Ross Thomas - No Questions Asked

“There was somebody in it with him,” I said. “Have you got any ideas?”

“The cops told me,” Spivey said. “I’ve been thinking about it. In fact, I haven’t been thinking about anything else. Jack knew a lot of people and a lot of them were bent all out of shape. Any number of them would have jumped at a chance like this.” He stared at me curiously. “You want to sit down? You don’t look so good.”

“Maybe I’d better,” I said. I sat down on a chair near the writing desk.

“What about a drink?” he said. “I’ve got some Scotch and some ice. I don’t think it’s all melted yet.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He poured two drinks, mixed them with water from the tap in the bathroom, and handed me one. “I heard what the cops had to say,” he said. “What’s your version?”

I told him my version and when I was through, Spivey had some questions. Some very good questions.

“You say the car trunk was locked?”

“That’s right.”

“Then it wasn’t because they panicked or anything like that was it?”

“No.”

“I mean they never intended to come up with the book.”

“It looks that way.”

“The money. The money bothers me. It bothers me quite a lot.”

I nodded. “I can imagine.”

“After you were slugged, you were sitting down in the snow. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“Now are you absolutely sure that you saw Marsh throw the suitcase into the car?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “He threw it into the back seat.”

“What about this lieutenant what’s his name — uh—”

“Fastnaught,” I said.

“Yeah, Fastnaught. That was an awful lot of money being tossed around. You had just been slugged hard, very hard, I’d say from the size of that lump under your ear. Are you sure you didn’t black out for maybe five or ten seconds?”

“You mean just long enough for Fastnaught to somehow get his hands on the money?”

Spivey shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

“There’s an even better one,” I said. “A quarter of a million dollars is an awful lot of money. Let’s say I’ve known Fastnaught for a while and so we get together and decide to go for it. In this version, Jack Marsh is all by himself. We go through with it just like it was set up, except that when Marsh gets out of the car Fastnaught blows him in two. Then to make it look good, Fastnaught bangs me on the neck, but not too hard, and we dump Marsh’s car somewhere, tuck the money away safe, and call in the cops. How do you like that possibility?”

“It’s not the first time that it’s been entertained tonight,” Spivey said. “When the cops came to see me they brought it up, but only as a possibility.”

“The snow,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s right, the snow. If it hadn’t been for the snow, I think they might still be working on it, but the car tracks didn’t fit. If you had dumped Marsh’s car someplace, that means you would have had to come back and that would have meant another set of car tracks. There weren’t any.”

“We could have walked,” I said.

“They checked that out, too,” he said. “You didn’t walk.”

“So that means that somebody somewhere in this town has got a quarter of a million in a suitcase and an old book. The book bothers me.”

“It bothers the hell out of me,” Spivey said. “If I don’t get it back, it means we’re out seven hundred and fifty thousand bucks — not just a quarter of a million.”

“You mean the insurance. You’ll still have to pay off Maude Goodwater.”

“That’s right.”

“Does she know yet?”

“You mean about what happened tonight?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I called her earlier while the cops were here. They talked to her, too. She took it hard — about Jack Marsh, I mean.”

“Fastnaught has another theory,” I said. “He thinks she might have been in on it from the start.”

“Maude?”

I nodded. “Maude.”

He shook his head. “Jack — well, yes. Jack’s maybe my fault and maybe he’s Maude’s fault a little, too. It was a big score — a quarter of a million dollars and Jack probably needed the money. He always needed money. But Maude—” He shook his head and didn’t bother with the rest of the sentence.

“Why not Maude?” I said.

He thought about it for a moment “Probably because she’s just too honest.”

“That’s one reason,” I said. “It’s probably as good as any and better than most. But it still leaves the book.”

Spivey put his drink down, clasped his hands behind his neck, and gave himself a tremendous stretch that made his chest bulge out until it threatened to fill half the room. I wondered what his chest was fully expanded — at least fifty-five inches. Maybe even more. When he was through stretching, he said, “I wonder what a hot copy of Pliny’s Historic Naturalis would bring?”

“They wouldn’t take that kind of a chance,” I said.

“Then why go to all that trouble, if they’re not going to peddle it? Why didn’t they just ransom it back?”

“Maybe the only reason they won’t go around trying to peddle it is that they don’t have to. Maybe they already have their buyer.”

Spivey got up quickly and started pacing. The room wasn’t large enough for him to do a proper job of it so he settled for three strides one way and then three strides back. He ground his right fist into his left hand as he paced. I don’t think he knew that he was doing it. If he had, it would have been a little theatrical. “Yeah,” he said. “That makes it work. Otherwise it wouldn’t.” He spun around and pointed a big forefinger at me. “Jack could have dug him up. A buyer, I mean. He would’ve known where to find one. Or who to go to, anyway. Maybe a middleman.”

I yawned. I couldn’t help it. “You’ll be looking for a nut,” I said. “Or maybe only an eccentric. But there’s one thing you can be sure of about him.”

“What?”

“He’ll be rich. Very, very rich.”

Spivey started pacing again. I watched as he used three paces to cover twelve feet one way and then back again just like before. He must have traveled the equivalent of a couple of blocks before he stopped again, whirled around, and once more aimed his huge forefinger at me like a pistol.

“You fucked up, St. Ives.”

“I was wondering when you were going to get around to it. I’ve been thinking about it and you’re right, I did fuck up. If I’d worked at it a little harder, I should’ve been able to shake Fastnaught. And if I’d lost him, then Jack Marsh would still be alive, but you’d still be out a quarter of a million dollars — and the book.”

“The switch,” Spivey said. “You could have set that up better.”

I shook my head. “The switch is always the thief’s option. Sometimes you can refine it, but you can’t originate it because he’ll smell double cross and probably refuse to deal. So all you can do is work within the framework of what he sets up and take your chances. And that’s what I get paid for, taking those chances.”

“Did you ever have one go sour like this before?” Spivey said.

I nodded. “A few times. Once it was an African shield. Another time it was an old sword in London.”

“What did you do?”

“What do you mean, what did I do?”

Spivey made an impatient gesture. “I mean did you just drop it or did you try to do something about it?”

“Sometimes I messed around a little.”

He nodded. “And after you got through messing around, what did you have?”

“Some answers. That’s about all.”

“A deal,” Spivey said.

“What kind of a deal?”

“You’re out twenty-five thousand dollars, right?”