Once a Mutt (Trace 5) Read online

“Not in so many words,” Trace said.

  “Not exactly, but the meaning was clear. Anyway, you can tell me all about it at dinner.”

  “Sounds good,” Trace said.

  “And I’ll see if I can find out anything about the Paddingtons.”

  “That sounds good too,” Trace said.

  “Are you staying in town?”

  “Ye Olde English Motel.”

  “What a dump,” Elvira said. “What room?”

  “Three-seventeen.”

  “I’ll call you at seven-thirty tonight and pick you up,” she said.

  “I could pick you up,” Trace said.

  “No. Somebody might see us and besides…”

  “Besides what?”

  “I wouldn’t want anybody I know to see me in a dark-blue Ford.”

  6

  At least Trace approved of the caliber of women in Westport, he thought as he waited in Adam Shapp’s law office, pretending to read a magazine and watching the lawyer’s receptionist.

  She was barely out of her teens and her skin seemed to sparkle. Probably in an effort to look more mature, her hair was pulled back tightly from her forehead and tied up in a bun and she wore large praying-mantis-like eyeglasses. But if the impression she wanted to give was one of all business, it hadn’t worked because she reminded Trace of one of those before-and-after scenes from a thirties’ movie where the librarian, prim and proper by day, rips off her glasses, lets down her hair, and at night stomps the stage at Minsky’s, bumping and grinding to the tune of “Let’s Do It in the Road.”

  It wasn’t just Westport either. All towns with a lot of money seemed to have more than their share of good-looking women. Was that cause or effect? Trace wondered. Did beautiful women naturally tend to towns where people were wealthy? That was cause. Or did women in rich towns have more time to spend making themselves and their children beautiful? That was effect.

  No way of knowing, Trace decided. That was the way life was. You passed through it and there were a lot of things that you wondered about and were never able to get answers to. Like why store clerks with acne were always rude. Why Alka-Seltzer fizzed when it got wet. How anyone ever learned to speak German. You left the world as dumb as when you arrived. The only difference was that you wore clothes when leaving.

  He looked away from the receptionist and took up a back copy of a psychology magazine. It flipped open to a page in which a postcard had been inserted, soliciting readers’ answers to a survey. Trace read the survey question:

  “If you were the President of the United States and the U.S. was losing a war and the only way you could avert defeat was to launch a nuclear strike, knowing that such a strike would prompt a retaliatory response, would you use nuclear weapons?”

  What a stupid question, Trace thought. What kind of war was the U.S. losing? What would happen to the U.S. if it lost the war? How could you make a decision without knowing the answers to those questions?

  He got up and took a pen from a wooden cup on the receptionist’s desk and came back to fill in the card.

  He marked the box that read, “Yes, I would use nuclear weapons.” Beneath it was a space for “Explain your actions.”

  “Because I like to kill people,” Trace wrote.

  He thought about it for a while, then filled in the name of Michiko Mangini and their address in Las Vegas. Maybe they would send someone to interview her and annoy her. That would serve her right.

  Suppose they sent her a free subscription for having the best answer? If they did, he’d make sure the subscription was transferred to him. He’d start watching the mail just to be sure. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to the mail lately.

  “Mr. Tracy.”

  Trace looked up and the receptionist said, “Mr. Shapp will see you now.” Trace nodded, put down the magazine, but stuck the postcard in his pocket. He walked toward the heavy mahogany door in the rear of the office.

  “Mr. Tracy?” the receptionist said again.

  “Yes?”

  “The pen, please?”

  “Oh. Heh, heh.” He took the ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket and handed it back to her. “Just forgot, I guess.”

  “I’m glad I remembered for the two of us,” she said.

  Snotty little twerp, he thought. Thinking that he would try to steal a cheap ballpoint pen.

  Adam Shapp was younger than Trace had expected. The tall blond man who hadn’t seen thirty yet was standing at his bank of office windows, looking out over the Post Road. As he turned, Trace saw he was wearing a three-piece gray suit with a Phi Beta Kappa key hanging from the vest. He was tan and his light-blond hair was trimmed neatly and he had light ice-blue eyes. He looked as if he should be playing at Wimbledon, not hanging around a law office.

  He smiled as he stepped forward to shake Trace’s hand. He was almost as tall as Trace and looked to be in a lot better shape. He was probably rich too, Trace thought. Young and rich and tan and smart and handsome. The boy from Ipanema. Hell, he probably had inherited a bank in Ipanema. He probably never had had to raise ten thousand dollars in a hurry to keep a restaurant deal alive to secure his future. Trace had a powerful urge to punch him, even while the lawyer’s hand was extended in friendship. Aaaah, he was probably a black-belt karate expert too and Trace would wind up getting his ass kicked. He settled for shaking his hand.

  “How are you, Mr. Tracy?” the young man said. “Please sit down.”

  Trace plopped into a chair facing the attorney’s desk.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Something else?”

  “What does something else consist of?” Trace asked.

  “Tea. Herbal tea. Bouillon. Maybe we’ve got some diet Coke.”

  “I’ve always regarded my body as a temple, Mr. Shapp. I wouldn’t put any of that junk in it.”

  The lawyer nodded and pressed the intercom button. “Sandy. Black coffee, please. Yes, just one.”

  He arranged Trace’s business card neatly in the center of his desk blotter, looked at it again, then up at Trace. “I expect you’re here to talk about Mrs. Paddington and her petition to the courts?”

  Trace nodded.

  “We’ve got a court date in…let’s see.” Shapp opened a red leather-covered date book and skimmed through the pages. “In three weeks. Mr. Paddington will be legally declared dead then. So what can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking into Mr. Paddington’s disappearance.”

  “You too? Your company had detectives doing that for a couple of weeks. Didn’t they find out enough?”

  “I guess not,” Trace said. “Anyway, I’m like the last big gun they like to fire before they give up. Hope to frighten away the enemy troops. And if they don’t run, then we surrender.”

  “It’s really kind of annoying, you know,” Shapp said as he sat down. “The case is very simple and you would think your company would stop fooling around and start writing the check.”

  “They hate to part with money,” Trace said. “It’s all Walters Marks’ fault.”

  “Who’s Walter Marks?” Shapp asked.

  “He’s the vice-president for claims. He thinks that anybody who carries more than a thousand dollars’ insurance only took out the policy to defraud old Gone Fishing.”

  “Gone Fishing? Oh, Garrison Fidelity. Okay. Remind me never to buy any insurance from Walter Marks.”

  “I’ll send you a note every couple of months,” Trace promised.

  Sandy, the receptionist, came in, carrying a cup of coffee, in a real cup, on a real saucer, on a wooden tray. She put it down squarely atop Trace’s business card.

  “Thanks, Sandy,” Shapp said.

  “Keep your eye on your pens, Mr. Shapp,” she said, and smiled toward Trace as she walked out.

  “What did that mean?” Shapp asked him.

  “She caught me trying to lift one of her pens,” Trace said. “I didn’t know it was such a matter of pride with her.”
/>   “You’re lucky you didn’t go after the paper clips. The cops would have been called,” the young lawyer said. He sipped at his coffee and looked at Trace as if inviting a question.

  “Will Mrs. Paddington be able to testify at the hearing?” Trace asked.

  “If it’s necessary, I imagine so. It probably won’t be.”

  “I got the impression she was pretty much of an invalid.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “This afternoon,” Trace said.

  “Well, she’s obviously not in the best of health. But if your company wastes our time and she has to go to court, she’s got those two people to bring her.”

  “Ferdinand and Maggie?” Trace said.

  “Right. The loyal retainers,” Shapp said.

  “What do you think of Mrs. Paddington?” Trace asked.

  “She’s an arsonist, a cold-blooded murderer, and a pathological liar,” Shapp said. “Come on, Tracy. She’s my client. What the hell am I supposed to think about her? She’s a poor woman with a dead husband and she wants her insurance money. She’ll probably spend it all on cat food or something. Do I think she’s playing with a full deck? I don’t know, the allure of animals hasn’t ever reached me. But this is all cut and dried, so I’m going to do my job, take my fee, and be done with it.”

  “Me too,” Trace said. “How’d Mrs. Paddington happen to retain you?”

  “Yellow Pages, I guess. I didn’t ask. I hardly ever reject clients because they don’t come with letters of introduction.”

  “You think this is just going to breeze through court, don’t you?” Trace asked.

  “It’s just a formality. It’s done every day. The only thing that makes this different is your company’s going to have to cough up two million dollars. Insurance companies ought to pay. That’s what they’re in business for.”

  “You tell that to Mrs. Paddington?”

  “Sure.”

  “You talk to her a lot?” Trace asked.

  “Not much. Once in a while on the phone. She types me little notes when she wants to remind me of something. I wouldn’t call us real close.”

  “How about Mr. Paddington? What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing except that he’s dead,” Shapp said. “What’d he do, make his money in pooper-scoopers or something, right? And then from Mrs. Paddington, I get that he was harmless enough. Big in save the animals. His plane goes down when, what, what’s he trying to do, save the harp seal or the woolly mastodon or whatever it is? What do I know about him? That’s about it.”

  “Not an animal lover? It’s hard to believe,” Trace said.

  “Hey, just because I live in this sappy town, don’t think I buy all this trendy crap. Save the seals, natural childbirth, bean sprouts, tofu, raw fish, it’s all bullshit.”

  “You don’t think there’s a chance that Paddington’s hiding out somewhere?” Trace asked.

  “You’ve been reading too many detective novels, Mr. Tracy. First of all, the Paddingtons are wealthy. I don’t think they’ve been spending the last seven years trying to figure out how to rip off What-his-name?”

  “Walter Marks. Write it down. Send him a nasty note,” Trace suggested.

  “Yeah. Walter Marks. They don’t need the hassle or the money.”

  “Do you know who Mrs. Paddington’s doctor is?” Trace asked.

  “No. It never came up. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Trace said honestly. “Maybe somebody’ll tell me this is the tenth husband she’s buried. Something like that.”

  “Good luck,” Shapp said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you think the Paddingtons got along?” Trace asked.

  “I never met him, but she thinks he was a saint. I’m surprised she didn’t build a shrine to him in the yard. Anything else?”

  “How do you stay so thin?” Trace asked.

  “Being young. I’ll worry about middle-aged spread in middle age.”

  As Trace got up, Shapp asked, “What do you do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Trace said. “I’m going to have to hang around ’cause I need to justify my existence. Unless you’ve got ten thousand dollars you want to lend me.”

  “I don’t think so. Are you going to make ten thousand dollars just for looking around?”

  “Only if I find something.”

  “You’re out of luck, then. What do you need the ten thousand for? Or is it personal?”

  “I own a piece of this restaurant at the Jersey shore. It suffered some storm damage and I’ve got to come up with repair money. You interested? I could make you a good deal.”

  “Not me. I don’t trust restaurants. Did you know that seventy-five percent of all restaurants fail?”

  “Is everybody I meet subscribing to the same clipping service? I can’t turn around without somebody telling me that my restaurant’s going to go belly-up.”

  “Sorry. Those are the brutal facts,” Shapp said.

  “I’m staying in the deal,” Trace said stubbornly.

  “If you need a good lawyer to get you out of the deal, keep me in mind,” Shapp said.

  Sandy was not at the reception desk when Trace left. He stole all the ballpoint pens from the penholder.

  7

  “Hello, Ed. How’s the storm damage?”

  “Still damaged. Where’s the fourteen thousand dollars?”

  “Hold, hold, hold, and hold,” Trace said. “Fourteen thousand?”

  “Your share of the repairs.”

  “Holy Mary, Mother of Gawd,” Trace said. “I talked to you a couple of days ago and it was ten thousand dollars.”

  “It was ten, maybe twelve. Now it’s fourteen. We just got estimates on the work that’s got to be done before we can open.”

  “Get new estimates,” Trace said. “Better yet, it’s fucking water damage, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Ed said.

  “Then buy a bunch of mops, hire a bunch of college kids. Don’t pay them more than three bucks an hour. Have them mop up the water. Buy two sunlamps to dry the place out. It shouldn’t cost but two hundred dollars and I’ll have my forty bucks in the mail to you tomorrow.”

  “Very funny,” Ed said.

  “Did you hear anybody chuckling on this end?” Trace said. “What the hell can a storm damage? The building didn’t fall down, did it?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then mop and dry it.”

  “You can’t mop and dry a ruined electrical system. A burned-out boiler. An air-conditioner that’s got to be rebuilt. A monitoring system for the bar that’s got water in the lines. Your share’s fourteen thousand dollars.”

  “What the hell kind of investment is this?” Trace demanded. “You said this was going to be something for my old age. A steady regular income that would last me the rest of my life, and now the freaking place isn’t even open yet and it’s already driving me to the poorhouse.”

  “Sorry, Trace, but we’ve got to get these repairs done to get our certificate of occupancy. You can’t open a restaurant without one. As soon as we’re open, the money’ll come pouring in.”

  “You’re a pain in my ass,” Trace said. “I want out. You want to buy me out?”

  “I don’t have the money right now,” Ed said.

  “How about one of the other partners? Hell, they’re all going to get rich, right? Tell them buy me out and they’ll get twice as rich.”

  “No interest there.”

  “How do you know that?” Trace asked suspiciously. “How do you know nobody wants to buy me out when I just asked you this very minute?”

  “I have a sense of what the other partners think.”

  “How’d you get such a well-developed sense of what other people think?” Trace said.

  “Actually, I’ve checked with the other partners. Just in case.”

  “You son of a bitch, you’re trying to sell out your own shares, aren’t you?” Trace shouted into the telephone.

  “Calm down. Aren’t we fri
ends?”

  “I thought we were until this, you goddamn pirate,” Trace said.

  “I was just trying to gauge what our other partners were thinking,” Ed said.

  “Gauge this,” Trace said. “You’re not getting any fourteen thousand from me. Not a penny more than ten thousand.”

  “When can I have it?”

  “Hold it. My share’s fourteen, but I offer you ten and you’re willing to take it? What the hell kind of estimate was it you got for repairs anyway? You’re a thief.”

  “If I get ten from you, I can pay the repair people a partial payment. Maybe I can hold them off for the rest until the place opens,” Ed said.

  “Maybe they’ll take the fee in free dinners and do the job for no cash,” Trace said.

  “I’m hurt, Trace,” the other man said. “I bet you think that this is easy for me.”

  “Easy or hard, I don’t care. But I never thought it was real hard to waste other people’s money. Christ, the Third World does it all the time.”

  “I need at least ten thousand dollars’ good-faith money from you. When can I have it?”

  “What happens if you don’t get it?” Trace asked.

  “We renege on our notes. We never open. The bank forecloses. They sell the place at auction.”

  “Cut the crap. What really happens?”

  “You get back maybe a dime on a dollar on the money you already put in. When can I have the ten-thousand-dollar down payment?”

  “I’m working on it,” Trace said.

  “Work real fast. I need it right away. I’d hate to see you go down on this deal. Particularly when just a few more dollars and it’s all broad sunlit highways for the rest of our lives.”

  “Yeah, rolling right to the poorhouse gates,” Trace growled as he slammed down the telephone.

  Trace lit another cigarette even though he had one burning in the ashtray. The maid had removed his butt can and he went into the bathroom, poured water again into the bottom of the wastepaper basket, brought it outside, and set it next to the bed. He stubbed out both cigarettes burning in the ashtray, dumped their remains into the butt can, and lit another cigarette.

  Being an entrepreneur was a lousy way to try to make a living, he thought. All his good ideas—and there were a lot of them—always required a lot of start-up money and he never had enough. He had never had any money when he was an accountant, and now that he worked for Garrison Fidelity, he didn’t have any more.