Free Step to the Graveyard Easy by Bill Pronzini Page B

don’t know and travel around selling them, is that it?”
    “No, that’s not it. Everybody seems to think I’m a salesman. That’s what I used to be. It’s not what I am today.”
    “Everybody’s a salesman.”
    “Not me. Not anymore.”
    “Perhaps Mr. Cape is simply a good Samaritan,” Stacy Vanowen said. “They do exist, you know.”
    “Not in my experience.” Vanowen finished his cocktail, shoved his plate aside, scrubbed at his mouth with his napkin, looked at his watch, rotated an expensive ring on his left hand—platinum, with a circle of fat diamonds—gestured to the waiter, and said as if there’d been no pause, “Everybody has motives. Everybody’s got an agenda.”
    “Not me,” Cape said again.
    Stacy Vanowen said, “I’d like to see the photos, Mr. Cape.”
    He handed her the glossies. Before she could separate them, her husband snatched them out of her hand. He glanced at the two of her, scowled at the one of himself. “This is the studio portrait I had taken for the
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article last year. What the devil?”
    “Let me look at them, Andy.”
    He allowed her to reclaim the photos. “How could somebody get hold of that one? Magazine didn’t use it after all, some kind of space problem, and they sent it back. I don’t remember what I did with it.” He asked her, “Do you?”
    “You said you were going to burn it.”
    “I thought I did.” Vanowen rotated the fancy ring again, hiseyes still on Cape. “I take lousy photographs. Thought this one was all right at first, but I’m glad
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didn’t use it. Makes me look stiff, like I’ve got a broom handle stuck up my ass.”
    Cape said, “Maybe this copy came from the photographer.”
    “I doubt it. He’s a friend of mine, he wouldn’t sell or give away any copies without my permission.”
    “Did you give out any to friends or business associates?”
    “No. My secretary might have, but she usually mentions that sort of request. I’ll ask her about it.”
    “I don’t like this,” Stacy Vanowen said. “These pictures of me…”
    Cape asked her, “Can you tell when they were taken?”
    “It had to’ve been recently, within the past month or so. I’ve only owned this beige outfit a few weeks.” She hugged her arms. “They make me feel cold. As if I’ve been… violated.”
    “Damn right it’s a violation,” Vanowen said. “These people you told Vince Mahannah about, Cape, the ones in San Francisco—”
    “Boone and Tanya Judson.”
    “Grifters, cardsharps.” He made an angry gesture, shifted in his chair, leaned back, leaned forward. “Why did they have these photos? What’s their game?”
    “I don’t have any answers for you, Mr. Vanowen.”
    “The poker scam idea doesn’t make sense. My wife isn’t a player, she never gambles at all. She—”
    He broke off as more food arrived. Three orders: one seafood salad, two plates of some kind of fileted whitefish. Cape glanced at his fish and then ignored it.
    Stacy Vanowen said, “What if it’s some kind of kidnapping scheme?”
    Her husband jumped as if she’d goosed him. “Kidnapping?”
    “It’s possible, Andrew. We’re well off, aren’t we?”
    “They wouldn’t need seed money for something like that,” Cape said.
    “That might’ve been just a lie to mislead you.”
    “There’s also the photo of Vince Mahannah. Why include him if you and your husband are kidnapping targets?”
    “God, I don’t know. Who knows how people like that think?”
    “It’s a big jump from convention-circuit con games to a capital offense. I don’t see those two making it.”
    Vanowen said, “You’re no expert, Cape.”
    “You’re right, I’m not.”
    “All right, then. We don’t know what they’re up to, that’s the bottom line.” Vanowen poked at his filet, banged the fork down without eating, pinched the ridge of muscle along his lower lip instead. “Mahannah passed on their description, but I want to hear it from you. In