Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

I didn’t get to answer him because there was someone at my elbow, someone I was glad to see because he is my favorite millionaire and we sorely needed another paying guest. Jay Porter Pemberton is a Wall Street type, old money, stuffy, but a very nice guy. He looked awful.

“Could I speak with you privately, Chick?”

My “sure, Jay Porter,” and his “privately” didn’t make a dent in Barry, who came along with us to the back office. Pemberton didn’t seem to mind, so I let it ride, but I thought he should have stayed. One of these days he’s going to need a plausible fib to tell the Big Booking Agent in the Sky. Boy, does he have things to answer for — like screwing up my career.

I grabbed the chair behind the desk before Barry could get to it. A guy behind a desk is always in control. Barry flopped on the leather couch, but Pemberton preferred to pace up and down like that poor puma I love over in the Central Park Zoo. (I’m going to turn that blue-eyed thing loose someday.)

“Why don’t you take a seat, Jay Porter? The broadloom needs a rest.”

“Chick,” he said nervously, taking one of the Eames chairs facing me, “I came to you because I haven’t any place else to turn. You’re experienced in such matters, and...”

He had taken a paper from his jacket pocket and was waving it about as he rambled on. I reached over and took it from him. Rude, perhaps, but the suspense was becoming too intense. It was a Xerox copy of a letter from a lawyer in Providence, Rhode Island, to someone named Samson Velker on East 89th Street in Manhattan, advising him of a legal strategy. It seems Jay Porter had been playing kissy-kissy with Velker’s wife, Gina. Now I understood the “you’re experienced in such matters” statement. I wasn’t insulted — a guy with three divorces behind him is beyond insults.

Barry gets into the act by coming to the desk and reading over my shoulder. “Having a conversation with a man’s wife is criminal?” he asks. “A million dollar conversation!”

“Criminal conversation is a concept in common law,” Jay Porter explained. “It gives a spouse the exclusive privileges of sexual relations with his partner. I looked it up. Rhode Island is a common law state.”

I re-read the letter. “Jay Porter, this is like an alienation of affections thing, and they never stand up. What you need is a lawyer.”

“No, Chick. Alienation and conversation are two different things. A loss of affection is almost impossible to prove. But that’s not the point. It’s the ensuing publicity that could destroy my name and my marriage. I’m an elder of my church, and my clients are all...”

“Take it easy, pal.”

He didn’t. “...and I can hardly go to a lawyer with a copy of a purloined letter. No ethical attorney would...”

“Jay Porter, STOP!” He did. “Now, slowly and calmly, lay it all out like you would a prospectus on a new stock issue.”

Believe me, if he writes a prospectus in the same garbled, confused way he told me the Velker story, American finance is in big trouble. Somehow I put it all together and shuffled it into a neat pack, with all the suits in the right place. I’ll deal it out to you painlessly.

That afternoon, Jay Porter had received the copy of the letter in the mail, from a girl named Lisa Banks who worked as a secretary in a Providence law office.

“Lisa is the only daughter of an elderly fisherman who did odd jobs up at my summer place in Newport,” Jay Porter explained. “Unfortunately, he was injured in a docking accident, and I covered all his expenses and put him on a retainer and paid Lisa’s way through secretarial school in Boston. The old man died last year, and although the daughter owes me nothing, I guess she felt she was repaying me somehow by sending me a copy of that letter. Of course I appreciate the warning, but she has put herself in legal jeopardy, so I can’t get legal counsel down here until this Providence lawyer, Procutto, contacts me.”

It gets worse, lots worse. Old Jay Porter started down the road to bankruptcy on January 16th, when a severe wind and ice storm decided to raise hell along the New England coast.

“I have a look-in caretaker of sorts, who lives in Newport, but when I called for a report on the storm, he was sick in bed. There’s been a lot of looting up there lately after winter storms, so I told Seth I’d be up myself. When I got there the next morning, it wasn’t all that bad. Part of the wharf and hangar were gone...”

“Hangar!” Barry was impressed. “You keep a plane up there?”