“I am not going to move out of this chair, friend, until I get the answers to my questions. Six days ago I got my teeth in a case. Maybe it’s a murder case. I don’t know yet. While unraveling I come across a deal where a client of yours is heading for a lot of trouble. You help me and maybe I can stop it. You sit there and sneer at me and I’ll sure as hell let it be known that I was blocked out of the play right here in your office. It will be my pleasure to nail you to your own wall.”
Harness looked over Stenn’s head at the far wall for ten seconds. He flicked the switch on the desk box and said, “Miss Trent, please bring in the Clove file.”
Within twenty seconds a tall girl loped in with the file and placed it on the desk. She shut the door soundlessly as she left.
“In eight weeks and two days we shall turn over to Miss Clove securities which, based on average market values for the past quarter, have a value of two hundred and twenty-one thousand, four hundred and three dollars. In addition there are government bonds in the amount of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, cash in the account totaling eighty-one thousand, seven hundred and fourteen dollars and seventy cents, and rental property estimated at a flat two hundred thousand dollars. In accordance with the terms of the will we paid out two hundred dollars a month to Mrs. Clove, now Mrs. Ferris, until the child was fifteen and since that time we have been paying three hundred dollars a month directly to Miss Clove. At the end of eight weeks and two days we shall turn over the entire estate of six hundred and twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and seventeen dollars and seventy cents, plus any accrued interest and income, to Miss Clove. There are no ‘strings attached’ as you put it. We hope that Miss Clove will continue to permit us to protect her interests, but that is a decision which she must make. We could keep the principal amount intact and pay her an income, before taxes, of roughly twenty-five thousand a year.”
“Suppose something happens to her before she inherits?”
“Then we are directed to turn the entire estate over to the Salvation Army. As a legal point, should she die the day after inheriting, the money would, of course, go to her heirs.”
“Does Miss Clove know the size of the estate?”
“At her request, for the past six years we have sent a quarterly statement.”
“Has she made any attempt to borrow against her expectations?”
“If she has, we have not learned of it.”
“Thanks.”
“Please don’t mention it.”
Chapter Four
Dance Macabre
The wire was on Stenn’s desk when he returned. He read it carefully.
Señor Stenn: Photograph resembles one Fernando Barredo y Fourzan of good family. Imprisoned at Monterrey one year 1938-39 blackmail of Norteamericano tourist. No permission to leave Mexico on file. Suggest deportation. Unable identify woman.
Then followed the print classification, repeated twice for accuracy’s sake.
He took the candid shot of Palma out of his desk drawer. He had been caught in bright sunlight as he emerged from the alley. Mexico City’s reply had been prompt.
He sat and thought for a long time. He went to the communications room and explained, very carefully, what he wanted done.
Then he went out and picked up Palma. The man was casual, smiling. He sat at his ease in the back seat of the car, as placid as someone humoring a whim.
Stenn said nothing. The immigration man was waiting at headquarters. Stenn took over one of the small rooms off the rear corridor. He sat behind the desk.
“Your name,” said Stenn, “and I probably can’t pronounce it, is Fernando Barredo y Fourzan. And I think you’re up for deportation.”
Palma smiled, unruffled. “You did quite well on the name. Quite well. It used to be my name, as a matter of fact. If you’ve checked that far you probably know that once upon a time I was in a Mexican prison. Purely a misunderstanding, I assure you.”
“You left Mexico without permission.”
“Did I, now! Unfortunate, wasn’t it?”
Stenn sighed. “All right. All right. What have you got up your sleeve?”
“This,” Palma said. He reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out a small grey folder and flipped it over to the immigration official.
The man leafed through it carefully. He handed it back to Palma. “I can check, of course, but it looks all right to me. Born in Mexico. Acquired Argentine citizenship in 1943. The visa is in order and he’s got another seven months here, provided he doesn’t get a renewal at the end of that time. We could probably block a renewal on the basis of undesirability if we can prove the Mexican prison term, but it would be a little delicate to cancel the present permit.”
“All you had to do,” Palma said to Stenn, “was ask me. I could have told you all this. Now, if you’re quite through...” He stood up.
“Sit down,” Stenn rumbled.
Palma shrugged and sank back into the chair.
The immigration man said that he didn’t see what more he could add. Stenn agreed and the immigration man left, leaving Stenn and Palma alone in the room.
Stenn looked into the man’s dark, alert eyes, smarting at the half-veiled amusement he saw there.
“You’re slick, like butter,” Stenn said.
“Thank you. Muchissimas gracias, my official friend.”
“Sit right where you are for a few minutes,” Stenn said. He left the small room, went up to the second floor and found Lieutenant Sharahan at his desk.
In a flat tone Stenn reported what had happened, what he wished to do. Sharahan stared at him. “Since when are we running this place with crystal balls and tea leaves, Paul?”
“I got to make it fit.”
“Like trying to put the kid’s bike in the Christmas stocking. You got a line on this by digging on the other case. It isn’t connected, you know.”
“The girl insisted on being a witness, Wally. Girls like that are maybe part psycho. They want to live fast. They want to see, taste, feel everything. That Palma, now. She’s got the bait, hook, line, sinker, pole, reel and his arm up to the elbow.”
“No,” Sharahan said very gently. “No, Paul. You got to do better. Let him go. If he’s as slick as you say, he’s slick enough to make trouble. We can’t hold him three minutes if he wants to complain to his legation. He’s a foreign national.”
“You know what happens if she’s as tough as I think?”
“I can guess.”
“She gets that dough and she converts it into cash, all of it. They get married and they go to Argentina. I’ve got a hunch that down there everything belongs to the husband. She can have an accident down there. It’s a big con, plain and simple.”
“That’s too bad. You were working on a Jane Doe. You’re not campaigning against matrimony. Not on department time.”
“Were working? Is the Jane Doe case closed?”
“Closed.”
“I’m sick, Wally. I think I got to have a couple days off. Maybe it’s flu.”
Sharahan waved a limp hand. “Okay. Get out of here. Be a damn fool. It’ll get you nowhere.”
Stenn told Palma he could leave and Palma left with a smirk.
Morganson hitched his belly closer to the bar of the Rip Tide. “Don’t get sore, Paul,” he said. “Don’t get sore. Just tell me. How much of it goes with the Jane Doe having blonde hair?”
“You’re making me sore.”
“Take it easy. Call me a student of human nature. Ten years we know each other. Every time there’s a blonde body, a dead blonde body, you knock yourself out. Maybe you lose what the smart boys call a sense of perspective. Objectivity. Sure, I looked over the Theater of the Dance. Palma had to play up to me because the Clove girl was there and he had to make it look good. He knew who sent me. The Clove girl was all dithery about it. She gushed. Palma gushed. I took notes. The hell with it. They’ll never put anything on. The whole layout is phony. But how can you paste it to the Jane Doe? Don’t answer that question. I just want you thinking straight.”