“Those diaries of yours must be hot stuff,” I said.
“They are more of a journal than a diary,” Procane said. “When I hear the word diary I always think of the wistful hopes of terribly inexperienced young girls. After a little experience, they stop keeping them.”
“What did you keep your journal in?” I said.
“You mean what do they look like?”
“Yes.”
“In ordinary one-hundred-page ledgers, approximately eight and a half by fourteen inches. They’re black with fake red-leather triangles to protect the right-hand corners. You can buy them at any office-supply store. I did.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Five, and they cover twenty-five years.”
“How’d it happen?”
Procane smiled a little. “I suppose it’s a little like the cobbler whose children have no shoes. I have this small farm in Connecticut.” He gestured toward the paintings. “They were all done there. I was at the farm last weekend and when I returned I discovered I’d been burglarized. By an expert.”
“Where did you keep them?”
“In an old safe that came with the house. I’ve been intending to replace it for years, but—” He shrugged.
“Was it punched, peeled or what?” I said.
“Peeled.”
“How’d they get in?”
“Through the front door. They walked in.”
“Your locks look pretty good.”
“They didn’t bother the thief. Or thieves. Neither did my burglar-alarm systems, which are supposed to be the best.”
“When did they call you? I don’t know why I keep saying ‘they.’ ”
“I do it, too,” Procane said. “A man called Wednesday morning and told me he wanted a hundred thousand dollars to return the journals. Then he said that he wanted you to handle the payment and that your services would cost me nothing, because you could take your ten percent off the top. I was surprised when he told me that Myron Greene was your attorney because I had just retained Greene. It was something of a coincidence and I’m not too fond of coincidences.”
“Neither am I,” I said and we looked at each other for a while as if trying to think of something suspicious to say. When we couldn’t, I said, “What did the thief say he’d do, if you didn’t pay up?”
“He’d send them to the police.”
“And you wouldn’t like that?”
“No, Mr. St. Ives, I definitely wouldn’t like that.” He rose, picked up my cup, and poured me another cup of coffee, not forgetting to put in the sugar. When he handed it to me, he said, “I’ve never dealt with a professional go-between before.”
“It’ll probably be your last time,” I said. “I don’t have much repeat business.”
“What I’m trying to ask, I suppose, is whether there’s a code of ethics in your profession?”
“About as much as there is in yours, I’d say. My ethics are my own and they’re not especially rigid or I wouldn’t be in this business. But if they didn’t protect the person who hires me — I guess I would call him a client — then I wouldn’t be in business. I haven’t had too many complaints.”
“I’m paying one hundred thousand dollars to ensure my privacy.”
I shook my head. “You’re paying one hundred thousand dollars to stay out of jail. Your privacy, if you want to call it that, has already been broken. A lot of people know you’re a thief, but none of them can prove it. Those journals can. If you want my guarantee that I won’t peek inside once I get them back, I won’t give it to you. I’m still too much of a snoop. But I can promise you that whatever I learn won’t go any further than me. I don’t know how I can make you believe that, but it’s not really my problem. It’s yours.”
“Yes,” Procane said, “I can see that.”
“I should tell you that when Myron Greene first mentioned your name, I told him that I thought you were a thief.”
Procane frowned. “Was that necessary?”
“Probably not, but it’s done, and after my nice little talk about ethics, I thought you should know.”
“What did Greene say?”
“He said he didn’t care and that it was all hearsay anyhow. Actually, I think Myron likes having a thief for a client.”
Procane looked at his watch. “It’s now ten forty-five. The man said he would call at eleven to give you instructions.”
“How’d he sound when you talked to him?”
“A little nervous, I think, but I couldn’t really tell because his tone was strange.”
“How strange?”
“Tinny.”
“He probably used a distorter,” I said. “They’ve all learned about voice prints from TV so distorters are the latest thing.”
Procane nodded as if he knew all there was to know about distorters, and then said, “Do you always work alone?”
“I do now,” I said. “I tried working with someone else a couple of times and both were disasters.”
“Comegys — the Frenchman I spoke of — encouraged me to work alone whenever possible. But he also told me that as I grew older I would learn of certain opportunities that I’d have to forgo because they were too complex for one man and I would discover there was really no one I could trust. I remember him saying, ‘Find someone and train them just as I found and trained you.’ Two years ago I finally took his advice. I’ve acquired two associates, a young man and a young woman. They’re quite efficient, even brilliant, I think. If you should need assistance, feel free to call on them.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said and then we sat there in a not uncomfortable silence until the phone rang. After Procane said hello, he handed me the phone and I listened carefully. Whoever was on the other end was using a distorter all right and the first thing he wanted to know was whether I had the money,
“I can get it,” I said.
“Okay, now listen good, because this is gonna be a little complicated. In fact, you may want to write it down.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s an all-night laundromat, the coin-operated kind that almost never has an attendant, over on Ninth Avenue between Twentieth and Twenty-first. It’s called the Neverclose. You got it?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Okay, now here’s whatcha do. You get one of those airline bags and put the money in it.”
“Ninety thousand,” I said.
“Yeah, ninety thousand. I’m letting you take your ten percent off the top so that means you’re kinda working for me, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, put the money in the bag,” he said and then paused as if giving me time to write that down.
“How do you want it?” I said. “Fifties, twenties, tens, or what?”
“Fifties and hundreds will be okay,” he said, “just so they’re old. Hell, a hundred-dollar bill’s nothing anymore.”
“Okay,” I said, doing some rapid calculation. “It’s going to weigh about three and one-fourth pounds.”
“Is that all?” He sounded a little disappointed.
“That’s what sixty thousand dollars in fifties and thirty thousand in hundreds will weigh.”
“If that’s all it’s gonna weigh, then throw in some tens. Say ten thousand in tens.”
“That’ll be another two pounds,” I said.
“Okay. Now at three A.M. sharp tomorrow, Sunday morning, you walk into the Neverclose laundromat. You got that? Three A.M.”
“I’ve got it.”
“At five minutes past three put the airline bag in a dryer. I don’t care which one. They got six of them and they’re the spin kind. They also got a heat control on them so make sure the heat’s turned down low. You with me?”
“All the way.”
“Okay. Now after you got the airline bag inside the dryer, close the door, and put a dime in at exactly six minutes past three A.M. Sharp. Now at exactly seven minutes past three A.M. one of the other dryers is gonna end its twelve-minute cycle. I don’t know which one yet, but one of them will. Okay. So you open it up and take out what looks like a blanket, only the blanket’s gonna be wrapped around the five ledger things I’ve got. You still with me?”