Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

“I don’t mean his heart. I mean he couldn’t make it at an honest job. He tricked his way, and cheated, and conned — that’s the only way he could have existed the way he did. Then he finally held up a bank. He’s the kind that siphons off a decent society. Maybe you don’t understand, Mr. Criminal Lawyer, but it’s my job to protect society from creeps like that.”

“And you do work at it, don’t you, Geblick? The paragon of law enforcement. Well, I always figured the cop who was most self-righteous was probably no more than a hairline away from the crooks he went after. Give him the right opportunity—” The attorney snapped his fingers. “And you’ve got another crook.”

Geblick paced, shaking his large head, hearing what he cared to hear. “What did he leave?”

Barstow pushed a set of papers toward him. “I’ve already put the legal work through — he wanted you to be able to have it as soon as you got the news. Nobody else has made a claim against it. He didn’t have a relative alive, not a soul. No friends, either. Just you, Geblick. So here’s the inventory.”

Geblick snorted and slowly read the list, which itemized Snider’s shack-like house, in one of the cheapest sections of town, as well as its meager contents.

“Why?” Geblick said again.

“Maybe he got to liking you, Geblick,” Barstow said. “You trailed after him long enough, didn’t you?”

“The bum!”

“You say. I say he was an inoffensive little guy who tried hard and then just couldn’t make it.”

“He made it for eighty-seven thousand.”

“Come on, Geblick! Where do you see eighty-seven thousand on that inventory?”

“How would it get there?” Geblick exploded. “You think he put it in a bank so you could find it that way?” He shook his head. “He probably hid it in a sewer because that’s where rats like to go.” He looked at the inventory again. “I just don’t get it.”

Barstow studied him, then said, “There’s an old philosophy someone created a long time ago, Geblick. You probably never heard of it, but it says that when you’ve been abused, turn the other cheek. Maybe that’s why he did this, Geblick. Just to give you the other cheek.”

Geblick stared at the dapper attorney, eyes dark and accusing. “You must be crazy.”

The next day, his tour of duty done, Geblick parked his sedan in front of the small house and stared with disgust at the dilapidated structure. The small lot was fenced with old boards ready to collapse. Scraps of paper and beer cans thrown from passing cars littered the front yard.

Geblick pushed himself out of his car and strode through warm twilight air to the door. Using a key Barstow had given him, he let himself into the interior and switched on lights — he’d had the utilities restored.

The living room was a model of disarrangement; old newspapers left where they’d been dropped, ashtrays overflowing with ashes and old butts everywhere, a cushion out of the sagging sofa on the floor, as though Snider might have been using it as a headrest as he lay on his back watching a small black and white television set propped on a discarded orange crate. Geblick walked slowly through the room, his practiced eyes surveying a small phonograph, a record holder, and Snider’s pathetic recording equipment. He’d once told Geblick that he’d gotten it from an amusement park that was closing; it had been in a small booth where a half dollar allowed you to record a few minutes of talk to be mailed to a loved one on an inexpensive lightweight 45 rpm record. On a table in front of the phonograph, beside a pile of music manuscript sheets, was Snider’s old clarinet, now covered with dust; he’d used the instrument to compose his pathetic melodies.

The kitchen, a small alcove off the living room, was similarly littered. Unwashed dishes were still in the sink.

Face set in distaste, Geblick crossed back through the living room, passed a small dirty-looking bathroom, and went into the bedroom, thinking that he might have to pay someone to take the thing off his hands.

Snider’s books — old, dogeared, some with their covers barely hanging on — were in a bookcase made of raw boards and old bricks. An old fashioned iron-framed bed supported a mattress that sagged treacherously. The covers were just as Snider had left them — he’d died halfway from the front door to the street one morning, and they’d found him there.

Shaking his head, Geblick hooked a huge hand around a corner of the mattress and jerked it up. The action was a secondary response as a result of his years of searching bedrooms where people had a predilection for hiding things under mattresses.

Holding the mattress up, he saw a sheet of paper clipped to a twenty dollar bill on the springs. He picked both up and read the black-crayoned message on the paper:

I DID IT, ALL RIGHT, GEBLICK. AND HERE’S PROOF. IF YOU WANT THE REST, FIND IT.