D. Champion - Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 2 — July 1947)

“Oh,” I said weakly. “Well, a guy’s got to let himself go every once in a while. All work and no play—”

“Makes jack,” he finished for me.

I knew that he’d stolen that one but I was in no mood to argue, even with Rex Sackler. I got out of the chair and with some effort took off my overcoat.

Sackler sat at his desk as I did so regarding me with chiding, disapproving eyes. He ran a thin white hand through his black hair and sighed.

“So,” he said, “I find myself the employer of a roisterer, a drunkard, a weak-willed tosspot. The life of a private detective should be above suspicion. We are aligned with law and order. We are the righteous sword of justice.”

“Always,” I said, “provided the price is right.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and looked like a long suffering man. “Joey,” he said, “invariably you reduce everything to a financial status. I am speaking to you not of money but of principle. You are spineless. You possess no will. You can not withstand temptation. The smell of whiskey, of a woman’s perfume, or the rattle of two dice cause you to sink into a slough of iniquity. Be influenced by your friends, some of whom are steel-willed, solid citizens.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Let me guess. Now, wait a minute. I’ve got it! It’s you!”

He frowned at me. “You are still frivolous. Yet you may well emulate me. My will is not putty. What temptation do I yield to?”

That was an easy one. It was true enough that Rex Sackler wallowed in no fleshpots. But steel will, rectitude and righteousness had nothing at all to do with it. The hard fact of the matter was, that in our industrial civilization there aren’t any free vices left.

Wickedness costs dough and there never was an O.P.A. on vice. And Sackler was not the boy to toss money away, whether on a loose woman or on the collection plate.

His regard for cash was a holy thing, beside which Nathan Hale’s affection for his country, Abelard’s love for Heloise, and a lyric writer’s emotional ties with the state of Alabama were as nothing at all.

He possessed more United States War Bonds than any three camels could comfortably carry. And he lived like an indigent Hottentot. His furnished room cost him every cent of four bucks a week and his diet was strictly sixty cent table d’hote.

The receiving department of the Salvation Army would have lifted its eyebrows at his clothes which were older than the twenty-first amendment to the Constitution and shabbier than a carpetbag.

I put all these facts into a few well chosen phrases and uttered them.

Sackler heard me out with growing indignation. When I had finished there was a long silence during which a gleam came into his black eyes. Had I been more alert that gleam would have warned me.

It was the expression he invariably wore when some money-making scheme evolved in his chiselling brain. He coughed slightly, took a sack of tobacco from his pocket and proceeded, most inexpertly, to roll himself a cigarette.

“Now, Joey,” he said, “you say I have no vices because vices cost money. That is not true. I am not a saint, nor do I begrudge expenditure for certain indulgences. For instance, do you realize that I smoke, perhaps, forty or fifty cigarettes a day?”

That was true enough. Of that number he rolled about half of them and bummed the rest. Figuring it rapidly, I estimated that the cost of this prodigal habit was every bit of four or five cents a day.

“Now,” he said, “to prove my point about will power, Joey, I am about to give up smoking as an object lesson to you.”

I looked skeptical. I have observed that for a normal man, smoking is the toughest habit to break. It is an automatic habit. Heavy smokers don’t even realize that they have lighted a fresh cigarette.

I said: “You can’t do it. That is, not for any period of time.”

“No? How about three months?”

I shook my head. “I still say you can’t do it.”

“You and how much cash, Joey?”

A red lantern on a railroad track could not have been plainer than that. In seven years I had not won a bet from Rex Sackler. Thirty percent of the salary he had paid me had found its way back into his own bank account through some kind of gambling device or another.

However, his air of rectitude and righteousness had me thoroughly annoyed. His smug air of superiority trapped me into saying: “A hundred bucks that you can’t quit smoking for three months.”

He took the misshapen cigarette from his lips, crushed it out in the ash tray on his desk and said: “You’re on, Joey. One hundred bucks. Three months. Moreover, I offer you spot cash if you win, and shall deduct it from your salary in four installments if you lose. What could be fairer than that?”

I sat down at my desk aware of an empty, apprehensive sensation at the pit of my stomach. I still believed that it was a most difficult task for a heavy smoker to quit the habit overnight. But against that was the awful fact that Sackler would do anything at all for cash. For a hundred bucks he’d probably give up eating and sleeping for three months.

I was still wondering whether I’d tossed my money in the gutter when the outer door opened and a visitor walked in. He was an odd looking character just this side of forty. He wore an old-fashioned derby hat, a suit whose cut had been the rage at the turn of the century, a black tie in which nestled a single pearl pin which looked genuine to my inexpert eye, and a pair of well polished high shoes.

Sackler inspected him as he entered, like Armour’s purchasing agent inspecting a steer. I knew Sackler’s gaze essayed to pierce the man’s outer garments and peer straight into his pocketbook.

Apparently, he liked what he saw there. He assumed his best floor-walker smile, rubbed his hands together and said: “Ah, good morning, sir.”

The stranger nodded. He said: “My name is Wilbur Fleming. I have come to offer you a commission.”

Sackler waved him to the chair facing his desk. Fleming took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dusted its seat. He sat down carefully as if he half expected to find a tack on the chair.

Then he took a snuff box from his pocket, sniffed a pinch of it delicately and sneezed. He replaced the box and said, half proudly, half defiantly: “You may as well get used to me, sir. I am eccentric. Moreover, I need a stimulant. That west side subway exhausts me.”

Sackler nodded rather uneasily. He had not yet pigeon-holed his client. He had not vet decided how much the traffic would bear when it came to the matter of fixing the fee.

“Now,” said Fleming, “let us get to the point. I have come here because I have heard it said that you are the best private detective agency in the city. Experience has taught me that it is always cheaper to have the best.”

“Cheaper?” repeated Sackler weakly.

“In the long run.”

“Ah,” said Sackler, his spirits picking up, “of course.”

“Now,” said Fleming, “I have two requests to make. You will probably think at least one of them odd. However, since I am willing to pay for my eccentricities I see no reason why you should complain.”

“None at all,” said Sackler like the fourth assistant director talking to De Mille.

“First,” skid Fleming, “I desire to learn the present whereabouts of one Donald Lionel Dworkin, who when I last heard of him was living at 206 East 39th Street in this city.”

Sackler scribbled something on his desk pad. “When was this?”

“Three years ago.”

“And you haven’t heard of him since?”

Fleming shook his head. “And I know no one else who knew him. I know of no relatives. This is a hard job so, naturally, it will pay more money than my second request which is simple.”