I re-read the letter. “Jay Porter, this is like an alienation of affections thing, and they never stand up. What you need is a lawyer.”
“No, Chick. Alienation and conversation are two different things. A loss of affection is almost impossible to prove. But that’s not the point. It’s the ensuing publicity that could destroy my name and my marriage. I’m an elder of my church, and my clients are all...”
“Take it easy, pal.”
He didn’t. “...and I can hardly go to a lawyer with a copy of a purloined letter. No ethical attorney would...”
“Jay Porter, STOP!” He did. “Now, slowly and calmly, lay it all out like you would a prospectus on a new stock issue.”
Believe me, if he writes a prospectus in the same garbled, confused way he told me the Velker story, American finance is in big trouble. Somehow I put it all together and shuffled it into a neat pack, with all the suits in the right place. I’ll deal it out to you painlessly.
That afternoon, Jay Porter had received the copy of the letter in the mail, from a girl named Lisa Banks who worked as a secretary in a Providence law office.
“Lisa is the only daughter of an elderly fisherman who did odd jobs up at my summer place in Newport,” Jay Porter explained. “Unfortunately, he was injured in a docking accident, and I covered all his expenses and put him on a retainer and paid Lisa’s way through secretarial school in Boston. The old man died last year, and although the daughter owes me nothing, I guess she felt she was repaying me somehow by sending me a copy of that letter. Of course I appreciate the warning, but she has put herself in legal jeopardy, so I can’t get legal counsel down here until this Providence lawyer, Procutto, contacts me.”
It gets worse, lots worse. Old Jay Porter started down the road to bankruptcy on January 16th, when a severe wind and ice storm decided to raise hell along the New England coast.
“I have a look-in caretaker of sorts, who lives in Newport, but when I called for a report on the storm, he was sick in bed. There’s been a lot of looting up there lately after winter storms, so I told Seth I’d be up myself. When I got there the next morning, it wasn’t all that bad. Part of the wharf and hangar were gone...”
“Hangar!” Barry was impressed. “You keep a plane up there?”
“Heavens, no,” Jay Porter assured him with a millionaire’s aplomb, “the Jet Star is kept at LaGuardia. The ‘hangar’ is really a boathouse, like the winter one at our Little Neck place, but hydroplane people call them hangars. You’ve met my wife Byerle, Chick. She’s a hydroplane enthusiast. Her father was Skip Dorian, who was killed in the World Cup race in ’68 — a terrible tragedy — and to console my wife, I’ve been underwriting Skip’s Sea Dart boat and crew. Lord, I could keep a string of racehorses for what that program costs me. More to the point, however, Byerle was in Jamaica to observe the Carib trials, dash the luck. If she’d been with me, this... this person wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. When I told Byerle on the phone about my trip, she was against it. Should have listened.”
“Bad break, Jay Porter,” I said, “but even more to the point, how’s about Mrs. Gina Velker?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Well, the main house was in fine shape, and since the snow had started again, I decided to spend the night. Around eight o’clock, there was a frantic pounding on the door, and I found this woman standing there freezing to death. Her car had skidded off the main highway, and she saw my lights. She must have walked a mile across open fields to get there, poor thing.”
“She isn’t going to be a poor thing if her hubby gets a million bucks out of you. You said woman, Jay Porter. How old? Looks?”
“Well, she’s in her late twenties, I would estimate, attractive, quite pleasant.”
“And she spent the night, right?”
“Well, actually,” he hesitated, “she spent the weekend. It was late Monday afternoon before the phones went on again and I could get us plowed out.”
“Okay, now the hard part. Did you have a conversation with her?”
“Oh, quite a lot, even though we didn’t have too much in common.”
“Criminal conversation, Jay Porter. Did you shake her bones?”
The elder of the church looked horrified. “Chick, need I remind you that I am a gentleman.”
The poor dope meant it, and I believed him. He is a gentleman with a capital G, a true rarity. Most of my friends can be described with a capital B, but not Jay Porter Pemberton.
The clincher to the whole mess is that, when they got plowed out and got to her car, it had a busted axle, and he drove her back to New York, stopping for lunch and dinner along the way. He had been seen with her by half the people in southern New England, which is one passel of witnesses — garage men, snow plow operators, waitresses, the whole works.
“It’s a sticklech,” Barry says with a yawn from the couch. He was lying down. Jay Porter gives me a quizzical look, since Yiddish is not his long suit.
“Sticklech. A trick — a scam — the old bamboozle.”
“But that’s preposterous, Chick. Gina was a very nice woman. Not refined in the proper sense, but certainly a decent person.”
“Decent, he says!”
“Shut up, Barry,” I snapped. “Jay Porter, you’ve got a hassle and a half on your hands. I still think you should see a lawyer, purloined letter or not. First thing you have to determine is whether it’s a scam or a legit misunderstanding on the husband’s part.”
“If you want to test a lie,” Barry said from flat on his back, “ask a master ligner. Ask Tall Tommy Tanuka.”
My prone partner has an idea, so with Jay Porter’s permission, I invite Tommy T back to the office. While I dealt Tall Tommy the story (burying the identities, of course), the ligner of ligners sat drinking Metaxa and beer, which is a disgusting sight. When I finished, he said, “If it is a scam, the best defense is impotence. I had a client once in Chicago who...”
“We don’t want to allow it to get into court, Tall Tommy. The guy never laid a glove on her, that’s flat.”
“I’m not talking about court, man, I’m talking about defense. If it’s a scam, it busts it sky high. Even if it’s a misunderstanding, it still blows it to hell. Now, this guy in Chicago took my advice and got outa the jam by taking some female hormones on the sly and then he gets himself examined by some sex doctors who pronounce him sexually dead.”
Barry groaned from the couch. “This is a good way to save money?”
“Well, he beat the rap,” Tall T said triumphantly, “only now he’s living with a twenty-year-old boy model in Evanston and his wife is suing him for divorce. I didn’t have to tell you the last part, fellas, but when Tanuka makes a lie, he always tells the truth about it.”
Jay Porter is turning green, so being behind the desk, I exercise control. “You’re missing the point, Tall Tommy. We want to know if the broad showing up at this guy’s Newport house in a snowstorm was sticklech or legit.”
He pondered. “Legit, as far as the snowstorm. Who could make up snow? The busted car, maybe. If it’s a scam it was probably cooked up after the fact. I’ll make a morning line of ten to one the wife showed up three days late and tells the truth to this bozo and it gives him ideas. Now, the nut of the matter is that the mark is going to lose some jack...”
“Money isn’t the problem,” Jay Porter said as aloofly as only a millionaire can, “it’s the publicity. To offer them a bribe wouldn’t solve anything. Blackmailers never stop at one payment.”