Scam

briefcase, and followed me out the door.

8.
    I HATE MIDTOWN. IN TERMS of driving, I mean. Not only can’t you park in midtown, you can’t even stand. I hadn’t been waiting more than five minutes outside Cranston Pritchert’s office building when a transit cop came by and made me move on.
    I drove around the block once, but the son of a bitch was still there. As I slowed down, he gave me the evil eye. I gave him a frozen smile and starred around the block again.
    Third time’s the charm.
    Like hell.
    My buddy was still there, and as I drove up he jerked his thumb.
    It was all I needed. My own personal transit cop.
    Only in New York.
    When I got around the block again Cranston Pritchert was standing there. So was the transit cop, but the hell with him. I pulled into the curb, rolled down the window.
    “Where is it?”
    “What?”
    “The envelope. Where’s the envelope.”
    “I don’t have it.”
    “What?”
    At that moment the transit cop insinuated himself, said, “All right, buddy, move it along.”
    “Get in the car.”
    “What?” Pritchert said.
    “I can’t stand here. Get in the car.”
    Pritchert got in, and I pulled out and headed around the block again.
    “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”
    “It’s gone.”
    “Gone?”
    “It’s not there.”
    “You mean someone took it out of the wastebasket.”
    “No. They emptied the wastebasket.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah. I went up and looked and they’d dumped the basket.”
    “Who?”
    “What?”
    “Who emptied the wastebasket?”
    “What do you mean, who? The cleaning people.”
    “They clean up in the afternoon?”
    “I don’t know when they clean. The fact is, they did.”
    “They dump anyone else’s basket?”
    “How the hell should I know?”
    “Well, it’s something we should find out. I really should go up there with you.”
    “No, damn it,” Pritchert said. “I told you no.”
    “Where does the garbage go?”
    “Huh?”
    “When they dump it, where does it go? Does a guy come through with a bin, they dump the garbage into that? Or a plastic sack?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You never noticed?”
    “No. Why would I?”
    I turned the corner, pulled up in front of the building again. Believe it or not, the transit cop was still there. I kept going, headed around again.
    “All right, here’s the thing,” I said. “There’s two possibilities here. One, the garbage got dumped just as you say, or, two, someone dumped it to get rid of the envelope. I’m trying to pin down which.”
    “How could you do that?”
    “I told you. Go up there and see if they dumped anyone else’s.”
    “I don’t want you doing that.”
    “No, but you could. When you go back upstairs, that’s the first thing you should check on.”
    “I’m going to go around asking people if their garbage was dumped?”
    “Don’t be a schmuck. Are you telling me you can’t manage to wander around, take a look?”
    “I’m not a spy.”
    “No, you’re not. So you do the best you can. If the other baskets haven’t been dumped, there’s a good chance someone pilfered yours. Which would be interesting as hell. If the others have been dumped, then the question is where. If we can find out where, maybe we can get that envelope back.”
    Pritchert grimaced. “I really think you’re making too much of the envelope. The important thing is the girl.”
    “I’ll work on the girl. But that’s later tonight. Right now, I’m working on this.”
    “And you’re driving me crazy,” Pritchert said. “If I go running around the office trying to find out where the garbage is dumped, you don’t think someone’s gonna notice?”
    “So they do. Say you think you threw out an important paper.”
    “Oh, that’s going to make me look great.”
    “What do you care how you look? We got a crisis here. We’re trying to handle it. Just say you threw something out.”
    “And they’ll want to know what.”
    “It doesn’t matter what.”
    “If it has to do with the business, it does.”
    “So say it wasn’t. Say it was theater tickets.”
    “Theater tickets?”
    “Sure. You had an envelope of theater tickets in your jacket pocket, you took it out. It got mixed up in the mail.”
    “Stop the car,” Pritchert said.
    We’d come around the block again. I pulled up next to the transit cop to let him out.
    Pritchert turned to me. “Look,” he said. “I’m glad you’re such a good liar. But I don’t think I could pull it off. Now, I’ll go