Free The Girl With the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

please let Mr. Gunderman know, and would he also notify Mr. Gunderman if he had made any disposition of his holdings in northwestern Canada, or if he had any intention of so doing?
    There were eighteen letters like that. Gunderman’s list didn’t match ours completely. He was missing a lot of the names we’d gotten from Al Prince, and he had one or two that Prince hadn’t given to us. I picked out the letters to the ten men with whom we’d been in correspondence and handed them back to Evvie.
    “You can mail these,” I told her. “They’ll tell him just what we want him to know. A few of these pigeons already sold land to us, and the rest have heard from us.”
    “What about the others?”
    “I’ll keep them.”
    “Won’t he get suspicious if he doesn’t hear anything from any of those men?”
    “He’ll hear from them. What other letters did he dictate?”
    I looked through them. There was a letter to the Ontario Board of Trade inquiring in a general way into the commercial purpose and history of Barnstable, and there was a very similar letter addressed to the Lieutenant-General’s office. I let those go through. Both of those sources would simply advise Gunderman that we had incorporated at such-and-such a date with so much capital, and that we had organized for the purpose of purchasing and developing land in the western provinces.
    This was all a matter of public record, and it was something we wanted Gunderman to know. We could tell him ourselves, but it was much better to let him find out on his own hook from properly official government sources. Let him think he was being shrewd. If you let a man convince himself that he is much cleverer than you are, he will never get around to fearing that you’re going to pull a fast one on him.
    “And this one here,” she said.
    The last letter was addressed to a Toronto detective agency that specialized in industrial and financial investigations. Gunderman asked for a brief report on (a) the Barnstable Corporation, Ltd., (b) Douglas Rance, and (c) John Hayden.
    “He asked me to put a call through to these people,” Evvie said. “I told him I couldn’t get through to them and I killed the call, and then he put it all in a letter. I was a little afraid of what might come out. I know he used this agency before, when he got taken the first time.”
    “I don’t think this letter should go out.”
    “That’s what I figured. And why I cut off the call. If a detective dug into things too deeply—”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “But if he doesn’t hear from them at all—”
    “He’ll hear from them,” I said. I swallowed some Scotch, got a cigarette going. She pursed her lips, moistened them with the tip of her tongue. She started to say something, then changed her mind and finished her drink. I went into the kitchen, filled a bowl with ice cubes, brought it and the bottle back into the living room. I put the bowl on the coffee table and added fresh ice and fresh Scotch to our glasses.
    “What should we drink to this time, John?”
    “ Salud y amor y pesetas ,” I said.
    “Health and love and money, I know that one. Isn’t there more to it?”
    “ Y tiempo para gustarlos .”
    “And time...what’s the rest of it?”
    “And time to enjoy them.”
    “And time to enjoy them,” she said. “Yes, that’s worth drinking to.”
    We touched glasses very solemnly and drank a toast to health and love and money and time to enjoy them. Outside, Olean remained very peaceful by night. The few traffic noises were all blocks away. I looked at her and felt that old urge come on strong from out of nowhere, a fast rush of desire that surprised me. A comfortable couch, a quiet and properly private apartment, a good bottle, a beautiful girl—all of them components in a standard mixture. I put a lid on it and started to tell her just what she should say to Gunderman in the morning.
    I ran all the way through it. It was simple enough, no details but a few hints to steer him in