Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

But he had learned that most people who do questionable things are as unremarkable as the people who don’t. Most people who are thrown into a cell for good reason are vastly astonished to find themselves there, because they look and feel like anyone else. It is all some kind of mistake.

Having faced the idea of digging up something Elmo could use against Dial Sinnat, he examined himself with care and concern, looking for some obvious alteration of the spirit. But he felt only a mild chagrin, a fussy anxiety about being successful at it — and not being caught at it, and a very subtle feeling of unreality, no more than a hangover or a slight fever would induce.

He had remembered old gossip, a fistfight, a damage suit which had been quietly dropped, and he had refreshed his memory in a microfilm booth at the paper. It seemed to make sense to go to a man’s enemies first. Rule one for the amateur blackmailer.

He walked around the corner onto Veronica Street and into the old Central Commerce Building, and climbed one flight of stairs to the offices of the accounting firm of Malley and Rand. The door was unlocked. The secretarial desks were empty. Chet Rand was behind his desk, his office door open. He was a soft, florid, red-headed man. His scowl turned to a smile as he recognized Jimmy Wing.

“Officially we’re closed, Jimmy,” he said. “But not for big financial figures like you. What have they got you doing now? Selling advertising?”

Jimmy sat down and looked at him amiably. “If you’re closed, why are you working? Too many accounts with two sets of books?”

“We recommend three these days. Four if it’s a partnership. What I’m doing, pal, is trying to save the skin of a stupid son of a bitch who just happened to forget to declare a little windfall he got three years ago.”

“What I want to talk about goes back a little further than that, Chet. I’m being the diligent reporter. Research. This is a confidential visit.”

“I won’t give you a crumb about any of our clients.”

“I wouldn’t ask. This is more personal. A story might break about an old buddy of yours. He might be getting into the same kind of trouble he got into once before.”

“An old friend of mine?”

“Dial Sinnat.”

Rand’s mild worn urban face changed in a startling way. For a few moments he looked capable of a dangerous violence. In a soft voice a half octave lower than his normal tone he said, “Is this your idea of a funny joke, Wing?”

“I’m serious.”

Chet Rand leaned back. “I get a lousy reaction to that name. But now I realize it isn’t fair. I tried to kill him once, and I don’t go anywhere where I might run into him. But I guess it wasn’t his fault. I was in a lot better shape then than I am now. I’m nearly twenty years younger than he is. But he like to kill me before they broke it up.”

“You dropped the suit, didn’t you?”

“There was a lot of pressure on me from all directions. From Ruthie and Don Malley and from just about every member of the Board of Governors of the Yacht Club. So I dropped it.” He gave Wing a strangely shy smile and looked away. “What I wasn’t willing to admit then, even though I guess I knew it all the time, I had to admit later. Ruthie was a slut. After what happened with Sinnat, I watched her closer. I didn’t lose my head the next time. I got the evidence on her and I used it to bulldoze her into a divorce. Somebody saw her in Phoenix over a year ago. I don’t know where the hell she is now. I keep wondering about her.”

“There was a dance that night, wasn’t there?”

“Nothing special. Just one of the Friday night things they used to have. I don’t know if they still have them. I resigned after it was all over. Sinnat had been at the hospital most of the day. Claire had twins that evening. Di came to the club from the hospital in a mood to buy champagne. I guess he got there about nine-thirty. Ruthie and I had a nice little load already, and the champagne topped it off. I guess it was about midnight I realized I hadn’t seen Ruthie for a while. I’d been playing poker dice at the bar. I went and looked in the car. She wasn’t there. I went out onto the docks looking for her. A wind had come up. Any noise I was making couldn’t be heard over the waves slapping the pilings and the boats creaking. I went way out on the end of the T and I wouldn’t have seen them at all if the moon hadn’t come out from behind a cloud at the right time. They’d pulled a bunk mattress out onto the cockpit deck of Johnny Shilling’s old Matthews , and if they hadn’t been in such a big hurry and stopped to rig a side curtain, they’d have been home free. It was a farce, I suppose. Like a dirty joke, where the husband always walks in. But it isn’t funny to the husband, Jimmy. It isn’t funny at all. They looked like farm animals, somehow. I went out of my mind. I smashed a boat hook on him, they tell me, and tried to skewer him with the splintered end. When he took it away from me, I tried to strangle him, but by the time they broke it up I had this new twist in my nose and I needed two hundred bucks worth of dental work. He’s a bull. We’d been friends. I did some work for him. We’d been in their house. They’d been in ours. Ruthie cried and lied and lied and cried. I don’t blame him now. I know she was a slut. I don’t blame him, but I still hate him.”

“Did Claire ever find out about it?”

“How could she help not hearing about it, in this town? But Claire is a tough girl, Jimmy. She’s a realist. She knows he’s no angel. She has a good life. Why should she mess it up because he did a little roaming when she was out of circulation? Hell, I can talk about it now, but there was a couple of years there when I couldn’t. If I was alone and began to think about it, I’d begin to cry. Isn’t that the damnedest thing? Not sad tears, but the way kids cry when they get mad. What kind of trouble is he getting into now?”

“I can’t talk about it, Chet. Wait and read about it in the paper.”

“What good does it do you to listen to all that old stuff?”

“Background information, Chet.”

“I don’t want it in the paper, by God!”

“It won’t be, believe me. We don’t run a scandal sheet.”

“Is it woman trouble?”

“It could be in that area.”

“I won’t wish him any luck. But how can anybody bruise the man? Name him as corespondent? There’s nobody to fire him, and she won’t divorce him. I’m telling you, pal, I spent at least a year trying to think of some way to mess him up, but short of shooting him, I couldn’t come up with a thing. They don’t give a damn for public opinion. He spends five mornings a week in the brokerage outfit. He’s quick and shrewd and he does very well at it. He’s healthy as a pig. And I’m now willing to admit he probably wouldn’t mess with any woman who wasn’t ready and willing. And Claire certainly doesn’t mess around.”

“And I suppose that when you worked on something for him, he wasn’t trying anything cute?”

Chet Rand looked at Wing narrowly. “Boy, you’re giving me the idea you’re fishing. The more I think about the story you walked in here with, the fishier it sounds.”

“What would I be fishing for? I’m just a newspaper type.”

“His personal financial records are complete and accurate. He’s got fat holdings on tax exempts, a slew of blue chips, and quite a lot of very very nice growth stuff. He doesn’t have to cut any tax corners. At least, that’s the way he was set four years ago. That closes that door. About the only tender spots I can think of would be his kids.”

Wing stared at him. “Four-year-old twins?”

“We keep the Art Center books. There’s a Natalie Sinnat drawing twelve bucks a week teaching a class of kids. Nineteen and cute.”