A Shared Confidence (13 page)

“What's your line then?”

“Investments. Stocks, bonds, that sort of thing.”

“Mr. Shaw's pretty handy with the stocks himself,” Ryland admitted grudgingly. “He's always rubbing it in how some guys can pick 'em and some can't.”

“It is true, Mr. Ryland,” Stanton acknowledged. “Profitable investment over time requires a rather unique blend of instinct, knowledge, skill, and if you'll pardon me for saying so, a bit of daring, of being bold enough to seize opportunities that others would have to mull over.”

“Listen to this man,” I told Ryland, pointing rudely at Stanton with a careless gesture. “That right there is it in a nutshell. You have to trust your instincts and you have to be ready to move when the time is ripe, not sit on your hands thinking about it. Sure you'll lose a few, but if you keep your ear to the wind and learn from your mistakes, you'll come out right enough over time.”

Stanton allowed as to how he couldn't have said it better himself. Clearly I was a man who shared his views in these matters. Oh, he was good, Stanton was. He kept his staid manner in place, but never made it off-putting, never made as though he found my brashness the least bit offensive. His reactions, his polite chortles and crinkly-eyed smiles, made it seem like he had a paternal affection for young men full of juice like myself. The basic character he'd created served him well; he was able with the subtlest alterations to make it the perfect fit for anyone. Before the food came, he and I were getting along famously. If I really had been a man with money to burn instead of a private investigator who already had his number, well…. I felt a twinge of guilt, thinking back to how I may have come down a little hard on Ryland without having seen for myself what he'd been up against.

The rest of it played out according to Hoyle, really. We chatted over a nice breakfast, at the end of which Stanton mentioned how much he'd enjoyed my company, and the least he could do in return was to offer to pay my hotel bill. I gave him a quizzical smile and he asked how I'd feel about doing a small errand for him and making a little pocket change in return. He invited Ryland along, too, of course, but Ryland begged off. Stanton would have made it very clear to Ryland earlier that he was under no circumstances to accept the invitation. Only the mark could be allowed on stage once the curtain went up.

An hour and a quarter after I first sat down at the table, Stanton was guiding me by the arm along Chase Street, right up and through the door of First Quality Investors. I glanced around for the Irish beat cop from last week but didn't see him. It didn't really matter; with Stanton himself escorting me, O'Malley would have held the door for us and tipped his cap as we stepped over the threshold. Inside, I was impressed anew at what pros these people were. Yes, it was a small, cheaply-rented, easily-staffed front if you knew what you were looking at. But nobody gave us so much as a glance when we came in. There was a bustle of activity at the windows, men buying and selling shares as fast as the clerks on the other side could write out receipts and count out money. It was downright surreal. The place looked, sounded, smelled, and felt like the real thing.

I let Stanton introduce me to the tall, serious man in steel-rimmed glasses behind the cage, requesting that I be afforded every courtesy. Stanton made his apologies and left, but not before inviting me to dinner Saturday night at his favorite restaurant. I spent another forty-five minutes in the place, buying my hundred shares of Transnational Substratum and then taking a seat to watch the board as the stock rose. I gave the look of a man trying to appear outwardly calm, my mouth in a tight line as I watched a clerk change the numbers. When the stock tripled, I hurried up to the window and sold, and left with $450 cash in my pocket, stepping quickly away like a man with a new-found secret to keep. I had to play my part as good as any of these shills. And with luck, there would come a time when I had to play it even better.

That evening
I drove the Cadillac out to Nathan's house for a home-cooked meal with the family. It was a nice break from all the rich food and barflying of the past few days. Nathan greeted me at the door, looking me up and down.

“Nice suit,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, handing him my hat. “Be a prince and don't crush that.”

I pushed past him into the dining room where Marie and the children were waiting supper for me. Both kids jumped up to hug me and I had a brief, wistful moment of wondering what it must be like to come home to that every night. A kiss on the cheek from Marie and dinner was served: a well-seasoned roast with new potatoes and asparagus. Conversation was light and relaxing, and after dinner Nathan and I took up our spots on the back porch. Nathan puffed his pipe, shook out the match, and asked how it was going.

“So far so good. Oh, that police matter from last week is taken care of. You won't hear anything more about it.”

“That's a relief.”

“How are things at the bank?”

“Normal, for the most part.” Nathan went on to explain that Myers and Wiedermann were really towing the line these days. No more strange disappearances, no phony dentist appointments, never late to work and no long lunches. I explained that this was a good thing; it meant we'd put the scare into them.

“What's your next move?” he asked.

“Keep playing the mark for now.”

“You mean keep playing the part of the mark for Stanton,” Nathan asked, “or keep playing Stanton as your mark?”

I laughed. “I guess I mean both.”

“How much longer will this take, do you think?”

I sighed and took a drag off my cigarette. How many more times was Nathan going to keep asking me this question? “They can stretch this out for a few weeks if they want to. If they're convinced there's a big score at stake and they want to make sure the mark is lured all the way in before they spring the big play. But don't worry,” I added. “When I'm ready, maybe a week at the most, I'll force the pace.”

“How?”

“Easy. Let them know I'm tired of nickel-and-dime, that if they don't have something juicy for me, I'll move onto greener pastures. That'll light a rag fast enough.”

“Lida what?”

“Light a rag,” I said, more clearly. “As in light a rag on fire and put it under someone's feet to get him moving.”

“Oh.” He shifted in his chair for a moment. “You sure you don't want to tell me exactly what your plan is?”

“I'm sure, Nathan. If it doesn't work, or if it somehow backfires, the less you know the better.”

He started to argue, but Marie appeared at the back door with drinks for the three of us.

“It's such a nice night,” she said, seating herself on the deck and looking up at the stars. “Don't you think so, Nathan?”

Late Saturday
morning I was strolling along the street outside my hotel, thinking about my dinner with Stanton that night. I barely noticed the spinster on the street corner collecting for the local mission.

“Alms for the poor!” she sang out. “You there, sir. The Lord has been good to you. Won't you share some of that goodness and help us support the Seventh Street Mission?”

I looked around and saw that I was alone on the sidewalk, that she was talking to me. Absently, I peeled a five-dollar bill from my money clip and dropped it into her pot.

“Thanks, Christian,” she said brightly. I only had time to notice that she was younger than I'd thought before her eyes widened behind the plain spectacles and she whispered: “Well, I'll be goddamned! Devlin Caine!”

I looked at the face under the black bonnet, scrubbed of makeup and staring at me open-mouthed. She looked maybe twenty-five years old, her body concealed by the long, black missionary frock.

“Sister?” I asked uncertainly, which made her laugh. That sound was all I needed.

“Penny? Penny Sills?”

“I can't believe it's really you.” She laughed again, touching my forearm with her right hand, then running the flat of her left hand along my chest, then grasping me by the biceps with both hands for a moment. You want to keep careful track of where a girl like Penny Sills touches you; she's one of the best pickpockets east of the Mississippi.

“The last time I saw you–” I began.

“Was on a train platform in Dubuque, Iowa,” she finished. “Just you, me, and a couple dozen cops.”

“I told you I was going to the police if you didn't give that money back,” I reminded her.

“I didn't believe you.”

“That was your mistake.”

“I know. That's why there's no hard feelings, right?” Even without makeup and dressed like a suffragist, Penny's a pretty girl with an infectious smile.

“How much time did you do?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know.

“Sentence was for eighteen months. Got it knocked down to ten for good behavior.” She winked at me. “Place was lousy with matrons, but the warden was a man.”

“And you repented and found the lord while you were inside?”

“Honey, I'd have repainted and found Caesar's Ghost to get out of that hole.”

“Is there even a Seventh Street Mission?” I asked.

“What, I'm a guide for tourists now? How the hell should I know? Hey,” she brightened again, “we should get a drink, you and me. You know, for old time's sake. What do you say?”

At that moment, I couldn't think of a reason not to.

I
was sitting in the
lounge of another nice hotel a few blocks from the Lord Baltimore, sipping the Campari and soda I'd ordered from the waitress and taking in the scenery. A young man at a baby grand piano was picking out a slow version of “Maple Leaf Rag” on the keys, his fingers gentle enough to keep the volume subdued. Friday afternoons must be nostalgia time at the lounge, I thought; ragtime was popular when I was in my teens. For a moment I let my mind go back to long summer nights and parties held in barns with cold beer icing down in steel tubs, drunk-friendly, clod-hopping farmers stomping on the straw to anything from “She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain” to whatever someone popped onto the phonograph, sang, or belted out on a rickety upright piano. Sometimes all three at once. Voices overlapped in my memory:

“Have you tried my Millie's rhubarb pie?”

“Oh hell, Bridget, let the boy have a beer! He's practically all growed up!”

“If this is the Devil's music, they must be dancin' up a storm down in Hades!”

“Clyde Saunders you watch that blasphemous talk in my home! Ragtime is for Libertines!”

“Libertines and loaded farmers!”

I remember leaning against a wooden beam, slowly sipping a cold bottle of beer as I watched the couples dance or chat with one another over a long table heavily laden with home-cooked food. A lively tune was coming out of Mr. Saunders' wind-up Victrola. Standing near another beam across the width of the barn was Cynthia, the Saunders' middle daughter. She was in a pretty white dress, matching ribbons in her blonde hair. She was staring directly at me, not smiling. Cynthia was just a kid of fourteen (a whole year younger than me), but you could already tell she wasn't going to be a kid for much longer. We stared at one another across the matted straw floor and through the noise of the revelers, and I nodded very slightly, also without smiling. She nodded back, and though there was nothing more to it – we didn't dance or even talk to one another that night or at any time after – the memory has always stayed with me. There'd been something thrilling about sharing a private moment with someone in the midst of public and noisy setting. A girl someone.

I smiled and raised my glass to the farmer's daughter, wherever she may be now. Does she ever think back to that moment? Does she even remember the neighbors from town, the immigrants with the two sons? Memory – everything you've seen, heard, touched, smelled, or felt in your entire life. A particular song on a lounge piano and I was back in a barn in Illinois. What other triggers might have deposited me back inside a musty lecture hall or a police station or a jazz house? A ball game on the radio might have taken me to Cubs Park with my father. A woman walking by wearing a certain perfume, and I'd have been back with Marie-Loraine in her Parisian flat – all youthful energy and injured pride, starting yet another fight over her other “customers” – just as the call of a certain bird would have landed me, however briefly, at her grave.

All right, Caine, you've had your stroll, now back to work. Penny would be here in a matter of minutes. She'd suggested this place, telling me she'd meet me after she went home to change clothes (the spinster getup wouldn't have cut it here). I didn't let my mind drift this time, I took it carefully, deliberately back five years to Dubuque, Iowa.

Penelope Sills was barely twenty-two years old at the time, grifting with some small-timers who'd grown too old to be reliable in the big con. They traveled the smaller towns, their chief game being to fleece soon-to-be widows by persuading dying husbands to part with a good sum of coin prior to expiring. They reworked the same tiny handful of subterfuges: long-lost relatives, previously unknown stock certificates, deeded properties – all phony, of course. Two somber types who could pass for lawyers, their brightly cheerful secretary (or sometimes a mark's distant niece), some official-looking documents, and a few words carefully chosen about the future care of the wife. That was all it usually took, convincing the distressed couple that something better awaited them in exchange for a temporary “investment”.

They'd been doing okay for themselves until they picked a shrewder than usual victim who'd had the good sense to call Pinkerton's. I was nearby wrapping up another case, and the boss wired me to swing by and help out the younger operative already checking things out. Turned out we had files on the two older men, though nothing on the girl. I found the hotel where the three of them were staying and started staking out a nearby gin joint. Sometimes they'd have a drink there and I managed to strike up a conversation one night. I introduced myself as a bible salesman, which is practically a code phrase for “grifter” to other con operators. I espoused the quality of my product using pat phrases with a light touch of irony to make it more obvious. The two older gents stayed in character, pros that they were, but I could tell the girl was young enough to let her guard down.

The idea, naturally, was to manage to catch these grifters at the right moment so that the police would have the evidence to send them over. The mark's wife had been advised to play along, even going to the bank with the “lawyers” to draw out the necessary cash for the bogus transaction. She was assured she'd have it back in short order, and would have done a helpful service to the community by helping to put these criminals behind bars. The night before the final act, I was in the bar with the three of them again, and Penny stayed after the other two headed back to their hotel.

We chatted and I could tell Penny was far from a hard woman. Like quite a few people who enter the soft rackets, she was in it mostly for the fun. The play-acting and the travel. The money was nice, of course, and she knew from experience that there were a lot less exciting ways to earn it. I looked into those guileless blue eyes and knew the old-timers were assuring her that these marks had it to burn, that they were only taking a little off the top that would never be missed. I doubted a girl like Penny would have slept easy knowing she was helping herself to a poor widow's life savings. Con men con each other like that all the time, especially the newcomers. Penny wouldn't be the first to see an exciting future belayed by a jail sentence while her more experienced partners walked.

And so, alone together at the bar, I tried my best to talk her out of it.

“Penny, there's something I need to tell you. Something important, and I need you to listen.”

“Sure, Dev. I'm all ears.”

“I'm not actually a bible salesman.”

“Yeah,” she snorted out a laugh. “Kinda had that one figured.”

“That's not what I mean. I'm a detective. I work for Pinkerton's.” I took out my badge and laid it on the bar between us. “The game's up, honey. There are other operatives as well as the local law all ready to move in tomorrow and catch you and your partners red-handed. Don't take the money, Penny. Don't carry it, make one of the other two do it. If you get stuck with it, take it right back to the bank, or even to Mrs. Pager herself. Do not walk into that train station tomorrow. Certainly not with your partners and damned sure not with the money. I could lose my job for telling you all this.”

She looked at me for maybe five seconds and burst out laughing.

“You must think I'm soft between the ears, Mister. Hell, you've as much as admitted to me you're a con yourself. You think you can show me some badge you got out of a Cracker Jack box and move in for the score after we done all the work?” She laughed again. “Nice try, lover.”

She finished her drink and left the bar, blowing me a kiss from the doorway on her way out.

I was waiting at the train station the next day, sitting on a bench reading a paper. My heart sunk a little when I saw Penny bouncing gaily along the platform, a suitcase in her hand. No sign of the other two. She would have told them about another con trying to cut them out of their own game, and they'd have laughed with her and wised up fast and blown town, telling her they'd meet her at the next station and to bring the money with her.

I stood up and walked toward her in some vain hope that I could get a word in before the arrest, tell her not to say anything until she got herself a lawyer. She spotted me from ten feet away and called out.

“Hey, hon, got any good deals on the Good Book today?”

In an instant, two Pinkerton's men were on either side of her, taking her roughly by the elbows as two more plainclothes policemen and three or four uniformed bulls closed in. It took her all of a few seconds to figure out this was real. She didn't scream or curse, didn't even seem angry, and she didn't cry. But the vitality was gone from her face since the first time I'd seen her. The cops handcuffed her and led her away. She cast one subdued glance back over her shoulder at me, but I couldn't read it; her face was still blank with shock. I walked off the platform, repeating those two words that never seem to help much in these situations: “I tried.”

A pair of scented arms hugged my shoulders from behind and I felt a warm kiss on my cheek.

“Sold any Good Books lately?” a female voice whispered in my ear.

I stood as Penny stepped around in front of me. Five-foot-two, eyes of blue, I thought to myself. Her blonde hair was in the same short pixie style she'd worn back in Dubuque, and her eyes were still as wide and bright. She showed off her nicely compact frame in a short black dress with full sleeves, and she'd put on make up, including bright red lipstick. You'd never have recognized her as the spinster beating the tambourine an hour ago.

“How have you been, Penny?” We sat down together around the low table.

“I been just grand, Dev. How you been?”

“Can't complain.” I flagged down a passing waitress who took Penny's order for rum over ice. I asked what she'd been up to.

“Little of this, little of that,” she answered breezily.

“Saving lost souls?” I asked.

“Nah, that's just my pocket money between gigs.”

“You're still in the game then?”

She gave me a sly smile. “Why? Going to arrest me?”

“I didn't arrest you last time,” I said, a little defensively. “In fact–”

“Oh, lighten up, Dev,” she laughed. “I'm just giving you the needle. I already told you I don't blame you for that. Hell, you tried to warn me off.”

“Sorry it didn't take.”

“Yeah, me too.” She leaned forward a moment. “I never told anyone you tried, though.”

“I know.”

She tilted her head. “How?”

“Because if you had, someone would have talked to me about it. No one ever did.”

Her drink arrived and she raised her glass to me.

“To good times ahead.” I drank the toast with her and tried to feel the situation. Had she really never blamed me for doing ten months' hard time? Or had she at first but gotten over it? She didn't seem like the type to hold grudges. Looking at her now, she seemed the same cheerful young woman I'd met in Dubuque. Maybe she was just one of those rare people who make up their minds early on in life to be happy, and stick to that regardless of the occasional obstacle.

“So what are you up to these days? Still with Pinkerton's?”

I shook my head. “I left there shortly after I saw you last.”

Penny raised her eyebrows. “Wracked with guilt over sending an innocent young girl to the slammer?”

“Nah, I'd already done that lots of times when you came along. I was just getting sick of working for a big firm.”

“So how you making rent these days?”

“Same thing, only I work for myself.”

“No kidding?” she laughed. “You got an office here in Baltimore?”

I shook my head. “I'm just here visiting. Seeing the sights. What about you? Who you working for when times aren't so slow?”

She shrugged. “Got a couple of mobs I'm in good with. I never get anything real important to do, but if they need a pretty face or just a pair of eyes to help out, I get money coming in.”

“You mean confidence mobs?”

“Christ, yes!” she laughed, almost spitting out her drink. “You think I'd work for the mafia?”

“I think you like excitement, Penny.”

“Sure, the kind a girl gets to live through.”

We chatted on awhile longer as I kept weighing the risks in leveling with her at least a little. Penny would know a lot about the con mobs in this city, who was into what and maybe any big scores that were going down. Her kind of knowledge could be invaluable to me. But was there any real way I could get it out of her without giving up too much of my own? She could sink my amateur scheme in two seconds with a word in the right ear. Would she want to? And how would I know whether she did? I had to remind myself that this girl was now twenty-seven, and had nearly an extra half-decade of experience in the trade. Four years of learning under masters how to use her looks and charm. More if you counted her time in the penitentiary. Sure, she'd only done ten months, but when you're surrounded twenty-four hours a day by every kind of seasoned criminal imaginable, it's like going to night school while you're attending university full-time during the day.

Penny took another drink of her rum, her blues fixed on my browns.

“You want to ask me something, don't you, Dev?”

“I do.” I sat my drink down on the table. “And you didn't invite me here just to hash over old times.”

“I didn't.” We smiled at each other for a few seconds until she asked: “So who's going to show first?”

I gestured with an open hand. “Ladies first, always.”

I had
breakfast at my hotel Saturday morning before driving the Cadillac over to an apartment house on the north side. Penny was having trouble with her landlord. Too many complaints from the neighbors over loud parties and gentlemen callers at odd hours. He wanted her out by the end of next week. She didn't want to move. She liked her apartment and the location was ideal, close to public transportation and the night spots she favored. She considered going to some of her colleagues over the matter, but such a petty problem might make her seem like a flake, not reliable enough to be counted on when it mattered. Also, most of them didn't know where she lived and she wanted to keep it that way. Plus she'd owe them a favor. Now she'd owe me one.