“Gee, honey, that must have been a nasty fall. Where did you hurt yourself?”
She gave a tired laugh. “Where didn’t I? There were a lot of… you know… fishing tackle things in the boat. I must have hit my mouth somehow because it’s all puffed out, and when I looked at myself head to toe in my mirror this morning, I swear I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m battered and bruised from head to toe. I couldn’t let you see me like this. I’m a fright.”
“That could be dangerous, Mary, a fall like that.”
“I know. I strained my back somehow, I think. It’s such a shock I guess it takes a lot out of you. My bones ache even.” She sighed again. “Darling, give me time to get all well again, just for you. Please?”
“Sure. Take care of yourself, kid. Sorry our luck was running bad.”
“Friend McGee, you are not one tenth as sorry as I am,” and there was total conviction gleaming through the drag of her words. “The decision was yes, by the way.”
“Good. How much.”
“He said it depends on how it goes. At least one and a half. Maybe up to three, or anywhere in between. He said to tell you he’ll be doing it through different accounts, scattered across the country. He wondered if you mind the amount being a little vague.”
“I expected that. If it gets too much play from the traders, he won’t be able to slow it down enough.”
“Dear, may I wish us better luck next time?”
“You may indeed. Hurry home to bed, honey.”
I hung up and looked into the bathroom in time to see Meyer sprinkle the last of his confetti and flush the toilet.
“The evidence is destroyed,” said Meyer, with big smile and big sigh.
“And Santo has climbed on.”
“May he enjoy the trip in good health. May he have asked a few friends to join him even.”
I gave him my third of the other claim check and he put it carefully into a pocket of his wallet. “So tomorrow,” he said, “I drive up to Broward Beach and go out A-One-A and find a place called the Annex, and at seven I am sitting at the bar, waiting for the pigeon. Correct?”
“Looking important and shifty. Correct.”
“Shouldn’t you ask me what it is I checked when I arrived for lunch? Don’t you care?”
“I do now. Now that I know it must be interesting.”
“Here is the scene. Mr. LaFrance rushes to the desk at the hotel. He has the three parts of the claim check taped together. He is panting, right?”
“His hands are trembling. He can’t wait for Harry to give him the money,” I said.
“So Harry takes the check and he doesn’t come back with a big brown envelope. He comes back with a small white envelope. Number ten. Greeting card size. The envelope I checked when I arrived for lunch, so I could get a claim check, so you could make the substitution and tear it up into three pieces and give him one.”
“Meyer, remember me? I know all this.”
“Shut up. Let me enjoy. So he asks Harry, where is the brown envelope? Where is the money? So Harry says the other fellow claimed it ten minutes after it was checked. Yes, Mr. LaFrance, he had the right three pieces stuck together. He said I shouldn’t mention to you that you lost the bet. I know, Mr. LaFrance, this check is torn in three pieces, too, but it isn’t the check for the money. It’s the check for this card.”
“And so,” I said, “stunned, bewildered, shocked, our Mr. LaFrance wobbles over to a lobby chair, falls into it and thumbs the white envelope open. Come on, Meyer! What does the card say?”
“Don’t rush. It says on the front: ‘Congratulations from the Gang at the Office.’ You open it. Inside it says: ‘It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.’”
“That is very wicked, Meyer.”
“But the signature. That’s the good part.”
“What did you do? Forge my name?”
“Not exactly. He saw your houseboat. He saw the name. Inside the greeting card he finds five playing cards I took out of a deck. I threw the rest of the deck away. The five, six, seven and eight of hearts. And the king of clubs. Right? A busted flush?”
I looked at him admiringly. “Meyer, you have great class. You have an instinct for this kind of work.”
“It was nothing, really. Just innate good taste, a creative mind, and high intelligence. It will make a nice signature anytime you want somebody to know who gave it to them good.”
Fourteen
AT NINE that evening Sheriff Bunny Burgoon sent word out from his office that he could see me. His chief deputy, Tom Windhorn, was planted in the same chair against the wall as before. They both looked as if they’d had a very hard day.
“From the talk out front I know you haven’t gotten him yet. But have you gotten any kind of line on him, Sheriff?”
“What I got doesn’t exactly boost up my spirits, mister. And it’s no joy having every newspaper and TV and radio station yappin‘ on and on about Shawana County having a deputy that turned bad. And it didn’t help any to have Monk Hazzard chewing me up long distance and telling me I was crazy as hell. But when I told him about car number three, it slowed him some.”
“Where was it? I heard you found it.”
“Just before sunset. The Highway Patrol chopper spotted it way over in the southwest corner of the county, run off into a marsh and bogged up to the top of the fenders. I got a call from the boys that went to check it out. There’s little places along the lake shore there, spread out. They were checking all Ihe driveways and heard somebody yelling in one of the places. Retired couple, trussed up, scared, and inad as puckered owls. Seems that Freddy drove in, kmocked, real polite, a little after two in the afteriaoon. Asked to come in. Said it was on a complaint an the fish and game laws. Head-knocked them both, tied them up, stuck dishtowels in their mouths: The boys say it’s a big tall old man, so his clothes fit Freddy good enough. Left the uniform. Put on the old man’s best suit, packed a bag with other clothes and toilet articles. Picked up what money they had around. Thirty or forty dollars. Drove off in the county car. Came back on foot and drove off in their Iwo-year-old Plymouth station wagon. Said he seemed nervous. Told them he was sorry he had to do them that way. Seemed right sorry about it. The old man tongued the towel out of his mouth after a while. When he heard the boys drive down his drive, he started bellering. So we put the car and the clothes on the wire. From there he’s twenty miles from the interstate. If he pushed it hard enough, he could have crossed into Georgia before we got the word out.”
“Once they calm down,” Tom said, “if we get all their stuff back to them and fix up anything busted or lost, and talk nice, they might not press charges.”
“We sort of reconstructed the thing with Bannon,” the sheriff said. “I say he must have come across Bannon on the road, hiking out to his place and told him he’d been foreclosed and his wife had took off on him; and he must have wanted to drive Bannon back here, but Bannon just wouldn’t believe him and wanted a look, so when he insisted, Freddy drove him the rest of the way out. That would account for the fat girl thinking they were talking ugly to each other. Now I’d say Bannon lost his head and tried to bust into the place that used to be his. Now that’s against the law and Freddy tried to gentle him some, but that was a lot of man and if he didn’t drop with the first knock, and if he rushed Freddy, that boy in his excitement just swang too hard is all. Caved his head bone in, maybe. And he knew Tom and me had chewed him for being too goddang quick with that mail-order pacifier, and I guess Freddy just lost his head is all. Having that girl see how he covered it up was just plain bad luck.”