The Green Eagle Score

“What do you feel about this man Parker now?”

“I think I hate him,” she said. “I’m afraid of him.”

“Because he would be justified in punishing you for your hatred,” he suggested. “Because he has done nothing to you directly to justify your hating him. That’s why you’re afraid, the fear is a way of feeling guilt.”

Sometimes the answers were too complicated for her. All she could do now was shake her head.

“Perhaps on Wednesday,” he said, “you’ll feel like talking about the robbery again. Perhaps you’ll understand your feelings better then.”

“I’ll talk about it now,” she said. “Now that I understand this, I want to talk about it, honestly.”

“There’s no time now,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound quite as sympathetic as usual. “We’ll see what happens on Wednesday.”

Now she did feel guilty. She’d been keeping the plans from Dr Godden for no reason, making him feel she didn’t trust him, causing a rift between them just when she needed him the most. “I’ll tell you the whole thing on Wednesday,” she promised.

“If you feel like it,” he said.

6

Norman Berridge surveyed the body and found it good. The rouge on the cheeks was perhaps a trifle too noticeable, particularly for a sixty-three-year-old man, but relatives tended not to be overly particular about things like that. Just so none of the lip stitching showed or anything actually disastrous along that line, almost any kind of slapdash cosmetology was acceptable. And with the kind of assistant one had to rely on these days, that was just as well.

Ah, well, no need to raise a fuss. It was acceptable. Good, in fact. He said so to the assistant standing proudly beside the body, a young Puerto Rican apprentice—Puerto Ricans were about the only ones who would accept proper apprentice wages any more, in this mollycoddled twentieth-century USA—who accepted the compliment with a good deal of pleased hand-fluttering and head-bowing, while his own cheeks got as red as the corpse’s.

The wall phone in the corner buzzed. Norman Berridge walked around the remains and the assistant, picked up the phone, and his secretary said, “There’s a man here to see you, Mr Berridge. He says his name is Lynch, he says it’s about the annuities.”

Berridge pursed his lips. He recognized the name, and the use of the word “annuities”. Lynch was one of the men who came to him from time to time for financing of their activities. It was  pleasant to have an area of investment offering—at some financial risk, of course—one hundred per cent profit and no involvement other than the initial outlay, but the men with whom he dealt in these matters never failed to unnerve him, and Lynch was possibly the most unnerving of them all. A cold man, as self-contained and silent as a panther, he seemed to Berridge always to be looking on him with contempt for his flabby body and bad nerves and jumbled mind. Lynch himself was as clean and cold and empty as the interior of a new coffin.

Lynch was not of course the man’s real name. One time when he had come with another man, the other had called him by a different name, which Berridge could no longer be sure he remembered. Porter, Walker, Archer . . . something like that.

No matter. It wasn’t the man’s name that counted, it was the opportunity he presented for investment. “I’ll be right up,” Berridge said into the phone, hung it up, and turned back to see the assistant dabbing at his body’s cheek, apparently having himself noticed it was a bit too red for someone not a habitue of Moulin Rouge. “Very good,” Berridge said. “Very good.”

He turned away from the assistant’s redoubled smile of pleasure and went over to the elevator, a small cage barely large enough for two. Shutting the gate, riding up to the main floor, Berridge reminded himself of his frequent vow to start using the stairs. Exercise was all he needed, and soon he’d have back the body of his twenties. Exercise, and some small restraint in diet. Nothing to it.

But he didn’t want to be panting when he walked into the room containing Lynch. Next time he was in the basement would be soon enough to start the new regimen. For now, his self-possession in Lynch’s presence would be greatly improved if his breathing were normal. Thus, the elevator.

Lynch was standing by the window when Berridge entered his office, gazing without expression at the formal garden Mrs Berridge maintained behind the house. It seemed to Berridge that Lynch never sat down, that their infrequent meetings in this office were always held with Lynch on his feet, as hard as a post.

This time, Berridge decided, he would also remain standing. It would make up a bit for the elevator.

“Lynch,” he said, as though pleased to see the man. “It’s been quite some time.” The false amiability and unction he had learned in dealing with bereaved relatives stood him well in other situations as well, most particularly this one. None of his true ambivalence about Lynch—money versus discomfort—showed in his voice or face.

Lynch turned away from the window, nodded briefly, and said, “I need three thousand.”

There was no small talk in Lynch, no social nicety. The man was as stripped and purposeful as a racing car or a fighter plane.

Which was just as well, actually. The last thing Berridge wanted was to know the specifics of the usage to which his money was to be put, and the next to the last thing was idle conversation with this man over some standard subject tike the weather.

So Berridge, ordinarily an expansive and loquacious man, matched Lynch’s brevity with his own, saying, “No problem at all. The usual terms, I suppose?”

“Right. If it comes off, you’ll hear in about ten days.”

“About the first of the month?”

“Just after. Second or third, something like that.”