Parnell Hall - The Anonymous Client

Tracy’s thoughts were interrupted by the plop of the mail falling through the slot. She looked up. Two letters were lying on the floor by the door. Two. Wow. Big day. Tracy got up from her desk and plodded mechanically over to pick up the mail.

Steve Winslow looked up from his paper when Tracy Garvin appeared at the door. He figured that she was just reaffirming the fact that she had given notice, and was ready with some sarcastic comment, but the look on her face stopped him.

“What is it?” he said.

Tracy held out a letter. “Another one.”

“Another letter?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell me there’s another retainer.”

“There is.”

Tracy handed Steve the envelope. He reached in and pulled out the torn half of a dollar bill.

“Son of a bitch,” Winslow said.

“There’s a letter with it.”

“Don’t tell me,” Steve said. “This is my change from the ten grand, right?”

“Not quite.”

Steve pulled out the letter, opened it, and read it aloud.

“Dear Mr. Winslow: I realize that my first letter failed to establish any means by which I could prove my identity. Enclosed find half of a dollar bill. In the event that I am in need of your services, I will present you with the other half of the bill. In the meantime, please remember that this is a matter requiring the utmost tact and delicacy.”

Steve looked at Tracy. “Jesus Christ.”

Tracy eyes were gleaming. “Yeah. Why would Bradshaw send you that letter?”

Steve shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. First Bradshaw sends me a retainer. Second, Bradshaw steals the retainer from my safe. Third, Bradshaw sends me the letter.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he sent the letter before he took the money back.”

“The letter is postmarked today.”

“That’s true, but he could have mailed it yesterday. He might have dropped it in a mailbox, and the mail wasn’t picked up until today.”

Steve shook his head. “He was in my office at three-thirty in the afternoon. If he’d mailed the letter before then, it would have been picked up. And he wouldn’t have mailed it after he’d been to see me.”

Tracy frowned. “I see the point. But that’s what he must have done.”

“All right, then we come back to why.”

Tracy shook her head. “You’ve got me. There’s no reason on earth why he would send that letter.”

“Exactly,” Steve said. “If he stole the money, he wouldn’t have sent the letter. And we know he stole the money.”

“So who sent the letter?”

Steve sighed. “How the hell should I know? All right, Tracy, take this letter down to Mark Taylor and tell him pass it on to his expert to see if it was typed on the same machine.”

Steve snatched up the phone and called Mark Taylor.

“Got your men pulled off the job yet, Mark?”

“Uh huh. You need them again?”

“I don’t know, but I may. Be ready to go into action. In the meantime I’m sending Tracy down with another note for your expert.”

“Bradshaw again?”

“That’s what I want to find out. But it sure looks like the same typewriter.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me there’s another retainer with it?”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re kidding. Don’t tell me it’s another ten grand.”

“Not this time, Mark.”

“No? What’d you get this time?”

“Half a dollar.”

Steve Winslow took a cab home. For Steve, cabs were a luxury. After years of driving them himself, he loved riding in cabs instead of always taking the crowded subway. Even though, he had to admit, the trip from his midtown office to his Greenwich Village apartment was actually almost quicker by subway than it was by cab.

Particularly at rush hour. And it was rush hour now. Steve had stayed in his office the whole day waiting for something to happen. And nothing had. Except for Mark Taylor calling back to confirm that the two letters had been typed on the same machine, the place had been dead. And yet he’d stayed. And he realized, the reason he’d stayed was that, despite everything he’d said, his feelings about everything that had happened were just the same as those of Tracy Garvin: he found the whole thing fascinating and he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

And nothing had. And now he was stuck in a traffic jam on Seventh Avenue with a taxi driver who smoked like a chimney and who kept the radio blaring.

“Fire swept through a two-story building in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, early this afternoon-”

Steve Winslow was sure one had. Fire swept through a building somewhere in New York City every day of the year. And it was tragic, of course, but Steve didn’t want to hear about it. Not at that volume. And yet he didn’t feel like telling the cabbie to turn it down. Because he sympathized with cab drivers, even obnoxious ones. He leaned his head out the window, away from the cigarette smoke and into the exhaust fumes of a bus.

The radio was still blaring. “In a surprise move, the Nassau County District Attorney’s office secured an order for the exhumation of the body of Phillip T. Harding, the wealthy oil magnate, who died last month at the age of sixty-three. A preliminary report from the autopsy surgeon indicates that the cause of death, originally attributed to coronary thrombosis, was in fact due to arsenic poisoning. The D.A.’s office would issue no statement on the matter, but indicated that the police were making a thorough investigation and that the true facts would be forthcoming shortly.”

“Cabbie!” Steve yelled over the radio. “Cabbie!”

“Yeah?” the cabbie yelled back.

“Turn the radio down. We’re going to a new address.”

It took nearly twenty minutes for them to get out of traffic and reach Bradshaw’s apartment building.

Winslow got out of the cab a block away. As he hurried to the building, he kept a sharp eye out to see that the place wasn’t being watched. He saw no one.

It was a four-story brownstone in the middle of the block. A narrow alley cut through the block to the right of the building, making the apartments on that side more desirable in terms of light and ventilation. Beside the front door of the building were a row of buttons and a call box, which Steve interpreted correctly as indicating that the front door was locked. Having no desire to talk to Bradshaw on the call box, Steve took a plastic credit card from his wallet and inserted it in the crack in the door. He couldn’t help grinning-just like on television. The spring lock slid back easily, and Steve slipped in the door and climbed the flight of stairs. There were two apartments on the second floor. Steve located apartment 2A, knocked on the door, and waited. There was no answer. Steve tried again, louder this time, then put his ear to the door and listened. There was not a sound from the apartment. Cursing the fact that he didn’t have a set of passkeys, Steve inspected the lock. He jiggled the doorknob, and to his surprise it clicked open. He hesitated a moment, then opened the door.

The body of David C. Bradshaw lay face down on the floor in a pool of blood. The handle of a large carving knife protruded from between his shoulder blades. Bradshaw’s head was twisted sideways, and his eyes, in the glassy stare of death, seemed to be glancing over his shoulder, as if he were preparing to ditch one last shadow.

Steve couldn’t help recoiling. It was, after all, his first dead body. He drew back, took a couple of deep breaths, and shook his head to clear it. Then he looked at the body again. No, it was something he’d never seen before, but something he’d visualized many times. The tableau, he realized, was exactly like the one Sheila Benton had described to him, in his other, his first, his one and only murder case-the dead man lying on the floor, the knife sticking out of his back. He knew now a little bit how Sheila must have felt. And this wasn’t even his apartment, as it had been hers. God!