Parnell Hall - The Anonymous Client

The cashier grinned. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.”

The blonde reached down under the counter and pulled out her purse. “Just a sec,” she said. She rummaged through her purse and fished out a postage stamp and a pink, perfumed envelope. “I hope the color doesn’t matter,” she said.

Steve handed her the money. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it couldn’t be better.”

Steve took the envelope and stamp to a table in the corner of the lobby. He put the list of bills in his wallet. He put the Bradshaw letters in the pink envelope, then stamped and sealed it. He addressed the envelope to himself at his office. He hurried outside, found a mailbox, and dropped the letter in.

Steve heaved a sigh of relief. Well, one down and a lot more to go. And the first was the worst. Mark Taylor. Steve hated what he had to do, but he really had no choice.

Steve returned to the restaurant, where he found Mark Taylor sipping a bourbon at a table for two in the far corner of the dining room.

“O.K., Steve,” he said. “What’s the pitch?”

Steve glanced at the drink.

“I had to order it,” Taylor said. “The waiter was getting impatient, and I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“That’s fine, Mark,” Steve said. “I’ll have one too. It’s been quite an evening.”

“Hasn’t it? All right, Steve. We can talk now. What did you drag me down here for?”

“To have dinner.”

Taylor stared at him. “What?”

“Sure,” Steve said. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“I had some hamburgers sent up. Look, Steve-”

“But that was a while ago, wasn’t it?”

“Around seven, but-”

“And it’s eleven now. You could eat a nice steak couldn’t you?”

“Sure, but-”

“Then let’s have dinner,” Steve said. He summoned the waiter. “I’ll have a scotch, and this man could probably use another bourbon. Then we’d like a couple of steaks, medium rare. The kitchen’s still open, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” the waiter said. “We serve food till midnight.”

The waiter wrote down the order and left.

Mark Taylor turned to Steve Winslow. “Steve, please. Don’t do this to me. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you know how I hate to be out of touch with the office. What the hell’s going on?”

Steve took a sip of scotch. “I’m afraid your office isn’t a very safe place for you right now.”

“Why not?”

“You’re going to have visitors.”

“You man cops?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh shit. How do you know?”

Steve shook his head. “I can’t tell you that right now. But the way things are breaking, sooner or later Sergeant Stams is going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. When he does, you’re going to have to answer questions. The less you know, the less you have to tell him.”

“I know too much already.”

Steve shook his head. “No you don’t, Mark. Actually, you know very little. The rest you just infer. Any conclusions you may have drawn are incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, and you can’t be forced to testify about them.”

“Testify!” Taylor was alarmed. “Am I going to have to testify?”

“It’s possible,” Steve said. “Which is why it’s important to differentiate between what you know and what you merely surmise. I’m going to tell you what you know.”

Mark Taylor blinked. “Steve. I got a license.”

“Just do what I tell you, and you won’t lose your license,” Steve said. “Now listen. This is what you know: On Tuesday I gave you a list of serial numbers of ten one thousand dollar bills. You traced the bills and discovered that they had been withdrawn from the bank by one David C. Bradshaw. On my instructions, you placed Bradshaw’s apartment under surveillance Tuesday afternoon. Your operatives reported to you that a young woman called on Bradshaw that afternoon. Immediately after her departure, Bradshaw also left the apartment. Your operatives followed both parties. The young woman was eventually followed to her home and identified as Marilyn Harding. Your men reported that Miss Harding was also being followed by operatives from the Miltner Detective Agency. Bradshaw ditched his shadow. Later, I informed you that Bradshaw was in my office. Your shadows picked up Bradshaw when he left my office and followed him home. You lifted fingerprints from my desk and had them traced. You found them to be the prints of one Donald Blake, a convicted felon with a history of arrests for larceny and extortion. On Tuesday evening at around six-thirty, Bradshaw left his apartment, ditched his shadows, and returned to his apartment at around nine-thirty. The following morning you dusted the combination of my office safe for fingerprints and found one that matched the right thumb of David C. Bradshaw. At that point I instructed you to call off your operatives and drop your investigation.”

Mark Taylor squirmed uncomfortably.

The waiter returned, set the drinks on the table, and departed.

Mark Taylor downed the rest of his first drink, and picked up his second. He swirled the ice around in the glass. He looked at the ice, rather than at Steve.

“Well, what’s the matter?” Steve said.

“I can’t get away with it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, in the first place, you haven’t said anything about the letters.”

“But no one is going to ask you about any letters.”

“They’re going to ask me to tell them everything I know about the case.”

“Exactly. That’s just the point I was trying to make. They’re going to ask you what you know about the case. What I’ve just told you is all you know.”

“I know about the letters.”

“What letters?”

“You know what letters,” Taylor said, irritably. “The Bradshaw letters.”

“See, that’s just what I mean,” Steve said. “You don’t know those letters came from Bradshaw. As a matter of fact, there is fairly good evidence they did not.”

“That’s not the point. The police are going to ask where I got that list of numbers.”

“And you’ll tell them you got it from me.”

“And then they’ll want to know where you got them.”

“And you’ll tell them you don’t know.”

“But I do know,” Taylor said. “Tracy copied them off the ten one thousand dollar bills that came in the first letter.”

“And how do you know that?”

“You told me so yourself.”

“Exactly. That’s hearsay. You don’t know where the list of numbers came from. What I told you is of no evidential value, and they can’t force you to testify to it.”

“Aren’t there some cases where they can?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “If they indict me and proceed against me on a criminal charge, anything I may have told you regarding the case could be received in evidence as an admission against interest.”

“Indict you!” Taylor said. “You’re kidding, of course?”

“Only half. I’m sure Stams would love to get me, if he could just figure out what to charge me with. But the point I’m making is, you don’t know that the letters have anything to do with the list, so you don’t need to say anything about them. It won’t be that hard because nobody knows about the letters, so nobody’s going to ask you.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“I saw that ten thousand dollars with my own eyes.”

“Did you compare the numbers on the bills with the list?”

“No.”

“There you are. Ah, here are our salads.”

“I’m rapidly losing my appetite,” Taylor grumbled.

The waiter served them and withdrew.

“Snap out of it, Mark,” Steve said. “You got nothing to worry about.”