LITMIR.BIZ

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and Jeff had stationed themselves between me and the door. They kept silent but they were looking awfully pleased with themselves.

      Grimaldi pushed an envelope across the desk toward me. It was of the same formidable stock as the letter I’d received from the snooty messenger an hour earlier. I deposited my papers on the desk, opened the envelope, and beheld a cheque payable to Matthew Wansborough in the amount I’d now committed to memory, $324,592.17.

      “Great,” I said. “Well, that’ll make it time for me to run along. I expect you gentlemen have chores to do.”

      In the deepest place in my heart, I didn’t believe I’d get off that easy. But it was worth a try.

      Grimaldi said, “Put the cheque back on the desk.”

      “Of course,” I said. “You’ll want to review my documentation first.”

      I returned the cheque and took two steps in the direction of the leather sofa under the LeRoy Neiman art work.

      “Not there,” Grimaldi said. “Downstairs.”

      Grimaldi hadn’t raised his voice from the moment I arrived in the Ace building. He conveyed authority with his tone. Low, husky, hard like nails. I was beginning to think Annie’s adjective didn’t come close to describing Grimaldi in his present state. He was more terrifying than menacing.

      “I need ten, fifteen minutes alone with this stuff, Jerry,” Grimaldi said. He was talking to the bearded guy. “You and Nicky take Crang downstairs.”

      Jerry and Nicky? What happened to Spike and Butch? As bad guys’ names went, Jerry and Nicky didn’t pack much punch. The thought didn’t make me any less apprehensive.

      Jerry led the way out of Grimaldi’s office, I was in the middle, and Nicky brought up the rear. We walked along the hall and down the stairs past the time cards and the door to the outside and into the drivers’ clubroom in the basement. Jerry was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. This one had “Van Halen” printed across the front. Another puzzle. Was Van Halen the guy or the band? Or perhaps both? Nicky had on a lumberjack’s outfit. Checkered shirt, thick brown pants, heavy boots. His face was gaunt and pockmarked. He was about as tall, though not as husky, as the average NBA point guard, about six three or six four. There was nothing about Nicky or Jerry that gave me comfort. The three of us sat at one of the basement tables.

      “Well, fellas,” I said, “what say we let bygones be bygones?”

      Jerry laughed. Not a pretty sound.

      “We’re gonna bygone you, asshole,” Nicky said to me. He had a high-pitched voice.

      Jerry laughed again.

      “That’s good,” he said to Nicky. “Bygone him. Bye, bye.”

      “Gone, gone,” Nicky said.

      I had Abbott and Costello for babysitters.

      Ten minutes went by. Slowly for me. Jerry and Nicky tried more plays on words at my expense. None rose to the heights of the bygone routine. Nicky shuffled the deck of cards on the table. He had a nimble touch. He kept on shuffling until the action became mesmerizing and tedious.

      Jerry got up and took two paper bags out of a locker. The larger bag had two submarine sandwiches. Power lunch. Jerry sat at the table and chewed on one of the subs. The second bag, much smaller, made a clunking sound when Jerry dropped it on the tabletop. Something heavy in there. Nicky ended his shuffling game and, almost idly, picked up the second and smaller bag and let the contents slide out.

      I’d seen most of the contents twice before.

      On the table, out of the paper bag, rested a gold chain made of thick links, a gold bracelet, gold earrings shaped like little seashells, a gold Hermès lighter. There was more jewellery, all of it gold and valuable. It was the late Alice Brackley’s collection.

      “Nice stuff, eh?” Nicky said to me. “Worth plenty.”

      “Yeah,” I said. My voice was a croak. “Very nice, Nicky.”

      Something inside my head began to swim around, and for a moment I felt faint. These two clowns were killers. It was Jerry and Nicky who’d smacked Alice Brackley. I gripped the edge of the table and waited for the weak spell to go away.

      31

      GRIMALDI HAD THE PAPER I’d brought him separated into two piles on his desk. The division was obvious: copies of the invoices on one side, Harry Hein’s computer printouts on the other.

      “You got access to a computer, Crang?” Grimaldi asked me. “And if you don’t, who was it analyzed the numbers on these invoices?”

      The four of us had reassembled in the president’s office. Grimaldi sat behind the desk, Jerry and Nicky flanked the door, and I stood in the middle. My position cast me in the role of the supplicant.

      “I have many skills,” I answered, inventing a new skill for myself on the spot. “Firing up a computer is only the most recently acquired.”

      “The concern I got,” Grimaldi said, “is suppose somebody else worked this out for you, he knows what’s in the papers.”

      “Nobody else,” I said. I wasn’t going to drag Harry Hein’s name into the proceedings.

      “Whose computer’d you use?” Grimaldi asked. “Sol said there’s nothing in your office except Mickey Mouse stuff.”

      “Sol would put it that way,” I said. “A friend’s computer. He let me into his office on the weekend.”

      Under pressure, I could fib with the best. Sometimes without the pressure.

      “What friend?” Grimaldi insisted.

      “Irrelevant,” I said. “He wasn’t around while I computed.”

      “You print more copies?”

      “Only what’s on the desk in front of you.”

      “What about the diskette?”

      “Not to worry.”

      “Don’t give me that bullshit,” Grimaldi said. “What’d you do with the diskette? The information still on it?”

      “I wiped it clean.”

      Was that the right terminology? And what the hell was a diskette? Must be the vehicle in the computer that stored information. Made sense, but had I answered Grimaldi’s question without revealing my technological ignorance?

      Grimaldi took his sweet time considering the response I’d offered. I couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely worried that someone else might be in on the computer analysis of his scam or he was merely letting me stew in my predicament. Either way, the conversation over the diskette and my usage of it was just the first and easiest hurdle. What about Jerry and Nicky, the murdering duo? Had they knocked off Alice Brackley on a caper of their own? Or had someone else directed the deed? Grimaldi for example? So many questions.

      Grimaldi spoke up.

      “If you’re lying, Crang, screw it,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

      He gave his words a different ring. Same hard sense of authority but with a new tone that resounded to me of finality. The words seemed to be a signal for Jerry and Nicky. They moved up behind me, fat Jerry at my right shoulder, towering Nicky breathing on my scalp from the left.

      I said, with more than a touch of haste in my voice, “The rest of the business is straight ahead, Charles. Keep the documents, fork over Wansborough’s cheque, and I’m gone.”

      “The business I’m talking about,” Grimaldi said, “is what Jerry and Nicky’s gonna take care of.”

      Jerry snickered on the right.

      “Let’s be candid, Charles,” I said, haste beginning

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