The Four Johns (12 page)

Mervyn shook his head. He was beginning to develop a respect amounting to reverence for the detective profession.

All he could do was shrug and knock at the door of Apartment 10.

Harriet Brill peeped coyly from her window.

“Mervyn. What a surprise!
Quel enchantement
!”

She undid the guard chain and pulled the door wide.

“
Entrez, entrez, mon cher savant
!”

Mervyn
entrezed
, carefully. She was wearing a muumuu housecoat decorated with huge hand-painted bananas and pineapples and coconuts, and she looked like a sack of fruit stuffed by a drunk.

“I was
just
about to brew my matutinal pot of tea,” Harriet said. “Won't you join me?”

“I'd like to,” Mervyn answered with a leer.

“Lovely! I'll set out another cup.”

Mervyn stood bravely in the middle of the room, looking around. Colorful travel posters were framed on the wall of the dinette, and Klee and Picasso prints hung in the living room, with three ceramic harlequins on the mantelpiece. He walked over and picked one up.

“I just bought those,” Harriet called. “Aren't they marvelous? They're Fenner Fuller's latest. I think he's so sardonically inventive.” She brought in a teak tray. “Do sit down, Mervyn. Would you care for a tea biscuit?”

“Thanks,” said Mervyn. He lowered himself gingerly into a birch plywood chair with a purple-and-green cushion.

“I don't believe you've ever been here before. How do you like my little den?”

“Very nice.” Mervyn tasted the tea. “How is Mrs. Kelly?”

Harriet blinked, looking uncertain. It was evident that Mrs. Kelly had broadcast her accusation of Mervyn beyond the hospital walls. “I haven't seen her since yesterday,” she said nervously. “She wasn't at all well. What a ghastly fall.”

“It's a long way down.”

“Falls are serious with older persons. Their bones are so brittle. It could easily have killed her.” Harriet gave Mervyn a rather shifty smile. She was really not at her best. It encouraged him.

“I saw her yesterday,” Mervyn said. “She was nuts.”

Harriet nodded rapidly. “I thought so myself. Sort of out of her head.”

Marvyn nibbled and cast about for the likeliest approach. “You're not working today?”

“Not this morning. I'm all caught up with my abstracts. I've some tests to prepare for my latest account—personnel-screening tests. I'm consulting psychologist for three different firms now,” she said modestly.

“Good for you. Do you work under John Thompson at the library? Is he your boss?”

“No, indeed. I merely have a desk in the staging room.”

“But I suppose you come in contact with him?”

“Once in a while. We don't have much to say to each other.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think he's leading a double life.”

“Oh?”

“Every weekend he disappears, regularly as clockwork. No one can find him. Not even Mr. Swinnick.”

Mr. Swinnick was general superintendent of the library. Mervyn thought back to his conversation with John Thompson. “Very odd,” he said. “I wonder what he's so secretive about?”

Harriet laughed for no perceptible reason. “Apparently you're still worrying about Mary.”

“I'm curious,” said Mervyn. Secretly, he congratulated himself.

Harriet's thick lips flattened noticeably. “I wonder if there'd be this much fuss made if
I
went bucketing off with a man.”

Keep her on the track, Mervyn. “Apparently she hasn't gone off with Thompson.”

Harriet sniffed. “Not unless he's got a cabin at Santa Cruz or in the mountains.”

“What about John Pilgrim?”

Harriet seemed to smell something bad. “Unsavory type. I can't imagine what … Well, I just can't imagine.… Or John Boce. It's simply ridiculous to consider
him
. He sees through Mary completely.” Her nose twitched. “I mean Mary is, well, frivolous. And John knows it.”

“How about John Viviano?”

Harriet snorted this time. “That lecher? He's capable of anything!”

Mervyn got to his feet. “Thanks for the tea.”

“Must you go? Another cup?”

“No, thanks. I just came to ask about Mrs. Kelly.”

Harriet was already at the window. “There's John now, inspecting your convertible. I do wish he'd buy it. It's ridiculous for a man to be without a car.”

“Bocey-boy is seldom without one,” said Mervyn. “Usually mine.”

“I've lent him old Scatterbolt on occasion.” She contrived to look both coy and disapproving. “John, of course, is value-conscious. I suppose it's a good thing, nowadays. Everything is so overpriced. And he
is
an accountant.”

“I'd better run down and see what he's up to.
Au 'voir
.”

“
Au 'voir
,” said Harriet Brill thoughtfully.

A passer-by, attracted by the for-sale sign on the convertible, had stopped Boce to ask if he was the owner. Mervyn hid behind one of the stucco urns at the court's entrance, and listened.

“Not me.” Boce answered the man emphatically. “I wouldn't own a convertible. This salt air dissolves the tops.”

“It doesn't look bad.” The would-be purchaser was a serious-looking young man in a tight-trousered black suit. “Any idea what the owner is asking for it?”

Boce laughed pityingly. “He changes it while you look at him. A week ago he offered it to me for practically nothing. I turned it down. You see, brother, I've driven it.”

“A dog, eh?”

“Put it this way. If you're a crackerjack mechanic and want some master's work, offer him a hundred. Chances are he'll kiss your hand.”

Mervyn revealed himself like Trampas in
The Virginian
. Boce drew his shoulders up quickly. Then he sang out, “Ah, there, Mervyn! Fellow here's interested in your car. I've been giving him the poop.”

“Just what is your price?” inquired the serious young man gaily.

“Three hundred,” Mervyn answered.

The young man departed.

“You weren't very persuasive, John,” Mervyn said in a mild voice.

Boce lowered his shoulders cautiously. “Give me something to work with.”

“What's your final offer on the car? This time I mean it. Well?”

“Oh … one sixty-five. If you throw in a new set of seat covers. And balance the wheels.”

Mervyn had an inspiration. “Make me a memorandum of that offer, John. Here, on the back of this envelope. Print. I can't read your writing.”

Boce seemed startled. But then he shrugged and complied. “I call your attention to the fact that I wrote, ‘Tentative and conditional, not a firm offer.'”

“Why did you do that?” Mervyn muttered, studying the thing.

“Just sound business practice. The law of contracts is pretty tricky stuff.”

“Well, I'll give you a tentative and conditional ‘no.' But I'll keep the memorandum in case I suddenly blow my tubes and start giving away my possessions.”

“I'll be there when you do,” said Boce playfully.

“Incidentally, where
were
you last Friday night?”

“My God, Mervyn, are you still chewing that old bone? What difference does it make?”

“What difference does it make to you what difference it makes?”

“For the life of me I can't see—”

“All right. My car disappeared along about then.”

Boce rolled his eyes, imploring the heavens. “So now I'm a thief as well as a liar.”

“Not necessarily. I think this John character went south in my car. I'd like to know his last name.”

“It's not Boce, old man, believe me.”

“I believe you. But man does not live by faith alone.”

“I wouldn't drive that rattletrap ten blocks,” Boce assured him. “Unless my life depended on it, of course.”

“Or you couldn't borrow my Volkswagen. Come on, John, give. Where were you Friday night?”

“Damn it all, Mervyn, if it's any of your business, I had a date! You satisfied?”

“No. Who was she?”

“Never mind! Let's just say one of the local fertility goddesses. We danced the Highland fling. Every time I tried to waltz out the door she dragged me back in for one more go-around.”

Beyond that, John Boce would not testify. In disgust Mervyn returned to Apartment 3, where he contemplated Boce's memorandum.

Suddenly he had an idea.

At the university library he gained access to the big workroom near John Thompson's office on the pretext of delivering a message to Harriet, who of course was not on duty. On his way out he paused by the bulletin board, which was thickly hung with notices of all kinds. One was a directive regarding summer schedules, signed “J. Thompson.” But it was typed.

Twenty minutes later, at the apartment house where Thompson maintained his residence, Mervyn had better luck. In the slot beside the call buttons was a neatly handprinted
JOHN THOMPSON
. Mervyn eased the card from the slot and fled.

His next stop was John Viviano's studio. The photographer was not in, but his brother Frank was, and to Mervyn's surprise he immediately nodded at Mervyn's request and rummaged through a file-cabinet drawer. He brought out a drawing done with much swash and verve, of a model in a black cape. Notes detailing the materials to be used were hand-printed along the side.

“My compliments,” said Frank Viviano. “I don't know why you want it, but I hope you can use it to hang John. I'm looking forward to kicking away the chair.”

Mervyn thanked him feebly, and left with the drawing.

Now how to get hold of a specimen of John Pilgrim's hand-printing? The project furrowed Mervyn's brow. An outright request would yield, he was sure, either a sneer or a burst of bad poetry. Or, worse, both. He could always break into the brute's cottage, of course.… Finally, Mervyn decided upon indirection.

He stopped into a stationery store and bought a copy of the current
Saturday Review
. There was a demonstration typewriter on display, and on the pretext of trying it out he typed a card with the message:

Complimentary Copy! Now is the time to get a
FREE
3-month subscription. All you have to do is suggest four persons (name and address) who
might
be interested in taking the
Saturday Review
. (Your name will
not
be used.)

Please print
.

Our representative will call shortly to collect your card. Just fill it out, and your
FREE
3-month subscription will start coming to you in (approximately) one month.

He parked down and across the street from Pilgrim's cottage. The Lambretta was gone, so the poet was not at home. Mervyn sneaked up the concrete walk to Pilgrim's porch, left the magazine, with the card clipped to it, propped against the front door, sneaked back and composed himself in his car to wait.

An hour went by before he heard the Lambretta's roar. Mervyn watched Pilgrim steer the machine bouncefully over the curb and up along the walk like a rocket. By some miracle it did not crash against the porch. The engine coughed and died, Pilgrim leaped off and to his door—and Mervyn saw him stoop and pick up the magazine and kick his door open and go into the cottage reading the card.

Mervyn waited, scanning Milton Street. About twenty minutes later a neatly dressed boy of about fourteen came along the sidewalk. Mervyn called him over and began to talk earnestly. The boy nodded without expression. Finally Mervyn pointed out Pilgrim's garden cottage; the boy nodded again, went up the walk and disappeared.

Five minutes later he returned bearing the card. Mervyn gave him a fifty-cent piece and sent him on his expressionless way.

By God, chortled Mervyn, I've outwitted that unwashed cat!

He eagerly scanned the face of the card, where he had typed the spurious message. His face fell; there was nothing on it but what he had typed. When he turned the card over, however, he immediately brightened. Pilgrim
had
fallen for it!

I spit on your lousy magazine. I hate the stupid egghead rag. Don't pull this on me again. Next time I'll grab your “representative” and I'll cockalize him.

J. Pilgrim

He had hand-printed his churlish message.

It was dusk by the time Mervyn got back to the Yerba Buena Garden Apartments. Not a bad day's work, he thought in the gloaming. For once, he had outfoxed his adversaries (as he had begun to think of the four Johns, even though three of them must be innocent).

As he passed John Boce's apartment, Mervyn heard Harriet Brill's laugh. It recalled to him the party of two nights before when Boce had “borrowed” his fifth of bourbon without permission. That was one bottle of bourbon, Mervyn decided, he would have to write off.

But to his astonishment, there outside his door in a paper sack stood a fifth of bourbon, practically full. Was the leopard changing his spots?

The incident, following as it did the success of his quest for hand-printing specimens, put Mervyn into a pleasant euphoria. In his apartment he locked the door, turned on the lights, pulled the drapes, took out the various hand-printing samples he had collected, laid them on the table beside the two anonymous letters, mixed himself a highball, and sat down humming.

Now let's see, Mervyn thought, rubbing his hands. He took his time, sipping his highball, enjoying far more the taste of superior intelligence and victory over the infidel.

Finally, he laid the two letters flat, with their neat, square, painstaking hand-printing, and compared them with the four specimens of the day.

John Boce's printing was characterized by wiry capitals leaning to the right in an italic sort of way, slapdash, scratchy.

John Thompson's printing was small, precise, secretive, with a tendency toward rounded corners and convex vertical strokes.