Hit Me

Forty-Five

The representative of Talleyrand Stamp & Coin arrived twenty minutes late. Keller, on the patio with a second cup of coffee, watched as the fellow parked his black Lincoln Navigator in the driveway and headed for the front door, briefcase in hand. Like his predecessors, he wore a conservative suit and a tie; in manner and body type he fell somewhere between the two.

“Pierce Naylor,” he said, first to Keller, then a moment or two later to Denia Soderling. “Lew Mintz couldn’t make it. As I understand it, I’m the third stamp buyer to cross this threshold in as many days. Ma’am, you must be sick to death of the whole tribe of us.”

“It’s been no hardship for me,” she said. “Mr. Edwards has enabled me to stay very much in the background.”

“You’re fortunate,” he said. “The less time you spend around stamp buyers, the better off you are. Well, it’s my intention to make this as simple and easy for you as I possibly can, and profitable in the bargain. Unless I’ve been misinformed, you were visited in turn by E. J. Griffey and Martin Rombaugh, and I’d be surprised if either one of them got out of here in less than five or six hours.”

Keller was preparing a reply, but Naylor didn’t wait for one. “That’s far more of your time than I intend to take,” he said, “nor will I eat you out of house and home, as I’m sure Marty Rombaugh made every effort to do. One hour’s all I’ll need.”

Oh?

In the stamp room, Keller indicated the chair that had served Griffey and Rombaugh in turn. Naylor stayed on his feet and walked over to the shelved stamp albums. “Spain,” he announced, and carried an album to the table. Still standing, he opened it apparently at random, studied the stamps, flipped a few pages, closed the album, and returned it to the shelf. He spent a little more time with Sweden, and not much time at all with Turkey.

“All right,” he said, after replacing the Turkish album where he’d found it. “Griffey and Rombaugh, with Griffey leading off. He’d have tried to make his offer preemptive, but that little ploy quite obviously didn’t work. And Marty would have tried to add a little sweetener. He’d top Griffey’s bid and slip you a little something for your troubles. But that couldn’t have worked, either, because the stamps are still here, aren’t they?”

Keller agreed that they were.

“How high did Griffey go? And was Marty able to top it?”

“We haven’t opened the envelopes.”

“You’re kidding,” Naylor said, and looked intently at him. “You’re serious,” he announced. “Well, that makes it interesting, doesn’t it? Why don’t we bring in Mrs. Soderling? I have a suggestion to make.”

“You want us to open both envelopes,” she said. “In front of you.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll guarantee to top the high bid by twenty percent. I believe that’s what you said.”

“It is.”

“But you barely looked at the stamps. How can you know they’re worth that much?”

“I know the Griff,” Naylor said. “I know Marty Rombaugh. If they say the collection’s worth X dollars, I know it’s worth that and more.”

“Twenty percent more,” Keller said.

“That’s right. I looked briefly at three albums, and that was enough to give me a sense of the quality and the degree of completeness. I’ll take the word of my predecessors as to the actual value, and at the same time I’ll trust them to have shaded their bid enough to leave ample room for profit. Enough room so that I can bid twenty percent higher and still come out ahead.”

“Or back out,” Keller said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Suppose we open the envelopes,” he said, “and one bid’s three times as high as the other, so high that you wouldn’t even want to match it, let alone top it by twenty percent. ‘My employers would never go for that,’ you’d say, and what could we do about it?”

“Not a damn thing,” Naylor allowed. “But so what? You’d go ahead and sell the stamps to Griffey or Rombaugh, whoever’s the higher, but that’s what you’d do anyway, isn’t it?”

There had to be a flaw in the argument, but Keller couldn’t spot it. Denia questioned the fairness of it. Wouldn’t they be giving Naylor an edge over the competition?

“I had that edge from the start,” he said, “because I’m the last of the three players in the game. If I’d already come and gone, and one of the others got to go last, he’d be giving you a version of the same pitch. Ma’am, you want to be fair to yourself, and to do right by the man who gathered all these philatelic treasures together in the first place. Which is to say you want the highest price. And that’s exactly what you’ll get if you open those envelopes.”

It was getting on for noon when they opened the envelopes. By ten minutes to four, the entire cargo compartment of the oversize SUV was filled to capacity, with one additional carton, its seat belt securely fastened, riding shotgun. There was another box on the floor containing a two-quart Thermos bottle and half a dozen sandwiches in individual self-sealing plastic bags.

“I’ll drive straight through,” Pierce Naylor said. “It’s around nine hundred miles to St. Louis, all of it on interstates, and with the sandwiches and coffee I’ll never have to leave the vehicle. Very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Soderling. I’ll have FedEx get your Thermos back in good shape.”

“It’s a spare, Mr. Naylor, and the cap’s chipped. Don’t bother returning it.”

“You’re sure? Because it wouldn’t be any trouble. Well, then. Mr. Edwards, Mrs. Soderling. A pleasure doing business with you.”

They stood in silence and watched him drive off. He’d flown from St. Louis to Denver, where he’d reserved the Navigator, making sure he got the largest SUV any of the rental outlets had on offer. If he’d missed out on the collection, he’d have driven back to Denver and flown home. But he’d been successful, so he’d drive home, pay the car rental people a drop charge, waste his return air ticket, and his employers would count it all money well spent.

“It was remarkable how smoothly it went. He called the firm he works for, and someone there called a bank and arranged a wire transfer, and in no time at all Mrs. Soderling’s bank confirmed that the money was in her account.”

“I guess I knew you could do that,” Julia said, “but it never would have occurred to me. And she’s happy with the price?”

“Very much so.”

“And your other business?”

“All taken care of. I’ll be home tomorrow.”

She put Jenny on, and he listened happily as she babbled away about a puppy. Was it too early to get her a dog? This was not the first time he’d asked himself this question, and the answer still seemed to be yes, that she wasn’t old enough yet. Soon, though.

He rang off, switched phones, called Dot. “You won’t believe this,” she said, “but the damnedest thing happened on Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver. An ex-con not too long out of Cañon City looked up his old girlfriend and slapped her around enough to leave marks. So she got her gun and put three rounds in his chest, and then I guess she felt remorseful, because she turned the gun on herself.”

“These things happen.”

“One in the heart. I understand men go for head shots, the mouth or the temple, but a girl wants to look her best.”

“So they say.”

“And they found something, don’t ask me what, that has them looking at the dead guy for that house that burned down a few nights ago.”

“Maybe there was something in his wallet with the address on it.”

“Of the house that went up in smoke? That might do it. Whatever it is, my guess is it’s enough for them to clear the case. Time for Pablo to head for home.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Uh, as far as us getting paid—”

“Won’t be a problem.”

“When the husband recovers—”

“That won’t be a problem, either.”

It took him a moment. “You’re saying he—”

“Died, Pablo. El esposo es muerto. Or should it be está? I think es, because it’s a permanent condition.”

“I thought she hired security.”

“She did, amigo, but all the king’s horses can’t keep a man’s kidneys from quitting on him. Acute renal failure, and I gather the only surprise at the hospital was that he lasted as long as he did. And this way she got to forgive him and fall back in love with him and get revenge on the people responsible for his death, and she doesn’t have to worry that he’ll find some other tootsie and put her through it all over again. Which we both know he would have done sooner or later. I have to say she comes out of this in good shape, Pablo. The little lady got her money’s worth.”