Mrs. Beresford looked at Mrs. Lenhart. Then she looked at Mr. Pascotti. Then she picked up one of her knitting needles and looked at the pudgy joker across its sharp glittering point.
“Neither do we, Mr. Ferris,” she said. “Neither do we.”
The Big Bite
A “Nameless Detective” Story
I laid a red queen on a black king, glanced up at Jay Cohalan through the open door of his office. He was pacing again, back and forth in front of his desk, his hands in constant restless motion at his sides. The office was carpeted; his footfalls made no sound. There was no discernible sound anywhere except for the faint snap and slap when I turned over a card and put it down. An office building at night is one of the quietest places there is. Eerily so, if you spend enough time listening to the silence.
Trey. Nine of diamonds. Deuce. Jack of spades. I was marrying the jack to the red queen when Cohalan quit pacing and came over to stand in the doorway. He watched me for a time, his hands still doing scoop-shovel maneuvers — a big man in his late thirties, handsome except for a weak chin, a little sweaty and disheveled now.
“How can you just sit there playing cards?” he said.
There were several answers to that. Years of stakeouts and dull routine. We’d only been waiting about two hours. The money, fifty thousand in fifties and hundreds, didn’t belong to me. I wasn’t worried, upset, or afraid that something might go wrong. I passed on all of those and settled instead for a neutral response: “Solitaire’s good for waiting. Keeps your mind off the clock.”
“It’s after seven. Why the hell doesn’t he call?”
“You know the answer to that. He wants you to sweat.”
“Sadistic bastard.”
“Blackmail’s that kind of game,” I said. “Torture the victim, bend his will to yours.”
“Game. My God.” Cohalan came out into the anteroom and began to pace around there, in front of his secretary’s desk where I was sitting. “It’s driving me crazy, trying to figure out who he is, how he found out about my past. Not a hint, any of the times I talked to him. But he knows everything, every damn detail.”
“You’ll have the answers before long.”
“Yeah.” He stopped abruptly, leaned toward me. “Listen, this has to be the end of it. You’ve got to stay with him, see to it he’s arrested. I can’t take any more.”
“I’ll do my job, Mr. Cohalan, don’t worry.”
“Fifty thousand dollars. I almost had a heart attack when he told me that was how much he wanted this time. The last payment, he said. What a crock. He’d come back for more someday. I know it, Carolyn knows it, you know it.” Pacing again. “Poor Carolyn. Highstrung, emotional... it’s been even harder on her. She wanted me to go to the police this time, did I tell you that?”
“You told me.”
“I should have, I guess. Now I’ve got to pay a middleman for what I could’ve had for nothing... no offense.”
“None taken.”
“I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, walk into the Hall of Justice and confess everything to a cop. It was hard enough letting Carolyn talk me into hiring a private detective. That trouble when I was a kid... it’s a criminal offense, I could still be prosecuted for it. And it’s liable to cost me my job if it comes out. I went through hell telling Carolyn in the beginning, and I didn’t go into all the sordid details. With you, either. The police... no. I know that bastard will probably spill the whole story when he’s arrested, try to drag me down with him, but still... I keep hoping he won’t. You understand?”
“I understand,” I said.
“I shouldn’t’ve paid him when he crawled out of the woodwork eight months ago. I know that now. But back then it seemed like the only way to keep from ruining my life. Carolyn thought so, too. If I hadn’t started paying him, half of her inheritance wouldn’t already be gone...” He let the rest of it trail off, paced in bitter silence for a time, and started up again. “I hated taking money from her — hated it, no matter how much she insisted it belongs to both of us. And I hate myself for doing it, almost as much as I hate him. Blackmail’s the worst goddamn crime there is short of murder.”
“Not the worst,” I said, “but bad enough.”
“This has to be the end of it. The fifty thousand in there... it’s the last of her inheritance, our savings. If that son of a bitch gets away with it, we’ll be wiped out. You can’t let that happen.”
I didn’t say anything. We’d been through all this before, more than once.
Cohalan let the silence resettle. Then, as I shuffled the cards for a new hand, “This job of mine, you’d think it pays pretty well, wouldn’t you? My own office, secretary, executive title, expense account... looks good and sounds good, but it’s a frigging dead end. Junior account executive stuck in corporate middle management — that’s all I am or ever will be. Sixty thousand a year gross. And Carolyn makes twenty-five teaching. Eighty-five thousand for two people, no kids, that seems like plenty but it’s not, not these days. Taxes, high cost of living, you have to scrimp to put anything away. And then some stupid mistake you made when you were a kid comes back to haunt you, drains your future along with your bank account, preys on your mind so you can’t sleep, can barely do your work... you see what I mean? But I didn’t think I had a choice at first, I was afraid of losing this crappy job, going to prison. Caught between a rock and a hard place. I still feel that way but now I don’t care, I just want that scum to get what’s coming to him...”
Repetitious babbling caused by his anxiety. His mouth had a wet look and his eyes kept jumping from me to other points in the room.
I said, “Why don’t you sit down?”
“I can’t sit. My nerves are shot.”
“Take a few deep breaths before you start to hyperventilate.”
“Listen, don’t tell me what—”
The telephone on his desk went off.
The sudden clamor jerked him half around, as if with an electric shock. In the quiet that followed the first ring I could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing. He looked back at me as the bell sounded again. I was on my feet too by then.
I said, “Go ahead, answer it. Keep your head.”
He went into his office, picked up just after the third ring. I timed the lifting of the extension to coincide, so there wouldn’t be a second click on the open line.
“Yes,” he said, “Cohalan.”
“You know who this is.” The voice was harsh, muffled, indistinctively male. “You got the fifty thousand?”
“I told you I would. The last payment, you promised me...”
“Yeah, the last one.”
“Where this time?”
“Golden Gate Park. Kennedy Drive, in front of the buffalo pen. Put it in the trash barrel beside the bench there.”
Cohalan was watching me through the open doorway. I shook my head at him. He said into the phone, “Can’t we make it someplace else? There might be people around...”
“Not at nine p.m.”
“Nine? But it’s only a little after seven now—”
“Nine sharp. Be there with the cash.”
The line went dead.
I cradled the extension. Cohalan was still standing alongside his desk, hanging onto the receiver the way a drowning man might hang onto a lifeline, when I went into his office. I said, “Put it down, Mr. Cohalan.”
“What? Oh, yes...” He lowered the receiver. “Christ,” he said then.
“You all right?”
His head bobbed up and down a couple of times. He ran a hand over his face and then swung away to where his briefcase lay. The fifty thousand was in there; he’d shown it to me when I first arrived. He picked the case up, set it down again. Rubbed his face another time.