Sol Stein - Other people

Thomassy

I told Francine she'd have to wait in the car.

"I didn't bring anything to read," she said.

"I'll leave the key. Turn on the radio."

"It'll drain the battery."

"I won't be long. Lock the doors from inside. Sit behind the wheel. If anybody tries to bother you, take off. When you get somewhere, call this number." I gave her a slip with Tarbell's phone. "Don't memorize the number," I said. "It's one you don't ever want to have to use without me fronting for you."

Tarbell answered the door, a large, curved pipe hanging from the side of his mouth. He removed it to grunt a greeting, led the way through the disorderly wilderness of his apartment, down a long hallway with closed doors on both sides like sentinels. We passed the open door to the kitchen. A woman sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee nodded at me. His wife? Cleaning woman? What was behind all those doors? I'd been in the apartment only once before. I glanced around his so-called study at the end of the hall. I'd forgotten what a mess of papers and casebooks littered the room.

"A flash fire'd put you out of business," I said.

"Nah," said Tarbell. "The best stuff's on microfilm."

"Brady's?"

"Natch. Have a seat." He flopped a fish hand at a Naugahyde armchair with a stack of file folders in the seat. "Just put them on the floor," he said, plopping his three hundred pounds into a swivel chair and passing me a stapled affidavit of about a dozen pages. "You'll see she signs it both ways. That Anna Costello, that's her real name. Her customers know her as Anna Smith. Her good customers know her as Anna Banana."

I was trying to be polite enough to pay attention to him, but my eyes were skimming the affidavit.

"Why Anna Banana?"

"Oh it's a thing she does. It's in there."

"What does she do for Brady that Mrs. Brady doesn't do?"

"Brady's on page seven. She refers to him as Mr. B."

"How do I prove it's Brady if I have to?"

"His social security number's in there. Anna's a smart lady."

I skim-read pages seven and eight.

"Useful?" asked Tarbell.

"The kind of people he works for wouldn't like to think their mouthpiece was into something this kinky. They'd think he freaked out."

"Other people's sex always looks crazy."

"This is straight out of Krafft-Ebing."

"Let me unstaple it. You can take pages seven and eight. Just bring them back."

"I'd like to take the whole affidavit."

"You're not paying for the whole affidavit."

"I'd like to fill myself in on Anna's kind of shtick, just in case I need to know more about her than how she services Brady."

"Well, skim it."

"I've got a lady waiting in the car."

"Skim it here."

I did. It was pretty awful stuff. I like to think I'm broad-minded, nothing human is alien to me and all that, but maybe some of this stuff isn't human. "Okay," I said when I had finished.

Tarbell took the staple out and handed me pages seven and eight. Then as an afterthought, he handed me the first and last pages also. "You might need those, the beginning, and then the signature page."

I stood up. I guess I wanted to get out of there.

Tarbell held his hand out.

"Sorry. Almost forgot." I gave him the envelope with the bills. I waited till he counted them. He wasn't part of Widmer's trusting world.

"By the way," he said. "He goes to Amsterdam at least once a year. Interesting."

"How'd you get that?"

"Other people go to Amsterdam. A little money helps finance their trip, and builds my inventory."

"Tarbell," I said, "do you have a file on me?"

I could swear his cheeks reddened. "Sure," he said. "Small one."

"Think I could guess what's in it?"

"Doubt it."

"Could I buy my own file?"

"What the hell would you want to do that for, George?" he said.

"Just testing."

"Get the hell out of here before I get angry."

"I should be the angry one."

"If I'm not covering everybody, people won't come to me first, they'll go to Broderick in New Rochelle. Listen, you don't like what I do for a living, you just get me reinstated in the bar, okay?"

I didn't want to get on the wrong side of Fat Tarbell. "Don't think I don't understand," I said. "My life is your business."

He laughed. "You're okay, George." He showed me down the long hallway to the door. "Come back soon."

Francine was sitting in the driver's seat. She unlocked the door and slid over when she saw me coming.

"Sorry it took so long," I said. "Some of the stuff I had to read on the premises."

"What's he got on Brady?"

"I'd just as soon not talk about it. It might put me off sex for a week."

I had meant to phone my service from Tarbell's. I guess reading that junk had distracted me. I pulled up at a public phone and called.

"A Dr. Koch called. Sounded very upset. Asked you to call soonest." She gave me Koch's number. I wondered what was up. I looked over at Francine in the parked car. She seemed restless. I decided I'd return Koch's call when we got home.

When we reached my place, I took my jacket off, lowered the knot of my tie, and sat down to read the Brady pages in Anna Banana's affidavit once more before putting them somewhere Francine wouldn't come upon them accidentally. I guess she'd say I had an old-fashioned point of view as to what a woman should and should not be exposed to. A double standard for kinkiness.

Francine got the ice, made the drinks as if it was her place. The whole thing had a domestic feeling about it. Was I bothered by that? I didn't want a woman to wait on me. Some guys get married for the service. A bachelor gets used to doing his own.

Jesus, I nearly forgot about old Koch. I stashed the Brady stuff away in the other room, then dialed Koch's number. "Oh," said the lady in the answering service as if she was waiting for my call. "He's very anxious to talk to you. As soon as possible." She gave me an unfamiliar number. I wrote it down, thanked her, and redialed.

"Sergeant Heller." It was a police station. A wave of thoughts skittered through my head. Koch'd been mugged. Couldn't be too bad or the old man'd be in the hospital.

I identified myself and told the sergeant I was trying to reach Dr. Gunther Koch. Francine had come into the room. She pointed at my glass. I must have gulped my drink without thinking. She was wanting to know if I needed another. I shook my head. Meanwhile, the sergeant had passed my call upstairs to the detectives. "Just a minute," somebody said, and I could hear the telephone clatter onto a desk top at the other end. It took forever till somebody else picked up, another voice, saying, "You the doctor's lawyer?"

"What happened?" I asked. "Did he get mugged?"

"No," said the rough voice. "The doctor's the perpetrator."

God, police use words like that every chance they get.

"What did he do for Christ's sake?" I couldn't believe that mild-mannered man would do anything harmful to anybody.

"He hit a guy in the eye with a dart."

I looked up at Francine.

"Could I speak to the doctor, please?" I asked.

"Hold on, I'll get him." Again, the receiver clunking on a desk top.

When Dr. Koch got on, he talked so fast in that accent of his I could barely make out what he was saying.

"Slow down," I said to him.

I could hear him take a deep breath. "It is unbelievable," he said. "They have taken my picture. They have taken my fingerprints. I am booked as if I am the criminal. Please help me."

"Tell me what happened. Slowly."

"This man, he had a gun."

"Start at the beginning," I said.

Then he told me about coming home from the movies, finding the door open, seeing the man at the file cabinet, the man forcing him to sit behind his desk. "I offered him fifty dollars to go," he said. "He took the fifty dollars and was taking Miss Widmer's file anyway. On my desk I have these three darts…"