for him.
‘These things will happen unless I call my employee and tell him to forget the phone call.’
‘And all I have to do is tell you where Marcia is,’ I said. ‘No deal, Cressner, I don’t know. We set it up
this way just for you.’
‘My men had her followed.’
‘I don’t think so I think we lost them at the airport.’
Cressner sighed, removed the smouldering cigarette holder, and dropped it into a chromium ashtray
with a sliding lid. No fuss, no muss. The used cigarette and Stan Norris had been taken care of with
equal ease.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘you’re right. The old ladies-room vanishing act. My operatives were extremely
vexed to have been taken in by such an ancient ruse. I think it was so old they never expected it.’
I said nothing. After Marcia had ditched Cressner’s operatives at the airport, she had taken the bus
shuttle back to the city and then to the bus station; that had been the plan. She had two hundred dollars,
all the money that had been in ~ny savings account. Two hundred dollars and a Greyhound bus could
take you anyplace in the country.
‘Are you always to uncommunicative?’ Cressner asked, and he sounded genuinely interested.
‘Marcia advised it.’
A little more sharply, he said: ‘Then I imagine you’ll stand on your rights when the police take you in.
And the next time you see my wife could be when she’s a little old grandmother in a rocker. Have you
gotten that through your head? I understand that possession of six ounces of heroin could get you forty
years.’
‘That won’t get you Marcia back.’
He smiled thinly. ‘And that’s the nub of it, isn’t it? Shall I review where we are? You and my wife have
fallen in love. You have had an affair. . . if you want to call a series of one-nighters in cheap motels an
affair. My wife has left me. However, I have you. And you are in what is called a bind. Does that
summarize it adequately?’
‘I can understand why she got tired of you,’ I said.
To my surprise, he threw back his head and laughed. ‘You know, I rather like you, Mr Norris. You’re vulgar and you’re a piker, but you seem to have heart. Marcia said you did. I rather doubted it. Her
judgement of character is lax. But you do have a certain. . . verve. Which is why I’ve set things up the
way I have. No doubt Marcia has told you that lam fond of wagering.’
‘Yes.’ Now I knew what was wrong with the door in the middle of the glass wall. It was the middle of
winter, and no one was going to want to take tea on a balcony forty-three stories up. The balcony had
been cleared of furniture. And the screen had been taken off the door. Now why would Cressner have
done that?
‘I don’t like my wife very much,’ Cressner said, fixing another cigarette carefully in the holder. ‘That’s
no secret. I’m sure she’s told you as much. And I’m sure a man of your experience knows that contented
wives do not jump into the hay with the local tennis-club pro at the drop of a racket. In my opinion,
Marcia is a prissy, whey-faced little prude, a whiner, a weeper, a bearer of tales, a -‘That’s about
enough,’ I said.
He smiled coldly. ‘I beg your pardon. I keep forgetting we are discussing our beloved. It’s 8.16. Are
you nervous?’
I shrugged.
‘Tough to the end,’ he said, and lit his cigarette. ‘At any rate, you may wonder why, if I dislike Marcia
so much, I do not simply give her her freedom -‘
‘No, I don’t wonder at all.’
He frowned at me.
‘You’re a selfish, grasping, egocentric son of a bitch. That’s why. No one takes what’s yours. Not even if
you don’t want it any more.
He went red and then laughed. ‘One for you, Mr Norris. Very good.’
I shrugged again.
‘I’m going to offer you a wager. If you win, you leave here with the money, the woman, and your
freedom. On the other hand, if you lose, you lose your life.’