A Shared Confidence (29 page)

What the hell, that was as good a rationalization as any for my having been taken in by my own damn con.

“What's funny, Mr. Caine?”

Jennings slid onto the stool next to me. I looked at my watch, noticed he was dead on time. I signaled Lonnigan to bring the boy a drink.

“A lot of things are funny, Jennings,” I answered. “I wouldn't know where to start. But this might give you a chuckle.” I reached into my jacket and took out a fat envelope. Inside was Jennings' cut: the whole fifteen thousand he'd won in the biggest night of poker in his life. And he'd handed it over without a word of protest. It just wouldn't have been right to keep it from him. Besides, I still had plenty left.

Jennings thanked me simply and sincerely, and put the envelope away in his pocket. We raised our glasses to a job well done.

“So what are you going to do with your share, Mr. Caine? Buy another Caddy?”

I'd actually thought about that, briefly. Just buying the Cadillac Fleetwood outright from the rental outfit in Baltimore and driving it back to K.C.

“Nah,” I shook my head. “Not my style. Flashy cars are like flashy women, kid: fun to drive, but you'll go broke trying to keep one.” I took another slug of scotch. “No, I figure to lease the empty office next to mine, call someone about having a communicating door put in.”

I turned on my stool so I was facing Jennings.

“I don't mind having a partner,” I said, “but I'll be damned if I'm going to have to look at his ugly mug every morning when I'm trying to do the crossword.”

Jennings' eyes widened and his perpetually lazy smile actually got up off the sofa for a second.

“On the level, Mr. Caine? Is that an offer?”

“That's an offer, boy-oh,” I smiled back, raising my glass again. “Are you in?”

~ The End ~

About William Topek

William Topek is originally from the Midwest, but has lived and worked throughout the United States and overseas. His widely varied career has included serving on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, teaching in a foreign middle school, and conducting regulatory seminars and security training as an employee of the federal government. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas and received his MBA from Willamette University in Oregon. His interests include film, fiction, history and the art of storytelling.

This is Topek's second novel. Shadow of a Distant Morning, featuring P.I. Devlin Caine, was published in 2010.

Acknowledgments

For their encouragement and generous feedback from conception to final edit, I would like to thank the following people: Patricia and Daryl Copeland, Chuck Lass, Sarah Melching, Steve Cullen, Bernie Carr, and Curtis Craddock.

While researching this novel, I was fortunate to come across one particularly fascinating and informative book. For anyone interested in learning more about confidence games of the time and the people who played them, I heartily recommend
The Big Con
by David W. Maurer (copyright 1940 by Universal Studios, Inc.).

Lastly, I would like to thank Michelle Halket at Central Avenue Publishing, not only for giving my work a home, but for her continued enthusiasm for my writing in general and my character Devlin Caine in particular.

Other Books By Central Avenue Publishing

COLD IN CALFORNIA

Deborah Riley-Magnus

Twice-baked vampire, Gabriel Strickland, learns he has a chance at redemption when he's whisked from his final demise into a purgatory secretly tucked in West Hollywood. Sixty creatures, including other dead vampires, pixies, a legendary Navaho stick man and bothersome leprechauns, struggle together to earn brownie points and wait out possible centuries of this purgatory. Gabriel receives dubious advice from the troll who runs the place, but there are always bugs in the pudding and he faces them all. Enter, the beautiful Dori Gallagher, who not only knocks Gabriel off his feet, but also an evil warlock who has designs on her. When menacing forces gather against Gabriel and everything he's come to respect, it's a fiery clash of the supernatural in one heroic effort to save his new reality.

SHADOW OF A DISTANT MORNING

William Topek

Kansas City, 1934. Devlin Caine, a WWI veteran and former Pinkerton's operative, is hired by a wealthy industrialist to check out a potential business partner. The job is simple and the money good, but for Caine, it's a short step from checking public records to being roughed up in a back alley. When the man Caine is investigating turns up murdered, Caine finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between his client, a competing industrialist, and a local underworld boss – all after a coded notebook Caine found in the dead man's hotel room. Desperate to unlock the mystery of the notebook (and to protect his client's beautiful young daughter), Caine plays the three men against each other in an effort to buy time. He knows only one of the three rivals can win this battle, and backing the wrong side will cost lives, starting with his own.

ARMOR OF LIGHT

Ellen L. Ekstrom

George Ascalon, earl of Grasmere, returns from the Fourth Crusade to learn that his father, a man who has forsaken his family and noble title to take up Holy Orders, has assigned him one last battle. There is an evil permeating a neighboring lord's lands and George is called upon to vanquish it. With a band of followers that includes his sister, a knight, a fletcher's wife and a mysterious noblewoman, George sets out to honor the pledge and in doing so discovers that he indeed has dragons to fight, and the person most in need of saving is himself.