Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  Mr. Jarvis returned, thrusting his paunch confidently ahead of him. He told me he was happy to be able to offer me two hundred dollars for watch and chain. If that was not acceptable, Brandenberg & Sons would be willing to take the item on consignment, in which case I would receive 65 percent of whatever they were able to obtain for it.

  “No,” I said. “Thank you, but the two hundred is satisfactory.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “If you’ll just step this way, I’ll get your money and prepare a receipt for you to sign.”

  I accompanied him to a discreet cashier’s desk where the money was kept in a small drawer. Nothing so vulgar as a cash register. Mr. Jarvis paid me in crisp fifties, and I signed a receipt he prepared describing the watch and chain in some detail. I had intended to use a phony name and address, but at the last minute I feared he might ask for identification. So I signed Jannie Shean and scrawled my real address. He didn’t ask for identification.

  Mr. Jarvis then escorted me to the front door. He seemed a genial, voluble type. I was conscious of his fruity cologne. We shook hands when we parted. I thought he held my hand a little longer than necessary.

  When I described this visit to Dick Fleming that night, he looked at me queerly.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “Two things,” he said. “One: He didn’t ask for identification. How did he know you didn’t steal the watch?”

  “Oh, come on, Dick! I was wearing my mink.”

  “You could have stolen that, too. But what bothers me most is why a place like Brandenberg’s is fooling around with secondhand watches. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it’s a valuable antique.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No,” I admitted. “Matty had it appraised when Father died. It’s worth about what Jarvis paid me.”

  “All right, then, we’re back to my question: Why is Brandenberg and Sons interested in stuff like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully.

  THE NEW WOMAN

  I WAS RELAXING IN Dick Fleming’s apartment, wearing my tart’s duds, hooker’s heels parked up on his cobbler’s bench.

  For some reason I really didn’t understand, Dick was turned on by my floozy costume. He liked the spiked heels, the net stockings, the padded bra. I wondered if I had suggested fun-and-games while wearing that getup, if he would, finally, be able to cut the mustard. I decided I didn’t want to find out.

  “Problem,” I said, my nose in my glass of white wine.

  “What’s that?”

  “When I come out at night in this Sadie Thompson disguise, I try to sail past the doorman as fast as I can. No problem there—so far. I think he thinks I’m a call girl balling one of those rich bachelors on the sixth floor. But tonight, as I was coming out of my apartment, my next-door neighbor was leaving at the same moment. I ducked back inside just in time. But if I keep coming out dressed like this, someone on my floor is going to see me sooner or later, and I’ll have a lot of questions to answer.”

  “But after you get your new place, won’t you be living there?”

  “Sure, but not all the time. I’ll want to come back occasionally to pick up my mail, write some checks, maybe change to have dinner with my sister. But I can’t keep popping in and out in this clown’s suit, particularly during the day.”

  We were silent a few moments, pondering. Dick topped off our glasses.

  “I don’t really think it’s a problem,” he said finally. “You’ll drive back to your permanent apartment, and in the car, you take off the wig and false eyelashes and wipe off some of the guck. Then you button the trenchcoat up to your chin. You could even keep a pair of loafers in the car so you don’t have to parade through the lobby on your stilts.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, nodding. “You’re so smart. And when I go from my apartment to the new place, I’ll just reverse the process, park somewhere and put on my wig and makeup in the car. That solves one problem and brings up another. My car. That XKE is just too conspicuous. Also, the license number could be traced. Also, a crook hoping to pull off a successful heist wouldn’t be driving a car like that.”

  “Borrow my VW,” Dick suggested.

  I shook my head. “Same objections. License could be traced, and a VW is just out of character. I think I better rent a car. Something that isn’t worth a second look. A nondescript Ford or Chevy or Plymouth. Something ordinary.”

  That same night, we decided on a name—Bea—to go with my new appearance, then on an identity for her. We agreed I’d try to avoid volunteering any information about Bea’s background, but if pressed I would grudgingly reveal the following:

  Beatrice Flanders was born in a small farming community near Terre Haute, Indiana. Both her parents were dead, but she had an older, married sister in Indianapolis, and a brother in the Navy. She was a high school graduate who had also attended business college for six months before she decided there was more money to be made as a cocktail waitress. She had been married to a nogoodnick who had introduced her to the shoddier, least profitable forms of larceny, including gas station holdups and the badger game. Hubby had deserted for parts unknown, never to reappear, and Beatrice had returned to hustling drinks in bars, taverns, roadhouses. She had also, for a few years, followed the convention circuit as a party girl. At various times she had teamed up with strongarm thugs, safecrackers, cat burglars, hotel thieves, etc., learning as she went along. Finally, for the last two years, she had been associated with Danny “Woppo” Epstein, who specialized in jewelry store holdups, working alone or recruiting local talent as needed. Danny had taught Beatrice all the tricks of his trade, although he never allowed her to go along on his jobs. Bea and Woppo had cut a wide and successful swath through the Midwest until a gutsy Chicago jeweler, reaching into an open safe at Danny’s command, came out with a Smith & Wesson .38 and blew Woppo away. Now Beatrice Flanders was in Manhattan alone, her funds running low, looking around.

  BEA’S PLACE

  WE PARKED THE RENTED Fairlane on West 87th Street, making certain the suitcases were in the locked trunk, out of sight. Then we began tramping up one cross street and down the next, from Riverside Drive to Columbus Avenue. In that area, Beatrice Flanders looked like one of the World’s Ten Best Dressed Women, but no one gave us a second glance. There were harlequins on the streets you wouldn’t believe, drunks in the gutters, spaced-out addicts nodding in doorways.

  We wandered from fleabag to fleabag, and after a while stopped asking each other how people could live like that. The answer was obvious: They had no choice. We saw crumbling walls, decayed ceilings, cracked plumbing fixtures, exposed electrical wiring. We saw one room that appeared to have decorative wallpaper until we realized it was an enormous road colony. We saw a once-elegant hotel that had become a whores’ dormitory. And always the diseased dogs, scabrous cats, cripples on crutches, wounded drunks with filthy bandages, and what seemed to be hundreds of mental cases talking to themselves, urinating on the sidewalk, howling at the sky, or sitting catatonically on the curb, fingering gutter filth.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, we found what we were looking for on West 94th Street between Broadway and West End. The Hotel Harding. Someone had defaced the outside sign to make it read “Hotel Hard-On.” It had once been a structure of some dignity, with a facade of gray stone and pillars of reddish marble framing the entrance. The lobby smelled of urine, vomit, old cigar smoke, hashish, and a disinfectant so acrid it made my eyes water. There were no chairs in the lobby—to discourage loiterers off the street, I guessed. In fact, there was nothing in the lobby but the scarred desk and the birdcage of an ancient elevator shaft. The elevator itself, however, was a self-service and relatively new, but already layered with the ubiquitous graffiti. The brass indicator showed twelve floors.

  The man behind the desk, reading a tout sheet through a hand-held magnifying glass, must have weighed at least 300 pounds of not-so-p
ure blubber. He was wearing a blue, sweated undershirt. His transistor radio was roaring racing results, and he was annoyed at being interrupted.

  “Five a day, thirty a week, a hundred a month,” the fat man said, singsong, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. The thirty came out “thoity,” hundred was “undert,” and month was “munt.”

  “With private bathroom?” I said in my husky whisper.

  He looked at me disgustedly.

  “’Ja say so?” he demanded. “Seven a day, forty a week, one-thirty a month. You want it?”

  “We’d like to take a look at the room,” Dick said firmly.

  The clerk took a key attached to a brass tab from the board of hooks and tossed it contemptuously onto the counter. It would have skittered to the floor if Dick hadn’t caught it.

  “Room 703,” the man-mountain snarled. “Cross ventilation. Sheets and towels every week.”

  We waited for the elevator to descend, then took a leisurely ride to the seventh floor. As we inched past the third floor we heard loud screams of extreme anguish: either a murder in progress or a woman in labor. On the fifth floor, someone was playing acid rock on a radio or hi-fi, loud enough to make the elevator vibrate in its shaft.

  Room 703 was on the east side of the hotel. I don’t know how the desk clerk figured it provided cross ventilation, unless you left the corridor door open and there was a breeze coming down the air shaft on the other side. The room was about fifteen feet square, with one window (on the shaft) and a small, open closet. The walls were cracked, the paint rippled with age and peeling in patches. The floor was covered with slimed linoleum, so worn that in several places the brown backing showed through.

  There was a single bed, a dresser, a tarnished mirror, an upholstered armchair, a small, rickety desk with a chair to match. Everything in that cheesy orangewood. There were no linens on the bed, and the mattress was stained in ways I didn’t care to imagine.

  The bathroom door had been painted so many times it couldn’t be closed. There was a sink, a toilet, an open shower stall. The fixtures were yellowed and crackled, the sink rusted, the toilet seat cracked and peeling. Dick flushed the toilet. It sounded like the Charge of the Light Brigade.

  We went back into the living room-bedroom-study-dining room-parlor, etc.

  “Let’s forget it,” Dick said.

  “Look for another place?”

  “No,” he said, “let’s forget the whole thing. You can’t live here or anywhere like it. Give it up, Jannie.”

  “Bea,” I said. “Watch yourself. And I’m not giving it up. This is great local color. I can get a page or two of description out of this place. Very realistic. I’m taking it.”

  “Maybe you should go to a doctor first and get some shots.”

  We went back down to the lobby, and I told the fat man I’d take it. By the week.

  “Week in advance,” he said. “No cooking. No boyfriends sleeping over. No loud music. No wild parties. No pot-smoking. No hard drugs. No customers.”

  I was delighted. My disguise was a success.

  I handed over forty dollars and got a furious stare when I asked for a receipt. But I stared back just as furiously, and finally got what I wanted. It was barely legible, but I figured it was something to show the IRS when they questioned whether a week at the Hotel Hard-On was a legitimate business expense. Then I signed a registration card with the name Beatrice Flanders.

  On the way back to the car, we stopped at a Broadway supermarket. I bought roach spray, rat repellent, soap, soap powder, washcloths, Brillo pads, etc. Then Dick insisted we stop at a liquor store where he bought me a fifth each of vodka, scotch, and brandy.

  “In case of snakebite,” he said.

  We drove back to the hotel, and Dick helped me upstairs with the suitcases and new purchases. It was then getting on to 6:00 P.M., and we decided to get something to eat in the neighborhood before Dick took a cab back to the East Side and I prepared for my first night alone in Room 703.

  We went out into the narrow corridor and almost collided with a man coming from the elevator. He drew back politely to let us pass. He looked about thirty-five, but had one of those hard, young-old faces that made it difficult to estimate age. He was tall, at least six feet, slender as a whip, and very, very dark. Jet hair, strong, black eyebrows, a complexion so brown it was almost russet. When he smiled at us, he displayed a gleaming array of shiny white teeth, dazzling against his tanned face and beard-shadowed jaw.

  “Just move in?” he inquired pleasantly.

  I nodded.

  “Welcome to Waldorf West,” he said wryly. “My name’s Jack Donohue. I’m in 705. If there’s anything I can help you with, bang on my door.”

  “Thanks,” Dick Fleming said gratefully. “Appreciate that. We’re going out for dinner. Can you recommend any place in the neighborhood?”

  “Most of them are ptomaine palaces,” Donohue said. He certainly did a lot of smiling. Mostly at me. “Your best bet is to eat Chink at Tommy Yu’s on Broadway.”

  “Thank you,” I said in my boudoir murmur. “We’ll give it a try.”

  He nodded and went down the hall to his room.

  In the elevator, Dick said, “Good-looking guy. And he seems pleasant enough. Won’t do any harm to have a helpful neighbor.”

  I didn’t say anything. In many ways Dick Fleming is not with it.

  After dinner we walked back to the hotel in silence. There were three men and a woman loitering on the steps of the Hotel Harding. They gave us a cold and silent appraisal as we walked by. We halted a few doors down. When we glanced back, they were still staring at us.

  “You’re sure you want to go back in there?” Dick asked nervously.

  “I’m sure,” I said, which was a damned lie.

  “Good luck then.” He kissed my cheek. “If you decide to run, then run. You don’t have to prove anything, to me or to yourself.”

  He touched my arm, then turned and walked away, back toward Broadway, a cab, escape. It took a conscious effort to keep from running after him. But I returned to the entrance of the hotel and started up the steps.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” the woman said in a whiskey rasp. “Y’strike out?”

  I shrugged. “You lose one, you win one.”

  They laughed, and suddenly they didn’t seem so sinister; the Harding was just another dirty hotel, and I would survive.

  When I got off the elevator and walked down the corridor (which, in honor of the graffiti, I had nicknamed the Tunnel of Love), I saw the door of Room 703, which I had locked, was now wide open. I peeped cautiously around the jamb. A wizened harridan was making up my bed with sheets that looked like the shrouds of a poverty-stricken ghost.

  She looked up as I came into the room.

  “Listen here, dearie,” she whined, “I take care of this whole rotten place. Twelve floors, and I got no help. I ask for help, but that owner, he don’t give me no help. I gotta do everything around here, people screaming for this and that, new sheets, fresh towels, and the mess some of these animals make you wouldn’t believe—”

  Her litany of woe went on and on as she spread the tissue-thin sheets, a threadbare cotton blanket, and hung two towels in the bathroom. They looked like used flour sacks.

  Finally, just to stop that whiny voice, I gave her two dollars.

  “God bless, dearie,” she said in a voice suddenly strong and vigorous. She folded the bills and stuffed them in her bra. “I’m Blanche. You need anything, you just ask for me. I’ll take nice care of you.”

  She gave me a horrendous wink. Then she was gone. I closed and locked the door behind her. There was a chain on the doorjamb, but the slot in which it should have fitted was missing. There were four splintered holes showing where it had been. So I got the straight-back chair and jammed it under the knob.

  I struggled with the air-shaft window for almost five minutes and finally raised it a few inches. A cool breeze came in. A breeze redolent of ripe garbage and burning rubber�
�but cool.

  I flopped down in the sprung armchair, kicked off the spike-heeled sandals, flexed my feet and surveyed my kingdom. I knew I should unpack, try to scrub the worst of the scum from the bathroom sink, spray against roaches, and generally try to settle in. But I was too weary to do anything but lean back and wonder just what the hell I thought I was doing.

  I wondered myself to the edge of depression. It was too late to back out, too soon to quit. I got up again and uncapped the bottle of vodka Dick Fleming had bought me. Then I looked around. No glasses.

  I took the chair from under the knob, unlocked and opened the door and stuck my head out. The hallway was empty. In stockinged feet I padded down the corridor to Room 705 and knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?” A forceful voice, almost angry.

  “Your new neighbor,” I said to the closed door. “Room 703.”

  Sound of chain being slipped. Not one, but two locks opened. Then the door swung wide. He smiled at me.

  “Hel-lo!” he said. “This is wild; I was just thinking of you.”

  “Listen,” I told him, “I’d like a drink. I’ve got what goes in, but I don’t have a glass. I was hoping you might have an extra you can spare until tomorrow when I can buy my own.”

  All this in my breathless floozy’s voice.

  He stared at me, the smile still there.

  “I can’t find Blanche,” I explained lamely.

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “Your husband doesn’t want to go out?”

  “He’s not my husband.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Just a friend. And he’s not here. Have you got that glass?”

  The tension went out of his stretched grin.

  “Then you took the place alone,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t understand. Sure, I’ve got a glass you can borrow. Come on in; I’ll wash it out for you.”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll rinse it.”

  “No bother,” he said, the white teeth flashing again like a neon sign. “Come on in. Just take a minute.”