“Oh, no, Frank. We’re satisfied all right,” Silk protested a little too quickly.
I knew about the talks the boys in New York were having too. If I gave them a chance they’d throw me to the wolves as quick as the next guy.
“Then go back there and tell them to stop shiverin’. You can tell them that I’m on top of every goddamn move they make and that I want them to do what I say.
“I’ve made arrangements to get every guy out that they pinch, within a few minutes after they book him. You tell them to keep operatin’ until I tell them different.” I went back to my desk and sat down.
Silk picked up his hat and moved toward the door. “I’ll tell them what you said, Frank.” His voice was respectful but his eyes were showing green.
I changed the subject. “You’re nine G’s behind on your share of the pool last week. While you’re here, go down and see Joe Price and square it.”
“I’ll do that, Frank,” he said, his hand on the door, his eyes shifting around the office.
I threw another punch. “And Silk,” I said quietly, “don’t forget that I remember you once wanted this job for yourself—and that I got a good memory.”
He took his hand off the door and held it toward me. “Don’t forget,” he said in a queer tone of voice for him, “if I didn’t give you your first break, you never would have got this setup.”
“I’m not forgettin’,” I answered quietly. “That’s why I’m talking to yuh so polite.”
He hesitated in the doorway a moment. He looked as if there were something else he wanted to say but couldn’t get the moxie up to say it. He went out and closed the door behind him. The trouble with these guys was that they’d been pushing others around for so long that they forgot they were human enough to stand a little shoving themselves.
I reached for the phone. “Get me Alex Carson.” Carson was the top shyster for the firm. I had to tell him to follow through on the idea I had when I was talking to Fennelli—the one about setting up bond and bailing the gee’s out as soon as they were pinched. Sometimes a little talk went a long way toward clearing things up. I was always ready to talk things out. The trouble was I couldn’t trust any of them enough to talk with, so I had to dope the whole works out myself. I could only tell them a little at a time or else they would know as much as I did and soon begin to get ideas.
When I was through with Carson, I hung up the phone and turned back to my desk. There were a lot of things I had to do. I smiled a little to myself. Easy living was hard work.
A girl came in with the five o’clock report and stood there waiting while I read it. I looked up at her. “Anything in from Tanforan yet?” I asked.
“No, Mr. Kane.”
I picked up the phone and asked for Joe Price. Joe Price was the controller—a very smart guy with the numbers. When I picked him up, he was making a hundred fish a week as head accountant for some lousy little company. He had gone into the bag for a few G’s, and I thought I could use him, so I pulled him out. He was worth it. I wasn’t paying him a grand a week because I liked his looks.
He answered.
“How’d we make out on the first at Tanforan?” I asked. Tanforan was in California and was three hours behind us.
“We’re down about eight thousand,” he spoke in that clipped accountant’s voice of his, “and the pool is down about thirty.”
“How does it look for the day?”
“We’ll be lucky to break even,” he said.
“O.K.,” I said, and hung up the phone. You couldn’t make it every day.
My secretary was still standing near the desk. I looked up at her. “There is a woman outside waiting to see you—a Miss Coville.”
I looked puzzled. “How did she get past the front desk?” I asked, “I don’t recall the name.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Kane,” the girl replied. “I guess she just walked by.” She picked up the report from the desk. “She said you’d know her, she was Marty’s sister.”
“Oh, yes!” I knew her all right! What the hell was she doing here? I hesitated a moment. To cover my thoughts, I asked: “Is Allison in yet, Miss Walsh?”
“No.” She started to go. “Shall I tell her you’re busy?”
I hesitated again, then answered: “Yes.”
She went out. I looked down at the desk. I had been tempted to see her, but nothing would be gained by it. She probably would recognize me as the guy that was in the hospital, even though I had put on a little weight and a two-hundred-dollar suit. It was better this way.
A few minutes later Allison came in. He was my night secretary. I needed two—one for day, one for night—and a woman was hard to get to work nights. I generally was around the office until pretty late and all the tabulations were in. So I had hired Allison.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“There’s a lady waiting outside to see you, a Miss Coville,” he said. There was a funny look on his almost effeminate face. I never did like him. I could never trust a man who could take shorthand.
“I thought I told Miss Walsh to send her away,” I said.
“She’s still waiting, sir.” He rarely looked directly at me, but now he did. I was surprised to see how strong his jaw line was. “She said you had promised to see her.”
I gave up. I’d see her and get it over with. “All right,” I snapped, “send her in!”
I stood up as Allison opened the door for her. She stood there in the doorway a moment looking at me. She was dressed in a smoky blue-gray suit that seemed to set well against her blue eyes. Her gaze was level and direct. Her mouth was firm and her jaw almost mannishly square.
She waited until the door closed behind her before she spoke. “It is you.” She walked toward me and held out her hand.
I ignored it. “Who did you expect it to be?”
She dropped her hand self-consciously to her side. Doubt flickered in and out of her eyes like shadows on a wall. “I don’t know,” she said with a suggestion of nervousness in her voice. Then it grew calm. “Anyway, you were at the hospital that time. I wasn’t wrong.”
“What does that prove?”
“Why, nothing I guess,” she answered. “It’s just that I thought—”
We had remained standing, facing each other across the desk, like fighters in a ring. “What do you want here?” I asked.
Her nervousness had gone completely. “I wanted to see you—to see if you were at the hospital—to see if you were the same person that had come into our house.”
“Now that you see who I am, is that all?”
She set her chin. She hadn’t changed very much. “You’re still the same person now that you were then. Only you’re older—and harder.”
I didn’t answer.
She began to speak again. “I shouldn’t have come. Marty and Jerry warned—”
With a bound I leaped across the space between us and put my hand over her mouth. “Shut up, you fool!” I whispered harshly. “Don’t you realize that I’m watched every minute, that everyone that comes here is watched? Why in hell you couldn’t leave well enough alone, I don’t know!
“Don’t you know what will happen to them if I’m ever tied up to them?” I didn’t use their names but she knew who I meant. I let go her mouth, her lipstick was on my hand. I wiped it off on a handkerchief and looked at her.
She was close to tears. Her eyes were filled and her lower lip trembled. She sank into the chair in front of my desk.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think.”
“That’s just the trouble! You didn’t think!”
“I only wanted to help,” she said.
“Who, me?” I asked sarcastically. “A lot of good you can do me! And if you’re ever traced to them, it’ll be tough. The best thing you can do when you get out of here is to never come back.”
She had gained control of herself. She stood up. Her voice was cool again and formal. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. It was a mistake to even try t
o help you. You haven’t changed a bit. No one can help you. You won’t let anyone try. You’ll just go along until you’re knocked down. I’m sorry I came.” She moved toward the door.
I watched her. I wanted to tell her I was glad to see her, wanted to tell her I missed the old bunch. But I didn’t dare. Maybe Jerry had sent her to me, looking for an angle. I couldn’t know.
“I’m sorry I was so rough with you,” I said gently.
“That’s all right,” she said, “I deserved it. I should have known better.” She was at the door. “Good-bye.”
I went to her and took her hand and smiled. “Anyway,” I said, “thanks for coming.”
We stood there a moment, our hands locked, looking into each other’s eyes. She leaned toward me, I felt a kiss brush my lips. “Remember what you said long ago,” she said. “‘Now we’re friends.’”
“Good-bye,” I said, and watched her close the door.
I called Allison for the Tanforan report, and while I waited on the phone for him to read the figures, I was thinking. It was nuts. It was screwy. This was no time to fall for a dame, no matter who she was.
Or was it?
61
I had been seated at the desk a long time, lost in thought. Allison had come in, turned on the lights, and left. Time flickered by without notice. I had come a long way in the last few years. All the things I had ever wanted were now mine. I had money. I wore good clothes, ate well, lived well. What more did I need?
A woman? Hell, all I had to do was snap my fingers and I had the best tail in the country! No, it wasn’t that.
Friends? Maybe. But I learned a long time ago I couldn’t afford them if I was to get what I wanted. For everything I gained, I had to give up something else. Besides, friends don’t give you what I got.
I turned my chair around toward the window and looked out. Across the river the lights of New York flickered tantalizing in my eyes. It was funny. There was nothing I really wanted across the river I couldn’t have here, and yet I wanted to go across the river. Maybe it was the pull of invisible chains restricting my actions that made it seem important. I got out of my chair, lit a cigarette, and stood near the window looking over at New York.
Ruth would have to come and see me just at the time she did! I wondered why? Did Jerry really send her? I had found out you couldn’t afford to take chances in this business. Your first mistake was generally your last.
But still if Jerry hadn’t gotten that job things might have been different.
The phone rang. I went to the desk and picked it up. It was Allison. “I’ve got the Tanforan report for you.”
I looked at my wristwatch. It was nearly ten o’clock. I didn’t think it was that late. I was tired and hungry. “O.K.,” I said, “what are they?” I listened to him and then hung up.
New York was still just across the river.
I sat there for a moment wearily; there was one thing I had to do before I could leave. I took Allison’s personnel record from the top drawer of my desk, where it had been since the day before, and looked at it. Then I pressed the buzzer for him.
He stood in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Come in and sit down,” I told him. “I want to talk to you.”
A puzzled look crossed his face. In a second it had gone. “Yes, sir,” he said, crossing to the chair in front of my desk and sitting down.
I held up his service record for him to see. “I’ve just been looking over your record,” I said. “It’s a very unusual one.”
He tensed slightly in his chair. “In what way, sir?” he asked. Despite his efforts to control it, his voice betrayed some perturbation.
“You can drop the ‘sirs’ and ‘misters’ when we’re alone, Allison,” I said. “That’s a lot of crap anyway. People only use titles of any sort to disguise their own feelings about the people they’re talking with. Everyone calls me Frank.”
He nodded. “My name’s Edward. Ed.”
I looked at him. He was no dumbbell. No matter how much he wanted to know the answer to his question, he threw it away when he saw I didn’t reply. Just that afternoon his jaw had impressed me. Now I saw other lines of strength in his face: the set of his mouth, his eyes, blue and determined, the furrows on his brow.
“You don’t care much for this sort of job, do you?” I asked. “With the background you have, it seems odd to me that you should have stooped to working in a place like this, for a guy like me.” I read from the record. “Columbia School of Business ’31, Columbia School of Law ’34.”
“A fellow has to eat.” He smiled at me, feeling more sure of his ground. “Hunger is no respecter of degrees, especially college degrees.”
I liked that. I found myself liking the man in spite of what I knew about him. I liked the way he didn’t deny my allegation that he was sinking below his standard. I liked his saying what he had instead of something like: “Oh, no, Mr. Kane! This is just what I want!”—or something equally stupid. I smiled back at him. “Don’t tell me that, Ed! Your folks seem to have been pretty well fixed.”
He tried another tack, seeing the first hadn’t gone over. There was a mocking tone in the back of his voice. He tried to give the impression that I had him. “I wanted to do something different,” he said. “I didn’t want to go into the dull routine of an ordinary law or business office.”
“So you came here,” I smiled.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And was it?” I asked.
“In a way,” he answered. “But wasn’t quite what I expected.”
I laughed aloud. “What did you expect—blood on the carpets? Be your age, man, this is a business, just like any other.” It was my turn to be mocking. He was beginning to show the slightest signs of having a temper. I made a mental note of that. He didn’t like to be laughed at. I changed the subject. “How long have you been working here, Ed?”
“About eight months,” he answered. I saw he didn’t call me Frank, but then he had dropped the “sir,” and “Mr. Kane.”
“How much do you get?”
“One hundred a week,” he said.
“What would you say if I made it two hundred?”
He looked a little surprised. “Why—why I’d say thank you.”
I laughed again. It was a good answer. “What would you do for it?”
He was puzzled again. “What do you mean, sir?” There it was back again.
“Supposing I were to tell you that the Department of Justice was trying to find someone in the office close enough to me to give them a line on my activities. Supposing you were that guy—I might be able to fix it. Would you send them the reports I would O.K.?” I looked over at him quietly.
He stood up and looked down across the desk at me. “Then you know?” he asked. He leaned forward against the desk, his hands gripping the edge, his knuckles white from their pressure.
“Know what?” I asked softly.
“That I’m from the Department of Justice,” he said. There was a sense of failure in the sound of his voice.
I felt a little sorry for him. Why did I always have to feel sorry for the wrong people? If I hadn’t caught on to him, he might have been able to hang me higher than a kite. “Oh, that!” I spoke lightly, as if it were unimportant. “I knew that when I hired you.”
“And yet you hired me?” His voice was still tense.
“Of course!” I smiled, seeing the surprise on his face. “I needed a secretary.” He tried to say something. I wouldn’t let him interrupt. “Sit down,” I said in a slightly bored manner. “There’s no need for dramatics. I’m not going to have you bumped off—that isn’t the way I operate. I told you just a minute ago that this is a business.”
He sank back into the chair silently.
I continued. “You’ve been here eight months. In that time you’ve learned nothing on which your department can base a case. I run a business. The business has many and diversified interests as you already know. We operate and have interests in various in
dustries, such as coin machines, juke boxes, clubs and restaurants, and small manufacturing. I like to gamble a little. Who doesn’t? All my profits from all phases of my activities are properly reported on my income tax. I commit no crimes. There, in a simple form, you have a picture of my company.
“It’s just what the name says on the door: ‘Frank Kane, Enterprises.’”
He was silent for a moment, then he looked directly up at me. The hidden things—the things that had made me distrust him, that I had sensed rather than seen on his face—were gone. They were replaced with a reserved kind of candor. He smiled. “I’m rather glad that’s over,” he said.
I laughed and lit a cigarette. I was too. If he could have known how close he had come! But that was something else. It wasn’t until yesterday that I had known about him, and with all this breaking now, I would have wound up behind the eight ball. I was silent.
“I guess I might as well go now.” He stood up.
“Suit yourself.” I watched him move slowly toward the door before I spoke again. “I could still use a good secretary.”
“What do you mean?”
I was deliberately vague. “You might turn in your badge and work for me. Or, then again, you might continue on the old basis; I really don’t care what you tell them about me.”
He looked incredibly young as he stood there. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” I asked. “No one but ourselves need know what we spoke about.”
“No,” he said, “it wouldn’t be fair.”
Fair, hell! What did he think spying on me was—fair! I laughed. “It’s up to you,” I said.
He went out.
I turned around in my seat and looked out across the river.
New York was still winking at me, giving me the old come-on, come-hither look.
62
It wasn’t until I had gone halfway across the bridge to New York that I began to realize just how much of a fool I was.
I had left the office about ten forty-five and had gone to the garage for my car. Then it happened. “Mike,” I asked the old garageman, “have you a car I can borrow for the evening?”
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 37