Wiedstein removed the airline bag from his shoulder and placed it on the poker table. “We’d like you to count it.”
“You want a drink or a cup of coffee while you watch?”
Wiedstein looked at Janet Whistler. She shook her head no. “We’re fine like this,” he said.
They didn’t quite stand over me while I counted the money, but they watched. Carefully. There were a few new bills, mostly hundreds, but not enough to cause any bother. It was all there and when I finished counting, I said, “Do you want a receipt?”
“That would be nice,” Janet Whistler said. She was attractive enough if you liked tall, rangy girls with slender figures and easy, natural movements. I didn’t mind them. She wore a loose gray-tweed coat that ended just above the black, over-the-calf boots that had to be laced all the way up to the top. Her hair was straight, brown, and shiny and fell halfway down her back and sometimes into her eyes so that she had to keep brushing it away. Her face had pleasant features, although some might have called them sharp. I thought of them as finely chiseled — except for her mouth, which was a bit on the wide side. Her eyes were a deep, dark brown and I don’t think she wore any makeup, but nowadays I have a hard time telling.
I crossed over to the typewriter, took its cover off for what must have been the first time in three weeks, rolled in a sheet of paper, and typed: “Received from Miles Wiedstein and Janet Whistler, One-hundred-thousand dollars ($100,000).” Then I typed in my name and the date, rolled the paper out, signed it, and gave it to Wiedstein. He read it, nodded, and handed it to the girl. I decided that he was twenty-four and she was twenty-three.
While she read it, Wiedstein said, “Mr. Procane told me to ask whether you were quite sure that you won’t be needing any assistance tonight?”
“I take it you’re the ones who’re in that on-the-job training program of his.”
Wiedstein smiled at that, a brief, even fleeting smile, but one that lasted long enough to show that there had been a concerned orthodontist somewhere in his childhood. Although his looks wouldn’t turn any heads, he was tall and seemed fit enough and the length of his light-brown hair wasn’t anything to fret about, regardless of your taste.
“He insisted that we ask you,” Janet Whistler said and handed the receipt back to Wiedstein. He stuck it away in the left-hand pocket of his double-breasted brown topcoat that had a sheepskin collar. The coat looked warm.
“Tell him that it was nice of him to ask, but that I won’t be needing any assistance.”
Wiedstein let his eyes wander over to the money that lay stacked on the poker table. “Your share’s ten percent of that, right?”
“Right.”
“Let me know when there’s an opening on your staff.”
“Dissatisfied with your present setup?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Yours just seems to be a pleasant business. Low risk and high pay.”
I looked at him for a moment or two and decided that his gray eyes weren’t set too far apart after all. His nose just had a wide bridge. “If you study hard with Procane,” I said, “we might do a little business someday.”
“We might at that,” he said and turned to Janet Whistler. “Let’s go.”
She smiled at me and I smiled back and together they moved toward the door. When he had it open, Wiedstein turned and said, “I’d be a little more careful about opening my door, if I were you, Mr. St. Ives. You never can tell who’ll be on the other side of it.”
“You mean thieves,” I said.
Both of them smiled again. “That’s exactly who I had in mind,” he said. “Thieves.”
When they had gone I went over to the poker table and counted out ten thousand dollars. It made an impressive looking stack. I counted it again to make sure that I wasn’t cheating anyone, especially myself, then looked at it some more and decided that it was far too much money for one night’s honest work.
By the time I took it downstairs and locked it away in the hotel’s safe, I had convinced myself that what I had to do that night wasn’t all that honest.
7
There were four of us waiting for the phone to ring in Procane’s office-study that Sunday afternoon. Procane sat behind his desk. Janet Whistler, wearing a dark-green pantsuit, was in a chair in front of the desk, and Miles Wiedstein and I were in the chairs that flanked the fireplace. We were waiting for someone else to call and for the second time tell me where I should deliver ninety thousand dollars so that Procane could get his journals back and stay out of jail.
The phone rang at four-thirty and both Procane and I jumped. The ring didn’t bother either Janet Whistler or Wiedstein and I decided that they must have had a good night’s sleep. Procane picked up the phone, said hello, then listened, said just a moment, and handed the phone to me.
I said hello and a man’s voice said, “St. Ives?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s just like I told Procane this morning. I’m offering the same deal, just a different time and a different place.” He was using a distorter, but not a mechanical one. It sounded as if he had a couple of marbles in his mouth. In addition to that, he seemed to be trying to strain his voice through something — a handkerchief perhaps or even a washcloth. It made him difficult to understand and I was glad he hadn’t decided to pile on a Chinese accent. Some of them do.
“When and where?” I said.
“Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock—”
“Tomorrow at ten’s out.”
“Why?”
“A couple of homicide detectives want to talk to me about Bobby Boykins and how he got killed. You knew Bobby, didn’t you?”
There was a brief silence and then the voice said, “Okay, Monday’s out. We’ll make it Tuesday at ten.”
“Where?”
“West Side Airlines Terminal, you know where it is?”
“Tenth and Forty-second.”
“Okay, at ten o’clock you go upstairs to the men’s room. Go in the first crapper stall on the left. If it’s busy, wait till the guy comes out. Then go in, sit down, and wait. Have the money in that same Pan-Am bag. Just wait there until somebody comes into the crapper stall next to you. They’ll push an airline bag under the partition into your stall. At the same time, you’ll push your bag—”
“Not at the same time,” I said. “I’m going to look first.”
“Okay, you look first. Then you push the money over. Then you get the hell out of the men’s room and out of the terminal. And don’t get any funny ideas about hanging around outside and waiting for somebody to come out of the men’s room carrying a Pan-Am bag. By the time they come out of there, it won’t be in there anymore. You got it?”
“I’ve got it”
“Now I’ll tell you how I want the money.”
“All right.”
“In twenties and fifties. Nothing bigger.”
“All right.”
“And when you see those homicide cops tomorrow, St. Ives, I wouldn’t mention anything about where you’re going to be at ten o’clock Tuesday.”
“You did know Bobby Boykins, didn’t you?” I said.
There was a silence that went on for nearly ten seconds until it was broken by the click of the phone as he hung up in my ear. I put Procane’s phone down and then told him what the distorted voice had told me.