“Oh, yes,” said Barstow, smiling behind his expansive desk in his expansive office; crisp, neat, slim, as well-tailored as Geblick was not.
“Insane,” Geblick said.
“Perhaps he was,” Barstow agreed.
“I tried to run him into the hole for the past year, he dies on me, and now you tell me he willed me everything. Why?”
“Maybe he thought a cop like you doesn’t earn enough.”
“Don’t get smart, Barstow.”
“You see, Geblick? You’re good at muscling a wife-beater into the wagon, but when it comes to good manners, you’re a clod. That’s why Snider’s trial turned the way it did. You had enough evidence to shade him behind bars, if just barely; but you got on the witness chair, and the jury suddenly started feeling sorry for Snider. You alienated the judge. So Snider, if he took that eighty-seven thousand out of the bank that day, got away with it.”
“Cheap, squirrelly little bum,” Geblick managed.
“He willed you his estate, Geblick,” Barstow said, grinning.
Geblick, massive of shoulder and angry looking, stood up. “When did he do it?”
“After the trial, after he had the heart attack, he came in here and told me he’d given me all the money he’d saved over the years, but that he wanted you to have what else he had when he died. And he knew he was going to die soon — the doctors had told him he was ripe for another attack that might kill him.”
“From what money he’d saved,” Geblick said loudly. “Out of what? His lousy veteran’s pension?”
“Royalties, Geblick. He was a songwriter, remember?”
“So sing me one of his songs. You ever hear one?”
“He played some of his records for me one afternoon when we were setting up his defense.”
Geblick swore.
“Why did you hate him so much, Geblick?”
“I hate criminals! And when I got on his trail, I found out that he was weak. I hate that, too!”
“Because his heart turned bad on him, Geblick? He gave you credit for that, you know — hounding him, hounding him.”
“I don’t mean his heart. I mean he couldn’t make it at an honest job. He tricked his way, and cheated, and conned — that’s the only way he could have existed the way he did. Then he finally held up a bank. He’s the kind that siphons off a decent society. Maybe you don’t understand, Mr. Criminal Lawyer, but it’s my job to protect society from creeps like that.”
“And you do work at it, don’t you, Geblick? The paragon of law enforcement. Well, I always figured the cop who was most self-righteous was probably no more than a hairline away from the crooks he went after. Give him the right opportunity—” The attorney snapped his fingers. “And you’ve got another crook.”
Geblick paced, shaking his large head, hearing what he cared to hear. “What did he leave?”
Barstow pushed a set of papers toward him. “I’ve already put the legal work through — he wanted you to be able to have it as soon as you got the news. Nobody else has made a claim against it. He didn’t have a relative alive, not a soul. No friends, either. Just you, Geblick. So here’s the inventory.”
Geblick snorted and slowly read the list, which itemized Snider’s shack-like house, in one of the cheapest sections of town, as well as its meager contents.
“Why?” Geblick said again.
“Maybe he got to liking you, Geblick,” Barstow said. “You trailed after him long enough, didn’t you?”
“The bum!”
“You say. I say he was an inoffensive little guy who tried hard and then just couldn’t make it.”
“He made it for eighty-seven thousand.”
“Come on, Geblick! Where do you see eighty-seven thousand on that inventory?”
“How would it get there?” Geblick exploded. “You think he put it in a bank so you could find it that way?” He shook his head. “He probably hid it in a sewer because that’s where rats like to go.” He looked at the inventory again. “I just don’t get it.”
Barstow studied him, then said, “There’s an old philosophy someone created a long time ago, Geblick. You probably never heard of it, but it says that when you’ve been abused, turn the other cheek. Maybe that’s why he did this, Geblick. Just to give you the other cheek.”
Geblick stared at the dapper attorney, eyes dark and accusing. “You must be crazy.”
The next day, his tour of duty done, Geblick parked his sedan in front of the small house and stared with disgust at the dilapidated structure. The small lot was fenced with old boards ready to collapse. Scraps of paper and beer cans thrown from passing cars littered the front yard.
Geblick pushed himself out of his car and strode through warm twilight air to the door. Using a key Barstow had given him, he let himself into the interior and switched on lights — he’d had the utilities restored.
The living room was a model of disarrangement; old newspapers left where they’d been dropped, ashtrays overflowing with ashes and old butts everywhere, a cushion out of the sagging sofa on the floor, as though Snider might have been using it as a headrest as he lay on his back watching a small black and white television set propped on a discarded orange crate. Geblick walked slowly through the room, his practiced eyes surveying a small phonograph, a record holder, and Snider’s pathetic recording equipment. He’d once told Geblick that he’d gotten it from an amusement park that was closing; it had been in a small booth where a half dollar allowed you to record a few minutes of talk to be mailed to a loved one on an inexpensive lightweight 45 rpm record. On a table in front of the phonograph, beside a pile of music manuscript sheets, was Snider’s old clarinet, now covered with dust; he’d used the instrument to compose his pathetic melodies.
The kitchen, a small alcove off the living room, was similarly littered. Unwashed dishes were still in the sink.
Face set in distaste, Geblick crossed back through the living room, passed a small dirty-looking bathroom, and went into the bedroom, thinking that he might have to pay someone to take the thing off his hands.
Snider’s books — old, dogeared, some with their covers barely hanging on — were in a bookcase made of raw boards and old bricks. An old fashioned iron-framed bed supported a mattress that sagged treacherously. The covers were just as Snider had left them — he’d died halfway from the front door to the street one morning, and they’d found him there.
Shaking his head, Geblick hooked a huge hand around a corner of the mattress and jerked it up. The action was a secondary response as a result of his years of searching bedrooms where people had a predilection for hiding things under mattresses.
Holding the mattress up, he saw a sheet of paper clipped to a twenty dollar bill on the springs. He picked both up and read the black-crayoned message on the paper:
I DID IT, ALL RIGHT, GEBLICK. AND HERE’S PROOF. IF YOU WANT THE REST, FIND IT.
Geblick read the message twice, laboriously. Then he ran out to his car where he still had a list of serial numbers the bank had produced after the money had been stolen. He ran a thumbnail along the numbers until he found the one that matched the one on the bill.
Geblick had put in for his vacation in the fall, but he had the seniority to request and get a change.
Carrying tools purchased from a hardware store, as well as a suitcase, he returned to the house he’d just inherited. He straightened the furniture, dusted, then swept the rug. He washed the dishes in the kitchen. He stripped sheets from the bed and carried them to a laundromat on the corner. As the washer went to work, he returned to the house and carefully squeezed every inch of the mattress. He searched through the few pieces of worn clothing Snider had left in the closet. Then he went back to the laundromat where he put the washed sheets in a dryer. While that operation was being completed, he sat in a metal chair, staring straight ahead.