Isaac Asimov: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972

Henry smiled and bent his head.

Bartram said, “There were times during the course of the investigation when I could not help but wonder, Henry, whether Anderson might not have been wrong and whether there might possibly have been no theft at all. Always, however, I returned to the matter of the acquisitive chuckle, and I trusted Anderson’s judgment.”

“You did right to do so,” Henry said softly, “for I did steal something from my one-time partner, the gentleman you have referred to as Anderson. And I never regretted the act for a single moment.”

“It was something of value, I assume.”

“It was of the greatest value and no day has passed without my thinking of the theft and rejoicing in the fact that the wicked man no longer had what I had taken away.”

“And you deliberately roused his suspicions in order that you might experience the greater joy.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you did not fear being caught?”

“Not for a single moment.”

“By God,” roared Avalon suddenly. “I say it again. Beware the wrath of a patient man. I am a patient man, but I am tired of this endless cross-examination. Beware my wrath, Henry. What was it you carried off in your attaché case?”

“Why, nothing,” said Henry. “The attaché case was empty.”

“Heaven help me! Where did you put whatever it was you took from him?”

“I didn’t have to put it anywhere.”

“Well, then, what did you take?”

“Only his peace of mind,” Henry said gently.

Here is one of the most unusual Christmas Eve detective stories we have ever read… In the letter accompanying the original manuscript, the author, Joe Gores, short-story Edgar winner of 1969, wrote: “I tried to write this story on three levels. First, simply as a File Series story about the repossession of a car; second, as a new kind of procedural detective story; and third, as a ‘challenge to the reader’ (with a bow to E. Q.) in which the final twist, the revelation that explains all, comes in the last three words of the story.”

We’ll say no more now — but please take the author’s challenge seriously. It will add immeasurably to your reading enjoyment… Happy holiday!

Christmas Eve in San Francisco: bright decorations under alternating rain and mist. Despite the weather, the fancy shops ringing Union Square had been jammed with last-minute buyers, and the Santa Claus at Geary and Stockton had long since found a sheltered doorway from which to contemplate his imminent unemployment. Out on Golden Gate Avenue the high-shouldered charcoal Victorian which housed Daniel Kearny Associates was unusually dark and silent. Kearny had sent the office staff home at 2:30; soon after, Kathy Onoda, the Japanese office manager, had departed.

Sometime after 9:00, Giselle Marc stuck her shining blonde head through the open sliding door of Kearny’s cubbyhole in the DKA basement.

“You need me for anything more, Dan?”

Kearny looked up in surprise. “I thought I sent you girls home.”

“Year-end stuff I wanted a head start on,” she said lightly. Giselle was 26, tall and lithe, with a Master’s degree in history and all the brains that aren’t supposed to go with her sort of looks. That year she had no one special to go home to. “What about you?”

“I’ve been looking for a handle in that Bannock file for Golden Gate Trust. There’s a police A.P.B. out on Myra, the older girl, and since she’s probably driving the Lincoln that we’re supposed to repossess—”

“An A.P.B! Why?”

“The younger sister, Ruth, was found today over in Contra Costa County. Shot. Dead. She’d been there for several days.”

“And the police think Myra did it?” asked Giselle.

Kearny shrugged. Just then he looked his 44 hard driving years. Too many all-night searches for deadbeats, embezzlers, or missing relatives; too many repossessions after nonstop investigations; too many bourbons straight from too many hotel-room bottles with other men as hard as himself.

“The police want to talk to her, anyway. Some of the places we’ve had to look for those girls, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that either one of them did. The Haight, upper Grant, the commune out on Sutter Street — how can people live like that, Giselle?”

“Different strokes for different folks, Dan’l.” She added thoughtfully, “That’s the second death in this case in a week.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Irma Carroll. The client’s wife.”

“She was a suicide,” objected Kearny. “Of course, for all we know, so was Ruth Bannock. Anyway, we’ve got to get that car before the police impound it. That would mean the ninety-day dealer recourse would expire, and the bank would have to eat the car.”

He flipped the Bannock file a foot in the air so that it fell on the desk and slewed out papers like a fanned deck of cards. “The bank’s deadline is Monday. That gives us only three days to come up with the car.”

He shook a cigarette from his pack as he listened to Giselle’s retreating heels, lit up, and then waved a hand to dispel the smoke from his tired eyes. A rough week. Rough year, actually, with the state snuffling around on license renewal because of this and that, and the constant unsuccessful search for a bigger office. There was that old brick laundry down on 11th Street for sale, but their asking price…

Ought to get home to Mama and the kids. Instead he leaned back in the swivel chair with his hands locked behind his head to stare at the ceiling in silence. The smoke of his cigarette drifted almost hypnotically upward.

Silence. Unusual at DKA. Usually field men were coming in and going out. Phones were ringing, intercom was buzzing. Giselle or Kathy or Jane Goldson, the Limey wench whose accent lent a bit of class to the switchboard, calling down from upstairs with a hot one. O’Bannon in to bang the desk about the latest cuts in his expense account…

The Bannock Lincoln. Damned odd case. Stewart Carroll, the auto zone man at Golden Gate Trust, had waited three months before even assigning the car to DKA. That had been last Monday, the 21st. The same night Carroll’s wife committed suicide. And now one of the free-wheeling Bannock girls was dead, murdered maybe, in a state park on a mountain in the East Bay. One in the temple, the latest news broadcast had said.

Doubtful that the sister, Myra, had pulled the trigger; if he was looking for a head-roller in the case he’d pick that slick friend of theirs, that real-estate man down on Montgomery Street. Raymond Edwards. Now there was a guy capable of doing anything to…

The sound of the front door closing jerked Kearny’s eyes from the sound-proofed ceiling. He could see a man’s shadow cast thick and heavy down the garage. It might have belonged to Trinidad Morales, but he’d fired Morales last summer.

The man who appeared in the office doorway was built like Morales, short and broad and overweight, with a sleepy, pleasantly tough face. Maybe a couple of years younger than Kearny. Durable-looking. Giselle must have forgotten to set the outside lock.

“You’re looking hard for that Bannock Lincoln.”

“Any of your business?” asked Kearny almost pleasantly. Not a process server: he would have been advancing with a toothy grin as he reached for the papers to slap on the desk.

“Could be.” He sat down unbidden on the other side of the desk. “I’m a cop. Private tin, like you. We were hired by old man Bannock to find the daughters, same day you were hired by Golden Gate Trust to find the car.”