The Scarlet Ruse (14 page)

"You have a point."

"What bothers me about you, McGee, I can't read you getting into this strictly as a favor to Fedderman. Where's the connection?"

"I owed one to a friend, and he called me on it and said help Fedderman." I knew he would accept that kind of reasoning and thought I saw acceptance in those small eyes. "How did you make me?" I asked.

"In nineteen months I put a good piece of money into that little old man's action. He checked out as an okay old man. He's good for his guarantee. But I wouldn't want to find out some day-he's gone, and there's a jewelry store. Also there is another thing, I wouldn't want that little old man to have a big mouth and say Frank Sprenger is giving him bundles of cash, and having all of a sudden some kind of audit that spreads from his book to mine. I could give all the answers, but it still wouldn't look good. I'm supposed to keep my head down at all tunes. So I arranged to have people keep an eye on the little old man. Any change in his pattern. I heard over two weeks ago he was getting to work earlier, staying longer. Maybe he's packing? He starts to get appraisals on a lot he owns, on some securities, on the retail business. So when you came onto the scene, we were already at battle stations, so I got a fast reading on you, and it shaped up this way in my mind. The little old man is very nervous lately. You try to get things back when people lose them and the law can't help them. I'm not his only account, but maybe the stuff he bought for me is missing? If so, I am the injured party. Fedderman will have to make it good, if that's so, but I would rather have the items he bought."

"Why?"

"If I wanted money, I already had money. I wanted the stamps."

"That's what I mean? Why did you want the stamps."

"Personally? I didn't and I don't. A certain associate is under very close surveillance. He made a mistake and didn't cover it well, and he thinks they are maybe building a very tight case against him. He's old and he's tired and he won't last long locked up. Anything he tries to cash in, they'll know it. He has some action going down here, and so he asked me to put his end into something small you can carry in a pocket, as good as money. It used to be stones. They're too big a markup even wholesale and too big a discount elsewhere. I heard of Fedderman, so we had a nice talk, and I tried it to see if it would work."

"Tried it?"

"He sold me four stamps from Grenada. From the island. Two pairs they were. One-penny green. Fifteen hundred bucks. I had a courier going to West Berlin, so I told her to sell them there for whatever she could get, and she got forty-eight hundred West German marks, no questions asked, and about a five-minute wait for the money. It worked like he said it would, so I went his route. When that certain associate wants to make his move, he can slip away and get down here. I give him the merchandise and get him onto a freighter with new papers, and he can live nice in a warm climate until he is dead. As a matter of fact, it's too bad the stamp thing isn't a market that will absorb money faster and easier."

"What am I supposed to be doing for you?"

"Is my merchandise missing?"

"Out of a lock box in a bank?"

"I don't see how it could be. Maybe it didn't get into the box."

"I don't know for certain if it's missing. Fedderman thinks something is wrong. But he's old. He could be wrong."

"He'll have to make it good. That's the agreement."

"He intends to live up to it."

"So if the merchandise is missing, you're trying to find it for Fedderman? You can be trying to find it for me too."

"It would be the same thing. He'd turn it over to you. If it's missing."

"I don't know what he's been putting in the book. I get these lists. They don't mean a hell of a lot to anybody except somebody in the same line of work as Fedderman. If anything has happened, it's more inconvenience to me than anything else. You let me know how you're getting along."

He counted out some money and leaned and put it on the corner of the desk near me. I said, "I don't want to be on the payroll, Mr. Sprenger."

"I wouldn't put you on. That's expenses, nothing else. Expense money saves a man time and trouble and makes him more efficient. That's a policy of mine."

"Well… just for expenses then."

"You have anything, you use the number Dave gave you. There's always somebody at the place."

"I think Harry Harris gave me the number."

"Harry who?"

"Harris. Reddish brown kinky hair, sunburn, sideburns."

"I don't have anybody like that working for me."

"Oh."

"Nobody who does work for me would ever remember anybody who looks like that."

"Now that you mention it, Dave was alone when he came to see me."

"What if I got in touch with you about some other kind of a problem sometime?"

"I seldom take on any work."

"It wouldn't be often. You could be on a retainer."

"I travel a lot. I might not be where you could get in touch."

"For your information, maybe seventy-five percent of what I do is all legitimate business affairs and management problems."

"I didn't mean I was making moral judgments."

"Then what?"

"I'm no damned good at taking orders. You get that way, working for yourself long enough."

I saw his interest fade. "Suit yourself then. Thanks for stopping in."

I didn't stand up on cue. "Too bad about that other clerk in Fedderman's shop."

"I would have missed that entirely if the name Fedderman didn't catch my eye. It jumped out of the print at me. Lawlor? Lawrence?"

"Mrs. Lawson. Jane Lawson."

I was trying to watch him closely without being too obvious about it. He seemed awfully plausible. I picked the words with greatest care. "Frank, you bother me." The blueberries turned to pebbles. "I bother you?"

"One little old man and two women in that shop. So they are involved, the women are, in all his accounts in some manner. So in effect they are handling four hundred thousand of money entrusted to you. You think there has been some hanky panky. The senior of the two clerks gets killed. Somebody got too rough. You read it, but you never stop to wonder if there is any connection at all. Is that logical? What's my other guess, Frank? What comes next?"

He frowned at me. "Now, come on! I sent somebody to shake the merchandise out of her if she had it? Why take a risk like that?"

"It turned into a risk when somebody got too rough."

He shook his head. "No, McGee. No, no, no. Your head is full of smoke. That was a nice little woman. You can smell the ones who will and the ones who won't."

"But you never went to the store?"

"She came to the bank once with Fedderman."

Suddenly that little itch in the back of my mind stopped itching, and I stopped finding some way to scratch it. I heard Jane Lawson's voice. "The Sprenger account is the one where he never looks at the old purchases or the new ones either. He just sits there like so much dead meat. He nods, shrugs, grunts and that's that."

"When did she come to the bank?"

He took an appointment book out of the middle drawer and leafed back through it. "May twenty-first. After lunch. The big girl came back from lunch and started throwing up. It was too late for Fedderman to reach me, so Mrs. Lawson came with him. I don't know why he apologized. What difference is it to me which woman puts the stamps in the book? Fedderman wants to make a big thing out of everything. Maybe you've got the same problem. Some freak got into the house and broke that little woman's neck."

I left with money in my pocket and vague unrest in the back of my mind. The pretty little receptionist was prodding at her dead tooth. She snatched her hand away, and gave me more smile on one side than on the other. I stopped and looked at the broad tape. Brownsville, Texas, was coming out with a twenty-million-dollar general obligation issue at five and a half percent to expand their sewage disposal system. Sharon, Pennsylvania, was assuming seven million dollars more of public debt for roads, bridges, and flood control. That was nice. I wondered how many Sprengers and friends of Sprengers had their hands cupped under the faucets, waiting for the money.

I walked a block and took a beach cab over to the mainland. On the island of Miami Beach, all you can legally get is a beach cab. If he takes you to the mainland, he is supposed to come back empty. The mainland cabs taking fares from the airport to the hotels along Collins have some of the doormen well enough greased so they can beat the system. Sometimes I wondered how much Sprenger and his pals had to do with the weird cab system that was suddenly costing me about seven dollars. But Sprenger had covered expenses.

It was almost noon. I peered into the shop and saw Mary Alice and rapped on the glass. She stared toward the door and then smiled and came quickly and let me in, locked the door, gave me the close and hearty stance, the hearty jolly kiss.

"Did you sleep all this time?"

"Me? Heavens! I was up practically before you got the door shut."

"That isn't going to do either of us any good, buddy."

"I came to see about taking you to lunch and-"

"I'm so glad you came here, Trav, really. There's something that really bothers me. I just don't know what to think. It seems to… I don't want to say anything until you see it."

It was back in Hirsh's office, on his desk. I sat in his chair and examined it carefully. She stood beside me with her hand on my shoulder. It was a white cardboard box, about twelve inches long, eight inches wide, an inch and a half deep. There was wide brown mailing tape affixed to it, running around it the long way and then around the middle, overlapping. Where the tape crossed, there was a mailing label. "Mrs. Jerome Lawson." Correct address. It was stamped in big red rubberstamp letters, "Book Rate." The return address was "Helen's Book Nooke."

"The book store is two blocks from here," Mary Alice said.

There were three eight-cent stamps on the package, not canceled. There was heft to the package, as if it contained a book. When I shook it, the book slid back and forth. The box was a little too long for it.

I examined the ends with care. The tape seemed to be slit very inconspicuously at one end. I fiddled with it until I found that the end could be pushed inward. It folded down reluctantly against the resistance of some kind of very strong spring. Once it was folded down and the box tilted until the contents were beyond the edge of the folded-down part, the contents could be pulled out of the box.

The contents was an album or stock book just like the one I had been shown previously as being identical to Sprenger's. But this one was green. Mary Alice pulled it out of its fiber slip case and showed it to me. There was a name in gold on the bottom right corner. "J. David Balch."

"Who is J. David?" I asked.

"One of the investment accounts. See. There's nothing in here. This is a new stock book. I found this by accident. It's so weird. We each have a little space for personal stuff under the counter near the back. Like cupboards with doors. This was in a brown paper bag, and it was wrapped in a sweater of hers. But it was too heavy for just a sweater. So I started monkeying around with it, wondering if I could open it or maybe pry it open a little way to look in. Know what I thought? That maybe she hid it because it was a very dirty book. That Helen sells things that you wouldn't believe, if she knows you."

I looked at the box again. There seemed to be some reinforcing glued to the back of the flap and to the bottom of the box so that the springs would not push through the cardboard.

She said, "I feel like such a great big dummy. I just never thought of changing the whole damned book."

"You are not alone, M.A. This thing is a shoplifter's gaff. They usually make them in handier sizes, without such a strong spring. And usually they are tied with string. If you glue the string to the paper, you get a very convincing look. The professional shoplifter buys an item from a good store. She takes it home and doctors the box and then takes it to other stores. Put it down on a counter and you can shove things through the end flap very inconspicuously. They have purses that are gaffed. They can put them down on the counter on top of merchandise and reach down into the purse and pull stuff up into the purse from underneath, through the bottom. I guess this had strong springs because it had to go through the mail. We didn't think of changing the whole book because they are personalized and arranged in a certain order."

"I can figure that out too, Trav."

She went and got a three ring notebook and opened it up at the index tab which bore the initials F.A.S. "These are the inventory sheets for Mr. Sprenger's account. I haven't kept this in the safe or anything. Why should I? Now look at these little figures I wrote in. There are thirty-six double-sided pages, and seven transparent pockets across each page. I number the pages in ink up in the top corners. Okay. Take this stamp here." I read: US #122a* 90c car. blk, w/o grill, VF $1500 ($1375) 28-6-4. The last three figures were written in.

I looked up over my shoulder at her. "Twenty-eighth page, sixth row down, fourth stamp over?"

"I don't want to seem like I'm accusing Jane."