I Come as a Theif Page 8

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Max was almost inaudible.

  Tony brooded for a minute. He knew that Max was too scared to deny it. On the other hand, with so broken an ally, he might do well to settle. “If I concede the interest, Lassatta, will the balance be paid in full? Twenty-eight to the penny? I’m damned if I’ll pay this guy Rubin a cent.”

  “It’s the custom, Lowder.”

  “I don’t know anything about customs. I only know the deal I made.”

  “Take it easy, fella.”

  “I’ll take it as I find it.”

  “You could make a mistake, you know.”

  “Two could.”

  There was a pause, and Lassatta finally shrugged.

  “Let me talk to Rubin. I’ll see what can be done.”

  “You tell Rubin—and anyone else you want—that the case goes to the Regional Director the first thing Wednesday morning if the whole twenty-eight thousand isn’t paid up by midnight Tuesday.”

  “Say, wait a second, wait a second,” Lassatta protested, with a note of actual grievance in his tone. “You were to give us two full weeks.”

  “They expire on Wednesday. And Max and I so far have received a stinking eight thousand bucks. And the Regional Director’s on my tail.”

  Lassatta’s eyes drooped. “I told you. I’ll see what can be done.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t care what can be done. If the twenty thousand still due isn’t paid up by Tuesday night, I’m through with the Menzies case. I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to talk about it.” He turned to wink at Max with a sudden exhilaration and chuckled at the latter’s ashy countenance. “You can call out your gorillas and toss us both in the East River. I couldn’t care less. But I promise you, Lassatta, on my sacred word of honor as a neophyte crook, no matter what you do, I’ll do what I say.”

  Lassatta looked pained. “It isn’t necessary to use that kind of language, Lowder. You’re new at this game, and you ought to be willing to learn the rules from those that know.”

  “I am. But you have to learn mine. What kind of a businessman are you, anyway? Do you think I’d ever do another deal with you, after the way you’ve treated me in this one?”

  Lassatta merely grunted at this, and Tony nudged Max to indicate that the interview was over. He was fairly sure at least of the compromised sum.

  At his office, however, on Monday morning, another complication developed. Tod Jennings, the Regional Director, came in to see him. He was one of those very dry, very faithful, very practical public servants, a bit gray, a bit bent, a bit dull, but with unexpectedly sympathetic eyes.

  “I thought I’d better check up on the Menzies case,” he said, almost apologetically. “I’ve had two more calls about it. There seems to be an impression that they may be in a real jam.”

  “Is that so?” Tony asked. He puffed at his pipe quietly for a moment as he contemplated his boss. Then he directed his attention to the files heaped up on the right side of his desk. “It must be here somewhere. Let’s see. Ah, yes, Menzies, Lippard.” He pulled out the file with a little nod of recognition and studied a memorandum clipped to the first page. “There seems to be a question about Lippard’s special partnership. It looks a bit complicated. I have a note here to call a Mr. Oxenstern on Wednesday of this week.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Lippard’s accountant. He was of the opinion that it could all be cleared up very easily.”

  “I see. What about our accountant? Have you sent him in yet?”

  “No. I thought I’d use Sam Cohn. He was on the Menzies account two years ago. He’s had a flare-up of his old ulcer trouble, but he’s due in next Monday.”

  “I think I wouldn’t wait for him, Tony. I think I’d put someone else on the job right away.”

  “Good, sir, I’ll do that.”

  When Jennings had left, Tony decided that he had better be out of the office all Tuesday. He would use the excuse of an annual physical checkup that he had forgotten about and telephone that he would be in early Wednesday. Otherwise Jennings would take the file and reassign it. Decidedly, things were getting close, but he wondered if he did not prefer it so. Could it be that he needed the feeling that he was earning his money? That he was still a puritan in crime? The idea, anyway, was amusing.

  That night was Lee’s thirty-ninth birthday, and they celebrated it at home, with a bottle of champagne sent around by her father. Lee claimed that it was the last birthday a woman could recognize, and she told him that she expected him to make passionate love to persuade her that she was still young. He assured her that she would have no complaints, yet when they went to bed, he failed altogether. This had never happened before, except when there had been some obvious reason, like his having drunk too much. In his own bed he lay awake, mortified and discountenanced. Then he heard the scratch of a match. Lee had got up and was smoking on the chaise longue.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded in a funny flat tone. “Don’t I attract you any more?”

  “Oh, come, Lee, you’re old enough to know about these things.”

  “Thanks for reminding me of my age.”

  “It happens in the best of families. Haven’t your girl friends told you?”

  “I know all about my girl friends and their impotent husbands. If this was a regular occurrence, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell. But it’s not. With you.”

  “Maybe it will be. From now on.”

  “What’s happened, Tony?”

  “Old age.”

  “Oh, phooey. It’s not that. I’ve lost my appeal for you. Come on. Admit it.”

  Tony was taken aback by the conviction in that tear-drenched voice. What had happened?

  “I love you, Lee.”

  “You beg the question.”

  “Do you think there’s only one way people can show it?”

  “I think there’s one way you can show it.”

  “What a physical philosophy.”

  “Isn’t it Joan’s?”

  He thought now that he saw his way out. “Yes.”

  “Is it because of Joan that you couldn’t tonight?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Because she’s dying?”

  “Because she’s dying.”

  “Is she worse?”

  “Yes. I talked to her this afternoon.” He wondered if he could even count the lies that he had told that day. “She wants to see me. You needn’t worry. She’s beyond that kind of thing now.”

  There was a long silence after this, and he hoped that she had been satisfied. But of course she wasn’t.

  “Do we have to wait till Joan dies before we make love again?”

  “That’s a bitchy remark.”

  “Then I’m a bitch. But I’m still entitled to an answer. Do we have to wait?”

  “Lee, you’re insatiable. Shut up about Joan, can’t you?”

  “Because she’s dying? I don’t care if she’s dying. Everybody dies. The point is, do any of us live?”

  “Very profound.”

  “What’s happening to you, Tony? Don’t you care any more about anything?”

  For the first time in their marriage he was so angry that he did not mind how much her feelings were hurt. He got up and went to the living room and spent the rest of the night on the sofa. But his sleep was fitful. He had a sensation of being a raft at sea, a raft of loose logs strung together by a rope, except that the rope was gone, and there was nothing to keep the logs from drifting slowly apart, even in still water, without waves or current. It was only a matter of time, and very little time at that, before he would be all over the ocean, before there would be no further visible connection between his individual, rotting pieces of timber.

  In the morning he dressed and shaved without talking to Lee, who pretended to be asleep, and breakfasted alone in the kitchen. Then he telephoned his secretary, to say that he would be out all day for a physical examination, and left the apartment to go to Max’s office. There, for once, the
latter had good news. A representative of Lassatta had delivered an additional eleven thousand dollars.

  “There are still nine to go,” Tony observed grimly.

  “You don’t really mean to turn in Menzies if we don’t get it?”

  “I’ve never meant anything more. Force is the only language these guys understand.”

  “Oh, Tony!”

  “Leave it to me, Max. You won’t get hurt. It’s me they’ll be after.”

  Max appeared to derive a desperate hope from this. He had evidently reached a point where he could only close his eyes and rely on the shards of his faith in Tony. “They say we’ll get the rest at two o’clock in the men’s washroom at Grand Central.”

  “The men’s room? Oh, my prophetic soul! Didn’t I tell you?”

  “They say you must be there, too.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Tony wondered, at a quarter to two, as he and Max were having their shoes shined in the appointed place, if the underworld did not actually enjoy these clandestine meetings, in parked cars, in back rooms of bars, on park benches. Unlike the business deals with which he had hitherto been associated, the details seemed to be worked out after the agreements had been reached. Perhaps these constant, dark encounters were a kind of diversion, even a form of needed social life. The Mafia must have had a good deal of time on its hands.

  Max suddenly rose and followed a pimpled young man in a pinstripe suit into the lavatory. When he returned, alone, he and Tony went up to the main waiting room. Tony sat on a bench, concealing the envelope in his newspaper and quickly counted out four hundred dollars in shabby twenty dollar bills. Then he burst out laughing.

  “I deserve it, Max!” he exclaimed. “I deserve the whole damn thing. It’s too beautifully ironic! I wanted to be the master of my destiny, and I end up with a small handout in a men’s room. Could Samuel Beckett have written it better?”

  On their way out of the station Max stopped at a broker’s booth and read the ticker. “Don’t worry about it too much,” he told Tony. “The market’s really picking up. I didn’t tell you, but Herron was up five points yesterday. If it does the same thing today, we’ll get by.”

  “Ah, but I’m still going to do what I said I’d do!”

  “Even if we don’t need to?”

  “Even so. That will be my dark integrity.”

  “But Tony, even if we’re in the clear?” Max’s eyes rolled in entreaty.

  “I told you, Max. Leave that side of it to me.”

  When Tony came home that night he found Lee very cool, but willing to accept a truce. Obviously to her disappointment, he agreed promptly to her suggestion that they should forgo any discussion of the quarrel.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” he explained. “But I think I’m beginning to see my way out. Give me two more days.”

  On Wednesday morning, his proposed deadline was past, and Lassatta was still eighty-six hundred dollars short. As soon as he arrived at his office, Tony asked his secretary to make an appointment with the Regional Director.

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Jennings wants to see you,” she informed him. “When he found that you weren’t coming in yesterday, he asked me to send him the Menzies, Lippard file. I suppose it must pertain to that.”

  Tony, strolling down the corridor to Jennings’ office, supposed indeed that it would “pertain” to that. Yet he still found the sense of excitement almost agreeable. Anything was better than those torn, crumpled bills at Grand Central.

  Jennings, however, was smiling as he handed the Menzies file back to Tony. “This matter is all arranged,” he said. “No further action required. I admit I got a bit hot under the collar when I found you were out yesterday and that nobody else had been assigned to Menzies. But when I’d called for the file and gone over it, I found it was, as you said, all a matter of the terms of Lippard’s special partnership. So I telephoned Lionel Menzies, and he told me that we needn’t argue the point as he had just obtained a further capitalization of four million. I sent somebody over from the accounting department, and this was duly confirmed. So everything’s okay. I guess you were right not to get too hot and bothered about it.”

  “I’ve had some other dealings with that firm,” Tony explained with a dry laugh. “I was reasonably sure they’d be able to meet the requirements. They’re pretty sharp cookies.”

  2

  Despite the fact that Tony and Max had received less than half of the original sum offered and only two thirds of the compromised figure, they were able to survive. The market seemed definitely restored, and Max with it. He had lost his haggard look.

  “If ever you doubt again the old adage that time is money, remember these terrible days,” he told Tony.

  “And I suggest that you, too, remember a couple of things,” Tony retorted. “Particularly what happens to little boys who fall in with loan sharks. Have you paid off Lassatta yet?”

  “Not entirely. I’d have to sell some of our Herron to do that.”

  “Sell it.”

  “But, Tony, it’s going up. It’s bound to go up more!”

  Tony contemplated Max’s fresh, boyish face with amazement. How was it possible that the fear which had so ravaged him, emotionally and physically, only a week before, should have departed and left no trace? How could a man have been that scared once and take the risk a second time? Was it the saving grace of a superficial man that his fears were superficial, too?

  “I should think at this point you might want to play it safe for a bit.”

  “You mean stop now?” Max demanded. “But we haven’t got anywhere yet. You and I haven’t taken the risks we’ve taken just to be a couple of petty bourgeois, I hope.”

  “You mean you’ve got another job for me?”

  “No, no, no, but I’m certainly not going to sell Herron. Or Alrae. I’m going to hang on to them if it kills me.”

  “Which I suppose it may. Anyway, so ends our first venture into crime. The only thing I can’t understand about it is why it pays Lassatta and Menzies to treat us so foully. Suppose they need to use us again?”

  A potential answer to Tony’s question seemed to be offered that same evening when a mild, soft-voiced young man accosted him in the street as he walked to the subway.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lowder. I’ve been sent by Mr. Menzies, Mr. Lionel Menzies. He would like to adjust a certain matter with you. If you would care to come to his apartment now for a drink, he would be very much obliged. I have the car here and can take you.”

  Tony was amused. The black limousine, the silent drive up the East River, the bar in the car, the use of the back elevator in Lionel Menzies’ magnificent apartment building in Sutton Place, all made for a far better scenario than the washrooms and parked cars of his more recent experience. The immense library where his host received him had a baroque stage at one end, framed with twisted columns, on which a dining room table and chairs were set. Between glass cabinets containing golden-backed books reaching to the ceiling were alcoves hung with old paintings and drawings. Tony noticed what he took to be a Van Dyke portrait, a Piranesi print, a Tiepolo drawing. Menzies was a small man, with a round, absolutely bald head and large, beady, laughing eyes. He made Tony think of a bug in an animated cartoon. He talked incessantly.

  “I see you like nice things, Mr. Lowder. Are you perhaps a collector yourself? No? But I’m sure you will be. Oh, I can tell. You spotted my Piranesi right off. It really is the best of the prison series. Can’t you see it as a set for a Verdi opera? Doesn’t it make you want to be a tenor in the last act, discovered by a spotlight in a living tomb and not too starved to sing one last superb aria? Ah, you admire the Tiepolo. That shows you have a real eye. Did anyone ever know skies like Tiepolo? Of course, a drawing is not the thing to see that in, but you must admit he could make a landscape do a minuet. Yes, right under it is a portrait of Corneille. Pierre Corneille who wrote Le Cid. We don’t believe it was actually done from life, but it’s very much of the pe
riod, don’t you think? Ah, Corneille, who else did more for the gloire of France?”

  Tony wandered about the chamber, allowing this odd creature to ramble on. Menzies’ chatter was self-generated; it needed no response. Was there some necessary connection between crime and banality? Surely it would behoove him to return to the straight and narrow if the lawless were so bound to the cliché. Or was he learning something fundamental about the nature of morality? Could a fine mind exist in the head of a criminal?

  “I guess we’d better get down to business, Menzies,” he said. “I saved your chestnuts, but I seem not to have got all of my own out of the fire.”

  “My dear young man, you’re blunt, and I like bluntness. Let me get you a drink.”

  The wait seemed interminable. Menzies hovered over a huge bar table, taking stoppers out of decanters, sniffing, measuring drops into spoons, prattling of his prowess in mixtures. But when he finally handed Tony a very small, sweet drink that seemed to have a rum base, his tone changed. He became almost masterful. “I am sorry you were approached by Lassatta. It was entirely unnecessary. Men like you and me, Mr. Lowder, need no intermediaries. I shall be glad to make up to you the balance due, but only on condition that in the future you and I deal exclusively with each other.”

  “Why should there be a future?”

  Menzies blinked his eyes, as if with pleasure at his guest’s wit. “You mean why should you go through that again? Of course, you shouldn’t. And you shan’t. Hear what I propose. I propose to establish an account for you in my firm, under the name of a nominee, of course. You will have the privilege of making withdrawals whenever you wish. I suggest that we start with a balance of whatever it was that Lassatta shortchanged you. What was it?”

  “Eighty-six hundred.”

  “Very well. Well make it eighty-six hundred. You see, I ask no confirmation, nor do I have any way of checking. I did not even know for certain there had been a short change. I simply assumed it, knowing Lassatta. The moment I heard that he was in it, I knew I would have to wait till he had made all his infantile blunders. But I can usually bide my time.”