Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

“I usually leave the reception room unlocked, in case I have a client and the client cares to wait.”

One corner of his mouth moved up faintly. “Somebody sure wanted this guy to wait, hey?”

I shrugged. He took a turn along the room and back again, hands deep in the pockets of his topcoat. Abruptly he said, “It says on your door you’re a private dick. This a client?”

“No. I never saw him before.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“No identification on him?”

“I didn’t look. The sergeant at Central said not to.”

He seemed mildly astonished. “A man dies in your office and you don’t even show a little healthy curiosity? Don’t be afraid of me, Pine. I haven’t chewed off anybody’s arm in over a week.”

“I obey the law,” I said mildly.

“Well, well,” he said. He grinned suddenly, and after a moment I grinned back. Mine was no phonier than his. He snapped a thumb lightly against the point of his narrow chin a time or two while thinking a secret thought, then turned back to the body.

He went through the pockets with the deft delicacy of a professional dip. The blood, the knife handle, the sightless eyes meant about half as much to him as last week’s laundry. When he straightened again there was a small neat pile of personal effects on one of the couch pillows and the dead man’s pockets were as empty as his eyes.

The wallet was on top. Lund speared it, flipped it open. The transparent identification panels were empty, as was the bill compartment. Shoved into the latter, however, were three or four cards. Lund looked them over slowly and carefully, his thick brows drawn into a lazy V above his long, pointed nose.

“Credit cards on a couple Loop hotels,” he said, almost to himself. “Plus one of these identification cards you get with a wallet. According to what it says here, this guy is Franklin Andrus, 5861 Winthrop Avenue. One business card. It calls him a sales representative for the Reliable Amusement Machine Corporation, Dayton, Ohio. No telephone shown and nobody listed to notify. Any of this mean anything to you, Mr. Pine?”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh. You ain’t playing this too close, are you?”

“I’m not even in the game,” I said.

“Initials in his coat don’t agree with the name on these here cards. That must mean something, hey?”

I stared at the bridge of his nose. “His coat and somebody else’s cards. Or his cards and somebody else’s coat. Or neither. Or both.”

His mouth hardened. “You trying to kid me, mister?”

“I guess that would be pretty hard to do, Sergeant.”

He turned on his heel and went through the communicating door to my inner office, still carrying the wallet. He didn’t bother to shut it, and through the opening I could see him reach for the phone without sitting down and dial a number with quick hard stabs of a forefinger. What he said when he got his party was too low-voiced for me to catch.

Two minutes later, he was back. He scooped up the stuff from the couch and said, “Let’s talk, hey? Let’s us try out that nice private office of yours.”

I followed him in and drew up the Venetian blind and opened the window a crack to let out the smell of yesterday’s cigarettes. On the outer ledge four pigeons were organizing a bombing raid. Lund shoved the phone and ashtray aside, dumped his collection on the desk pad and snapped on the lamp. I sat down behind the desk and watched him pull up the customer’s chair across from me.

I got out my cigarettes. He took one, sniffed at it for no reason I knew of and struck a match for us both. He leaned back and hooked an arm over the chair back and put his dull gray eyes on me.

“Nice and cozy,” he said. “All the comforts. Too bad they’re not all like this.”

“I could turn on the radio,” I said. “Maybe get a little dance music.”

He grunted with mild amusement. All the narrow-eyed suspicion had been tucked out of sight. He drew on his cigarette and blew a long blue plume of smoke at the ceiling. Another minute and he’d have his shoes off.

He let his gaze drift about the dingy office, taking in the Varga calendar, the filing cases, the worn tan linoleum. He said, “The place could stand a little paint, hey?”

“You drumming up business for your day off?” I asked.

That got another grunt out of him. “You sound kind of on the excited side, Pine. Don’t be like that. You wouldn’t be the first private boy got a customer shot out from under him, so to speak.”

I felt my face burn. “He’s not a customer. I told you that.”

“I guess you did, at that,” he said calmly. “It don’t mean I have to believe it. Client getting pushed right in your own office don’t look so good, hey? What the newshounds call a bad press.”

I bit down on my teeth. “You just having fun, Sergeant, or does all this lead somewhere?”

“Why, we’re just talking,” he said mildly. “Just killing time, you might say, until the coroner shows up. That and looking over the rest of what the guy had on him.”

He stuck out an untidy finger and poked at the pile. Besides the wallet, there were several small square transparent envelopes, some loose change, a pocket comb, and a small pair of gold tweezers.

He brought his eyes up to stare coldly at me, his mellow mood gone as quickly as it had arrived. He said harshly, “Let’s lay off the clowning around, mister. You were working for him. I want to know doing what.”

“I wouldn’t bother to lie to you,” I said. “I never saw the guy before in my life, I never talked to him on the phone, or got a letter from him. Period.”

His sneer was a foot wide. “Jesus, you must think I’m green!”

“I’m not doing any thinking,” I said.

“I hope to tell you, you aren’t. Listen, I can book you, brother!”

“For what?”

“Obstructing justice, resisting an officer, indecent exposure. What the hell do you care? I’m saying I can book you!”

I didn’t say anything. Some of the angry color faded slowly from his high cheeks. Finally he sighed heavily and picked up the necktie and gave it a savage jerk between his square hands and threw it down again.

“Nuts,” he said pettishly. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m trying to do a job. All I want is a little cooperation. This guy just don’t walk in here blind. You’re a private dick, or so your door says. Your job is people in trouble. I say it’s too damn big a coincidence him picking your office to get knocked off in. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” I said. “I’m saying what I’ve already said. He’s a stranger to me. He could have come in here to get out of the wet or to sell me a slot machine or to just sit down and rest his arches. I admit he might have come here to hire me. It has happened, although not often enough. Maybe somebody didn’t want him spilling any touchy secrets to me, and fixed him so he couldn’t.”

“But you never saw him before?”

“You’re beginning to get the idea,” I said.

“Go ahead,” he said bitterly. “Crack wise. Get out the office bottle and toss off three inches of Scotch without a chaser and spit in my eye. That’s the way you private eyes do it on TV eight times a night.”

“I don’t have an office bottle,” I said.

The sound of the reception room door opening and closing cut off what Lund was about to say. A short plump man went past the half-open door of the inner office, carrying a black bag. Lund got up without a word and went out there, leaving me where I sat.

Some time passed. Quite a lot of time. The murmur of voices from the next room went on and on. Flash bulbs made soundless explosions of light and a small vacuum cleaner whirred. I stayed where I was and burned a lot of tobacco and crossed my legs and dangled my foot and listened to the April rain and thought my thoughts.