Called by a Panther Read online

  The curious thing about it all was that the longer it went on, the more sympathetic the general public became to the “terrorists.”

  Oh, the idea of bombers in Indianapolis . . . That was awful. Terrifying. The people responsible had to be nuts and the longer it went on, the more frustrated they would become. It was only a matter of time, surely, before the bombs started getting wired up. Before they started going off. Before they started killing people.

  It would end in grief. Had to.

  But meanwhile the irreverence reflex that jerks whenever people are told the same thing too many times had led to a growing undercurrent of civic pride: our bombers didn't hurt anybody, got their message out and still hadn't been caught.

  There was no diminishment in the massing of the forces of law and order, but meanwhile the bombers were hot. They were a sporting event. If there'd been someplace to go and watch. Mom would have been there.

  This time the Scum Front had managed to leave their contribution in one of the “Pyramids”—three bizarre eleven-story office buildings up north.

  How did they get one in there?

  As before, a warning was issued and the bomb had been recovered without an explosion. Channel 43, “Environment TV,” on the Cab-Co cable system had, again, been the vehicle by which information was given to the police.

  From the timing to hit the Sunday papers, it was obvious that the Chief had already known about this week's bomb at the Saturday night party.

  But I didn't read all the bomber stories. The psychological profiles, the speculation about Middle Eastern connections, the analyses of their “demands.”

  I had something else to read in this week's paper.

  Finally I found it: Dust off that family skeleton today. Albert Samson, Private Investigator.

  Appearing bare like that, boxed at the bottom of a page, it didn't look nearly as amusing to me as when I'd placed it.

  Maybe the youthful Frank was right. Maybe my advertising campaign did need more pizzazz, more client targeting. More other stuff I couldn't remember.

  And then there was a knock at the door.

  But it couldn't be Frank, my woman's immature daughter's immature fiancé. The filmmaker. Who was making “industrials”—commercials to you and me—thereby learning his craft so he would be ready for his big break when Hollywood called.

  Because it wasn't three yet. Was it?

  The doorbell rang.

  I did not feel like talking to Frank about the virtues and power of television advertising. Even if that was the way Go-for-It Detectives went for it on a Sunday afternoon.

  Even if it did guarantee my woman some time alone with the headstrong daughter, time for her to deliver the latest barrage of “But Lucy's.” “But Lucy, marriage has life-affecting implications that aren't immediately obvious . . .” “But Lucy, what's wrong with just shacking up with the guy for five or ten years first . . .?”

  Keep taking them pills, hon . . .

  The bell rang again.

  Chapter Four

  FRANK WAS BIG AND GAWKY and square-jawed and the worst thing about him was that he believed what he was saying.

  He shook my hand like there was an off chance he could get oil to flow. He stared unblinkingly into my eyes. He exuded idiot competence and confidence. I could tell immediately why my woman hated him and why Lucy loved him. And green eyes. He had eyes that truly looked green. Or was that because of the money he hoped to make?

  “Albert,” he said, “I've been working really hard on your product concept. It's been a challenge, but I really feel that I can fill in the concept sink that your customer interface material is suffering from.”

  Oh dear, oh dear.

  “I've got a number of options to present to you, but let me tell you now I think we really need to go in hard, so some of the suggestions I am going to make will exceed the initial budget concept you gave me. But it will really be worth it, it really will. I really want you to trust me on this one because it's really exciting me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Albert, you are at the cutting edge in your business. There simply aren't any other TV ads for private investigation services in Indianapolis at this point in time. The other agencies, large and small, are all taking passive profiles, so that opens the road to an aggressive attack, wide as the Grand Canyon.”

  “Oh.”

  “If we can establish your ads with distinctive image and flair, then you will have the opportunity to establish yourself as the brand name in your field in Indianapolis. Think about it. People won't say to themselves, `I need a private detective.' They'll say, `I need an Albert Samson.’ ”

  “You want to make me into a Jello?”

  “That's right! Isn't it great!”

  Oh dear, oh dear.

  But I had promised to give the kid some rope.

  “That's an idea, Frank.”

  “It really is, isn't it? But it does mean, Albert, that you've got to get into television right away! In absolutely as big a way as you can afford. I know that as an undercapitalized service industry, you are likely to be reluctant to take on a large advertising commitment, but now is the time! Hock the family jewels. It will pay for itself in no time, I'm sure it will. I've mapped out a campaign for a series of short, interrelated commercials. Realistically I think we'll have to start with them on Cab-Co, because Cab-Co represents the best value in television advertising available in the city.”

  “You mean it's cheap.”

  “For television advertising, yes.”

  The kid obviously didn't value my jewels very highly.

  “And it's offering some very good multichannel packages. Do you know much about Cab-Co?”

  I hesitated.

  Frank told me how Cab-Co was breaking the mold of the cable-TV business. How the fact that it had been given a franchise at all showed that it was something special. How to survive it had to compete aggressively and offer great deals to advertisers.

  And there was a degree of logic to what Frank said.

  Cable television in Indianapolis used to be doughnut-shaped. One company served the doughnut, another the hole. But suddenly local officials had eliminated the monopoly status of doughnut and hole and gave permission to a third company to compete throughout the complete pastry area.

  When the new franchise was awarded it caused a stink, because another Indianapolis-based cable system operator, Omega, had made national news a few years before by trying in court to force the city to do exactly what it had now done of its own free will.

  But Cab-Co won the new franchise because it had promised local programming and per-subscriber royalties far beyond levels that any other cable company would consider. Nobody in the trade believed that Cab-Co could survive, but operations began with a flourish in January. The subscriber jury of natural selection was still out, though Cab-Co's owner, Hershel Morgason—a Minnesotan who had married into a monied Indianapolis family—claimed loudly that he was “well on target.”

  “It's a special time for television in Indianapolis,” Frank said. “You have chosen to make your big move at exactly the right moment. You really have.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Albert, do you even know the full range of services that you offer?”

  “Well,” I said.

  “I've been drawing up a list of all the things that a private investigator can legitimately claim to make available to Napoleon and Josephine Public. And it's impressive, truly impressive.”

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his inside jacket and winked at me as he unfolded it. He began to read. “Security consultancy. Company background. Personnel evaluation. Litigation research. Insurance claims and fraud investigation. Surveillance. Executive and VIP personal protection. Creditworthiness. Political risk analysis. Accident reconstruction. Photography. Undercover operations. Missing persons investigations. Divorce research. Juvenile reconstructive work. Evidence acquisition for personal or court use. Theft recovery. Ballistics, voice prints, lie
detection. Asset location. Electronic measures and countermeasures. Witness interviewing. Personal escort services. Adoption inquiries. Fraud, conspiracy and corruption investigation. Patent infringement investigation. Repossession. Courier service. Liquidation proceedings. Data control. Acquisition and merger research.”

  Frank put his list down. He smiled. He said, “Albert, you are awesome!”

  I said nothing.

  “The beauty part,” Frank said, “is that you are a one-man operation. That's what's going to make selling you so easy. You are not anonymous and impersonal. When people call your number wanting to hire an Albert Samson, they're going to get through to Albert Samson! You don't even have a receptionist. People are going to be knocked out by that. You are the real article. All natural, no preservatives. You are a certified organic, no chemicals added, whole-food private eye and once we get started, nobody is going to want anything less.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “What are you charging?”

  I told him my new rates, established when I remodeled the rooms above the luncheonette and began to think of advertising. Rates that also allowed me to subcontract work, if I got too busy.

  “Double them,” he said.

  Then he pulled out the storyboards he had prepared. Short spots, featuring me.

  “Hang on, Frank. I don't know how to sell stuff on television.”

  “It's got to be you, Albert. You're the product!”

  “But—”

  “Look at this.”

  We looked.

  “The commercial starts with an actor. He's middle-aged. He's overweight. He has five o'clock shadow. There he is, standing in front of an acre of used cars. He begins his spiel about how he's going to pay people to take his cars away. While he's talking, we fade down what he's saying and at the same time we draw back and, look! He's on television! And then you walk on in front of the set and say, `Would you buy a used car from this man?' You pause, to let the question sink in. Then you say, `Let me find out if he's honest before you risk your money.' See, we've used the word 'honest' and people will associate that with you. Then we bring up your logo, name, address and phone.”

  “My logo?”

  “And through the whole thing we are running a crawl that lists all the things you can do for people. We'll run that on the bottom of each commercial. It'll be magical!”

  He stood back. He stared at me with those bright green eyes. He said, “Trust me, Albert. I know we can do it.”

  And for a moment, just a moment, I believed.

  Chapter Five

  FRANK LEFT AT FOUR-THIRTY. I had commissioned him to draw up specific plans for a quintupled budget.

  Well, I did have the Charlotte Vivien money.

  But when he was gone I sat down at my desk and returned to the world I knew. I could hardly believe what I had done.

  Yet wasn't the whole idea to end having to scratch for work, once and for all? And if I really made an effort to become a Go-for-It Detective, then maybe, just maybe . . .

  The clock said I should be hungry, but I didn't feel like eating. I turned on the television: PBS, no commercials. I watched a cranky commentator argue that as carbon dioxide globally warmed the earth, people would need less heat in the winter, would therefore burn less fossil fuel and would therefore produce less carbon dioxide so in the end the balance would correct itself. So we didn't need to worry about it now after all.

  I tried to heal.

  He had just gotten to me when I was weak, Frank.

  And I hadn't done anything irreversible.

  And by occupying Frank I had given my woman a fair crack at the fair Lucy.

  Persuasive broad, my woman.

  Besides, she would probably approve of what I had done. We could go out, celebrate. Take in a movie.

  My fantasies were interrupted. I heard footsteps on the stairs to the office.

  I couldn't believe it at first.

  Five-thirty. There was no reasonable explanation as to who it might be.

  Yet one does not climb a flight of metal steps signposted “To the Detective” by mistake. Even the neon sign gets rested on the Sabbath.

  Then the footsteps stopped. They rang my bell. The bell that is connected to the button below the brass plate that said, “Albert Samson, Private Investigator.”

  Not, surely, a client. No beleaguered Hoosier could expect aid or succor. Or security consultancy, personnel evaluation, litigation research, surveillance, VIP protection, political risk analysis or juvenile reconstructive work. Not on a Sunday.

  You can't even get beer in Indiana on a Sunday.

  Yet the evidence of a presence was irrefutable.

  I answered the door.

  Standing outside was a thin angular man with a shock of dark hair that half obscured his face. There was no obscuring the fact that it was Quentin, the party Brit.

  I was too astonished to speak.

  He wasn't. He said, “How was it for you?”

  I stared at him.

  “The party. Did you enjoy any of it?”

  Since the party had been unspeakable, I said nothing. “Look,” he said, “sorry if you're not feeling jolly, but may I come in?”

  “What do you want?”

  “To hire you,” he said.

  “Hire me? What for?”

  “I don't mean to be a nuisance, old chap, but it is rather important.”

  Oh well.

  I stepped aside and he entered. In the middle of the room he shook his head so that for a moment he had the use of both eyes. He glanced around but then said to me, “I knew it when I saw you working so manfully through that awful murder script of mine.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That you were someone I could talk to. A soulmate.”

  I waited, but it was not a good day for testing my patience.

  “In England, you know, Albert is a name used by members of the working class and by princes.”

  “In Indiana, Albert is a name used by tired private detectives who don't like their Sundays interrupted. If you have something to say, please get on with it.”

  He laughed his goosey laugh. He punched me on the shoulder, man to man. “I have something to say,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “I need you to help me murder my wife.”

  Chapter Six

  HE GRINNED AS I LOOKED at him. The expression was that of a pleased child.

  “Out,” I said.

  “No, no! It's all right, it really is. It's nothing illegal.”

  And for the first time I felt a spark of interest. It kindled the Go-for-It Detective in me enough to ask, “You want to hire me, as in money?”

  “Yes.”

  “American legal tender?”

  He sat in my Client's Chair and hummed to himself.

  The Go-for-It Detective unlocked his desk and found his organizer while he reflected on the “drunkard's walk” path that his life had followed to bring him to this moment. The Go-for-It Detective asked himself yet again whether money was really worth what it cost to earn it. But then the Go-for-It Detective thought about the face he would lose with his woman if he turned away a paying client without hearing him out.

  I said, “You'd better explain what this is about.”

  “The first thing you have to understand is that I am a poet.” Quentin rocked back in the chair and flopped his hair away from his face for a moment once again.

  The accumulating stress got to me.

  I said, “Name, I. M. A. Poet. Now, Mr. Poet, I understand that you want me to bump off a troublesome spouse. How would you like that done? Poison? Hanging? Bazooka? The real issue is whether you want her put out of her misery quickly or whether you want it to be long and agonizing. If the latter, perhaps I could recommend a death by natural causes because I can't think of anything that could make her suffer more than death by lingering marriage to a jerk-off like you.

  Quentin leaned forward at this. The hair fell back over his face and I wondered if wat
ching it would hypnotize me. “Please, Albert!” he said. “I need your help.”

  I waited.

  “I am a poet,” he said. “Not exactly honoured in my own land, but not a nobody. I also have a little inherited money. And as the proverb has it, money makes the mare go, so I have been able to devote myself fully to my art, provided I restrain any desire for personal luxury.”

  He squirmed to establish the luxury of greater comfort in the chair.

  I said, “Go on.”

  “A year or so ago one of my verse collections fell into the hands of Mrs. Charlotte Vivien. Charlotte isn't sophisticated in the ways of poetry but she knows what she likes.”

  “And she liked your poems?”

  “Happily, yes,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Charlotte, as you undoubtedly know, is extremely wealthy in her widowhood and that allows her to indulge her fancies. She set the machinery going that brought me to Indianapolis. I am now entering the fifth month of an extended writer's residency. I do a few workshops, in libraries and high schools, but mostly I just write.”

  “That sounds pretty comfortable. So what's the problem?”

  “My problem is that I have fallen in love.”

  This was not what I expected. I'd been thinking more in the territory of, say, gambling debts.

  “To be in love!” He stretched his arms out and looked to the heavens. Well, to my ceiling. But he looked for the first time like poets are supposed to look. “That is the last thing I ever expected to say about an American woman.”

  “Who exactly are you in love with?”

  “With Charlotte, of course. Wasn't it obvious last night?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Ah, you were much too engrossed in the humiliating performance you had been engaged to give.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You did it beautifully, I thought. You gave off the most impressive aura of world-weary hackdom, the honest journeyman reduced to extreme expedients but retaining enough dignity not to sell out completely. They can buy my body but not my heart. I thought that your sneeze into the fingerprinting powder was a moment of minor genius. A brilliant piece of theatre which said, `I may be a trained monkey but you can't make me do it your way.’ ”