THE PACKAGE ARRIVED BY UPS. It was signed for and delivered up to my condominium by one of the smartly attired doormen whose cheery, helpful disposition indicated he knew on which side his croissants were buttered. He all but saluted once he’d handed it over and adroitly stepped away when I reached into my pocket for a tip. “Part of the job, Mr. Tripper,” he said, as he almost always did. He knew the payoff was in the end much larger when he hadn’t nickeled-and-dimed everybody to death all year.
I took it to the terrace, where the afternoon shadows had cooled off one of the summer’s first hot days. The breeze rustling the trees in Central Park below felt good and clean and pure. Summer hadn’t yet beaten Manhattan to its grubby knees.
The return address meant nothing to me. A street somewhere in Seattle, the initials ABM. I slit the twine and tape with the old Swiss Army knife I used for a letter opener and peeled the wrapping paper away, then unfolded the top of a cardboard box somewhat larger than a shoe box.
It contained a letter, an old envelope marked HARRIGAN’S DELUXE PHOTO FINISHING, and a largish, heavy oilskin package with several thick rubber bands tightly enclosing it. The letter was short. It was signed by someone I’d never met.
Dear Mr. Tripper,
My father, Martin Bjorklund, with whom you were once acquainted, died recently. Among his possessions we found the contents of this box with the instructions that upon his death it all be sent to you. I have no idea what either item is but be assured they have not been opened and are exactly as Father left them. Perhaps they are keepsakes with some particular significance to the two of you.
Sincerely,
Anita Bjorklund Montgomery
For God’s sake … Marty Bjorklund. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, not since that last meeting in Tangier.
I opened the envelope first.
There were four cracked photographs, each of the same subject. They were Polaroid shots. Harrigan had had nothing to do with them beyond providing an envelope of the right size. They were pictures of a dead man.
I tried unwrapping the rubber bands but they were old and brittle and snapped at my touch. Some of the strands of rubber were embedded in the oilskin, which was itself cracked, dried out. Slowly I unfolded the flaps, it slowly dawning on me what I’d find. When the oilskin was entirely pried away, the heavy oily thing, so redolent of what it was, lay on the table before me.
A Mauser Parabellum nine-millimeter automatic. The four-inch barrel gave it a slender elegance. It was built on the Swiss Luger model.
Pictures and a gun.
It looked like the evidence in a murder case …