The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (97 page)

“What I’d like,” he said, “is for you to sort of keep an eye on Hogan’s house. Not spy, mind you, just keep an eye on.” He drew on his cigar and awaited an answer.

I took a lazy swat at the earth with the edge of the hoe blade. “I don’t see anything wrong with us telling you if anything odd goes on there,” I said, “under the circumstances.”

Faber exhaled smoke and handed me a white card with his name and telephone extension number. “Hogan’s not used to having neighbors,” he said. “That’s why he bought the house he’s in. He might forget about you and make a slip. Do you have a pair of binoculars or a telescope?”

I looked at Adelaide and winked so the lieutenant couldn’t see me. “I think I have an old pair somewhere.” That somewhere was on the edge of Adelaide’s dresser, where the powerful field glasses could be used by her at a moment’s notice.

“Well, it’s been nice to meet you folks,” Lieutenant Faber said, “and it’s good of you to help. Your police department thanks you.” Again he shot us his mechanical smile, then turned and walked toward his car.

Adelaide and I stood and watched until he’d turned from the driveway and was gone from sight.

“Now you can really play Mata Hari,” I said, going back to my hoeing.

Adelaide didn’t answer as she bent down and applied the spade to the broken ground.

I left the spying – as I’d come to think of it – pretty much up to Adelaide. She spent a lot of time sitting at the bedroom window, her elbows resting on the sill as she peered intently through the field glasses. But at the end of two weeks she hadn’t noticed anything really noteworthy, just the comings and goings of a high-living young bachelor of wealth.

She was sitting concentrating through the glasses one afternoon when the doorbell chimed. I rose from where I was lying on the bed reading and went downstairs to answer it.

When the door swung open there was Jack Hogan, dressed in swimming trunks and smiling, with a brightly colored striped towel slung about his neck.

“How about taking me up on that swimming invitation now?” he asked. “The temperature’s over ninety, so I thought it’d be a good time.”

I was a little surprised to see him, a little off balance. “Uh, sure, if it’s okay with Adelaide.” I stepped back. “Come on in and I’ll ask her.”

When I went upstairs Adelaide was still at the window with her eyes pressed to the binoculars.

“Jack Hogan’s downstairs,” I said. “He wants to know if we’ll go swimming with him in his pool.”

Adelaide turned abruptly and looked up at me, her eyes wide and appearing even wider due to the red circles about them left by the binoculars. “But I thought he was in his beach house! I’ve been waiting for him to come out!”

“You’ll wait a long time, darling. He’s in our living room. Do you want to go?”

“Swimming? Do you?”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t. It is a hot day.” I changed quickly into my swimming trunks and went downstairs to tell Jack Hogan we’d be ready to go as soon as Adelaide had changed.

Adelaide had on her skimpiest black bikini when she came downstairs. I saw Hogan look with something like momentary shock at her tanned and shapely body.

This was the first time they’d met, at least close up. After introductions we drove to Hogan’s house in his long tan convertible. Seated beside him was an amply proportioned blonde who looked as if she might have been used to model the car on TV. He introduced her as Prudence, which I didn’t think fitted, and we were on our way.

As we splashed around, drank highballs and got better acquainted, I found that I liked Jack Hogan, though I must still admit to some jealousy and distaste that he could come by all he had so easily while I worked so hard for less. What surprised me was that Adelaide seemed to like Hogan too. Adelaide had had a father who’d deserted her, who’d been much like Hogan, free-spending and dishonest. She had hated him until the day he died, perhaps still hated his memory. And yet from time to time I could see some of her father in Adelaide, under the surface of the careful, thrifty and loving woman she really was. I saw some of that wildness and daring now as she stood on Hogan’s tanned shoulders and let him flip her out and into the deep water.

When we got out of the pool and went inside for snacks I noticed an expensive-looking, lewd silver statuette of Bacchus on a low table in the entrance hall. It could hardly escape my attention because Jack Hogan flicked it with his finger as we walked past.

“I stole that earlier this year,” he said, “or rather one just like it. The stolen one had the owner’s name engraved on the bottom, so I sold it and used the proceeds to buy this exact duplicate. Lieutenant Faber really thought he had me when he discovered that statue sitting there, but when we checked for the owner’s engraving it wasn’t there, and I could hardly have removed it without any trace. It drove the lieutenant almost wild.” Hogan chuckled as he led us into the large kitchen with an attached dining area.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you,” Adelaide said to Hogan with a bewildered little laugh.

Prudence, the busty blonde, popped a potato chip with cheese dip into her mouth. “Oh, there isn’t anyone else like Jackie!”

I could only agree as I mixed myself another highball.

From the time of the little impromptu swimming party on, I began to notice things. It seemed to me that Adelaide spent more and more time spying from the window for Lieutenant Faber. And she found excuses to drive into the city more and more often. And on occasions when I came home from work I noticed that her hair near the base of her skull appeared damp. Did I only imagine the faint scent of chlorine those evenings as she served dinner?

It seemed, too, that Adelaide and I were caught up in more and more domestic quarrels, and we’d seldom quarreled before. She accused me of having ignored her through the years, spending all my free time and weekends working.

It didn’t take long for me to be ninety percent sure that Adelaide and Jack Hogan were conducting an affair behind my back. But would I ever be more than ninety percent sure? Hogan managed his love life as he did his burglaries, with such practiced skill that the victims of his callousness could only suspect but never prove, maybe not even to themselves. For a long time I deliberated before taking any action.

There was never any doubt in my mind that I would take some sort of action. I couldn’t allow things to go on as they were, and I felt confident that I could do something about them. A man who’s hard to best in business is hard to best in any other phase of life.

What I finally did was go to see Lieutenant Faber.

The lieutenant’s office was small, littered and dirty. There were no windows, and dented gray file-cabinets stood behind the cluttered desk where Lieutenant Faber sat. As I entered he glanced up with his uneasy, weary look – then managed to smile at me.

“Have a seat, Mr Smathers,” he said, motioning toward a chair with a tooth-marked yellow pencil. “I take it you’ve come here because you know something about Jack Hogan.” I couldn’t help but notice the hope in his voice.

“In a way that’s why I’m here,” I said, and watched the wariness creep into the lieutenant’s narrow eyes as he settled back in his desk chair.

“What is it that you observed?” he asked.

“Nothing that really pertains to his burglaries, Lieutenant. In fact, nothing of use to you at all.”

Faber let the pencil drop onto the desk top with a resonant little clatter. “Why don’t we talk straight to each other, Mr Smathers? Save time, yours as well as mine.”

“All right, I came here to ask you for a favor.”

“Favor?” His gray eyebrows rose slowly.

“Yes,” I said, “I wonder if you could arrange for me to have some infrared binoculars. I think most of what goes on at Hogan’s house happens after dark, and it would help if I could see through that darkness.”

Lieutenant Faber rolled his tongue to one side of his mouth and looked thoughtful. “Seems like a good idea,” he said. “I can get you the field glasses within a few days.”

“Fine. Should I pick them up here?”

“If you’d like.” Lieutenant Faber looked even more thoughtful. “What is it you think you’re going to see at night?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Who knows? That’s why I want the infrared binoculars.” I stood to leave.

“I’ll give you a telephone call when you can pick them up,” the lieutenant said, standing behind his desk.

“Call me at my office,” I told him, “anytime during the day.”

“Why not your home?”

“Because my office would be more convenient.”

He came from around the desk and walked with me to the door. “Mr Smathers,” he said in a confidential voice, “I want Jack Hogan any way I can get him. Do you understand?”

“I thought you wanted him that badly,” I said as I went out.

That very evening, when I awoke after dozing off while watching television, I found a gold cigarette lighter beneath the sofa cushions. During my sleep my hand had gotten itself wedged between the cushions, and when I freed it my fingertips had just brushed the hard, smooth surface.

When I rolled back the cushion I saw the lighter, with the initials J. H. engraved on it. I knew it would also have J. H.’s fingerprints on it, so I lifted it gently by the corners and slipped it into my breast pocket before Adelaide came into the room.

Lieutenant Faber telephoned my office in the middle of the week to say I could drop by headquarters and pick up the infrared binoculars. So I wouldn’t waste any valuable working time, I drove to see him on my lunch hour.

The binoculars were in a small case sitting on the edge of his desk. I sat down and examined them and he shoved a receipt across the desk top for me to sign.

“You suspect Jack Hogan is seeing your wife, don’t you?” he said in a testing voice.

I didn’t look at him as I hastily scrawled my signature on the pink receipt. “Yes, and I want to know for sure.”

“And what happens if you do find out they’re seeing each other?”

I handed the receipt back to him and rested the binoculars in my lap. “What would happen if a burglary was committed and evidence pointing to Hogan was found at the scene?”

“Then all we’d have to worry about would be breaking down his customary alibi.”

“And if he had no alibi? If he was actually home alone at the time of the burglary but couldn’t prove it because of a witness’s testimony that he saw him leave then return?”

Lieutenant Faber ran his tongue over his dry lips. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for, only Hogan has never dropped a clue in his life.”

Gingerly I reached into my pocket and dropped the gold cigarette lighter with Jack Hogan’s initials onto Faber’s desk. As he reached for it I grabbed his hand.

“I think you’ll find it has Hogan’s fingerprints on it.”

Lieutenant Faber leaned back away from the cigarette lighter as if it were something that might explode. I saw his glance dart to his office door to make sure it was closed, and at that moment I was very sure of him.

“Where did you get it?” he asked.

“Under the sofa cushions in my home.”

“And you’re giving it to me?”

I nodded. “And I don’t require a receipt.”

Lieutenant Faber slowly unwrapped the cellophane wrapper from one of his cigars. As he held a match to the cigar he looked at me over the rising and falling flame. Then he flattened the cellophane wrapper, slid it deftly beneath the gold lighter and placed both lighter and cellophane in his desk drawer.

“For the next three weekends,” I said, “I plan to tell my wife I have to leave town on business from Thursday evening until Monday morning. Instead I’ll stay at a motel outside of town, and I’ll spend my nights on a hillside watching Hogan’s house.”

“From Thursday night to Monday morning,” Lieutenant Faber repeated slowly.

“When you find the right burglary case, call me at the motel, and I’ll tell you if Hogan was home alone that night. Then you ‘discover’ the lighter at the scene of the crime and I testify that I saw Hogan drive away and that he was gone during the time the robbery was committed.”

“One thing,” Lieutenant Faber said. “What if . . .?”

“That’s possible,” I told him, “but Adelaide will hardly be in a position to say she was at Hogan’s house all night, will she? Especially considering the fact that she knows he’s a burglar anyway and deserves to be caught. She can’t afford to be like his swinging single alibis.”

Lieutenant Faber nodded and I stood and carefully tucked the binocular case beneath my arm.

“I’ll let you know what motel I’ll be staying at,” I said to him as I started to leave.

“Smathers.” He stopped me. “I want you to know I’m doing this because of what I think of Hogan. He’s a –”

And the lieutenant told me in the purplest language I’d ever heard just what he thought of Jack Hogan.

I will say Adelaide put on a good act. When I told her about my upcoming business trips she acted convincingly upset by the idea of being left alone. She even stood in the doorway and waved wistfully after me as I got into a cab for the drive to the airport.

Only I didn’t go to the airport. I had the cabbie drive me to a car rental agency where I rented a compact sedan. Then I drove to Sleepy Dan’s Motel and checked in. If I worked it right, I could write all this off as business expenses. And I was smart enough to have set up a plan that would require me to miss only three days, Fridays, in three weeks at the office. I could even sneak in and do some work on Sunday when no one was there if need be. I congratulated myself on my cleverness as I lay down to get a little sleep before sunset.

The spot I’d picked was perfect, a small clearing on the side of a hill from where I could look directly down at Hogan’s large house and grounds. The powerful binoculars brought everything near to me, and the infrared lenses eliminated the darkness as a problem. The night was warm, and I unbuttoned my shirt and settled back to watch until morning.

There were no results that first week. Lieutenant Faber sounded disappointed when I told him on the phone of Jack Hogan’s activities. A burglary had been committed that would have been perfect for our purposes, but I had to tell him that at the time Hogan wasn’t home and I didn’t know where he’d gone. Lieutenant Faber suggested hopefully that he might have gone to my house, but I quickly told him he could rule that out. My house was in view from where I watched also. We decided to wait for an opportunity we could be absolutely sure of.