The Procane Chronicle (12 page)

“Procane?”

“Yes.”

“In a gutter.” He looked at me and grinned sardonically. “Don’t let the rough finish fool you, St. Ives. At nineteen I was graduating from Stanford. At twenty-one I was commanding an infantry company in Vietnam. At twenty-three I was in the gutter.”

“It sounds like a lively tale.”

Wiedstein shook his head. “Not really.”

“What was it, drugs?”

“They don’t do anything for me.”

“A woman could have done it.”

“Nothing so romantic. It was booze.”

“You don’t have the earmarks.”

“You mean because I’m a Jew.”

“That didn’t cross my mind. Your age did.”

“Jews aren’t supposed to be drunks. They’re supposed to have all this warm family support that keeps them from falling into the bottle.”

“I’ve heard that theory.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

“I believe it’s a theory that’s used to explain why not too many Jews are alcoholics. But I’ve known some who were. Or are.”

“Now you know another one.”

“How bad is it?”

“Well, I’ve always been precocious. I made the whole thirty-year trip in less than three years. Blackouts. Convulsions. The whole thing.”

“Where were you?”

“San Francisco and here. Procane found me in a gutter in the Village. He took me home with him.”

I shook my head. Wiedstein glanced at me. “Sounds a little rich, right?”

“It doesn’t sound like the way I think Procane should sound.”

“He was looking for me. Or somebody like me. He got the idea from his analyst.”

“Someday I’ll have to meet that one.”

“His analyst told him a bright, reformed drunk would make a hell of a thief. Procane’s only problem was to find one young enough. He went looking and found me.”

“But you weren’t reformed.”

“I was ripe though. Or thought I was. I lived at Procane’s place for six months. He started teaching me what he knew. I wasn’t too keen about it at first, but what the hell, I was broke and it was free room and board and a little pocket money. I kept sober for three months.”

“Then what?”

“Then I got drunk.”

“What happened?”

Wiedstein pulled up in front of the Adelphi and put the car in park. “Procane gave me one more chance. He made it clear that that’s all it was. No lectures. Nothing. Then we pulled a job together and that was it. I was cured. That doesn’t mean I can drink, but the compulsion’s gone.”

I must have looked dubious because Wiedstein gave me another sardonic grin. “Still sounds a little rich?”

I nodded. “A little.”

“It’s not really. It’s just that I found out something about myself.”

“What?”

“That I can substitute one compulsion for another,” he said. “Now I’d rather steal than drink.”

M
YRON GREENE WOULDN’T EVEN
comment on the half-million dollars that was to be anonymously contributed to the Harlem drug abuse clinic, or whatever it was, until he checked with Procane to see whether it was really any of my business.

When he called back he said, “Well, it’s just as Mr. Procane told you. He intends to contribute the money sometime next month and he’s asked me to handle it. It’s really no great problem although the tax aspect has some interesting angles.”

“You mean it’s deductible?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. It depends on how we decide to raise the money. There are capital gains to be considered and quite a few other technicalities that I won’t bore you with.”

“You’re not boring me,” I said.

“I fail to understand your interest, Philip.”

“I’m just curious about whether you can make any money by giving away a half-million dollars.”

“You can’t make any money, but you can save a great deal on your current and future federal income tax.”

“Give me a for instance.”

“Well, Mr. Procane’s income is such that it falls within what is called the fifty percent contribution base. In other words, he can contribute fifty percent of his income each year and claim it as a tax deduction.”

“I aspire to that base.”

“No you don’t. Next we will probably decide to make the gift in the form of securities that have not appreciated in value since they were purchased.”

“They’ll be like those dogs that I bought.”

“Yes, but I warned you about those. So, Mr. Procane will contribute a half-million dollars in securities this year. However, there is a special five-year carryover provision. This means that for the next five years he can deduct up to half of his income as a charitable contribution.”

“So what do you think Procane makes each year, a couple of hundred thousand?”

“I’m not sure that’s really your concern.”

“He has to make that much to live like he does. So if he donates the half a million this year he can write it off during the next five years and it really won’t cost him anything.”

“That’s an oversimplification.”

“But essentially correct.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“He’s all heart, isn’t he?”

“I happen to think that it’s an extraordinarily generous and worthwhile gesture.”

“So does Procane. Good-bye, Myron.”

I decided that it was still going to be a very, long search for the good thief. The five hundred thousand dollars that Procane planned to hand over to the drug clinic was the five hundred thousand that he would have to pay anyway in income tax over the next five years. His half-share of the million he stole would probably be spirited off to Switzerland or Panama and cautiously reinvested from there. His tax diddle wasn’t illegal, although stealing a million must be. But since he was stealing it from the drug merchants, I really wasn’t sure what law Procane would be breaking, and somehow I didn’t feel that Myron Greene was really the right person to ask.

It was one o’clock by the time that I got through talking to Greene. Before I could ask him about Procane’s wonderful generosity, I’d had to tell him all about how I’d retrieved the journals, omitting no detail because he especially liked those.

Talking to Myron Greene usually made me hungry for some reason that I’d never bothered to think about so I decided on a Danish sardine sandwich which I created between two thick slices of dark German rye, and garnished with Bermuda onion, Dijon mustard, and Romaine lettuce. It was accompanied by a bottle of Filipino beer that had something of a kick to it. I was sitting there at the poker table, savoring the international flavor of my lunch and not at all worried about its gastric consequences, when somebody knocked at the door.

I took the last bite of the sandwich and swallowed the rest of the beer and with my mouth full I went to the door, put the security chain on, and opened it. I didn’t recognize him at first because he wore a gray, double-breasted worsted suit with a neat chalk stripe and a blue shirt with longish collar points that framed the plump knot in his blue-and-white figured tie. His black, pebble-grained loafers were burnished and gleaming.

He could have been from the insurance company or even a high-class collection agency, but he wasn’t. He was from the cops and the last time I’d seen him he had been wearing dark blue along with a pair of handcuffs that he’d locked around my wrists. He was Officer Francis X. Frann, once of the New York Police Department’s motor-scooter patrol who, for all I knew, had now been promoted to plainclothes detective because of his brilliant work on the St. Ives case.

“Hello, Mr. St. Ives,” he said.

I said hello, but it must have come out a little muffled after it went around the mouthful of sardine sandwich;

“I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

I swallowed and nodded, closed the door, took off the chain, opened the door wide, and waved him in. He moved to the center of the room and then turned slowly, his eyes sorting out the furnishings as if he suspected that most of them were stolen property.

“What have we got to talk about?” I said.

“I’m on my day off.” I’m sorry.

“Why?”

“Your clothes. I thought you might have been promoted.”

“That’s why I’m here on my day off. I’d like to be.”

“You’re poking around in the Bobby Boykins murder.”

He nodded.

“On your own.”

He nodded again.

“That’s nice. I wish you luck.”

His eyes started to inventory my furniture again. They were still dark brown and they didn’t look as if they cried easily. Somehow they didn’t go with his twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old face that was all pink and white with some light-blond eyebrows, a snub nose, a girlish mouth, and a prizefighter’s chin.

When he got through checking out the furniture for the second time, he said, “I’ve got a friend or two down at Homicide South.”

“It’s nice to have friends. I’m going to have a beer. You want a beer on your day off?”

He hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, sure, a beer would be good.”

I took two beers out of the Pullman kitchen’s built-in refrigerator, poured them, and handed him a glass.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Try that chair over there.”

He tried the chair along with a swallow of his beer and said, “Hey, that’s good stuff.”

“It’s from the Philippines.”

He looked suspiciously at his glass, but took another swallow anyway. “Like I said, I’ve got a couple of friends down at Homicide South.”

“What about them?”

“They let me take a look at that statement you gave Oller and Deal.”

“So?”

“Well, it got me to thinking that maybe you knew more about this guy Boykins than you told Deal and Oller.”

“It made them think the same thing.”

“Yeah, I read their report, too. They said you weren’t too cooperative.”

“I’m sorry they feel that way.”

Frann shook his head. “No you’re not.”

“All right. I’m not sorry.”

“You wouldn’t tell em who you were workin for.”

“You’re trying to bust this case by yourself, huh?”

“That’s right. By myself. I never had a murder one right on my beat. There’ve been a bunch of manslaughters, but no murder ones.”

“I’m glad things’ve picked up.”

“It could give me a chance to show what I can do.”

“I take it you want to make detective.”

“I don’t wanta stay on a motor-scooter, for Christ sake.”

“And you think I can help.”

Frann nodded his big chin a couple of times. “You can help all right, but it don’t seem likely that you will.”

“But you’re going to try me anyway.”

“I’m going to ask you some questions.”

“Which I don’t have to answer.”

He shrugged and stretched out his feet in front of him. He seemed to be settling in for a long stay. “This go-between business you’re in. It must make you a lot of money.”

“Not so much.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He made his left hand perform a negligent wave. “Nice midtown pad, imported beer, poker table all set up, and ready to go. I imagine a guy like you plays table stakes.”

“You’ve got a good imagination.”

He nodded. “I don’t think it’s so bad. I imagine that on a deal like you were on the other night you’d make about nine or ten thousand dollars. I counted that money you were carrying, you know.”

“So I heard.”

“Money always makes me think.”

“About what?”

“More money.”

It was beginning to sound like a shakedown, but I wasn’t sure. He was taking an awfully long time to make his point and most shakedown artists like to get right down to business and to hell with the social niceties. There was nothing to do but let him talk.

“I figured if I could find out who you were working that go-between deal for the other night, I might get a lead on who killed the old man.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So this morning I sort of followed you.”

“Sort of?”

“I’m a pretty good tail. You didn’t make me.”

“That’s right, I didn’t.”

Frann took out a small, spiral-bound notebook and flipped it open. “At nine thirty-three this morning you came out of here and caught a cab down to the West Side Airlines Terminal. You arrived there at nine fifty-one and then sort of fooled around outside. You were carrying a blue Pan-Am airline bag.”

“I was meeting some friends.”

“Huh. At ten sharp you went inside the building and then entered the men’s room upstairs. You stayed in there until thirteen after ten. Then you came out carrying a blue airline bag. But it wasn’t no Pan-Am bag; it was a United one.”

“You’ve got a great future on the force.”

“That’s when you made the switch—the buy back, wasn’t it?”

“Whatever you say.”

“I say this. I say you come out of the men’s room and meet two people, a man and a woman. In their twenties, about my age. All three of you get in a Carey Cadillac limousine and then go to a certain address on East Seventy-fourth. You want the number?”

“No.”

“It took me a little while to check this out, but that address is where somebody called Abner Procane lives. I couldn’t find out nothing about him yet. But that’s who you’re working for, I bet.”

“Doing what?”

“Making a payoff for him this morning. Buying him something back.”

“What?”

“Well, Christ, I don’t know that yet.”

“You don’t even know that I’m working for him. For all you know he’s an old friend. I met two people at the airline terminal this morning. Maybe they’d just come in on a flight.”

“They didn’t have no luggage.”

“Maybe they lost it.”

“Yeah, well what about the airline bags? You take a Pan-Am bag into the crapper and bring a United one out. What about that?”

“I think you made a mistake. Or if you didn’t maybe I did. Maybe while I was washing my hands I picked up the wrong one. Maybe the bag I took into the men’s room contained some gifts for my friends and I didn’t notice I’d picked up the wrong one until I got to the address on Seventy-fourth. You haven’t got a thing, Frann, but a wasted day off.”

His pink face got pinker. He rose and put the empty glass down. “I’m gonna check this guy Procane out, then we’ll see who made a mistake.”

“You want some advice?”

“From you?”

“No charge.”