Scam

blew my mind. Not that she meant to, it just worked out that way.
    I was standing on the corner of Third Avenue and 68th. The assignment she gave me was 68th Street between Second and Third.
    Half a block away.
    The location was a rarity in itself, because the East 60s are an affluent neighborhood, and affluent clients are infrequent at Rosenberg and Stone.
    But that was the least of it.
    My car was still parked in front of Miriam Pritchert’s on East 78th Street. And my briefcase was in it—naturally, I hadn’t taken it with me to go tailing Pritchert’s wife. Ordinarily, I could not call on a client without my briefcase. All the forms they need to sign are in it, including the retainer.
    But this wasn’t a sign-up. It was a photo assignment. The client had just gotten home from the hospital, and Richard wanted me to take injury photos of the surgical scars.
    Even so, ordinarily my camera would be in my briefcase.
    But—
    This was my second assignment of the day. On my way back from Amy Greenberg’s, I’d stopped at Jacoby Hospital in the Bronx to sign up a guy who’d broken his neck. I kid you not. The guy’d been hanging upside down from a defective chinning bar, which had collapsed, causing him to fall on his head. The client, one Jaspar T. Baines, was a thin, muscular black man whom I found stretched out full-length in bed with his head in traction.
    It was a situation that cried out for a photo, and I’d smuggled my camera in. I do that by wearing it on a cord around my neck and under my arm, so it hangs down under my jacket as if in a shoulder holster. This was necessary, because most hospitals won’t allow you to take pictures.
    I’d gotten mine, thank you very much, and what a fine picture it was.
    And because of that I had my camera with me.
    What a fantastic stroke of luck.
    I hied it down the street to take pictures of Susan Franklyn’s reconstructed knee.
    Only it wasn’t quite that easy. First off, there was a security problem. Susan Franklyn’s building was harder to get into than Miriam Pritchert’s. The guard in the lobby must have asked me half a dozen questions before he was even willing to call upstairs. Even then he wasn’t happy—I swear I thought he was going to ask me for a photo ID.
    Then there was the client herself. Susan Franklyn was young, attractive, and modest. Most of Richard Rosenberg’s clients couldn’t give a damn about modesty—for an injury photo, they’d happily strip to the buff. Not Susan Franklyn. Her injury was only her knee, but she was wearing pants, and she wasn’t willing to drop them for the shot. A trifle coy, since she was presumably wearing underwear, not to mention a fairly long shirt. But what the hey, I’d gotten enough breaks on the assignment, I could afford to wait while she changed.
    Which she did. Into a bikini bathing suit. Go figure. Ten times more revealing than dropping her pants in the first place.
    On the other hand, it made a great shot. The girl was a dish. In a skimpy bikini, she was a delectable dish. Except for the ugly, red, raw, surgical scars criss-crossing her left knee.
    Wow. Talk about your daily double. On one roll of film, I had a guy with his neck in traction, and a mutilated pinup model.
    Richard would come in his pants.
    I finished my photo session, thanked the young woman—whose scars would quickly fade and who would have a nice day at the beach on the money Richard was going to get her—and went out.
    I was tempted to spread my arms wide, show the guard in the lobby I hadn’t absconded with the family silver, but I stifled the impulse, contented myself with a superior smirk as I went by.
    Outside, I checked my watch. Even with the costume change, the whole assignment had only taken a half hour since I’d been beeped. I wondered if Miriam Pritchert and Marty Rothstein were still having lunch.
    They weren’t. One glance through the window showed the table was vacant.
    I wondered if they’d gone up to her place.
    Or up to his.
    Or if he’d simply gone back to work.
    Well, I knew how to check on that.
    I went to the pay phone, called his firm.
    The receptionist assured me he was still out to lunch.
    I dropped another quarter, called Miriam Pritchert. It rang four times and an answering machine came on.
    I hung up, dialed four one one, asked for a listing for Martin Rothstein.
    There were four. I called them all and none were home. Of course, he didn’t have to live in Manhattan. Or he could be listed as M.