I picked up the receiver and asked Judy to get me Jesse Gordy of the Welcome Self-service store and then I hung up.
‘How did you help Mavis Sherman?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘That’s not your business, is it, Steve? So many people, these days, get into trouble. When I can help, I help.’ She lifted her hands and dropped them into her lap. ‘One day — who knows? — someone could help me.’
The telephone bell rang.
‘Mr. Gordy on the line, Mr. Manson,’ Judy told me.
‘Mr. Gordy?’
‘Yes, Mr. Manson. How are you?’ The sneer in his voice was unmistakable.
‘I will have to postpone our little transaction. In two days, there will be no problem, but right now there is a problem.’
‘Is that right? I too have problems. Let us discuss our joint problems tonight as arranged at nine o’clock. You remember the address: 189, Eastlake? A token could make me reasonable,’ and he hung up.
Jean had been listening in on the extension. We both faced each other as we replaced the receivers.
‘I’ll take Mavis to lunch,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘The birth pill article is in proof. I’ll get it down to the printers.’
The telephone bell rang. It was Marvin Goodyear who wrote our travel page. From then on until lunchtime I hadn’t a minute to think of my own problems. I had lunch with Jeremy Rafferty, our film and theatre critic. Not paying much attention, I half listened to him expound while we ate the businessman’s lunch. Every now and then, he would pause in his monologue — Jeremy was a non-stop talker — and regard me. Finally, he said, ‘I get the idea I’m not making an impact, Steve. Are you sickening for something?’
‘I’ve got Wally on my mind,’ I said, which wasn’t true.
He shook his head.
‘A terrible thing. Some muggers after drug money. It could happen to any of us. Now, look, suppose I do a piece about the danger of our streets, hooking it up with the violence of films?’
‘Sure. Send me an outline.’ I waved to the waiter for the bill.
‘Man! You sound as enthusiastic as a dowager of eighty offered sex.’
As I paid the bill, I said, ‘What do you know about the sex lives of eighty-year-old dowagers?’
He laughed, thanked me for the lunch and took himself off. I drove over to my bank and presented a cheque for three thousand dollars. The teller beamed at me, said how much he liked the last issue of The Voice of the People, then excused himself as he disappeared into Ernie Mayhew’s office. Ernie must have given him the green light for he came back and paid out three hundred crisp ten-dollar bills. I put them in my billfold and drove back to the office, wondering if three thousand dollars would be Gordy’s idea of a token payment.
Jean was still at lunch. I called the hospital and was told Wally was still in a coma. I then called Lucilla.
‘The poor darling is feeling very low,’ Lucilla drawled.
‘I don’t think it would be considerate to get her out of bed to talk to you. Her eye is quite bad.’
‘Then let us be considerate,’ I said and hung up.
Jean came in.
‘I think I’ve got it fixed. Unless Gordy’s file has been destroyed. Mavis will give us a photocopy. She says there was no breakin last night. As soon as Webber leaves, she’ll check the files.’
‘When does he leave?’
‘Around 19.00. Mavis has the keys. She’ll telephone me as soon as she gets it.’
‘If I can get it before I see Gordy, I could have a lever.’
‘If it’s there, you’ll get it.’
‘Thanks, Jean. I’ve got three thousand dollars for Gordy. I called the hospital.’
‘So did I and I talked to Shirley. She’s bearing up. She tells me Brenner has been to see her. She gave nothing away. Brenner now thinks it was a mugging.’
‘It could just possibly be.’
‘Well, to work. You have the leader to write, Steve. My desk is loaded.’
When she had gone, I pulled my IBM Executive towards me. The leader was about the dollar devaluation. I was in no mood to write sense, but somehow, after littering the floor with crumpled paper, I got something down on paper that did make sense.
The rest of the afternoon rushed away with telephone calls, three contributors with ideas, two bad, one good. While I was dictating to my Grundig, the intercom buzzed. I flicked down the switch.
‘Mr. Borg is here, Mr. Manson,’ Judy told me.
Joe Borg was Chandler’s dog-of-all-work. He handled anything that was tricky and I knew him to be a top-class man with a salary that made my thirty thousand a year peanuts. But he had a hell of a job that would have given me ulcers.
‘Send him in.’
Borg breezed in. He was short, thin, dark, around forty years of age. His eyes were like tiny black buttons and his mouth wore a perpetual grin.
‘Hi, Steve!’ He closed the door and coming to my desk, he put down a square carton. ‘Armaments for you and Max. There are pistol permits and two boxes of slugs.’ He eyed me. ‘Don’t go killing people, Steve.’
‘That’s quick work, Joe. Thanks.’
‘When the boss says so, it is so.’ Again he eyed me. ‘Watch it, buddy. Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.’ He screwed his face into a comical grimace. ‘Now who said that?’ He started for the door. ‘I’ve got a date with a hot piece of tail who cools fast if she’s kept waiting,’ and he was gone.
I took from the carton two .38 police automatics with shoulder holsters and two boxes of cartridges. The permits were made out in my name and Max’s name. I stood up, took off my jacket and put on the shoulder holster. I had been in the Vietnam war and I knew about guns. I checked the automatic, found it worked well, then loaded the gun. One thing I was determined about, it wouldn’t be my fault if I landed up in hospital.
I put the gun in the holster, stood away from my desk and did five experimental draws. The gun came from the holster each time smoothly and fast. Satisfied, I took off the holster and put the set-up in my desk drawer. Then I called Max at his home address. There was no answer. Max lived on his own. He was one of those men who didn’t want to be tied to one woman. He flirted around and was happy that way.
As I replaced the receiver, Jean came in.
‘Mavis has just telephoned... no luck. Gordy’s file has gone missing.’
I sat behind my desk.
‘Can you make sense of this, Jean? Webber told me he had a file on Gordy. Now this lie about a break-in: now no file.’
‘I can only guess. Either he is being blackmailed by Gordy or someone with influence has persuaded him to lay off.’
‘Who?’
She thought, frowning.
‘Who has been stealing from the store?’ she asked finally. ‘According to Wally, Sally Latimer, Mabel Creeden and Lucilla Bower. I don’t know any of these women. Do you?’
Mark Creeden immediately jumped into my mind. He owned the biggest house on the Eastlake estate. He was the President of the Howarth Production Corporation: a big wheel, the most important man on the estate. His wife, twenty years his junior, was inclined to act regally, as he did, and the women on the estate didn’t go for her, including Linda.
Creeden had enough pull and enough money to put Webber in his pocket. But why should he want Gordy’s file destroyed? What could be in it to cause a man like Creeden trouble? Thinking about it, I decided I liked Webber better for being anxious to keep Gordy under cover. It could be his wife, Hilda, had been stealing.
I lifted my hands and let them drop on my desk.
‘I’ll see Gordy tonight. Maybe I’ll get an angle.’ I looked at my watch. The time was 19.15. ‘Have dinner with me, Jean.’