Nightwork (21 page)

They did not look in my direction, and went out through the front doors into the expensive sunlight of the Avenue Montaigne, two lovers in the city for lovers, on the way to an exquisite lunch, oblivious of the rest of the world, oblivious of me, standing just a few feet from where they had passed, with a stiletto in my overnight bag and murder in my heart.

T
HE NEXT MORNING I WAS
in the lobby at eight thirty. Two hours later she came through the lobby and went out. In Florence I had never seen her in daylight. She was more beautiful than I remembered. If ever there was a lady made for an American’s dream of a wicked weekend in Paris, it was Lily Abbott.

I made sure she didn’t see me, and after she was gone I went up to my room. There was no way of my knowing how long she would be gone from the hotel. So I moved quickly. I had packed Fabian’s bag, with all his belongings, the houndstooth jacket on top, as I had found it. I called down to the concierge’s desk and asked for a porter to come to my room and pick up a suitcase to take to Mr. Fabian’s room.

I had the stiletto letter-opener in its leather sheath in my pocket. The adrenalin was pumping through my system and my breathing was shallow and rapid. I had no plan beyond getting into Fabian’s room and confronting him with his suitcase.

There was a knock on the door and I opened it for the porter. I followed him as he carried the suitcase to the elevator. He pushed the button for the sixth floor. Everything happens on the sixth floor, I thought, as we rose silently. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, I followed him down the corridor. Our footsteps made no sound on the heavy carpet. We passed nobody. We were in the hush of the rich. The man set the bag down at the door of a suite and was about to knock when I stopped him. “That’s all right,” I said, picking up the bag myself, “I’ll take it in. Mr. Fabian is a friend of mine.” I gave the porter five francs. He thanked me and left.

I knocked gently on the door.

The door opened and there was Fabian. He was completely dressed, ready to go out. At last we were face to face. Myself and Sloane’s nemesis, riffling cards, afternoon and evening, at home in the haunts of wealth. Thief. He squinted slightly, as though he couldn’t see me clearly. “Yes?” he said politely.

“I believe this belongs to you, Mr. Fabian,” I said and bulled past him, carrying the suitcase down a hall that led into a large living room which was littered with newspapers in several languages. There were flowers in vases everywhere. I dreaded to think of what he was paying each day for his lodgings. I could hear him closing the door behind me. I wondered if he was armed.

“I say,” he said, as I turned to him, “there must be some mistake.”

“There’s no mistake.”

“Who are you anyway? Haven’t we met somewhere before?”

“In St. Moritz.”

“Of course. You’re the young man who attended to Mrs. Sloane this year. I’m afraid I don’t remember your name. Gr-Grimm, isn’t it?”

“Grimes.”

“Grimes. Forgive me.” He was absolutely calm, his voice pleasant. I tried to control my breathing. “I was just about to go out,” he said, “but I can spare a moment. Do sit down.”

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.” I gestured toward the suitcase, which I had deposited in the middle of the room. “I’d just like you to open your bag and check that nothing’s missing. …”

“My bag? My dear fellow, I never …”

“I’m sorry about the broken lock …” I kept on talking. “I did it before I realized I had the wrong one.”

“I just don’t know what you’re talking about. I never saw that bag before in my life.” If he had rehearsed a year for this moment, he couldn’t have been more convincing.

“When you’ve finished and you’re satisfied that I’ve taken nothing,” I said, “I’d be obliged if you brought out
my
bag. With everything that was in it when you picked it up in Zurich.
Everything
.”

He shrugged. “This is absolutely bizarre. If you want, you can search the apartment and see for yourself that …”

I reached into my pocket and took out Lily Abbott’s letter. “This was in your jacket,” I said. “I took the liberty of reading it.”

He barely glanced at the letter. “This is getting more and more mysterious, I must say.” He made a charming, deprecating gesture, too much of a gentleman to read another man’s mail. “No names, no dates.” He tossed the letter on a table. “It might have been written to anyone, by anyone. Whatever gave you the idea that it had anything to do with me?” He was beginning to sound testy now.

“Lady Abbott gave me the idea,” I said.

“Oh, really,” he said. “I must confess, she
is
a friend of mine. How is she anyway?”

“Ten minutes ago, when I saw her in the lobby, she was well,” I said.

“Good God, Grimes,” he said, “don’t tell me Lily is here in the hotel?”

“That’s enough of that,” I said. “You know what I’m here for. Seventy thousand dollars.”

He laughed, almost authentically. “You’re joking, aren’t you? Did Lily put you up to this? She
is
a joker.”

“I want my seventy thousand dollars, Mr. Fabian,” I said. I made myself sound as menacing as possible.

“You must be out of your mind, sir,” Fabian said crisply. “Now I’m afraid I must go.”

I grabbed him by the arm, remembering the walleyed man in the arcade in Milan. “You’re not leaving this room until I get my money,” I said. My voice rose and I was ashamed of the way I sounded. It was a situation for a basso and I was singing tenor. High tenor.

“Keep your hands off me.” Fabian pulled away and brushed fastidiously at his sleeve. “I don’t like to be touched. And if you don’t get out right away, I’m calling the management and asking for the police. …”

I picked up a lamp from the table and hit him on the head. The lamp shattered with the blow. Fabian looked surprised as he sank slowly to the floor. A thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead. I took out my paper knife and knelt beside him, waiting for him to come to. After about fifteen, seconds he opened his eyes. The expression in them was vague, unfocused. I held the sharp, needle-like point of the stiletto to his throat. Suddenly, he was fully conscious. He didn’t move, but looked up at me in terror.

“I’m not fooling, Fabian,” I said. I wasn’t, either. At that moment, I would have happily killed him. I was trembling, but so was he.

“All right,” he said thickly. “There’s no need to go to extremes. I took your bag. Now let me up.”

I helped him to his feet. He staggered a little and sank into an easy chair. He felt his forehead and looked apprehensively at the blood smeared on his hand when he took it away. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “Good God, man,” he said weakly, “you could have killed me with that lamp.”

“You’re lucky,” I said.

He managed a little laugh, but he kept looking at the stiletto in my hand. “I’ve always detested knives,” he said. “You must be awfully fond of money.”

“Average fond,” I said. “About like you, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t kill for it.”

“How do you know?” I asked. I stroked the blade of the little weapon with my left hand. “I never thought I would either. Until this morning. Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” he said.

I took a step toward him, threateningly.

“Stand back. Please stand back. It’s … well …Shall we way that I don’t have it at the moment, but that it’s
available
? Please don’t wave that thing around anymore. I’m sure we can come to terms without further bloodshed.” He dabbed at his forehead again.

Suddenly the reaction set in. I started to shake violently. I was horrified at what I had done. I had actually been on the point of murder. I dropped the stiletto on the table. If Fabian had said at that moment that he refused to give me a cent, I would have walked out the door and forgotten the whole thing. “I suppose,” he said quietly, “at the back of my mind I realized that one day someone would come in and ask me for the money.” There was an echo there that I could not help but recognize. How had Drusack behaved in his desperate hour? “I’ve taken very good care of it,” Fabian said, “only I’m afraid you’ll have to wait awhile.”

“What do you mean—wait awhile?” I tried to keep my tone menacing, but I knew I wasn’t succeeding.

“I’ve taken certain liberties with your little nest egg, Mr. Grimes,” he said. “I’ve made some investments.” He smiled like a doctor announcing an inoperable cancer. “I don’t believe in letting money lie idle. Do you?”

“I haven’t had any money to let do anything before this.”

“Ah,” he said. “Recent wealth. I thought as much. Would you mind if I went into the bathroom and washed off some of this gore? Lily is likely to come in at any moment and I wouldn’t like to frighten her.”

“Go ahead.” I sat down heavily. “I’ll be right here.”

“I’m sure you will.” He got up from his chair and walked unsteadily into the bedroom. I heard water running. There was undoubtedly a door leading from the bedroom into the corridor, but I was convinced he wouldn’t leave. And if he had wanted to I wouldn’t have done anything to prevent him. I felt numb. Investments. I had imagined various possible scenes while on the trail of the man who had taken my money, but I had never thought that when I finally caught up with him our meeting would take the shape of a business conference.

Fabian came out of the bedroom, his hair wet and freshly combed. His step was firm now and there was no indication that just a few minutes before he had been lying on the floor, senseless and bloody. “First,” he said, “would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I believe we can both use one.” He went over to a sideboard and opened it and poured from a bottle of Scotch into two glasses. “Soda?” he asked “Ice?”

“I’ll take it neat.”

“Capital idea,” he said. He slipped in and out of being British. White’s Club, the Enclosure at Epsom. He handed me the whiskey and I gulped it down. He drank more slowly and sat opposite me in the easy chair, twirling the glass in his hand. “If it hadn’t been for Lily,” he said, “you probably never would have found me.”

“Probably not.”

“Women.” He sighed. “Have you slept with her?”

“I’d rather not answer that question.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He sighed again. “Well, now …I imagine you’d like me to begin at the beginning. Do you have the time?”

“I have plenty of time,” I said.

“May I make one proviso before I start?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“That you don’t tell Lily anything about… well, about all this. As you might have gathered from the letter, she thinks highly of me.”

“If I get my money back,” I said, “I won’t say a word.”

“That’s fair enough.” He sighed again. “First, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little about myself.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’ll make it brief,” he promised.

As it turned out, it wasn’t as brief as all that. He started with his parents, who were poor, the father a minor employee in a small shoe factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was born. There was never enough money around the house. He had not gone to college. During World War Two he was in the Air Force, stationed outside London. He had met an English girl from a rich family. Actually, the family lived in the Bahamas, where they were reputed to have large estates. He had been demobilized in England and there, after a hasty courtship, had married the girl. “Somehow,” he said, explaining the union, “I had developed expensive tastes. I had no desire to work and no other prospects for leading the kind of life I wanted any other way.”

He had moved to the Bahamas with his new wife and taken up British citizenship. His wife’s family weren’t miserly toward him, but they were not generous either, and he had begun to gamble to eke out his allowance. Bridge and backgammon were his games. “Alas,” he said, “I fell into associated vices. Ladies.” One day there had been a family meeting and the divorce had followed immediately. Since that time, he had made do with his gambling winnings. For the most part he had lived fairly comfortably, although with many anxious moments. During part of the winter season the pickings were not bad in the Bahamas, but he was forced to keep traveling. New York, London, Monte Carlo, Paris, Deauville, St. Moritz, Gstaad. Where the money was. And the games.

“It’s a hand-to-mouth existence,” he said. “I never got far enough ahead to take even a month off without worrying. I saw opportunities around me constantly that would have made me a rich man if I had even a modest amount of capital. I won’t say that I was bitter, but I certainly was discontented. I had just turned fifty a few days before the flight to Zurich, and I was not pleased with what the future might have in store for me. It is rasping to the soul to be committed to the company of the rich without being rich yourself. To pretend that losing three thousand dollars in one evening means as little to you as to them. To go from one great palace of a hotel to another while you’re on duty, so to speak, and to hide in dingy out-of-the-way boarding-houses when you’re on your own.”

The ski club group had been particularly lucrative. Almost permanent games had been set up from year to year. He had made himself well-liked, did a minimum amount of skiing to establish his legitimacy, paid his debts promptly, gave his share of parties, never cheated, was agreeable with the ladies, and was introduced to likely prey among the abundant Greek, South American, and English millionaires, all gamblers by nature, proud of their games and careless in their play.

“There was also the possibility,” he said, “of meeting widows with independent fortunes and young divorcées with handsome settlements. Unfortunately,” he said, with a sigh, “I am terribly romantic, a failing in a man my age, and what was offered I wouldn’t have and what I would have wasn’t offered. At least,” he said, with a touch of vanity, “not on a financially acceptable basis. I know that I am not painting a very heroic picture of myself …” he said.

“No,” I said.

“… but I would like you to believe that I tell the truth, that you can trust me.”

“Go on,” I said. “I don’t trust you yet.”