A Fatal Glass of Beer Read Online Free Page A

writer. Little thing. Only woman besides Fanny Brice who ever successfully upstaged me. Pretends she’s a man-eater. Probably still a virgin. I mean West. You agree?”
    “I don’t list my clients and I don’t talk about them,” I said.
    “Good answer,” he said, making another mark. “She says you’re an honest man?”
    “Is this the office of a dishonest man?” I asked.
    He looked around, his eyes pausing on the Dali, and turned back to me. “An unsuccessful dishonest man, mayhaps.”
    “Mayhaps,” I agreed.
    “What do you think about marriage?” he asked.
    “I tried it once. My wife left me and married a rich man. He died and she’s about to marry another one.”
    “Good,” he said, making a check mark. “I too was once married. Still am, though I haven’t seen her in years. I believe I drove the woman mad, though we managed to bear a son. Do you have children?”
    “No,” I said.
    “What are your fees?”
    “Thirty dollars a day plus expenses,” I said.
    “Expenses?”
    “Food, water, gas, bribes, parking fees, travel, hotels or motels if necessary,” I said.
    “You get paid twenty-five cash each day as a fee, and expense money as we go,” he said, pulling a handful of bills from his pocket. “Here is one day or more in advance.”
    He handed me a fifty-dollar bill.
    I thought I saw a bulge in his other pocket and the hint of the appearance of more bills. I didn’t argue. Twenty-five dollars a day was my bottom-line fee. And, besides, this was going to be in cash.
    “The case?”
    He reached into another pocket and pulled out a letter. He handed it to me. It was postmarked Philadelphia. No return address. I opened it and took out the single sheet. It was typed and read:
Dear Bulbnose:
Humiliation is one thing a man cannot endure and call himself a man. You have humiliated me. I have spent years considering some form of humiliation for you but have come to the conclusion that you are beyond humiliation. However, you are not beyond pain, especially the pain of monetary loss. It is I who have taken your bankbooks. It is I who will take back some of my pride by taking as much of your money as I can. You can try to stop me, you sick old sot, but I’ll prove the better man. The task begins in Philadelphia and will not end until I have at least a million dollars.
    Lester O. Hipnoodle
    “Who’s Hipnoodle?”
    “Never heard of him,” said Fields.
    “Sounds like a fake name.”
    “I am a collector of the odd, unusual, and creative name,” said Fields. “No name surprises me. Many delight me. This nom de plume, if it is one, is not of the caliber that merits serious artistic consideration. Be that as it may, I have been, over the course of my long and honored career, stashing money in banks across the country, going back to the days when I joined the Keith circuit. I have kept the bankbooks on a table in my office at home. My secretary has of late attempted to put the books in order. In the midst of so doing, we both noted one morning that the stacks which overflowed elegantly like small works of art had significantly dwindled. There were only about half of them left. And then this letter.”
    I looked at the letter again and reached for the phone.
    “We’ll go to your house and take a look,” I said. “After a couple of calls.”
    “Certainly,” he replied, turning his hat in his lap and reexamining the Dali painting.
    While I was putting my call through, Fields outlined his plan, said I should find a driver to take his car to Philadelphia while he and I flew, and that he trusted none of his servants.
    “At least three of them are Nazi spies,” he muttered. “And one is definitely a Jap, though he claims to be Chinese.”
    “Operator,” I said into the phone. “I need a number in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.… Thanks.”
    I held on while I waited.
    “Why didn’t I think of that?” Fields said. “Too much time in the damned sanitarium. I’ve got a slight case of