The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [118]
“Who, then?” asked Borst.
“How should I know?”
“You told Mr. Lachtmann that you knew. Want us to go back and tell him that you lied to him? He won’t like that. ‘Specially the way his daughter was found. An’ notice …” Borst wagged a finger at me. “I ain’t asking you about that, though I might.”
“I said I may know,” I protested.
“Well,” Borst went on, “don’t matter now if you do or you don’t. We know. Want me to tell you how we know? Dr. Carroll was a real big help here, too. First, he was not only kind enough to find where Turk lived, saving us lots of leg-work, but also to be there when he died. I’d lay you ten to one that if Turk had croaked with just that old lady in the room, nobody’d ever have seen the body again. Then, he did us an even bigger favor by figuring out that Turk died of arsenic poisoning and not cholera. The other doc here”—Borst turned to me and crooked a thumb at the Professor—“told me that it was you who checked his hair when he was cutting him up. Very clever. Of course it means that you suspected foul play in the first place, but we’ll leave that go for now. Then, you did us the biggest favor when you missed the money in the floorboards after you searched his rooms—”
I began to protest, but Borst waved me off. “C’mon, Doc. We ain’t so dumb that we can’t tell when somebody’s been through somebody else’s things. Missing the money was the biggest favor, ‘cause along with the money—I must have forgot to tell you—was a journal. Seems your friend Turk kept a record of his dealings. Not all that unusual, actually.”
A journal? What journal? I had the journal. I had found it at Wharf Lane.
“Now, we couldn’t get much from the journal at first—Turk had used letters instead of words—so we put it aside in case it came in handy later. That was about where things stood, when the doc told Mr. Lachtmann about the accomplice. As soon as Mr. Lachtmann told us, we went back to Haggens’ place. Once we know what we’re looking for, we know how to get information out of folks. We found out that there was another George that Turk was friendly with. We also found out that after Turk had a couple of accidents with some young ladies he came up with someone else to do the actual dirty work, or at least that’s what he told potential customers. Even women in desperation ain’t gonna just lie there and die. There was even one girl who told us that Turk told her that if she ever needed fixing up, George was just the guy to do it. That sent us back to the journal ’cause there seemed to be money moving between Turk and a ‘GF.’ We had figured it was money coming in—payment for goods, so to speak—but after we heard what we did, we figured maybe it was money going out—services rendered kinda thing. Once we had that, it wasn’t too hard to figure out who ‘GF’ was.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I protested. “Just because Turk wrote something in a book, it doesn’t mean it happened.”
“Oh, yeah, Doc. Sure. Turk takes the trouble to write all these letters and numbers in a book and hides it where’s he figures no one’s gonna find it, but it don’t mean nothing? If that makes sense to you, all I can say is I hope I never get sick.”
Borst reached down and took Farnshaw by the arm. “Well, if there’s nothing else, me and Dr. Farnshaw will be going.” The three of us were forced to watch helplessly as Borst led our young colleague out the door. Before he left, he turned back. “Been a pleasure chatting with you.”
We remained in the office, stupefied. Simpson and the Professor were merely overwhelmed by the episode itself. I had other questions to consider. Two journals—I had to decide which was real or, in fact, if either of them was real. Turk might well have created a spurious document implicating Farnshaw to barter with in case the police uncovered his activities. The more information to be traded, the better the deal. It was certainly preferable to be able to bargain with the police for the name of the person performing the actual abortions than to be forced to face the