Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

“Anyway, two years go by, and then things start to change. I notice that this guy has started coming in on Tuesdays. And pretty soon it’s Thursdays and I’m seeing him on Mondays, and when I come in on Sunday he’s been working all weekend. His secretary, too — she’s in there, and they’re bringing in groceries. And then this other guy gets sick, so I have to cover for him, and damned if the secretary there and her boss are not working Friday nights and Saturday nights too.”

“Thriving private practice,” the Judge said, nodding at him. “Envy of every practitioner. Those hours are just brutal.”

“They must be,” Panda said. “Well, anyway, the days go by, and one day I am sitting there, I open up the paper. And what do I see but his picture and his name is under it. This is Attorney Andrew Boyster, who’s been working those long hours. And he is in the paper because his wife’s suing him. She is suing him in the back and she’s suing his front, too. What she wants is a nice divorce, and every dime he’s got. And there’s another picture, which is of Andrew Boyster’s wife. And she does not look like the lady that I know.”

“She looked a little older, maybe?” Henry Neelon said.

“Well, I assumed she was,” Panda Feeney said. “I didn’t think too much about that, just how old she might’ve been. What caught my eye was, you know, she alleged adultery. And I thought I might have some idea, of just who she had in mind.”

“Well,” Feeney said, “the papers had their usual field day. And I have got a dirty mind, so of course I read it all. And I am sitting there one night, the two of them come in, and I am looking at their pictures. They give me the great big grin, and she asks me how I like it.

“I do not know what to say. I figure they are going to tell me, I should mind my own damned business. So I mumble something at them, and they start to laugh at me. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that, if your name is Thomas Feeney,’ Andrew Boyster says to me. And since we’re never introduced, that kind of throws me, right? ‘How come me?’ I say to him, and that is when he tells me. I am getting a subpoena. I am going to testify.

“I say: ‘Why me? What do I know?’ He says his wife thinks that I know lots. Like who’s been coming in and going out the building I am guarding, and she wants to ask me that.

“Now, I figure,” Panda said, “I am in the glue for fair. So I ask him: ‘What do I say?’ And he says: ‘Tell the truth,’ And they go upstairs laughing, just as happy as can be. Which at least made me feel better, that the guy’s not mad at me. I just may not lose my job.”

“Did you testify?” the Judge said.

“Uh-huh,” Panda said.

“And did you tell the truth?” the Judge said, looking grim again.

“Absolutely,” Panda said. “Told the Gospel truth. Had on my best blue suit, you know, clean shirt and everything. And they ask me, his wife’s lawyers, did I work the Coast Apartments and how long did I work there. I told him those tilings, truthfully, and all the other junk he asked me before he comes to the point. And when he does that he decides he will be dramatic. Swings around and points to Boyster and says: ‘Do you know this man?’ And I say: ‘Yes, I do know him. That is Andrew Boyster,’ Then he shows me a picture, which is Boyster’s secretary that I guess is now his widow, and he wants to know: do I know her? And I say: ‘Yes, I do.’

“ ‘Now,’ he says, like this is this great big salute he’s planned, ‘how long have you known these people? Will you tell His Honor that?’ And I say: ‘Yessir. Yes, I will.’ And I turn and face the Judge there and I say: ‘I have known them for two weeks.’ ”

“Which of course was the strict truth,” Neelon said, laughing with him. “Did he ask you the next question?”

“You mean: ‘When did you first see them?’ ” Panda asked the Judge.

“Yeah,” Judge Neelon said, “that is exactly what I mean.”

“No,” Panda said, “he didn’t. I think he was flabbergasted. He just stood there and looked at me like his mouth wouldn’t work. And then when he got it working, all he could think of asking me was whether I was very sure that was my honest answer. And I said: ‘Absolutely, sir.’ And then I was excused. And then when Christmas came that year, I got a case of Chivas Regal, and it was from Andrew Boyster and that second wife of his who I still think’s a nice lady. And then when Drew got his judgeship, my name came up on the list faster than it ever would’ve otherwise, and that is how I got this job here. Because Drew thought I was smart. What I said, testifying, it did not make any difference to the way the case come out — at least that is what he told me. ‘But,’ he told me, ‘Panda, it was the one laugh that we had while all that crap was going on, and we just wanted you to know that we appreciated it.’ Which is why I thought Drew Boyster was a very classy guy — because of how he treated me.”

Judge Neelon studied Panda for about a half a minute. Then he nodded and said: “Okay. You are off the hook. You don’t have to speak when we have services for Drew. And I will not report you.”

“Thank you, Judge,” Panda said.

“There’s one thing, though, I’d like to know,” the Judge said thoughtfully. “At least, I think I’d like to know it, so I’ll tell you what it is. That day when you were on the table, up there in the jury room? The day I burst in on you and you described your back pain to me in such colorful detail?”

“I remember it, Judge,” Panda Feeney said.

“If I had asked you, that day, if you had that back pain then, what would you have told me? Do you want to tell me that?”

“To be candid, Judge,” Panda Feeney said, “since you’re giving me that option: No, I don’t think that I do.”

Neelon nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “And if I were to ask you: Have you ever lied to me? You’d tell me that you never have.”

Panda Feeney nodded. “Yes. And that would be the truth.”

George Sims lives in a village in Berkshire, England, where he is a dealer in modern rare books. The most recent of his eleven suspense novels, The Rare Book Game (1985) draws on his thirty-year experience in the book trade.

“I am incapable of writing a straightforward detective story because I am primarily interested in describing characters and conveying atmosphere,” Sims comments. “Remember Mrs. Fitz!” substantiates this claim.

Dear Barbara Benyon,

I expect you have already peeked to see who this letter is from. Ha-ha! that was no good as you do not know me and I shall not put my given name but the one assigned to me from The Other Side. Yes, ’tis true, I am only an admirer from afar, but I do know quite a lot about you. For instance that you work at Barclays Bank, in the Strand branch — in fact it was to Messrs. Barclays that I was first indebted for your name, Miss Barbara J. Benyon, on that plaque which you so dexterously and prettily place on the counter.

But I am not one of your customers — I was only in the Strand branch on an errand or “a chore” as Mother used to say — so that will stop you puzzling as to which one I might be. What else do I know about you? Well, that you travel to and from the bank on the No. 11 bus and that you sometimes have lunch at Mario’s on Agar Street. And occasionally you take sandwiches and eat them in Lincoln’s Inn Fields or on the Embankment. Down by the Thames you tend to “moon about” and stare at the famous old river as if it might reveal some of its strange secrets to you, and I do think you are rather “the dreamy, romantic type.” You have a tiny gold watch on a pigskin strap which you consult a good deal at lunch-time, and a gold locket, but no rings I’m glad to say! You are not tall, in fact “five foot two and eyes of blue.” You recently had a summer cold. You read the Daily Mail on the bus in the morning and sometimes you buy the Standard on leaving the bank. All correct so far? Obviously I know where you live. By the way that girl who shares your flat is definitely not the type I should trust but more of that anon.