Final Notice Read online

  FINAL

  NOTICE

  The Harry Stoner Series, #2

  Jonathan Valin

  TO KATHERINE

  Copyright © 1980 by Jonathan Valin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First ebook edition 2012 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-62064-314-3

  Library ISBN: 978-0-7927-9339-7

  Cover photo © Rubén Hidalgo/iStock.com.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  MORE HARRY STONER EBOOKS

  FINAL

  NOTICE

  1

  IT WAS a brand new building, modern-looking in the style of contemporary day schools and community colleges—all glossy undulations and shining declivities, like a razor haircut in concrete and glass. But the old women behind the service desk hadn't changed a bit since the days when suburban libraries were just plaster walls, wood shelving, and “Quiet” signs. They were still little old ladies in floral print dresses and high-topped shoes, wearing too much lipstick or none at all. Wispy gray-heads meant to lean together and gossip. Which is what two of them did when they saw me stride through the glass doors—all six feet, three inches of me—with my busted statue's face gone civil in a smile. I figured that they knew every man, woman, and child in the neighborhood by sight. And not only by sight. By record and by reputation, too. By fines and by finitudes. Which, in itself, was probably enough to put the lemons in their looks. That and the fact that they didn't know me.

  I asked one of them if she could show me to Leon Ringold's office, and she gave me her overdue frown and looked up coolly from behind rimless spectacles. She was a very little old lady, this one, with round stooped shoulders made for the red cardigan sweater she was wearing and the sharp, chinless head of a night owl.

  “I'll see,” she said, lingering over the “see” as if being shown to Leon Ringold's office were no sure thing. Then she asked me what she'd been wanting to ask since she and her cronies had seen me come through the door. She did it with a little sweetness in her voice, deliciously, as if she were sucking on a mint.

  “May I say who's calling?”

  “Harry Stoner,” I said. “He's expecting me.”

  She toddled off to a door behind the desk and walked through it into what appeared to be a small, white-walled office. There was a two or three minute space, which the other old ladies pretended to fill by stamping overdue books and sorting through catalogue cards. Then the owl-eyed one came out the door and back to the desk. She looked, I thought, slightly disappointed. They all looked slightly disappointed. I began to wonder if they didn't know who I was, after all.

  “You can go in,” she said without enthusiasm.

  I went in.

  It was indeed a small office, bare except for a steel desk set opposite the door. Leon Ringold, or the man I took to be Leon Ringold, was standing behind that desk; and behind him, on the far wall, a muscular wooden Jesus was peering sadly over his shoulder. Ringold was a small man in his late thirties, with wavy, lead-colored hair and an incongruous little boy's face that made him look as swart and peevish as an elf. He held out his right hand as if it hurt him to move; and when I shook it, he swayed slightly at the shoulders.

  “Your ladies don't seem to like my looks,” I said, sitting across from him at the desk.

  He made an exasperated face and said, “Ignore them. They don't want to see Ms. Davis lose her job, that's all. My God, I can't do anything around here without their butting in. It's just like living at home.”

  I smiled and Ringold blushed from forehead to chin. He had all the makings of a “tetchy” one, as my grandmother used to say. One of those angry little men who've never forgiven the rest of the world for looking down on them, as if a man's stature were purely a matter of height. It didn't take a detective to conclude that the best approach with Mr. Leon Ringold was to stick strictly to business and to save the banter for a client with a thicker hide. “Ms. Davis is the lady you hired to recover the books?” I said in my best detective's manner.

  He nodded and looked deeply moved. “It's unbelievable, isn't it, that a public library would be forced to hire a security guard? But book theft has become a regular epidemic in this country. Why the Hamilton County Library system has lost over a million dollars worth of property in the last three years alone. And do you know why?” He didn't wait for an answer. “I'll tell you why!” he said angrily.

  I leaned back in the chair and put on a polite face while Ringold gave me a civics lesson. When he came back to the part about hiring Ms. Davis, I tuned in again.

  ”... so the Board of Directors hired her to trace books down and to keep an eye on the stacks. Replacement costs are so high that they felt the expense was justified, although I wish I'd been consulted on the choice.” Ringold blushed again and I didn't smile. “I'll be honest with you, Stoner. Kate is a liberated young woman whose lifestyle does not suit our conservative clientele. It was a mistake to hire her for this branch. I think the Board can see that, now. She constantly exceeds her authority and has already caused any number of embarrassing incidents. And of course, I'm powerless to intervene.”

  “You could fire her.”

  He looked at me as if that was the stupidest thing he'd heard in seven years. “And have them all quit on me?”

  “The ladies?”

  “Every last one of them,” he said grimly. “Ms. Davis keeps them in coffee and in small talk. And they've taken her under their wings. She's one of them.” Ringold looked at his office door with disgust.

  It was going to be hard to keep from smiling around Leon Ringold.

  “For the salary they're paying her, we could have computerized our desk,” he said and his little boy's face grew wistful. “You know Honeywell has a dandy two-disc mini, and it doesn't even require a dedicated line. Just a Mode-M and three terminals equipped with Ruby Wands. The darn thing inventories, fines, checks out. All by itself! Gee...” He broke out of his trance with a start. “Well, it's too late for that. I'm stuck with the old ladies and Ms. Davis. I don't suppose it would be all that bad if it weren't for this Ripper thing. That's what they're calling it downtown, you know. The Ripper case! What I mean to say is that a number of important people are getting upset. Kate's had college training in criminology and in social work. But this...”

  Ringold pointed to a folio sitting on the corner of his desk. “Well, take a long look for yourself,” he said.

  It was an Abrams art book. Seventy-five bucks for six dozen handsome photographs and a few meager paragraphs of text. This particular volume was a collection of cinquecento art. Bramante, DaVinci. I skimmed through it, while Ringold whispered, “You see? You see what I mean?”

  I saw, all right. Perhaps a little more than Ringold himself saw. Because this wasn't the work of a high school prankster, scribbling scars on the Mona Lisa's forehead like the cross-hatching on a road map. No, some puny soul had taken his time, with an Exacto knife and a ruler, and meticu
lously cut away the genitals, the breasts, the mouths and the eyes of all the delicate looking Italian ladies in the book. Cut them away with a fanatic precision, as if he were carefully excising every source and brand of sexual appeal. Those missing mouths and eyes shook me a little bit. And after a decade or so in this business, I'm not easily shaken.

  “How many more of these books are we talking about?” I asked Ringold.

  “Over two dozen. About three thousand dollars worth.”

  I let out a low whistle and he nodded.

  “It appears that a majority of them were mutilated in the library itself. Perhaps over a period of months. The art collection is housed on the second floor in a relatively isolated spot. It wouldn't have been difficult for the perpetrator to hide himself away, in the lavatory or in one of the typing carrels. Before we hired Ms. Davis in July, the desk librarian on the second floor was the only supervisor, and she generally had her hands full with the juvies. I do have a list of patrons, some thirty names, who have withdrawn art books over the past two years. You may check them out if you see fit, but my own feeling is that this is the work of an outsider and not a library member. We are a relatively large branch, Stoner. But our budget for purchases and replacements is shockingly small. This,” he said, pointing to the folio on his desk, “has got to stop. We simply can't afford to post a permanent guard in front of one shelf of books. Especially a guard with as little experience as Ms. Davis.”

  He lowered his eyes to indicate just how much was involved. And for some reason that look set off something like a warning bell in my head.

  “Why did the Board hire a novice like Ms. Davis in the first place?” I asked him.

  “Affirmative action,” he said, the way some people say “forced busing.” “To tell the truth, she's the protegé of Roscoe Joffrey, my immediate superior.”

  The warning bell stopped ringing and I looked at Ringold with fresh interest.

  “Who's hiring me, Mr. Ringold? Who's paying my salary?”

  He sat back slowly in his chair and covered his mouth with his right hand. “I am,” he said.

  “I see.”

  “You needn't worry about the money. I have it. I mean, within reason, I have the funds.”

  I didn't say anything. Despite his boyish looks, Leon Ringold was shaping up as a clever operator. If I nailed his vandal for him, Joffrey's protegé would be discredited and Leon would get his two-disc mini and, maybe, a job downtown. I guess I didn't hold his ambition against him, although I resented the fact that he didn't want me to know what he was up to. Which is a queer kind of vanity for a private detective, Harry, I said to myself.

  “Well?” Ringold said impatiently. “Do we have a deal?”

  “I'll want to talk to Ms. Davis first. To find out how much work she's already done.”

  Ringold squirmed in his chair. “You don't seem to understand. I want this investigation handled discreetly. Tact, Stoner. That's what's needed here.”

  “Tact meaning Ms. Davis isn't supposed to know I'm on the job?”

  “That's the general idea, yes.”

  “I don't do industrial espionage, Mr. Ringold,” I said coolly.

  He tapped himself on the cheek with a forefinger and looked aghast. “Espionage? I simply want this matter handled confidentially.” He tapped his cheek again, rubbed his chin, coughed politely, stared at the markings on a number two pencil, and said: “Well, I don't suppose there would be any harm in consulting with the girl. But, remember, Stoner, this was your idea.”

  2

  SHE WAS sitting on a tall wooden stool beside the art collection, reading a worn paperback copy of The Women's Room. From where I was standing in the stairwell, she looked very young and a bit studious in her round turtle-shell glasses. Quite pretty, nevertheless. Round, milk-white face. Small nose. Blue eyes. Her blonde hair cut short and set in a tangle of curls that glowed like a cluster of Malaga grapes on a white china plate. I stared at her for a moment before climbing the last stair to the second floor. The way she was perched there, out in the open, she certainly wasn't going to surprise anyone. At least, not anyone with half a brain in his head. And then I wondered just what the hell she planned to do if she did manage to catch Hyde Park's version of Jack the Ripper. She didn't have the big, sinewy muscles you sometimes see on beach girls and on lady jocks, although her shoulders were firm and square and her legs plenty long. Nice legs. What promised to be a nice figure, too.

  I walked up to where she was sitting and told her who I was, and she wrinkled her pretty nose as if she'd read something unpleasant in her book.

  “Could I talk to you for a few minutes, Ms. Davis?” She put the book down, slapped her hands on top of it, as if it were a jack-in-the-box with a broken catch, and said, “What do you want?” in a husky voice.

  I saw at once that she knew exactly what I wanted, that one of those little old ladies had told her why I was there. I went ahead with the charade anyway, explaining politely that I was a private detective hired by Leon Ringold to act as a security consultant to the library.

  That seemed to amuse her, the security consultant part. She plucked off her glasses and said, “Security consultant? Is that the new word for spy?”

  Then she put her glasses back on and reopened the book. Under different circumstances, I might have walked away. But she was young and pretty, and it wasn't hard to see how someone like her could work up a grudge against someone like Leon Ringold. I decided to give her one more try. I cleared my throat noisily and said, “Couldn't we start over again?”

  “After all we've been through?” she said without looking up. “Let's stop kidding around. I know precisely why you're here. To spy for Ringold. And if you think I'm going to help you cut my own throat, you'd better think again. Anyway, I don't like your looks. We'd never get along.”

  “It's a good thing we didn't have kids, then, isn't it?”

  She smiled into The Women's Room. Not a big grin, but a start.

  I said, “Ringold aside, just what is it about me you don't like?”

  “That's a bit like the joke about Mrs. Lincoln and the play, isn't it?” she said and closed the book. “Let's just say I don't trust Leon Ringold or anybody who works for him.”

  “What if I told you that I don't trust Ringold either?”

  “You're taking his money, aren't you? You don't need to trust him.”

  She had a point. An insulting point, to be sure. But, then, she didn't know me; and men in my profession don't have reputations for virtue, if that's your idea of a reputation.

  “I didn't ask for any help on this case,” she said, eyeing me frostily. “And I don't need any macho cops coming around and queering it for me now.”

  I began to think she was right. We wouldn't ever get along. “Take another look, Ms. Davis,” I said stiffly. “You'll notice that I'm not walking on my knuckles. And my brow may be a little craggy, but there's a decent brain behind it. You've got me all tagged and pigeon-holed before you've given me a chance to prove you're right. You call that fair?”

  She glared at the floor for a second and thought it over. “All right, security consultant, what do you have to say?”

  “Well, for starters, when I walked up here just now I wondered why you'd made yourself so visible. Sitting on a stool in front of the art shelf may scare this guy away for awhile, but the longer you stay here the more familiar you'll become. If the Hyde Park Ripper is a real psycho and he's still lurking around this place, he may start to make all kinds of unpleasant connections between you and the books you're guarding. He may even decide to follow you home one night with his trusty penknife.”

  “I'm counting on it,” she said flatly.

  That stopped me. Cold. I looked again at that pretty girl with the studious face and said, “You mean to say you're baiting him? You want him to come after you?”

  She nodded. “I'm a third degree brown belt in karate, Mr. Stoner.” She held up two pretty white hands. “In California, I'd have to register these
as weapons.”

  I laughed. She sounded so damn silly I couldn't help it, although I could have bitten my tongue off afterward.

  Kate Davis lowered her mitts and looked me squarely in the eyes. “You know there are all kinds of pigeon-holers and some of them ought to grow up and look around them. These are different times, Mr. Stoner. But, then, you wouldn't understand.”

  And with that she turned on her heels and walked away, down that dark aisle lined with oversized art books.

  ******

  I'm not a particularly vain man, but I like to think I understand the etiquette of the eighties as well as the next he/she or “ter.” If I err, it's usually on the side of caution; and I usually apologize for it when it's pointed out to me. But Ms. Davis was one of those arrogant young people who not only wants to point out your mistakes to you but to refuse all apologies. The kind who thinks that only she can see the rocks hidden in every snowball of a metaphor. With someone like that, male or female, etiquette goes out the window and I say, “Forget it.”

  All of which meant that she'd made me mad. Mad enough to act unprofessionally. Instead of asking her whether she'd checked out the list of names Ringold had given me or whether she'd consulted with the police, who keep tidy files on sex offenders, I stamped downstairs to the first floor reading room, plunked myself down in one of the nubby orange chairs they'd sunk beside the picture windows, and stared at the cars nosing along Erie Avenue. Outside it was a beautiful fall day and, after a minute or two, I decided it was damn foolishness to waste it, brooding over Kate Davis. I'd do the job I was paid to do; and if the lady thought I was too much of an antique to deal with, that was too bad for the lady.

  “Karate!” I said aloud.

  And a sweet little voice replied: “It's not just a sport.”

  I looked up.

  The owl-faced woman with the red cardigan sweater was standing in front of me.

  I grinned at her. “What do you know about karate?”