Ed Gorman: Rough Cut

"Maybe when we talk to Stokes tonight-"

I looked at her. "We?"

"Sure. We. I mean, I hope you're not planning to dump me now. It's kind of late in the game." She was joking but there was an anxiety in her voice. "I mean, that's something Clay would do. Not take me along."

What could I say? That I was going to be just like the husband who'd mistreated her over the years?

We spent the hour and a half waiting to go to Stokes's in a tiny bar meant to be intimate but that succeeded only in being oppressive. Peanut shells crunched underfoot like broken glass and the jukebox threatened to deafen you. Photos of NFL players looked down at us with the reverence of saints.

"May I ask you a question?" Cindy said after our second drink.

"Sure."

"Maybe you won't want to answer it."

"That bad, huh?"

"It's about your first wife."

"Oh-oh."

"Why she left you, I mean."

I smiled. "It was probably for all the right reasons." I shrugged. "I'm not exactly a prize, you know."

"You're a prize to me."

"You don't know me well enough yet."

"What a great self-image."

"Just what I love. Pop-psychology jargon."

"Some of it's true."

"Some of it."

"How about one more question?"

"What?"

"When I asked you about wanting to get married again, were you serious?"

"Very."

She smiled again. "Good."

I glanced at my watch and thought of Hauser, my accountant. He had been supposed to call me back. Tough to do when I'd left the office early. I wondered if what he had to say would have any bearing on my meeting with Stokes.

I explained all this to Cindy, then got up and worked my way back to the phone. It would have helped if I'd been a lineman for the Packers.

Then it was a ten-minute wait while a slickie in a toupee pleaded with his secretary to let him come over to her apartment. He sounded horny and lonely and pathetic all at the same time. I had begun to feel sorry for him until-getting me off the hook-he glanced up at me in the middle of a plaintive sentence and winked at me. Mr. Sincerity.

Finally, he took his lies and his middle-aged lust and his toupee back to the bar.

My accountant, Hauser, did well enough to live in the second most prestigious section of the city. His wife had the right kind of voice for the address, too, a cultured tone with just a hint of proper sexuality.

Hauser, when he came on the phone, struggled to sound happy to hear from me. "Hey," he said, "good to hear from you."

"Hey, yourself," I said. "I wondered if you'd figured out anything yet."

"Matter of fact, I have."

He paused long enough for a drumroll. Finally, he said, "Your accountant, Wickes, and your partner, Harris, were defrauding you."

Though that's about what I'd expected to hear, I still felt shock and anger. There's a difference between suspecting your wife of being unfaithful and walking in on her.

"The Eagle Production angle," Hauser went on. "Clay Traynor was involved, too. Your company billed Traynor's company for very expensive commercials that never actually got shot, then when Traynor paid your company, I think there was a three-way split. Eagle was a dummy company that Harris and Wickes set up."

I swore.

"Unfortunately," he said, "that's not all."

"Great."

"I'm not quite sure how to tell you this."

"Flat out is the best way."

"Your company is about three weeks away from bankruptcy. "

This time I swore for a long time. Hauser had the good grace to let me go on.

"Harris and Wickes," he said, "they were embezzling the profits from the Eagle setup-and they were embezzling the regular company profits, too, and investing them in a variety of ways. Wickes is not what I'd consider an investment genius." Now it was his turn to swear. "Up until a few months ago, they managed to hide what they were doing. Then the losses got too great."

A guy had come up to stand outside the phone booth. He held a drink in his hand. A drink I needed much worse than he did. I opened the door a bit and pointed at his glass. "I'll give you ten dollars for your drink."

"You kidding, buddy?"

"I wish I were."

He studied me a moment. "That must be one helluva bad phone call."

I didn't have time to explain the real situation so I used shorthand, something simple and powerful. "How would you feel if your wife suddenly told you she was in love with another man?"

He handed me the drink and disappeared without asking for my ten-dollar bill.

On the other end of the phone Hauser was chuckling. "You advertising people are damned clever."

"Yeah," I said, "you can ask my dead partner just how clever." Then I had to ask. Had to. "Is there any way I can turn my financial position around?"

His pause said everything. "I don't think so, Michael. I really don't. Wickes has managed to stave off the worst of your creditors by giving them partial payments-but that's only going to last a few weeks longer."

"Let me ask you something and I'd appreciate a straight answer."

"Sure," he said, sounding a bit apprehensive.

"Denny Harris and Merle Wickes-given the situation they were in, do you think they'd be capable of pulling off a robbery?"

"Straight answer, right?"

"Right."

"I knew Denny for over ten years and he was a totally charming guy, lots of fun to be around. But he was also completely unscrupulous. I wouldn't put anything past him. And Merle-well, he's just this pathetic little guy who Denny pumped up into believing he was a big man. Merle would go along with anything that Denny wanted to do. And obviously he did. I doubt that Merle would have had courage enough to become an embezzler without Denny there to hold his hand."

"Yeah, I doubt it, too."

Hauser yawned.

"I'm sorry I called so late," I said.

"It's all right," he said. "Actually, I'm glad it's over with, giving you the bad news, I mean."

"Thanks," I said.

"You'll need to sit down with me and we'll have to figure out how you start a new agency."

"Yeah," I said. Numbness was starting to set in. All I could think of was Hauser's response to my question-that Denny was capable of anything.

I thought of the missing guard Kenneth Martin-and of the robbery of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gems- and of two murders.

Then I thought of the private eye named Stokes, whom I'd be seeing in less than a half hour.

Many things were starting to come clear in my mind.

Too many things.

"Thanks, again," I said.

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Michael."

"Yeah," I said, and hung up.

On the way over to Stokes's I told Cindy everything I'd learned. Everything. Even about her husband.

"God," she said. Then she fell silent, watching the cold night shadows move across the moonlit snow and the tiny houses huddled against the universe.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have told you. A friend of mine told me once-beware people who are eager to give you bad news."

She sighed. "I suspected something, anyway. After you told me about the robbery I started thinking about certain signs over the last year-things started disappearing from our house, silver sets, jewelry, things like that. Clay has always lived beyond his means. I knew we'd have to pay for it someday." She shook her head obstinately, with a sadness as weary as the widow Kubek's had been.

"His cousin can help him out."

"I don't think so, Michael. He's not the type to help anybody out. I just want it over with," she said. "Everything. I want to know who murdered Denny and Gettig, and I want to know why. Then I want the police to do their job and take the killer away-and then I want…" She paused. "And then I want you and me to try and make sense of things with each other. Don't you?"