by Kane, Henry
“None. Nor did you mention money.”
“I shall mention money this afternoon, old boy.”
“That will be a decided improvement, old boy.”
“I take it if it’s money on occasion you’re interested. Correct, old boy?”
“Correction, old boy. If it’s money I’m always interested.”
“Beautifully put, old boy.”
“Thank you, old boy.”
“First then a brief introduction to Barry Howard and be prepared, if you please, for shock. Ready?”
“I’m all ears like corn ready to be shocked. Shoots.”
The rimless glasses glistened sadly but he made no attempt at a topper so I knew I was now enmeshed in a business conference because a business conference is as deadly serious as it is deathly boring. I lit a cigarette, lay back in my swivel chair, and hoped that the money was sufficient to tip the balance.
“I met the guy,” said Alfred Surf, “at a swank party a couple of months ago thrown by Elsa Stutz up at Scarsdale. When he learned who I was, he cottoned to me like a nettle to a wool sweater. He said that he has heard of me, heard of my reputation as a publisher and as a man of integrity—I’m quoting him now, mind you—and said that he wanted to write a book. Well, that’s about par for the course at any party I attend. Every stranger I meet, once he learns my business, wants to write a book. You know?”
“I know,” I said grimly.
“I humored him because he was a very pleasant man, distinguished, good-looking, well-spoken, most attractive. The more he talked, though, the less I was humoring him—the more I was growing interested. First off, he’s a linguist. He speaks twelve languages, fluently. I’m pretty good at French and Spanish and I tested him and he was only great. He also speaks English, Portuguese, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian—but fluently. He has more than a smattering of other languages, but those he speaks fluently. By birth, he’s a Hungarian, but his family migrated to Paris, where his father was Professor of Languages at the Sorbonne.”
“What did he want to write for you—a universal lexicon?”
“Easy, old boy. The more I talked with Barry Howard—”
“It’s not a Hungarian name.”
“It’s the name he’s using now.”
“He’s used other names?”
“Countless.”
I swung my chair to upright. “A goniff?”
“Of the uppermost echelon.”
“It gets interesting.”
“It gets more interesting. Listen.”
“I’m all ears like corn—”
“Please. Once was enough of that.”
“Check,” I said although aggrieved. I thought perhaps it had missed the first time. It had not. It had bounced off and lain there, a dud undetonated. A miss is not as good as a smile. I sulked in my swivel chair, I pouted, I puffed petulantly on my cigarette, but Alfred Surf, intent upon business, disregarded my discomfiture.
He tucked his cigar into a circle of mouth, sucked, and blew blue expensive aromatic fumes. “The guy,” he said, “confided that he had never done an honest day’s work in his life. He’s a swindler, a confidence man, an international imposter.”
“And he told all this to you?”
“He wants to do a book, an autobiography. What else is an autobiography but a confessional?”
“But why?”
“Why what?”
“Why should this schlemiel want to do an autobiography?”
“Why does anybody—panderer, politician, playwright, potentate, Polly Adler?” He squinted behind his lenses. “The psychiatrists have explained it quite frequently; they have the same impulse themselves to which too often they yield in the shape of one of those ponderous tomes of dreary drivel that nobody reads except perhaps perforce their patients.” He sighed. “An autobiography has been explained as a wedge—a wedge to immortality. The desire for immortality flickers, no matter how fitfully, in all of us. An autobiography is a tombstone, and the best of all possible tombstones, because it stands erected while you’re still alive. What better tombstone than a tombstone you’re still around to enjoy?” Once more he sighed. “A published autobiography is the final punctuation—a triumphant exclamation mark—for a towering ego. There comes a time in a person’s life—generally a superlative egotist with a damned interesting life—when he’d rather have an autobiography than bread, butter, cakes, or ale.”
“And what time is it in this Barry Howard’s life?”
“He’s about fifty-five, I’d judge.”
“And he’s anxious to do this Confessions Of A Con Man?”
“Oh now come off it, Peter. Thieves, murderers, drunks, drug-addicts, sadists, prostitutes—all have done autobiographies some of which have contained unbelievably horrifying and incriminating matter, and you damned well know it as well as I do.”
“What about this Barry Howard’s matter?”
“Let me get to it chronologically, won’t you?”
“Tick away, my friend.”
The cigar had gone brownly dead and he used his torch to revivify it. He puffed it to glowing and smiled around it. “Suffice it to say that my conversation with Barry Howard up at Elsa Stutz’s warranted a further conversation by appointment at my office.”
“And how did that turn out?”
“Just beautifully. And that conversation in my office warranted many further conversations; rather, soliliquies directed at a tape-recorder, but brother, what soliliquies! He made one proviso, however, which, of course, I shall honor.”
“And that?”
“If and when the autobiography is published and he is not around to collect the royalties, I am to hold them until I hear from him, and forward them. He would send me a letter over his signature, the letter hand-written and containing certain code-words. He would give me an address to which immediately I would send the money in care of whatever name he specified. This condition was entered as a clause in our contract.”
“The guy sure trusts you.”
“Why not? I have a reputation, and I’m proud of my reputation, and I’m pleased that Mr. Howard is cognizant of that reputation. Actually—as you’ll soon become aware—the money doesn’t mean a damned thing to him, he’s quite solvent. I believe he inserted the condition as a bulwark for some future time when, possibly, he might be in need. Who knows how the wheel turns, and it’s a wise man that makes provision for all contingencies.”
“What about those tapes?”
“Unbelievably interesting. There’s enough material there for two books and my contract is ironclad, signed, sealed, and witnessed.”
“Is this sort of thing usual between publisher and … er … author?”
“Not unusual. I mean, it’s been done before, by other firms, as well as my own.” He puffed on the cigar which was down to its middle now. “But let’s get to you, dear Peter.”
“Always an interesting subject, to me at least.”
“Mr. Howard admits he’s no writer and admits that he has neither the time nor the inclination to do the actual writing. I racked my brains for a proper collaborator and nothing happened until I thought of you. You’re perfect for this job. You understand the criminal mind, you have a sort of empathy for these people, and you have just the style for this kind of work. A light touch on a sorry subject is like flint on stone: it brings forth the spark which is so necessary …”
“And did Mr. Howard agree to me?”
“Mr. Howard never heard of you.”
“Well, that’s flattering.”
“It’s my flattery that counts here, not Barry Howard’s. I declared you as the collaborator and he had no objection—so you are the collaborator.”
“Unless I have objection.”
“You won’t when you hear the terms.”
I settled back happily to hear the terms but there was nary the germ of a term in what came next—there was more about Barry Howard.
“The stuff on
the tape is absolutely sensational. In thirty years devoted to the single purpose of peaceably separating people from money this guy has stolen, and spent, upwards of ten million dollars.”
“Alfred, old boy, it’s none of my business but have you ever considered that you’re getting the business from this Barry Howard?”
“Meaning?”
“That the stuff on the tape may be a load of crap.”
He grunted. “Even if every word is apocryphal, I’d still publish the book, because the material is genuinely interesting, utterly ingenious, vastly different and absolutely fascinating. However, I don’t believe it to be apocryphal. After all, I wasn’t born yesterday. He’s mentioned names, dates, persons, and places and I’ve checked and they’ve checked out, all of them. Also, in his thirty years, he’s been in jail only twice—once, as Sigmund Brent in Miami, and once as Hugh Radford in Lisbon. The first time he did two years, the second time three years. I’ve checked both of those and they’ve proved up.”
“But, pal, how do you know he’s the guy; the guy who went to jail, and the guy who says he’s the subject of the autobiography?”
“Once again, I think he is, but if he isn’t, I don’t care.”
“If he is, you’re liable to have trouble with the police.”
“Not me. He. And I’ve told him that. Me? I’m only publishing a book, putting memoirs into print. He’s confessing to innumerable unsolved swindles; gorgeous peculations but definitely high crimes.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“Said that it was his risk. Said that he was happy to run the risk. Said that by the time the book was published, he’d be out of the country, living under a different name in an entirely different milieu. Said that it was my job to publish and to hang on to the royalties so that I could deliver if and when he ever sent for them.”
“And did you tell him that the cops were liable to arrive before the money?”
“I did and once again he said that was his risk, that he would know how to handle it once the circumstances evolved.” I shrugged. “Quite a guy.”
“And what an operator! Never twice in the same city, but all over the world—Bombay, San Francisco, Liverpool, Tokyo, Haifa, Buenos Aires, Dallas, London, Rio, Reno, New Orleans—and always a skillful swindle, always with a dame as an accomplice but never the same dame, and never any violence, he abhors violence.”
“A pacifist, eh?”
“With an abiding revulsion for physical violence.”
“And where does he get these dames? Every sale a new frail.”
“Oh, he’s a beautiful, striking, attractive man. According to him, in each city, he first finds the girl and settles down with her, before he even begins to plot his course.”
“Not to be plotitudinous—how does he get rid of her; I mean, each time?”
“She gets her share, and that’s the end.”
“Is it? Have you ever settled down with a gal and then, just like that, try to take off?”
He held up one hand, palm facing me. “You musn’t misunderstand. There’s no romance, nothing like that, never.”
“He settles down with the gal but there’s no romance. This guy a fairy?”
He looked at me askance. His expression took on acerbity which has nothing to do with absurdity but to me, in my innocence, his vex was my perplex. What the hell had I asked? We sat, for moments, sort of glare to glare, and then I swiveled around with my back to him which left us sitting, for more moments, sort of ass to askance.
“Peter,” he said finally, “I’m no quidnunc.”
I twirled around to share of his glare again.
“Alfred,” I said thinly but stoutly, “I don’t know what means quidnunc.”
“Gossip, busybody, tattletale, scuttlebuttler. That’s what means quidnunc.”
“Scuttlebuttler,” I said in new fond admiration. “There you have really ripped off a gasser, Dad. My compliments, my encomiums, and a long litany of unspoken panegyrics.”
That cleared the air of all but the stink of nicotine and the pollution of polysyllables. He smiled and I smiled and I said, “So? Is he?”
“I think so but of course it’s none of my affair.”
“I hope it isn’t, dearest Alfredo.”
“I dont know why you’re interested—”
“Pure curiosity.”
“—but if you are, you’ll have an opportunity to arrive at your own judgment. I expect you’re going to meet him.”
“When?”
“This afternoon. I’m throwing a big shindig at my place, starting at four this afternoon, for one of my authors, Vickie Wiggleston, who has a new book—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“It starts at four with cocktails and goes on practically all night, on business expense, including buffet supper. Everybody who is anybody, plus of course everybody who is nobody way down to the vacuity of nothing in tailored clothes, will be there. Barry Howard, and any guests he might choose to invite, has been asked. He called today and accepted—said he had decided to remain in town—especially to meet you. I insist that you be there, Peter.”
“Any other inducement aside from the baroque Barry?”
“There’ll be lots of gals, a lot of them beautiful.”
“That’s an inducement, but there must be more. I’m hinting out loud, Pappy.”
“Oh.” He laid away his dead cigar. He rustled amongst his clothes and produced papers, two clipped-together sheafs with ominous legalese blue backs. “One is my ironclad contract with Barry Howard,” he said.
“Not interested.”
“The other is my contract with you.”
“Interested, but you don’t expect me to read it, do you? You’re hiring me as an artist, a writer, an ilk that doesn’t read contracts. Tell me what it says and where to sign.”
“You’re to receive one-third of all royalties, which, it is my hunch, are going to be more than mere, because it is my earnest belief that we’re hatching a best-seller here. I’m paying an advance of fifteen thousand, ten to him, five to you.”
I scrambled for a pen but said, “Where’s my five?”
He laid a check on my desk. I hastened to sign where he directed. He gathered up his papers, left one set for me.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “You too.”
It had been, so far, a fruitful day, or, a day of fruit, aside from Barry Howard. Alfred Surf took up his truncated cigar and took his leave. Me, I stuffed away the check and the contract, picked up the phone and plucked out the number of the Brittany.
“Peter Chambers,” I said to the hominy-grits switchboarder, “calling again for Michael Peabody.”
“He has not returned yet, suh.”
“For the next half hour or so, I’ll be at this number,” I said. I gave her Jack Medford’s telephone number. “If Mr. Peabody comes in tell him to call me there, urgent. If he doesn’t, before I leave, I’ll call you back, and tell you where I’ll be. Solid?” I said.
“Oh yes suh, solid,” she said and giggled the magnolia-and-moonlight gurgle awash with the perky perquisites that are the exclusive property of charmers reared below the Mason-Dixon line. And now, fellow-Americans, fellow-patriots, and fellow-flag-wavers in my far-flung fifty states, I challenge you. What was Mason, who was Dixon, and what was their line? Ponder that, as I pondered it floating in ignorance, wafting past my Miranda into the tangerine sunshine of sooty springtime in New York, Friday, the day of our Lord, the fifteenth of June.
SIX
JACK MEDFORD was a young man unyoked from many problems but still hamstrung by a few. He had been reared since the age of five without a mother which is a rough start on any course. His father, always a respected banker but a singularly handsome man with a small fortune of inherited wealth, was an inveterate lady-chaser and thus no symbol of respectability for the growing boy. The boy himself grew into a savagely handsome adolescent pampered, petted, spoiled and despoiled by
the shrinking violents of the bleaker sex. On top of that he had an overweening disrespect for the value of money, an overwhelming aptitude for getting rid of it with indiscriminate speed, and an egregious unconcern about earning any part of it.
“He has a will to nil,” his father had lamented.
“What the hell is a will to nil?” I had queried.
“An extraordinary willingness to do absolutely nothing. That boy is a born idler.”
That was not entirely true but the banker’s mind of Charlie Medford carried within it the block against admitting even unconscious equivocation. The boy loved to paint and was good at it and the boy loved to sculpture and was good at it but to the banker’s mind of Charlie Medford these were the parasitic hobbies of the dilettante; he wanted his boy to choose and work toward one of the allegedly respected paying professions: doctor, lawyer, engineer, banker, broker, business man, even scientist. Thus a breach opened and rebellion poured through and in Jack Medford’s senior year at high school the rebellion curdled to serious trouble and both father and son, bent by circumstance, twisted their views to a mutually hostile readjustment.
Jack had been running with a pack of neo-delinquents and during an evening on the town an internecine rumble had developed during which one boy was stabbed to death by another. As was later adduced this had been a personal fight between two boys but at the beginning the police mistook it for an outbreak of juvenile warfare and Jack among others was arrested. He had been kept incommunicado overnight, questioned, cross-questioned, and severely mauled about by certain sadistic misfits that contaminate every police department. In the morning Charlie had communicated with me and I had made my inquiries and made my phone calls and pulled my strings and I had finally sprung the boy free and clear and scared green but forever disenchanted and distrustful of police.
Every clout has a sliver of reminding, and Jack Medford had learned his lesson. It had been an ill wind but it had not blown upon a hood. Jack straightened up and flew right, aided and abetted by a remorseful if bewildered Charlie, with Uncle Peter in the middle as mediator. It was decided that Jack would do four years at Columbia, earn a diploma, and then select a career unbesmirched by paternal bias. Upon graduation, and as per pact, Jack became a sculptor supported but not uplifted by Papa Medford. Charlie provided adequately but not lavishly and their uneasy truce merged to a lasting armistice if not a permanent peace, but money remained the root of all upheaval for young Jack. He ran through the long green as though it were short grass. He was a stalwart adherent of the sage that had first proclaimed the precept that money is like manure: good only when spread around. Jack spread it as though it were good news and he was the sole herald. He had expensive tastes, he ran with expensive girls, and his debts piled up like drifts in a blizzard. He had an acknowledged talent and one day he would make his mark—also his franc, his florin, his guinea, his rupee, his lira, his ruble, his yen—but sculptors take a long time in coming and in the interim he was carving out a statuesque composite of arrears that could only be discounted by a sudden stroke of fortune, huge largesse from a doting patron, an undetected act of crime, or the death of his father of whom he was sole heir.