Buyer beware

13

The jangling telephone by my bed yanked me out of sleep at nine the next morning.

It was Carlon, as promised. He told me that arranging for me to get what information I needed from First Security Trust had been difficult, but that he'd managed it. The bank was one of an affiliation of Midwestern banks with which three of the Carlon plants did business. He told me to ask for a man named Tom McGregor, the loan officer who'd processed Talbert's application.

I thanked Carlon and asked him if he'd heard of Gratuity Insurance. He hadn't. And he said the name Robert Manners meant nothing to him.

When Carlon hung up I placed a call to Lieutenant Frank Dockard in Layton. When he answered the phone, he seemed not at all surprised to hear from me. By now he'd know I left Layton. I assumed he knew I was calling from Chicago.

"I'd like you to check on a Robert Manners for me," I told him.

"Who's he?"

"I don't know. That's why I phoned you. Anything new in Layton?"

"The bullets taken from the Star Lane house were thirty-eight caliber, from the same gun, if that helps you any."

"You never can tell."

"Anything I should know, Nudger?"

"I don't think so."

"What number are you calling from? So I can phone and let you know if there's anything on Manners."

"I'll call you, Lieutenant. Sometime this afternoon. And thanks." Before he could reply I hung up.

I dressed, had a quick buckwheat pancake breakfast and headed for First Security Trust. The extent of Car-Ion's influence amazed me. His nationwide corporation seemed to touch everywhere in the business community. What he could accomplish with his index finger on the telephone was to me the most startling revelation of the case. He'd mentioned political prospects that might surprise me. Maybe that was part of it; maybe it was known that Carlon might soon be in a position to do some important people important favors. I wondered, how many Carlons were there, how many men with that kind of encompassing influence on other lives?

First Security Trust was one of Chicago's older banks. There was more polished wood and marble in the lobby than formica. Half a dozen female tellers were at their windows, and the bank was active with customers either waiting in short lines or standing and writing at long, elbow-high tables.

I identified myself and asked a young girl at the information desk for Mr. McGregor. She spoke for a moment on the phone, and soon after she hung up, McGregor came into the lobby to greet me.

He was a middle-aged man, short and overweight, with a seamed, smiling face and a broken-veined drinker's nose. Not at all the banker type. After a firm handshake he led me behind the tellers' cages to one of a series of small, frosted-glass cubicles, each containing a desk and chair. He moved behind the desk and motioned toward the chair with a smile, waiting for me to be seated before he sat down. I sensed his deference to someone authorized to receive normally confidential information.

"I understand you're the bank officer who processed a loan application by Victor Talbert," I began. When he nodded, I asked him how much Talbert had wanted to borrow, and why.

McGregor unlocked a top desk drawer and pulled out some forms stapled together. He laid them on the desk and bowed his head to stare at them, the fingertips of his left hand touching his temple near his eye. He spoke without looking up, as if the forms intrigued him.

"Victor Talbert requested a loan of sixty thousand dollars for capital to form a hardware distribution firm."

"Collateral?" I asked.

"The loan was to be granted in phases, secured by inventory."

"What made you decide against granting the loan?"

McGregor raised graying eyebrows in surprise. "But we didn't decide against. Talbert had an impeccable record, and his previous employer vouched for his integrity and ability. And my own personal assessment of Talbert was favorable. He was an impressive young man."

"Speaking as a nonbanker," I said, "it sounds risky."

"The phasing of the loan minimized the risk. In actuality we'd have been loaning the second half after the first had been paid. It was to be amortized over a ten-year period."

"Did he actually receive any money?"

"No, that's the strange thing about it. Talbert was contacted and told the directors had approved the loan. I talked to him myself. But on the date he was to come here to finalize the loan, he didn't show up."

"What day was that?"

McGregor traced a steady finger over the form before him. "The fifteenth of last month."

"What address did Talbert give you?"

The finger shot diagonally to the lower left corner of the form. "Five seventy Oakner, apartment seven."

I drew a folded slip of paper from my breast pocket and scribbled the information down. McGregor rotated the forms on the desk for my perusal in an exaggerated gesture of cooperation. I thumbed through them but saw nothing else useful. Talbert had listed himself as twenty-eight and single at the Oakner address. He'd had several employers before High Grade, but his experience was almost entirely in the hardware wholesaling business.

When I was finished, McGregor solicitously showed me out.

From First Security Trust I drove to the Oakner address Talbert had listed on his application, a tall brownstone apartment building set back on a narrow lot. Ivy was taking over the building's southeast corner, as if trying to bring the tall structure to earth.

I discovered what I'd expected. The apartment manager told me that Talbert had lived there for three months with a woman and young child, and when I showed him a photo of Joan Clark he identified her as the woman. They had moved out just over a month ago, without notice, but they had left behind an envelope containing the remainder of their rent money.

When I got back to the TraveLodge, I phoned Dockard and also got what information I expected from him. There were four men with major criminal records who used the name Robert Manners, either as their genuine name or an AKA-two in prison, one out of the country and the other eighty years old in a home in Iowa.

I replaced the receiver and stretched out on the bed, my shoes off, thinking about the day's main development. Keen, likable, admirable and ambitious Victor Talbert had run out on a sixty-thousand-dollar loan that would have enabled him to start his own business.

I found that remarkable.