Black Money

28

On my way into town I stopped at a gas station with an outside telephone booth and called Christman in Washington. He was still out to lunch. The operator transferred my call to the restaurant where he ate, and eventually I heard him say: “Christman here. I’ve been trying to get you, Lew. You’re never in your office.”

“I haven’t been in for the last few days. Do you have anything more on our friend?”

“A little. Until a few months ago he was a second secretary at the Panamanian Embassy. He was fairly young for the job, but apparently he’s very highly qualified. He has an advanced degree from the University of Paris. Before they transferred him to Washington he held the post of third secretary in Paris.”

“Why did he leave the diplomatic service?”

“I don’t know. The man I talked to said he resigned for personal reasons. He didn’t explain what he meant by personal reasons. But Domingo didn’t leave under a cloud, so far as I could ascertain. Do you want me to dig some more?”

“There wouldn’t be much point,” I said. “You might tell whoever you talked to in the Embassy that their boy was shot in Los Angeles yesterday.”

“Dead?”

“Very. They’ll probably want to do something about the body, when the police release it. Captain Perlberg is in charge of the case.”

I was a few minutes late for my appointment with Sylvester, but he was later. He arrived at the clinic about half-past one, looking harried, and took me into his consultation room.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Archer. I thought I’d better drop in on Ginny Fablon.”

“How is she?”

“I believe she’ll be all right. Of course she’s woozy from shock, and I have her under fairly heavy sedation. But she’s accepted the fact of her mother’s death, as well as her husband’s, and she can see beyond them to some kind of future.”

“I still don’t think she should be left by herself.”

“She isn’t by herself. The Jamiesons have given her a guest cottage. They’re providing her meals, and Peter is there to wait on her, of course, which is all he ever wanted. She may have a happy ending yet.”

“With Peter?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” He added with a sidewise cheerless grin: “You understand my idea of a happy marriage is essentially anything that works.”

“How’s your own marriage working?”

“Audrey and I will muddle through. We’ve both had a lot to forgive. But I didn’t ask you here as a marriage counselor. I have some information for you.”

He brought a manila folder out of a drawer of his desk. “You’re still looking for Leo Spillman, aren’t you?”

“I am. So are the police.”

“What if I told you where and how to find him? Could I count on a certain amount of tolerance from you?”

“You’d better explain what you mean by that.”

He bit his thumb and studied the dent his teeth made. “I let down my back hair yesterday. Frankly I was rattled. The fact is, you know more about me that anyone else in town. It’s beginning to look as if everything connected with this mess if going to be spread out in the public prints. All I’m asking from you is a certain amount of decent reticence about my part in it. I have a great deal to lose.”

“What do you want suppressed?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want the details of my co-operation with Spillman– Couldn’t we keep it a doctor-patient relationship? That’s what it was essentially.”

“That’s what it became, anyway. I’ll hold back the rest of it if I possibly can.”

“Then the thing that Audrey and Fablon had– does it have to come out?”

“I don’t see why it should have to. Anything else?”

“I won’t try to press this too far,” he said, with a wary eye on my face, “but that money Marietta tried to borrow from me Monday – could we keep it confidential?”

“I doubt it. Mrs. Strome at the club knows about it.”

“I’ve already talked to her. She’s safe.”

“I’m not.”

Sylvester’s eyes became shallow and hard.

“Why are you balking at that? It’s the least embarrassing thing, really.”

“Not if Marietta was trying to blackmail you.”

“For what? The Spillman-Fablon business? I thought that was settled.”

“It isn’t settled to my satisfaction.”

“But you can’t accuse Marietta of being a blackmailer. It was just a friendly loan she asked me for. Naturally I was hoping she’d keep quiet about the Spillman bit, and Audrey’s mix-up with her husband.”

“Naturally. Was there anything else you wanted kept quiet?”

“By you?”

“By anybody. I’ve been wondering for instance, why and how Ginny came to work for you. I understand she was a receptionist here for a couple of years.”

“That’s right, until two years ago this summer. Then she went back to school.”

“Why did she leave school to go to work?”

“She’d been over-studying.”

“Was that your opinion?”

“I agreed with Marietta about it. The girl needed a change.”

“She didn’t come to work here for personal reasons, then?”

“I wasn’t her lover,” he said in a grating voice, “If that’s what you’re getting at. I’ve done some lousy things in my life but I don’t mess around with young girls.”

He glanced up at his framed diplomas on the wall. There was a puzzled expression in his eyes, as if he couldn’t remember how he had acquired them. His expression turned faraway, further and further away, as if his mind was climbing back over the curve of time to the source of his life.

I brought him back to the present. “You were going to tell me how to find Spillman.”

“So I was.”

“If you’d given me the information yesterday, you’d have saved trouble, possibly a life.”

“I didn’t have the information yesterday. That is, I didn’t know I had it. I stumbled across it early this morning when I was going over Spillman’s medical records.”

He opened the folder in front of him. “About three months ago, on February 20, we had a request for a copy of the records from a Dr. Charles Park, in Santa Teresa. I didn’t fill the request myself – Mrs. Loftin’s initials are on the notation – and she neglected to mention it to me. Anyway, as I said, I came across it.”

“What were you looking for?”

“I wanted to check how sick Spillman really was. He was sick, all right. Apparently he still is. I called Dr. Park’s office as soon as I found the notation. He wasn’t in yet himself, but his girl confirmed that Ketchel was still his patient. Apparently Spillman is using the name Ketchel in Santa Teresa.”

“Did you get his address there?”

“Yes, I did. It’s 1427 Padre Ridge Road.”

I thanked him.

“Don’t thank me. You and I have an agreement, for what it’s worth. I want to add one other small item to it. You mustn’t tell Leo Spillman I sicked you on to him.”

He was afraid of Spillman. The fear hissed like escaping gas in his voice, and lingered like an odor in my mind. On my way north to Santa Teresa I stopped at my apartment to pick up a handgun.