The Baxter Trust

do.”
    Farron opened the door. She gave him a look, then stalked out of the office.
    Farron closed the door, went back, and sat at his desk.
    “Well,” Stams said. “What do you think?”
    Lieutenant Farron thought Sergeant Stams had successfully passed the buck. But he wasn’t going to acknowledge that to him.
    Farron shrugged. “Could be nothing. Practical joke. Could be something else. What I don’t like is the fact the phone call came as soon as she got home. It could mean our man’s watching the house.”
    Stams nodded. “So what do we do?”
    Lieutenant Farron knew that sarcasm would be lost on Sergeant Stams, but he couldn’t help himself.
    “What do we do?” he said. “We put three bodyguards on her at all times, assign five squad cars to the area, and tap her phone.”
    He looked up to see Sergeant Stams looking at him, impassive as always.
    “What do you think we do?” Farron said. He snorted and handed him the letter. “File it.”

3.
    S HEILA B ENTON SPENT A RESTLESS night.
    Johnny called around seven o’clock to tell her he’d arrived safely and everything was going fine. Sheila would have loved to have told him all about what was happening, but she didn’t have the heart. He had his wife’s attorneys to deal with, and he didn’t need the added distraction. Besides, he’d kidded her on the way to the airport that she wouldn’t be able to get along for two days without him, that she’d be calling him up for advice. Well, she’d handled this herself, hadn’t she? She’d reported it to the police. She’d done everything she could do. And what the hell could he do, a million miles away?
    And the other thing was, Johnny was never serious. He treated everything as a joke. He wouldn’t take this seriously. He’d just kid her about it
    That started Sheila off on a bad train of thought. Johnny was never serious. How could she be sure he was serious about her? Nonsense. She knew he loved her. Didn’t he? Wasn’t he in Reno divorcing his wife so he’d be free to be with her? So what if he was never serious. She liked the way he kidded around. That was part of what had attracted her to him in the first place. So what was she worrying about?
    It was a bad night. A night without Johnny. A night without coke. Jesus, she hadn’t thought it was going to be this hard. By eleven o’clock she was climbing the walls. She had ransacked the refrigerator and the kitchen shelves, and found damn little. Some orange juice. Some Wheaties. Some stale crackers. What she found, she ate, but it wasn’t nearly enough. She wanted something exciting, like pizza. But she couldn’t eat a whole pizza, and no one would deliver a slice. And she wasn’t that keen about walking out to Broadway, not alone, not at night, and not now. But she really wanted something.
    What she wanted, of course, was coke. She didn’t really want to admit that, but it was true. And when she finally did admit it, when she finally said to herself, “Jesus, I need a hit of coke,” she rationalized. It would have been all right, she told herself, if it hadn’t been for the letter. That was what was throwing her. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have needed the coke. She wouldn’t have felt this anxious and desperate. She could give up the coke easy enough, that wasn’t the problem. But not now. Not with Johnny gone and this thing happening to her. This scary thing that she didn’t understand. There was plenty of time to stop taking coke when everything was all right. That was the time to do it. Not in the middle of a crisis. Not with so much else on her mind.
    By one in the morning she had convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with buying coke at this particular juncture in her life, and, considering how things stood, she should simply go ahead and do so.
    With this conviction, she was finally able to fall asleep.
    She awoke the next morning at nine o’clock. She got up, showered and dressed, folded up the bed and set out to accomplish her purpose.
    On her way out, she checked the mailbox. The mail hadn’t come yet, and she was glad. She wasn’t up to another letter, if one happened to be in it.
    Sheila walked out to Broadway and hailed a cab. Aside from cocaine, taxis were her one extravagance. Sheila couldn’t stand public transportation. It was so filthy in the subway. And so inconvenient, particularly getting from one side of town to the other. You had to take the subway to Times Square, shuttle,