Read Online The Longest Second by Bill S. Ballinger - Free Book Online Page B

table while she called. Placing the phone back on its cradle, she approached me and her hands on my shoulders. “Vic,” her voice was sympathetic, “you mustn’t get discouraged. Perhaps we’ll think of something else.” Her fingers picked at my shirt. I looked into her face; quickly she turned her face away.
    It was at that time I remembered Merkle. When he left the hospital, Merkle had given me his address, so I decided that I’d call on him. That night I took the slip of paper with his address and set off. Merkle lived in a small, reconverted two-room apartment located in a basement of an old brownstone house.
    "The door to his apartment was beneath a stoop of stone stairs to the first floor, and was protected by a heavy wrought iron grille. Rust had gnawed the edges of the iron, and it was pocked with leprous orange spots. After I had rung the belt Merkle opened the door and peered out into the night. Recognizing me, he asked me in. The living room was furnished with cast-off furniture including an overstuffed couch, cane chairs, and a rough mat rug, although it contained an obviously new television set with a very large screen. Plates with remains of crusts, toast, daubs of jelly, half-eaten sandwiches, and drying desserts littered the end tables, seats of the chairs, and tops of the furniture.
    “Well, well, well,” exclaimed Merkle, his face contorted into a too friendly smile, “my old roommate! How’re you All right?”
    “’Ess,” I told him,
    “Huh?”
    “Ess,” I repeated, nodding my head.
    “Oh, you mean yes! So you’ve gotten your voice back.”
    It seemed too much trouble to go through the effort of putting up with such a clown. But, on the other hand, I might be able to use him. Sitting down, I began writing. My original paper pad and pencil had been exchanged for a small permanent pad which was covered with a heavy sheet of transparent plastic. I wrote on the plastic with a wooden stylus, and when I was finished, by lifting the plastic sheet away from its dark background, the writing disappeared, am the pad was ready for use again. It eliminated all the discarded scraps of paper, and the problem of carrying pencil and pens. I attempted to explain to Merkle that I wanted to, trace a possible account through the banks. At once, Merkle brought up the subject of the police. “Won’t they do it for you?" he asked.
    I gave him the explanation I had given Bianca, although there was another reason which I had not explained to either. If I had an account, I didn’t know where the money had come from, and I was not sure that I would care to have the police probing it. Certainly not until I knew more about it myself. However, I said nothing of this to Merkle. He accepted my explanation, as had Bianca, and he sat for a while deep in thought.
    Like so many lonely persons, Merkle was anxious to be friendly and to be of help. I was ready to accept his help, but I did not care to have his friendship. Finally he said, “I think I told you that I work for Sampson, Smith and Tobler. It’s a big wholesale hardware supply house. They get a lot of orders from a bunch of little stores all over the state and they’ve got a sort of system worked out. They have these double cards ... post cards ... printed up, stamped, and everything. All you have to do is address them. There’s a place to check on the second card which is torn off and returned in the mail. So why don’t I swipe a supply of them from the mail room? You can address them to the banks, fill in your name as the guy to be reported on, and then see what happens.”
    It sounded all right except that the cards would be returned to Sampson, Smith and Tobler. I pointed this out to Merkle. He waved away my objection. “So what?” he asked, and grinned. “I’m head clerk in the mail room and I get the mail first. Any cards coming with your name on ’em, I’ll just tear up and throw away—unless it says ‘Yes’ or has something about you. What