Time to Murder and Create

Chapter 4

At four thirty that afternoon I was in a reception room on the twenty-second floor of a glass and steel office building on Park Avenue in the high Forties. The receptionist and I had the room to ourselves. She was behind a U-shaped ebony desk. She was a shade lighter than the desk, and she wore her hair in a tight-cropped Afro. I sat on a vinyl couch the same color as the desk. The small white parson’s table beside it was sparsely covered with magazines: Architectural Forum, Scientific American, a couple different golf magazines, last week’s Sports Illustrated. I didn’t think any of them would tell me anything I wanted to know, so I left them where they were and looked at the small oil on the far wall. It was an amateurish seascape with a great many small boats cavorting on a turbulent ocean. Men leaned over the sides of the boat in the foreground. They seemed to be vomiting, but it was hard to believe the artist had intended it that way.

“Mrs. Prager painted that,” the girl said. “His wife?”

“It’s interesting.”

“All those in his office, she painted them, too. It must be wonderful to have a talent like that.”

“It must be.”

“And she never had a lesson in her life.”

The receptionist found this more remarkable than I did. I wondered when Mrs. Prager had taken up painting. After her children were grown, I supposed. There were three Prager children: a boy in medical school at the University of Buffalo, a married daughter in California, and the youngest, Stacy. They had all left the nest now, and Mrs. Prager lived in a landlocked house in Rye and painted stormy seascapes.

“He’s off the phone now,” the girl said. “I didn’t get your name, I’m afraid.”

“Matthew Scudder,” I said.

She buzzed him to announce my presence. I hadn’t expected the name would mean anything to him, and it evidently didn’t, because she asked me what my visit was in reference to.

“I’m representing the Michael Litvak project.”

If that registered, Prager wasn’t letting on. She conveyed his continued puzzlement. “The Hit-and-Run Cooperative,” I said. “The Michael Litvak project. It’s a confidential matter, I’m sure he’ll want to see me.”

I was sure he wouldn’t want to see me at all, actually, but she repeated my words and he couldn’t really avoid it. “He’ll see you now,” she said, and nodded her curly little head at a door marked PRIVATE.

His office was spacious, the far wall all glass with a rather impressive view of a city that looks better the higher up you go. The decor was traditional, in sharp contrast to the harsh modern furnishings of the reception room. The walls were paneled in dark wood — individual boards, not the plywood stuff. The carpet was the color of tawny port wine. There were a lot of pictures on the walls, all of them seascapes, all unmistakably the work of Mrs. Henry Prager.

I had seen his picture in the papers I’d scanned in the microfilm room at the library. Just head-and-shoulder shots, but they had prepared me for a larger man than the one who now stood up behind the broad leather-topped desk. And the face in the Bachrach photo had beamed with calm assurance. Now it was lined with apprehension pinned in place by caution. I approached the desk, and we stood looking each other over. He seemed to be considering whether or not to offer his hand. He decided against it.

He said, “Your name is Scudder?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not sure what you want.”

Neither was I. There was a red leather chair with wooden arms near the desk. I pulled it up and sat in it while he was still on his feet. He hesitated a moment, then seated himself. I waited for a few seconds on the off chance that he might have something to say. But he was pretty good at waiting.

I said, “I mentioned a name before. Michael Litvak.”

“I don’t know the name.”

“Then I’ll mention another. Jacob Jablon.”

“I don’t know that name, either.”

“Don’t you? Mr. Jablon was an associate of mine. We did some business together.”

“What kind of business would that be?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Nothing as successful as your line of work, I’m afraid. You’re an architectural consultant?”

“That’s correct.”

“Large-scale projects. Housing developments, office buildings, that sort of thing.”

“That’s hardly classified information, Mr. Scudder.”

“It must pay well.”

He looked at me.

“Actually, the phrase you just used. ‘Classified information.’ That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

“My associate Mr. Jablon had to leave town abruptly.”

“I don’t see how—”

“He retired,” I said. “He was a man who worked hard all his life, Mr. Prager, and he came into a sum of money, you see, and he retired.”

“Perhaps you could come to the point.”

I took a silver dollar out of my pocket and gave it a spin, but, unlike Spinner, I kept my eyes on Prager’s face instead of on the coin. He could have taken that face to any poker game in town and done just fine with it. Assuming he played his cards right.

“You don’t see many of these,” I said. “I went into a bank a couple of hours ago and tried to buy one. They just stared at me and then told me to go see a coin dealer. I thought a dollar was a dollar, you know? That’s the way it used to be. It seems the silver content alone in these things is worth two or three bucks, and the collector value is even higher. I had to pay seven dollars for this thing, believe it or not.”

“Why did you want it?”

“Just for luck. Mr. Jablon has a coin just like this one. Or at least it looked the same to me. I’m not a numismatist. That’s a coin expert.”

“I know what a numismatist is.”

“Well, I only found that out today, while I was finding out that a dollar’s not a dollar any more. Mr. Jablon could have saved me seven bucks if he’d left his dollar with me when he went out of town. But he left me something else that’s probably worth a little more than seven dollars. See, he gave me this envelope full of papers and things. Some of them have your name on them. And your daughter’s name, and some other names I mentioned. Michael Litvak, for example, but that’s not a name you recognize, is it?”

The dollar had stopped spinning. Spinner had always snatched it up when it started to wobble, but I just let it drop. It landed heads.

“I thought since those papers had your name on them, along with those other names, I thought you might like to own them.”

He didn’t say anything, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I picked up the silver dollar and gave it another spin. This time we both watched it. It stayed spinning for quite a while on the leather desk top. Then it glanced off a photograph in a silver frame, wobbled uncertainly, and landed heads again.

Prager picked up his desk phone and pushed a buzzer. He said, “That’s all for today, Shari. Just put the machine on and go ahead home.” Then, after a pause: “No, they can wait, I’ll sign them tomorrow. You can head along home now. Fine.”

Neither of us spoke until the door of the outer office opened and closed. Then Prager leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his shirt front. He was a rather plump man, but there was no spare flesh on his hands. They were slender, with long fingers.

He said, “I gather you want to take up where — what was his name?”

“Jablon.”

“Where Jablon took off.”

“Something like that.”

“I’m not a rich man, Mr. Scudder.”

“You’re not starving.”

“No,” he agreed. “I am not starving.” He looked past me for a moment, probably at a seascape. He said, “My daughter Stacy went through a difficult period in her life. In the course of it, she had a very unfortunate accident.”

“A little boy died.”

“A little boy died. At the risk of sounding callous, I’ll point out that that sort of thing happens all the time. Human beings — children, adults, what does it matter — people are killed accidentally every day.”

I thought of Estrellita Rivera with a bullet in her eye. I don’t know if anything showed in my face.

“Stacy’s situation — her culpability, if you want to call if that — stemmed not from the accident but from her response after the fact. She didn’t stop. If she had stopped, it would not have helped the boy at all. He was killed instantly.”

“Did she know that?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is that pertinent?”

“Probably not.”

“The accident… if she had stopped as she should have done, I’m sure she would have been exonerated. The boy rode his tricycle right off the curb in front of her.”

“I understand she was on drugs at the time.”

“If you want to call marijuana a drug.”

“It doesn’t matter what we call it, does it? Maybe she could have avoided the accident if she hadn’t been stoned. Or maybe she would have had the judgment to stop once she hit the kid. Not that it matters any more. She was high, and she did hit the boy, and she didn’t stop the car, and you managed to buy her off.”

“Was I wrong to do that, Scudder?”

“How do I know?”

“Do you have children?” I hesitated, then nodded. “What would you have done?”

I thought about my sons. They weren’t old enough to drive yet. Were they old enough to smoke marijuana? It was possible. And what would I do in Henry Prager’s place?

“Whatever I had to do,” I said. “To get them off.”

“Of course. Any father would.”

“It must have cost you a lot of money.”

“More than I could afford. But I couldn’t have afforded not to, you see.”

I picked up my silver dollar and looked at it. The date was 1878. It was a good deal older than I was, and had held up a lot better.

“I thought it was over,” he said. “It was a nightmare, but I managed to straighten everything out. The people I dealt with, they realized that Stacy was not a criminal. She was a good girl from a good family who went through a difficult period in life. That’s not uncommon, you know. They recognized that there was no reason to ruin a second life because a horrible accident had taken one life. And the experience — it’s awful to say this, but it helped Stacy. She grew as a result of it. She matured. She stopped using drugs, of course. And her life took on more purpose.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She’s in graduate school at Columbia. Psychology. She plans to work with mentally retarded children.”

“She’s what, twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two last month. She was nineteen at the time of the accident.”

“I suppose she has an apartment here in town?”

“That’s correct. Why?”

“No reason. She turned out all right, then.”

“All my children turned out well, Scudder. Stacy had a difficult year or two, that’s all.” His eyes sharpened their focus suddenly. “And how long do I have to pay for that one mistake? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“Well?”

“How deep did Jablon have the hook in you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What were you paying him?”

“I thought he was your associate.”

“It was a loose association. How much?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “The first time he came I gave him five thousand dollars. He gave the impression that one payment would be the end of it.”

“It never is.”

“So I understand. Then he came back a while later. He told me he needed more money. We finally put things on a business basis. So much a month.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand dollars a month.”

“You could afford that.”

“Not all that easily.” He managed a small smile. “I was hoping I could find a way to deduct it, you know. Charge it to the business in some fashion.”

“Did you find a way?”

“No. Why are you asking all this? Trying to determine just how much you can squeeze out of me?”

“No.”

“This whole conversation,” he said suddenly. “There’s something wrong with it. You don’t seem like a blackmailer.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. That man was a weasel, he was calculating, slimy. You’re calculating, but in a different way.”

“It takes all kinds.”

He stood up. “I won’t go on paying indefinitely,” he said. “I can’t live with a sword hanging over me. Damn it, I shouldn’t have to.”

“We’ll work something out.”

“I don’t want my daughter’s life ruined. But I won’t be bled to death.”

I picked up the silver dollar and put it in my pocket. I couldn’t make myself believe he had killed the Spinner, but at the same time I couldn’t positively rule him out, and I was getting sick of the role I was playing. I pushed my chair back and got to my feet.

“Well?”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said.

“How much is it going to cost me?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll pay you what I paid him. I won’t pay any more than that.”

“And how long will you pay me? Forever?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe I can figure out something that’ll make us both happy,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I do.”

“If you mean a single large payment, how could I trust you?”

“That’s one of the things that has to be worked out,” I said. “You’ll hear from me.”