“I don’t know.”
Taylor looked at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
“You don’t know your own client?”
“No.”
Taylor ran his fingers through his curly red hair. “Now wait a minute. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You want me to find a client for you, but you can’t tell me who the client is?”
“That’s right.”
“Could you give me a hint?”
Steve grinned and passed the envelope with the money over to him.
“What do you make of this?” Steve said.
Taylor opened the envelope and pulled out the thousand dollar bills. He riffled through them and whistled.
“Well?” Steve said.
“Well,” Taylor said. “This seems to be ten thousand smackers of genuine U.S. currency. The bills are old and are not in sequence.”
“That’s right,” Steve said. He handed him the note. “And what do you make of this?”
Taylor read it and looked it over.
“Well, this is your basic anonymous letter. It appears to have been written on a non-electric typewriter, with elite type. The r is slightly out of alignment.”
“Not bad. I don’t suppose you could tell me the make?”
“No, but I got an expert who could, if you want to pay the freight.”
“O.K., send it along,” Steve said. “And then start tracing the numbers on those bills. Cover all the banks. Today’s Tuesday, so the withdrawal was probably made yesterday.”
“Hell, Steve, you don’t have to tell me how to do that. With a withdrawal of that size it should be a snap.” Mark hefted the envelope. “I suppose you’d like me to take these along with me.”
“I don’t think so,” Steve said, grinning. “Tracy?”
Tracy, who had been watching wide-eyed, was startled at being addressed. “Yes?”
“If you could type up a list of the serial numbers on these bills.”
“Sure.”
Tracy took the envelope from Taylor and hurried to her desk.
Mark Taylor watched her go.
“Nice looking girl,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Why’s she really leaving?”
Steve shrugged. “Bored. Says I’m never here and there’s nothing for her to do.”
“Now where would she get an idea like that?” Mark Taylor said. He leaned back in his chair and yawned. “You know, when I got you an office in my building, I figured I might run into you now and then.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“So how come you never come in to work?”
Steve shrugged. “I just can’t bring myself to come in here when there’s nothing to do.”
Taylor nodded. “Makes sense.” He grinned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the outer office. “But I suppose you find her attitude unreasonable.”
Steve grinned. “Of course I do. She’s young and impressionable. She wants everything to be exciting and fun. I, on the other hand, am a cynical old fogy-just on the near side of senile-and I happen to know that nothing is exciting and fun, and I’d be happy to settle for interesting.”
“An anonymous ten thousand dollar retainer’s rather interesting.”
“It is for a fact. It’s also a pain in the ass.”
“Maybe for you,” Taylor said. “I can always use the work.”
“Things slow?”
“Not slow. Just dull. Lotta personal injury shit.”
“You got some men on tap to put on this?”
“No problem.”
Tracy returned from the outer office and handed a typewritten list to Mark Taylor and the bills to Steve Winslow.
“Thanks,” Taylor said. He glanced at the list, folded it, and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “I’ll get right on this. Anything else?”
“Yeah. When you find my client, put a tail on him. Don’t let him out of your sight, but don’t let him know he’s being tailed.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Why’s that?”
“Sounds expensive.”
“I’m sure it is. Just don’t pad your bill too much, ’cause I may have to eat it.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that particularly offensive remark. But for the sake of future argument, let’s pin down exactly what you want.”
“I want you to find my client. I want you to tail him. I don’t want him to know he’s being tailed.”
“And you want to pay a buck ninety-five.”
“Exactly.”
Taylor nodded. “That gives me a pretty good idea. And how extensive do you want the surveillance?”
“Total. I want to know where he goes and who he sees.”
“That’s a problem.”
“Why?”
Taylor shrugged. “Well, this may surprise you, but there’s a lot of people still don’t walk around with name tags on their chests. Which means I gotta tail the people he talks to in order to find out who they are.”
“Of course.”
“And I presume these people can’t know they’re being tailed.”
“Naturally.”
“I don’t want to ruin your day, but if this guy has an active social life, this just could run more than a buck ninety-five.”
“Just remember it’s coming out of my own pocket.”
“Well, it’s a pretty deep pocket. I see a ten thousand dollar retainer in it.”
“Yeah, well I can’t keep it till I know whose it is. I can’t even put it in the bank.”
“You’re kidding.”
Steve shook his head. “Depositing it in my account might be considered tantamount to accepting employment.”
“So what you gonna do with it?”
Steve jerked his thumb. In the corner was an old office safe he had inherited from the previous tenant. “Tracy, we got the combination to the safe somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Tracy said. “If you did, it was before I started work.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “The guy gave it to me, and I’m not sure what I did with it.”
“Probably locked it in the safe,” Taylor said.
“Yeah, right. Well, if I can find it, I’ll put the money in there. Otherwise, I’ll have to rent a safe deposit box. But the one thing I’m not going to do is deposit it in my account.” Steve frowned. “O.K., Mark. Get me off the hook. Tell me who my client is.”
“No problem,” Taylor said, getting up. “I’ll get right on it.”
“How soon you think you’ll have it for me?”
Taylor shrugged. “I should have it before lunch.”
Tracy had been standing there, hanging on every word. She was obviously very excited, and was making a great effort not to show it. But this was too much. In spite of herself, she blurted, “You’re kidding.”
Mark Taylor looked at her and smiled. “No, I’ll have it. It’s just routine.”
Mark Taylor meant his remark to be friendly and reassuring. And perhaps to impress this attractive young woman with his efficiency.
But the effect he achieved couldn’t have been worse. Tracy looked as if he’d just told her there was no Santa Claus.
4
It wasn’t quite that easy. Actually, it was closer to two-thirty when Mark Taylor finally got back with the information.
In the meantime, Tracy had been giving her best impression of someone who was not excited out of her mind. It was easy at first because she was occupied-the combination to the safe had to be found. An exhaustive search of the office had finally located it where Steve had shoved it, among the papers in one of his desk drawers. And it had been interesting to watch Steve try the numbers on the antique safe and see if the combination actually worked. But after it had, and the ten thousand dollars had been safely locked inside, Tracy had come full face up against her original problem-there was nothing to do. It had been boring before. In light of the anonymous letter, it was excruciating.
Steve was keyed up too, but on a different scale. Tracy was like a kid with a new toy. She accepted the letter as a matter of course. She was young enough and romantic enough and so conditioned by a steady diet of detective novels, that she expected anonymous cash retainers sent in the mail. Steve was old enough and cynical enough to realize such things were fantastic and totally unreal and therefore to be regarded with the utmost skepticism.