Killing Time

Seven

Marvin Reed is tall and well built. At thirty-two, he doesn’t show a single sign of middle-aged spread, but still has the build of a college sports star. He has dark blond hair and regular features, and since his father runs Reed & King Chemical Supplies, he can afford to dress well and does. With all of this, he just misses being handsome.

The problem isn’t anything physical, really. I think it’s his mental outlook, his attitude toward life. He’s worried, and harried, and nervous. His wife nags at him and his father has a kind of blind hope for him. As a result, he has permanent frown lines on his forehead, his eyes have a perpetually-drooping expression of puzzled pain, and his full-lipped mouth is weak and down-curved and trembling.

He was waiting in the lobby for me, fidgeting and worrying. He looked tremendously relieved when he spied me coming toward him, as though he hadn’t been really sure I’d come and talk to him after all, and he bustled me immediately off to the hotel dining room for lunch.

He was in a frantic hurry, until we sat down. Then I asked him what he wanted to talk to me about, and he began to stall. “Not until we eat, Tim,” he said pleadingly. “Lunch first, and then we’ll talk. All right?”

I wanted to tell him no, just to see what his reaction would be, but I was afraid he’d cry, so I said all right.

We ate lunch, and since we weren’t to talk about the subject that had brought us together, we wound up not talking at all. I ate mechanically, trying not to look at him, and finally the meal was over, and it was time to get to business.

But still he stalled. I waited for him to start, and he waited for me to encourage him to start. We sat there like that for a while, and finally I gave up and said, “Well?”

“It’s this letter,” he said, all in a rush, and jabbed into his coat. People had been doing that to me all the time lately, reaching into their coats for letters. Once the letter had turned out to be a gun, so the letter-reaching motion now made me somewhat nervous.

But what Marvin Reed came out with was a letter. He skittered it onto the table between us and sat back, fidgeting a bit, leaving the next move up to me.

I picked it up. It was addressed to Marv at his home address, and the upper left-hand corner of the envelope told me the sender was one J. Bluger, from Albany.

The letter itself was short and to the point: “Dear Marv. In a day or two, a lawyer named Paul Masetti will be calling on you, with a letter of introduction from me. He’s a fire-breathing gang-buster, working with the Citizens for Clean Government, and he’s out to reform that ugly little town of yours. If you can help him, do. If you can’t, don’t come squawking to me. I was asked to write the letter by someone I couldn’t very well refuse. I leave you to your own judgment in the matter, but wanted you to be forewarned. Let me hear from you the next time you’re up this way. Jay.”

I read it through, turned it over and looked at the blank back, and said, “Who is this Jay Bluger?”

“A college friend,” he said. “We still keep in touch from time to time.”

“Okay,” I said. I put the letter back in its envelope, and slid it across the table to him. “Now what?” I asked him.

“I got that letter yesterday,” he said. “I spent all last night worrying about it, wondering what I should do. This morning, Masetti called me, asked to have an appointment with me at two o’clock this afternoon.” He looked at his watch, a nervous, erratic movement. “In thirty-five minutes,” he said.

“And?”

“I told him I’d go.” He licked his lips, reached out to the envelope, changed his mind, snatched the hand back again. He looked pleadingly at me. “What else could I do?”

I nodded. “And where do I come in?” I asked him.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wanted to pick the letter up, and yet he didn’t want to pick the letter up. He played nervously with the salt shaker for a minute, chewing on his lower lip. Finally he said, “You know who the people are who run Winston.”

“So?”

“My father’s one of them,” he said, not looking at me, as though relating an up-till-now hidden sin.

“Your father’s the boss,” I told him bluntly.

He winced. “I can’t turn against my own father,” he said pathetically. He spilled salt, released the shaker, brushed ineffectually for a minute. “But I can’t just — just sit aside and do, do nothing,” he stammered. “I... well, I’ve got a, a civic responsibility, I—” He faltered miserably to a stop.

“I still don’t see where I come in,” I told him.

He took his courage, such as it was, in both hands, and blurted it out. “I want you to take my place. I want you to see this man Masetti at two o’clock and tell him you’ve been hired by me to help him as much as you can. And tell him — explain to him why I can’t do anything myself.”

I was shaking my head before he was half-finished. “You’ve wasted money on my lunch, Marv,” I told him. “Masetti called me, too. I just talked to him.”

He looked at me, all attention. “What are you going to do?”

“I turned him down. You can do it, too. Explain to him yourself why you can’t help him.”

He looked scared and pained. “I couldn’t, Tim,” he said. “How could I face him?”

“That’s up to you,” I said. I got to my feet. “I’m sorry, Marv. But that’s a job I’ve already turned down once today.”

“Tim,” he said pleadingly, “could you just go and tell him why I can’t help? You don’t have to say you’ll work with him or anything. Just tell him why I have to refuse.”

I thought it over. Marvin was one of those pitiful people it’s practically impossible to turn down, but at the same time I didn’t feel like any more conversations with friend Masetti. “I’m sorry, Marv,” I said. “It’s your baby.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“You’ll think of something.”

I left him sitting there, and walked out to the street and turned toward DeWitt, going back to the office. It occurred to me as I walked what it was that Marv, being Marv, would think of to do about his meeting with Masetti. He’d neglect to show up. By two o’clock, when he was supposed to be saying hello to Masetti, he’d instead be safely holed up somewhere where Masetti couldn’t find him with a Geiger counter, and he’d stay holed up until he was sure Masetti had the idea. That was Marv’s style.

At the corner of State and DeWitt, I waved for the third time that day at Gar Wycza, and strolled along among all the women shoppers through the June sunshine, down the two blocks to the bank building. I stopped off at Sampson’s Specialty Superette, the only grocery store along the downtown section of DeWitt Street, chatted with Roberta, the boss, for a couple of minutes, and got two empty boxes that had originally held cans of tomato soup. Then I continued on to the office.

Up on the seventh floor, I stuck my head through the door of Ron Lascow’s office and said to Jess, “Anybody want me?”

“Not that I can think of,” she said. She looked at the cardboard boxes. “You going away?”

“No such luck. Has Ron gone off to Hillview yet?”

She nodded. “He should be back by three.”

“Hokey-dokey. I’ll be in the office for a little while.”

She flipped the toggle, giving me back my phone service, and I went across the hall to key my way into my office. Once inside, I locked the door again, then unlocked my filing cabinet and went through the files. Stuff that had anything to do with the people who were going to be at that three-o’clock meeting went into the cardboard boxes, plus information on anybody else that might, in other hands, either send somebody to jail or leave him open to be blackmailed. When I was finished, the two cartons were bulging full and the filing cabinet was almost empty.

The phone rang as I was relocking the filing cabinet. An operator asked me if I was Tim Smith and I said I was and then she said she had a call for me from Albany.

The voice that came on was tweedy, slightly British, vaguely distracted. “Bruce Wheatley, Mr. Smith,” it said.

It took me a second to remember where I’d heard that name before. Paul Masetti had mentioned it. This was the head of the CCG. “I take it,” I said, “that Masetti just called you.”

“He told me you refused to offer him your assistance, Mr. Smith.”

“That about covers it.”

“I wonder,” he said, “if your decision was at all influenced by Paul Masetti’s, uh, personality. He isn’t, heh-heh, the most amiable of men and—”

“I noticed that,” I said. “But that wasn’t what decided me. What decided me was that I don’t believe this town needs much reforming, and particularly not by outsiders.”

“Come now, Mr. Smith,” Wheatley said heartily, “surely you aren’t going to tell me Winston is the best of all possible towns—”

“It does pretty well,” I told him. “The last time a reform outfit got hot around here was during the war — 1944. I came back and the place was a mess. The people in City Hall were one hundred per cent honest. They were also one hundred per cent stupid.”

“I assure you, Mr. Smith, Paul Masetti is anything but stupid. He may not have much personal charm, but he’s a brilliant man, absolutely brilliant. The work he did for us in Monequois—”

“You don’t have to apologize for Masetti. I’m sure he knows his business. But I’m sure I know my business, too, and my business is helping keep this town quiet and safe and well run. And I think it’s doing all right as it is.”

“Is that your final word, Mr. Smith?” He sounded disappointed, like a teacher whose most promising student has suddenly announced he isn’t going on to college after all.

“That’s the final word,” I told him.

“In case you should change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

“In case you should,” he insisted gently. “I’d like to give you my phone number, here in Albany. You can call me here any time.” He rattled off a number, which I didn’t bother to take down, and said, “I hope I’ll be hearing from you, Mr. Smith.”

“I doubt you will,” I told him.

I hung up, and looked at the cardboard cartons full of records. The locked filing cabinet in the locked office had always been safe enough, up till now. Now, I had the feeling there ought to be a safer place.

I got the masking tape out of my desk drawer and sealed the boxes. Then I unlocked the door and carried them, puffing, across the hall to Ron Lascow’s office.

Jess looked up at me in surprise. “Are you moving in?”

“Only temporarily. When Ron gets back with my car, ask him to do a favor for me, will you?”

“Put the boxes in the car?”

“Right.”

“I don’t suppose I should know what’s in them,” she said.

I shrugged. “Why not? It’s just some old stuff I’ve had hanging around.”

“Shucks,” she said. “I was hoping they were full of old mysterious secrets.”

“No such luck.” I grinned at her and went back to the door. “I’ll see you later.”

“I bet you don’t even have any old mysterious secrets,” she said.