A Shared Confidence (22 page)

She pulled away and sat back against her pillow, then reached for my cigarette.

“And what are you really trying to do?” she asked. I just stared at her. “You're not going to try and take the money off of Giarelli?” Her eyes narrowed, maybe even with a hint of concern.

“Noooo!” I said emphatically, laughing. “I've done a lot of stupid things in my time, honey, but stealing from gangsters isn't one of them.”

“You going to try and take it before Stanton delivers it?” Now she was really curious.

“Don't be simple. You might see some difference in doing it that way. Giarelli wouldn't.”

“Then what
are
you going to do?”

I said nothing and she said: “Still don't trust me, huh?” I was glad she didn't sound hurt about it; she wasn't playing me for that big a mark.

“I think you're playing level with me, Penny. So far. But I also think you'd turn on a dime and go over to Stanton for real if you thought the wind was blowing that way.”

“I probably would,” she agreed, then looked down at the blanket for a moment. “Guess you don't think much of me. Guess you're right not to.”

I put my hand gently under her chin and tilted her face back up toward mine.

“It's what you do, Penny. It's the life you've chosen. I understand that you have to play by the rules as you see them. We all do. Doesn't keep me from thinking you're a swell gal.”

She looked at me for a moment.

“You mean that, don't you?”

“Yeah, I mean that.”

“You don't trust me but you still like me.”

“Sweetheart, if I only liked people I trusted, I'd hardly have any friends at all.”

She snuggled warmly against me. “You're different, Dev. You're not like a cop, you're not like one of us. I can't quite figure you out.”

“Let's hope Stanton can't either. And speaking of Stanton…”

“Yes?”

“I tried to help you once five years ago, Penny. Remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“I'm going to try to help you again and I hope this time you listen. There's more going on with all this. Nothing I can tell you, but you don't want to be playing on Stanton's side in this, even if his side starts looking better to you.”

She pulled away again, trying to read my face. Her eyes widened again as she made a connection.

“Is the law closing in on Stanton? Is that what you mean?” Her eyes went wider. “Is this what this whole thing is about? You're helping them, just pretending you're in this for yourself?”

“Are you going to tip Stanton?”

She shook her head, her face serious.

“Because if you do, Penny, you know what'll happen? The same thing that happened last time, only worse. I know you don't want to go back inside, and I sure as hell don't want to see you go back either.”

“And if I keep helping you?”

“Then you'll be fine. I promise you will. You may even make a little something for your trouble.”

So far as empty promises made to a woman in bed go, I thought, there are worse.

I was
showered and dressed by eight. Penny was long gone and I called the front desk and tipped the maid who came to change the sheets. Jennings should be along soon and the boy would need some rest after another all-night poker game. I was sitting alone in the room, having a smoke and thinking when the door opened and Jennings walked in smiling, his eyes shining from beer and victory.

“How much, Jennings?”

“Over fifteen grand, easy,” he grinned, pulling out a stack of bills and slapping them on the table.

“You hungry?”

“I'm starving, Mr. Caine.”

“Come on, you can tell me about it over breakfast.”

We went back to the cafe across the street where I ordered bacon and eggs for one and Jennings had oatmeal and pancakes for six. The poor kid was dying to tell me the details of his evening but too hungry not to eat at least half his food first. I listened patiently, ignoring the parts I couldn't follow. I knew how the story ended.

Jennings walked into a game in progress at the same place, unannounced but knowing he had an open invitation.

“Oh, they were happy to see me, Mr. Caine.”

“A standup guy like Tom Shandle? I bet they were, kid.”

Jennings had a thousand-dollar stake with him and started out with his same five hundred in chips. What these men didn't know, of course, was that Jennings had lost on purpose the last time. We both knew he might have lost last night, too. The best poker player in the world can't do much if he never gets the cards, but Jennings started getting them almost from the start. He explained to me that his opponents had no idea how easy they'd made it for him. First, he'd already played with them for several hours a few nights ago, most of them. He'd had a chance to study them and see how they handled the boards. And their signaling worked against them as well. Jennings had most of their signals down pat, and it took him maybe a hand or two here and there to learn the signals of the two guys who hadn't been at the table the last time. By working together like they did, it made it easy for Jennings to figure out who he had to beat, as the rest would either fold or not go too far in. Jennings kept his eye on the pots, losing a few small ones when he had to but raking it in on the big ones.

As last time, there were no stacked decks or hidden cards, and with the deal changing every hand, even a good false shuffler can't work his magic till the deck comes around to him. Jennings didn't see any false shuffles, though, and he has an expert's eye for them. The cries of encouragement early on became less enthusiastic as the night dragged on. Jennings acted excited when he won big, even got cocky enough at one point to do the old two pair trick when he laid down. A pair of red tens and a pair of black tens! How about that, fellows?

“Early on, I get this godawful hand,” he explained. “Nothing, seven high. I bluff bad, you know, rubbing the back of my hand under my chin like I'm not aware I'm doing it. That's what I did last time, so they already know that's my tell. They call me and I lose the pot. I do it maybe an hour later with another nothing hand and get caught out again. Then, towards the end of the night, when I'm holding four aces, I do it again and keep raising like I'm desperate. Of course, they all go right in with me, trying to keep me raising, and it gets down to me and the guy they figure's going to win. Just the two of us, me rubbing the back of my hand against my chin and throwing chips in like I'm trying to scare the guy off. He lays down his flush and starts reaching for the pot and I slam the aces down and clap my hands and whoop, get real excited, so now they don't know what to think. Maybe I just do that thing with my hand on my chin when I get worked up about something good or bad. And, of course, they never figured out when I was bluffing for real.”

I was sure Jennings had played it perfectly, just a victim of sustained good luck throughout most of the night, probably too dumb to quit while he was ahead. They'd never peg him as having nerves strong enough to stay in a high-stakes game that long and keep his head. And in a way, they'd be right, as I wasn't all that sure Jennings had any nerves to speak of. The game broke up around five-thirty this morning when a bored beat cop started tapping his billy club against the back door. Jennings slipped the cop fifty bucks and promised the game would be gone next time he passed by the door. This went with the fifty bucks Jennings gave that same cop earlier to tap his billy club at five-thirty and break up the game. Jennings treated the others to a few beers at The Cordovan before taking a taxi to the hotel.

“Sounds like it helped to go there and lose the other night first,” I admitted. That had been Jennings' idea, and he'd had to sell it to me pretty hard to get me to along with it.

“Helped? It set the whole thing up, Mr. Caine. Let me watch them play, got them eager for me to return. And it made them bet a lot wilder than they would have since they already had me figured for a chump.”

He was right, of course. They took him for a chump and he took them for, well, everything they had in their pockets.

“It was a solid plan, Jennings. Fifteen grand. Jesus.”

“How much of that do I get to keep, Mr. Caine?” Jennings was only teasing, but I still felt really bad. For all I knew, this was the biggest night Jennings had ever had in his poker-playing life.

“Nothing for now, kid. I'm sorry, but we need that money for the rest of the plan. But when this is all over, if things go halfway right, you'll get a fair cut, I promise.”

“No sweat,” Jennings nodded. “I already figured.”

“You better get back to the hotel and grab some shut-eye,” I told him. “You're on again tonight. And Jennings? I'm sorry I can't let you keep your winnings just now. I really am.”

“Hell, Mr. Caine, you told me that from the start. Besides,” he added, grinning like he'd just beaten the Devil himself with a pair of fives, “keeping the money ain't near so much fun as winning it!”

I
woke suddenly in the
middle of the night, trying to remember for a moment what city I was in, what hotel I was in, who I was supposed to be. I grabbed my watch and read the luminous markers on the dial. Two-forty-two a.m. I put the watch back on the night table, which I recognized as part of the furniture at Kelly Shaw's suite at the Lord Baltimore.

It was the dream that had awakened me. Giarelli was standing next to my rented Cadillac, puffing on his cigar and looking at me with his unfeeling gaze. Next to him, Ethan Ryland was on his knees, the top of his head sawn off flat just above the ears. Giarelli dipped a paint brush into the top of Ryland's open skull, then spread the thick, crimson fluid over the coachwork of the Caddy in patient, even strokes, careful not to spill so much as a drop on his cream-colored suit. Ryland's sightless eyes were glassed over, but his jaw was working and he kept murmuring quietly “Just a couple more days, Mr. Giarelli. I'll have the money. Just a couple more days.” Giarelli was ignoring him, and was saying to me: “Hope you know what you're doing, Bright Boy. Hope you know what you're doing.” Townsend was sitting behind the wheel of the Cadillac, wearing a pair of headphones that led to the wire recorder in the seat next to him, catching all this.

I climbed out of bed, turned on a lamp, and walked over to the chair where Giarelli had sat Wednesday night. I looked down at the carpet. Giarelli's goons had done a fair job cleaning up the stain, but whatever they'd used had discolored the rug in that spot.

I went to the bathroom for a glass of water, thought about having a real drink, settled for doing a few pushups, then went back to bed.

I met Stanton in the lobby of the Lord Baltimore Thursday evening. He came walking in carrying a heavy valise, spotted me, and came over to sit down next to me.

“You've got the money?” I asked.

“I have,” he answered soberly. “Including the thirty thousand dollars' interest for our loan. I presume you would like that now?” He started to reach into the valise and I caught his hand, shaking my head.

“Not now. Certainly not here. You hold onto that until I'm ready to hand over the cashier's checks.”

Stanton looked up at me, confused and more than a little concerned.

“I was under the impression, Mr. Shaw–”

“I want to see that you've taken care of Giarelli first,” I told him. “I want to know that the man's satisfied and that he's not going to be showing up again. We'll give it till Monday. If he's not bothering either of us by then, I'll believe we're in the clear and I'll hand over the checks.”

Stanton started to protest, attempting to make various assaults against my reasoning. I cut him off pretty quick.

“Monday, Mr. Stanton. That's the deal I'm offering. If you have a better one, take it.”

Stanton sighed and dropped it.

“Shall we go upstairs then?” I shook my head again.

“You can handle this one on your own,” I said. “We'll meet up tomorrow and you can tell me how it went.”

He started to say something, then rose and marched resignedly off toward the elevator. No doubt he was wondering about his chances of coming back down in it.

Stanton and
I met for lunch on Friday, where he assured me things had gone as smoothly as one could reasonably expect. He was in my suite with Giarelli for less than five minutes, just enough time to hand over the money and receive a warning from Giarelli not to be talking about any of this.

“He made a general suggestion that it would be bad for my health to do otherwise,” Stanton told me, and for a moment I admired his sense of understatement. There had been nothing general about Giarelli's threat; I'd listened to it on the wire recorder that morning.

I drove out to Nathan's for dinner Friday night. The company was warm and the food better than good, but I was a little too wound up to really enjoy it. Things would be coming to a head quickly, and I was finding it increasingly difficult to really relax.

Once the kids were in bed, Nathan and I held our war council on the back porch.

“Let's start with this.” I handed Nathan three cashier's checks, good ones. This business had taken far longer than I'd expected, and the first payments on the three bogus loans in Nathan's department were due. I smiled at the look of surprise on his face as he took the checks.

“Are these good?” he asked.

“You think I'd drop bad paper on my own brother?”

Realization crossed his face.

“You took the money from the loan I secured for you.”

“No, that's for something else. I won this money in a poker game. Well, somebody did.”

“Once I enter these payments…” Nathan began doubtfully.

“You're thinking you'll be giving up your chance to report the loans as fraudulent, pretend you just discovered the fact. Why? Maybe it was the act of processing these payments that made something click in your mind, made you take another look at the original paperwork. Maybe you thought it was strange all three firms used cashier's checks instead of printed company checks.”

Nathan nodded slowly.

“That could work. It makes sense. But I'd have to move pretty quick.”

“Also not a problem. It's almost show time. If things go as I'm hoping, everything will balance out and no one else at the bank will ever have to know. If my plan doesn't work, you can report the fraudulent loans you just discovered.”

“What should I do about Myers and Wiedermann?”

“Depends on which way things blow. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. How have they been acting, by the way? Been behaving themselves?”

“They have,” he said. “No absences, never late to work, no long lunches. I'm not sure what you said to them, but it seems to have taken effect.”

“It was more what I showed them.” I looked up at Nathan's raised eyebrows and said: “Skip it.”

“I sure wish I knew what you were up to,” Nathan said. He really didn't wish that, of course, but he had no way of knowing that.

“We have to keep you and your good name in the clear,” I reminded him. “If my plan doesn't work, you're just a responsible bank executive who – through his own tireless efforts and meticulous sense of detail – found something amiss. Who knows? You might even get another promotion out of it.”

“You really think so?” I found myself disappointed in Nathan that he asked that so quickly.

“Stranger things have happened.”

We sat a moment in silence, Nathan puffing at his pipe as I looked up at the stars.

“Dev? I want you to know, whichever way it turns out…well, I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've been doing for me.”

“You're welcome, Nathan, but let's hold that till it's all over. For luck if nothing else.”

“And when it is all over,” he reminded me, “let me know what your expenses have been for all this. Whatever the total is, it'll be worth it to me.”

He took another draw at his pipe, remembered something, and added:

“Of course, the forty-thousand dollar loan can't be included in that.”

“Of course.”

Sunday afternoon
I was sitting with Clay Stanton at the bar of his favorite restaurant, the one he used to impress the marks. He'd called the Lord Baltimore and left an urgent message for me to meet him. He was more upset than I'd ever seen him. I listened to him carefully for ten minutes without interrupting, then lit a cigarette and thought for a moment.

“Are you telling me,” I said slowly, “that Casper Giarelli abducted a Secret Service agent?”

“He believes he has.”

“He believes he has,” I repeated. “I think you'd better go through all this with me again, start to finish. Don't leave anything out.”

According to Stanton, Giarelli and his “associates” had been enjoying a drink at the hotel bar Saturday night when they observed a young man approach a patron seated by himself. They heard the young man introduce himself as an employee of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, watched him flash some credentials. The young man was with the Secret Service, in their anti-counterfeiting division. He explained that there'd been an unusual quantity of phony hundred-dollar bills floating around this city recently, and asked if the other man had any such bills on him.

“This Treasury agent,” Stanton explained, “apparently identified a counterfeit bill in the man's wallet and immediately confiscated it. Observing this got Mr. Giarelli to thinking, and he called the young man over to his table, explaining that he had recently acquired a large sum of cash – payment for a debt owed – and asked if the man would mind coming upstairs to his room to examine the bills. The agent was only too happy to oblige.”

“Go on.”

“Once in the room, the agent identified the entire contents of the valise I gave to Mr. Giarelli the night before as counterfeit.”

I exhaled smoke and fixed Stanton with a hard stare.

“You paid off Giarelli with funny money? Good God, man, are you insane?”

“It isn't counterfeit!” Stanton countered hotly. “The money I gave Mr. Giarelli is perfectly legal tender, I assure you.”

“Then why would this man from the Secret Service say it's fake?”

“This next part is a bit difficult to explain,” Stanton admitted. I bet it is, friend, I thought, and I'm dying to hear you try.

Stanton elaborated for me. Through certain business contacts of his, he'd recently learned of a man running around town posing as a Secret Service agent. This man would show phony credentials, ask to see his victim's cash, and then convince the victim that at least part of his cash consisted of counterfeit bills, which the phony agent would then “confiscate”.

“You see, Mr. Shaw, this man posing as a representative of the Treasury, well, he's nothing more than a trickster. What I believe is referred to in the vernacular as a ‘confidence man'.”

“Is that so?”

Stanton nodded eagerly. “I thought nothing of it at the time. Just an unusual anecdote, something to keep an eye out for.”

“How did Giarelli manage to get ahold of you?” I asked.

“He left a message at the hotel where I stay when I'm in town.” Stanton looked at me, even more agitated. “He also had a telegram addressed to me sent to First Quality Investors. And another one delivered to this very restaurant! They telephoned me only this morning.”

“I guess he wasn't lying about knowing where to find you,” I laughed nervously.

“Us, Mr. Shaw! He knows where to find both of us.”

“Yeah. Did you explain to him about this Secret Service guy being a phony?”

“I did my level best. I'm not at all certain he believed me. In any event, he gave me a new deadline. I am to bring him another two hundred thousand dollars cash by tomorrow night.”

“I still don't follow, Stanton. He thinks you tried to fob off counterfeit bills on him once, but he's willing to take cash from you a second time?”

“Mr. Giarelli will have the Secret Service man on hand to authenticate the bills this time,” Stanton explained.

“Have him on hand?”

“I received the very strong impression,” Stanton said quietly, “that the young man was in Mr. Giarelli's suite when Mr. Giarelli telephoned me. That the young man is, in fact, not being allowed to leave.”

“This Giarelli must be worse news than I thought,” I said, “if he's not afraid to kidnap a fed.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Stanton said. “Even though this man is not a federal agent. He can't possibly be, because the money I gave Mr. Giarelli is quite genuine. And my hearing this story from my associates, it's entirely too coincidental for him not to be the man they were talking about.” Stanton's eyes narrowed as he remembered something. “Mr. Shaw, didn't you tell me one of the bills you'd collected from the brokerage office last week was counterfeit?”

“That's right, I did.”

“Do you recall how you you discovered this?”

“A man came up to me at the hotel bar. Introduced himself as a…” I snapped my fingers, “…a Secret Service agent.”

“A young man? Tall and slender, with fair hair?”

“As a matter of fact, he was. What, did Giarelli give you a description?”

“My associates did, the ones who first told me of this man's antics.”

I thought for a moment.

“So the bottom line is, Giarelli is still not satisfied.”

“Not at present,” Stanton admitted.

“Well, you're not getting those cashier's checks until he is. That was the deal, remember?”

“But that's just it, Mr. Shaw! I can't possibly raise another two hundred thousand dollars in cash by tomorrow evening. But if we were to cash that amount from the checks you have and take it to Mr. Giarelli, and retrieve the original money I gave to him – which I assure you is perfectly sound–”

“Are you out of your mind?” I laughed cruelly at Stanton. “I'm not handing over anything to you until after Giarelli is out of the picture. Period. And anyway, what would be the point? So you can take another case full of money and have this same young con man tell Giarelli it's fake all over again?”

“I'm certain that by now this confidence man has realized he won't be allowed to leave Mr. Giarelli's presence until he authenticates the currency I bring. It's in his best interests
not
to identify my next delivery as counterfeit.”

“Yeah, and then Giarelli will have four hundred thousand dollars in cash and plug you both,” I said.

“Murder a federal agent?” asked Stanton. “Or even murder me with a federal agent as a witness?”

“I thought this guy wasn't a federal agent.”

“But Mr. Giarelli believes he is.”

I crushed out my cigarette and stood up.