Time to Murder and Create

I stretched out on the bed with a book, but after I'd gone through a few pages I realized I was reading without paying attention. And my little room was beginning to feel even smaller than usual. I went out and walked around for a while, and then I hit a few places and had a few drinks. I started out in Polly's Cage, across the street from the hotel, then Kilcullen's, then Spiro and Antares.

Somewhere along the way I stopped at a deli for a couple of sandwiches. I wound up in Armstrong's, and I was still there when Trina ended her shift. I told her to sit down and I'd buy her a drink.

"But just one, Matt. I got places to go, people to see."

"So do I, but I don't want to go there and I don't want to see them."

"You could be just the slightest bit drunk."

"It's not impossible."

I went to the bar and got our drinks. Plain bourbon for me, a vodka and tonic for her. I came back to the table, and she picked up her glass.

She said, "To crime?"

"You've really only got time for one?"

"I don't even have time for the one, but one's got to be the limit."

"Then let's not make it to crime. Let's make it absent friends."

Chapter 3

I suppose I had a fair idea what was in the envelope before I opened it.

When a man who sidesteps through life by keeping his ears open suddenly turns up wearing a three-hundred-dollar suit, it's not hard to figure out how he got it. After a lifetime of selling information, the Spinner had come up with something too good to sell. Instead of peddling information, he had turned to peddling silence.

Blackmailers are

richer than stool pigeons, because their commodity is not a one-time thing; they can rent it out to the same person over and over for a lifetime.

The only problem is that their lifetimes tend to shrink. The Spinner became a bad actuarial risk the day he got successful. First aggravation and ulcers, then a dented skull and a long swim.

A blackmailer needs insurance. He has to have some leverage that will convince his victim not to terminate the blackmail by terminating the blackmailer.

Somebody—a lawyer, a girlfriend, anyone—sits in the background with whatever evidence has the victim squirming in the first place. If the blackmailer dies, the evidence goes to the cops and the shit hits the fan. Every blackmailer makes a point of letting the victim know about this added element. Sometimes there's no confederate, no envelope to be mailed, because evidence lying around is dangerous to all concerned, so the blackmailer just says that there is and figures the mark won't call his bluff. Sometimes the mark believes him, and sometimes he doesn't.

Spinner Jablon probably told his mark about the magic envelope from the beginning. But in February he had started to sweat. He had decided that somebody was trying to kill him, or was likely to try, so he had put his envelope together. An actual envelope wouldn't keep him alive if the idea of the envelope failed. He'd be just as dead, and he had known it.

But he had been, in the final analysis, a pro. Penny-ante for almost all his life, but professional just the same. And a professional doesn't get mad. He gets even.

He'd had a problem, though, and it became my problem when I cut his envelope open and checked its contents. Because Spinner had known that he would have to get even with somebody.

He just hadn't known who.

THE first thing I looked at was the letter. It was typed, which suggested that at one time or another he had stolen one more typewriter than he could sell, so he'd kept it around. He hadn't used it a hell of a lot.

His letter was full of xxxxxx'd-out words and phrases, skips between letters, and enough misspelled words to make it interesting. But it added up to something like this:

Matt:

If you're reading this I'm a dead man. I hope it blows over but no bets on that. I think somebody tried for me yesterday. There was this car just about crawled up the curb coming at me.

What I got going is blackmail. I fell into some information worth good money. Years of scrounging around and I finally stepped right into it.

There is three of them. You'll see how it lays when you open the other envelopes. That is the problem, the three of them, because if I'm dead one of them did it and I don't know which. I got each one on a string and I don't know which one I'm choking.

This Prager, two years ago December his daughter ran down a kid on a tricycle and kept on going on account of she was driving on a suspended license and strung out on speed and grass and I don't know what else. Prager has more money than God and he spread it on everybody and his kid was never picked up.

All the information is in the envelope. He was the first one, I overheard some shit in a bar and I fed this one guy drinks and he opened up for me. I'm not taking him for anything he can't afford and he just pays me like you pay rent the first of the month but who knows when a man is going to go crazy and maybe that's what happened. He wants me dead, shit, he could hire it done easy enough.