The Procane Chronicle

8

Two hours later Janet Whistler didn’t smile or nod when I came into the Adelphi’s lobby and walked over to where she sat in a brown club chair. She wore a long belted coat of dark-green leather and the same pantsuit that she had worn earlier in the day. She was smoking a cigarette and as I approached she snuffed it out with the air of someone who has smoked too many of them while waiting too long.

“I think we should talk,” she said.

“My place or the bar? They’re both private.”

She hesitated just long enough for me to decide that a proper upbringing could still do occasional battle with the liberation movement. “The bar,” she said.

It wasn’t difficult to find a table because they were all empty. We chose one near the door and when Sid came over from behind the bar she ordered a bourbon and soda. I asked for a Scotch and water that I didn’t particularly want or need.

“Where’s Wiedstein?” I asked after we had tasted our drinks.

“He’s picking me up here later.”

“What’s it like?”

“What?”

“Working with Procane.”

“I like it.”

“That doesn’t tell me what it’s like.”

She started unbuttoning her leather coat and then shrugged out of it before I could help. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before,” she said. “But then I haven’t done much.”

“College?”

“Three years.”

“You want me to guess?”

“Don’t bother. It was Holyoke.”

“Then what?”

“I drifted. A little modeling, mostly in Paris; some acting out on the Coast and here.”

“How did you hook up with Procane, answer an ad?”

“Procane’s analyst recommended me. I was seeing him, but not professionally. He told Procane that I had all the attributes of a cunning thief. We met, talked it over, and that’s how it happened.”

“What’s Procane’s problem?”

“Does he have to have one just because he’s seeing an analyst? That’s a terribly old-fashioned attitude.”

“I’ve been told that I’m rather out of touch.”

“Didn’t you ever feel the need just to talk to someone? A person like Procane might feel that. Or perhaps he’s just afraid of heights. Don’t you have some secret doubts or fears that you’d like to talk to someone about?”

“Probably,” I said. “Most people do.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean you’re crackers, even if you do wake up some mornings and wonder why you’re doing what you do, which I think is really a silly sort of a business.”

“The hours are good,” I said.

“Is it that or are you afraid that you couldn’t hack it anymore at what you used to do? You wrote a column, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“And now you’re doing something that’s just a little shady, something that has just a bit of a smell to it.”

“Some people think it’s glamorous.”

“But what do you think?”

“That its demands are just about right for someone without too much ambition.”

“Like you?” she said.

“Like me,” I said and smiled to show that I wasn’t taking any of it very seriously.

She swallowed some more of her drink and said, “Someday we’ll have to talk about what made you run out of ambition.”

“All right. Someday we will. But you wanted to talk about something else. What?”

“Jimmy Peskoe,” she said and then watched me carefully.

“What about him?” I said.

“You know him?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“He’s dead.”

“So?”

“We think he’s the one who stole Procane’s journals.”

“We?”

“Miles and I.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Miles found someone Peskoe was trying to sell the journals to.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “That’s not important. He’s reliable. He says Peskoe was willing to sell them for ten thousand dollars.”

“But he didn’t buy?”

“No.”

“Did he know what they were?”

“Not really, but Peskoe said he should get a hundred thousand for them.”

“Why didn’t Peskoe do it himself?”

“He was too nervous.”

“Not too nervous to be a thief though.”

“That takes a different kind of nerve.”

“Why didn’t the guy buy the journals from Peskoe?”

“Simple,” she said. “He didn’t have the money.”

“And you say Peskoe’s dead?”

“That’s right.”

“When?”

She looked at her watch. “A couple of hours ago. He jumped, fell, or was pushed from his hotel. Room eight-nineteen of the Joplin Hotel. It’s on East Thirty-fourth.”

“You were there?”

“Just after he jumped. Or was pushed or—”

“Fell,” I said. “What did you do?”

“It happened just before we got there so we went over to look at him. We didn’t know who it was then. A few seconds later the desk clerk came out and said it was Peskoe and that he was in eight-nineteen. He kept saying it over and over. So we went into the hotel and lifted the key to eight-nineteen, took the elevator up to the tenth floor, walked back down, and then went through Peskoe’s room. The journals weren’t there.”

“Did you find anything else?” I said.

Her eyes had brightened when she told me about it. She must have liked the excitement. Searching Peskoe’s room had taken nerve, I had to admit, although I didn’t much want to for some reason, probably because she thought I was in a silly business. I was almost beginning to agree when she said, “We didn’t find anything. What else could there have been?”

“Six thousand dollars,” I said and felt a bit smug.

“What six thousand?”

“The six thousand that Bobby Boykins paid Peskoe for the journals.”

The excitement went out of her eyes and it was replaced by a kind of thoughtful reappraisal. At least that’s what I interpreted it to be when she said, “You’re not quite as indolent as you look, are you? Maybe you’d better tell me about what you’ve been up to.”

So I told her about the unsuccessful approach that Bobby Boykins had made to Finley Cummins and how Cummins had furnished me with Peskoe’s name for a price and how Peskoe was lying dead on the sidewalk when I arrived at the hotel on Thirty-fourth Street.

“What do you call these people you talk to,” she said, “ ‘contacts?’ ”

“I just think of them as friends and acquaintances.”

“It didn’t take you long.”

“It doesn’t when you know where to ask. You found out about Peskoe and it didn’t take you long either.”

She shook her head. “We’re in the business.” She said it seriously and I didn’t laugh at her perhaps because she really felt that there was honor among thieves, especially the kind who had spent three years at Holyoke.

“It doesn’t matter how we found out,” I said, “because all we know is that Peskoe probably stole the journals from Procane and probably sold them to Bobby Boykins who got killed before he could collect on them for ninety thousand dollars. We don’t know who’s got the journals now. Whoever has them probably killed both Boykins and Peskoe.”

Something was bothering her so she decided to ask me because there was no one any wiser around. “Why would they kill Peskoe?”

“You found out that Peskoe was trying to peddle the journals to at least one other person besides Boykins. And I found out that Boykins was trying to sell a share in them to at least one person. God knows how many others the two of them approached, maybe half a dozen. So maybe one of the ones that they approached decided to cut himself in without putting up any cash. So he killed Boykins and took the journals. And maybe Peskoe knew who it was — or at least could figure it out. So Peskoe jumped out of his window, or fell, or was pushed.”

“Mr. Procane isn’t going to like this at all,” she said.

“Is that where Wiedstein is now — telling him?”

“Yes.”

“He should have waited.”

“Why?”

“Then he could have told Mr. Procane how much I don’t like it.”