“Inventory all finished?” I asked casually.
“What?”
“The inventory. Last night. At the store.”
“Oh,” he said, not looking at me. “Oh yes. All finished. Perfect. Everything checked out.”
“It’s unusual, isn’t it? Taking inventory two weeks before Christmas?”
“Oh no,” he said. “No no no. Take them all the time. Once a month, at least.”
“Shoplifting?” I guessed.
“My God, no!” he said, busy at the stove. “Our losses are minimal. We do have a foolproof system of showing the merchandise, you know. One item at a time. You don’t see item two until item one is stowed safely away. No, the inventory is for us, internal security.”
“Internal?” I said, figuring that out. “You mean you don’t trust your help?”
He laughed: A hard, toneless laugh.
“Of course,” he said. “Trust ’em. Have to. What? But still … temptation, you know. A lot of small, very valuable items.”
What he said made sense. But I had the oddest impression that he was conning me, an eerie feeling that he was reciting a prepared speech.
That dinner was something. Blue point oysters on a bed of shaved ice. Each succulent blob topped with a spoonful of Beluga caviar. Don’t knock it. A salad of tiny cherry tomatoes on romaine leaves with an anchovy dressing. A pasta dish that was a mixture of noodles, elbows, gnocchi, and God knows what else, all in a sort of Alfredo sauce, rich enough to put two inches on your hips instantaneously.
What else … let me remember. The main dish was braciole—slices of rare steak spread with a paste of parsley, cheese, garlic, salt, pepper, oil. Thin slices of salami and bacon atop that. Crowned with a tomato sauce. Your gastric juices flowing? You should have tasted it. I wanted to put a dab behind my ears and, possibly, just a touch in the armpits.
And then minor things like french-fried zucchini, balls of rice molded with ground steak and Parmesan cheese. And Key lime pie made from grated lime peel. Espresso. Some kind of liqueur that tasted of burnt almonds and burst into flame when Noel Jarvis carefully put a match to the surface of each glass.
And, of course, wine during the meal. A dry white to begin. A rich, heavy chianti classico to finish.
“Marry me,” I said to him.
“Dee-lighted,” he said, giggling. And I wondered how long it would be before he was once again prone in the master bedroom. In all honesty, I was feeling no pain myself. But it was obvious he had a head start on me. And was keeping ahead. With no urging on my part.
By this time we had wandered back into the lush living room, carrying our coffee and brandies, belching gently.
“Help you clean up?” I offered halfheartedly.
“Nonsense,” he said stoutly. “Someone will come in tomorrow morning. Go through the place.”
“Who?” I said idly. “The FBI?”
It was a joke; that’s all it was: a silly joke. It made no sense whatsoever—I admit it. But I was bombed enough so that I had a good excuse for not making sense. I admit that “Who? The FBI?” was just nonsensical, just something to say. No reason for it. But Noel Jarvis’ reaction was incredible.
He jerked to his feet, spilling most of his drink down his shirtfront. I didn’t like the look in his eyes.
“Why did you say that?”
“My God, Noel,” I said. “Take it easy. It was just a joke. A lousy joke, I admit. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just something to say.”
He collapsed as quickly as he had pounced at me.
“Of course, my dear,” he said lolling back. “A joke. No, no, not the FBI. Just the cleaning lady. Take care of everything, she will. Enjoy the dinner?”
“I told you,” I said. “The best. The very best. You don’t eat like that every night, do you?”
He was sitting in a velvet armchair. Suddenly he slid down until he was hung on the end of his spine, legs stretched out in front of him. All of him was limp, beamy, and relaxed. Another inch down and he’d have crumpled onto the floor.
“You know,” he mumbled, “let me tell you something, luv.”
“Tell me something.”
I don’t apologize for this drunken conversation. I’m just trying to report it as accurately as I can.
“What I’d really like to do,” he said slowly. “What I’d really, really like to do. All my life. Is run a restaurant. That’s what I’d really like to do. Yes. But who of us can do what we …”
He left that sentence unfinished. I knew what he meant.
It was sad; he would have made a hell of a chef.
“Hey,” I said brightly. “Noel, did you read about that robbery? In San Francisco? Last Saturday, I think it was.”
“Friday,” he said, looking at me blearily. “Afternoon. Heard about it. Devolte Brothers. San Fran.”
I realized he wouldn’t be with me much longer.
“How about a nightcap?” I suggested. “A brandy? Settle all that marvy food. I’ll get it for you.”
He grinned at me.
I went into the kitchen, found a bottle of Remy Martin. I didn’t slug him, honest I didn’t. I poured him exactly as much as I poured for myself. An ounce each, being very drunkenly exact with a little measured jigger he had.
He was still conscious when I came back into the living room. He took the brandy snifter from me with a glassy smile. I pressed his fingers around it.
“Cheers,” he said, missing his mouth on the first try. But he finally made it.
“You bet,” I said, standing near him so maybe I could catch him when he collapsed. “Listen, Noel, aren’t you afraid that your place could be ripped off like Devolte? In San Francisco?”
He straightened up, pulling in his legs. His eyes rolled up to me. I could almost hear the rumble.
“No way,” he said, shaking his big head. “No way.”
“They had alarms,” I reminded him. “The newspaper stories said so. But by the time the cops got there, the place was cleaned out and the crooks were gone. With all the jewelry.”
“Silent alarms,” he said drowsily. “Bullshit. I beg your pardon, dear lady. The theory is, with silent alarms, you see, the police or a private agency are alerted and come running. No danger to people in the store. Like me. Who sounds the alarm. You see? Right? You press an ordinary button in the store, a bell goes off, a siren, whatever, gas, smoke, and a cheap crook panics and shoots. You understand? Like if Brandenberg got held up, I press a button, bells ring, and they shoot me. Could happen.”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course. I understand. That’s why they call them silent alarms. You press a button, nothing happens in the store. But the cops in the precinct house or guards in a private security agency, they’re alerted. But no one in the store gets hurt.”
“Right,” he said, nodding wisely.” No one gets hurt.”
“I hope you’ve got silent alarms in your place,” I said, trying to yawn. “I wouldn’t want you hurt.”
“Bless you, my child,” he said, taking a sip of his brandy. “Bless you. Better than that. Much better.”
“Better?”
“Oh yes,” he said, bobbing his hand up and down like an idiot. “Much better. You know our store—the chair rail that runs around the wall? Right around the wall, behind the display cases?”
“Sure. I’ve seen it.”
“Seen it,” he said, smirking. “It’s all pressure. We stay away from it. The whole rail. Waist-high. On the wall. It’s pressure. In sections. Back into it, it goes off. You know? We’re held up. Our hands in the air. We back up. Our ass—I beg your pardon, dear lady—our ass presses against the chair rail. It activates the alarm.”
Puzzling. I was puzzled.
“So?” I said. “Noel, you back into that railing, and it activates a silent alarm. Then? In another ten or fifteen minutes cops or private security guards could be swarming all over the place. But by then the crooks could be long gone. That’s what happened in Frisco. So what’s the point?”
“The point,” he said. “What’s the point. Ho-ho!”
The empty brandy snifter slipped from his limp fingers, thumped to that thick, buttery rug. His head began to loll, bobbing on his thick neck. I was still standing alongside him. I should have been kind. After that magnificent dinner, I should have let the cook drift off to a deep, drunken, well-deserved rest. But I had to know.
“Noel,” I said loudly, bending down so my lips were near his ear, “what’s the point? The point, Noel? If you or any of the clerks back into the railing, the silent alarm goes off. So?”
“You see,” he muttered, chin on chest. “Silent alarm. They come right away. Five, ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, yes,” I said desperately, “but by then the crooks are gone. With everything in the store.”
He heaved suddenly. I thought he might be about to throw up, to crack his cookies, and I stepped back hurriedly. But no, it was just a spasm of mirth.
“Nonononono,” he mumbled, settling back. “Not going. Anyplace. The crooks. You back into the railing. It sounds silent alarm. Cops come. But also, it locks the door. Electrical. Front door. Locks. Only way out. Heavy double-glass. Take ’em an hour to smash through that. See? Silent alarm. Door locks. Can’t get out. No back way. Trapped.”
“Noel,” I breathed, “that’s beautiful!”
But he didn’t hear me. He was gone. Head tilted to one side. Face flushed and smiling. I went into the kitchen, made some efforts at cleaning up. I mean, I rinsed and stacked the dishes in the sink. Emptied ashtrays. I figured I owed him all that. I didn’t think I’d be seeing Noel Jarvis again.
I got home without being molested, raped, or murdered. The cabdriver told me all about his kidney stones, and I said things like “Really?” and “No fooling?” When I was safe inside my own apartment, the first thing I wanted to do was to call Dick Fleming and tell him about those crazy pressure alarms that locked the front door at Brandenberg & Sons.
But then I had just sense enough left to note that it was past midnight. And sense enough to realize that, while not exactly zonked, I was spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about that cabdriver’s kidney stones. So I undressed and fell into bed, laughing like a maniac.
I awoke Wednesday morning with an awful hangover. I did what I could: popped aspirin, drank a quart of water, and rubbed my temples with ice cubes. Then ate the cubes. After a while the shakes stopped and I was able to make a cup of instant coffee and toast a frozen bagel. I was getting along all right, recovering slowly, when the phone rang, and I thought that shrill bell would cleave my skull.
“Noel Jarvis here,” he said briskly. “Just wanted to make certain you arrived home safely.”
“I hate you,” I told him. “You forced me to eat all that divine food. You practically poured all that beautiful wine down my throat. It’s all your fault.”
“Ah,” he said, “we have the whimwhams this morning, do we?”
“I do,” I said grumpily. “You sound in offensively good shape.”
“Listen, Jannie,” he said, suddenly serious, “if you’re really suffering, I know exactly what you need. Do you have any cognac in the house? Or any kind of brandy?
“Do as I say,” he said sternly. “Exactly one ounce. No more, no less. Take it straight. No ice, no water. In twenty minutes you’ll be leaping into the air and clicking your heels.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I thanked him for a marvelous dinner and he said he’d be in touch. As soon as I hung up, I dug out a half-full bottle of Courvoisier and measured out a precise ounce. I held on to the kitchen counter, closed my eyes, and downed the shot in three determined gulps. Murder. Then I looked at my watch.
You know, he was right? In almost exactly twenty minutes that Mt. Vesuvius in my stomach stopped erupting, and I thought I might live to play the harpsichord again. In fact, I was feeling so chipper, I took a second brandy into my office and set to work on my secret manuscript, describing all the events of the preceding evening, including that business about the pressure alarms in the chair rail at Brandenberg & Sons.
That chore completed, I showered, shaved my legs with a steady hand, put on my trollop’s togs, and set out for the Hotel Harding, happy that I wouldn’t have to be making the Beatrice Flanders transformation many more times. It had started as a lark and was becoming a drag.
I knocked on Jack Donohue’s door. He wasn’t in, which was fine with me.
Anyway, I didn’t see him. I carried out the hotplate and some personal junk in a shopping bag, so fatso behind the lobby desk wouldn’t think I was skipping. I reckoned that Fleming and I could handle the suitcases and the rest of my stuff on Thursday night. That was when I figured to split. And even if I had to leave everything behind, it would be no great loss. I had made certain there was nothing in the room to connect Beatrice Flanders with Jannie Shean.
As a matter of fact, the room clerk wasn’t behind the desk when I came downstairs. So I unloaded the shopping bag into the trunk of the rented Ford and went back upstairs for a second load. This time I took Bea’s black wig, extra sets of falsies (front and back), and most of her clothes. Who knows—someday I might be invited to a masquerade party.
I got back to East 71st Street late in the afternoon. One of the things I had brought back with me was my trusty, handy-dandy pistol. That I carefully stowed away in the bottom drawer of my desk. Then I called Dick Fleming at his office, and suggested we meet for dinner at Chez Morris. He groaned.
“Jannie,” he said, “can’t we go someplace for a decent meal?”
“I had a decent meal last night,” I told him. “Tonight I want food I can’t eat. I’ve got to drop at least three pounds. Please, Dick, humor me. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“Well … all right,” he said grudgingly.
“That’s a love,” I said. “Afterward we can come back to my place for a sweet, rich, wonderful dessert.”
“Oh?” he said, interested. “What?”
“Me,” I said.
The dinner was just as lousy as I hoped it would be. I ate three mouthfuls, and Dick, trying hard, finished only half his fried sole.
One of the reasons I ate so little, aside from the loathsomeness of the food, was that I was talking so much. First of all I told Dick about the final meeting at the West 47th Street garage on Thursday night.
“Can you make it?” I asked him.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he promised.
I gave him all the details of Donohue’s plan. Dick put his elbows on the table, began rubbing his eyebrows back and forth.
“Something wrong?” I asked him.
“Too loose, Lautrec,” he said. “How are the other guys going to get to the antique shop on time?”
“Beats me,” I said, shrugging. “Donohue was vague about it. Maybe they’ll take cabs. Maybe they’ll steal another car. Maybe one of them will use his own car.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” he repeated. “I just don’t like it. It’s not well planned. Doesn’t sound like Donohue. He’s usually so careful about details. And that business of them coming into the car one at a time to put on the coveralls—that’s crazy.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“You know,” I said, “you’re right. The rest of the caper took a lot of work, a lot of planning, a lot of thought. I admit the part you mentioned just doesn’t hang together. It’s sloppy. But it’s Donohue’s idea, so I guess he figures it’ll work.”
“Well … it’s not our worry, is it, Jannie? We take off Thursday night and the whole thing stops dead. Isn’t that right?”
We stared at each other across the table with blank eyes.
“Sure,” I said finally. “Stops dead. But I did want the whole thing to be foolproof.”
I told him about the dinner with Noel Jarvis, and he practically slavered when I described the oysters, the beef braciole, the Key lime pie. Then I related Jarvis’ reaction to the Devolte
Bros, holdup in San Francisco, and how the chair rail at Brandenberg sounded a silent alarm and locked the front door.
“So?” Dick said, smiling. “A great detail for your book. I told you that you should, ah, cultivate his acquaintance. How else would you have found out about that cute gimmick?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, do I tell Jack Donohue about that chair rail and the locked door?”
Fleming looked at me, blinking a few times, thinking …
“No,” he said at last, “you can’t tell him. Because then he’d want to know how you found out. Then what would you say?”
“But if they try the heist without us, Dick, they’ll all be trapped.”
“So?” he said coldly. “Their problem, not ours.”
“I suppose so,” I said slowly. “Still …”
He reached across the table, took up my hand.
“Jannie, I know you feel a kind of—of responsibility for Donohue, Hymie Gore, the Holy Ghost, and the other guys they’re recruiting. But it’s their choice. Don’t you understand? Sure, you gave them a target and a plan. Or we both did. But we’re not forcing them to go through with it at the point of a gun. They can pull out of it anytime they want to. Just as we can, and will. So if they try it by themselves and get caught, it’s their own fault. It has nothing to do with us.”
I shook my head, bewildered.
“Dick, I can’t figure the morality of this. What you say makes sense. In a way. But if those nuts try it on their own and get picked up or someone gets hurt, I’m going to feel partly to blame. Besides being scared out of my wits that they’ll tell the cops about us.”
“What’s to tell?” he argued. “They know you as Bea Flanders. Her description and address are nothing like Jannie Shean, who lives on the East Side. And I look like a million other guys in New York and they don’t even know where I live. So we’ve got nothing to worry about, Jannie.”
He kept talking like that all the way back to my apartment. Even after we were naked in bed together, he kept reassuring me, telling me it was going to be all right, we’d make a clean split the following night, and Donohue & Co. wouldn’t be fools enough to try it on their own. It all sounded so logical.
Caper Page 13