I was having a late lunch of pickle and peanut butter sandwiches when somebody entered my outer office.
I wasn’t in the mood, so I didn’t bound up, dash to the door, bow, scrape.
Still, pickle doesn’t go that well with peanut butter.
I found that my visitor was none other than Roger the Agency Op, last seen about to visit Normal Bates for Wanda Edwards.
‘Roger!’ I said.
He was surveying my reception chamber. A wisp of a smile showed as he turned to me. ‘Mr Samson?’
‘My friends call me “sir,” but don’t feel obliged. Sit down. If you’re staying.’
He looked around the room. I have a bench and a chair for clients. He didn’t look taken with either but he finally chose the chair.
‘How’d you get on with Norm?’
‘How did you know who I was?’ he asked.
‘I recognised you from Jane’s description. Great way with words, Jane.’
He rubbed the back of his head. I felt he was getting annoyed. But he forced himself into a working gear. He said, ‘Miss Wanda Edwards hired me through my agency a couple of days ago to locate her sister-in-law.’
‘I know,’ I said.
He nodded as if it had been front-page news and everybody should know. ‘But I don’t know why the hell my controller took the case on. We’re rushed off our feet. Seems everybody in the whole damn city wants something investigated. You probably have the same problem.’
‘My feet hardly remember what the floor is like,’ I said.
‘I don’t usually work on weekends,’ he said.
‘Me neither.’
‘But when the clients are ready to pay for speed, it’s hard to turn them down.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘once I found out that there was another operative working on the same case, but for different people, I thought to myself, what are we both killing ourselves for? We’re pros. If the trail is there, we’ll both find it. So, I thought, why not stop by and talk to the other guy, man to man. If we pool our resources, and work together, then we find the lady more quickly and with less fuss.’
‘Normal Bates got fussed, huh?’
‘Frankly, for someone who knows what the job is about, he didn’t cooperate a lot. I couldn’t seem to find a way to get to him.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what terms you are on with your client – Douglas Belter, the banker, isn’t it? But, to be honest and frank with you, my client has come in with a money-is-no-object attitude, and there would be no problem in doubling up a substantial part of your fee. Especially if we can crack it quickly. I’m going to be straight with you. I think you’re probably a little ahead of me just at the moment. But you know how useful the kind of facilities I have access to through the agency could be. Thing is, I’ve got an industrial case that I am due to start on Monday, a big undercover thing, and if there’s any way I can clear this one by then, well, I’ve got to go for it. So. ...’
He paused.
Maybe deciding whether to call me Mr Samson or sir.
‘What facilities have you got?’
‘Everything to make modern detection easier. Direct computer links to almost every information bank in Indiana and most of the major storage facilities nationwide. Supplemental agents. Contacts in the Police Department, State Police, Sheriff’s Office and Midwest FBI, as well as a number of governmental and private service agencies like IRS and banks. All kinds of live and remote surveillance equipment. And anything we don’t have we can get.’
‘That’s impressive,’ I said.
‘It’s a hell of an outfit,’ he said. ‘Everything first class.’
‘So let me get the situation clear, Roger,’ I said. ‘You are completely stuck and want to get off the hook by buying me out. Do I take the gist of things correctly?’
He was not struck by my evaluation.
‘I like you a lot, Rog, old pal. You got real style. But I’m one of these old-fashioned girls. The kind that might give it away, but doesn’t like being asked to sell it.’
The agency-trained smile gave way to a purely private glare.
He said, ‘You’re saying fuck off?’
‘Right.’
He stood and seemed to swell to an awesome size in front of me.
‘I ought to know better than to try to deal in a professional manner with an amateur penny-ante creep. You guys are scavengers, jackals who feed on the remains that big-time outfits leave behind. You live off the sick business we wouldn’t touch, or on the muscle game, and the kind of image we do everything possible to put behind us. If I didn’t despise guys like you, working alone or in tiddly shit agencies, I’d feel sorry for you.’
He backed to the door, and left. He didn’t say goodbye.
My pal Rog cheered me up a lot because, whatever else he may be, a jackal disinclined to sell his clients out has got to be a jackal of distinction.