Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“We don’t do criminal work, you know,” Brevizin said.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Curtis told him. “I should think it would mostly be negotiating with the proper authorities. If a criminal lawyer is eventually needed, I’d be happy to accept your recommendation.”

“Thank you.”

“So that’s why I’m here,” Curtis said.

Brevizin said, “Mr. Curtis, are you also here to undo the things Mr. Manville said to me on Friday?”

Curtis beamed. “Of course! He and I both went pretty public before we settled down. I’ve made his reputation whole again, but he can’t quite do the same for me. Rumor is hard to kill. Yes, I would definitely like you to squelch the rumors anywhere you find them. If you’re afraid this would be a conflict of interest, I’ll have George phone you from Singapore tomorrow. We are of one mind now.”

“No, I understood that from CNN,” Brevizin said. “Well, you know, I must say I quite enjoyed the image of you as some sort of rampaging freebooter. But, as usual, reality, though less enjoyable, will have to do.”

“Then you’ll accept me as a client?”

“I had not actually accepted Mr. Manville as a client, expecting to see him back here today, so there is no conflict of interest. Yes, of course, I’ll see what needs to be sorted out with the Mallory , and if I happen across any rumors about you I’ll laugh them to scorn.”

“Thank you,” Curtis said, and as they both stood, he said, “You might call Inspector Fairchild, see how he’s coming along.”

“I’m sure I’ll speak with him,” Brevizin said.

Tony Fairchild was making notes to himself, in the tiny crabbed writing he’d learned as a boy, when there’d never been enough money for food, much less for paper. These days, he wrote in small memo pads appropriate to the size of his penmanship, because he was well aware that his writing looked ridiculous on something the size of, say, a legal pad, where a lonely Tony Fairchild paragraph would be a tiny forested island in a great yellow sea.

He was writing notes to himself about Captain Zhang, and George Manville, and Kim Baldur, and Richard Curtis.

He was writing mostly questions, not because there weren’t any answers but because there were far too many answers, and they didn’t fit together. Usually, it was the policeman’s job to get the principals in an investigation to open up and tell their stories; this time, only dead Captain Zhang had ever shown the slightest inclination to keep his mouth shut.

If only the stories jibed in some way, in any way at all. Being a self-made man from a poverty-stricken family, who’d never gotten a boost up from a bloody soul, Fairchild was naturally anti-Curtis in his sentiments, naturally assumed that the richest man in the room was always the biggest villain, and yet this time the rule didn’t seem to hold true.

For Kim Baldur to be telling the truth, Curtis would have had to overreact to a truly astonishing degree at the presence of Planetwatch next to his Kanowit Island property. Fairchild had had people look into Curtis’s history, and had found plenty of pugnacity there, any number of lawsuits and lawyers, but absolutely nothing extra-legal, if you didn’t count the normal businessman’s corner-cutting. Curtis’s struggles a few years ago with the Chinese authorities, after Hong Kong had been returned by the British, had been monumental and had ultimately got him nowhere, but even then he’d limited himself to the courts. Oh, there’d probably been a bribe or two here and there along the way, but that too was only business.

So Fairchild thought it most probable that Curtis was being maligned here, though he wasn’t entirely certain why, and that was one of his biggest questions. What did Kim Baldur hope to get out of all this? Why would she tell these stories if they weren’t true?

Baldur was clearly under the control of that fellow Diedrich; could he be the one behind it? Fairchild hadn’t taken to Diedrich at all, had found him hyperbolic and melodramatic and probably basically untrustworthy, but could it possibly be that Baldur was merely parroting stories Diedrich had fed her, with no other reason than that Diedrich, who had an acknowledged antipathy to Curtis, was hoping to make some extra trouble for the man along the way? It seemed a very strange thing to do; and yet.

Sergeant Willkie stuck his carrot-topped head in at the office door: “Sir, a Mr. George Manville on the line, from Singapore.”

Fairchild looked at the small clock on his desk: eleven-fifty. That would be nine-fifty in the morning in Singapore, which would be about right. Curtis would have briefed Manville first, of course. He said, “Sergeant, tell them I’m in the loo, I’ll call right back within five minutes, and get a phone number. Once you’ve got it, say, ‘Oh, here he is,’ and put me on.”

“Right, sir.”

Fairchild put down his pen. Much would depend on what Mr. Manville had to say for himself. Had he left the Mallory in mid-ocean, with Kim Baldur? Had the two of them kicked around Brisbane together for the latter half of last week?

There was just one verifiable point in the opposing stories: Baldur claimed to have left the ship with Manville, Curtis claimed that Manville had left the ship alone. One story had to be false, one storyteller a liar.

Sergeant Willkie’s head appeared again: “He’s on the line, sir.”

“Very good.” Fairchild picked up the phone: “Fairchild here.”

“Good morning, Inspector.” It was an American voice, of course, mid-range, but with some faint tinge of accent in it, as though the speaker had been away from home a long time. Which was probably true, Manville being an engineer whose work history was almost exclusively around the Pacific Rim. “George Manville here,” the voice went on. “Mr. Curtis says you want to talk to me.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Manville. Mostly it’s about Captain Zhang Yung-tsien. You knew him on the Mallory , didn’t you?”

“Well, I don’t say I knew him. We said hello once or twice.”

“Didn’t you have your meals with him? I understood you’d been a few weeks on the ship, out at Kanowit Island.”

“Oh, sure, I ate with the officers, but they mostly gabbed together, you know, and I don’t talk any of that. I had my own people I worked with, didn’t have much to do with the crew.”

“Ah. You remember Kim Baldur.”

“The idiot from Planetwatch. Oh, yeah, I remember her.”

“Were you together with her in Brisbane at all?”

“ Together with her?” The disgust in the man’s voice certainly sounded genuine, “I was never together with that piece at all. Why would I be together with her?”

“Well, did you leave the ship together?”

“I never even saw her that morning, she wasn’t around for breakfast. Still in bed, I suppose. I was up and out, soon as we docked. I had things to do.”

“Such as see Mr. Brevizin.”

A little pause, and, “Who?”

“The lawyer, Brevizin. You—”

“Oh, right! When Mr. Curtis and I had our little, whadayacallit, difference of opinion. That’s all over now.”

“But that was one of the things you had to do, see Mr. Brevizin. Were you doing other things at the same time, having to do with Richard Curtis? Other people you were seeing?”

“That’s all done,” Manville said. His voice had risen half an octave, he sounded as though he might be getting irritated, or upset. “I don’t have to talk about that.”

“Mr. Manville, I’m not accusing you of anything, I merely—”

“Captain Zhang killed himself, that’s what I heard, and that’s what you’re looking into. That’s what you’re looking into, isn’t it?”