The Deep Pocket by David Linzee

She was in the big lonely building late at night, but she wasn’t alone. There was a killer with her!

It was four in the morning when Susie, crossing the lobby with a fresh cup of coffee, had a fleeting sense that something was out of place.

She paused and looked around with some trepidation. She had been working, here only a month, and it seemed that whenever something was wrong it turned out to be her fault. But right now, she decided, she was imagining it: the law offices of Wentworth, Mosby & Stant looked as punctiliously elegant as usual. On the wall between the elevators, the stainless steel letters which spelled out the firm’s name gleamed even in the faint light. The dark wood furniture and beige carpeting were fresh from the ministrations of the night cleaning crew. The magazines in the waiting area were neatly stacked, the ash trays polished. The vase on the receptionist’s console awaited the morning delivery of fresh flowers.

Susie shrugged. She supposed that she was only missing the familiar background noises — the low continuous hubbub of voices, buzzing telephones, clattering typewriters, and whirring copying machines. Just now, she could hear only the sigh of the ventilating system.

She crossed the lobby to the huge windows. This was the twentieth floor — the firm occupied this entire floor, as well as the one above — and she looked out on a vista of black towers and distant, empty streets. In the daytime, downtown had a population in the tens of thousands; at this hour, she mused, she was one of a couple of hundred.

She turned and walked back to her office. The long corridor was dim as a tunnel, and the doors were thrown open on empty offices. It amused Susie that she — the lowliest paralegal in the firm — had the place to herself. She felt like kicking off her shoes and capering down the hall, or sneaking into one of the partners’ offices and helping herself to a cigar.

But then she noticed that she was not alone: there was a sliver of light showing beneath the door of Harry Stant, the senior litigating partner. The mere proximity of this imposing figure was enough to puncture Susie’s irreverent mood. Last week he had frostily advised her that she must attain the proper legal gravity: her penchant for playing practical jokes on the mail-room boys and sending facetious memos to the associates was most unsuitable. Adopting a sober expression, she hurried back to her office.

The tiny cubicle was stacked with boxes. They contained a client’s financial records, and she had been ordered to get them organized by next morning. As she lugged yet another box onto her desk, she noticed a memo lying on her in-tray. Dated yesterday, it said that since an unnamed associate had reported his keys lost, the office locks would be changed the next day. New keys would be distributed —

Abruptly Susie realized why she had thought something was wrong as she crossed the lobby. She should not have been able to cross the lobby at all. The heavy security doors between the elevators and the reception console should have been closed and locked. But they had been wide open.

She winced as hot coffee sloshed over her fingers. Her hand was shaking. She put the cup down and stood.

What was she going to do now? Make a mad dash for the elevators? She caught sight of her reflection in the dark window — shoulders hunched, hand to her mouth — and made herself relax. She was being foolish. They’d simply forgotten to close the security doors last evening. She’d never known them to forget, but still—

She would go to Mr. Stant. Yes, that would make her feel better. She hoped he would not think it was another of her pranks; if he did, one look at her face ought to convince him otherwise. She left her office and started down the corridor.

But after a few steps she stopped dead. The light in Stant’s office had gone out.

“He’s not there.”

She gasped and swung round. But the dim corridor was empty.

“Stant’s not there. The night typists are gone. And the computer programmers. And the cleaning crew. There’s nobody here but you and me.”

The voice was hushed, hollow, diffuse. It was coming through speakers in the ceiling. The man was talking to her over the office paging system: he could be anywhere.

Instinctively Susie began to back up, toward the elevators.

“Are you that anxious to meet me? You’re heading in my direction.”

Susie froze.

“Yes, I can see you. Shall I prove it? Your hair is long and either light-brown or blonde. You’re wearing a red turtleneck and dark slacks. Rather Bohemian for a law firm, but you’re pretty enough.”

He broke off, and for a moment there was only the sound of his breathing, seeping through the speakers.

“I want a word with you. Go to a phone.”

Susie turned back into her office, shut the door and leaned against it. Her heart was pounding against her ribs and she could hardly breathe. She glanced around for something she could use to block the door. But the document boxes were not heavy enough, and she knew she could not budge her desk.

She lunged for the telephone and stabbed buttons: got an outside line and called the police.

“Don’t do that,” said the hushed voice over the speakers.

She froze with the receiver in hand. She could hear the first ring on the line.

“Hang up that phone or I’m coming down there for you!”

She dropped the receiver in the cradle. How could he have known what she was doing? In an instant she understood: he must be at the receptionist’s console, and he had seen the switchboard light up as soon as she lifted her receiver. She could not call out without his knowing at once, and he was between her and the elevators.

“That’s better. Now this time just dial the switchboard.”

Susie stumbled around the desk and sank into her chair. Staring at the telephone, she could not pick it up.

“Come on,” said the man irritably. “I don’t mean you any harm.”

The assurance gave her just enough nerve to pick up the telephone and make the call — as it was no doubt meant to do.

He came on the line at once. “What’s your name?”

“I’m — Susan Verver.”

“I take it from the position of your office that you are a litigation paralegal and that you work for Harry Stant. Correct?”

As he said this, it penetrated Susie’s confusion and anxiety that he was a lawyer himself. It was not only the inside knowledge he displayed; it was in the very tone and phrasing of the question.

“Yes,” Susie mumbled.

“I came to get something of Stant’s. Unfortunately for you, I couldn’t find it in his office, or his secretary’s office. Therefore I conclude that you have it.”

So it had been he in Stant’s office all along. Susie cringed at the realization. Swallowing, she managed to bring out the question: “What is it?”

“His appointment calendar.”

She did not have to look. The black-backed calendar was lying on the other side of her desk. She had been scheduling depositions for Stant all day.

“I... I don’t have it.”

“You’re lying,” he replied, and she realized that she had hesitated too long. “Come on, don’t waste my time.”

Susie took the receiver away from her ear, as if that would somehow hold him back, give her time to think and room to maneuver.

An idea came to her. Once, on the telephone, she had recorded a young lawyer’s candid comments about a client, and teased him that she planned to turn the cassette over to the client. It had been one of her most unfortunate practical jokes — but the tape had been clear enough. If she could work the same trick now, it would give her something to bargain with. Switching on her dictaphone, she laid the mike next to the speaker attachment of the telephone. She put the call through it.

“All right,” she said, “I have the calendar.”

“Look at it.” She jumped at the sound of his voice, which seemed so much louder and closer through the speaker. “Is it up to date? Does it have Stant’s appointments for yesterday?”

She opened the calendar. There were lines written beneath the previous date in the neat hand of Stant’s secretary: times, places, names. What could be so important about them? “Yes,” Susie said. “What do you want?”

“Just bring it to me.”

She glanced at the turning reels of the cassette in her dictaphone. “Who are you? What do you want?”

In the momentary pause, she expected the click of the receiver going down. But he replied, “My name is Chester Hellmuth. You know it?”

She did. He was a partner in a firm across town. Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “If you’re satisfied, Miss Verver, I’ll expect you in the library in one minute.” The line went dead.

Susie stared down at the calendar for another moment before snapping it shut. Perhaps Hellmuth and Stant were on opposite sides of a case, and Hellmuth hoped to gain some slight advantage by knowing Stant’s appointments. She strained to believe this, but could not. Hellmuth was risking too much.

She longed to stay where she was just a little longer, to work out what she would do, what she would say to him. But there was no time. Besides, her nerve might fail if she did not go at once.

She stood and switched off the dictaphone. With the cassette in hand, she hesitated: should she bring the calendar along? If her plan worked, Hellmuth would never get to see it.

Still, she took it. She must not arouse his suspicions. She left the office and started down the corridor, pausing only at a secretary’s desk. There she took an envelope — blank but for the firm’s name and address engraved in one corner — and slipped the cassette into it. Sealing the envelope, she put it in her pocket.

She found the library empty. Hellmuth must still be out in the lobby, watching the switchboard and elevators until he was certain that she had arrived.

Susie’s gaze strayed nervously about the room. Shelves of case reporters and digests rose up into the shadows far above her head. There was a spiral staircase leading to a gallery and a door which gave access to the twenty-first floor lobby. Going from floor to floor, she had often used the stairs as a shortcut. She recalled how the lawyers, interrupted at their studies, would frown up at her. Their books and yellow pads were lying on the tables even now, awaiting the morning and the resumption of work. It was only a few hours away. Five hours from now, the room, and the building, and the city, would be full of people. But at this moment there was no one to help her. She fingered the envelope in her pocket, and waited.

The door from the lobby opened, and Hellmuth emerged from the shadows below the gallery. He was a tall man in his fifties, heavyset and balding. He wore the customary dark pinstriped suit, the vest buttoned tightly over a slight paunch.

He glanced at the calendar she held clutched to her breast. “Bring it here.”

Susie stepped back, slipping the envelope from her pocket with her free hand. “No. I have an offer to make you.”

The words brought no surprise to his face, only a look of irascible boredom. “What kind of offer?”

She backed up into the corridor. There was a mailchute set into the wall. Her eyes never leaving Hellmuth, she raised her arm until the envelope was poised over the slot. “I recorded our talk — the important part of it. The tape is in here. It will come back in tomorrow’s mail, and they’ll know who you are, and what you tried to do. Unless you turn and walk out of here now, I’ll drop it.”

“Ah,” Hellmuth murmured. “So that was your scheme.”

“Look, I’m not bluffing.” Susie did not understand his words, and tried to cover the only flaw she could see in her plan. “I did record you.”

“Oh, I know that. You think I can’t tell when I’m switched through a speakerphone? That distinctive bottom-of-the-well sound? I work in an office just like this, you know.”

He was advancing on her as he spoke. “Stop!” she cried. “Stop or I’ll let this go.”

But he did not stop. Susie waited until the last moment, when he was just an arm’s length away, and opened her fingers.

The envelope dropped a few inches and jammed in the slot.

Hellmuth did not glance at it. His tired, contemptuous eyes were on hers. “The cassette’s too thick. Haven’t you noticed that you can’t get more than one letter at a time through those slots?”

Slowly he reached out a hand. Susie cringed, pressing herself back against the wall, but he merely took the envelope from the slot and put it in his pocket.

“Now bring the calendar over,” he said, turning away.

He settled himself at one of the long teak tables, as if it were his own desk, and she set the calendar before him and waited in meek silence, as if she were his secretary.

“You might as well know the rest now,” Hellmuth said.

She shook her head. “I don’t want to know. Take what you want and go. Please.”

“No,” he said. “It can’t be as simple as that.”

A chill knifed through Susie’s insides. “You said I wouldn’t be harmed.”

“That was expedient.” He paused, then went on, “I can’t leave you to tell them about it in the morning.”

When he finished speaking the silence in the room seemed palpable to Susie. It seemed to hold her motionless. When Hellmuth came at her, she would not even be able to raise a hand against him.

The silence stretched on unendurably. When at last Hellmuth made a move, it was only to open the calendar in front of him.

“You know where Stant was this afternoon?”

He asked the question indifferently, putting on his reading glasses, as if he would merely dismiss her as soon as she answered. She realized that he could not bring himself to kill her. Not yet. The paralyzing fear lost its grip on her. If Hellmuth wanted to talk, let him talk.

She mumbled an answer: “At the hospital, I think.”

“Yes. The question was, which hospital?” He had reached the day’s date, and his finger traced the line he wanted. Then he wrote down the name of the hospital and the client Stant had seen there. “You know, when you suddenly find yourself a criminal, it is a great advantage if you also happen to be a lawyer. You have all the right connections.”

He closed the calendar and put the note in his pocket. “Getting the access card for this building, and key to this office, for instance. A simple matter, as one of your associates has the locker next to mine at the Athletic Club.

“In fact, I would never have heard about Stant’s visit to the hospital if I hadn’t been at the Bar Association cocktail party. Someone said, they’d heard Harry Stant called an ambulance chaser before, but they hadn’t realized how true it was.”

Hellmuth was leaning back in his chair, dangling his glasses over his pinstriped paunch. He seemed to have forgotten that Susie was there. He was listening to his own mellifluous voice.

“A young girl — the daughter of an acquaintance, I believe — was the victim of a hit and run early yesterday morning.” He looked at his watch. “Exactly twenty-two hours ago. Even though she’d not yet regained consciousness, Stant was at the hospital by noon, offering condolences and. signing up her parents as clients. I don’t blame Stant for being greedy. It’s an excellent case. The girl, when she comes to, will suffer excruciating pain and suffering, and will be crippled for life. So the damages will be in seven figures easily. Stant will get a third of that. If he can bring a case — for the question is, against whom? Will the girl be able to identify the driver? There were no other witnesses. And will the driver turn out to be a deep pocket? You know the phrase, ‘a deep pocket?’ ”

“Yes,” Susie responded dully. “It means a defendant with lots of money.” She knew what Hellmuth would say next, and the knowledge sickened her.

“Quite. And the defendant in this case would be a deep pocket, as it is I.” With hardly a pause, the calm recitation continued. “So that leaves only the problem of whether the victim will be able to identify me. I can’t be sure. But I have my initials on my license plate — a foolish vanity — and I have an expensive and rather distinctive car. And my face is well-known. She looked right into my eyes, the moment before—”

His voice broke, for the first time. For a while he sat in silence, folding and unfolding his glasses. When he resumed, he had managed to find again his loftily ironic tone. “I can’t take the risk. I am a lawyer myself, and I do not intend to fall into the clutches of my own kind. They’d strip me clean. If the girl identifies me, the District Attorney will indict me for manslaughter, among other charges. I’ll be convicted, fined, and sentenced to several years in prison. Then Stant will simply take the conviction to civil court and they’ll award him all the damages he asks for.”

He rolled his chair back from the table and stood to face her. “I would lose my freedom, my reputation, and every cent I’ve got. Just because I had a few too many drinks at a party, and was in a hurry driving home. I’ve concluded that it is too high a price to pay.”

Susie understood now what he had been doing. He had not been talking to her, but to himself. He had made up his mind to kill her — and to finish off the wretched girl in the hospital — long ago. But he had quailed for a moment before the actual deed. He had needed to run over the chain of his reasoning again, to persuade himself. He was a persuasive man: he was a lawyer. Now he could murder her.

“It can’t work — don’t you see?” Susie pleaded in desperation. “They’ll suspect—”

“There will be no one for them to suspect, if the girl dies before regaining consciousness. And with luck you will pass for an accident.”

Involuntarily she glanced over his head, at the spiral staircase that led to the upper floor.

“Yes,” she heard Hellmuth say. “The steps are narrow and it’s dark in here. You’ll be found at the bottom with a fractured skull. A fall.”

As he spoke, he began to move unhurriedly around the table. For a moment his deliberateness held Susie in thrall. Then, as he came around the table, she saw the heavy crystal paperweight in his hand.

Susie swept a chair from beneath the table and sent it rolling at his legs. He bent and put out a hand to ward it off, and before he could straighten up she was round the table and running for the stairs.

In a second she was through the door to the twenty-first floor lobby. She pushed the door closed behind her and leaned against it. She had only a few seconds before he would come after her.

Her glance fell on the big grandfather clock — a firm heirloom — which stood next to the door. She knew it was too heavy for her to move. But...

Straining on tiptoe she managed to grasp the newels atop the clock. She heaved backwards with all her might. The clock teetered and fell over in a crash of glass and metal, blocking the door.

Susie could not hope that it would stop him. But it would hold him up. She darted across the lobby and stabbed at the elevator call button. The doors slid open. By sheer good luck, one elevator had come to rest on this floor.

And then, on the threshold of the empty, beckoning car, she stopped dead.

Turning, she saw the door behind her was still shut. By now Hellmuth should have been there, straining the jamb against the heavy clock.

He had not followed her. He was not in the library, but in the lobby directly below her. He had only to push the call button, and the elevator would obediently stop for him. She would be trapped.

Susie backed away, watching the doors slide shut and the indicator light go off.

There was a door to her right, leading to the emergency stairs. Susie took a step toward it — and then realized that Hellmuth could be watching the landing below, waiting for her. Or he could be on his way up.

She stood frozen in an agony of indecision.

“Susan.”

It was the hollow whisper over the paging system. He was where she had known and dreaded he would be: in the lobby below, at the reception console.

“You’re too clever for your own good. You can’t escape. You can only prolong the misery. If you had gotten in that elevator, it would all be over by now.”

She stared out the windows at the black skyscrapers in the distance, as the voice filtered out of the dimness around her.

“Now it’s going to be a long drawn-out business. But the end is certain. I’ve propped open the fire door, so you can’t get by without my seeing you. And I’ve called all the elevators. When they get here I’ll block the doors open. Then I’ll come up the stairs.”

He broke off for a moment, and there was only the hum of static from the speakers.

Then he was back. “That was the second elevator. I’ve blocked it. Only two more left. Why wait, Susan? Get it over with. Just walk down the stairs. One instant of pain, and it will all be over with. Just walk down the stairs.”

He clicked the receiver down and the speakers were silent. Another elevator must have arrived.

Susie buried her face in her hands and gave a strangled sob. She was trapped. There was only one means of escape from her fear. For a second, she was on the brink of yielding to him.

With an effort, she dropped her hands to her sides, opened her eyes and looked at the empty lobby around her. The man’s assured, persuasive voice, with its veneer of sympathy, had held her mesmerized, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. But it wouldn’t work. She would not give up. If she had time, she would use it. When Hellmuth came for her, he would not find her unarmed.

There must be something she could use as a weapon. She nearly sank into hopelessness again as she cast her mind over the contents of the office: books, files, pencils... Nothing that would help.

And then Susie had it. With a steady hand, she unlocked the security door and went through to the reception area. Her weapon was in the copying room, and she started to run down the hall toward it — then hesitated.

She turned back to the door. There was no use locking it, for Hellmuth had the key. But still she stood swinging the door to and fro on its hinges for a few precious seconds. The weapon was not enough. She needed something that would give her an opportunity to use it. Her idea, once again, was for a practical joke — the oldest, dumbest practical joke in the world. But it would give her a chance... if she had time to set it up.

In fact she was ready for Hellmuth in plenty of time. She heard his footsteps echoing up the concrete stairwell, and through the crack in the door she watched him cross the lobby toward her. He was moving slowly, breathing hard from his exertions.

He paused in the doorway, frowning at her where she sat behind the reception console. That smug, contemptuous frown.

“It would have been easier if you’d come down, Susan. For both of us.”

She was silent.

“It’s over now, in any case. Come out from behind that desk. You can’t—”

“Shut up!” Susie shouted at him. “I’ve heard enough talk from you.”

His jaw set and his right hand came up, holding the heavy paperweight. He threw the door open. The Black’s Law Dictionary slipped from its perch atop the door and slammed onto his shoulder.

He gasped in pain and staggered forward. “Of all the stupid — you—”

He did not finish. Susie leapt from behind the console and swung at him.

The blade from the paper cutter was not very sharp, but it was heavy, and it had all her strength behind it. There was a gritty thud as it cut through to the bone of Hellmuth’s forearm. He cried out and clutched at his wound. But he did not let the paperweight fall.

Susie fell back a step, gripping the cutter tightly in both hands. “Drop it,” she pleaded hoarsely. But a look at Hellmuth’s face told her that he would not.

He transferred the paperweight to his bloody left hand and came at her again. Susie hefted the blade to her shoulder and swung it two-handed, like an axe.

The blow caught him squarely on the temple. He toppled over. Black blood seeped from beneath his thinning hair into the elegant beige carpet.

Susie dropped the blade and backed away, choking on sobs of horror and relief. She spun and ran. Ran twenty-one stories, down to the street.