Killer's Payoff

4.

The passbook for the savings account looked like this:

The account had been started in October with the sum of $21,000. In January there had been an additional deposit of $9,000, and in April a third deposit of $15,000. The interest, computed on April first and indicated in the passbook at the time the April eleventh deposit had been made, was $187.50. Kramer had not made a withdrawal since the account had been opened.

The checking account was a working account. There were regular deposits and withdrawals. The deposits were usually made around the first of each month, give or take a week. The deposits were made in three unvarying amounts: $500, $300, and $1,100. The withdrawals were made in varying amounts-to pay bills and for pocket money. The savings account, it seemed, had been Kramer’s nest egg. The checking account was the one that had sustained him in his daily pursuit of happiness, to the tune of $1,900 a month.

The bank, on Monday morning, July first, had two checks that were waiting to be deposited in Kramer’s checking account. The checks had apparently been mailed together with a deposit slip on the afternoon Kramer had been killed. They had not reached the bank until Friday morning, had not been got to that afternoon, and so were still waiting for deposit on Monday.

Both checks were made payable to cash.

One check was in the amount of $500.

The other was in the amount of $300.

One was signed by a woman named Lucy Mencken.

The other was signed by a man named Edward Schlesser.

Both checks had been endorsed for deposit by Sy Kramer.

LUCY MENCKEN tried hard not to appear voluptuous. It was impossible. She wore a man-tailored suit and low walking shoes, and her long brown hair was pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she tried to give the impression of a sedate exurban matron, but it was impossible.

Steve Carella happened to be married to a voluptuous woman. He knew all about voluptuousness or voluptuity or whatever Webster called it; Carella had never taken the time to look it up. He knew that his wife, Teddy, was voluptuous, and using her as a measuring rod, he knew there wasn’t a woman alive who could fool him into thinking she was not voluptuous simply by wearing a dowdy-looking suit and Army shoes. In the terraced back yard of the exurban estate, overlooking the swimming pool in the distance, Carella sat with Lucy Mencken and wondered why she wore Army shoes.

The trees rustled with a gentle breeze, cool for July. He could remember the summer before and the sweltering routine of working in an inferno with a cop hater loose. It would have been nice, last summer, to have had access to a pool the size of the one on the Mencken estate. He sat watching Lucy Mencken as she sipped her gin and tonic. She held the glass with complete familiarity, a woman at home with her surroundings, a woman at ease with luxury. The luxury made Carella somewhat uncomfortable. He felt like a man who’d come to give an estimate on how much it would cost to prune the trees near the gatehouse.

The fact that she was voluptuous disturbed him, too. She moved with complete ease within the rounded length of her body, but the clothing was a complete contradiction and it emphasized rather than denied the ripeness of her flesh. He wondered what a single man’s reaction to Mrs. Mencken would be. He wondered, for example, how things would have worked out if he’d gone to see Edward Schlesser and sent Cotton Hawes to meet Mrs. Mencken. From what Hawes had told him, Nancy O’Hara had turned out to be a beautiful girl. And now there was Lucy Mencken. Sometimes it went like that, he supposed. A case bursting with beauty. Idly he wondered what it was like to be single. Happily he thanked God he was married.

“What was your relationship with a man named Sy Kramer, Mrs. Mencken?” he asked.

Lucy Mencken sipped at her drink. “I don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer,” she said. In the distance Carella could hear shouting and laughter from the pool.

“Seymour Kramer, then,” he said.

“I don’t know any Seymour Kramer, either.”

“I see,” Carella said. “Did you know that Mr. Kramer is dead?”

“How would I know that?”

“It was in the newspapers.”

“I rarely read the newspapers. Except where it concerns my family.”

“Does your family often make headlines?” Carella asked.

“My husband is in politics,” Mrs. Mencken said. “He will be running for the state senate this fall. His name often appears in the newspapers, yes.”

“How long have you been married, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Twelve years,” she answered.

“And how old are your children?”

“Davey is ten, and Greta is eight.”

“What did you do before you were married?”

“I modeled,” she said.

“Fashion?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar? Like that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you do any modeling now, Mrs. Mencken?”

“No. I stopped modeling when I got married. Being a wife and a mother is enough of a career.”

“What was your maiden name?”

“Lucy Mitchell.”

“Is that the name under which you modeled?”

“I modeled under the name of Lucy Starr Mitchell.”

“About twelve years ago, is that right?”

“Twelve, thirteen years ago, yes.”

“Is that when you met Sy Kramer?” Carella asked.

Mrs. Mencken did not bat an eyelid. “I don’t know anyone named Sy Kramer,” she said.

“Mrs. Mencken,” Carella said gently, “you sent him a check, dated June twenty-fourth, for five hundred dollars.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Your signature is on that check.”

“There are other Lucy Menckens in the world, I’m sure,” she said.

“You do have a checking account with the Federal Savings and Loan of Peabody, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“There is only one Lucy Mencken who has an account with that bank, Mrs. Mencken.”

“If that’s the case, the check was forged. I’ll have it stopped at once.”

“The bank has verified your signature, Mrs. Mencken.”

“It still could have been forged. That’s the only explanation I have for it. I don’t know anybody named Sy Kramer or Seymour Kramer or any Kramer at all. The check was obviously forged. I’ll call the bank and have it stopped.”

“Mrs. Mencken…”

“In fact, I’m grateful to you for calling it to my attention.”

“Mrs. Mencken, Sy Kramer is dead. You no longer have anything to fear.”

“Why should I have anything to fear? My husband is a very powerful man.”

“I don’t know what you had to fear, Mrs. Mencken, but Kramer is dead. You can tell me…”

“Then he won’t miss the check if I put a stop-payment on it.”

“Why was he blackmailing you, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Who?”

“Sy Kramer. Blackmail or extortion. Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“His checking account shows a monthly deposit of five hundred dollars, along with other deposits, of course. Your check was made out for five hundred dollars. Why did you send Sy Kramer a check for five hundred dollars each month?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“May I see your checkbook stubs, Mrs. Mencken?”

“Certainly not.”

“May I see your canceled checks?”

“No.”

“I can get a search warrant.”

“That’s just what you’ll have to do, then, Mr. Carella. My checkbook and my canceled checks are private. Not even my husband questions me on what I spend or how I spend it.”

“I’ll come back with a warrant,” Carella said, rising.

“Do you really expect to find anything when you return, Mr. Carella?” she asked.

“I suppose not,” he said wearily. He looked at her searchingly. “You don’t dress like an ex-fashion model, Mrs. Mencken.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

“This suit cost three hundred and fifty dollars, Mr. Carella.”

“That’s a lot of money to hide behind.”

“Hide?”

“Mrs. Mencken, a man was murdered. He was not what you might consider an ideal citizen, but he was nonetheless murdered. We are trying to find his murderer. I wish you had helped me. We’ll find out what we want to know, anyway. You can hide your checks and your stubs, and you can hide yourself behind that expensive suit, but we’ll find out.”

“Mr. Carella, you are being impertinent.”

“Forgive me.”

Lucy Mencken rose, moving with easy grace within the shapeless suit.

“The children are in the pool alone,” she said. “Were you leaving, Detective Carella?”

“I was leaving,” Carella said tiredly, “but I’ll be back.”

THE CHECK LAY on the desk between them.

The legend on the frosted-glass door read, SCHLESSER’S SOFT DRINKS. The man behind the desk was Edward Schlesser, a balding man in his early fifties. He wore a dark-blue suit and a yellow weskit. He wore black-rimmed bop glasses. The glasses covered blue eyes, and the eyes studied the check on the desk.

“Is that your check, Mr. Schlesser?” Cotton Hawes asked.

Schlesser sighed. “Yes,” he said.

“Did you send it to a man named Seymour Kramer?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“What difference does it make? He’s dead.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Hawes said.

“It’s over now,” Schlesser said. “Are you like a priest? Or a doctor? Does what I tell you remain confidential?”

“Certainly. In any case, it won’t get outside the department.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. Did you trust Sy Kramer?”

“No,” Schlesser said. “If I’d trusted him, I wouldn’t have been sending him checks.”

“This wasn’t the first check?”

“No, I-” Schlesser stopped. “Who will you tell this to?”

“Two people. My partner on the case, and my immediate superior.”

Schlesser sighed again. “I’ll tell you,” he said.

“I’m listening, sir.”

“I run this business,” Schlesser said. “It’s not a big one, but it’s growing. There’s competition, you know. It’s hard to buck the big companies. But my business is growing, all the time. I’ve got money in the bank, and I’ve got a nice house in Connecticut. My business is here, but I live in Connecticut. I make good soft drinks. Our orange is particularly good. Do you like orange?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you a case when you leave. If you like it, tell your friends.”

“Thank you,” Hawes said. “What about Kramer?”

“We had an accident a little while ago. In the bottling plant. Not too serious, but a thing like that, if it gets around…This is a small business. We’re just beginning to make a mark, people are just beginning to recognize our bottle and the name Schlesser. A thing like this…”

“What happened?”

“Somehow, don’t ask me how, a freak accident-a mouse got bottled into one of the drinks.”

“A mouse?” Hawes asked incredulously.

“A tiny little thing,” Schlesser said, nodding. “A field mouse. The bottling plant is in a field, naturally. Somehow the mouse got in, and somehow he got into one of the bottles, and somehow it went through the plant and was shipped to our distributors. A bottle of sarsaparilla as I recall.”

Hawes wanted to smile, but apparently this was a matter of extreme seriousness to Schlesser.

“Somebody bought the bottle of soda. It was the large family size, the economy size. This person claimed he drank some of the soda and got very sick. He threatened to sue the company.”

“For how much?”

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Hawes whistled. “Did he win the case?”

“It never got to court. The last thing we wanted was a trial. We settled for twenty-five thousand dollars out of court. I was glad to have it over with. There wasn’t a peep in the papers about it. It could have ruined me. People remember things like that. A mouse in a bottle of soda? Jesus, you can be ruined!”

“Go on,” Hawes said.

“About a month after we’d settled, I got a telephone call from a man who said he knew all about it.”

“Kramer?”

“Yes. He threatened to turn a certain document over to the newspapers unless I paid him money to withhold it.”

“Which document?”

“The original letter that had come from the claimant’s attorney, the letter telling all about the mouse.”

“How’d he get it?”

“I don’t know. I checked the files, and sure enough it was gone. He wanted three thousand dollars for the letter.”

“Did you pay him?”

“I had to. I’d already paid twenty-five thousand dollars to keep it quiet. Another three wouldn’t hurt me. I thought it would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. He’d had photostated copies of the letter made. He asked for an additional three hundred dollars a month. Each time I sent him my check, he’d send back another photostated copy. I figured he’d run out sooner or later. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He’s dead.”

“He may have friends,” Hawes said.

“What do you mean?”

“A partner, a cohort, someone who’ll pick up right where he left off.”

“In that case, I’ll keep paying the three hundred dollars a month. It comes to thirty-six hundred dollars a year. That’s not so much. I spend sixty thousand dollars a year advertising my soft drinks. All that would go down the drain if that letter got to the newspapers. So another thirty-six hundred a year isn’t going to kill me. If Kramer has a partner, I’ll keep paying.”

“Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth, Mr. Schlesser?” Hawes asked.

“What do you mean? You mean the night Kramer was killed?”

“Yes.”

Schlesser began laughing. “That’s ridiculous. Do you think I’d kill a man for three hundred dollars a month? A lousy three hundred dollars a month?”

“Suppose, Mr. Schlesser,” Hawes said, “that Kramer had decided to release that letter to the newspapers no matter how much you paid him? Suppose he just decided to be a mean son of a bitch?”

Schlesser did not answer.

“Now, Mr. Schlesser. Where were you on the night of June twenty-sixth?”