Buyer beware

26

The day after Gratuity's unexpected "liquidation" Carlon arrived in Chicago with a battery of anonymous-looking lawyers. I talked to some of them, filling them in on what the police might have missed telling them, and found them to be sharp, cold individuals. They pondered legal angles that sounded ridiculous until they discussed them so seriously that they became serious.

During the course of the day, I managed to break through to Carlon once, for a brief and interrupted phone conversation. His lawyers accounted for his inaccessibility with explanations that sounded reasonable when said fast.

Carlon did manage to have his daughter free within hours. Whether Joan Clark was out on bond or hadn't had charges brought against her I didn't know and didn't think to ask her when she phoned to thank me. I accepted her thanks with a humility befitting one of the finest investigators in the country, not mentioning the exorbitant fee her father had agreed to pay me for risking my life.

For a while, the police gave me a hard time about withholding evidence, but some old connections I had put in some words for me. Carlon also interceded, though in this instance he couldn't be of much help. It could have turned out worse. I escaped prosecution and was sure I'd be able to retain my investigator's license, but I'd never operate again in Chicago. I could stand that. Before Joan hung up I asked her to tell her father I was on my way over to thank him personally for his efforts on my behalf.

When I got there, Carlon was out.

It was past noon the next day before he deigned to see me in his suite at the Continental Plaza. I didn't know whether to be angry about his inaccessibility or grateful to him for helping to get the police off me.

When I walked into Carlon's opulent suite, he shook my hand enthusiastically and bared his teeth in his PR smile, making me more confused. One thing I wasn't confused about was the remaining forty thousand dollars he owed me.

Carlon was wearing leather slippers and some sort of patterned blue silk lounging robe. He sat down slowly in an overstuffed chair in the manner of a king situating himself on a throne. "I can't thank you enough, Nudger," he said earnestly, "and neither can Joan."

"Fifty thousand dollars is more than adequate thanks," I said. I found myself ill at ease in the luxurious suite, with my wrinkled bargain suit and the scratches from the Devon Acres woods still marking my hands and face.

"Actually I've been trying to contact you to talk about that for the past few days," Carlon said, and I felt a chill of suspicion dance up my spine, catch in my throat as a lump.

I wanted to speak, didn't know if I could manage it or what I should say.

"I've had my accountant draw up a check for you," Carlon said and held out a pale-blue and beautiful rectangle of paper.

Letting out my breath, I leaned forward and accepted it from him.

When I looked at the check, I saw that it was for five thousand dollars, and I felt a weight settle in my stomach. I was afraid of the rage that was pulsing through me. My voice was strained and distant. "You're thirty-five thousand short…"

Somehow Carlon managed to look surprised. There wasn't a hint of insincerity in his handsome face or concerned gray eyes. "Of course you realized the remainder of the fee was predicated upon certain circumstances in Joan's disappearance."

"It was predicated upon my finding her," I said tightly. Behind Carlon his male secretary had entered the room and begun to busy himself about a cluttered desk.

"Let me point out," Carlon said, "that the investigation has revealed nothing criminal, nothing legally actionable, in Joan's involvement. My lawyers and the police have questioned her extensively. She was never actually a part of that establishment Manson cult."

"That seems to me to be beside the point."

He appeared puzzled. "It was Joan's welfare that this was all about, wasn't it?"

"That and fifty thousand dollars." I was getting angrier now, feeling the loss I knew I couldn't avoid.

"That seems a rather mercenary point of view," Car-Ion said. Then his voice became tolerant. "You must see this for what it was-a business arrangement. There is, after all, not even any written record of our agreement-"

"Our agreement was about fifty thousand dollars," I interrupted, "and I was to collect it when I located your daughter."

He shook his head as if losing patience with a backward child. "Believe me, Mr. Nudger, the conversation wasn't exactly as you remember it. The full remainder of the fee was predicated upon certain conditions. Why, any impartial judge-"

"I know I can't sue you. There's nothing in writing. And since you've somehow managed to get Joan off the hook legally, I can't endanger her case in court."

"You seem to grasp those essentials," Carlon said. "Why can't you grasp the fact that you were involved in a very profitable business deal, though not so wildly profitable as your imagination had led you to believe? I wish you could recall the exact details of our conversation in Layton." He seemed to believe it. I don't think any polygraph would have tripped him up. "The five thousand dollars," he said, nodding toward the check in my hand, "is as much a gesture of appreciation as anything."

I knew what he meant. He could still stop payment on what he'd given me, which would be a considerable amount of money even after I'd paid my expenses. The weight in my stomach seemed to expand, driving the anger from me and replacing it with resignation. I was disgusted with myself for feeling even a vague gratitude toward Carlon for what he had paid me. Though legally he owed me nothing.

The desire to get really nasty with him, even violent, left me then. I did have ten thousand dollars in the bank. And any outburst would cost me five thousand, in itself more than I'd ever been paid for a single case.

I'd be damned, though, if I'd thank Carlon for his "gesture of appreciation." Stuffing the check into my shirt pocket, I left him without saying anything. Some small satisfaction.

It was winter and I was home in my house trailer, lounging on the sofa, watching the six o'clock news, when next I saw Dale Carlon. He was standing before richly flowered wallpaper somewhere, pleasantly and patiently explaining to a network newsman how a rise in plastics prices now would actually save the consumer money in the future. Gee, he was convincing!

Later that evening I thought I'd catch the Carlton interview again on the ten o'clock news. But during the weather forecast, the picture on my portable TV suddenly shrank to a tiny, brilliant square of light, revolved and disappeared.

I went to the metal box where I kept my important papers and dug out the set's warranty.

It had expired the week before.