Scam

superstitious, still there’s always the chance the client’s husband, boyfriend, or whatever will come home and say, “Hey, what the hell you signing there?” and the game will be up. Not that it would matter in terms of me getting paid—still and all, I like to do the job.
    Anyway, I signed up Betty Brody and her broken leg and called the office.
    “Rosenberg and Stone.”
    “Hi, Mary,” I said.
    It was a pleasure.
    I should explain. Richard Rosenberg employed two switchboard girls, Wendy and Janet. Both were away on summer vacation, and I couldn’t have been happier. Wendy and Janet were simple tools at best. Well, that’s not fair—they were borderline competent; competent enough to have lasted this long without getting fired. But only because they were incompetent enough to be willing to work for the tiny wages Richard Rosenberg was willing to pay. The fact is, I was never able to depend on them. Any information they gave me was likely to be wrong. More than once I had had to search for a nonexistent client, phone number, or address.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, they happened to have identical voices, so you never knew which one you were dealing with. Which was a bit of a pain. I could never say, “Hi, Wendy” or, “Hi, Janet.” Worse, if god forbid I should have to call them back, I never knew which to call.
    Now they were on vacation, and Richard had hired one woman to take their place. Which in a way made sense—one competent woman to do the work of two incompetent ones. Which worked just fine. The woman was crisp, efficient, and right on the button. Moreover, she was only one person, so there was no danger of confusing her with anyone else. Plus, her name was Mary Mason, which rhymed with Perry Mason, so, bad as I am with names, I wasn’t likely to forget hers.
    “Hi, Mary,” I said. “It’s Stanley,” secure in the knowledge that she was going to give me a case and that the information would be correct.
    Wrong again.
    The message was to call Cranston Pritchert.

7.
    “T HIS BETTER BE GOOD.”
    I wasn’t kidding. Having driven all the way back from Queens to meet Cranston Pritchert in my office, I wasn’t about to take any shit. I was also billing him for the travel time.
    “It’s good. Believe me, it’s good.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    Pritchert frowned. “Well, actually, it isn’t good. What I mean is, it’s something. Something concrete.”
    “Like what?”
    Pritchert dropped his briefcase on my desk, popped it open, and pulled out a sheet of paper.
    “Like this,” he said.
    I looked. It was a letter, consisting of words cut from newspaper headlines and pasted on a sheet of paper. There was no date, no greeting, no salutation.
    It said, I SAW YOU IN THE SINGLES BAR.
    “See?” Pritchert said. “What did I tell you?”
    I frowned. “Where did you get this?”
    “It was in the mail.”
    “What mail?”
    “This morning’s mail.”
    “It came to your house?”
    “No. To the office.”
    “Someone sent this to your office?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Where’s the envelope?”
    “Huh?”
    “The envelope it came in.”
    “Oh. I don’t have it.”
    “What?”
    “I threw it out.”
    “You threw it out?”
    “Well, I didn’t know.”
    “How could you throw it out?”
    “Hey. I didn’t know. I got the morning mail. This was just one of the letters in it. I open it up, throw the envelopes away. Then I get to this.”
    I put up my hand. “I’m still not following. Where is this happening?”
    “I told you. At work.”
    “Yes, but where at work? In your office?”
    “Yes. In my office.”
    “You’re seated at your desk?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Where do you throw the envelope?”
    “In the wastebasket.”
    “So it should still be there?”
    “I suppose so. Why?”
    “You didn’t fish it out after you got the letter?”
    “No. Why should I?” Pritchert said, irritably. “Look, you’re making such a deal about the envelope, what about the message?”
    “What about it?”
    He stared at me. “What do you mean, what about it? Now we know what’s going on.”
    “We do?”
    “Yes, of course. The girl was a setup, just like I said. Someone set me up because of the proxy fight.”
    “How can you get all of that from this letter?”
    “Are you kidding? Just look at it.”
    “I’m looking at it.”
    “Well, there you are. I saw you in the singles bar. What could be clearer than that?”
    “The statement is clear. The implications are