Дональд Уэстлейк - Enough [A Travesty (novel) and Ordo (novelette)]

“Husband?” I’d known Laura had at one time been married, but everybody has a marriage or two somewhere in their past and I’d always assumed hers was long since over and done with. “You mean, she was still married?”

“That’s my understanding,” he said. “Legally separated, I believe.”

And she’d been nagging me to break the old ties. Now I saw the whole plot; she’d hold on to husband number one until I was lined up to take his place. Devious devious women, they’re all alike. Josef Von Sternberg knew what he was talking about.

The detective spoke through my interior monologue. “The point is, I was there. I watched the two of you go into the building, and then quite some time later I watched you come out alone, and I must say, Mr. Thorpe, rarely have I seen a man act as guilty as you did. I didn’t know what it was all about, of course, but I thought probably I ought to keep an eye on you.”

“You followed me.”

“That’s just what I did,” he agreed. “And I noticed another peculiar thing. You must have let half a dozen empty cabs go by, but then when you got to Sheridan Square you were suddenly in a real frantic rush to hail a cab and jump in and holler out your address.”

He paused, with a bright alert smiling look, as though offering me a chance to compliment him on his powers of observation. I refrained.

He went on. “Well, it seemed to me you didn’t want anybody tracing you from Mrs. Penney’s apartment, and I thought that a little peculiar. So I followed you uptown here, and waited to see which lights went on, and got your name from the doorbell. You really ought to ask who’s there before you let anybody in, you know, just as a by-the-by.”

“The intercom’s broken.”

“Then you ought to get it fixed. Believe me, it’s my business and I know, you can’t have too much security.”

“I’ve talked to the super and the landlord both. Wait a minute! What are we talking about?”

“You’re right,” he said, “I got myself off the subject. I’m a bug on safety, I take all kinds of precautions for myself and I’m all the time pushing safety on everybody else. Let me see, now. After I got your name from the doorbell I went back downtown and let myself into Mrs, Penney’s apartment.”

That surprised me. “You had a key?”

“Well,” he said, with another of his little smiles, “I have a whole lot of keys. Generally there’s one for the job.”

“You broke in, in other words.”

“Well, sir, Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “I don’t think you ought to start using harsh words, you know. There’s two of us could do that.”

“All right, all right. Get to the point.”

“Well, you know what I found in the apartment.”

“This envelope,” I said, waggling the fist in which I had it imprisoned.

“Yes,” he said, “and a body on top of it. From the marks on the coffee table and the floor, it looked to me as though there’d been some sort of fracas. You struck her — there’s a bit of a gray spot on the side of the jaw, she was dead before it could swell up any — and she hit her head on the coffee table going down.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

He did a judicious pose, pursing out his lips and stroking the line of his jaw; Sidney Greenstreet. “That’s a possibility,” he said. “On the other hand, you did run away, and you did try to cover your presence in the apartment, and if you’ll look at this picture here you’ll see you do just look guilty as all hell.”

From inside his coat he had taken a photograph, which he now leaned forward to extend toward me. I took it, with the hand not crushing the envelope, and looked at a grainy but recognizable black-and-white picture of myself emerging from Laura’s apartment building. By God, I did look guilty as all hell, with my mouth open and eyes staring and head half-twisted to look over my shoulder. I also looked very bulky, as though I’d just stolen all the silver. Mostly I reminded me of Peter Loire in M. “I see,” I said.

“Infra red,” he told me. He seemed very pleased with himself. “The negative’s in my desk at the office.”

I looked up from my own staring eyes into his calmly humorous ones. “What now? What are you going to do?”

“Well, sir,” he said, “I think of that as being up to you.”

And suddenly we were in a situation I recognized from the movies. “Blackmail,” I said.

He looked a bit offended. “Well, now,” he said, “there you go with the harsh words again. I just thought you might be interested in buying the negative, that’s all.”

“And your silence?”

“I wouldn’t want to get a man in trouble, if I could avoid it.” He shifted his bulk on the sofa. “Now, I’m supposed to turn in my report by twelve noon, and it seems to me I could handle it one of two ways. Either I could say a gentleman — that would be you — brought Mrs. Penney home but left her at the street door and went away, or I could report that you went in with her and came out without her and please see photo attached.”

I said, “How much?”

“Well,” he said, “that’s a very rare photograph.”

“And I’m a very poor man.”

He chuckled at me, disbelievingly. “Oh, come along now. You’ve got a nice place in a rich part of town, you’ve—”

“This isn’t a rich part of town. A couple blocks west of here is rich, but not here.”

“This is the Upper East Side,” he informed me, as though I didn’t know where I lived.

“Look,” I said. “You just walked up the stairs yourself, do you think they have walk-ups in a rich part of town?”

“On the Upper East Side of Manhattan they do. Besides, you’re a writer.”

“I’m a movie reviewer. There isn’t any money in that.”

“You’ve had books out.”

“Film criticism. Did you ever see a book of film criticism on the best-seller list?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the best-seller list,” he said, “but I do know from my years with the agency that successful writers tend to have nice pieces of money about themselves.”

“I don’t,” I said. “For God’s sake, man, you’re a detective, surely you could check into that, find out if I’m a liar or not. I’ll show you my checkbook, I’ll show you letters from my wife screaming for money, I’ll show you my old income tax returns.”

“Well, sir,” he said, “if you’re too poor, I think I’d be better off going for the glory of making the arrest.”

A cold breeze touched me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t say I don’t have any money. Obviously, if I can afford to pay I’d rather do that than go to jail. It just depends how much you want.”

He frowned at me. He studied me and thought it over and glanced around the living room — and to think I’d been pleased at how expensive I’d made the place look — and at last he came to a decision: “Ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars! I don’t have it.”

“I won’t bargain with you, Mr. Thorpe.” He sounded rueful but determined. “I couldn’t falsify my report for a penny less.”

“I don’t have the money, it’s as simple as that.”

He heaved himself to his feet. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Thorpe.”

“I’ll tell them, you know. That you tried to blackmail me.

He gave me a mildly curious frown. “So?”

“They’ll know it’s the truth.” I jammed the photograph into my trouser pocket. “I’ll have this picture for evidence.”

He shrugged and smiled and shook his head. “Oh, they’d probably believe you,” he said, “but they wouldn’t care. Funny thing about police, they’d rather catch a murderer than a blackmailer any day in the week.”