Hit Parade

“What, a couple of meals? I don’t see how…oh, I get it, Keller. Stamps. But weren’t you going to buy stamps anyway?”



“Up to a point,” he said.



“And you sailed right past that point, didn’t you? Because you had the money from Detroit, burning a hole in your pocket.”



“I didn’t lose control,” he assured her. “I spent pretty much what I intended to spend. I had all this money coming in, so I figured I could afford for some of it to go out. But if I have to give it back…”



“There’s a reason why giving money back goes against the grain. Once I’ve got it in my hand, it’s my money. And giving it back is like spending it, and what am I getting for it?” She sighed. “Other hand, anything happens to him and somebody with a badge is going to want to talk to you. And you’ve made a very good career out of so arranging your life that you never have to talk to anybody with a badge.”



“There ought to be a way.”



“How old is the guy, Keller? Sixty, sixty-five?”



“Sixty-seven.”



“Even better. Maybe you’ll catch a break. He’s up there in years, he’s under a lot of stress and strain. Maybe nature’ll help you out. It wouldn’t be the first time.”



“He seems pretty healthy, Dot.”



“Never sick a day in his life, and then pow! The old ticker blows out, and next thing you know he’s approaching room temperature. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen?”



“It would have to happen within the next twenty-four hours.”



“Makes it a little less likely, doesn’t it? Suppose he wins one of those blue ribbons? Maybe the excitement’ll do it.”



“He’s got a whole wall full of them back home. I don’t think it would be all that exciting.”



“Well, maybe he’ll lose, and he’ll be so disappointed he’ll kill himself…Keller? Where’d you go?”



“I’m here,” he said. “But I’d better get back to the auction room. I’ve got a couple of lots coming up.”



The last lot he bid on was from St. Pierre amp; Miquelon, a couple of French islands off the coast of Newfoundland. He had strong competition from a determined telephone bidder, and went higher than he’d planned, but that was all right. He had cash to pay for it, and he wasn’t going to have to give it back.



He went to his room, picked up the phone, then changed his mind and went downstairs to use the house phone in the lobby.



“It’s Jackie,” he said, the name sounding strange to him. But it evidently sounded fine to Bingham, who said he’d just gotten out of the shower, and had he lost track of the time? Because he didn’t think they were meeting for dinner for another hour and a half.



“No, this is something else,” he said. “Are you alone? Can I come to your room?”



“I’m always alone. And yes, give me five minutes to put some clothes on, then come on up.”



Bingham supplied the room number, and seven or eight minutes later Keller was knocking on the door of 617. Which was fine, he’d decided. Room 1217 would have been better, but 617 would have to do.



And it was certainly spacious enough. Keller’s room three floors down was comfortable enough, if a little on the small side, but Bingham had a suite. “More space than I’ve got any use for,” he told Keller, “but when you spend a little more you get treated a little better. And if I fart in one room I can go in the other until the air clears. You want a drink?”



He didn’t, but said he did. Because that way Bingham would take a drink-although his breath already held the bouquet of good whiskey.



Bingham poured, and they touched glasses, and Keller wet his lips while Bingham drank deeply. “Just as well you came up here,” he said. “I’ve got something for you, and I was going to bring it along to dinner, but who’s to say I wouldn’t forget? I’ll give it to you now and you can leave it in your room before we go out.”



The clear plastic sheet held a cover, postmarked 1891 in Martinique’s capital city of Fort-de-France, and backstamped in Paris and surcharged here and there, bearing several different stamps from the island colony’s first issue.



“It’s a beauty,” Keller said. “What do I owe you for it?”



“It’s a present.”



“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve got to let me pay for it.”



“Nope. You can’t buy it, Jackie. It’s not for sale. It’s a gift.”



“But-”



“It’ll cost you plenty in the long run,” Bingham told him, and paused to top up his own drink. “All the covers you’ll buy. But you’ve got to feed the shark, don’t you?”



“Well, I’m very happy to have it. I wish I had something for you in return. And maybe I do.”



“Oh?”



“The reason I came up here,” Keller said. “You really expect to be killed, don’t you?”



“Sooner or later. When someone with money and power is determined to kill you, you don’t stand much of a chance.”



“Sherry, I think I know a way to get you off the hook.”



“I don’t think there is any such way. But I’d be a fool not to hear you out.”



“Well,” Keller said. “You know, the other day you were talking about how people don’t know that much about each other. And you said for all you knew I could be a stock swindler, or a confidence man.”



“It wasn’t meant as an insult.”



“I know that, but it hit a little close to the bone. I’m neither of those things, not exactly, but I haven’t lived my whole life inside the law, either.”



“You know, I had the sense you were a man of the world, Jackie.”



“I wouldn’t have the collection I do,” he said, “if it weren’t for insurance fraud.”



“Reporting your own stamps as stolen? I wouldn’t think-”



“When it comes to stamps, I’ve always been completely on the up-and-up.”



“Same here. That’s the thing about hobbies.”



“I’m talking about life insurance fraud. A couple of times over the years I’ve faked my own death. So I know a little about the mechanics of it. Sherry, you’ve got somebody back home who wants to kill you. You can’t buy him off or scare him off, and he won’t let up as long as you’re alive. But if he doesn’t think you’re alive…”



Bingham had a ton of questions. Where would you get a body? What about DNA? Dental forensics?



“Have another drink,” Keller suggested, “and I’ll explain what I have in mind.”



“It just might work,” Bingham said. “You want to know something? It’s scarier than dying. I was pretty much used to the idea of that, but this…”



“I know what you mean.”



“And at the same time it’s exciting as hell. Because it’s a whole new life. I’d be starting over with next to nothing. Wayne State ’ll get my stamps and everything else I own. I’ve got a little cash tucked away in secret accounts, and I can get that, so I’ll never have to wonder where my next meal is coming from. But where will I live, and how’ll I keep from running into somebody who can recognize me?” He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose I could dye this. Or cut it real short. Or shave it off, but then people start wondering how you’d look with hair.”



“There are a lot of tricks,” Keller said, figuring there would have to be. “And I can help you come up with them.”



“And you can find a body that’ll pass for mine. Jackie, I’m not going to ask how.”



“Nobody’s going to get killed,” he assured Bingham, and talked vaguely about cooperative funeral parlors. Even as he spoke, the whole prospect sounded dubious to him, and he was glad Bingham’s intake of whiskey was increasing its credibility.



“Now here’s what’s crucial,” he said. “First of all, it has to happen here, in San Francisco. Where nobody knows you, and where the police will have every reason to wrap it up in a hurry and ship the body back to Detroit. Where nobody will bother with an autopsy, because San Francisco already held one.”



“Stands to reason.”



“Number one,” he said, “is that ring of yours. It’s distinctive.”



“My high school ring. I’m not even sure I can get it off. Let me try some soap.”



He returned from the bathroom with the ring in hand. “There,” he said, presenting it to Keller. “And number two?”



“Your suicide note. You’ll want a sheet of Cumberford letterhead.”



“In the desk drawer.”



“Could you get it? We’ll want to have your fingerprints on it, and nobody else’s.”



“Good thinking. Now what should I write?”



Keller frowned in thought. “Let’s see,” he said. “‘To Whom It May Concern. I suppose I’m taking the easy way out, but I have no choice.’” He went on, and Bingham said he had the sense of it, and how would it be if he phrased it more in his own words? Keller told him it would be ideal.



By the time he’d finished, he’d filled the whole sheet of hotel stationery. “‘I would advise my heirs at Wayne State University to sell my entire collection of stamps,’” he read aloud, “‘and recommend the San Francisco firm of Halliday amp; Okun for this purpose.’ You know, I spent close to fifty thousand this weekend. I might not have bothered if I’d had any idea I was only going to own the stamps for a matter of hours.”



“You could take them along.”



“You think so? No, it’s got to be more convincing to leave them behind. And it’s not as though I’m going to resume collecting German states in my new life, or anything else in the world of stamps. Handwriting’s a little shaky.”



“Well, you’re about to kill yourself. That might make a man the least bit unsteady.”



“I think the scotch may have had something to do with it. Just let me sign this. Signature looks okay, doesn’t it?”



“It looks fine.”



“So. What happens next?”



47



“Pretty slick,” Dot said. “Got him to write a note, got him to take off his ring, and then gave him a helping hand out the window. I know people who drown themselves tend to leave their clothes all folded up on the beach, but do many jumpers do it naked?”



“It happens,” he said. “What never happens is that somebody undresses a guy before shoving him out a window.”



“Until now.”



“Well,” he said.



“But you said he was dressed when you went upstairs. So you had to undress him.”



“When I phoned him,” he recalled, “he said he’d just got out of the shower. I should have told him to just put on a robe.”



“I think he did enough, Keller. How’d you get him unconscious?”