Family Jewels

4

Stone was at his desk the following morning when he heard voices — a man and a woman — followed by scuffling sounds, followed by a very large man with a length of tape across his nose and two black eyes, looking much like a sorrowful raccoon. Right behind him was Joan, wielding the .45 that she kept in her desk drawer.

“Freeze!” she yelled.

“Joan!” Stone said loudly. “Don’t shoot him!”

“Oh, all right,” Joan replied, sounding disappointed. She lowered the weapon.

“Who are you and what do you want?” Stone asked. “And talk fast, or I’ll let her shoot you.”

“My name is Harvey Biggers,” the man said.

“Oh, right. Sorry, I was a little slow on the uptake. You’d better sit down before you pass out. I’ll handle this, Joan. Put the gun away.”

Biggers sat down. “I have to talk to you.”

“I’m afraid that conversation can’t take place,” Stone said, “since I represent your former wife.”

“Look, you don’t know what you’re getting mixed up in. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for legal advice. Just give me five minutes to ease my conscience.”

“Your conscience? If you want to confess, speak to somebody at the Nineteenth Precinct.”

“This is not a confession, it’s a warning.”

“A warning about what?”

“About what you’re getting mixed up in.”

“Mr. Biggers, every time I take on a client I get mixed up in something, it’s what I do. Now what’s your point?”

“You’ve been misled.”

“Not for the first time.”

“Maybe not, but this time could be fatal.”

“Fatal for whom?”

“For you. Sorry, that was a terrible joke. Fatal for me, actually.”

Stone sighed deeply. “You’re not making any sense at all, Mr. Biggers.”

“I’m being set up.”

“Set up for what?”

“For getting killed.”

“Let me give you a little help with the noir nomenclature, Mr. Biggers. When you’re being set up it means someone is trying to have you wrongly accused of killing someone else.”

“It does?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t it mean something else, too?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“For someone else killing me?”

“Ah, you mean being set up to be killed?”

“That’s what I said.”

“That may be what you were trying to say, but it didn’t come out that way. You mean, someone is trying to kill you?”

“Not yet.”

“When?”

“Very soon, it seems.”

“Who is trying to kill you?”

“Not trying, planning.”

“All right, who is planning to kill you?”

“My wife, of course.”

“Mr. Biggers, do you have more than one wife?”

“Well, not at a time. But right now I have two ex-wives, and one of them is trying to kill me.”

“Which one?”

“Why, your client, of course.”

“Mr. Biggers, unless you start making some sense real quick, the lady with the gun in the outside office is going to come back, and my client will never have the chance to kill you.”

“I know you will find this hard to believe, but she wants you to believe that I am trying to kill her, when it is she who wants to kill me. Look at me, she’s already gotten me beat up.”

“No, you got yourself beat up when you assaulted my associate, Fred.”

“That little twerp is your associate?”

“Mr. Biggers, let me remind you that the man you are referring to as ‘that little twerp’ put you in the hospital and made you look like a raccoon.”

“He just got lucky that time.”

“No, in that regard he is always lucky, and you should not provoke him again into having to defend himself. Now can we get back to the point?”

“The point is that your client, Carrie Fiske, wants you to think I want to kill her, when in reality it is she who wants to kill me.”

“Mr. Biggers, while I appreciate your newfound clarity of thought, your thought is preposterous. Why would she want to kill you?”

“Because she’s mad at me, and because she’s mean.”

“Let’s take those one at a time. Why is she mad at you?”

“Because I left her. Isn’t ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ a motive in this modern world?”

“I’ll grant you that — a woman scorned is capable of a lot.”

“Carrie is capable of anything.”

“All right, how is she mean?”

“In any way you can possibly think of — she’s mean morning, noon, and night, especially at night, in bed.”

Stone wanted to rest his forehead on the glass top of his desk and cool his fevered brow, but instead he did the right thing. “Mr. Biggers,” he said, “I cannot listen to your concerns any longer. I refer you to the New York City Police Department, to which you can express your fears and even make a charge against Ms. Fiske, should you desire to do so. Now, this conversation is at an end. Please leave before I ask my secretary to escort you from the premises with a .45 stuck in your ribs.”

Harvey Biggers made a small noise, then he got up and strode, nearly ran, from Stone’s office. Stone heard the outside door close.

Joan came into his office. “Did he harm you?”

“No, he was too afraid of you.”