No Questions Asked

7

After finishing his second cup of coffee Spivey said he had to go back to his room to call his office and bring them up to date. After he left I finished reading the copy of Time that I had bought the night before. I even read the column that listed the editors and the writers and the researchers to see whether anyone I knew was still working for it. Nobody was, and I wondered why they had quit or if they had been fired and where they were working now.

That brought me up to noon and I called Spivey to see if he would like some lunch. He said he was just about to make his first call to his office because he had forgotten about the three-hour time difference between Washington and Los Angeles and that I should go ahead because he didn’t know how long he would be on the phone.

I told him that I would check with him later, hung up the phone, and sat there trying to think of somebody else in Washington who might like me to buy them lunch. Before I reached the bottom of my list the phone rang, and I found myself stuck with a luncheon date that I wasn’t fast enough to lie my way out of.

It was Fastnaught, of course. I agreed to meet him in the hotel’s restaurant at 12:30, and when I arrived he was already there, a martini on the table in front of him. I ordered a Scotch and water to keep him company, and after it came I let it sit there and waited to see how long it would take before he dived into his martini.

He held out for almost a minute, and his hand didn’t shake very much at all as he lifted the drink to his lips. At least he didn’t spill any. After a couple of swallows he put the glass back down and gave me a bleak little grin that he formed with only half of his mouth.

“I shake a little in the morning,” he said.

“I noticed.”

“I try to hold out until noon. I don’t always make it.”

“You stash a bottle in your desk yet?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I keep it in the car.”

“Well, you’re getting there.”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Your wife drink?”

He nodded. “Like a trout. I figured it out last month. We must spend close to two fifty or three hundred on booze every month. It’s about the same or maybe a little less than we spend on groceries.”

“Any kids?”

He shook his head again. “She works. At least she does when she can get up in the morning, which is getting to be a problem.”

“Cut out the booze and you could spend all that money on something else. A boat. Maybe a house in the country. Whatever you want.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It’s not simple. It’s a matter of choice. The only drunks I ever knew who quit successfully were the ones who chose not to be drunks anymore. The choice they would’ve liked to have made, of course, was between being a gentleman drinker or a drunk. But they had run out of in-between. They could either be drunk or dry.”

Fastnaught looked at me curiously. “You been there?” he said.

I picked up my drink and tasted it. It tasted the way it always did, of better times. Then I shook my head at Fastnaught’s question. “I watched my old man when I was a kid. He was a college professor in Columbus. Associate professor, really. He went all the way down and then all the way back up. It took him about ten years. He liked to find the sleaziest bar possible, buy drinks for everybody, and then lecture them on The Faerie Queene. That was his specialty, Spenser. Then one night somebody brought him home with one of his eyes hanging down on his cheek. There was nobody home but me. I was thirteen, I think. I put the eye back in the socket. It seemed the thing to do. My mother was out of town. We sat there until four o’clock in the morning with him holding a wet washcloth over the eye that I’d put back. He didn’t say a word. I didn’t either. Then at four he said he thought that maybe I’d better call the doctor. Well, he lost the eye, but he never took another drink.”

Fastnaught finished his martini and looked at me. “There’s gotta be a moral there someplace.”

“It helps if you’re only thirteen.”

“But you still put it away.”

I nodded. “But I don’t lecture in bars on The Faerie Queene.”

“Huh,” he said. “I think I know what you mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do. You remember the man in the Hathaway shirt?”

“The guy with the patch over his eye?”

“He looked almost exactly like my old man, moustache and all, after my old man started wearing a black patch. For some reason I never bought a Hathaway shirt.”

“Yeah,” Fastnaught said. “I can see why. Or at least I think I can.” He toyed with his empty glass. “You want another drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

After the second round of drinks came, we ordered. Fastnaught decided to have an omelet. I chose the lamb stew, which the menu claimed was a house specialty.

As we waited for the food, Fastnaught leaned toward me over his drink. He looked almost as though he were crouched to spring.

“They’re giving me a hard time,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Who?”

“The FBI.”

“How hard a time are they giving you?”

“They say they’re being kept out of something that they oughta be in on.”

“What did you say?”

“I told them that they were as much in on it as I am. But then I’m not in on it hardly at all, except that I didn’t tell them that.”

“They probably figured it out for themselves,” I said.

“I had the Senator call them. I didn’t wanta do that, and he sure as hell didn’t want to, but he did anyhow. I’ve just about used him up on whatever he owes me. I was hoping to sort of save him for something else.”

“Such as?”

“How the hell should I know?” Fastnaught said. “But the way I’m going, there’s damn well gonna be something else that I could use him for. Probably to save my ass.”

“How did he do?” I said. “With the FBI, I mean?”

Before Fastnaught could tell me, the waiter brought the omelet and the stew. I tasted the stew, and it was quite good. Fastnaught looked at his omelet as though it might wiggle. But after a moment he began to eat it, slowly.

“Why don’t you have a bottle of beer to wash it down with?” I said.

Fastnaught looked at me coldly. “If I’da wanted a beer, I’d’ve ordered one.” Then he thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, maybe I do want one.”

After his beer came he ate some more of his omelet, perhaps a third, and then he put his knife and fork down. He looked at me. “He got us twenty-four hours.”

“Who?”

“The Senator. He went all the way up to an assistant director and that’s what he got us.”

“What happens after twenty-four hours?”

“They jump in with both feet. Hard.” I see.

“Well, what do you see?”

“What I see is that I can’t see much difference. You’ve already jumped in hard. As long as they keep out of my way, I don’t see how the FBI would matter. Some of them, if they don’t take themselves too seriously, aren’t all that bad.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” Fastnaught said.

“But having done it you want something in return, right?” I said.

“That’s the way it works.”

“No, it isn’t. Not with me. What you want me to do is carry you around in my hip pocket. I don’t work that way, and you know damn well I don’t.”

“When’s it gonna be?” he said. “The switch, I mean. It’s gonna be tonight, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” I said. “Tonight. Or is it tomorrow night, or maybe the day after? I forget.”

Fastnaught shook his head. “It’s tonight. You got wet shoes. That’s how I know it’s tonight.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“I’m a hell of a detective,” he said. “There isn’t a thing in God’s world that would get you out in all this snow before noon today unless you had to go pick up the money. If you went to pick up the money, it means that you’re ready to make the switch, except that you’re not gonna do that in the middle of the five o’clock rush, so that means tonight.”

“My word, Holmes.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like the wet shoes stuff,” Fastnaught said. “It sort of helped, too, that I tailed you to the bank this morning. You and that other guy, what’s his name?”

“Spivey.”

“Uh-huh. Spivey. Max Spivey. He’s big, isn’t he?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“Hell, I’ve been detecting all over the place this morning and me with the worst hangover a man ever had. I even did some more checking on this guy Jack Marsh. Guess what I found out?”

“How much is it going to cost me?”

Fastnaught grinned at me, and for a moment the grin took away most of the age and the lines that the liquor had written on his face. He looked very much like he did when I first knew him — young and merry and full of what-the-hell.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m gonna throw this one in free — except I’m gonna let you pay for the lunch.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been out to L.A. a couple of times on business and both times I worked with the same guy out there and we got to be pretty good drinking buddies. Well, this guy is a gossip merchant. I mean most cops are gossips, but this guy eats it. So I call him at home this morning just before I called you. Well, we go back and forth for a while — you know, the how the hell are you stuff and then I shoot him a couple of real juicy items about the White House and an L.A. congressman that I’d picked up somewhere, probably in the John at work. You know the kind of stuff you hear in this town.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, after that I ask him to tell me what he can about this guy Jack Marsh who I understand used to be with the cops out there before he went private. So this guy, this buddy of mine, tells me that almost everybody out there knows or at least has heard of Jack Marsh on account of he’s so mean. Not that he’s not good, my buddy says, in fact, he’s probably the best private guy around out there, but he sure was one mean cop and from what my buddy hears he’s even meaner now that he’s gone private. My buddy says he doesn’t know how Marsh was when he was in Army intelligence, but he was probably mean then too. He used to be a captain, Marsh, I mean.”

“Who was he mean to?” I said.

“Well, there were a couple of Mexicans out there who probably thought he was mean, but they’re not around anymore to tell about it.”

“Dead?”

“Dead. It was a liquor store stickup and it could have gone either way, but my buddy says Marsh chose the other way. That was the first time. There were three more times before he quit and went private. It got so that guys didn’t much want to work with him out there on account of he was so mean.”

“But good?”

“Yeah, that’s right, mean but good. Well, the other thing that my buddy hears is that Marsh is making a lot of money out there and that he’s shacked up with this rich fox now that he’s moved up in society. Well, guess who this rich fox is?”

I decided to spoil it for him. “Maude Goodwater. Except I don’t think she’s so rich anymore.”

“But it’s her book. I mean the one you’re gonna buy back.”

“That’s right. It’s her book. It used to be her father’s.”

“And she’s shacked up with Jack Marsh.”

“I think they call it living together nowadays. Maybe because it gives it a little more tone.”

“Maybe,” Fastnaught said. “Okay, she’s living with mean Jack Marsh and she sends him here to Washington to pick up the book, but the next thing we know somebody’s taken mean Jack out while he’s got the book tucked under his arm and they’re willing to sell it back and maybe mean Jack along with it for a quarter of a million. You like it?”

“Not much,” I said.

“I sure as shit wouldn’t like it if I was you,” he said. “Maybe you’ll like it even less when I drop the next little juicy item on you. And maybe you’ll change your mind about having me in your hip pocket.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, last month, my buddy tells me, a grand jury out there came within a cunt hair of handing down an indictment for extortion. Now guess who they were thinking of indicting?”

“Our Jack,” I said.

“Yeah, our Jack,” Fastnaught said. Something started working in his face and it spread to his eyes. They lost their dullness and took on a fresh, cold sparkle. “I’ve just had a flash,” he said.

“And you’re going to share it with me.”

“You bet. You say this Goodwater broad is hard up?”

“That’s what I understand. Although I’m not sure what the rich think hard up is. I suppose it means that she’s down to her last twenty or thirty thousand — something like that.”

“So she decided to sell the book.”

“That’s right.”

“For how much?”

“I don’t know. At least half a million, from what Laws over at the Library of Congress tells me.”

“Okay, let’s see how this one fits. She and Marsh are sitting around out there in L.A. and she’s crying because she’s down to her last twenty or thirty thousand, like you say, and she’s gonna have to sell the book just to scrape up half a million and Marsh comes up with this idea. Why doesn’t she let him go pick it up? Then he’ll just sort of disappear for a while and let everybody think he’s been kidnapped along with the book. After that they’ll call in some real honest go-between, who’s not too bright, and he’s got just the guy in mind, and they’ll let the insurance company cut its losses and pay a quarter of a million to get the book back. What do you think, sugar? he says and she says, swell, honey, that’s a wonderful idea, why don’t you go ahead and set it up and we’ll split. How do you like it, St. Ives?”

“It’s got a lot of drama,” I said. “There’s one thing that bothers me.”

“What?”

“What if I make the switch okay and get the book back?”

“Well?”

“Well, what if our Jack Marsh doesn’t turn up until two days later when somebody finds him floating in the Anacostia?”

Fastnaught shook his head. “That isn’t gonna happen.”

“Can you guarantee it?”

I could see his mind working. Finally he said, “No, I can’t guarantee it.”

“Well, that’s why you can’t ride along in my hip pocket.”

“No way, huh?”

“None.”

He slumped back in his chair and looked at me with eyes that had lost the snap and sparkle they had had a few moments ago. They had gone dull again and old. The change made Fastnaught look tired and a little used up. “Well,” he said, “the least you can do is buy me a brandy.”

“I’ll do better than that,” I said. “I’ll buy us both one.”