Джо Горес - Dead Man

“You had two other P.I.’s looking for him for a week before you came to me, and don’t even know which rest room he uses.”

“You mean he’s a fucking fag?”

“No. I mean that you know nothing about him, yet you handpicked him to be Lorimer’s attorney with power to cosign on that box with her. Who or what made him desperate enough to steal from you? Was he being blackmailed? If so, over what? Was he a gambler in debt to a shylock? Is he a cokehead? In love?”

Maxton exclaimed, “How do you expect me to know anything like that? He’s a fucking law clerk, for Godsake!”

“Exactly. You said the substitution probably won’t be discovered until Mrs. Lorimer’s death, if then. Does she know about the theft? Do you plan to return the bonds to her?”

There was a long silence. Maxton finally turned to the window behind the desk, stood with his face so close to it that when he spoke his words left small puffs of steam on the glass.

“Zimmer agreed to substitute forged bonds I supplied for two million worth of the genuine ones. He was to get a hundred thousand, tax-free, for that service.”

“And just in case, you made sure you couldn’t even get into the box — only Zimmer,” said Dain. “That way, if the substitution was discovered, Zimmer would take the fall.”

Maxton turned back into the room. “That’s right.”

Dain leaned forward with a friendly look on his face.

“So the question is, why did you have to steal the bonds?”

Maxton slammed his empty glass down on the desk so hard it cracked in his hand. He threw it into the wastebasket.

“None of your fucking business.”

“I’ll tell you why,” said Dain. “Your wife found out you were fooling around and filed for divorce. She wanted the usual — alimony, house, car... But I’m assuming she also wanted a lot of tax-free cash under the table — or else.”

Maxton said softly, “Or else what?”

“Normally I’d expect her to wake up dead in a garbage pail somewhere, but instead you trot out and try to steal two million bucks to keep her happy. So she’s really got something — probably something the fraud division of the IRS or your playmates with the ini-names would like to know. So she’s got an edge on you.” He suddenly snapped the words. “Does Zimmer?”

“I told you, the man’s a fucking law clerk. That’s why I chose him for this — he wouldn’t dare try a double cross.”

“But he did,” said Dain. He stood abruptly, picked up his book, headed for the door. “I’ll be in touch.”

It was the week before exams on Northwestern’s hundred and sixty green hardwood-dotted acres bordering Lake Michigan. Undergrads sprawled on the grass like terrorist victims. Dain, in his three-piece suit and power tie, wearing clear-glass horn-rims that made him look professorial, stopped a worried-looking coed for directions to the law school. She had a chocoholic complexion and a stack of books under her arm that listed her to port like a sailboat beating into the wind. When he spoke to her she dropped her books. He caught them before they hit the walk.

“The law school?” he prompted gently.

“Oh, ah, yeah.” She half turned, pointed beyond the U-shaped concrete admin building with its signature clock tower to another building half-hidden by the green leaves and startling white trunks of some birch trees. “The red brick? With the white window trim?”

“Many thanks. Good luck with the exams.”

An hour later, in the pleasantly secluded Shakespeare Gardens, he stopped beside a bench on which a sternly attractive brown-haired woman was correcting papers. She wore a tweed suit with a skirt short enough to show several inches of very shapely thigh. There was a great stack of law-books on the bench.

“Dr. Berman?” She squinted up into the sun; Dain shifted so he blocked it from her eyes. “They said at the law review that you often came here in nice weather to correct papers.”

She took off her glasses, said rudely, “I’m faculty advisor for the review. Who are you?”

“James Zimmer,” said Dain as if the name were an answer.

The irritation faded. Her eyes softened with memory. “Jimmy Zimmer! God, I haven’t thought of Jimmy for...” She caught herself, said sharply, “I asked who you were.”

“Mr. Zimmer has applied to the United States Justice Department for a position as a federal prosecutor. In such cases there is a routine investi—”

“Jimmy? A federal prosecutor?” She stopped just short of an unexpected giggle. “We were law students here together...” Sternness tightened her face. “I doubt if I can tell you anything that would be of interest to the Justice Department.”

Dain put a shoe on the edge of the bench. “How about if Jimmy made the law review or not?”

She looked startled, then burst out laughing. “You’re good at this, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” said Dain, and moved her books aside enough to sit down beside her on the bench.

When he left a half hour later, he knew that on his own Jimmy Zimmer would have had neither the imagination, wit, nor courage to plan the bond theft from Teddy Maxton.

That evening at Zimmer’s apartment building he gleaned a second possibly useful fact from a snide overweight born-again in the laundry room. She described a woman Zimmer had been “shamelessly intimate with” for several weeks that past winter

“Nights at his apartment?”

Her eyes flashed. “Whole weekends. It ended around the middle of January.”

“And after that?” Dain’s voice was insinuating.

“He had a peroxide floozie up one time, a month ago, but I put a stop to that.” Her uncolored lips curved in righteous triumph. One plump cheek even dimpled. “I called the police and told them harlots were working out of his apartment.”

Dain asked God to bless her, and left. Her description of the blonde was “cheap”; her description of the winter lover was that of Maxton’s executive secretary, Jeri Pearson.

A cooling wind off Lake Michigan was puffing its way up the skyscraper canyons to swirl old newspapers against pedestrians’ legs and tug at women’s dresses. If Marilyn Monroe had been out in it, her skirt would have been up around her ears and poor old Tom Ewell would have had to strap down his hard-on.

As the minute hand on the clock a block down from the First Chicago Bank of Commerce leaped forward to 9:23 A.M., Dain exited the bank. He had traded his leather-bound book for a clipboard. In the guise of a state bank examiner he already had talked with the woman who had let Zimmer into the safe-deposit box. She hadn’t remembered him, but her records had: clocked in at 9:03, clocked out at 9:22.

A city-grimed Cicero bus farted past Dain; he made a notation on his clipboard. Behind the bus, a red-headed Irish-faced meter maid was chalking tires. Another note for her. Near the corner a postman opened the letter box and began putting the mailed letters into a big canvas bag. Dain made a note.

He crossed the street, stood on the far corner. His eye was caught by a doughnut truck pulling away from KARL’S KOFFEE KUP KAFE midblock to his right. He scribbled a note, went down that way. A boy exited Karl’s with a tippy cardboard tray of coffee in plastic-capped Styrofoam cups. Dain wrote.

Beyond Karl’s was an alley. He glanced down that way, then stopped, utterly still. Foot traffic flowed around his solid immobility. Yes. It was what he’d do. He started ambling down the alley, stopped again. Him, but not Zimmer. Zimmer, alone, just about here would be thinking, still time to turn them over to Maxton and get his 100-K and live happily ever after.

As he was passing the back door of a café a short-order cook came out to dump some garbage in one of the pails. It went in with an ugly wet plopping sound. Dain stopped again, abruptly.