The Case of the Prodigal Son

It was an August afternoon. The heat was as thick as borscht. I had just fished the last Lucky out of the pack and jammed it into my mug. I was tilted back at my desk, wondering where a down payment for the next fifth of gin was coming from, when there was a knock at the door.

"The secretary's out," I yelled.

The old dame at the door was as broad as a three-horse photo at Belmont with a face to match. Yet something about her spelled class. She carried a Best & Cos. shopping bag. Sitting on top was a book. I could just make out the name on the spine: Gra-cilis ad Parnassum.

"What can I do for you, grandma?"

"You a shamus?"

"That's what it says on the door."

Her eyes narrowed. With one hand she swept my feet off the desk and with the other she grabbed the butt from my mouth and ground it out on my forearm.

"What it says on the door, wiseacre, is Private Investigations. And that's what you can do for me."

This dame meant business. I pulled a tube of Unguentine from the botton drawer and spread some on my burn. She tossed a folder onto my desk.

"What's the story?"

It s like this, shamus. One of my sons is missing, You find him."

"One of your sons," I said. "How many do you have?"

"This year about six hundred."

"You get around, grandma."

She reached over and lifted me out of the chair by the lapel of my Barney's seersucker, slash pockets no flaps.

Listen, shamus. I want funny remarks, I hire Morey Amsterdam."

"No offense," I said. "I'll take the job. Three hundred simoleons a day, plus expenses. And I go first class. Ramada Inns and four-year old whiskey."

"It's a done deal," she said, letting me fall back with a thud. She reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a roll of bills as thick as a Lindy's pastrami. She peeled off a few Franklins and dealt them across the desk.

"Where do I find you when I need you?"

"You can reach me here." The card she scaled over to me had only her name and address. Alma Mater. Hanover, New Hampshire.

"One last thing," I said, as she turned to go. "What's this poor yokel done?"

That s for us to know, sucker, and you to find out."

It was all in the folder. Photographs, life history, SAT scores. Fact that he could climb a rope and swim fifty yards. But it had all ended when he was twenty-one. Nothing else. This one was going to take some doing.

It was five days and several schmeers later. I was standing in an office on the top floor of one of Gotham's finest. Steel and glass. The poor chump had left a trail as long as the Rockettes' laundry. Graduate school, church deacon, photos in Town &Country. He was as hard to miss as the Hindenberg at Lakehurst.

"You got the wrong man," he said from behind his modular desk. "Sorry for all your troubles."

I don't fade so easily. New fingerprints, new name. Still, I knew I had my man.

"I do, eh?" I strode casually around the office. On the wall were plaques from the Kiwanians, the Rotarians, the Rosicrucians, the Boys Club. This guy was a bleeding pillar of his community. Doric. Maybe I was wrong.

I peered in a closet and got my first break. Hidden behind the da Pinna suits was a pyramid of beer cans.

"Collect these, do you?"

"Just an old habit," he said coolly. "You can't use that in a court of law and you know it."

He was quick on his feet. It looked like a stalemate. Then I spotted it.

"If you're the wrong man," I cried, grabbing an ash tray from the sandalwood and brass coffee table, "what's this?"

He went white as a sturgeon. There, etched into the bottom of the ashtray, was a college seal.

"And," I yelled, pointing to the two figures on the seal, "What do you call these?"

He gurgled a gurgle I haven't heard since Zale nailed Graziano. "Indians," he muttered.

"Indians," I said. "You could do time for this!"

Faster than I could follow it, his story came tumbling out. He gave me everything, ever since the old lady had lost touch with him. An M.B.A., a Wall Street apprenticeship, marriage to a frozen-food heiress, the Union League Club. A long slide to Nowheresville that ended at the bottom where I found him: president of a bank. Nothing exactly criminal, but nothing John Garfield would be interested in playing, either.

"I don't get it, Mack. Why the dodge, the fast shuffle?" He looked hard at me. His eyes were misty.

"It's the Class Agents. They find you wherever you are. They peer through the windows and slip notes into your mail. One summer on the Vineyard I found Give Or Else chalked over the HobieCat. I couldn't take it. I cracked."

"But this Mater broad ..."

"She's a grand old lady," he stammered. "But tough. Look, do me a favor." His voice broke. I knew what he was going to say, and I didn't want to hear it.

"Forget you ever found me. Don't turn me in. You have no idea what it's like. They're everywhere. They're relentless. This bank can give you whatever you want. A toaster ..." He started to sob.

"Sorry, pal." I jammed three Luckies into my mug and lit up. "That's my job."

He didn't take it the way Mary Astor had when Bogart used the line. Maybe he hadn't seen the movie.

I wired the old lady to meet me at my office. Now all I had to do was wait. It didn't take long. I was sitting at my desk doing my cuticles when she barged in like Sutherland playing Tosca. I looked up.

"Well?" "Well what?"

"Don't give me the Bobby Breen act, shamus. What do you have?" I tossed the report at her. It was all in there. She read it at a glance.

"Look," I said. "You don't have to turn this guy in. He's been coughing up every year. Four figures, anonymously. What do you say? Give the bum a break."

I could tell I wasn't making a dent.

"Sure, we'll give him a break," she said with a snort. She stuffed the report into her shopping bag. "We'll give him a break. After we're through with him he'll be lucky if his mailbox will hold the J. Jill catalogue."

"You're some tough cookie, Grandma. What do you have in your veins. Ice water?"

She stopped halfway out the door. I could see her sneer silhouetted against the bare bulb in the hall.

"No, sucker. The hill winds."

The author, a Denver lawyer, claims to bea regular contributor to the Alumni Fund.His second novel, as yet untitled, will beout this fall.