Lawrence Block - The Specialists

“Perhaps if my husband agrees, I could call your Mr. Stedman tomorrow and—”

“Ma’am, if you was to call Mr. Stedman, we’d be glad to come, but that limb, the sawing of it isn’t but a ten-dollar piece of work, and for us to come all the way clear up from Lambertville—”

“Oh, my. Only ten dollars?”

“What with us being here now, ma’am, she wouldn’t be any more than that. Oh, I see, you was recollecting that termite inspector and three hundred dollars. Now if you wanted to call the Better Business Bureau in Lambertville, or if—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mrs. Tuthill was laughing now. “Oh, my, ten dollars, and here I thought... oh, for heaven’s sake, cut the silly thing off. Ten dollars!”

“It seems wrong,” Simmons said. “Cutting a perfectly good limb off a perfectly good tree.”

“Shucks,” Murdock said, “I reckon it would have had borers sooner or later.”

“Telling her to look how the leaves are growing.” The road swung around to the left, and Simmons tapped the brake pedal lightly. The truck rolled into the curve. “That lawn, now, that’s something else. You see how patchy it was? That comes from cutting it too low, that and using the wrong seed mix.”

“Soon as we’re all set up, you can go back and do Mrs. Tuthill’s lawn for her.”

“Somebody should. Those burnt-out patches, that comes from using a fertilizer with too much phosphate. Of course, now, to do the right kind of work on a lawn that size—”

“You suppose it’d cost as much as cleaning out her termites?”

Simmons laughed.

“Does seem like a waste,” Murdock went on. “Climbing her damn tree and sawing the damn limb off and daubing on the creosote and all just for a reference. And you damn well know Platt ain’t going to call her anyway.”

“Colonel Cross says he might.”

“Platt? Gangster like him, that kind of a bad old boy, nice old lady like Mrs. Tuthill wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

Simmons shrugged. “Might try to call Mr. Stedman in Lambertville. Might have some trouble, since there’s no Mr. Stedman in Lambertville—”

“There really a Lambertville?”

“Must be. Colonel says we need a reference. Colonel has a habit of being right. That’s Platt’s place on the right.”

“And who says crime don’t pay?”

Simmons braked the truck and slowed to a crawl. While Murdock checked out the trees on the front lawn, Simmons clicked off mental pictures of the estate itself. Eighty yards of frontage rimmed by a ten-foot iron fence. A gate in the center opening onto a circular driveway. The main house, huge, white, fronted by massive columns. A garage off to the left, with living quarters over it. The grounds, Simmons noted, were very well kept.

He said, “He just might already have a tree surgeon, Ben.”

“He’s got a tree that’s dying.”

“Really?”

Murdock pointed at an aged silver maple. “Storm damage. See where the lightning caught it? Wonder what the hell you’d do with something like that.”

“You’re the doctor.”

Murdock grinned. Simmons pulled to a stop at the gate. Guards stood on either side, thick-bodied men wearing revolvers on their hips. The one on Murdock’s side also carried a carbine.

Murdock drawled, “Stedman’s Tree Surgery, here to see Mr. Platt.”

The guard with the carbine shook his head.

“Not home?”

“No.”

Murdock grinned easily. “Think my boy and I’ll just have a look at that tree if we might.” He started to open the door. The guard leaned on it and Murdock let it swing shut.

The guard said, “Nobody comes on the grounds without Mr. Platt says it’s okay.”

Murdock hesitated, then heaved a sigh. “Well,” he said. “I’ll just phone him up tonight.”

“You do that,” the guard said.

Back on the road Murdock said, “Seemed worth a try.”

“I didn’t think they’d go for it.”

“Not the way those two take to playing soldier. Two guards, two of them, and that fat one can’t make do with just a revolver, he needs a bee-bee gun, too. You catch the fancy belt and holster?”

“That’s hand-tooled leather.”

“Nothing but the finest. Reckon they can shoot worth spit?”

“I have a feeling they practice a lot.”

“I guess,” Murdock said. He took a cigarette and gave one to Simmons. They smoked for a while in silence. “I’ll call him tonight, we’ll do the job in the morning. Lawn looked good, didn’t it?”

“Like a golf course.”

“Means he probably thought about getting a tree doctor in and never got around to it. We’ll make it all good tomorrow. How’d you like that fat boy on the gate, anyhow?”

“They were both fat.”

“Yeah. I sure had a longing to take the two of them.”

“So did I,” Simmons said.

The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall was located at the northwest comer of the intersection of Broad Street and Revere Avenue. Broad Street was the main commercial thoroughfare of the town, and the one-story brick building fronted on Broad with a small parking lot alongside on Revere. Dehn put his car in the lot and walked around to the front entrance. It was fifteen minutes past three. The bank normally closed at three, but on Fridays it stayed open until 5:30.

Dehn opened the door, went inside. He was wearing a gray sharkskin suit and carrying a slim leather attach
 case. His glance darted around the bank, registering impressions, estimating distances. He wouldn’t have to supply details. Giordano, who had visited the bank during the noon rush, would probably be able to come up with a virtual floor plan of the layout. But Dehn wanted to get his own feel of the place, and it wouldn’t hurt for him to be able to backstop Giordano.

A row of tellers’ cages on the right. A stand-up desk in the center where depositors could fill out slips. On the left, three desks for bank officers, just one of them presently occupied. A staircase at the rear center, presumably leading to the vault room in the basement. A uniformed guard at the head of the stairs, another at the side door, plus the one he had passed in front. The guards themselves looked wholly interchangeable, stiff white-haired men with slight paunches and underslung jaws. Dehn guessed they were retired cops.

Dehn went over to the desk where a bank officer sat. When the man looked up from a column of figures, he said he wanted to open a checking account. The officer pointed him to a chair, opened a desk drawer, asked if he was interested in a regular or a special checking account. He started to explain the difference, and Dehn cut in and said the regular account would be fine. The officer brightened at this.

Dehn gave his name as Arthur Moorehead of Seattle, explained he had taken a position in New Cornwall and would be bringing his family east as soon as he found suitable accommodations for them. “But first you set the financial house in order,” the banker said. “Good, good.”

A year earlier Dehn had opened an account as Arthur Moorehead at the Shippers’ Bank of Seattle. He had closed out the account within a week, but somehow or other he had never destroyed the checkbook. He wrote out a check now for $2,500 and used it to open his account.

The bank official said something tentative about waiting a week for imprinted checks.

“Oh, of course,” Dehn said. “You’ll want to wait until my check clears in Seattle. No problem. I won’t need to draw on this account for the time being.”

It would take the check at least ten days to bounce back to New Cornwall. And by that time the bank would have more important things to worry about than Arthur Moorehead.

After the last of the forms had been filled out, Dehn asked about a safe deposit box. They only had a small selection, he was told, and there was a waiting list for the larger boxes, but a small one might be available. Was that satisfactory?