The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

The Jury Caper

Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, July 1974.

While Clara tidied the dinette and did the dinner dishes, Eddie passed the minutes restlessly in her small living room, pacing the carpet, fiddling with the TV set.

When he heard her closing cabinet doors in the kitchenette, he settled into the large orange-colored armchair, feigning an air of well-fed contentment that masked the out-of-sight idea churning in his mind.

With his superficial good looks, curly black hair styled long about his ears, slender body clothed in carefully coordinated brown-tan-gold, Eddie was a good imitation of a fashion advertisement depicting a young executive taking his ease. The fact is, he spent a lot of time studying the ads, then picking with ferret determination through the cut-rate and chain stores when he had to buy a shirt, tie, jacket, shoes, or suit.

Clara came in, palming a stray wisp of dull brown hair from her forehead. Eddie turned his head, looking up and hitting her with the Bailey special smile, glint of white teeth, a crinkling at the corners of sooty-lashed eyes.

It worked as always.

Clara pinked with pleasure as he took her hand and drew her down on his lap. She was plain, but not a real dog, Eddie reflected. The lack-luster hair set the tone for the rest of her. Ordinary face and figure. Dull brown personality. Sum total not unpleasant, just blah. A shy, lonely, affection-starved working girl.

But she was a cool cook, and her apartment was always open when there was no place else to spend an evening. Her eagerness to please him sometimes annoyed Eddie. Still, it was nice to receive golf clubs and Swedish sweaters for presents and to know she would always override his protests about accepting loans from her.

He slipped his arms about her waist.

“Was the dinner okay, Eddie?”

“The greatest.” His lips nuzzled her neck, bringing a shivery little sigh from her. She wriggled comfortably in his lap, resting her head against his shoulder.

He let her have a moment of idyllic contentment; then he murmured against her hair, “Kitten, I’m darn tired of not being able to give you things.”

“You’re all I want, Eddie.”

“See what I mean? Girl like you, you rate the best. I want us to play on the sand at Miami Beach. Dine at Antoine’s. Shop for a bauble in a Parisian shop.”

She raised slightly and looked at him, their eyes inches apart. “What are you talking about, Eddie?”

“You and me, baby.” He kissed her quite suddenly, feeling her response of passionate longing. His own mind was more concerned with the immediate future than with this moment. Clara’s job in the courthouse hadn’t interested him, except as an incidental source of bread — until the recent murder of a girl named Nancy Chavez.

He broke the kiss lingeringly. “We can have all those things, Kitten, everything we’ve dreamed of, and we don’t have to necessarily rob a bank to do it.”

“How, Eddie?”

“You just make sure I’m on the jury when the Chavez case comes to trial. I’ll take care of everything else, and when the trial is over we’ll have so much bread you’ll think I’ve printed the stuff, believe me.”

She drew back, but not much. “I don’t understand, Eddie.”

“It’s simple. You’ve told me about your job and how the jury setup works in this state. First, a list of jurors is summoned, making up a jury pool. From this pool the jury clerk makes up the lists that will act as juries in the civil and criminal cases scheduled for trial in the courthouse before the various judges.”

“That’s about the way it works,” she said, “but I still don’t see—”

“Who is the jury clerk, Kitten? Who handles the papers, keeps the records, draws the jury lists from the pool?”

“I do, Eddie. You know that.”

“So I’m volunteering, baby, for a duty that most citizens try to duck. You add my name to the pool. Then you make sure I’m included in the jury for the Chavez trial. After that, who knows? Maybe a honeymoon to Hawaii.”

“Oh, Eddie!” A sob of happiness filled her throat. “Did I hear you say honeymoon?”

“Your ears don’t lie, Kitten.” He bruised her lips with a Bailey special. He knew he’d overrun the first objective. He was as good as sitting in the jury box already, hearing the indictment read against young Richie Wood for the murder of Nancy Chavez.

Eddie escaped Clara shortly before midnight. Instead of going directly home, he tooled his Toyota sports crosstown to a modestly fashionable apartment building. He thumbed the communicator button in the lobby half a dozen times before he admitted to himself that Joella Marlowe wasn’t home.

He gritted his teeth, glowered about the small empty lobby. Often when he had to take Clara in his arms, his mind would displace her with the lovely blonde image of Joella. Right now, he was stung with the thought of Joella living it up with some well-heeled creep while he’d had to make the scene with Clara.

Okay, Joella baby, he thought as he kicked the lobby door open, but you’ll be singing Eddie-boy’s tune...

The next morning at ten o’clock Eddie was in a corner booth in a downtown bar and grill. He drank coffee in nervous sips, his eyes riveted to the front door. Now and then he blotted his forehead with a purple-hued handkerchief.

The back-bar clock registered ten-fifteen when Baxter Wood appeared in the doorway and paused to look the bar over. Eddie recognized him instantly, from pictures splashed on television and front pages when Nancy Chavez was murdered.

Eddie stumbled in his haste to get out of the booth. He hurried over to the multimillionaire plastics manufacturer.

“Mr. Baxter Wood?”

“Yes.” The word was a guttural. Even in a cashmere suit and twenty-dollar necktie, Baxter Wood struck Eddie as a character who would be right at home in a lumber camp. The guy had a blunt, square face topped with a style-scorning crewcut the color of iron.

“I’m Eddie Bailey, Mr. Wood, the fellow who phoned you earlier this morning and suggested a meeting.” Eddie was sweating only a little. “Not many people in here this time of day. We can have all the privacy we need over there in that corner booth.”

When they were seated, facing each other, Baxter Wood waved the waitress away and folded his hands on the tabletop; they looked like sledgehammers.

“Okay, bub,” Wood rumbled in that bullfrog basso, “what’s it all about? You said enough on the phone to get me over here. Let’s hear the rap.”

“I got this idea from statements you made to the press when your son Richie was charged with the murder of Nancy Chavez,” Eddie said, “and because I know someone who could be used.”

Wood drummed the table with thick fingers, eyes spearing Eddie from under craggy brows. “I buy boys with slide rules to work my equations, bub: Right now I’m interested in Richie.”

“You said you’d fight to your last penny to free him,” Eddie said. “You won’t have to. I’m going to spare you that expense.”

Before Eddie was aware of movement, his lapel was clutched in a beefy hand, his midriff yanked against the table. The big, blunt face was only inches from his, the eyes steaming.

“Bub, if you got some evidence, know something the police don’t—”

Eddie somehow managed to smile his Bailey man-to-man, a quirk of the lips, a John Wayne tilt of the head. “The deal’s a lot cooler than that, if you’ll just stop manhandling me for a minute.”

Wood released his grip. Eddie eased back, brushing the wrinkles from his jacket. “This person I mentioned who could be used, she happens to be the jury clerk as well as a friend of mine.”

Eddie saw the warm shift in the steel-hued eyes.

“Well, now, that’s what I call interesting,” Wood said.

“I can guarantee you I’ll be on the jury, working for a verdict you and Richie want to hear.”

Wood rubbed his flattened lips with the knuckles of his left hand as he thought it over. “How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars, pocket change to you,” Eddie said, “payable the day Richie walks out of the courtroom a free man.”

“If he walks out free, how will I know it was your doing, that he wouldn’t have come clear anyway? I should pay you twenty-five grand for that?”

“It’s up to you, Mr. Wood, if you want to take that kind of chance. But for twenty-five thou you’ll know that he is free and that I was in the jury room. Like, you ever bought any better insurance?”

“Suppose the other eleven are a hard-nut bunch who want to railroad my kid?”

“They don’t come that hard, Mr. Wood. I’ll stick in there until Hell’s Angels are teaching Sunday School.”

“What if you’re excused during the impanelling of the jury and an alternate juror takes your seat?”

“With the deal made, would your lawyers excuse me?”

“Don’t act cute, bub! You know I’m talking about the prosecutor.”

“Mr. Wood, please,” Eddie sighed, “give me a little credit. When the prosecutor quizzes the jurymen, you think I’ll let him see anything other than an alert, open-minded young man without anti-Establishment hangups?”

A faint hint of friendliness tugged the corners of Wood’s mouth. “I swear, bub, I’m beginning to think you could pull it off.”

“Trust me, Mr. Wood.”

“But no money in advance, see?”

Eddie endured a small, inward groan, letting the hope fade of talking Wood into a binder.

“The terms are fine, Mr. Wood,” he said blandly. “The day Richie is freed I drop by and pick up twenty-five in the privacy of your home.”

“You got a deal bub!” Wood said, leaning back.

“We’ve got a deal,” Eddie amended. As Wood started to rise, Eddie said softly, “I trust your honesty, but if you shattered my faith, we’d both go to jail, on a charge of jury fixing. I’d just have to spill the beans, and you got so much more to lose than I have. Big trouble for yourself. Not to mention Richie standing trial again after a blaze of terrible publicity.”

Halfway to his feet, Wood paused. He gravelled a laugh. “That’s good, bub. You covered all the angles.” He reached across and plumped Eddie on the shoulder. “You deliver, you’ll get paid. We got what you might say is a perfect business understanding.”

“We mustn’t be seen together,” Eddie reminded. “You won’t hear from me again until the trial is over.”

“Sure, bub. Total strangers fill the jury box.” He knuckled Eddie lightly on the jaw. “Keep your nose clean. Stay out of drafts so you don’t come down with a virus. I’d feel terrible if you broke a leg or something and missed the trial.”

With that bit of advice, Wood turned and barged out of the bar.

Two down, Eddie thought.

It took Eddie until three o’clock to track down Fleschetti. He found the lean, swarthy man in the bookie joint behind Rudeen’s tavern. Fleschetti was sitting propped back against the dirty wall in a straight chair, his outthrust feet resting on the chair’s twin. He was watching the tote board and chewing on a cigar.

Eddie threaded his way through the crowded, smoke-filled room.

“Hi, Mr. Fleschetti.”

Fleschetti glanced up. He was about as attractive as a dagger-thrower for the Mafia, but he said pleasantly enough, “How ya, Eddie?”

There wasn’t a vacant chair and Fleschetti didn’t offer the one he was using for a hassock. Eddie bent a knee and half-sat, the wall supporting his back.

“I need a loan, Mr. Fleschetti.”

“Sure, Eddie. You always paid up in the past, one way or another.”

“Then my record ought to be good for a big chunk of bread this time.”

“Yeah?” Fleschetti took the wet, ragtag, chewed end of the cigar from his mouth. “How big?”

“A thou.”

Fleschetti squinted, absently waving away a short, fat man who was hobbling over to talk to him.

“That’s pretty big for a guru in your shoes, Eddie. How come?”

“I got a sure fire deal. But it’ll keep me tied up for a few days starting Monday morning. Meantime, there’s a long weekend.”

“And a chick?” Fleschetti shook his narrow, oily face. “Always a chick with a guy like you, Eddie.”

Fleschetti shrugged, dropped his feet to the floor. He reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a pad of printed forms about the size of a letter envelop. He scribbled in an amount with a ballpoint pen and handed pen and promissory note to Eddie for him to sign.

“You’re borrowing twelve hundred, Eddie. You get a thou. Service charges, two hundred. Interest five percent per week, compounded weekly. Note payable by the week with the interest taken out first.”

“I know,” Eddie murmured. His eager fingers dashed his signature across the bottom of the note.

“I hope she’s worth it, Eddie.”

“She is,” Eddie said, exchanging the note for ten one-hundred dollar bills Fleschetti counted from a scuffed, bedraggled, two-inches-thick wallet.

“You asked for it, Eddie. I didn’t make a pitch to sell you. I never do with my customers.”

“Sure,” Eddie said, cramming the money in his pocket.

Fleschetti swung his feet back up on the chair. “Don’t forget I always collect, Eddie. I know a tough old shiv what’s out of work. I’d hate the expense of putting him on the payroll and sending him around for a collection.”

Eddie laughed. “Don’t be such a worrier, Mr. Fleschetti. I always been good for it. This time I got a deal that’ll make twelve c-notes look like chicken feed.”

“Plus interest,” Fleschetti reminded.

Out of the bar, Eddie dialed the courthouse and got Clara on her extension.

“Kitten, I just had some terrible news,” he choked the words into the phone. “My aunt Hilgred, she’s almost like a mother—” His voice broke.

“Eddie,” Clara’s voice was sharp with alarm, “what is it? Is she sick or something?”

“Terrible accident, Kitten. Car full of teenagers barreled into a shopping center parking lot and knocked her fifty feet as she was going to her car.”

“How awful!”

“I’ve got to go out there, to Des Moines.”

“Of course, Eddie. Can I do anything to help?”

“Just pray for the poor old lady, Kitten,” even though you’ve never met her. “I won’t know the setup for sure until I get there, so I may not have a chance to call you until I get back.”

“I understand, Eddie.”

“I’ll make sure aunt Hilgred is comfortable and getting the best of care. I’ll be back Sunday night, ready for jury duty Monday morning.”

“I’ll be thinking about you every minute, Eddie.”

“That’s my Kitten. ’Bye now.” He blew her a kiss, hung up, and made an aaagghh! face at the phone.

Joella opened her apartment door a crack in answer to Eddie’s rapping knuckles.

“Hi, doll.” Before she could say anything, he put enough pressure on the door to brush his way inside.

Joella was a vision in a filmy pink shortie. Eddie’s eyes took a dizzying ride over a leggy figure a showgirl would have envied. Her honey-gold hair was piled in casual, little-girl disarray atop her head. Her tanned face glistened from a careful massage with cleasing cream.

A glint of impatience made her doe-shaped green eyes a shade darker. “Eddie, I’m really very busy—”

He moved through the cozy, pleasantly pastel decor of the small living room and dropped on a Danish couch. He stretched, settled comfortably, thrusting out his legs and crossing his ankles.

“Yum-yum-yummy,” he grinned at her. “Can anything so beautiful be real?”

“Thanks, friend. But I haven’t time to listen now. I have to dress for dinner.”

She walked to the couch, lifted her hand, and wiggled a slim, tapering finger in the direction of the door. “It’s unlocked, Eddie. Close it on your way out.”

“Now is that the sweetest doll in the world? Kitten, you don’t know how I’ve missed you.”

“No rap, Eddie. I’m not listening.”

“You’d like to.”

She shook her head. The movement spilled a lock of hair from the careless, temporary upswept. It curled vagrantly about her cheek, making her all the more delectable in Eddie’s eyes.

“Look Eddie,” she said reasonably. “Be nice. Just run along. You’re a great guy, except in the important department. I’m expensive, Eddie, and you always end up as an also-ran.”

“Too bad I can’t afford you.”

She gave a little sigh, her green eyes holding with his for a brief second. “Maybe so, at that. But we’ve been through the routine before, haven’t we? So leave it as friends. Don’t spoil the bit that we had, Eddie.”

He plucked at his lower lip.

“I really believe you’re going to throw me out.” He breathed out heavily. “In that case, what’ll I do with this?” Reaching inside his jacket pocket, he drew out the wad of hundred-dollar bills. With a melodramatic movement, he threw them toward the ceiling. The cluster broke apart, and he watched the widening of Joella’s green eyes as the bills fluttered down about her.

“Some shower, doll,” he chuckled. “Just the first drops. Plenty more where that came from.”

He reached and took her slender wrist. She was gazing raptly at the clutter of money, making no resistance as he pulled her onto his lap.

“Time we turned in again, doll,” he murmured against her ear.

She was a warm rustling, arms gliding about his neck. “I’ve missed you, Eddie. Really I have.”

“So let’s make up for lost time with a weekend in Las Vegas.”

“You’re beautiful, Eddie...”

At eleven o’clock Sunday night Eddie dragged his exhausted body and brain into his down-at-the-heels bachelor pad. He struggled out of jacket and necktie, tossing the garments on a chair that already held a dirty shirt and sweater. Grunting with the effort, he opened the hide-a-bed convertible couch, kicked off his shoes, and lowered his fatigued bones.

Tired as he was, he lay on his back grinning at the ceiling, licking his memory chops. What a weekend! It shimmered in his mind, an elysian haze. First-class accommodations on the jetliner... the swank of the Vegas hotel... the intimate dinners... floor shows... the balconied room with the king-size bed... the smoky smoothness of expensive Scotch sipped beside the pool... the craps table...

All of it a lovely, lovely backdrop for the warmth of Joella’s arms, the fire of her kisses.

They’d gone through every dime in four days, but Eddie kept that thought out of his mind. Right now, he didn’t want anything to spoil the memories.

The skirling of the alarm clock reached into the deep vacancy of sleep earlier than usual the following morning. Eddie mumbled himself awake, reaching out to turn off the clock and lying there for a moment staring at nothing in particular. He was drearily hungup with the idea of being penned in the jury box. He dosed himself with strong medicine, the thought of Baxter Wood’s twenty-five thou. It gave him the energy to get out of bed.

He came out of the building an hour later, his appearance totally out of keeping with the messy apartment he left behind. Dressed conservatively and groomed to his fingernails, he might have been a bright young customer’s man in a brokerage office.

A tension gnawed at him as he drove downtown, parked the Toyota in an all-day lot, and walked into the impersonal fifteen-story stone mass of the courthouse.

He didn’t doubt Clara, or himself, but he wouldn’t feel really easy until he was actually on the Chavez jury.

The jury pool room on the fourth floor was filling with people of all shapes, sizes and colors when Eddie strolled in.

Clara appeared at nine o’clock sharp, in sensible skirt, blouse, fiats, hair in a brown bun at her nape. She was carrying a clipboard and looked so drab and frumpy, compared to Joella in Vegas, that Eddie felt a little sorry for her.

She stood beside a desk in the corner of the room, introducing herself and reciting her routine jazz in a sing-song voice. She commended them all for answering the call to civic duty, mentioned the importance of the jury system under the American banner of freedom, and touched on the state laws governing responsibilities of jurymen.

Then she was calling out the lists, and a short time later Eddie was among the group being herded by a bored deputy into a huge courtroom. The vaulted expanse seemed to Eddie to have all the warmth of a mausoleum, when he took his place, third chair front row, in the jury box.

The lawyers were shuffling papers and exchanging pleasantries at their tables. John Ward was the prosecutor, a lean, spare man with a grizzled face. Wood had retained the firm of Proctor, Proctor, and Adams to defend his son. Old man Proctor himself, who looked like a wily white-haired Mississippi senator, was in charge of the legal battery.

The bailiff rapped a gavel. All rose in the crowded courtroom as the judge entered. The bailiff called court to session with his “O-yez, O-yez.”

The following hour was more nerve-wracking than Eddie had anticipated. Defense and prosecution questioned each juror in turn. The defense excused juror number eight, the prosecution five and nine. The alternates who took their seats were accepted. Eddie surreptitiously pressed a handkerchief in his wet palms and experienced a pleasant inner unwinding. The trial was underway, and he was in his twenty-five thousand dollar seat.

He slipped his first direct look at young Richard Wood, slouched at the defense table. The boy had the brawn, the bulldozer-operator look of his father. Aside from their years, the main difference in father and son was visible in Richie’s petulant, self-centered curl of lips. The punk kid, Eddie reflected, had the natural sneer of a spoiled brat.

During the two days of the trial, Eddie was struck by the lack of drama. In his television-conditioned mind, murder trials were drawn-out featurelengths of sudden surprises, witnesses cracking under cross-examination. Much of this one was conducted in voices at conversation level, with the florid judge sneaking a yawn behind his hand now and then.

The story came out in simple, bold terms, to Eddie’s way of thinking. The evening of last June fifth a group of affluent young people got together for a lakeside party. Grass was smoked. Non-smokers washed down speed pills with beer.

High on speed, Richie Wood kept forcing his attentions on Nancy Chavez. The girl decided to leave the party. Richie followed her to her car. A little later, the others heard a scream. The boys rushed from the lake and saw a figure very much resembling Richie disappearing into the dark underbrush. A few yards from her car, they found Nancy Chavez, clothing torn. Dead. Strangled. Her screams cut off by a pair of powerful hands.

The prosecution said it was cut-and-dried. The defense said, not so; for isn’t it just possible that the fleeing figure seen by the witnesses was a skulker about Richie Wood’s size looking for a chance to loot parked cars?

The judge charged them, and the jury filed out. Seated in the private room adjacent to the courtroom, Eddie looked at the faces hovering about the long table. Butcher, baker, clothing maker. A housewife and a secretary. A salesman, used car appraiser, retired bookkeeper.

It was an ill-at-ease gathering, everyone glancing at the others, waiting for someone else to break the ice.

The retired man, a tall, skinny, gray wisp, cleared his throat. “Guess our first job is to elect a foreman.”

“I’ll nominate you,” Eddie said. “And I move the nominations be closed. We don’t have to waste a lot of time, seems to me. The prosecution didn’t prove the man guilty beyond a shadow’ of doubt.”

Resembling a side of his own beef, the butcher, on leave from his supermarket employer, snorted in derision. “Proved him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt! Plain as the nose on your face. The punk tried to rape that girl and grabbed her by the neck to shut her up.”

Eddie cut the juror with a cool look. “I think we’re all intelligent human beings who won’t ruin a young man’s life by jumping to conclusions.”

He sensed that most of the others were with him, especially the plump housewife and the sickeningly pale secretary with the washed-out blue eyes.

“Mr. Foreman,” Eddie suggested, “why not take a vote right now to see how we stand, how we may be split?”

“Sounds like a good, efficient idea,” the old bookkeeper nodded. “How many think the boy is guilty?”

The butcher’s hand went up. So did the salesman’s and the tailor’s. After a moment, when there was no other show of hands, the tailor indecisively lowered his. The salesman held out a minute longer. He shrugged, dropped his hand. “With a start like this, we’ll never get a guilty verdict, and I got competition selling my customers every hour I’m in here.”

The butcher stood alone, and Eddie relaxed in his chair knowing he had it made.

Shortly after nightfall, Eddie parked the Toyota in the shadows of the elm trees that lined the driveway of the Wood suburban estate. He got out and walked the few remaining yards to the imposing, white-columned colonial home.

Baxter Wood was waiting for him, standing as a shadow beside a wrought-iron veranda table.

“I guess we made it, Mr. Wood.” Eddie felt that he was one big goosepimple of anticipation and excitement. He could hardly keep his voice from breaking into a delirious falsetto. “Had some trouble with one fellow, a butcher, but I carried the ball without a stumble.”

“So you did, and I’m grateful.” A note of real feeling was in Wood’s voice. He thrust out a manila envelope. “Count it, if you like. It’s all there. Twenty-five thousand in hundred and fifty dollar bills.”

Eddie took the money with the feeling that he was swooning. Wood threw a meaty arm about his shoulders and walked Eddie to the edge of the veranda.

“Don’t’ ever feel that we did anything wrong, young fellow. Remember that you gave my son — and me — a fresh chance. I’ve bought into some mining interests in Mexico, and I’ve had it out with Richie. He’s going down there and make a man of himself, work in the earth, learn to sweat a little and eat plain, gut-sticking grub. Appreciate a cot in a mining camp when he flops after a day’s honest labor.”

Wood dropped his hand and looked out into the darkness. “Yes, young fellow, it should make a man of my son, this final chance for him to be a man.”

“I’m glad to have had a part in it, Mr. Wood,” Eddie said, anxious only to be away, paying off that bloodsucking loan shark Fleschetti, then blasting off to Joella.

“Good night, m’boy.”

“So long, Mr. Wood.”

Eddie nudged the speed laws as he drove back to his apartment. He left the Toyota in the no-parking strip in front of the scabby brick building. He would be inside just long enough for a change of shirts and a phone call to Joella.

He took the steps to the second floor two at a time, keyed open his door, clicked on the bed-sitting room light. Whistling merrily, he rummaged through the chest of drawers, finding a pink broadcloth in its laundry plastic.

He turned, heading toward the bath with the fresh shirt in his hands. Halfway across the room, he caught a movement out of the side of his vision. He stopped suddenly, with knees almost buckling.

Richie Wood was standing in the dark kitchenette doorway, as big, tough, and twice as mean looking as his father.

Heart pounding at the sudden sight of the intruder, Eddie clutched the back of a chair and swallowed the dryness in his throat. “Why... what...” he stammered. “How’d you get in here?”

“Simple,” Richie said, taking a couple of grizzly bear steps into the bed-sitting room. “Good old dad told me about our juror to spare me strain during the trial. I looked you up in the phone book, climbed the fire escape, and broke the kitchen window. Then I waited, figuring you wouldn’t be long in dashing in after the payoff.”

Eddie backed a step, feeling an acid sweat eat suddenly across his face.

“Wh-what do you want?” he asked thickly, guessing already from Richie’s presence, Richie’s eyes, Richie’s deadly determined manner what Richie wanted.

“The last thing I want is that deal the old fool has hatched for me in Mexico,” Richie said. “Man, I’d blow my mind down there with those peons and time clocks and holes in the ground.”

Eddie hugged the manila envelope stuffed under his belt. “No! You can’t have it! It’s my money!”

“Yeah?” Richie said, inexorably closing in. “Who you squawking to? The fuzz? Man, how you going to report a theft you don’t dare explain?”

Richie snapped his fingers. “Hand it over, punk. Have a heart. The old man has cut off my allowance, bought that one way ticket to Mexico, told the foreman down there to treat me just like the hired help. So make like a love-child, man. Return the Wood lettuce, to me. By the time I get through jetting off and having a twenty-five thousand dollar ball the old man will wish he’d never heard of mines in Mexico.”

Richie’s hand was reaching. Eddie lunged back. Richie lunged forward. The bleat from Eddie’s lips was cut in half by the impact of Richie’s fist.

Eddie slammed against the wall. Almost beyond feeling, he sensed that Richie had grabbed him by the neck and was banging his head against the dirty plaster. Then Richie, the room, the panic all vanished.

The apartment was filled with a deep-space silence when Eddie began to live again. The process was a torment. The pain in his head squeezed a thin moan through his lips. He was crumpled with his face against the musty-smelling carpet. He felt as if he was being put back together with a welder’s torch. Even more painful was the knowledge that Richie Wood and the twenty-five thousand were long gone.

He dragged himself up and slumped on the couch, two big tears filling his eyes. He knew he was going to have to make dull, dumb Clara feel lovely and adored for a long time.

He dredged up the strength to reach for the phone and dial Clara’s number. She must have been sitting on her phone. She answered instantly.

He took a breath and gave it all he had, the Bailey special sockeroo, an intimate huskiness: “Baby, these last days have been endless without you.”

“Me too, Eddie. Please hurry to me, Eddie. I’ve picked a wedding dress and—”

“Easy, Kitten,” he smothered a groan. “We got to talk this thing over. I mean, something has come up. My deal fell through, and aunt Hilgred, she had to have emergency surgery.”

“The poor dear!”

“She had nobody else to turn to, Kitten. I had to do what I could.”

“Of course you did, Eddie.”

“So I wired a loan from a character named Fleschetti who sends out shivs to do his collecting. And I love you too much, baby, to have you see me if I was ugly. Like, with all my teeth missing or an ear lopped off.