As a Favor (19 page)

I waited.

“The name, you see, it wasn’t Alec Effield.”

“What was it?”

“Johnson.”

“Johnson? Do you know the first name?”

“No.” She looked put out.

“Mona, Johnson is one of the most common names in the country, almost as common as Smith.”

Mona forced a smile. “Maybe that’s why he chose it.”

“Then what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“At the bank, Mona. What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened. I left.”

“Okay,” I said. It wasn’t okay at all, but I continued. “That was the first time you were there. What about the next month?”

“Someone saw me both times?”

“Uh huh. What did you do the second time?”

“Nothing.” Seeing my growing anger, she added quickly, “I just waited from twelve to one. But Alec didn’t come. Maybe he came later. Or maybe not.”

I stared at Mona, picturing her not in her violet T-shirt and peasant skirt, not with her loose breasts straining the fabric, but with the right make-up and a wig, with a brassiere and a blazer. Mona transformed.

“Listen, I could have found out about Alec. I still could. He’s easy to play; he’ll tell me.”

I stood up. “As soon as I leave here I’m going to call in and have someone keep an eye on you. Don’t try to leave Berkeley without checking with me.”

I didn’t call in for a tail. For the moment my bluff would keep Mona here.

Instead I drove across the crowded Friday evening streets, pulling from lane to lane, running yellow lights. My foot pressed harder on the gas pedal as I recalled Alec Effield spurting crocodile tears and telling me how worried he was about his reputation.

Leaving my car behind Effield’s, I ran toward his flat, up the stairs and banged on the door.

Inside it was dark. There was no music. I glanced at my watch—six-fifteen. I banged again.

“Open up, Effield.”

A light came on in the main house. A face peered out from behind a shade. No sound came from Effield’s. Effield might be out. He could be dining at some expensive French restaurant, on the money from those dummy cases.

I pounded once more, but the realization was coming clear: Effield might be inside, hiding, and there was nothing I could do. I had no actual proof that he was Anne’s accomplice. There was only Mona’s word that he was in the bank. And as I’d thought while staring at her, “Johnson” could be, not Alec Effield, but Mona. Alec Effield could be merely a dupe.

“A
LEC
E
FFIELD COULD BE
a dupe.” I was standing against the sink, as Howard pulled the leftover lasagna from his fridge. In the living room a guy in a 49ers shirt was watching a Japanese horror movie. Upstairs, lights and music blared from the six bedrooms of the old house. A woman clad in only bikini pants ran across the landing. I hadn’t seen the inside of a place like this since college.

Howard had been to my apartment and never raised an eyebrow. Now I could understand why.

Howard and I had been friends, close friends, for three years. In a sense it was strange I’d never been here before. But it was no accident. When I’d been married to Nat, visiting Howard would have created more discord than there already was. Most of the time, there had been arguments and bad feelings enough. And I had kept my distance for other reasons. Howard was my friend, but there was more to it than that, and I hadn’t wanted to explore that area then. And after the divorce, I hadn’t wanted to explore anything. Mostly I’d wanted to be left alone. And now? I didn’t know exactly.

“You mind eating cold lasagna?” Howard asked.

“What?”

“There’s something wrong with the oven. Do you mind eating the lasagna cold?”

I laughed. “A little touch of home. No, cold’s fine with me. But listen, about Alec Effield, if he is a dupe, then Anne’s accomplice could be Mona.”

“Wait, wait. Start from the beginning. When I last caught this saga we were leaving Priester’s and you had come up with something that you promised to tell me later.” Handing me the lasagna pan, he picked up two bottles of Coke and plates. The forks peeked out of his shirt pocket.

I followed him to the dining room table. Out of the side of my eye I could see terrified Japanese shouting in ill-dubbed English.

“Hey, Wayne,” Howard called, “could you watch that in your room?”

I took a bite of lasagna. Even cold, it was good. “The beginning,” I said, as Wayne trudged up the stairs. “Well, Anne Spaulding had two scams going. First she was taking bribes from clients on the Avenue, probably about twenty dollars a throw.”

Howard took a swallow of Coke. “Pretty small time.”

“My guess is that it was her first taste of crime. The dummy cases followed. Even Effield admitted Anne would have had no trouble working dummies.”

“How would she have done it?”

“Easier than you’d think. She could pretend she had interviewed the clients, set up the cases, and have the checks sent out. Then it would be just a matter of picking them up.”

“I assume she didn’t do that herself, trotting from house to house, like the farmer’s daughter collecting eggs.”

“No. There was the black woman who has been seen picking up checks in the hotel lobby. The woman Daisy Arbutus saw.”

Howard cut a bite of lasagna, forked it and held it in readiness. “So you think the black woman picked up the money and then she or Spaulding forged the signatures and—”

“No.”

“No? Then what?”

“Anne Spaulding couldn’t copy anything. There’s overwhelming agreement on that.”

“Then the other woman signed them?”

Absently, I followed the passage of lasagna from fork into Howard’s mouth. Normally his conclusion would have made sense, but from all I had heard of Anne Spaulding, I couldn’t believe she would allow another woman so much power. “No. What would keep the black woman from walking off with the profits? It’s not like Anne could report her.”

Howard finished his Coke and held the bottle aloft to check for any last drops.

“According to Mona Liebowitz, Alec Effield was at the bank using an alias to get into a safe-deposit box.”

He put down the bottle. “So, somehow the money got from the hotels to him and he put it in the safe-deposit box. Maybe keeping it in a safe-deposit box was insurance against any one of them betraying the others.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing it’s much safer than keeping that amount of money at home, particularly when two fellow crooks know it’s there. Obviously, none of them could put their gains in regular bank accounts, and there’s only so much they could spend before they drew attention to themselves.”

“But what do you mean by insurance?”

“Okay. Suppose Anne and Alec sign for the box as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. That means that only they have access to the box. Things balance out between them and the black woman; they have access to the accumulated loot; she has first access to each month’s take. She could make off with the monthly money, but no more. While they control the ongoing take, they are still dependent on her each month. And…” With his right foot Howard nudged his empty plate over, then he propped both feet where it had been.

“And?”

“And there’s the key.”

“Go on.”

“The key to the safe-deposit box. The bank has one key. The depositor has one or two keys. Obviously Alec Effield has a key.”

“I can see where that gives Alec control and the black woman control. But it doesn’t seem to insure Anne.”

“Maybe Anne didn’t need any more control than she managed through force of personality.”

“Possible. But Anne sounds like someone who would leave no unnecessary escape hatch.” I moved a piece of my lasagna around on my plate. “Another possibility is that Mona could be lying about the whole safe-deposit thing, or any part, and she could be the accomplice.”

“And the black woman?”

“Mona, with make-up, wig, other clothing.”

“Would she pass?”

I realized Howard hadn’t seen Mona. “It’s not like making a Swede into a pigmy. Weston, the guy at the wheelchair theater, was telling me how much make-up can do. And with Mona it would be no problem at all.”

“So then you’re saying that Anne Spaulding set up the dummies and Mona collected the money, signed the checks, and put the cash in the safe-deposit box.”

“I’m saying maybe. Maybe Alec Effield was in the bank. Maybe he signed the checks. He’s good at copying, Howard. Very good.” I told him about the Suzanne Valadon copy in Effield’s office. “He even told me copying wasn’t valuable outside the criminal world.”

Things were falling into place. “The new addresses on the memos in Anne’s cases,” I said. “Effield wrote them after he killed Anne. He had access to the cases. They were in his office.”

“Or Mona Liebowitz could have gotten to them. It doesn’t sound like a tightly run office. But…” Howard took a bite of my barely touched lasagna. “But, sticking with Effield for the moment, if he’s involved, then who is the black woman?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to find Effield.”

The streets were dark now as I drove the familiar route across town to Alec Effield’s place. Why couldn’t he be home when I needed him, or at least live closer?

It was nearly ten-thirty. Cars struggled along the main thoroughfares, cars filled with people coming home from movies, or going for a drink. No one was in a hurry. No one was making way for anyone else in a hurry. I was tempted to use the pulser, but we’d all been cautioned about resorting to it too freely.

I turned onto Spruce, winding higher up into the hills. Here two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses sat on their narrow lots like fans in the bleachers. Their lights were muted by the fog. I pulled into Effield’s street and stopped the car behind his.

Effield’s flat was still dark. I stomped up the stairs, prepared to bang long and hard on the door.

The door stood ajar. I pushed it and walked in, calling Effield’s name and feeling around on the wall for the light switch.

“Ef—” I stopped, swallowing a scream. It was a moment before I could force myself to look again.

Effield lay sprawled across the beige couch, his head hanging over the back, his eyes locked open in terror. Blood, dark red, nearly brown, stained his red shirt. It had run onto his beige pants. It had splattered on the beige couch and on the beige rug.

There was no need to feel for Effield’s pulse. It didn’t take a doctor to see that his throat had been cut, the carotid artery severed. His blood had pumped out like water from a garden hose.

Steeling myself, refusing to succumb to the nausea rising in my stomach, I turned away from Effield’s body and surveyed the room. There was no sound, and few hiding places. Taking out my automatic, I pulled open the closet door. It held only clothes. I checked the other rooms, but the killer had gone.

Then I called the station. The beat officer would be notified. The lab crew would arrive. The coroner would come. Another officer would take Mona Liebowitz to the station.

The weapon didn’t require much searching. Effield’s brass letter opener lay behind the sofa, the blood still on the blade and, from a cursory glance, I figured the hilt had been wiped clean. Only a thin streak of blood remained.

The beat officer came through the door at the same time as the back-up crew. After he surveyed the scene and shook off the sight of Effield’s body, I told him about the case.

Then came the search of the flat, and the ground—painstaking, inch-by-inch work, circumscribed by the beams of flashlights. It hadn’t rained in months; there would be no footprints.

The ground showed nothing. The flat was a zero, unless some of the fingerprints turned out to be useful. But I doubted that. The killer had been careful enough to wipe the knife. And besides, everyone in Effield’s unit had been here for the party Monday night. Fingerprints would prove nothing.

But the safe-deposit key, which I expected to find on Effield’s key ring or in a drawer, was definitely not in the flat. Either the killer had taken it, or Effield had had it only long enough to get into the box. I suspected the latter—that there was only one key. Even split three ways it was too much money to spend without attracting attention, or to keep at home safely. So the black woman collected the checks from the hotels, Effield signed them, and Anne, the black woman, or both cashed them. Then Anne or Effield put the money in the safe-deposit box and gave the key to the black woman. Anne and Effield had the signatures; the black woman had the key. A good, safe arrangement. Then neither Effield nor Anne nor the black woman would be able to take the money alone.

It was four
A.M.
when I closed up the house. When I’d driven here I had expected Alec Effield to tell me who the black woman was. I had felt sure I could get him to talk.

Doubtless she, too, realized how close he was to breaking, and having killed once …With Effield dead the secret of her identity was safe.

Or was it? I did, after all, have a witness who had seen her.

Q
UENTIN
D
ELEHANTY WAS LYING
on his side, snoring like a recording from Sri Fallon’s.

I stepped into his cell and shook him. “Get up, Delehanty.”

He gurgled, turned, eyes still closed, and began to snore louder.

I shook him again, and kept shaking till his eyes opened.

It was a couple of minutes before he realized where he was and why. And it wasn’t till he had walked from the cell to the interviewing area and consumed two cups of machine coffee that he was clearheaded enough to talk. Even then he didn’t look crisp, but whatever lucidity he could muster I considered a boon.

“Are you with me, Mr. Delehanty?” I asked.

He nodded, slowly; each head-raising motion seemed an effort.

“Okay.” I waited till he looked up. “Who was the black woman with you at Anne Spaulding’s house Monday night?”

“Huh?”

“Anne Spaulding’s.”

His head hung. I wondered if he hadn’t heard or if he was just playing for time.

“Delehanty, answer the question.”

“I need more coffee.”

“After you answer.”