunderman in Olean, New York. He gave her Gunderman’s office number.

“You can’t talk to him,” I said.

“I can. You can’t, because he knows you. He hasn’t talked to me yet, and by the time he meets me he’ll have forgotten my voice.”

“But—”

He held up a hand. He said, “Mr. Gunderman? This is Gerald Morphy, of Brennan Scientific Investigations. You wrote us about an outfit called the Barnstable Corporation?” A pause. “Mr. Gunderman, I wanted to tell you right away that I don’t believe we’ll be able to handle this investigation ourselves. Right at the moment we’ve got almost all of our operatives tied up on an industrial sabotage thing, and we’re not accepting any other cases at the moment.” Another pause. Then, “I do have a suggestion. If it’s satisfactory to you, I’d like to refer the matter to another investigator, a man named Robert Hettinger. He’s worked for us in the past. He has his own office now and he’s quite reliable and honest. Would that...yes, certainly. Yes, he’d make his reports directly to you and you could make your own financial arrangements with him. This looks to be a small matter, Mr. Gunderman, and while I wish we could serve you directly...yes, well, I can guarantee the man’s work personally. Yes, fine, Mr. Gunderman, and it’s my pleasure, sir.”

He put the phone down and smiled across the desk at me. He looked as triumphant as a sparring partner who’d just knocked out Liston. “In two or three days,” he said, “we send him this.”

He handed me a two-page letter. The letterhead read
Robert M. Hettinger...private investigative service...404 Richmond West...Toronto
. The report said everything we could have wanted it to say. It invented a fine upstanding background for Rance, who was cast as a scion of an established Toronto family with a background in shipping and land development. It said that I was new in Toronto, an employee of Barnstable, and so on. We couldn’t have worked up a cleaner bill of health for ourselves.

There was also a bill for fifty dollars Canadian for services rendered.

I said, “Who’s Hettinger?”

“I am.”

“And the address?”

“You can rent office space at four-o-four Richmond for five dollars a month. I get a desk and mail privileges for that much. I paid them five dollars, and they’ll have Gunderman’s check for me when he sends it along.” He grinned elaborately. “Fifty dollars, and when you subtract the cost of the stationery and the phone call and the month’s rent on the desk space, we still come out about twenty dollars ahead. I figured we might as well pick up pin money along the way.”

“And if he tries to call you?”

“There’s a girl who answers the phone for everybody on the floor there. If he calls, Mr. Hettinger is out. But he won’t. He’ll get the report and send a check, and that’s all.”

It was neat and I told him so. He was as hungry for praise as a puppy who had finally succeeded in getting the puddle on the paper. He poured more Scotch for us and as we drank to success, I told him again how neatly he’d fielded the ball, and that was that.

I called Evvie from my hotel. This time she was home. I said, “John here. You alone, baby?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Just a progress report. Everything’s running smoothly on this end. Your boss is going to start getting letters any day now.”

“Good.”

I told her about the detective agency routine. She thought it was very clever, and I didn’t bother mentioning that it was Doug’s idea. I asked her how Gunderman was behaving.

“He’s falling all the way,” she said.

“I understand he’s trying to reach me.”

“Three times today, John. He was upset when you managed to leave town the other day without seeing him. He’s positive there’s something going on that he could make money on. He doesn’t know what the gimmick is but he’s sure there is one and he’s dying to find it. How much longer do you want to let him dangle?”

I thought about it. “Maybe I’ll take another trip to Olean soon,” I said.

“That would be nice.”

“Let’s see. I think maybe the middle of the week, maybe on Wednesday. He should have enough replies by Monday afternoon so that the whole picture will soak in fast enough. Now here’s the bit. Monday, you’ll tell him that you got a call from me. I wasn’t in Toronto, you’re not sure where I was, but I wasn’t in Toronto. I called you, and it seems as though I’m anxious to see you, not Gunderman but you. You have the feeling that I’m halfway crazy about you, and—”

“Are you, John?”

“What?”

“Halfway crazy about me?”

I lit a cigarette. “Anyway, at this point you became the little heroine, doing it up right for the boss. You knew he wanted to see me, so you conned me into coming down to Olean on the excuse of seeing Gunderman. He’ll be delighted. And set it up so that I’ll come around to his office sometime Wednesday afternoon.”

“You didn’t answer my question, John.”

“Did you get what I said?”

“Of course. You still didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ll give you the answer in person,” I said.

I wound up sitting at the bar at The Friars. They had a piano trio there that wasn’t half bad, a West Coast outfit a long way from home. The bass player had worked with Mulligan ages ago. I stayed there until the place closed and walked back to my hotel.

Eight

“Have a seat, John,” he said. “Just have a seat and relax. You must have had quite a trip. I hate those little puddle-hopping airlines. You no sooner get your belt fastened than it’s time to unhook it because you’ve landed already; just up and down again. And I guess you’ve had a belly full of travel lately, haven’t you?”

“Well, I’ve been busy.”

“Now I’m sure you have, John. I’m sure you have at that. I wish I hadn’t missed you that morning. Your hotel wouldn’t put an early call through to your room, and then you were gone before I could get hold of you. I was sorry about that.”

“I meant to come over in the morning,” I said. “But it turned out, well, to be quite a late night, and then I went and did more drinking than I usually do, and I felt I ought to sleep a little later than usual. And then when I did wake up—”

I left the sentence hanging. Gunderman nodded slowly and said, “I suppose you weren’t feeling too well, John.”

“No, I guess I wasn’t.”

“Probably a little bit of a hangover?”

“Well, I felt a little rocky.”

“I can imagine. I guess Evvie did a good job of showing you the town. I wish I could have come myself. Still, she’s better at playing host than I am. And a damn sight better looking than I am, as far as that goes. I think she’s taken a shine to you, John.”

I did a good job of trying not to look embarrassed. I took a cigarette and fumbled for matches. He gave me a light and relit his cigar. He could see that I was ill at ease and nothing could have delighted him more. He was enjoying himself tremendously.

“You’re a hard man to get hold of, John,” he said. “I couldn’t get your home telephone number, so I had to try you at your office. I’m afraid I made quite a few calls. They didn’t tell me that you were out of town at first, just that you weren’t in and they didn’t know where you could be reached. Then they did tell me you were out of town, but didn’t seem to know when you’d be back, so I just went on calling. Your bosses must really keep you hopping.”

“I did a lot of traveling this trip,” I admitted.

“Get much accomplished?”

“Well,” I said vaguely.

“Buy a lot of land, John?”

I coughed on my cigarette. I looked at him nervously, and he looked back and let his eyebrows climb up a notch. I met his eyes and drew again on my cigarette. I didn’t say anything, but then I didn’t have to. We had reached a quiet understanding. I was telling him that I knew that he knew that our hunting lodge story was a lot of hooey, but that I wasn’t too crazy about the idea of discussing it, not for now, anyway.

“Well,” he said easily. “I ought to tell you, John, that I’ve had time to think over your proposition, and while the tax-loss features are attractive, certainly, I’m afraid I’m not interested in selling my property. Not for the time being, at least.”

“I see.”

“You don’t seem very disappointed.”

I leaned forward in my chair, stubbed out my cigarette in his ashtray, and narrowed my eyes. I said, “I’m afraid I had more to drink the other night than I usually do. When I was out with Ev—with your secretary. I guess I talked a little more than I wanted to, and I guess she relayed some of what I said to you.”

He just smiled.

“The men who employ me trust me to do my job, Wally, and part of doing my job is keeping certain matters confidential. I...if I said anything that I shouldn’t have said, and if it got back to you, well, I just wish you’d forget it.”

“Oh? You don’t have to worry about my making trouble for you, John.”

“It’s not that, but—”

“And if it’ll set your mind at rest, you didn’t tell me so very much through Evvie. Or if you did tell her everything, then she held out on me.” He chuckled to let me know how plainly impossible it was that she might keep anything from him. “But I do know a lot more about the operations of the Barnstable outfit than I ever learned from you. After all, I wouldn’t keep calling you in Toronto just to tell you that I wasn’t interested in your proposition, would I?”

“I didn’t think so, no.”

“Hardly. Would you like to know what I’ve managed to learn?”

I nodded, and he told me. He parroted back just about every fact we had arranged for him to uncover. He gave me dates and figures and names and I let my jaw drop progressively as he built himself up a good head of steam. When he finished I just sat there shaking my head.

“I couldn’t have let all of that slip to Evvie.”

“You didn’t, John.”

“Why, there are things you know that I don’t even know, like exactly when the company was organized. How did you—”