After Midnight

what’s going on. I’m curious. Maybe it is something I can write about. And maybe I can help you.”

“Who says I need any help?”

“You’ve gotta be awfully desperate to put on a disguise and come over here the way you did—make up a story about being stood up for breakfast.”

I shook my head and tried to look stupid.

“And Morning Dehydration Syndrome? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Just because you’ve never heard of it…”

He smiled and shook his head. “And the second Tribune? You must’ve called in the request for it. My guess is, you needed to get into Tony’s apartment for some reason, but you didn’t know which one it was. So you called for a replacement paper. You wanted to see where it got delivered.”

“You oughta be a writer,” I told him, smiling and shaking my head. “With an imagination like that…”

“Am I wrong?”

“Dead wrong.”

“Oooh. Don’t say things like that, okay? To a writer, that sounds like some sort of ironic foreshadowing. I’m not at all interested in getting myself killed. I’m fascinated by your situation, that’s all.”

“You don’t even know my situation.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What do you think is going on?” I asked him.

“Tony had something in his apartment, and you wanted it. You had to get it. Maybe you figured you just couldn’t wait for the Tribune guy, so you thought up the breakfast story and came to my door, hoping you could trick me into letting you into his place. While I was searching for him, you tried to take care of your problem, whatever it was. And you made the fake call to his sister to add a touch of verisimilitude to your story.”

Laughing, I said, “What a crock.”

“Was he blackmailing you? What?”

“He stood me up for breakfast.”

Murphy raised his right hand and said, “No matter what, I’ll never tell a soul.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for your story.”

“Haw!”

“And if it’s something usable, we can work out a deal so you get a percentage of everything.”

“You really are curious.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” he said.

“Nothing like what?”

“I’m minding my own business when a gorgeous mystery woman comes to my door and drags me into her intrigue.”

Gorgeous?

“It’s a first,” he said. “This sort of thing just doesn’t happen in real life. Not to me, anyway. At least it never did until this morning.”

“Maybe I’d better leave.”

“No, don’t. Please. You’ve got no idea how great this is. For me. Do you want another beer? Something else? Just name it, I have to know what’s going on. Was Tony blackmailing you? Did he have pictures of you, or…?”

I shook my head.

“What’ll it take for you to tell?” he asked.

“I guess I’ll take another beer,” I told him.

Nodding, he stood up. “You won’t run off, will you?”

“Not a chance.”

He raised his eyebrows as if he wanted to know why.

“I can’t run off,” I explained. “I might have to kill you.”

Which was a joke. I didn’t intend to kill him. There’d be no need for it. Like I already mentioned, I planned to ensure his silence by getting him to screw me.

32

LEVERAGE

Entering from the kitchen with two fresh bottles of beer, Murphy looked eager and excited and not at all worried. He sat down on the couch and filled our mugs with beer.

I took a drink, then said, “Before you get too comfortable, you’d better shut the front door. And get your checkbook.”

“Sure. Okay.”

He got up again, closed the main door, disappeared into another room and came back with it.

I held out my hand.

“You want to see it?”

“You’re curious about my story, I’m curious about yours.”

“Well…” He shrugged, then handed the checkbook to me.

I flipped through his check stubs. He hadn’t been very diligent about keeping track of his balance, but I performed some simple math along the way. By the time I came to the final stub, he seemed to have about twelve thousand dollars, give or take a few hundred. I looked up at him and said, “Not bad.”

“Well, I just got an advance.”

I felt a little giddy. When you don’t have a job and your bank balance is less than two hundred bucks, twelve thousand looks like a fortune.

I gave Murphy a frown. “You could’ve offered me a little more than a thousand.”

“Well…How much do you want?”

“How about ten?”

“Ten thousand? I wouldn’t have anything left to live on. Whatever I’ve got now, it’ll have to last me for months.”

“How many months?”

“I don’t know. It all depends. Six or eight, maybe. And I have an estimated income tax payment coming up in September. That’ll clean me out if I don’t get something else by then. And I probably won’t. The taxes always clean me out.”

“Suppose you give me five thousand?” I suggested.

He grimaced.

“Five thousand in cash, up front, and you can have my story. I’ll sign a paper, giving you all the rights to it. You won’t have to cut me in for a percentage or anything, even if it’s a bestseller or blockbuster movie. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If you get low, just don’t pay your estimated tax on time.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“My story could make you a lot of money.”

“I don’t even know if I can use your story. I don’t know, what it is.”

“And you never will unless you cough up the five grand.”

He scowled at me, but with a glint in his eye. He almost seemed to be smiling as he sat down on the couch and reached for his beer. He drank some. Then he said, “Just give me a hint.”

“A hint?”