Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

“Come in, come in!” Stitt urged Johnny. He poured liberally into a glass he dredged up from the depths of the ice-packed bucket and handed it to the receptionist, who accepted it with an embarrassed smile. “Drink up, Helen,” he told the girl. “Take the rest of the day off. Have a good dinner on me. Run the ticket through petty cash in the morning.” He disregarded the girl's murmured thanks to walk over and unlatch the gate in the wooden railing. “Come in,” he repeated. He saw Johnny's face. “That affair of last night,” he said dismissingly. “Send me the bill.”

“I brought you the bill, Stitt.”

For a second, at Johnny's tone, the cold eyes congealed and the features hardened to a rigid austerity. Just for a second, and then before Johnny's unbelieving eyes the Max Stitt he thought he knew was gone again. “Any other day of my life, Killain, I would accommodate you. I would accommodate you gladly. Any day prior to today. At ten o'clock this morning I became a half-owner of the business here. It is an event in a man's life. At ten o'clock this morning I was done with affairs such as that of last night.” He held up the magnum. “You will join me?”

“Too early for bubbly,” Johnny said cautiously. “You got any schnapps?”

“I do have schnapps.” Stitt walked to a green filing cabinet in a corner and removed a dark, squat bottle. He half filled a water glass he removed from a desk. He splashed champagne into a glass he took from the bucket, handed Johnny the water glass and raised his own aloft. “To ten o'clock this morning,” he toasted, and downed his champagne.

“Mr. Stitt-” the receptionist put in timidly from the side. “If you really don't need me any more today-”

“Run along,” he told her. “Draw the curtain on the door. I've packed off the warehouse crew, too. Anyone coming in that door this afternoon can have a drink, nothing else. Tomorrow business as usual, Helen.”

After pulling down the yellow curtain on the front door, the girl went out a door in the back, her bag under her arm. Max Stitt seated himself behind a desk, loosened his collar and produced a box of cigars, which he offered to Johnny. He elevated his feet to the top of the desk, slid down on his spine, stripped the cellophane from a cigar and sighed profoundly in the cloud of smoke from its lighted tip. “I have become legitimized,” Max Stitt proclaimed solemnly to Johnny. “I have no further interest in the disposition of Hegel's piece. I'm done with all that. In this life a man steals what he must to set himself up legitimately. After that a wise man steals only from the tax people.”

“I doubt that Dechant would have agreed with you.” Johnny was curious to see how far Stitt's mellow mood would take him.

“Claude Dechant was a fool,” Stitt said flatly. “To be more specific, a fool over women. They bled him. A pipeline to Fort Knox couldn't have kept him going. He lacked my perspective.” The corners of his mouth lifted around his cigar. “To me, women are an irritation ninety-eight per cent of the time. The other two per cent of the time they are merely slightly less of an irritation. I can't stand their gabble, or their grasping.”

Johnny took a swallow of the pungent, colorless liquor in his glass. “You knew Dechant a long time,” Johnny suggested.

Max Stitt nodded. “We were from Colmar. We'd never worked together, but we knew each other. In 'forty he went with the French, I with the Germans. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw him in an Italian lieutenant's uniform in a cantina in Florence in August of 'forty-four. Right away, when he saw me, he had a plan. Claude always thought big, give the devil his due. I was a captain in charge of two demolition squads. The one bridge out of six left standing in the general retreat from Florence had not been my assignment.” The natural arrogance was back in Stitt's voice, Johnny noted. “Claude was attached to a Canadian colonel as interpreter and liaison, and, of course, in that Italian uniform a spy. It would have been amusing to have gotten him hung, but I listened to Mm.”

Stitt puffed lengthily on his cigar. “He had detailed maps of three of the larger deposits of medieval and modern art that had been moved in around the city from all over Italy. There were over thirty of them altogether, I'm told. I could get trucks. It looked easy, but the Allied advance overran us. It turned out, too, that other people had the same idea we did. Some stuff was loaded and rushed off God knows where. It was never seen again. We were lucky finally to get out with a whole skin. It came down finally to Claude burying a few pieces himself. It took him three years to get back to get them. I was over here by that time. The pickings looked a little better on this side. I hooked on with Arends. He needed someone with my organizing ability who knew the back alleys of Europe like I did.” Max Stitt shrugged.

Johnny prompted him. “And at ten o'clock this morning-”

“I listened to the lawyer read Arends' will. He'd never paid me what the job I was doing for him was worth, but we had an agreement in writing that, if anything happened to him, half of this was mine. I couldn't be sure of him, though. He could have added a codicil to his will at any time. I had to hope he'd figure finally that his widow would be better off with me running the business, and that's the way-it went. I signed a contract with her at the lawyer's to continue as general manager at an increase, with half the profits.” He straightened up in his chair, refilled his champagne glass and raised it to Johnny. “To the end of the old road. No hard feelings. You'll have trouble disposing of that piece. Not many buyers for a thing like that. That's why Claude was a good man to have around: he had contacts.”

“With you comin' into a windfall like that, you're not afraid of the police tryin' to pin the tail on you for Arends?”

“They might think I hired it. They know I didn't do it.” Max Stitt looked down at his glass. “Arends wasn't alone when he went up to Madeleine's apartment. Two of the help told the police that another man went upstairs with Jack. They never did see him come down. The police had me over there last night. It seems I'm not the man.”

“Did you hear a description?”

“They were careful that I didn't. They shouldn't have too much trouble finding out.”

“You think you know?”

“I know that as of ten o'clock this morning I started minding Max Stitt's business, and his only.”

“Did I tell you Palmer made me an offer for the piece?” Johnny asked casually.

“Palmer did? Palmer? He wouldn't pay a quarter to see an elephant roller-skate. Something wrong there. He stole his money young, and he's been a cautious type ever since. If he ever knew one-tenth the uses to which Claude put his money-“

“What I hear, him an' Faulkner are goin' to school on it.”

Max Stitt laughed, a harsh, unmusical sound. “Faulkner,” he said disparagingly. “That warmer Bruder?”

“He seems to get around with the redhead.”

“She's using him.”

“You were a little rough on her a while back.”

“She told you that?” Stitt looked surprised, then smiled wisely. “She didn't tell you. You saw. So she's using you, too.” He stood up behind the desk. “I showed her that no woman uses Max Stitt.” He lifted the magnum and held it to the light. “Empty. And I've talked myself sober.” His light-colored eyes considered Johnny. “Yesterday it wouldn't have been like this, Killain. Tomorrow it won't be. All I want is to be left alone.” He stubbed out his cigar with finality. “Sorry to rush you, but I'm locking up.”

He removed a heavy key ring from the center drawer of his desk and followed Johnny to the front door. Johnny was already on the cement walk outside when Max Stitt spoke again. “Don't turn your back on that redhead. Take it from a man who knows.”