"You keep it up," Tommy said, "I'll find my own self guilty, the way you make it sound."
"Plus he's hard to get a sympathetic jury for. He's a big handsome guy, a sharp dresser, and you'd love him in a gin joint but how much do you love him in a courtroom? He's a telephone securities salesman, perfectly respectable thing to be, calls you up,advises you how to invest your money.Fine. That means every clown who ever lost a hundred dollars on a stock tip or bought magazine subscriptions over the phone is going to walk into the courtroom with ahardon for him. I'm telling you, I want to stay the hell out of court. I'll win in court, I know that, or worse comes to worst I'll win on appeal, but who needs it? This is a case that shouldn't be in the first place, and what I'd love is to clear it up before they even go so far as presenting a bill to the grand jury."
"So from me you want-"
"Whatever you can find out, Matt.Whatever discredits Cruz andHerrera. I don't know what's there to find. I'd love it if you could find blood, their clothes with stains on it, anything like that. The point is that I don't know what's there to be found, and you were a cop and now you're working private, and you can get down in the streets and the bars and nose around.You familiar withBrooklyn?"
"Parts of it.I worked over here, off and on."
"So you can find your way around."
"Well enough. But wouldn't you be better off with a Spanish-speaker? I know enough to buy a beer in a bodega, but I'm a long way from fluent."
"Tommy says he wants somebody he can trust, and he was very adamant about calling you in. I think he's right. A personal relationship's worth more than a dime's worth of 'MellamoMatteoycomoestáusted?' "
"That's the truth," TommyTillary said. "Matt, I know I can count on you, and that's worth a lot."
I wanted to tell him all he could count on were his fingers, but why was I trying to talk myself out of a fee? His money was as good as anybody else's. I wasn't sure I liked him, but I was just as happy not to like the men I worked for. It bothered me less that way if I felt I was giving them less than full value.
And I didn't see how I could give him much. The case against him sounded loose enough to fall apart without my help. I wondered if Kaplan just wanted to create some activity to justify a high fee of his own, in the event that the whole thing blew itself out in a week's time. That was possible, and that wasn't my problem, either.
I said I would be glad to help. I said I hoped I would be able to come up with something useful.
Tommy said he was sure I could.
Drew Kaplan said, "Now you'll want a retainer. I suppose that'll be an advance against a per diem fee plus expenses, or do you bill at hourly rates? Why are you shaking your head?"
"I'm unlicensed," I said. "I have no official standing."
"That's no problem. We can carry you on the books as a consultant."
"I don't want to be on the books at all," I said. "I don't keep track of my time or expenses. I pay my own expenses out of my own pocket. I get paid in cash."
"How do you set your fees?"
"I think up a number. If I think I should have more coming when I'm finished, I say so. If you disagree, you don't have to pay me. I'm not going to take anybody to court."
"It seems a haphazard way to do business," Kaplan said.
"It's not a business. I do favors for friends."
"And take money for them."
"Is there anything wrong with taking money for a favor?"
"I don't suppose there is." He looked thoughtful. "How much would you expect for this favor?"
"I don't know what's involved," I said. "Suppose you let me have fifteen hundred dollars today. If things drag on and I feel entitled to more, I'll let you know."
"Fifteen hundred.And of course Tommy doesn't know exactly what he's getting for that."
"No," I said. "Neither doI."
Kaplan narrowed his eyes. "That seems high for a retainer," he said. "I'd have thought a third of that would be ample for starters."
I thought of my antique dealer friend. Did I know what it was tohondle? Kaplan evidently did.
"It's not that much," I said. "It's one percent of the insurance money, and that's part of the reason for hiring an investigator, isn't it? The company won't pay off until Tommy's in the clear."
Kaplan looked slightly startled. "That's true," he admitted, "but I don't know that it's the reason for hiring you. The company will pay up sooner or later. I don't think your fee is necessarily high, it just seemed a disproportionately large sum to lay out in advance, and-"
"Don't argue price," Tommy cut in. "The fee sounds fine to me, Matt. The only thing is, being a little short right now, and coming up with fifteen C in cash-"
"Maybe your lawyer will front it to you," I suggested.
Kaplan thought that was irregular. I went into the outer office while they talked it over. The receptionist was reading a copy of Fate magazine. A pair of hand-tinted etchings in antiqued frames showed scenes of nineteenth-century downtownBrooklyn. I was looking at them when Kaplan's door opened and he beckoned me back inside.
"Tommy's going to be able to borrow on the basis of his expectations from the insurance monies and his wife's estate," he said. "Meanwhile I can let you have the fifteen hundred. I hope you have no objection to signing a receipt?"
"None at all," I said. I counted the bills, twelve hundreds and six fifties, all circulated bills out of sequence. Everybody seems to have some cash around, even lawyers.
He wrote out a receipt and I signed it. He apologized for what he called a little awkwardness around the subject of my fee. "Lawyers are schooled to be very conventional human beings," he said. "I sometimes have a slow reaction time when it comes to adjusting to irregular procedure. I hope I wasn't offensive."
"Not at all."
"I'm glad of that. Now I won't be expecting written reports or a precise account of your movements, but you'll report to me as you go along and let me know what turns up? And please tell me too much rather than too little. It's hard to know what will prove useful."
"I know that myself."
"I'm sure you do." He walked me to the door. "And incidentally," he said, "your fee is only one-half of one percent of the insurance money. I think I mentioned that the policy had a double-indemnity clause, and murder is considered accidental."
"I know," I said. "I've always wondered why."
Chapter 8
The Sixty-eighth Precinct is stationed onSixty-fifthStreet between Third and Fourth Avenues, straddling the approximate boundary of Bay Ridge andSunsetPark. On the south side of the street a housing project loomed; across from it, the station house looked like something from Picasso's cubist period, all blocky with cantilevered cubes and recessed areas. The structure reminded me of the building that houses the Two-three inEast Harlem, and I learned later that the same architect designed them both.
The building was six years old then, according to the plaque in the entranceway that mentioned the architect, the police commissioner, the mayor, and a couple of other worthies making a bid for municipal immortality. I stood there and read the whole plaque as if it had a special message for me. Then I went up to the desk and said I was there to see Detective Calvin Neumann. The officer on duty made a phone call,then pointed me to the squad room.
The building's interior was clean and spacious and well lit. It had been open enough years, though, to begin to feel like what it was.
The squad room contained a bank of gray metal file cabinets, a row of green metal lockers, and twin rows of five-foot steel desks set back to back. A television set was on in one corner with nobody watching it. Half of the eight or ten desks were occupied. At the water cooler, a man in a suit talked with a man in his shirtsleeves. In the holding pen, a drunk sang something tuneless in Spanish.
I recognized one of the seated detectives but couldn't recall his name. He didn't look up. Across the room, another man looked familiar. I went up to a man I didn't know and he pointed out Neumann, two desks down on the opposite side.