William Lashner - Fatal Flaw

It was still afternoon when I got home, stripped off my suit, slipped between the covers. It was still bright outside, sunlight was leaking through the gaps between my window and my shade. I stared at the ceiling for a moment. It didn’t break apart, it was inert, safe. I closed my eyes and slept like a dead goat.

When I awoke, it was dark and silent and I knew exactly what I needed to do. I might not have known what the hell I was doing before, I had never before contemplated doing what I had contemplated doing to Guy, but now I was on more comfortable ground. A girl was dead, my lover was dead, and she left me now a mystery to solve, a simple mystery. Who the hell had killed her? To save Guy and enact my vengeance both I needed only to unlock the mystery, ferret out the motive, and find the murderer. And I believed just then I already had the key.

I was wrong, of course. There was nothing simple about the mystery of Hailey Prouix’s death, just as there was nothing simple about Hailey Prouix herself.

But damn if I wasn’t right about the key.

“FIRST PHILADELPHIA,Market Street Branch, Allison Robards speaking.”

“Hi, Allison. Tommy, Tommy Baker, over at First Philadelphia, Old City. How you doing today?”

“Fine. Tommy, is it?”

“That’s right. Tommy, Tommy Baker.”

“Tommy Baker, that name is familiar. Did I meet you at the Christmas party?”

“Remember the fellow in the checked jacket dancing that dance?”

“The bald one?”

“I’m not bald, I’m follicularly challenged.”

“I thought the name was familiar. Tommy. Tommy Baker. How are you, Tommy?”

“Great. Doing great, except for our computers. Are you guys up, or is the whole system down?”

“No, we’re up. What do you need?”

“I got a police detective in here asking about one of our accounts. The name is Hailey Prouix.”

“Hailey Prouix? Isn’t she…?”

“Exactly. But with my computer down, and it’s been happening a lot. Someone is screwing up. Who’s the vendor, you know?”

“Not my department.”

“They said her office was near your branch, so I thought you might be able to help.”

“Okay, sure, Tommy. What was the name again?”

“P-r-o-u-i-x. Hailey. With a suburban address.”

“Here it is. Account number 598872. We are the home branch. She opened the account here two years ago.”

“All right, great. What’s the balance?”

“One-oh-three-four-two and fifty-six.”

“Any recent activity?”

“Checks, nothing strange. Except…”

“Go ahead.”

“A wire transfer about two months ago, February eighteenth. Big amount. Whoa. Four hundred thousand.”

“You don’t say. Where to?”

“Don’t know, location isn’t listed here. It’s number WT876032Q. You’d have to check Wire Transfers for specifics.”

“Okay, that’s great, thanks. And as the home branch, you guys have her safe-deposit box, too?”

“Let me look. Hold on a sec, I’ll have to check the cards.”

Long pause.

“No, no, we don’t have a safe-deposit box registered in her name.”

“All right, thanks a load.”

“No problem.”

“And, Allison. Have a nice day.”

THE KEY.

It sat on my desk, the little chunk of metal, one end rounded like a clover, the other jagged like the teeth of one of the winos on North Broad Street. And stamped into its head the words./. Canton, Ohio, the birthplace of football and home to the pro football hall of fame. Also the home of Diebold, Incorporated. From the moment I first laid eyes on it in Hailey Prouix’s desk drawer, I knew what it was. Diebold didn’t make just any old lock and key. Diebold didn’t make filing cabinets or desks or padlocks or cars. Diebold made vaults, bank vaults. This was the key to Hailey Prouix’s safe-deposit box, the hiding place for her secrets, both personal and financial. A man in black had searched the house after the murder, apparently looking for this very chunk of metal. And in my vomitous encounter with Skink, he had told me that he knew I had it and that he wanted it, wanted it badly enough to let me know he wanted it. I had taken it on a whim but suddenly, in my desire to save Guy’s life, I had a great need to know what was inside its box.

I used the phone I had given to Hailey, to keep the records off my office line, and geared myself up for the role, shaking my neck, jiggling my arms, breathing like a prizefighter about to enter the ring. What I needed was the right voice. A job like this depended on voice. With the right voice you could work wonders. Tommy, Tommy Baker. With my rumpled suits, my spreading rear, my comb-over. I had risen fast at the start, but then my career had stalled, along with my life. My wife had gained thirty pounds, my daughter had pierced her tongue, my car smelled like a cat, and I was trying to make that new teller but she didn’t seem interested. My weight was high, my blood pressure higher, I drank too much because by my age my father was dead. What I needed was a tone of overt jocularity covering a vast sea of despair. The jocularity I could fake, the despair I didn’t need to.

“FIRST PHILADELPHIA,Ardmore Branch.”

“Hi, this is Market Street. Who am I speaking to?”

“Latitia Clogg.”

“Hi, Latitia. This is Tommy, Tommy Baker. Allison Robards over here suggested I give you a call.”

“Allison?”

“She said she had some questions for you before and that you were a great help.”

“Allison? Oh, yeah, Allison. Pretty little blond girl.”

“That’s the one. Look, I have something you might be able to answer. I have been getting some information requests from Legal about account number 598872, which was opened by a Hailey Prouix in this branch about two years ago.”

“Isn’t she…?”

“That’s right. What was the Daily News headline: SHOT THROUGH THE HEART? What do you think of that, huh? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Wonder about what?”

“Fate. Life. The price of bananas. Who knows? But Legal, man. You should see the mess of forms they want us to fill out. It’s going to take a week.”

“I bet. First thing let’s kill all the lawyers, right?”

“Who said that?”

“Wasn’t it like Nixon or somebody?”

“Probably. Look, Latitia, they’ve been asking us, in addition to the account information, whether there was a safe-deposit box in her name. We’ve got nothing here on that, but I understand she was living not too far from your branch, so I was wondering if you could check whether she had a box there or not.”

“Of course, Tommy. Just wait a minute, I’ll check the cards.”

Long pause.

“Nope, nothing. Sorry.”

“No, that’s good, that’s easier. Thanks, Latitia. By the way, I have to check out some other things, too. You know anyone in Wire Transfers I could get to help me out?”

“Kelly Morgan.”

“She knows her stuff?”

“Oh, yes. Tell her Latitia sent you.”

“Thank you, you’ve been great. Did I meet you at the Christmas party?”

“I was there with my husband.”

“Why is it, Latitia, that all the good ones are already taken?”

ALONG WITHthe key, I had taken Hailey Prouix’s expired driver’s license from the desk in the room of her murder. It was the only picture I had of her: guilt-ridden lovers don’t take snapshots. In my office, the door closed and locked, I looked hard at the tiny photograph on the card, but it was like looking at a stranger. There had been a wonderful plasticity to her face, her mouth always teetering on the edge of a smile or a frown, her eyes widening or contracting, her face alive with the currents of emotion flowing beneath the surface, but all that aliveness was missing on the photograph. She looked plain, even mousy on the license, her hair pulled back, her glasses hiding the sharp ridges of her face instead of accentuating them. She looked like no one I had ever known. The raw statistics were there, birth date, sex, her height was listed as five-two, her eyes blue, but she was missing.