The Green Eagle Score

6

Norman Berridge surveyed the body and found it good. The rouge on the cheeks was perhaps a trifle too noticeable, particularly for a sixty-three-year-old man, but relatives tended not to be overly particular about things like that. Just so none of the lip stitching showed or anything actually disastrous along that line, almost any kind of slapdash cosmetology was acceptable. And with the kind of assistant one had to rely on these days, that was just as well.

Ah, well, no need to raise a fuss. It was acceptable. Good, in fact. He said so to the assistant standing proudly beside the body, a young Puerto Rican apprentice—Puerto Ricans were about the only ones who would accept proper apprentice wages any more, in this mollycoddled twentieth-century USA—who accepted the compliment with a good deal of pleased hand-fluttering and head-bowing, while his own cheeks got as red as the corpse’s.

The wall phone in the corner buzzed. Norman Berridge walked around the remains and the assistant, picked up the phone, and his secretary said, “There’s a man here to see you, Mr Berridge. He says his name is Lynch, he says it’s about the annuities.”

Berridge pursed his lips. He recognized the name, and the use of the word “annuities”. Lynch was one of the men who came to him from time to time for financing of their activities. It was pleasant to have an area of investment offering—at some financial risk, of course—one hundred per cent profit and no involvement other than the initial outlay, but the men with whom he dealt in these matters never failed to unnerve him, and Lynch was possibly the most unnerving of them all. A cold man, as self-contained and silent as a panther, he seemed to Berridge always to be looking on him with contempt for his flabby body and bad nerves and jumbled mind. Lynch himself was as clean and cold and empty as the interior of a new coffin.

Lynch was not of course the man’s real name. One time when he had come with another man, the other had called him by a different name, which Berridge could no longer be sure he remembered. Porter, Walker, Archer . . . something like that.

No matter. It wasn’t the man’s name that counted, it was the opportunity he presented for investment. “I’ll be right up,” Berridge said into the phone, hung it up, and turned back to see the assistant dabbing at his body’s cheek, apparently having himself noticed it was a bit too red for someone not a habitue of Moulin Rouge. “Very good,” Berridge said. “Very good.”

He turned away from the assistant’s redoubled smile of pleasure and went over to the elevator, a small cage barely large enough for two. Shutting the gate, riding up to the main floor, Berridge reminded himself of his frequent vow to start using the stairs. Exercise was all he needed, and soon he’d have back the body of his twenties. Exercise, and some small restraint in diet. Nothing to it.

But he didn’t want to be panting when he walked into the room containing Lynch. Next time he was in the basement would be soon enough to start the new regimen. For now, his self-possession in Lynch’s presence would be greatly improved if his breathing were normal. Thus, the elevator.

Lynch was standing by the window when Berridge entered his office, gazing without expression at the formal garden Mrs Berridge maintained behind the house. It seemed to Berridge that Lynch never sat down, that their infrequent meetings in this office were always held with Lynch on his feet, as hard as a post.

This time, Berridge decided, he would also remain standing. It would make up a bit for the elevator.

“Lynch,” he said, as though pleased to see the man. “It’s been quite some time.” The false amiability and unction he had learned in dealing with bereaved relatives stood him well in other situations as well, most particularly this one. None of his true ambivalence about Lynch—money versus discomfort—showed in his voice or face.

Lynch turned away from the window, nodded briefly, and said, “I need three thousand.”

There was no small talk in Lynch, no social nicety. The man was as stripped and purposeful as a racing car or a fighter plane.

Which was just as well, actually. The last thing Berridge wanted was to know the specifics of the usage to which his money was to be put, and the next to the last thing was idle conversation with this man over some standard subject tike the weather.

So Berridge, ordinarily an expansive and loquacious man, matched Lynch’s brevity with his own, saying, “No problem at all. The usual terms, I suppose?”

“Right. If it comes off, you’ll hear in about ten days.”

“About the first of the month?”

“Just after. Second or third, something like that.”

“Excellent. You want it now, I suppose.”

“Yes.” “Care to come with me to the bank?”

Lynch nodded, and moved away from the window. Berridge, pleased with himself for not having seated himself behind his mahogany desk, led the way out of the office and down the rear hall to the garage, where he pushed the button that opened the third door along, the one for the Toronado. Past that was his daughter’s Mustang, while on this side were the Cadillac and his wife’s Volkswagen. The hearse and flower car were kept in another garage, beside the house.

Berridge felt good behind the wheel of his Toronado, young and vital. He had noticed that just about every other Toronado driver he had ever seen was, like himself, middle-aged and portly, but this didn’t interfere with the infusion of youth the car gave him. He was as capable of doublethink as anyone.

His money, for instance. He considered himself an honest and upright and patriotic man, he detested beatniks and peaceniks and other antisocial freaks as much as anyone, and if his income-tax statements were annual pieces of remarkably baroque fiction that was no contradiction at all, but merely another facet of his character, the hardheaded businessman facet. Poorer families tended to pay morticians in cash; cash was untraceable; untraceable income would only be reported by fools; Norman Berridge was nobody’s fool. If in a safety-deposit box in a bank downtown there were wads of wrinkled bills, just as they had come to him from the hands of his clientele, that was simply one way of an ordinary person’s defending himself from the encroachments of Big Government.

And if that money was occasionally doubled—and occasionally lost, too—by investment in the unspecified activities of men like Lynch, so what? Since when was investment a crime?

There was no conversation on the ride downtown. Berridge was painfully conscious of Lynch on the seat beside him, but he knew none of the awareness or discomfort showed. He drove, a little too slowly and too cautiously, through the slight mid-morning traffic, angle-parked the car at a parking meter just down the block from the bank, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Lynch said nothing to that, which was typical of the man.

Berridge agonized over whether or not to put a dime in the meter. Would Lynch consider him effete if he did, or slovenly if he didn’t? Contempt seemed possible in either case.

The problem was solved for him when he put his hand in his change pocket; he had no dimes. He walked on by the meter and down to the bank.

He enjoyed the complexity involved in reaching his box, the gates to be gone through, the form to sign, the dignified obsequiousness of the guard, the necessity of both the guard’s key and his own being inserted in the box at the same time, all gave him a feeling of importance, and of safety. And the value so obviously conferred on his safety deposit box seemed to rub off on him as well, giving him a feeling that he himself was considered valuable. All in all, a satisfying experience and a welcome antidote to ten minutes in the silent company of Lynch.

Berridge requested and got a large manila envelope. Carrying this and his box, he entered one of the private chambers, sat at the table there, and counted out fifties and twenties and an occasional ten until he had reached three thousand. The bills stuffed the manila envelope, which he could barely seal shut. Then there was the reverse procedure to go through, returning the box to its place and himself to the outside air.

When he returned to the car, Lynch was smoking, the air inside the car acrid with the smell of smoke. Unobtrusively Berridge turned on the air conditioner when he started the engine. Meantime Lynch ripped open the envelope and began to count the bills. He counted as Berridge drove homeward again, his absorption undisturbed by Berridge’s progress through the streets. Each little handful, when counted, went into another of Lynch’s pockets until when he was done, the envelope was empty, the money was out of sight, and Lynch looked exactly the same as before.

When Berridge was stopped by a red light, Lynch extended a crumpled twenty towards him, saying, “You counted wrong.”

“I did?” Surprised, Berridge took the bill, and didn’t notice the light had turned green until the car behind him sounded its horn. Then he drove the rest of the way with the bill clutched in his right hand.

When they reached the house—large, white stucco, with well-tended plantings all around and a discreet black-with-gray-letters sign on the lawn—Lynch said, “Let me off in front.”

“Certainly.”

Lynch didn’t say goodbye. Berridge watched him cross the street and get into a Pontiac with a New York State plate. Stolen? He had no idea.

After Lynch drove away, Berridge drove the Toronado back into the garage, the door opening for him at his approach. Once inside, seeing the manila envelope crumpled on the seat beside him, he permitted himself to become annoyed at Lynch, at his silence, his cold arrogance, his sloppiness in leaving that envelope there.

Berridge looked at the twenty-dollar bill still in his hand. Lynch had only counted the money once. Why had he been so sure it was Berridge who had made the error?

Berridge’s stomach felt bad.