The Con Man

Twelve

Bert Kling expected trouble, and he was getting it.

Usually, he and Claire Townsend got along just jim-dandy. They’d had their quarrels, true, but who was there to claim that the path of true love ever ran smooth? In fact, considering the bad start their romance had had, their love was chugging along on a remarkably even keel. Kling had had a rough time in the beginning trying to dislodge the torch Claire was carrying from the firm grip with which she’d carried it. He’d succeeded. They had passed through the getting-acquainted stages, and had then progressed rapidly through the con man’s legend of going steady, and then through the con man’s formality of getting engaged, and then — if they weren’t careful — they would enter the con man’s legality of getting married, and then the con man’s nightmare of having children.

Provided they could leap this particular hurdle that confronted them on that Wednesday night.

The hurdle was a very high one.

Kling was learning, perhaps a little late to do anything about it, that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The woman scorned was rather tall by American standards. Not too tall for Kling, but she’d have given the run-of-the-mill, unheroic American male trouble unless she wore flats on her dates. The woman scorned had black hair cut close to her head and brown eyes, which were aglow now with an inner fury, and a good mouth, which was twisted into a somewhat sardonic grin. The woman scorned was slender without being skinny, bosomy without being busty, leggy without being gangly. The woman scorned was, as a matter of fact, damned pretty even when she was venting her fury.

“You know,” she said, “that this probably means no vacation, don’t you?”

“I don’t know that at all,” Kling said. “I have no reason to believe that.”

“You are not, if you’ll pardon my pointing it out, writing up a traffic ticket at the moment.”

“Nor did I intend to sound as if I were,” Kling said, amazed by the high level of their argument, thinking at the same time that Claire looked quite lovely when she was angry and wanting simultaneously to kiss the fury off her mouth.

“I realize that the 87th Precinct is just loaded with super masterminds who have all sorts of priority over a dumb rookie who just got promoted. But, for God’s sake, Bert—”

“Claire—”

“You did crack a murder case, you know! And the commissioner did personally commend you and did personally promote you! What do you have to do in order to get a vacation spot that jibes with your fiancée’s schedule? Stop mass fratricide? Cure the common cold?”

“Claire, it’s not a question of—”

“Whatever you have to do, you should have done it!” Claire snapped. “Of all the idiotic times for a vacation, June tenth absolutely takes the brass bologna! Of all the incredibly ridiculous—”

“It’s not my fault, Claire. Claire, the schedule is made out by Lieutenant—”

“...incredibly ridiculous times for a vacation, June tenth positively wins the fur-lined bathtub!”

“All right,” Kling said.

“All right?” she repeated. “What’s all right about it? It reeks! It’s bureaucracy in action! Hell, it’s totalitarianism!”

“It’s a hell of a thing, all right,” Kling agreed. “Would you like me to quit my job? Shall I get a nice democratic position like shoemaker or butcher or—”

“Oh, stop it.”

“If I were a midget,” Kling said, “I could probably get a job stuffing Vienna sausages. Trouble is—”

“Stop it,” she said again, but she was smiling.

“You better?” he asked hopefully.

“I’m sick,” she answered.

“It’s a tough break.”

“Let’s have a drink.”

“Rye neat,” he said.

Claire looked at him. “No need to go all to pieces, Officer,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. Worst comes to worst, you can go on vacation with some other girl.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Kling said, snapping his fingers.

“And all I’ll do is break both your arms,” Claire said. She poured two hookers of rye and handed one of them to Kling. “Here’s to a solution.”

“You just hit the solution,” Kling said, raising the glass to his lips. “Another girl.”

“Don’t you dare drink to that!” Claire said.

“You’re sure finals don’t begin until the seventeenth?”

“Positive.”

“Can you swing something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Kling looked into the eye of his glass. “Aw, hell,” he said, “here’s to a solution,” and he threw it down.

Claire swallowed hers without batting an eyelid. “Let’s think,” she said.

“How many tests are there?” Kling asked.

“Five,” she answered.

“When is school over?”

“Classes end on the seventh of June. The next week is a reading week. And then finals start on the seventeenth.”

“When do they end?”

“Two weeks later. That’s when the semester is officially over.”

“June twenty-eighth?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great. I need another drink.”

“No more. We need clear heads.”

“How about you taking your tests during that last week of classes?”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just is.”

“Has it ever been done before?”

“I doubt it strongly.”

“Hell, this is an emergency.”

“Is it? Bert, Women’s U is an all-girls school. Can I go to the dean and say I’d like to have permission to take my finals the week of the third because my boyfriend and I are leaving on vacation the following week?”

“Why not?”

“They’d probably expel me. Girls have been expelled for less.”

“Hell, I can’t see anything wrong with that.” Kling thought it over for a moment and then nodded emphatically. “There is nothing at all wrong with going on vacation with your fiancé — not boyfriend, if you please, but fiancé — especially if you plan on getting married soon.”

“You make it sound worse than I did.”

“Then your mind is as evil as your dean’s.”

“And yours, of course, is simon pure.”

Kling grinned. “Absolutely,” he said.

“It still wouldn’t work.”

“Then give me another drink, and we’ll resort to all kinds of subterfuge.”

Claire poured two more hookers. “Here’s to all kinds of subterfuge,” she toasted. Together, they tossed off the shots, and she refilled the glasses.

“We could, of course, say you were having a baby.”

“We could?”

“Yes. And that you were going to be confined to the hospital during finals, so could you please take them a little earlier? How does that sound?”

“Very good,” Claire said. “The dean would appreciate that.” She tossed off her drink and poured another.

“Go easy there,” Kling advised. He drank his whiskey and held out his glass for a refill. “We need a clear head here — heads, I mean.”

“Suppose...” Claire said thoughtfully.

“Um?”

“No, that wouldn’t work.”

“Let me hear it.”

“No, no, it wouldn’t work.”

“What?”

“Well, I was thinking we could get married and say I had to miss finals because I was going on my honeymoon. How’s that?”

“If you’re trying to scare me,” Kling said, “you’re not.”

“I thought you wanted to wait until I graduated.”

“I do. Don’t tempt me.”

“Okay,” Claire said. “Whoosh, I’m beginning to feel that booze.”

“Keep a tight grip,” Kling said. He thought silently for a moment. “Get me a pen and some paper, will you?”

“What for?”

“Letter to the dean,” Kling said.

“All right,” Claire answered. She walked across the room to the secretary, and Kling said, “You wiggle very nice.”

“Keep your mind on your work,” Claire said.

“You are my work. You’re my life’s work.”

Claire giggled and came back to him. She put her hands on his shoulders, leaned over, and kissed him fiercely on the mouth.

“You’d better go get the pen and paper,” he said.

“I’d better,” she answered. She walked away again, and again, he watched her. This time, she returned with a fountain pen and two sheets of stationery. Kling put the paper on the coffee table, uncapped the pen, and asked, “What’s the dean’s name?”

“Which one? We have several.”

“The one in charge of vacations.”

“None such.”

“Permissions?”

“Anna Kale.”

“Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss,” Claire said. “There are no such things as married deans.”

“Dear Miss Kale,” Kling said out loud as he wrote. “How’s that for a beginning?”

“Brilliant,” Claire said.

“Dear Miss Kale: I am writing to you on behalf of my daughter, Claire Townsend—”

“What’s the penalty for forgery?” Claire asked.

“Shhhh,” Kling said. “On behalf of my daughter, Claire Townsend, who requests permission to take her final examinations during the week of June third rather than during the scheduled examination period.”

“You should have been a writer,” Claire said. “You have a natural style.”

“As you know,” Kling went on, writing, “Claire is an honor student...” He paused. “Are you?”

“Phi Bete in my junior year,” Claire said.

“A bloody genius,” Kling said and then went back to the letter. “Claire is an honor student and can be trusted to take her exams without revealing their content to any students who will be tested at a later date. I would not make such an urgent request were it not for the fact that my sister is leaving for a tour of the West on June tenth—”

“A tour of the West!” Claire said.

“...a tour of the West on June tenth,” Kling went on, “and has offered to take her niece with her. This is an opportunity that should not be bypassed, adding — I feel — more to a young girl’s education than a strict compliance to schedule could offer. I hope you will agree the experience should be a rewarding one, and I know you would not put red tape into the way of a trip that would undoubtedly enrich one of your students. Trusting your decision will be the right one. I remain respectfully yours, Ralph Townsend.” Kling held the letter at arm’s length. “How’s that?” he asked.

“It’ll make a fine Exhibit A for the state,” Claire said.

“Screw the state,” Kling said. “How about the letter?”

“My father hasn’t got any sisters,” Claire said.

“A slight oversight,” Kling said. “What about the drama of the appeal?”

“Excellent,” Claire said.

“Think she’ll buy it?”

“What have we got to lose?”

“Nothing. I need an envelope.” Claire rose and went to the secretary. “Stop wiggling,” he called after her.

“It’s natural,” she answered.

“It’s too natural,” Kling said. “That’s the trouble.”

He began doodling while she searched for an envelope. She found the envelope and started back across the room, walking as rigidly as she could, inhibiting the instinctive sway of her hips.

“That’s better,” Kling said.

“I feel like a robot.”

She handed him the envelope, and he quickly scrawled Miss Anna Kale across its face. He folded the letter, put it into the envelope, sealed the envelope, and then handed it to Claire. “You are to deliver this tomorrow,” he said. “Without fail. The fate of a nation hinges on your mission.”

“I’m more interested in your doodling,” Claire said, looking down at the drawing Kling had inked onto one of the stationery sheets.

“Oh, that,” Kling said. He expanded his chest. “I was an ace in art appreciation, you know.”

He had drawn a heart on the sheet of paper. He had put lettering into the heart. The completed masterpiece looked like this:

“For that,” Claire said, “you deserve a kiss.”

She kissed him. She probably would have kissed him anyway, heart or no. Kling was, nonetheless, surprised and delighted. He accepted Claire’s kiss, and her lips completely wiped out of his mind any connection he may have made between his own artistic endeavor and the tattoos found on the 87th’s floaters.

He never knew how close he’d come to solving at least one mystery.