Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

Hamilton sipped his drink.

Why did they fall for it so often?

Ignorance, stupidity, old age. Sometimes all three?

Yesterday, Hamilton had spent the morning in the lobby of the First National branch in the Southview Shopping Center. He had kept an eye on the deposit window. It was the second day of the month and that was usually a busy time, what with pension and social security checks being deposited.

He had selected Amos McNalley.

McNalley fitted the pattern. In his seventies or more. Good clothes. Neatly groomed.

Hamilton had followed him when McNalley left the bank.

McNalley covered four blocks at a brisk pace before he turned into the three-story apartment building.

Hamilton, one block behind, found himself puffing when he entered the small foyer and studied the names on the glassed mail compartments.

Evidently the mail had just been delivered. There was mail in all the slots except one. Amos McNalley had apparently picked up his before going up to his apartment.

Now Hamilton glanced at his watch as he saw Amos McNalley leave the apartment building and begin walking toward the shopping center.

Hamilton quickly downed his drink and followed. He was puffing again when McNalley entered the First National branch building.

After approximately ten minutes, McNalley came out of the building. He blinked for a moment at the green square and its park benches. He sat down on one of them.

Hamilton waited another five minutes and then approached. “Mr. McNalley?”

McNalley looked up. “Hamilton? The vice-president of the bank?”

Hamilton nodded. “You have the money?”

McNalley took an envelope from his inside coat pocket. “You said something about two hundred dollars?”

“Of course.” Hamilton brought out his wallet and removed two one hundred dollar bills. “Here you are, sir. And the bank wishes to thank you for your assistance.”

Hamilton glanced into the envelope. The money was all there. “Now I’ll go back to the bank and we’ll get after that scoundrel immediately. I should be back in half an hour.”

He took a dozen steps before he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to face what instinct told him were plainclothes-men.

The taller of the two spoke. “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you do not choose to...”

Hamilton closed his eyes and listened to the bitter end.

McNalley joined them and spoke for Hamilton’s benefit. “I waited fifteen minutes before I used the phone.” He grinned. “I spent forty years on the force before I retired and the last ten were as head of the Bunco Squad. I think I learned a few things about Pigeon drops in that time.”

Hamilton sighed. Every five years or so he had a day like this. It made him wonder if it was really all worthwhile.

Spiro got to the restaurant first, and sat silently on a plump semicircle of leather cushions, sipping a cold, dry martini and listening to the lunch talk. Big talk, little talk, deal, deal, deal; it was just like the talk he’d heard in every restaurant in every city where the selling business had taken him and his black suitcase. But today, the talk jarred. Today, Spiro had big worries.

O’Connor showed up at 12:30. He said: “Welcome home, Joe. You knock ’em dead in Chicago?”

Spiro edged over for his lunch partner and picked up a spoon. “Yeah, I knocked ’em dead, all right.” He rapped the spoon against a glass and rang a clean sweet bell that made the waiter look in his direction. “You want a martini, right?”

“You got it,” O’Connor grinned. “Tell you the truth, Joe, I kind of think you’re lucky. I hate being stuck behind a desk. Me, I like to travel.”

“I like it all right,” Spiro said.

“Then what’s wrong? You look worried.”

“I am.”

“Bad trip?”

“No, good trip. Best three weeks on the road since last year. It’s no business worry. It’s a health problem.”

“No kidding? You having trouble, Joe?”

Spiro slumped in his seat.

“No, not me. It’s Katherine.”

“Your wife?”

“Yeah. I guess the worst is over, but she really had me scared for a while. I been through hell these past three days—”

“Well, what happened?”

“It must have started a couple of weeks ago, when I called her from Chicago, just to say hello. She complained of a headache, some dizziness, nothing very serious. But that’s the way this thing is — hardly a symptom at all. That’s what’s so frightening about it.”

“About what, for Pete’s sake?”

“About this disease. I forget what it’s called exactly — mono, monotheocrosis, something like that. It’s a very rare disease, one of those medical freaks that show up once in a hundred years. The symptoms are practically nonexistent; the doctor told us some people don’t realize a thing until it’s too late.”

O’Connor’s jaw slackened. “Until it’s too late? You mean this thing’s fatal? ”

“That’s right. If you don’t catch it in time—” Spiro snapped his fingers crisply, “—that’s it.”

“But she’s okay now? You found out in time?”

“Yes, thank God. It was pure coincidence that saved us. My doctor came to our house on Thursday night to play some bridge. I told him about Kathy’s cold, and he looked her over. He thought she was looking funny, so he decided to take a blood sample; that’s when he found this crazy bug. It’s a damn good thing he did — for both of us.”

“How do you mean?”

“This monotheocrosis — it’s catching as hell. A couple of nights more, and I would have had the damn thing in my system, too.”

O’Connor’s drink arrived, and he gulped it gratefully.

“But what did you do about it? Is there a cure?”

“That was my first question, too. My doc was a little baffled by the whole thing, but luckily he remembered the name of a man who made a study of the disease. A Dr. Hess, on the third floor of the Birch Building. We shot right down there and saw him, and he was very comforting. He said they might not have been able to do anything ten, twelve years ago, but now they had drugs that could do the trick. I was so relieved I almost cried.”

“Boy! No wonder you look so beat. That was quite an experience.”

“It sure was,” Spiro said, downing the rest of his drink.

They left the restaurant at two, and Spiro said good-bye to O’Connor on the corner of Fifty-eighth and Madison. Then he stepped into a cab and gave the driver the address of the Birch Building.

He was there in ten minutes. In the lobby, he stopped at a newsstand and bought a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, and entered the elevator. “Three,” he told the operator.

The corridor was bustling with people settling back into the afternoon work routine. He lounged near the elevator for another ten minutes, and the hallways emptied.

At 2:30, O’Connor stepped off the elevator, looked up and down the hall, and then headed left.

Spiro called out: “O’Connor!”

O’Connor whirled, looked bewildered, and then walked up to his friend.

“I just wanted to be sure,” said Spiro, “you son of a bitch.” Then he drew back his fist and drove it into O’Connor’s cheek. O’Connor yelped and fell sprawling to the marble tiles. Spiro, feeling better than he had in a long time, pressed the Down button.

He awoke at 6:55, five minutes before the alarm was to sound. Turning on his side, he gazed with dispassionate interest at the woman who lay sleeping beside him.

Such a cow, he thought, When he thought of who he could be sleeping next to—