Jack Shepard
Private Investigations
August 7, 1946
Emily Stendall
Protection and Investigation into Threats
July 19, 1946 - August 5, 1946
On the afternoon of Friday, July 19, 1946, the Client, Miss Emily Stendall of 67 East 65th Street, entered my office and retained me to provide her with protection. According to Miss Stendall, the Subject, Joey Lubrano, an elevator operator in her building, and residing at 16 East 7th Street, had made threats to her regarding her safety.
Also according to Miss Stendall, Mr. Lubrano had carried on an affair with her sister, Mrs. Sarah Nolan, also a resident of 67 East 65th Street. During this affair, Mr. Lubrano took photos of Mrs. Nolan in various states of undress and in lewd poses. Mr. Lubrano had promised these photos would remain private but later used them to blackmail her.
Mrs. Nolan also confided in Miss Stendall that she had arranged an exchange with Mr. Lubrano but the night it was to take place, Mrs. Nolan was found drowned in her bathtub, under the influence of a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. Mr. Lubrano having had a solid alibi was not held by the police. The death was ruled accidental.
Miss Stendall believed that Mr. Lubrano took the money, kept the photos and negatives, drugged Mrs. Nolan, and drowned her. The police agreed to search Mr. Lubrano’s residence but recovered no evidence and, with no evidence from the medical examiner’s office that her death was a homicide, the case was dropped.
Mr. Lubrano, now in the clear, approached and threatened Miss Stendall. In her words: “He threatened me just the other day, told me to keep my mouth shut from now on or he’d shut it permanently—just like he did my sister’s.”
The Client speculated that Mr. Lubrano still had the incriminating photos and would begin a second blackmailing scheme, this one perpetrated on the deceased’s husband.
After my initial interview of the Client, I dined with her at Little Roma. Afterwards, we took a cab to her 65th Street apartment. There, I observed Mr. Lubrano operating the elevator, as she had claimed, and I found him to be hostile to her, as she had claimed.
After I physically discouraged the Subject from advancing on my Client, I instructed Miss Stendall, for her own safety, to pack her belongings and leave the premises with me. She agreed to check into the Plaza Hotel and invited me to stay with her. I declined. . . .
I raised an eyebrow at those last lines. “What does it mean that your client invited you to ‘stay with her’ at the Plaza? Did she have a suite with a second bedroom?”
No, baby.
“Then she wanted you to . . .”
Heat up her sheets, do the horizontal tango, go to bed with her, what do you think?
“But you declined, right? It says right here you did.”
That night.
“Excuse me?”
I had work to do that night—putting a tail on Lubrano. But the invitation from Miss Stendall to share her bed became a standing one, and I took her up on it the next night.
“You slept with your client?”
Yeah, baby. And more than twice.
I shook my head. “I just can’t believe you did that.”
Why not?
“Because in the Jack Shield books, Jack never slept with a client, even when tempted. He said it would compromise the investigations and—”
These aren’t Jack Shield’s files you’re reading, baby, these are Jack Shepard’s—the files of a real man, who lived a real life, and made real mistakes.
“So you admit it was a mistake to sleep with Miss Stendall? That it was unethical?”
Technically.
“Then why did you do it?”
She was a knockout and she was hot for me, and I went to bed with her . . . and, boy, but if I didn’t call that one on the money.
“What?”
You’ve been avoiding my files because you were afraid of what you’d find.
“No—”
Yes. You don’t like the look of the truth, so you just don’t want to see it—especially when it’s about people you care about and it’s not pretty. But you better be ready to believe the worst about people, because that’s the name of this game you’re in now.
I frowned as I considered Jack’s charge. It was true that during my disastrous marriage I’d refused to see my husband for what he was . . . and, during the marriage, I’d blinded myself to my in-laws manipulations and insults, taking in silence whatever they’d dish out by telling myself they were simply trying to “help” or that they meant well and really didn’t mean to come off as disparaging. But I’d woken up to all of it eventually (after they began to blame me for Calvin’s suicide and began “advising” me—during my vulnerable period of mourning—that the “best thing” for Spencer was to send him away to English boarding school). Still . . . Jack wasn’t wrong that I did prefer to focus on the good in people.
“I’ll admit I don’t want to see the worst in people I care about,” I confessed, “or even strangers for that matter. I mean, I hate to think any person is capable of stealing a book from our store, let alone a triple murder. But this isn’t just about me. It’s also about you.”
Why do you think I’m stuck here in limbo, sweetheart? If I were a saint, don’t you think I’d be playing a harp about now?
“There you go again, implying your life trapped in an independent bookstore is akin to eternal damnation. Well, I’m not buying it. You may not be playing a harp at the moment, but you can’t have been all bad, or else you’d have gone a lot farther south than Rhode Island—and I’m not talking Cartegña, Mr. Shepard . . .”
Jack snorted. We’re getting off the subject. Keep reading.
I did and found the report impressive. Despite the copious use of outdated slang in his thoughts to me, Jack knew how to write well—or at least put two ideas together on paper. It was also clear he had a highly organized mind.
“I can see why Timothy Brennan found your files such a rich source of information for his books. You’re very thorough . . .”
Thanks, baby. Chalk it up to my time in army intel. If you didn’t write it up right, somebody down the line would get it in the neck. Literally.
I nodded and kept skimming the file. It seemed Jack hadn’t just checked out Joey Lubrano’s story, he’d also checked out Emily Stendall’s. I yawned as I continued to read. “It looks like you investigated your own client? Why?”
Why do you think?
“I guess you didn’t trust everything she was telling you . . .”
Bingo.
“But she was the one paying—”
Add an “L” to that word, baby. As it turned out, she was the one playing . . . and she tried to play me.
“I can’t see how . . .” I yawned again, felt my eyelids beginning to flag, realized I was finally beginning to relax into sleep. “And I don’t see what this has to do with Johnny’s case . . .”
Close your eyes, sweetheart, you will . . .