Milo March #3, page 4
There were several books on Spanish grammar and two Spanish-English dictionaries. They were all well worn.
Then I found the diaries. Twenty big fat volumes. One for each year. I stacked them on the floor and sat down. In every volume there were pages torn out. But in the other pages there was a complete record of the trivia that a man can perform in his lifetime. It helped to complete the picture of Carter, but that was all. It wasn’t until I went back and started leafing through the first volume again that I found something interesting. Even then I almost missed it.
Twenty years before, Samson Carter had written a lot in his diary about his life having no purpose. It sounded like the sort of thing most people think when they’re maybe sixteen, but not often as late as twenty-two. But within a couple of months all this had changed. It was there that for the first time there were pages torn out. And during the period when he was feeling sorry for himself, there were records showing that he had gone to see a Dr. Harrison Blake three times a week. There was just the mention of the appointments. After the torn pages there was no more reference to Dr. Blake.
I should have caught it the first time. Those steady appointments three times a week, on the part of someone who was emotionally disturbed, might mean a psychiatrist. And a psychiatrist might be able to shed more light on Carter—if he was still alive and if he still remembered a patient after twenty years.
There was a writing desk in one corner of the room. I went through it, knowing that if there’d been anything of value in it, the police would’ve already grabbed it. The only chance was that the cops and I might disagree on what was valuable.
It was filled with paid bills. Nothing else. Except for a receipt from the Foster Magic Shop not far from Times Square. I stuck it in my pocket and shoved the other papers back.
I locked the door and went downstairs. I knocked on the door and she opened it so quickly she must have been standing right by it. I handed her the keys.
“You leave everything the way it was?” she asked.
“Exactly,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“You see his books?” she wanted to know. “A man who liked books that much wouldn’t just walk off and leave them. That ought to prove to you that something terrible happened to him.”
“Are you going to save the room for him?” I asked.
“He’s paid up for the rest of the month,” she said. “I wouldn’t think of renting it before the end of the month.”
“One more thing, Mrs. Frasur,” I said. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Carter?”
“Wednesday morning when he left. He’d taken his suitcases down to Penn Station the day before. He was just starting his vacation, you know. To Chicago.” She peered out at me. “Have they looked for him in Chicago?”
“They’ve looked,” I said dryly. “Thanks again, Mrs. Frasur. If I ever need a rooming house, I’ll be sure to look you up.”
“I hardly ever have any vacancies,” she said darkly.
I laughed and walked away. Down the street, I stopped in the drugstore and looked in the phone book. Dr. Harrison Blake was still listed. I called and told him that I’d like to see him about a former patient. He sounded pretty busy, but he finally agreed to see me the next morning.
The next stop was the magic shop. I just had enough time to make it and get into the offices of Great Northern.
There were a dozen men standing around inside the magic store. All of them were busily doing tricks for each other. One guy would do a trick and then everybody would try to top him. I leaned against the counter and waited until the owner finished showing some kid how to make a cigarette vanish. Then he came over to me.
I put the receipt on the counter. “Remember this guy?” I asked.
He looked at it. “Mr. Carter,” he said. “Sure. … He’s the same one who did that jewelry robbery this week, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “Did you know him well?”
He shrugged. “He was a customer,” he said. “He’d been coming in here for several years and buying a few things. We never talked about anything but magic.”
“Was he good?” I asked.
“Pretty good. Like a lot of amateurs, he did two or three things well and that was it. Golf balls, a couple of thimble routines, and that was about all.”
“When was he in last?”
“Maybe a month ago?”
“Remember what he bought?” I asked.
He glanced at the receipt. “This was it,” he said. “A dozen golf balls and three shells—why three, I don’t know. Some thimbles and two decks of cards.”
“That was all?”
“That’s it,” he said. His manner indicated there was no point in talking about it any longer. I agreed with him. I picked up the receipt and put it back in my pocket. I sidestepped some guy who was doing an energetic back-palm and left.
It was a few minutes before five when I arrived at Great Northern. John Franklin was waiting for me. He looked like he’d been pacing up and down since he dropped me off that morning. His office was big enough for a lot of pacing. But it was also equipped for some fine sitting—with big, upholstered leather chairs—which interested me more at the time.
“Pretty good for a cop,” I said, dropping into one of the chairs and waving at the room.
“Yeah,” he said. “How’d you make out, Milo?”
“Pretty good,” I said. “I talked to four people at length about Carter and I came up with four different pictures of him. Stone sees him as a lover of diamonds and that’s all. The cops think he’s just another scheming crook and coldblooded killer. A guy who worked with him still thinks he’s a jerk and wonders what the hell he’s going to do with the loot. His landlady sees him as a studious book lover who wouldn’t do anything nasty to girls and who was too tidy to do anything like a murder.”
“I know,” he said. “I’d noticed that everybody had a different idea of him. That means Carter doesn’t go by anybody else’s rules. And that’s why I said it takes imagination to get anywhere on this case.”
I nodded. “I’m getting a pretty good idea of my own about him,” I said. “And you know something, Franklin—I’m beginning to like the little guy.”
He looked worried for a minute. “Is that going to interfere with you taking him?”
I grinned at him. “You couldn’t pry me off the case,” I said. “I don’t approve of murder even if it’s committed by someone I like. And I’d rather take him myself than have some cop do it.”
“You can be as gentle as you like,” he said, “as long as we get that diamond back.”
“As long as you’re willing to pay the running expenses, I’ll get it back,” I said. “Now I want you to do something. Get on the phone and without tipping that it’s related to this case, find a guy for me. Vasco Lopes. He was arrested five years ago on June 22. I want to know where he is now.”
“What did you find?” he asked, reaching for the phone.
“Something the cops haven’t yet,” I said. I saw his look. “Sure, I’m being evasive. I don’t like to talk about my ideas. That way there’s no leak and no one telling me how they think I ought to handle it. That’s the way I work. Take it or leave it.” I said it gently so he wouldn’t get angry.
“We’ll take it,” he said. “Results are all that mean anything, and you’ve always delivered those.” He got busy on the phone. He talked to somebody on the force and then hung up.
“Vasco Lopes,” he said, turning back to me, “is in Sing Sing. Doing ten to twenty.”
“Good,” I said. “Now I want something else. Arrange for me to see him. Tonight.”
He whistled softly. “That’s a bigger order,” he said. “You’ve got to get a smallpox shot. By the time you can reach the prison, it’ll be late. Why not do it early in the morning before your plane?”
“I’ve got another appointment in the morning. It has to be tonight.”
“It’ll be way past visiting hours. The warden won’t like it.”
I made a suggestion about the warden. “What’s the matter? Isn’t this company important enough to swing a little influence with seven hundred thousand bucks at stake?”
“I think so,” he said gravely. “Wait a minute.” He left the office.
When he came back there was another man with him. An older man with just enough gray in his hair to set off the Florida tan. He was the kind who looked more at home at a director’s meeting than anywhere else, unless it was the country club.
“This is Milo March,” John Franklin said. “Milo, this is Mr. Delaney. Mr. Delaney is the executive vice-president of Great Northern.”
He gave me a limp hand to shake. It’s a funny thing about vice-presidents. You take a guy when he’s working his way up; he’ll have one of those locker-room handshakes and his ideas will veer according to the wind. Then he finally makes the grade. Right away his mind becomes rigid and his hand goes limp.
“How are you, March?” he said with what he thought was a friendly tone. He was going to prove he was democratic if it killed him. “John here tells me you’ve done some fine work for us. Glad to see you’re working with us again.”
What can you say to a guy like that? I settled for a low-pitched “Ummm.”
“Now,” he said briskly, having finished consorting with the help, “what’s this about wanting to see a prisoner in Sing Sing tonight?”
“That’s it,” I said.
“What is the purpose?” he asked.
“I think he may help me find where Samson Carter has gone.”
“How?”
Before I could answer that one, John Franklin jumped in ahead of me. “March rather likes to work pretty much on his own, sir. Since his methods have been so successful in the past, I’m letting him play this the way he sees fit.”
“I see,” Mr. Delaney said. He saw, all right, and he didn’t like it. He was a man who expected answers when he asked questions. But he decided to let it pass. “It could be arranged, of course. The warden is a very good friend of mine and so is the governor. But it’s quite irregular. I’m not sure we should do it.”
“Okay,” I said cheerfully. “It’s your seven hundred thousand dollars.”
That got him. I was talking about a number he loved. “I will get in touch with the warden and see what can be done,” he said.
He marched stiffly out of the office. John Franklin and I grinned at each other.
“He’ll get over it,” I said. “He’ll run over to his club later and have a spot of Irish whiskey and branch water and forget all about it. It’ll do him good to have the help talk back once in a while.”
He was still a little nervous about it. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “We might as well get the other thing out of the way while we’re waiting.”
He took me down to another office. One of the insurance company’s doctors was there. He examined me and then gave me a smallpox shot. That’s all there was to it.
“That’ll get you in almost anywhere,” Franklin said as we walked back to his office.
When we got there, the vice-president’s secretary was waiting for us. She said that the warden would be expecting Mr. March. I watched the movement of her hips as she walked out. It was a high-level wiggle, as though every inch of her knew how important her boss was. I grinned to myself, but didn’t say anything to Franklin. He probably wouldn’t have understood; if he could have, he wouldn’t be in the job he was. That’s the trouble with seeing too much. It keeps your head bumping against those upper rungs.
“Want me to go up with you?” Franklin said.
“If you’d like the ride. I don’t want you going in with me, but I wouldn’t mind having someone drive me up.”
“I’ll do it. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A thousand dollars.”
He looked his question.
“Better charge it up to general expenses,” I said. “Mr. Delaney wouldn’t approve of what I’m going to do with it.”
He nodded and left. When he came back, he handed me a stack of bills. “I thought you’d rather have it in small bills,” he said.
“Good,” I said. I counted the money. There was a thousand dollars. I tucked it away in my pocket.
“I thought somebody might make a mistake and slip in a couple of extra bills,” I explained. “But I guess I’ll have to work for my money.”
He laughed, but it didn’t sound natural. People who work in banks or insurance companies are never amused about mistakes with money.
We went downstairs to a restaurant and had dinner. Then we got in Franklin’s car and headed north. I leaned back against the seat and went to sleep before he could start a conversation.
Four
Night fog out of the river had turned Sing Sing into a gray ghost castle. Our headlights picked at it through the fog and I felt myself shiver. But only partly from the cold. The fog made the outside look even more like it was on the inside where everything was gray—including the hopes of most of the men there.
They kept us at the gate until a captain of guards came down. John Franklin stayed with the guards, but the Captain took me back and into the main prison. He was a surly man, the expression on his face being, I imagine, little different from that of the other inmates. He didn’t say anything until he had shown me into a small room.
“Wait here,” he said. He closed the door and left.
There was nothing in the room but a metal table and two plain chairs. The walls were whitewashed and antiseptic-looking. I sat in one of the chairs and lighted a cigarette.
After a bit the door opened and a man stepped inside. Beyond him a guard stood at the door. I had specified that I had to see the prisoner alone, so I stared at the guard and waited. He finally closed the door. I shifted my gaze to the prisoner.
He wore faded gray denim. A black number was stenciled across it. He was tall and well built, probably about my own age. He had black hair and dark skin. Women would have considered him handsome. His face was locked in a kind of hardness that left no room for emotion. Only his eyes were alive, and they watched me with a steady wariness. The guards wouldn’t have told him anything about me, but late visits were not part of the regulations. Prisoners know that the unusual is not to be trusted. They learn the hard way.
I pushed my cigarettes over in front of the other chair.
“Cigarette?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. He stepped over and took a cigarette but remained standing. I tossed him my matches. He caught them and lit the cigarette without taking his gaze from me. He put the matches down on the table.
“You’re Vasco Lopes?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I sat and smoked without saying any more. He scuffed his feet on the concrete floor.
“Who’re you?” he asked finally.
“Milo March,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t mean anything to him.
“Copper?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m an insurance detective. You might call me a cop, but a cop wouldn’t.”
Something flickered through his eyes. It might have been the beginning of a smile. If it was, it never reached his lips. “Insurance?” he said. He was in for armed robbery. He couldn’t see any connection. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Maybe nothing,” I said. “Maybe a lot. Why don’t you sit down?”
He was curious by this time. It took some of the edge off the hostility he felt for anyone who could walk in or out of this place as he wanted to. He pulled back the chair and sat down.
“I want to know something,” I said.
His face tightened again. “I ain’t no squealer,” he said. For the first time I noticed the barest trace of an accent in his voice.
“I know you’re not,” I told him. “I’m not exactly asking you to blow the whistle on anyone. What I’m asking you will never be repeated to the cops.”
This time he outwaited me.
“Five years ago,” I said, “the day after you were arrested, a little guy went to see you in the Tombs. You probably don’t remember his name, even if he told you, but it was Samson Carter.”
He’d forgotten but he remembered quickly. He looked interested.
“The next day,” I said, “the little guy came back. This time he gave you a thousand dollars. In cash.”
That surprised him. I could see that he thought no one knew about that. And it made him more curious.
“I want to know what you told him for that thousand dollars,” I said. I waited a minute. “When you tell me, I’ll give you another thousand dollars. In cash.”
He tried to read the answers in my face. But I wasn’t giving anything away either. “Maybe,” he said, “he wanted me to tell him how to pull a job.” He was fishing.
I shook my head. “I think I know why he came to see you and was willing to pay a thousand dollars,” I said. “Want to hear my guess?”
“Go ahead,” he said. “It’s your visit. I ain’t going anyplace.”
“You were an American citizen,” I said. “You pulled a big job and then you went to Lisbon and vanished. The cops probably notified the police of every country and then sat back, hoping somebody would fish you up for them. But in the meantime you came straight back to America. Only you came in on a Brazilian passport and with an American visa. They were all in order and nobody thought of questioning them. You stayed away from the places where anyone had known you. If you’d kept your mouth shut, you might never have been caught. The cops were looking for an American citizen they thought was out of the country, not a Brazilian citizen sitting in their laps.”
Something flickered through his eyes again. I decided that was as far as he ever went with laughing.
“That’s not guessing,” he said. “All of that was in the papers.”
