The One Dollar Rip-Off

by Ralph Dennis

  “See him? Don’t he look like an orphan?”

  I said that he did.

  “You get Ben Pride?”

  I shook my head. “Slipped us.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Not now.” I opened the door and stepped out. “You drive.”

  He moved over behind the wheel. He waited until I rounded the Ford and slid into the seat next to him. “You got a script for this?”

  “How about subtle kidnapping?”

  “Fine.”

  “Around the block and pull up in front.”

  He gave me a sharp look. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Later,” I said.

  While he did the box step that would place us on the curb next to the Shady Rest I opened the glove compartment and took out the .38 P.P. I passed it to Hump and he braced it between his left thigh and the door.

  I got out, closed the door, and headed straight for Eric Pender. He looked at me. His eyes read me and flipped away. I think he believed that I’d swing aside and go into the hotel. Instead I leaned down and picked up his topcoat and the suitcase. “Ben sent me,” I said.

  He grabbed for the suitcase. I kept it. I quick-walked toward the car. I was a step away from the back door when he caught my arm. “How do I know … ?”

  “I told you. Ben sent me. There was a complication at Peachtree Center. He couldn’t come.”

  He hesitated. I jerked my arm free. I opened the back door and tossed the topcoat and the suitcase in.

  “You coming or staying?”

  He leaned past me. Either he was going with me or he was reaching for his topcoat and suitcase. I didn’t wait to see which it was. I put a hand on his rump and shoved him. He said, “What the hell …?”

  I pushed in behind him and closed the door. While he struggled to turn toward me, I tapped Hump on the left shoulder. He passed the .38 back to me.

  I held it low, on a line with his nose. “Surprise.”

  Hump eased away from the curb.

  Pender’s glasses had fallen low on his nose. He used a finger to push them back into place and blinked at me.

  “Where?”

  “My place,” I said. I grinned at Pender. “Relax. It’s not a long drive.”

  Eric Pender sat stiff-backed on my sofa, looking straight ahead. Hump stood over him. I squatted over the suitcase and flipped the catches. I swung the top open and dumped the contents on the floor. Nothing but clothing. I kicked those aside and stood up. I placed the suitcase on the arms of the easy chair. I found what I was looking for in the elastic pockets at the back of the suitcase. Five thick bundles of twenties and an envelope. The envelope held about a dozen checks drawn on the Temple Construction Company account at the Bay City National Bank.

  I fanned the checks and waved them at Pender. “Want to explain these to me?”

  He hadn’t spoken since his first protest when I’d pushed him into the car. He didn’t now, either. He shook his head.

  I returned the checks to the envelope and tossed it in the suitcase with the bundles of twenties. “You think it’s a matter of bank fraud, huh?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You better do another think.” I went into the bedroom and dialed Art’s home number. Edna answered. “I’ve got to speak to Art.”

  “He’s sleeping, Jim.”

  “It’s important, Edna.”

  “It better be.” The rattle of the receiver as it banged on the night table and I could hear her waking him.

  I said, “Art, before you start bitching, I’ve got Eric Pender. I’m home. You’ll need a warrant. Accessory to murder.”

  I hung up and returned to the living room. I could see from Pender’s face that he’d overheard my conversation. I could read concern and disbelief. “You don’t believe it, huh?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with killing Buddy and Red.”

  Hump grinned at me. “See? He can talk.”

  “You think I mean the two in the yellow Caddy?” I shook my head at him. “I mean what happened today at the Peachtree Center mall.”

  Hump jerked his head around at me. He was puzzled. It wasn’t the way I wanted to break it to him, but I’d started and I didn’t have time to walk off in a corner with him. “The killing of Bill Heffner,” I said. “Ben Pride stuck a knife in him.”

  It happened so fast I didn’t so much see it as hear it. Hump hit Eric Pender with the back of his hand. The black-rimmed glasses flew across the room and hit the wall next to the front door. Pender fell sideways and covered his face with his hands. Hump was on him. He grabbed Pender by the arms and pulled him upright. I stepped in fast and caught Hump by the shoulders. “No, Hump, it was Ben Pride.”

  “This bastard worked with him.”

  It was an effort. I felt the cords of muscle relax in Hump’s shoulders. He rammed Pender into an upright position and backed away. “Bill?” He still didn’t believe it.

  “Stone dead,” I said.

  Hump shoved past me and went into the kitchen. I looked at Pender. He couldn’t see well without his glasses. There was a cut on the bridge of his nose where Hump’s hand had slammed the glasses against it. The cut began to bleed. Pender rubbed a hand across his nose and smeared the blood.

  “Funny thing about the law,” I said. “An accessory is as guilty of the crime as the one who pulls the trigger or uses the knife. You were backstopping Pride today. I’ll testify to that. I saw you there.”

  “Scumbag,” Hump said. He filled the kitchen doorway. He’d found the bottle of J&B and a glass.

  “Tell me about the Bay City National checks,” I said.

  Pender looked down at his hands. He saw the blood for the first time and I thought he’d vomit. “He … why, he …”

  “That’s nothing to what he’ll do if I let him.”

  Hump took a swallow of the J&B neat and grunted.

  “If I tell you … ?”

  I nodded.

  Ben Pride had handpicked him. As a man at a dance picks the plain and horny girl from a crowd of fifty. All his life Eric Pender had lived with his mother. It hadn’t been much of a life. His mother dominated him and then in the summer she died and he was free but he didn’t know what to do with that freedom.

  He met Ben Pride in late August and for the first time he’d had his inside look at the world that money made possible. There’d been drinking and dinners and young girls. And when he had developed a taste for that life, Ben told him how he could afford it and he had listened.

  He worked late some nights and one night, when he was alone in the office, he’d processed the checks drawn on the First Federal of Boston. He hadn’t stopped there. The more he thought about it the more the split he’d accepted from Pride didn’t please him. So he’d run off a series of smaller checks on the Bay City account. This group of checks would be his own nest egg.

  “You torch it yourself?”

  “No. I drew him a map of the office. I let him make a duplicate key from mine.”

  I believed him. Torching was not a job for beginners. “How much was the nest egg?”

  “Almost two hundred thousand.”

  “And your split from the Tiflon score?”

  “One hundred thousand,” he said.

  “And you were going to pass the Bay City checks yourself?”

  “It seemed easy enough after you understood bank procedure.”

  “Through Joe Bottoms?”

  Joe Bottoms was his cousin, a few times removed, on his father’s side of the family. During the time in Atlanta, before he and Pride moved on to Tiflon, Pender had looked up Bottoms. Bottoms had gone in with him and he’d been given one quarter of the Bay City checks. Pender hadn’t trusted Bottoms completely and he’d felt that the promise of the other checks, better money, would keep him honest.

  Late in the running of the scam in Tiflon, the disaster hit. Somehow, even now he didn’t know how, one of the Bay City checks turned up in the bundle Ben Pride was passing. It was a small
check, only ten thousand. Ben Pride made his first guess and hit the roof. He’d roughed up Eric Pender. And with good reason. A badly run scam in Atlanta, one handled by beginners, could ruin the rest of the Tiflon one. Pender gave in and sold out his cousin, Joe Bottoms.

  “I didn’t think they’d hurt him.”

  The last weekend trip out of Tiflon, Ben Pride, not wanting to show himself, had hired two men to visit Joe Bottoms. The first tune, perhaps the one the girl next door had overheard, Bottoms convinced them that he had already deposited the checks in such and such an account. He’d been warned by the two men not to touch the account. The truth was that Bottoms had chickened out. He hadn’t deposited them and he was still trying to work up his nerve.

  Some discreet checking by Pride revealed that the account hadn’t been opened the way Bottoms swore that it had. He sent the two men back. They visited him the day after Hump and I did. Frightened, scared by them, Bottoms told the first lie he could think of. He said that Hump Evans had taken the checks from him. The lie didn’t save his life. Then the men went after Hump. When the attempt in the parking lot failed, Ben Pride called them off. The scam in Tiflon was almost over. If the checks weren’t banked yet, there was no reason to believe they’d reach the Boston bank in time to arouse any suspicion. Convinced of that, Ben Pride had lost interest in the Bay City account. So, Eric Pender had kept the other $150,000 in checks, just in case he ever found a way to use them.

  The rest of it we knew.

  I got two glasses and poured Pender and me a drink. His hand shook so much he lost most of it on his shirtfront. After he finished, I walked him into the bathroom and watched him while he washed up. I even found a band-aid for the cut on his nose.

  Art arrived a few minutes later. The warrant and the squad car were on the way.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I was on the back steps with Hump. The bottle of scotch, an inch or so left in it, was between us. We’d left Art talking to Eric Pender. Now we watched the dark thunderheads rolling toward us above my garden terrace. The talk about Bill was behind us. We’d kicked some gentle sand over that. Kicking sand was better than scratching sores.

  Art stuck his head out the back door. “This Pender says you two kidnapped him.”

  “He said that?” I tapped my glass on Hump’s knee. “I thought we did a citizen’s arrest.”

  “He says you held a gun on him.”

  “Me?”

  Hump laughed. “Him?”

  “I don’t even have a gun.” I stood up. I brushed the seat of my pants and nudged the remainder of the bottle toward Hump. “I’d better talk to him and get it straight.”

  I followed Art into the living room. Eric Pender was in my easy chair now. His hands were cuffed in front of him, a concession to the fact we didn’t think there was any danger left in him. The band-aid on his nose had a brown blood crust on the lower end.

  “You know Ben Cooper?” I said to Pender.

  “No.”

  “That’s it.” I spread my hands at Art. “He doesn’t know Ben Cooper. Ain’t that hell? You know him, don’t you, Art? Black stud drives a Yellow cab.”

  Art said that he did.

  “All I said to Pender was that Ben sent me. If he didn’t know Ben Cooper then why the hell did he get in my car?”

  Art chewed and swallowed a laugh. Pender gave it up. He lifted his cuffed hands and rubbed at his eyes. He must have felt like Alice in Wonderland.

  I found a pack of smokes on top of the TV set. I let Art have one and lit us both. “What time is the flight, Eric?”

  “We were taking the bus.”

  “All right, be a snot.” I pointed a finger at the open suitcase where the envelope of checks and the bundles of twenties were. “You do a count on the cash, Art?”

  “A rough one. It’s between twenty and twenty-five thousand.”

  I blew a trail of smoke at Pender and tried on a smirk. It didn’t seem to fit. “A hundred thousand was supposed to be your share of the score, right?”

  Pender shrugged.

  “Mister, you got jobbed. By a master at it. Not even a sixth of the total for doing more than half the work. That’s short end. And he wouldn’t let you run your own little swindle with the Bay City checks. Killed your cousin and got you involved in a murder this afternoon without telling you about it. What does it take to convince you?”

  “You were jobbed,” Art said.

  “Go on and play dumb.” I bent over the suitcase and plucked the envelope of checks. Art raised an eyebrow at me. “This was what my hunt was about. Ends it for me.”

  “Not important,” Art said.

  At the bedroom door I had my last blast at Pender. “If God had meant for you to act rich, dumb as you are, you’d have been born with a gold American Express card.”

  Art trailed me into the bedroom. I found Bill Heffner’s folder and slipped one of the Wanted posters from it. “You know somebody at airport security?”

  “Joe Benson.”

  I passed him the poster. “It’s a long shot. Might be he booked his flight using one of these names.”

  He found the number in his notebook and dialed it. I dropped the envelope of checks on the night table and looked around. Eric Pender stood in the doorway. “Yeah?”

  “It was a United flight to New York. Leaves at seven-ten tonight.”

  Art said, “Hold it a second, Joe.”

  “What name?”

  “Richard Bristow for him, Ned Pendergast for me.”

  Art repeated the names into the phone. There was a wait while Benson checked with United. “Is that right?” Art said. Then to us: “He scratched that flight.”

  “See if he booked another. Probably the same name.”

  It was a longer wait. “Nothing with United? Well, okay, you call me …”

  “He have a passport?” I asked Pender.

  “Both of us did. We were flying to New York and then to …”

  “London?”

  Pender nodded.

  “Have Benson check all London flights.”

  It didn’t take long. There weren’t that many. Service from Atlanta was new. Art said, “Thanks, Joe, I’ll get back to you. I think we’ll set up something.”

  Art put down the receiver and stood up.

  “Make us guess,” I said.

  “Richard Bristow booked himself a Delta nine-oh-five to London. He booked it last night. There wasn’t any reservation for Ned Pendergast.”

  Eric Pender backed out of the doorway. He sat down in the easy chair and closed his eyes. Yes, jobbed and he knew it now.

  Eight-forty in the evening.

  Art told Hump and me we were out of it. Far out of it. It was Art’s show with cooperation from airport security. Implied, but not said, was the thought that he didn’t want another screw-up like the one at Peachtree Center.

  Hump and I, off to one side, watched him construct the box with both ends closed. A stocky man in a London Fog raincoat, a suitcase at his feet, stood a few feet from the X-ray security machine. He was talking to a woman with orange-red hair. I’d seen Art talking to him. I knew he was the back door.

  Art and Joe Benson were the front door. Benson was operating the X-ray machine they ran the carry-on baggage through. Art, with an official clipboard in one hand, looked like clean hands white collar.

  “Waiting dries me out,” Hump said.

  “I think you’ve got a drinking problem.”

  “And company,” he said.

  That was true. I’d have said more but, at that moment, I looked past Hump and saw Ben Pride. He had the stride of a world-beater, a man with some strong commercial purpose in his mind. I knew that walk. The rest of him was different. His hair was black, as it had been in the Houston photo, and he wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His suit was dark brown this time and he carried a leather bag about the size of an attache case but perhaps twice the thickness. Pride reached the feed-in of the X-ray machine and placed the bag, side down, on it.

&nbs
p; Art touched the clipboard to his chin. The man in the London Fog hugged the woman with orange-red hair and stepped in behind Ben Pride. Art handed the clipboard to Joe Benson. He crossed to the feed-out section of the X-ray machine. The leather bag bump-bumped out and did a slow turn. Ben Pride reached for the bag. Art stepped in front of him. I saw the glint on the handcuffs, a brief flash, and then Art slapped the cuff on Ben Pride’s right wrist. The man in the London Fog moved in fast. He patted Pride down from armpits to ankles.

  Ben Pride looked over his shoulder. I think he intended to say something to the man in the London Fog. Instead his eyes fixed on me. That was the first that I realized I was grinning. It was a nasty grin and it nailed Pride. I read it all on his face. Curiosity about me and surprise about what was happening to him. I took that as my cue. I walked over to him. Hump followed a pace behind me. When I was close enough so that I’d be sure he heard me, I said, “Bill Heffner.”

  “What about him?”

  “He scammed you.”

  I stepped past him. Benson had the leather bag unzipped. Pride had used a section of newspaper to level one end of the stack. The rest of it was cold cash. Bundles and bundles of it. Maybe as much as half a million. Maybe more.

  Benson ruffled one bundle. He whistled. Behind me I could hear Art reading Ben Pride his rights from a card.

  “It’s been satisfactory in every way,” Frank Temple said. “I believe I made a wise choice when I hired the two of you.”

  “It cost a life it didn’t have to,” I said.

  “The con man? What was his name?” He tapped the checks together on the table and jammed them into the envelope.

  I didn’t answer.

  He’d written a check for ten thousand. It was the last payment and it was in front of him on the coffee table. He reached for it. “I’ll write another one and add enough to give him a good funeral.”

  Hump spoke for me. He picked up the check for ten thousand and stuffed it in his pocket. “That’s not necessary.”

  “I’d be glad to.” Temple’s face had the pseudo-sadness on it, the mark of a funeral director. “It was a bad thing.”