Arthur Brown was bored.
Arthur Brown was impatient.
He thought of his brothers of toil back at the 87th. Those lucky ones would be dealing with rapes and muggings and knifings and burglaries and robberies and homicides and all sorts of interesting lively criminal activities. He had to sit in a shack and listen to the proprietress of the women’s wear shop in Peabody—he knew her well by now; her name was Antoinette, and the shop was sickeningly called the Curve Corner—tell Lucy Mencken about the new line of bathing suits that had arrived, and wouldn’t she like to come down and try some on?
Brown devoutly wished she would go down and try some on. He wished she would take her son and daughter with her and allow them to try on some bathing suits, too. He hoped that Charles Mencken needed new swim trunks. He hoped the entire family would go down to the Curve Corner and enjoy an orgy of trying on svelte swimwear. Then the phone would be free for the afternoon. Then he would not have to listen to female gossip about a girl named Patricia Harper who danced too intimately with the husbands of Peabody; then he would not have to listen to plans for the next garden-club meeting (the club was called the Peabody Potters); then he would not have to listen to eight-year-old Greta’s telephone romance with a ten-year-old boy named Freckles.
In short, he would not have to invade the goddamn privacy of what seemed to be a normal, decent, clean-living family.
He knew, of course, that the telephone company itself maintained monitoring stations. The purpose of these stations was to keep a constant check on the efficiency of the almost entirely automatic equipment. There was no intention of maintaining a telephone tap in the strictest sense of the words. But there were loud-speakers, and men listened to those loud-speakers, and if anyone thought a telephone call was a private thing, he was sadly mistaken. Usually, the speaker was tuned down to a low mumble. Occasionally, and completely arbitrarily, it was turned up so that words became intelligible. A telephone call was about as private as a church auction, and this should have lessened the guilt Brown was feeling. Too, he was waiting for a call that might lead them to a criminal. But neither of these factors lessened the unpleasantness of his job, nor the impatience with which he attacked it.
When the call came, he girded himself for what he was certain would be another social exchange. The light flashed on the recording equipment as soon as the receiver was lifted from the cradle in the Mencken home. Brown put on his earphones. Before him, the tapes wound relentlessly. The bug in the base of the Mencken phone picked up every word.
“—wait a moment, I’ll see if she’s home.”
That was the Mencken maid. Brown knew her voice by heart. There was a long pause. Then…
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Mencken?”
Brown heard what could have been a short gasp from Mrs. Mencken.
“Yes?”
“You’ve had time to think over my last call, ain’t you?”
“Who is this?” Lucy asked.
“Never mind who this is. I told you this is a friend of Sy Kramer’s. I know all about the arrangement he had with you, and I’ve already told you there will be a few changes now that he is dead. Is that clear?”
“Yes, but…”
“You wouldn’t want that material released to the newspapers, would you?”
“What material?”
“Don’t bluff me, Mrs. Mencken. You know what material I’m talking about, so don’t try to bluff me.”
“All right,” she said.
“I want you to meet me tonight.”
“Why? Just give me your name, and I’ll send you the check.”
“You’ll send a policeman to pick me up, you mean.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.”
“You’d be smart not to try anything like that. The material is with a friend of mine. If you try to call the police, if there’s even the smell of a cop with you when we meet tonight, that stuff gets mailed to the newspapers.”
“I understand. But why must we meet?”
“To get things set up.”
“You said it would be about the same as with Kramer.”
“I want to talk it over with you. I want to know just where we stand. I don’t want any mistakes.”
“All right,” Lucy said wearily. “Where shall I meet you?”
“Can you get in to the city?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know downtown Isola?”
“Yes.”
Brown picked up his pencil and moved his pad into writing position.
“There’s a place on Fieldover Street. Do you know where that is?”
“In the Quarter?”
“Yes. The place is called Gumpy’s. It’s right on Fieldover, near Marsten Square. I’ll meet you there.”
“What time?”
“Eight o’clock?”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “How will I know you?”
“I’ll be wearing a brown sharkskin suit.” The man paused. “I’ll be reading the Times. Remember, no cops. If there are any cops, the material gets mailed out before you can say Jack Robinson.”
“I’ll be there,” Lucy promised.
“Bring your checkbook,” the man said, and he hung up. The next call Lucy Mencken made was to her husband’s office. She told Charles Mencken that a college roommate of hers, a girl named Sylvia Cooke, was in town and wanted Lucy to join her for the evening. Would it be all right?
Charles Mencken was a trusting husband with a faithful wife. He told Lucy it would be perfectly all right. In fact, he would take the children to the country club for dinner. She told him she loved him, and then broke the connection.
Arthur Brown immediately called the 87th Squad.
GUMPY’S COULD JUST AS EASILY have been called Dumpy’s, because it was just that. Whoever had made the call to Lucy Mencken had shown considerable unconcern for the fact that she was a lady. The person who’d called her had even shown unconcern for the fact that she was a woman.
Gumpy’s was on Fieldover Street, close to Marsten Square. Gumpy’s catered to the trade in the Quarter. The trade did not care very much about the furniture in Gumpy’s, or the lighting, or the fact that the walls seemed ready to cave in. The trade was neither here nor there, and the trade was more or less protected by a state law that made a token show of force while actually overlooking the neither here nor there status of such people as composed the clientele of Gumpy’s. Many people from other places in the city came to ogle the steady clientele of Gumpy’s. It was good clean fun to howl at two men dancing together. It was excruciatingly comic to see a woman wearing a man’s suit and paying court to another woman. These sightseers, like the steady clientele, were too interested in what was happening around them to pay too much attention to the décor of the place. Even the fire inspector didn’t care very much. It was rumored about that Gumpy himself paid a considerable chunk each month to keep the place from being condemned as a fire trap. Such rumors always run rife when a man has a profitable enterprise going for him. Why, the fire inspector may have been the most honest man in the city, and far above taking any sort of bribe.