Джеймс Чейз - One Bright Summer Morning

Kramer got to his feet, went over to the booth and shut himself in. He lifted the receiver, humming happily under his breath. The humming quickly ceased. The harsh, unsteady voice of Abe Jacobs, Solly Lucas’s chief clerk, told him the news.

“Shot himself?” Kramer repeated and he suddenly felt a vacuum forming inside him.

He had known Solly for thirty years. He had known him to be a brilliant if crooked attorney with an uncanny instinct for making money, but he had also known him to be a fool regarding women, and an extravagant and reckless gambler. Lucas wouldn’t have killed himself unless he had come to the end of his financial road. Kramer felt cold sweat break out on his forehead. He had a sudden sickening fear for his four million dollars.

It took two weeks of concentrated ferreting to discover just why Solly had ended his life. It seemed that he had four important clients... Kramer being one of them. Each of these clients had trusted him with large sums of money. Lucas had used this money for his own purposes. He had been unlucky, or perhaps it was he was getting too old for a speculative gamble. He had thrown in more and more of his clients’ money to hold off disaster. Land, building and stock speculations had finally sunk him into a bottomless pit. When the crash came he was in the hole for nine million dollars, including Kramer’s four million. Lucas knew Kramer. This was something Kramer would never forgive. He saved Kramer the trouble of killing him; he killed himself.

It took Kramer some time to accept the fact that Lucas, who had been his prop and his friend for the past thirty years, had betrayed him into poverty. Apart from five thousand dollars in his bank, his shares, his bonds and even the cash in his safe deposit had vanished with Lucas’s death.

He sat in Lucas’s big, luxury office, facing Abe Jacobs, a tall, thin man with an egg-shaped head and close-set, shifty eyes.

Jacobs said quietly, “There it is, Mr. Kramer. I’m sorry. I had no idea what he was doing. He never confided in me. You’re not the only one. He’s lost something close on nine million dollars in two years. I guess he must have been crazy.”

Kramer got slowly to his feet. For the first time in his life, he felt old.

“Keep me out of this Abe,” he said. “I haven’t lost a dime... hear me? If the Press get on to me, I’ll get on to you!”

He went out into the sunlit street and got into his car. He sat for some minutes, staring blankly through the windscreen, seeing nothing but his bleak, dollarless future. Should he tell Helene? He decided he wouldn’t tell her, anyway for the time being. But what was he going to do? How was he now going to live? He thought of the new Cadillac he had ordered. There was this mink stole he had promised Helene for her birthday. He had booked a suite on a luxury liner for a trip to the Far East: not paid for yet, but Helene was wildly excited and could talk of little else. He had several commitments that involved a large sum of money. The paltry five thousand dollars in his bank would be swallowed up within a week if he tried to meet these commitments.

He lit a cigar, started the car engine and drove slowly back to Paradise City. During the drive, his mind was active. Something had to be done, and done fast.

Kramer hadn’t been known as a dangerous criminal for nothing. Okay, he told himself, savagely chewing on his cigar, he had been financially wiped out. Well, he wasn’t too old to start again, but how? That was the question... how? To make four million dollars when you are sixty years old wanted some doing... an impossible task... unless...

His slate grey eyes narrowed. His heavy sunburned face with its square jaw, lipless mouth and long thick nose set in a hard, expressionless mask while his brain poked and probed for a way out of this financial hole.

He arrived back at the villa to find Helene preparing to go out. She looked anxiously at him.

“Did you find out why he did it?” she asked as Kramer came heavily into the lounge.

“He got caught short,” Kramer said curtly. “He was a little too smart... like the rest of them. Look, baby, run along. I’ve things to think about.”

“You mean he went bust?” Helene stared: her green-blue eyes horrified. She had always regarded Solly Lucas as a kind of financial wizard. It was unbelievable to her that Solly of all people could lose his money.

Kramer grinned mirthlessly.

“That’s about it. He went bust all right.”

“Why didn’t he come to us? We could have helped him,” Helene said, wringing her hands. “Poor Solly! Why didn’t he come to us?”

“Are you going out?” Kramer said, his face darkening. “I’ve things to do.”

“I thought I’d drive down town... the mink stole. The girl wanted me to approve the skins.”

Kramer hesitated for a brief moment. This wasn’t the time to buy a mink stole, he told himself, but he had promised it to Helene. There would still be time to cancel the order if things got really rugged. He patted her arm.

“Go ahead. I’ll be seeing you,” and he walked into his study: a big room with books, a desk, three lounging chairs and a view of the rose garden.

He closed the door and sat behind his desk. He lit a cigar. He heard Helene drive away in her two-seater Jag. He had two hours, possibly more, to consider his position before Helene returned. The two coloured servants who ran the house wouldn’t disturb him. He sat motionless, his slate grey eyes fixed in a blank stare at the curling smoke of his cigar. The hands of his desk clock moved on. There was no sound in the room except for the faint ticking of the clock and Kramer’s heavy breathing. He sat there, a brooding evil genius, determined to win back his lost fortune if he could only think of the means.

He had been thinking for the best part of an hour when he abruptly got to his feet. He walked over to the window and looked out onto the neat lawn and the massed beds of roses without seeing them. Then he crossed the room, unlocked a drawer in his desk, and took from it a cheap manila file. He opened the file and looked thoughtfully at a number of Press cuttings that were neatly clipped into the file. He fingered the cuttings, his heavy face sullen in thought. He finally closed the file and put it back into the drawer.

Moving silently, he went to the door of the study and easing it open, he listened. Faintly, down the passage he could hear the murmur of voices of Sam and Martha, his servants, conversing in the kitchen. He closed the door, went to his desk, searched in the top right-hand desk drawer until he found a small, shabby address book. He sat down and consulted the book.

He finally found the telephone number he wanted. He told the telephone operator he wanted San Francisco. He gave the number which he read from the book. The operator said she would call him back.

He replaced the receiver, stubbed out his cigar and leaned back in the desk chair. His face was now a stony expressionless mask: his eyes were very bleak.

There was a long delay, but finally the operator called him.

“Your party is now on the line,” she told him. “The number has been changed.” She sounded irritated that she should have been put to so much trouble.

Kramer was listening to the clicks on the line. He heard a man say, “Hello? Who’s that?”

He said, “I want to talk to Moe Zegetti.”

The man said, “This is Zegetti. Who’s calling?”

“I didn’t recognize your voice, Moe,” Kramer said. “I guess it is a long time... seven years, isn’t it?”

“Who’s that?” The man’s voice sharpened.

“Who do you imagine it is?” Kramer said with a wolfish grin. “Long time no see, Moe. How are you?”

“Jim! For Pete’s sake! Is that you, Jim?”