Even the Wicked

After a while I picked up the phone, made a call. Jim Faber answered the phone himself, saying "Faber Printing" in the gruff voice in which I have come to find considerable reassurance over the years. It was good to hear his voice now, and I said as much.

"Matter of fact," I said, "just dialing your number made me feel better."

"Well, hell," he said. "I can remember times I'd be getting to the bar for the first one of the day, and really needing it. You know, feeling like I was going to jump right out of my skin?"

"I remember the feeling."

"And once the drink was poured I could relax. I hadn't had it yet, it wasn't in my bloodstream spreading peace and love to every cell in my body, but just knowing it was there had the same effect. But what can be so bad that you're actually driven to call your sponsor?"

"Oh, the joy of the season."

"Uh-huh. Everybody's favorite time of year. I don't suppose you've been to a meeting within recent memory."

"I left one about two hours ago."

"That a fact. What's keeping you busy these days, besides guilt and self-pity? You hot on the trail of Will's replacement?"

"He's got half the cops in town after him," I said, "and all the reporters. He doesn't need me."

"Seriously? You're not investigating the case?"

"Of course not. I'd just get in everybody's way."

"So what is it you're doing, if you're not doing that?"

"Nothing, really."

"Well, there's your answer," he said. "Get off your ass and do something."

He rang off. I hung up the phone and looked out the window. The city was still out there. I went out to take another crack at it.

19

I couldn't do much in what was left of that afternoon. All I really managed was to figure out which people to see and what questions to ask them.

That would have to wait until morning. Meanwhile Elaine and I caught the new Woody Allen movie and listened to a piano trio at Iridium. Walking home, I told her the season was getting to me.

"Well, I'm not an alcoholic," she said, "and I'm not even a Christian, and it gets to me. It gets to everybody. Why should you be different?"

"What drew me to you in the first place," I said, "was your wonderfully incisive mind."

"Rats. All these years I thought it was my ass."

"Your ass," I said.

"You can't have forgotten it."

"When we get home," I said, "I'll refresh my memory."

* * *

In the morning I put on a suit and tie and went downtown to the Chase branch on Abingdon Square where Byron Leopold had done his banking. The bank officer I sat down with was a bright young woman named Nancy Chang. Early on she said, "I can't help it, I have to ask.

Does this have anything to do with the man who's writing those letters?"

I assured her it didn't. "Because I recognized your name right away from the newspaper stories. You're the man who broke the case."

I said something appropriately modest, but for a change I wasn't sorry for the recognition. It certainly greased the wheels, and I walked out of there with a photocopy of a check payable to Byron Leopold in the amount of $56,650. It was drawn on a bank in Arlington, Texas, and the name of the account was Viaticom.

"Viaticom," I said. "Have you ever heard of an insurance company by that name?"

"No," she said. "Is that what this is supposed to be? An insurance payment?"

"He cashed in a policy," I said. "But this is more than the cash value would have amounted to, unless my source made a mistake in the amount. And Viaticom doesn't sound like any insurance company I ever heard of."

"It doesn't, does it? You know what it sounds like? Some Silicon Valley outfit that makes software."

I said, "Maybe the insurance company has a separate unit for policy redemption."

"Maybe."

"You sound dubious."

"Well, it doesn't look like any insurance company check that I ever saw," she said, fingering the photocopy. "They're all computer-generated these days, and usually machine-signed. This is all filled in by hand with a ballpoint pen. And it looks as though it was signed with the same pen, and by the same person."

"Viaticom," I said.

"Whatever that means. No address, just Arlington, Texas."

"Wherever that is."

"Well, I can tell you that much," she said brightly. "It's between Dallas and Fort Worth. Where the Rangers play?"

"Oh, of course."

"See? You knew all along." She grinned. "Are you going to have to fly down there? Or can you let your fingers do the walking?"

* * *

The 817 information operator had a listing for Viaticom. I'd have tried to wheedle the address out of her as well as the number, but before I could ask she shunted me to some digital recording that told, me, the, number, one, numeral, at, a, time. I can't figure out how those things work, but I know better than to try reasoning with them.

I wrote down the number and dialed it, and when a woman answered and said, "Viaticom, good morning," I had no trouble believing I was talking to somebody in Texas. It was all there in her voice—the boots, the big hair, the shirt with the pearl buttons.