Джордж Хиггинс - The New Black Mask (No 4)

“ ‘Glad you asked,’ he says, and he whips open the desk drawer and pulls out this set of pictures, maybe half a dozen eight-by-tens, and they’re all pictures of my father, goin’ in and coming out, the Persian Delight. ‘Now lemme tell you a few things, Junior Johnson,’ Foster says. ‘The first thing is that the young lady’s name is Dawn and he always asks for her. Which he does because when she was a little kid, her mummy didn’t take good care of her teeth, which means the ones she’s got in her mouth now she can take out, and apparently this broad can suck a golf ball through a hundred feet of garden hose. And the second thing is that Dawn has got a brother who is doing time in Concord on a Middlesex sentence the Cambridge DA got for him, and she wants him paroled. Which the DA is willing to do if Dawn tells the grand jury about all the things that the Persian Delight does for people. Except that the DA needs a john, all right? Someone that will get up onna stand and corroborate what Dawn says. Which is a hard item to find, since most of the guys that go in there don’t care to testify about what they go in there for.

“ ‘So,’ he says,” Johnson said, “ ‘the question I have got for you is this: Are you gonna do what I want done? Or am I gonna tell my good friend the DA I know a guy who goes there and he’ll have to testify or I’ll yank his pension rights. You want some time to think about it? Or are you gonna be sensible, and do like I say?’ ”

Johnson shrugged. “So I’m cleaning his gun,” Johnson said.

“The son of a bitch,” Shanahan said.

“My father, you mean,” Johnson said.

“Your father I don’t,” Shanahan said. “I mean that fuckin’ Foster.”

Johnson shook his head. “You got to, Jake,” he said, “you got to find some way, you don’t just get all cranked off at somebody before you think things through. It ain’t Foster that’s my problem, all right? It’s my fuckin’ father, that’s my problem here. I get in here today about fifteen minutes late, which I got stuck in traffic and there’s no way I can help that, and I got Foster’s fuckin’ gun in my kit because it’s that time again, and you know what I get from him? From Gerard, I mean? ‘Where the hell’ve you been, you selfish little bastard? Don’t you know that Dawn’s got clients? She’s got her appointments? You’re supposed to be on time, you little bastard, you.’ And back and forth, and this and that, I tell you: it was awful.”

“And you’re taking this,” Shanahan said.

“Well,” Johnson said, “I don’t have a whole lotta goddamned choice, you know? I got the old man, and I got fucking Foster, and I got the fucking job onna force, and I got to keep all of them. You look at the whole thing serious, and there isn’t one of them I can get rid of, if I’m sensible. Which I am, because somebody sure should be.”

“I don’t believe this,” Shanahan said. “I don’t believe what I am hearing. What you’re telling me.”

“See?” Johnson said. “That’s what I told you. That’s exactly what I said.”

Edward D. Hoch was born in Rochester, New York, in 1930 and resides there now. A former advertising executive, he sold his first story in 1955. Since then he has published more than seven hundred short stories as well as novels. A former president of the Mystery Writers of America, he was awarded an Edgar for “The Oblong Room.”

Mr. Hoch comments that “this story is probably my favorite of the thirteen stories I’ve written about private eye Al Darlan. I wrote it in 1981 for a contest sponsored by the Third International Congress of Crime Writers in Stockholm, Sweden ... Although it didn’t win one of the three top prizes, it was the first of the runner-up winners to be named.” “The Other Eye ” was published in a British collection, but this marks its first American publication.

The day started poorly with the arrival of the morning mail. The only first-class letter was a reminder from my landlord that the office rent was overdue. I was wondering what to do about it when Mike Trapper walked through the partly open doorway.

“Pardon me, are you Al Darlan?”

He was tall and blond and young — young enough to be my son. “That’s me,” I admitted. “Al Darlan Investigations, just like the sign says. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a job. I want to learn the private detective business.”

“Afraid I’m not taking on any help this week, kid.”

He sat down without being asked, and slipped off his sports jacket. The office was muggy with late July heat. “Look, I’m just out of college, and I’ve got a little money saved up. I don’t want a job. I’m looking for a small business I can buy into.”

“Buy into?” I frowned and thought of the letter from my landlord. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Mike Trapper.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it. “I’ve had four years at Cornell, including a lot of pre-law courses. I was going to enter law school like my dad, but I decided I couldn’t take another couple years of classes and books. I’m twenty-two and I want to get started with my life.”

“What makes you think you want to be a private investigator?”

“I figure it’s the closest thing to the law. You do a lot of work for lawyers, don’t you?”

“Occasionally,” I admitted. “But there’s nothing glamorous about this work. If you’ve been stuffing your head with books about California private eyes, let me tell you—”

“I know.”

“It’s not even messy divorce cases anymore. Nobody needs a private detective to win a divorce case in this state. It’s staking out department stores to catch some employee going out the back door with a camera or a couple of shirts. It’s chasing after some kid who’s been kidnapped by its father after the mother won custody in a divorce case. It’s maybe even doing an illegal telephone tap for some guy who doesn’t trust his business partner.”

“I know,” he repeated.

“And you still want to do it?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got a small operation here.”

“That’s why I picked it. I can’t afford to start big.”

“There’s not even a secretary right now. I had to let her go.”

“How much would it cost me to buy in for, say, a third of the business?”

“I’d have to think about that. I can’t rush into this.”

“Ten thousand is all the money I could afford to invest.”

“Where’d a college kid manage to save ten thousand?”

“Here and there. My dad said he’d stake me to part of it.”

I sighed and scratched my head. “Look, Mike, I’ve got to level with you. There’s not even enough business here to keep one person busy. The one-man private agency is a thing of the past. I outlived my profession. Go down to one of the big outfits and start out working on insurance cases. They always need smart young kids like you.”

“I don’t want that, Mr. Darlan. I want a place like this.”

“There’s no liquor in the desk drawer. And I keep my gun in that big iron safe most of the time. I just turned fifty years old—”

“Ten thousand dollars, Mr. Darlan. Will it buy me a third of the business?”

I looked over at the dirty window and the dusty bookshelves and wondered what the hell I was letting myself in for. Was I just going to pull this kid into bankruptcy with me?

“Maybe a quarter of the business,” I said quietly.

And so it happened.

A week later he moved in, and I had a sign painter change the lettering on the door to read Darlan & Trapper, Investigations.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” he asked, seeing it for the first time.