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THE MIDNIGHT SKULKER 35

Schaumburg, Illinois

Monday, March 5, 1974

4:17 p.m. Central Standard Time

Taking her hand, “Do you still want to move to San Diego?”

“ ‘Do I still want to move to San Diego’?  Yeah! Bet your ass I still want to move to San Diego! I love it there!  Besides, we sold this house and bought that house and think that we’d be hit with one hell of a law suit… or two, if we back out the deals.”

“Yeah, I think so, too! I love it there also and want to get away from this fucking cold place! But, Marcie, I don’t have a job.”

“Mitchie, you’re a salesman. You’ll find a job.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too, and thought I’d talk to…. “

“You can talk to Sophie to see what it would take for you to get a license to sell real estate.”

“Yes, that, too.  But I’ve also been thinking about Mister Sawyer. He seemed to like me and I have a feeling he’d take me on and train me to be a car salesman.”

“I think that selling ‘Mercedes Benz’ automobiles makes you a little more than just a ‘car salesman’ and it might not be all that easy to sell those cars.  Especially for someone like you that knows absolutely nothing about cars.”

“I’m really not very mechanically inclined, am I?”

“ ‘Really not very mechanically inclined’?” Marsha repeated with a dry chuckle. “I’m surprised you know the difference between the ignition and gas hole.”

The spat of humor over, “You realize,” Mitchell asked, “how lucky we were; how perfect the timing had to be to get that, as Sophie said: ‘glowing earnings report’ from Edwin?”

“Yes, of course ‘I realize’. If the escrow was opened on Thursday morning and Sophie got the loan papers in at the same time…”

Interjecting, Mitchell said, “With the two hour time difference, that means the earliest the bank could have reached Plankow was…”

“The bank had to catch him in the late afternoon Chicago time.” Marsha interjected, “Probably when they were packing to make their getaway and that means Edwin and Geraldine were still there on Thursday, and – because the phone was still ringing there until this afternoon – they probably called the telephone company to shut the phones down and pulled all the furniture and stuff on Friday.”

 “And when the bank called late Thursday he was probably caught off guard and figured, ‘what the hell, may as well give the sucker a break’ and told them what a fantastic salesman I am.”

“And maybe also,” Marsha said, giving Edwin Plankow the shadow of a doubt, “the son of a bitch was feeling guilty about swindling and screwing us.”

“The fact that I won’t have a job after we move won’t matter here, in the selling of our place…”

“Yeah,” Marsha said, “but if you have no means of earning an income it will matter to our lender there, so…”

“So let’s not say anything to anyone about it. Especially to Sophie…”

“Or even Alice…”

“Because they talk to each other.”

“So we won’t mention anything to Sophie about me, maybe, selling real estate until after we’re there…”

“And the escrow’s closed.”

“You know how rotten this is? That son of a bitch knew we put our home on the market and he didn’t give a damn about the fact that I have four kids and a wife. Hell, if the timing was right, we could have moved to San Diego and then discovered there was no business and that I had no means of earning a living.”

“Yeah,” Marsha said, “and Edwin knew you were in the process of selling your customer list here and wouldn’t have the means to earn money either here or there.”

“What really bugs the shit out of me is, besides being swindled, is that someone I really liked and trusted turned out to be such a cold-hearted, fucking, son of a bitch!”

“I guess that’s what swindlers and con-artists’ are,” Marsha repeated: “‘cold-hearted, fucking, sons of a bitches’!”

“The three thousand we paid Plankow took almost all of our savings so, ‘thank God’ we made that extra ten thousand on the house.”

“We should be able to manage very well on twenty-two thousand until you get a job and have some money coming in, Mitch.”

“I don’t see any reason to mention this to the kids, do you?”

“No. There’s no reason to upset them and we don’t know who they’d talk to about it.” Standing, “May as well get dinner started.”

To be continued

©November 13, 2011 / Mark M. Lichterman