Bob Roache did not intend to permit me to search the Clancy files unwatched.
Why hadn’t I expected that?
I finally found him in his office on the Friday afternoon before the family and a few guests were coming to dinner, allegedly to see the final shots for the “Parochial School” exhibit.
A man in his early forties with thinning brown hair, bloodshot eyes, and an expanding belly, Roache looked far too seedy for his tailor-made gray suit and his plush office. He did not seem particularly happy to see me, but was not antagonistic either. He may have had three or four drinks at lunch, but he was also watching me shrewdly, searching hungrily for the main chance.
A crook, but a clever crook.
“I suppose the boxes are around here someplace.” Bob Roache affected to be bored. “I don’t know that we have time to hunt for them right now.”
“It’s just some income tax returns that we need to settle a few questions about inheritance taxes. Old Jim Clancy had his fingers in a lot of pies.”
“So I hear,” Roache murmured. “So I hear. Why didn’t Ed Murray call me?”
“I thought it would be easier this way. You can phone Ed and verify who I am and the nature of the problem.”
“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Charley.” He grinned crookedly. “Your face is familiar enough.”
It was essential that I get at those papers now. If I left his offices without them, he’d search in them all night and find what I thought was there.
“I can’t understand how there was so much confusion after O’Laughlin’s death.”
“Mostly because there was a lot of confusion all during his life,” Roache said, yawning. “He liked it that way. Easier to cover his tracks. When they were closing up his firm, they practically gave the stuff away. I only glanced through it.”
“I see.”
I wanted to break the cheap shanty Irish bastard’s neck.
“I don’t mind turning the whole packet over to you, but I think I should probably have a court order.” He fiddled with the big sapphire on his right hand. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“I’m sure we could get it and we will, but if I could glance through the files to make sure that what we’re looking for is in them. Then we can ask the court to expedite the matter.”
I was reciting almost verbatim the careful scenario in which Vince had rehearsed me.
“Well, there’s the matter of our expenses in storing and protecting these materials for several years.” He yawned again. “Office space in this part of the Loop has gone through the roof the last couple of years.”
“I can understand that.”
“You’d be willing to pay for our services in storing your father-in-law’s records?” His eyes glinted.
“Within reason, surely.”
“Would five thousand be reasonable?”
Just like that.
“That’s a lot of money, Bob.”
He shrugged indifferently. “I’m sure there’s a lot of money involved in Jim Clancy’s estate. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so eager for his records.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “I could go a thousand dollars.”
“Two and it’s done. You can search them today and we’ll deliver the whole stack as soon as you get the court order.”
“Fair enough.” I reached for my checkbook.
“In cash.”
“Cash?”
“Only way.”
I opened my wallet and counted out the twenty one-hundred dollar bills that I had place there before boarding the L that morning.
“I see you came prepared.” He began counting the money. “Pleasure to do business with a man like you.”
I was ushered into an empty office and the blond secretary, with obvious distaste for the effort required, brought in, one by one, six legal-size cardboard file boxes and piled them on the desk. Bob Roache settled comfortably into a chair in the corner of the room.
“I got nothing to do this afternoon, so I may as well keep you company. That way I can assure the court that nothing has been removed.”
It wasn’t okay at all.
I started with the oldest box—late thirties. Tax returns, commodity sales receipts, canceled notes, copies of deeds: the dry records of a pirate’s bloody life.
Nothing that looked like an envelope of pictures that might be addressed to the police or to one of the papers.
“Nothing in it?” Roache cocked a curious eye.
“I suppose enough material for a couple of novels, if someone knew what it all meant, but no tax returns that seem pertinent.”
“What years are you looking for?”
“Forties, early fifties. This box is earlier, but I want to be systematic.”
I went through the second box more carefully. There were many envelopes, bits of paper, notes on yellow sheets. I looked carefully at each one, fearful of rushing and missing something important.
“Nothing here either.”
He glanced at his watch. “Want to call it a day and come back tomorrow?”
“Not if I can continue now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The third box, mostly records from the forties and the fifties, was the one in which I expected to hit pay dirt.
I would, that is, if my theory was correct. On that gray February afternoon with the world thawing outside and a crucial family gathering that night, I began to doubt my theory.
When I had finished a minutely careful examination of box number three, I had even more doubts about it.
Roache had been called out of the office to take a phone call. He didn’t seem particularly upset, reasoning perhaps that what I was looking for was too big to be stuffed into a pocket.
“Not here either.”
“You’d make a good lawyer.” Roache laughed. “You didn’t miss a thing in that box.”
I resolved that if I find something I must hide all reaction to it and hope there was some way I’d get a second chance if Roache’s phone rang again.
“I kind of thought it would be in that box. Right year.”
“Godawful mess, isn’t it?”
The fourth box was the worst mess of all. Papers, folders, notes, bills had been crammed into it, as if someone was rushing to finish a task.
Now I was sure I was wrong. No ice-cream bar today.
Halfway through the box I found the 1952 tax return. Automatically I opened it. Inside was a yellowed lettersize envelope. On it was printed in large block letters: TO BE DELIVERED TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHICAGO AMERICAN SIX MONTHS AFTER MY DEATH.
Cautiously I felt the sides of the envelope. There were thin objects inside. They might well have been photographs.
Struggling to maintain an appearance of indifference and calm, I put the return back in the box, its corner sticking out, and continued my search.
I ached to look up to see if Roache was watching me with special care. If I did I would give the game away.
“Nothing here,” I shoved the box aside. “Maybe our hunches were wrong.”
“No refunds,” he joked.
“None expected.”
I started on the fifth box, forcing myself to be as careful as I had been with the previous boxes. Roache now looked bored out of his mind.
Would the phone never ring? What would I do if he was not distracted?
Try to slip the envelope into my jacket pocket while he was sitting in the room with me?
Pretty risky.
“Well”—I moved the fifth box to the edge of the desk—“last one.”
“Good hunting.” He was examining his fingernails.
Then the blonde appeared again.
“What is it now, Denise?” he snapped.
“The Senator, Mr. Roache.”
“Oh damn it. Excuse me, Charley. Don’t steal anything while I’m out.”
“Fat chance,” I murmured.
At last free to tremble, my fingers shook uncontrollably as I jumped up and began to search frantically in the fourth box, the one with the tax return and the envelope.
I couldn’t find the corner of the return that I had left sticking out.
It wasn’t there. Was I in the wrong box?
Quickly I looked through the others. No turned-up corner in any of them either.
I was badly confused now. Which box had it been? It could have been any of them. I was blowing it.
I took a deep breath, thought of how much I loved my wife, and plunged back into the third box.
I heard Roache’s voice in the corridor.
Then I remembered that the 1952 return had been in the middle of the file in the fourth box. I jammed my hand into it and pulled out a return.
Sure enough. 1952!
He was talking to someone at the door.
I pulled the envelope out, stuffed it into my inside jacket pocket, and then shoved the return into the fifth box, the one I was examining when Roache left the room.
At that very moment he returned.
I commanded my heart to slow down, my nerves to stop.
“No luck yet,” I said easily.
“Hope you didn’t steal anything?”
“Want to search me?”
He laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
If I had not suggested it, he might have insisted.
I continued to work my way through the box. A few minutes later, I pulled out the return.
“I’ll be damned! Wouldn’t you know it would be in the last place you look.”
“It’s always the way. Is it the right one?”
I sat down at the desk and made a pretense of studying the form.
“Sure looks that way. … would you put it in a separate envelop so we can find it quickly when we get the court order.”
“Why not?” He took the return. “I’ll have Denise take care of it and bring the boxes back to our storage room. We’ll make a copy of this return first thing Monday morning.” He leered at me. “No extra charge.”
He’d spend the weekend trying to figure out what was in the return that was so important. Well, good luck to him in that.
“I’ll give her a hand.”
Denise and I moved the boxes into a musty, windowless room in which files and folders were crammed in total chaos. She thanked me. With elaborate show, Roache took the envelope in which she had placed the allegedly precious return and locked it in a safe in his office.
“A pleasure to do business with you,” I said cheerfully.
“Same here.”
We would seek the court order and have a clerk at Vince’s office go through the documents carefully to see if there were any more time bombs. I was sure I had the ice-cream bar.
I walked across the street to City Hall, found the men’s room, and inside a toilet stall opened the envelope. I felt the contents to make sure they were photographic paper and then closed the envelope.
Someday, maybe, I would tell Rosemarie the whole story.
I tore the envelope and its contents into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
Outside on Washington Boulevard, despite the somber February day and the deep slush, I felt like a man reborn.
So long, Jim Clancy, it’s been good to know you.