Lawrence Block - Hit Parade

“You know, I had the sense you were a man of the world, Jackie.”

“I wouldn’t have the collection I do,” he said, “if it weren’t for insurance fraud.”

“Reporting your own stamps as stolen? I wouldn’t think-”

“When it comes to stamps, I’ve always been completely on the up-and-up.”

“Same here. That’s the thing about hobbies.”

“I’m talking about life insurance fraud. A couple of times over the years I’ve faked my own death. So I know a little about the mechanics of it. Sherry, you’ve got somebody back home who wants to kill you. You can’t buy him off or scare him off, and he won’t let up as long as you’re alive. But if he doesn’t think you’re alive…”

Bingham had a ton of questions. Where would you get a body? What about DNA? Dental forensics?

“Have another drink,” Keller suggested, “and I’ll explain what I have in mind.”

“It just might work,”Bingham said. “You want to know something? It’s scarier than dying. I was pretty much used to the idea of that, but this…”

“I know what you mean.”

“And at the same time it’s exciting as hell. Because it’s a whole new life. I’d be starting over with next to nothing. Wayne State ’ll get my stamps and everything else I own. I’ve got a little cash tucked away in secret accounts, and I can get that, so I’ll never have to wonder where my next meal is coming from. But where will I live, and how’ll I keep from running into somebody who can recognize me?” He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose I could dye this. Or cut it real short. Or shave it off, but then people start wondering how you’d look with hair.”

“There are a lot of tricks,” Keller said, figuring there would have to be. “And I can help you come up with them.”

“And you can find a body that’ll pass for mine. Jackie, I’m not going to ask how.”

“Nobody’s going to get killed,” he assured Bingham, and talked vaguely about cooperative funeral parlors. Even as he spoke, the whole prospect sounded dubious to him, and he was glad Bingham’s intake of whiskey was increasing its credibility.

“Now here’s what’s crucial,” he said. “First of all, it has to happen here, in San Francisco. Where nobody knows you, and where the police will have every reason to wrap it up in a hurry and ship the body back to Detroit. Where nobody will bother with an autopsy, because San Francisco already held one.”

“Stands to reason.”

“Number one,” he said, “is that ring of yours. It’s distinctive.”

“My high school ring. I’m not even sure I can get it off. Let me try some soap.”

He returned from the bathroom with the ring in hand. “There,” he said, presenting it to Keller. “And number two?”

“Your suicide note. You’ll want a sheet of Cumberford letterhead.”

“In the desk drawer.”

“Could you get it? We’ll want to have your fingerprints on it, and nobody else’s.”

“Good thinking. Now what should I write?”

Keller frowned in thought. “Let’s see,” he said. “‘To Whom It May Concern. I suppose I’m taking the easy way out, but I have no choice.’” He went on, and Bingham said he had the sense of it, and how would it be if he phrased it more in his own words? Keller told him it would be ideal.

By the time he’d finished, he’d filled the whole sheet of hotel stationery. “‘I would advise my heirs at Wayne State University to sell my entire collection of stamps,’” he read aloud, “‘and recommend the San Francisco firm of Halliday amp; Okun for this purpose.’ You know, I spent close to fifty thousand this weekend. I might not have bothered if I’d had any idea I was only going to own the stamps for a matter of hours.”

“You could take them along.”

“You think so? No, it’s got to be more convincing to leave them behind. And it’s not as though I’m going to resume collecting German states in my new life, or anything else in the world of stamps. Handwriting’s a little shaky.”

“Well, you’re about to kill yourself. That might make a man the least bit unsteady.”

“I think the scotch may have had something to do with it. Just let me sign this. Signature looks okay, doesn’t it?”

“It looks fine.”

“So. What happens next?”

“Pretty slick,”Dot said. “Got him to write a note, got him to take off his ring, and then gave him a helping hand out the window. I know people who drown themselves tend to leave their clothes all folded up on the beach, but do many jumpers do it naked?”

“It happens,” he said. “What never happens is that somebody undresses a guy before shoving him out a window.”

“Until now.”

“Well,” he said.

“But you said he was dressed when you went upstairs. So you had to undress him.”

“When I phoned him,” he recalled, “he said he’d just got out of the shower. I should have told him to just put on a robe.”

“I think he did enough, Keller. How’d you get him unconscious?”

“Rabbit punch.”

“Always a popular favorite.”

“At first I thought I’d killed him. I figured it was better to hit him too hard than not hard enough. Because I didn’t want him to know what was happening.”

“But the blow didn’t kill him.”

“No, he was alive when he went out the window.”

“But not for long. Six stories?”

“Six stories.”

“With no overhangs or canopies to break his fall.”

“That was the pavement’s job,” he said.

“And the cops? Were you in town long enough for them to get around to you?”

“I went to them myself,” he said.

“Jesus, that’s a first.”

“As soon as I heard about Bingham’s death, and that didn’t take long. I told them how I’d spent some time with him over the weekend, and that it’d be my guess that he’d received bad news from his doctor, because he would say things like why was he buying these stamps when he couldn’t look forward to owning them for very long. And he’d sort of hinted at suicide, talking about meeting fate head-on instead of waiting for it to come up on him from behind.”

“How’d this go over?”

“Well, the detective I talked to wrote everything down, but it just seemed to be confirming what he’d already decided. It was pretty much open and shut, Dot.”

“The window was open,” she said, “and the door was shut.”

“That’s about it. A very candid suicide note in his own hand, signed and dated, and weighted down with his watch and his class ring. And, alongside it, all the stamps he’d bought over the weekend, plus a wallet full of cash.”

“That’s enough to fool just about anybody,” she allowed. “Except for Len Horvath, who thinks you’re the greatest thing since Google. He said he can’t wait until somebody pisses him off so he can use you again.”

“He actually said that?”

“No, of course not. But he’s a happy man, and he sent us the cash to prove it. I have to say he’s not the only one you managed to impress, Keller. Getting him to write the note, that’s kind of rich.”

“You gave me the idea.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You said maybe he’d kill himself. Out of disappointment at losing the blue ribbon.”

“I said that? I don’t even remember, but I’ll take your word for it. Did he lose the blue ribbon?”

“No, he won.”

“But he found something else to be disappointed about. That’s what gave you the idea? My idle remark?”

“Plus an idle remark of Bingham’s, saying I could be a confidence man or a stock swindler. And I realized that I felt like a con man, pretending to be his friend while I was getting ready to take him out, and then I thought, well, what would a con man do?” He frowned. “It was interesting, manipulating things, making it all work out, but I wouldn’t want to be a con man full-time. I really did like him, you know.”