I had been in this room before, and I had still memories of the little unpleasantness that had occurred then. Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb, and I was expecting unpleasantness again.
The interview hadn’t begun well, and it wasn’t improving. Already Brandon was fiddling with a cigar: a trick that denoted his displeasure.
“All right,” he said in a thin, exasperated voice, “let’s start from the beginning again. You had this letter…” He leaned forward to peer at Janet Crosby’s letter as if it had been infected with tetanus. He was careful not to touch it. “Dated May 15th, 1948.”
Well, at least that showed he could read. I didn’t say anything.
“With this letter were five onehundred-dollar bills. Right?”
“Check,” I said.
“You received the letter on May 16th, but put it unopened in a coat pocket and forgot about it. It was only when you gave the coat away the letter was found. Right?”
“Check.”
He scowled down at the cigar, then rested his broad fat nose on it.
“A pretty smart way to run a business.”