Ross Thomas: No Questions Asked

“Are you ready to start?” the voice said.

“You’re a little early,” I said. “The insurance man hasn’t got in from California yet. I don’t know if he’s bringing the money with him, or if he’s arranged to get it from a bank here.”

“His plane touched down at Dulles three minutes ago,” the voice said.

“I wasn’t even sure he could land in all this snow.”

“The plane had to circle for an hour.”

“You do keep in touch.”

“That’s right, we do,” the voice said. “We’d also like to take a look at you.”

“I’m not so much,” I said. “Five-eleven, a hundred and sixty-five pounds, fair complexion, dark blond hair, and shy brown eyes.”

“That’s nice,” the voice said. “At nine o’clock you can take your brown eyes down to the lobby where a dinner meeting will have just let out. At exactly nine-oh-five we want you to go over to the newsstand and buy a copy of Time magazine, a Hershey bar, and two packs of Kents. Then we want you to go right back up to your room.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll be in touch,” the voice said. After that there was a click, and the phone went dead.

Because I had some time to kill and because life has taught me not to be quite as trusting as I was when I was six, I called Dulles and found out that a United flight from Los Angeles had indeed touched down just a few minutes before, after having circled the airport for nearly an hour. After that I stood at the window and watched it snow on the statues in Lafayette Square.

At 9:01 I was down in the lobby. A small crowd of fifty or so well-dressed people were milling about, putting on their coats, and telling each other what a wonderful speech it had been and how glad they were that they had braved the snow to hear it. I stood there in the lobby trying to decide if there were a politician whom I would go out to hear on a snowy night, or even a nice warm one, decided that there wasn’t, and then moved slowly through the crowd over to the newsstand. I stood there for another moment and looked around casually, trying to sense rather than see whether there was anyone watching me. But there were too many people still putting on their coats and chattering to each other about the speech and the snow. I could neither sense nor see anyone staring at me, so I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:05.

I took a copy of Time from the magazine rack, told the newsstand clerk I would like a Hershey bar and two packs of Kents, paid for them, and moved back through the thinning crowd to the elevator. I looked around again but nobody was even looking my way. They were all still talking to each other, and none of them seemed to care whether I went up to my room and took a nap or out into Sixteenth Street and built a snowman.

Back up in my room I turned on the TV set and ate the Hershey bar while I watched a rerun of a cops and robbers program that seemed to be taking place out in Los Angeles under smog-alert conditions. I turned the TV set off after a few minutes and settled down with Time , reading it from back to front as I always did. I was about halfway through the magazine and learning all about what names had made news last week when the phone rang.

A deep male voice asked me if I were Mr. St. Ives, and when I said I was he said that he was Max Spivey, that he was a vice-president with the Pacifica insurance company, that he had just had a rotten flight in from Los Angeles, and an even worse trip in from Dulles, and that he needed to see me, but that he needed a drink even worse.

“Do you drink Scotch?”

“I drink anything.”

“I’ve got some J and B up here that you’re welcome to.”

“I’ll be up in five minutes,” he said.

He was knocking on the door in a little less than that. His deep voice went with his size, which was large, very large, even massive. He held out his hand and said, “I’m Max Spivey,” and his voice seemed to rumble up out of his chest.

“Philip St. Ives,” I said as my hand vanished inside of his.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said. “You’re supposed to be good.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Sit down anywhere.”

The room seemed to shrink in size by half after he came in. He looked around and nodded at the bed. “I’ll use that,” he said. “I don’t like to sit on hotel chairs until I’ve tested them.”

He wasn’t much less than seven feet tall, possibly four inches less, maybe even five, but no more than that. He sat down carefully on the bed, but the springs protested anyhow, and it seemed to embarrass him a little. Even though he was huge he was well proportioned, all 275 pounds of him at least, and when he leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees his pants legs stretched tight, revealing thighs as thick as telephone poles. They went with the rest of him.

“It’s a nice hotel,” he said when I came back out of the bathroom carrying two glasses. “I decided to get a room here when your lawyer said that this is where you’d be staying.”

“They keep it up,” I said. “How do you want your Scotch? I’ve got water, but no ice.”

“Just pour some in a glass,” he said.

“How’s that?” I said and handed him a water tumbler that was a third full.

He said that was fine, waited until he was sure that I had a drink of my own, raised his glass in a small salute, and then knocked back half of his drink in a gulp.

He was somewhere past thirty-five, a year or two past it, which was long enough to have got him accustomed to the idea that he was going to have to make his way in a world that was designed for a smaller race. His moves were smooth and careful, almost delicate, as if he were afraid that he might squash something if he moved too fast.

If he hadn’t been so big, his looks wouldn’t have turned any heads. Although he wasn’t exactly ugly, there was a bit too much chin and forehead, and something should have been done for his nose, which arced down and to the left toward a thick-lipped mouth that turned up at one end and down at the other as if it couldn’t decide whether to snarl or smile. But when he did smile, as he did now after having drunk some of my Scotch, it was a merry one that showed a lot of splendid white teeth.

If you looked at him only casually, you might take him for just another huge hulk of a man who hadn’t quite grown up to be a giant. But if you looked again, you would have noticed his eyes, and then you would have known that somewhere inside that huge frame was a cool, watchful intelligence that liked to puzzle things out on its own. They were green eyes, almost sea green, and what they had seen so far of life may have robbed them of most of their warmth.

After he had taken another swallow of his drink, Spivey produced a pack of unfiltered Camels, lit one, and then used his thumb to indicate the window.

“We’re not exactly used to snow out in L.A.,” he said.

“Well, they’re not too sure what it is here either.”

“Yeah, I took a cab in from the airport. It cost me twenty bucks and I think that half the time we were going sideways. A hell of a trip.” He took another swallow of his drink. “You heard from them yet?”

“The thief — or thieves?”

“Yeah. I figure it’s two. At least two. It would take two to get through Jack Marsh.”

“I understand that you’re pretty high on him.”

He nodded. “He’s one of the best private operators on the coast. I guess we’ve used him maybe a dozen times.”

“In what capacity?”

“You know much about us?”

I shook my head. “Not much. Just what my lawyer told me. You seem to be taking away some funny business from Lloyd’s of London.”

“You mean the tits and ass stuff?”

“Is that what you call it?”