Read Online The Procane Chronicle by Ross Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

buy?”
    “No.”
    “Did he know what they were?”
    “Not really, but Peskoe said he should get a hundred thousand for them.”
    “Why didn’t Peskoe do it himself?”
    “He was too nervous.”
    “Not too nervous to be a thief though.”
    “That takes a different kind of nerve.”
    “Why didn’t the guy buy the journals from Peskoe?”
    “Simple,” she said. “He didn’t have the money.”
    “And you say Peskoe’s dead?”
    “That’s right.”
    “When?”
    She looked at her watch. “A couple of hours ago. He jumped, fell, or was pushed from his hotel. Room eight-nineteen of the Joplin Hotel. It’s on East Thirty-fourth.”
    “You were there?”
    “Just after he jumped. Or was pushed or—”
    “Fell,” I said. “What did you do?”
    “It happened just before we got there so we went over to look at him. We didn’t know who it was then. A few seconds later the desk clerk came out and said it was Peskoe and that he was in eight-nineteen. He kept saying it over and over. So we went into the hotel and lifted the key to eight-nineteen, took the elevator up to the tenth floor, walked back down, and then went through Peskoe’s room. The journals weren’t there.”
    “Did you find anything else?” I said.
    Her eyes had brightened when she told me about it. She must have liked the excitement. Searching Peskoe’s room had taken nerve, I had to admit, although I didn’t much want to for some reason, probably because she thought I was in a silly business. I was almost beginning to agree when she said, “We didn’t find anything. What else could there have been?”
    “Six thousand dollars,” I said and felt a bit smug.
    “What six thousand?”
    “The six thousand that Bobby Boykins paid Peskoe for the journals.”
    The excitement went out of her eyes and it was replaced by a kind of thoughtful reappraisal. At least that’s what I interpreted it to be when she said, “You’re not quite as indolent as you look, are you? Maybe you’d better tell me about what you’ve been up to.”
    So I told her about the unsuccessful approach that Bobby Boykins had made to Finley Cummins and how Cummins had furnished me with Peskoe’s name for a price and how Peskoe was lying dead on the sidewalk when I arrived at the hotel on Thirty-fourth Street.
    “What do you call these people you talk to,” she said, “ ‘contacts?’ ”
    “I just think of them as friends and acquaintances.”
    “It didn’t take you long.”
    “It doesn’t when you know where to ask. You found out about Peskoe and it didn’t take you long either.”
    She shook her head. “We’re in the business.” She said it seriously and I didn’t laugh at her perhaps because she really felt that there was honor among thieves, especially the kind who had spent three years at Holyoke.
    “It doesn’t matter how we found out,” I said, “because all we know is that Peskoe probably stole the journals from Procane and probably sold them to Bobby Boykins who got killed before he could collect on them for ninety thousand dollars. We don’t know who’s got the journals now. Whoever has them probably killed both Boykins and Peskoe.”
    Something was bothering her so she decided to ask me because there was no one any wiser around. “Why would they kill Peskoe?”
    “You found out that Peskoe was trying to peddle the journals to at least one other person besides Boykins. And I found out that Boykins was trying to sell a share in them to at least one person. God knows how many others the two of them approached, maybe half a dozen. So maybe one of the ones that they approached decided to cut himself in without putting up any cash. So he killed Boykins and took the journals. And maybe Peskoe knew who it was—or at least could figure it out. So Peskoe jumped out of his window, or fell, or was pushed.”
    “Mr. Procane isn’t going to like this at all,” she said.
    “Is that where Wiedstein is now—telling him?”
    “Yes.”
    “He should