A Shared Confidence (19 page)

We batted it back and forth for a few more minutes, what it all might mean, Straker butting in every so often when there was an obvious and therefore safe point to make. I wanted to ask Mattling if he was worried that dealing with Stanton might take up too much of Giarelli's time, take him away from his other business in Baltimore that the F.B.I. wanted to catch him at, whatever that was. If something got fouled up and Mattling missed his chance at bringing in Giarelli, he might have a serious change of heart about the assistance and protection he'd offered me (assuming it had been a sincere offer to begin with). But I couldn't risk asking in front of Straker, and besides, Mattling didn't appear to be overly concerned.

“Keep working Stanton best you can,” Mattling advised. “Convince him to stick around if he's thinking otherwise. Be a shame if we didn't get him after all this effort.” I didn't imagine Senator Cumberland would be too impressed, either. I told Mattling I'd do my best. He nodded, got up from the booth, and left the diner.

“Dev,” Straker said quietly as I was getting up myself, “I didn't mention anything to Agent Mattling about the Secret Service man who came to see you yesterday. Didn't see any need, not at this point anyway.” I had a mental image of taking hold of the back of Straker's neck and slamming his face into the table, mostly for the enjoyment of hearing something of his break again after so many years.

“You're a peach, Straker.” I walked back out onto the street.

I was
able to take in a movie with Nathan and his family Sunday afternoon. While we were standing in line for tickets, Billy noticed a poster for
Bride of Frankenstein
. He pointed it out to his dad and got the expected “We'll see.”

“Did you ever see the first one, Uncle Dev?” he asked me.

“Yep. Read the book, too.” I really had. Part of a college literature class I signed up for after watching a very cute brunette sign up for it ahead of me.

“No foolin'?” Billy asked. “Did the monster talk in the book or did he just, you know, ggrrrrrrrrrr!” Billy held up two groping hands in front of him to complete the impression.

“He talked. Matter of fact, he spoke French.” Billy thought I was trying to put one over on him, so I just winked and smiled.

When I returned to The Lord Baltimore that evening, there was an envelope waiting for me at the front desk. I took it up to my room and opened it, drawing out the folded letter inside and reading the neat handwriting:

Dear Mr. Shaw,

My most profuse apologies for what transpired in your suite yesterday. It is an unfortunate but rather common occurrence in my trade that over-eager investors do on occasion seek out my services much against my will. I hope you don't think for a moment that the uninvited guest who so rudely intruded on our pleasant chat is the kind of individual with whom I do business. At any rate, I was able to convince the gentleman that he and I have no business with one another, nor will we at any time in the future.

I do hope that you were not overly distressed by this incident, and I wish to assure you in the strongest possible terms that I am quite prepared to continue your own transactions as scheduled. If you would be so kind as to meet me outside First Quality Investors at ten a.m. tomorrow, I will be at your service.

Yours most sincerely,

Clay Stanton

I refolded the letter and slid it back into the envelope, smiling to myself. Strongest possible terms, indeed. As I'd hoped, Clay Stanton wasn't the kind of man to be scared away from an easy half million dollars. How he planned to handle Giarelli, I didn't know, but he was still on the line for me, which was all I cared about.

I had a nap and then a shower, put on fresh clothes, then took a taxi over to my first hotel where I picked up Jennings. We found an out-of-the-way spot for dinner and talked some business.

“You found the place?” I asked him. He grinned and nodded, then swallowed a healthy mouthful of food.

“Just where you told me the girl said it was, on Thirty-First between St. Paul and Calvert.” The Cordovan was a sort of private club where only con men hung out. Penny had given me the name and where to find it, and I'd given orders for Jennings to drop in. He'd ordered a beer under the watchful eyes of the other patrons, then casually asked the bartender if The Yellowtail Kid had been in recently.

“Don't know any such person,” the bartender told him.

“Well, if any such person comes in, would you mind telling him Tom Shandle is looking for him?” Jennings left a five-dollar tip for a ten-cent glass of beer. He then pulled out the rest of his wad of cash and asked the bartender if he knew where a fellow could play a little cards in this town.

“Did he bite?” I asked Jennings.

“Got a game lined up tonight,” Jennings smiled, helping himself to a spoonful of potato salad that could choke a big dog.

“Can you really do this?”

His mouth full, Jennings held a hand to his heart as though I'd wounded him.

That evening,
I was sitting in my suite reading the newspaper and feeling a bit restless. I headed down to the hotel bar at around ten o'clock and stayed a little over an hour before taking the elevator back to my room. The first thing I noticed after opening the door was that a lamp was on, the light spilling over onto a chair and showing me a woman's dress draped over it. Stockings and other assorted personal garments littered the floor, presumably belonging to the woman reclining in the bed with the bedclothes pulled up.

“Slow night at the bar?” a familiar voice called out, then I heard the click of the lamp on the night table and saw the short, pixie-cut blonde hair.

“Penny, what the hell are you doing here!” I took my hand away from the butt of my Colt and let my heart slow down a little.

“My place is being painted,” she answered. “Figured you wouldn't mind.” Her place probably was being painted, I realized. Penny had caught on that her landlord wanted to keep in good with Kelly Shaw, and she'd be playing that angle to the hilt.

“Besides,” she added, “I'm supposed to be your traveling companion, remember? We ought to keep up appearances.”

I walked over toward her and sat on the edge of the bed.

“What's this all about?”

She shrugged. “I got no place to stay. I got a friend with a nice hotel suite. I'm a little lonely tonight. Does it have to be more complicated than that?”

“It does with you.”

“Because I'm a con?” she laughed. “In that case, I'd think you'd want to have me in your sight as often as possible.”

She was in my sight all right. Either one of us could adjust the view with just one tug at the blanket. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked into her eyes. Something seemed strange.

“I thought your eyes were blue, Penny.”

“They are most of the time,” she giggled. “They only turn green when I'm in the right mood.”

I found I was leaning in closer, breathing in the scent of her. I kept waiting for the voice inside my head, telling me to put a stop to this nonsense. Apparently, that voice was still downstairs at the bar.

“What mood is that?”

She was leaning in closer, too, the bedclothes starting to slip, and gave me a very warm, very soft kiss that was almost long enough.

“Guess,” she whispered.

Half an hour later we were both still awake, sharing the bed and and one of my cigarettes.

“So it's all set then?” Penny said.

“Set as it can be,” I told her.

“And you don't think this Giarelli will be a problem?”

“Not for me. He may end up being a big problem for Ryland and Stanton.”

“Stanton seemed a little shook when I talked to him yesterday afternoon,” Penny admitted. “He'd calmed down by today, but he wants to make sure your investments go off without a hitch.”

“He's going to be disappointed,” I said, my mind elsewhere. “You ever think of leaving all this, Penny? Getting yourself a real job?”

“I've never worked a real job,” she said, reaching for my cigarette and helping herself to a puff. “Put that together with the fact that I'm twenty-seven, never finished high school, and have a prison record, what do you think my opportunities are?”

“I know some people,” I said. “Might even be able to make that prison record of yours disappear in the right circles. If not, I'm sure I could find the kind of people willing to overlook a mistake made in youth.”

She threw her head back and laughed heartily, then hugged and kissed me.

“You're a good guy, Dev. You really are. But I'm not looking to be rescued from my wicked ways anytime soon.” She took another drag from the cigarette and stared off into space. “I had an Aunt Sarah. She pretty much raised me. Worked hard her whole life. She'd scrub floors, do people's shopping for them, walk their dogs, wait tables, anything and everything just to put bland food on the table in a tiny, crummy apartment. I can see her now on her hands and knees, not a spark of life in her eyes, just moving that scrub brush around and sweating like a horse. I don't remember her ever having one bit of fun in her whole drab life.”

Penny looked up at me.

“That's not for me, lover. I'd rather risk going to prison ten times over than have to live like that. Just surviving day after day, never doing anything, never going any place, never feeling anything. This is who I am, Dev. This is who I want to be. Is that okay with you?”

I wasn't sure if she was mocking me or sincerely seeking my approval.

“It's your life, Penny. There are worse ways to live one than what you're doing. I'm just saying there are less risky ways, too. More stable ways. And they're not all scrubbing floors and walking dogs.”

“Oh, I know. But I can take care of myself.”

“No argument there,” I said, looking over her lovely figure in the lamplight. “If you took any better care of yourself, I'd never be able to focus on what's coming up.”

Penny rebutted this, claiming that many men found love-making to have just the opposite effect, honing their minds to a great degree.

“I read somewhere about how bullfighters in Spain do it,” she told me. “Close to before entering the ring as they can. They say it sharpens up their peepers, gives 'em better reflexes.”

“If that's the case,” I said, “I'm probably ready to take on Stanton, Giarelli, and all their shills and goons this minute without breaking a sweat.”

She snuggled up to me, her eyes green again.

“Maybe we better make sure,” she whispered.

When I
woke the next morning, Penny was gone, along with half of the forty thousand dollars' cash I had stashed around the suite in various hiding places.

I slipped on my robe and walked over to the telephone.

“This is Mr. Shaw in 402. I'd like to order breakfast.”

I smiled to myself. So far, so good.

I
was hoofing it down
Chase Street to keep my appointment outside the brokerage office with Clay Stanton. He was waiting outside the door and greeted me with an apology for that “most unfortunate incident” in my hotel suite the other day.

“I got your letter,” I acknowledged, somewhat brusquely. “That guy had some nerve busting into my room like that.” Stanton agreed wholeheartedly, but assured me it wouldn't happen again.

“I hope it hasn't colored your view of our arrangements for this week,” he added.

“I'm not sure,” I said slowly. “I need to ask you something, Mr. Stanton. Something important. Who left my room first after you two had your talk? Was it you or that other guy and his goon?”

With the finely-honed instincts his years in the game had given him, Stanton sensed danger immediately. His answer was quick and smooth.

“Mr. Giarelli – that is the gentleman's name by the way – was rather insistent that I depart first. Naturally, I was loathe to leave him alone in your hotel room. I protested but, as I said, he was rather insistent. And he did have someone with him, you'll recall.”

I nodded sharply. “That's what I figured. Well, the fact is, Mr. Stanton, I had the forty thousand dollars' cash in my suite Saturday, ready for our transaction this morning. It's gone now, every dollar of it.”

“Oh no!” Stanton gasped. “My boy, that's terrible!”

“It's an inconvenience,” I agreed. “It'll be terrible for this Giarelli when I catch up to him. You wouldn't know where I might find him?” My face had been dark the whole time we'd been talking, and I made sure not to lighten it just yet.

“I'm afraid I have no idea, Mr. Shaw. As I explained in my letter, he's attempted for some time now to invest through me. I wanted no part of him from the start. Quite frankly, sir, the man reeks of the criminal element.” Stanton said it with a perfectly straight face, I had to give him that.

“You think he's a mobster?” I asked, showing a little concern over the fact.

“That is my suspicion, Mr. Shaw.”

“Sure looks like one at that.”

“You didn't happen to notice whether the money was still in your room yesterday?”

I gave Stanton a smile that was both irritated and embarrassed, explaining that I had been out most of the day with my traveling companion, Miss Sills. Stanton asked as circumspectly as he could whether Miss Sills had visited my suite at any point during the day…or evening.

“We came back for a nightcap after dinner last night,” I said. “It was fairly late and…” I looked up sharply. “You think Penny might have taken the money?”

Stanton shrugged slightly, giving my imagination time to start working.

“You haven't known her all that long, I believe,” he said simply.

It was
just after one o'clock when I knocked on the door of my room at the first hotel. A few moments later, Jennings answered in his bathrobe, his hair sticking up like straw. He'd still been asleep.

“Getting a pretty late start today, aren't you, boy-oh?” I strolled past him and tossed my hat onto the desk.

“I didn't make it back here till after five this morning,” he informed me.

“Five? How'd the poker game go.”

“Went fine,” he said through a yawn. “Clockwork.”

“How much, Jennings?”

“Twenty-five hundred,” he said, shrugging.

I stared at him a moment before showing off my ignorance.

“It took you all night to lose twenty-five hundred dollars in a poker game?”

“Geez, Mr. Caine, it takes just as long to lose as it does to win.” He went onto explain – fairly politely, I thought – that you don't just go throwing down big money into the pot and lose time after time until you're out. Not if you're wanting to make the right kind of impression on certain people. Imagine, Jennings asked, if the dealer for the next hand had scooped up Jennings' fold from the last and noticed three queens or even a full boat, sixes over aces. Everyone would know something was up. He had to take a few small pots now and then when he had too good a hand to risk that happening.

“It makes sense when you put it that way,” I admitted, feeling like an idiot. “Come on, get dressed and I'll take you to breakfast. You can fill me in on the rest of it then.”

Half an hour later I watched as Jennings put away three eggs, six strips of bacon, six pancakes with syrup, two thick slices of toast, and a side order of two biscuits with gravy. I took it slow with my turkey sandwich, giving him time to get started on his meal by bringing him up to date on Stanton.

“I told him it wouldn't be a problem for me to get more cash,” I explained, “but that it would take at least another day. Of course, that put us behind schedule, so he'll have to handle larger amounts for the remaining investments.”

“And he was okay with that?” Jennings grinned, reaching for the jar of syrup.

“He was a regular sport about it.”

When it came Jennings' turn, I sat back over a cigarette and coffee and listened. He'd shown up at the backroom game around eleven-thirty last night, following the directions given to him at The Cordovan and mentioning the barman's name to get in. He introduced himself as Tom Shandle to the group of cons passing the time over a friendly game, asking again if any of them had ever worked with The Yellowtail Kid. No, they couldn't say they had, but they promised to keep an ear out if he showed up in Baltimore. Jennings sat at the table, bought five hundred dollars worth of chips, had a cold beer brought to him, and thanked them for letting an out-of-towner join their game. Jennings warned them with a smile that, well, he was a pretty good poker player and they might want to watch themselves. There were a few friendly hoots and jeers around the table, and the game commenced.

Jennings won the first two pots right off the bat. He knew his hands weren't great, that the other players were throwing away better just to pump up his confidence and make him careless. Jennings dutifully clapped his hands, raked in the chips, and announced to the table that he had a feeling this was going to be his night. Jennings is the best poker player I've ever met, and would have had a fair chance at cleaning out the whole table, but that wasn't the plan. He was playing the deftest con there is against pros in the game: letting them know he wasn't a total rube, that he had some experience under his belt, but coming across as thinking he was a lot sharper than he was. Just the kind of young upstart they'd want to have a little fun.

According to Jennings, they were impressed at the simplicity of his latest small-con scheme. Don't make it any more complicated than it has to be, that's what The Yellowtail Kid had taught him when they were on the grift together back in St. Louis. See, Tom Shandle had come across a forger back in Knoxville, and believe you me, fellows, this guy was an artist. He'd had this guy make up a phony identification showing Shandle to be a T-Man.

“'T-Man actually refers to the Bureau of Prohibition,” I interrupted. “The guys who went around with axes smashing stills.” It got confusing, as the Bureau of Investigation also had a Prohibition Department, which is a big part of the reason they finally changed their name to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“But Secret Service is still Treasury, right?” Jennings asked.

“Yeah, it is. Go on.”

So with this phony identification, Jennings could walk up to practically anyone, explain that he was with anti-counterfeiting, demand to see whatever bills the mark had on him, and relieve said mark of any funny money he happened to be carrying.

“Only it ain't funny money,” Jennings explained to them, laughing. “I help myself to a fifty here, a couple of c-notes there, all perfectly good but the mark, he thinks I done him a favor taking it off his hands and not hauling him in.” Of course, he was careful to catch the right kind of people in the right kind of place, and he rarely tried to take a mark's whole wad (“Unless the guy's just extra dumb or I really don't like his face.”). But it was a neat score. No partners, no witnesses, only a phony name nobody could track. The cons around the poker table offered nods of approval along with their compliments. Neat score, indeed! Had Shandle thought this up on his own? Indeed he had, Jennings assured them. Of course, he couldn't play a town too small for too long. Best to keep moving. He'd probably stay in Baltimore another two weeks maybe.

“So if any of you boys are planning to use this one, I think it's only fair that you wait for me to clear town first. I mean, that's kind of a courtesy in a right town like this one, ain't it?”

The men around the table agreed earnestly, a few of them probably thinking they might try it if times got too tough, or just to see if it really worked, but most of them working regularly for “stores” now and considering their hard-scrabble grifting days behind them.

The game started to go badly for the new kid after awhile. Even his good hands were getting trumped by better, and he kept buying more chips and losing them almost as fast.

“Were they cheating?” I asked.

“Sure. I mean they weren't stacking decks or hiding cards, but they were signaling across the table like a six-way telegraph. Scratch an earlobe, rub a nose, stick out a lower lip while looking at their cards. Each guy had his own signal for when he thought he had the best hand, and the rest of them would pump the betting in that guy's favor.”

And so the night dragged on, and as the new kid kept losing, sly digs became groans of sympathy around the table. Hard luck, Shandle, but things got to start turning around for you one of these hands, don't you think? That's just the odds. They ended up taking the whole twenty-five hundred I'd staked Jennings, who got gloomy for awhile and then shook it off with a laugh. Easy come, easy go, ain't that what they say? So it wasn't his night, but it very well could be next time. That is, he grinned, if he hadn't scared them off tonight. Good-natured laughter followed this taunt, and the other players allowed as to how Tom Shandle was a real sport who knew how to take his licks. He was welcome at their table any time. Of course he was: he was a young con with money in his pockets who wasn't a very good poker player.

“Sounds like you did just perfect, Jennings,” I told him.

“You and me should work together more, Mr. Caine,” he grinned, adding more cream to his cup of coffee. I'd had that thought myself more than once this year. Maybe after we got back to Kansas City….

When I
walked Jennings back to the hotel, I stopped at the front desk to check for messages. The clerk handed me a note someone else had written:

Please contact me as soon as you can. Nathan

I walked over to the house phone, dialed the bank, and had myself put through to Nathan.

“Nathan Caine speaking.”

“I got your message. What's up?”

“It's Myers and Wiedermann,” Nathan said, sounding nervous. “They took the afternoon off today.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes. They simply walked into my office and told me they had some business to take care of and that they wouldn't be back today. They were quite arrogant about it.”

“That's not good.”

“They also asked me to contact Mr. Shaw and tell him to meet them at three o'clock this afternoon.” I scribbled down the address Nathan gave me.

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” Nathan said. “Myers said ‘Tell Mr. Shaw not to be late.' And then they simply walked out. Just like that.”

It was five minutes to three when I stepped inside the anonymous saloon at the very edge of a decent neighborhood. The place was all but empty, one bartender practically napping behind the bar and maybe two old drunks. A ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, barely disturbing the dust floating in the shaft of sunlight coming through the front window. Whatever was brewing, the two men I was to meet had wanted to pick some place inconspicuous, some place their peers wouldn't be likely to run into them.

There at a round wooden table in the far corner were Myers and Wiedermann, the latter smoking a fat cigar. They sat next to a big guy in shabby clothes, some cheap hired thug who was either trying to stare me down or hold in his wind. I walked up to the table with my hands in my pockets.

“What's all this?” I asked. Wiedermann looked me up at down, taking in my expensive duds and my new shoes, catching the glints of gold from my watch and pinky ring. I'd been dressing like this for what seemed so long I hadn't even thought of changing for this meeting. I should have.

“Little change of plan, Mr. Shaw,” said Wiedermann, sounding full of himself.

“Change of plan,” agreed Myers.

“You see,” Wiedermann again, “I had an interesting little chat with Mr. Ferrier the other day. It seems you have to rely on a forger to get your federal identification these days,
Mr. Shandle
.” Wiedermann pretended to be confused. “Or is it Shaw, like it says on the driver's license you also got from Ferrier? Mighty peculiar, wouldn't you say?”

“I would,” chimed in Myers.

I was half-listening to them, concentrating more on the thug in my periphery. He was cheap goods and that was a fact. Big and bulky, yes, but even low-rent mob torpedoes aren't allowed to be seen on the street dressed that shabbily. These two bankers had started talking, first to each other and then to Ferrier. They figured they had my number, so they'd walked into some pool hall or gone to the track and given a tenspot to the first oversized gorilla who was broke and sober enough to be looking for his next drink.

“We don't know who you are,” Wiedermann said. “And we don't care to know. What we do know is you're going to get on a bus or a train, get the hell out of town, and never darken our door again. Otherwise…” he glanced to his right, “you'll have to take things up with Mr. Braughton here.”