Operation Bamboozle

by Derek Robinson

  “Five grand?”

  “No. Six thousand four hundred and twenty dollars. Round figures send the wrong message. Our boy is an individual and he comes at his own special, individual price.”

  Hancock smiled, partly in admiration. “I never looked at it that way.”

  “How d’you feel about going into partnership?”

  They shook on it, went downstairs, walked to Hancock’s car. “Let’s get to work tomorrow,” Luis said.

  “So soon?” Hancock was surprised. “Doing what?”

  “Doing Norton Scripps Todhunter,” Luis said. “He’s out there, waiting. Why waste him?”

  7

  Back in the days when a man could ride a horse clear across town, witness two gunfights and help put out a burning house, buy a sack of avocados and still be home in time to hunt grizzlies in the Pasadena wilderness, somebody built a house in Beverly Hills and called it Hungerford Manor. Not so much a house as a pile. Built to last and it refused to fall down.

  In the 1920s a bootlegger called DiLazzari bought it because the walls were granite and the windows were small, which was a serious advantage in a business where you sometimes couldn’t hear the radio soaps for the rattle of Tommy guns. He liked the soaps and the privacy which his skill at making and moving booze in industrial quantities had earned him. He’d cracked the great secret of American capitalism: make your second million first. When Prohibition ended he was ready to move into fresh rackets. LA was growing. Someone had to service its natural needs.

  Vito DiLazzari II was born in the Manor, grew up there, never lived anywhere else, and he felt trapped in the dump. “How much to get the wreckers in?” he asked. “How much to flatten it?”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” his uncle said. “Wreckers ain’t cheap. You don’t like it, then just sell it. The way the market’s going you’ll get a million easy.” He sipped his lemonade. They were sitting at a rustic table, under an oak tree. “But it’s your house. Your money.”

  “Money’s no damn good when you can’t use the stuff. It’s got so I’m afraid to spend fifty cents on a good cigar. Goddamn Revenue men.”

  “You’re not alone,” his uncle said. “Jimmy Lanza’s wife, up in San Francisco, wanted a mink, had to settle for a plain woolen overcoat. Jimmy was scared the Revenue would want to know where the money came from. It’s called reverse accountancy.”

  “It’s persecution. It’s un-American. Can’t we get into some legit racket that has a cash flow we can turn on? Carnivals, dancehalls, movies …”

  “Stay away from the studios, Vito. Those guys are trained thieves. Every picture they make turns a fat loss, it’s an art. Speaking of art, we still have those hot Picassos in a warehouse in Anaheim …” For a while they talked business: interstate cigarette smuggling; offshore casinos; protection involving trucking and agriculture, both of them highly sensitive in California where any delay could turn a load of lettuce into a heap of green mush. Overall, the local economy was healthy, although his uncle was a little worried about the rise in street crime in LA. “Too many Latinos,” he said. “They’ll knife you for a dollar. Got no work ethic. Reminds me …” He took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Remember Milt Gibson? Ran with your father in the Thirties, did a stretch. Kind of mouthy. We used to call him Gee-Whiz Gibson.”

  “Another gabby old bastard,” Vito complained. “This ain’t a home for the aged. Why don’t the sonsabitches die?”

  “Your father liked Milt. Put bits of work his way, fencing and stuff … Thing is, he came to me with a name. Cabrillo. Guy just moved into town. Was in El Paso when Frankie Blanco cashed his chips. Happened right outside this Cabrillo’s house.”

  “Blanco was disloyal,” Vito said. “I hate that. A man who betrays his family betrays himself, and ends up a nothing. I wrote a paper on loyalty when I was majoring in ethics at UCLA. Got a lousy B for it. College professors ain’t so smart.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, Tony Feet from Chi was in the house too. Also Jerome Fantoni’s girl, Stevie. Now she’s here with Cabrillo. Doing what, we don’t know and don’t much care, but the Bureau does. Back to Milt Gibson. The Bureau helped put him away, now they use him as a kind of go-between. He dishes the dirt to the FBI but he clears it with us first.”

  “Semi-disloyalty,” Vito said. “That I can live with.”

  “Yeah. Your father knew the set-up, but he reckoned it helps to know what the Feds are thinking. Right now it’s Cabrillo, and we got nothing on him, but Milt needs something to sing about.”

  “Well, hell. Tell ’em homicide. Tell ’em the guy’s counterfeiting currency with reckless endangerment leading to multiple homicide. We’re not in that racket, so let the Bureau go chase the bums who are. They need the exercise.” Vito looked with gloomy satisfaction at his home. “I’d burn it down, but the goddamn Revenue would audit the cost of the kerosene.”

  “It’s granite,” his uncle said. “Try a small nuclear weapon.”

  8

  The painting was incomplete. Luis took a long look at it and said he was sure it would be jolly nice when it was finished, and Princess Chuckling Stream punched him the belly so hard that he fell backward over a chair and made a gurgling noise like the last of the dishwater going down the plug hole. “Don’t expect any sympathy from me,” Julie said. “Nice ain’t in this artist’s vocabulary.” She cracked open some more peanuts and ate. He relaxed on the floor and got his breath back.

  Stevie said to Princess, “Just because he talks this funny sorta English, you don’t need to hit him. His kinda nice don’t mean your kinda nice, it means, in England, holy shit, get a load of that, you an’ me, we can make sweet music baby. That kinda nice.”

  “Keep that woman away from me,” Luis wheezed.

  “Which one?” Julie asked.

  He righted the chair and sat on it and looked at the picture again. “I like the feet.” He said. “No shortage of toes. But she’s only got three fingers on one hand.”

  “Art is not anatomy, you dummy,” Julie said.

  “All the same …”

  “Ain’t the same,” Princess growled. “And the kind of guy who counts his girl’s fingers before he drops his pants ain’t gonna buy my crap.”

  “Princess paints sex,” Julie said. “Steamy sex. I love it.”

  “Me too,” Stevie said. “Don’t deny your body’s honest longings, Luis, it ain’t healthy. I read that in Scientific American.”

  “I can’t see the sex for the steam,” he said.

  Princess took the painting and wrapped it in velvet. “Your trouble, you want everythin’ too damn easy,” she said. “Like every man I ever knew.”

  RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT

  The Todhunter residence had a butler, which was a good start. He took their card and their hats, and invited them to wait in the dark and highly polished hallway. Hancock could have parked his Oldsmobile in it and left room for a Sherman tank without moving the pair of black horsehair couches. These looked as if they couldn’t be moved easily. Maybe the house had been built around them.

  The butler returned. They followed him to the library, everyone marching in lock-step.

  Norton Scripps Todhunter was standing in the middle of the room, hands in his jacket pockets, thumbs hooked outside. He was about forty, and he gave that solid impression of someone who hasn’t run a step since he was twelve and carries an extra twenty-five pounds as a result. The weight was disguised by lightweight tweeds but his tailor could do nothing about the jowls.

  Todhunter held the card at arm’s length. “Eagleston, Chappell and Hart. I knew a David Eagleston at Harvard. Somewhat …” He searched for the word. “Unreliable,” he decided.

  “Our Eagleston is a Yale man,” Luis said. “Henry Eagleston.” Short pause. Todhunter seemed a little disappointed. “And Chappell was at Columbia,” Luis said. “As for Hart …” He frowned.

  “Chicago,” Hancock said. “Summa cum Laude.” Todhunter looked at the back of the card for more informatio
n. None. He nodded, which gave his jowls a workout. Luis thought: This man leads a dull life.

  They introduced themselves. Todhunter didn’t smile or shake hands, but he gestured toward kingsize armchairs. They sat.

  “Harvard,” Luis said. “Not only a fine school, but also a guiding philosophy of life. Or so my Harvard friends tell me.” He smiled with his eyes. “Alumni reunions must be enjoyable.”

  Todhunter thought about alumni reunions and came to no firm conclusion. He took out a pipe and looked into it and put it back.

  “I know I speak …” Hancock cleared his throat. “I speak for all the partners at Eagleston, Chappell and Hart …” More throat-clearing, “… when I express my sorrow for your loss.” He blinked his sympathy.

  “A trying time,” Luis said. “So much to be done. The legalities to be observed, the loose ends to be tied. A very testing experience.” His brow wrinkled as a measure of the test.

  “It was only after serious discussion,” Hancock said, “that Eagleston, Chappell and Hart decided that we should come here.”

  “Not to add to your grief,” Luis said. “But to help you eliminate a tiresome problem.”

  Somewhere a clock struck twelve. They sat and listened. The chimes sounded as if they had been wrapped in fog. Todhunter sighed, perhaps happily, perhaps not. “I hope you chaps are allowed a drink while on duty,” he said, and rang for the butler.

  “Bless my soul,” Luis said. “Isn’t that a pedigree Labrador above your mantelpiece?” Todhunter got up and fetched the picture. It was lifesize. Luis shook his head in admiration. “My mother used to breed them,” he said. The butler appeared. “Drinks,” Todhunter said. “And fetch the dogs.”

  There were four: two bitter-chocolate, two honey-blond. Todhunter talked Labradors, without haste, for twenty minutes. He took his visitors through their pedigrees and proved it with several photo albums. The dogs grew restless. The library had french windows, opening onto lawns. “Perhaps a little romp on the grass?” Luis suggested.

  The dogs romped for fifteen minutes, while the men watched, and compared Labradors with lesser breeds.

  “Can you stay for lunch?” Todhunter asked. “I’d like to show you my stamp collection. There’s some early Brazilian air mails I’m rather proud of.”

  It was nearly three in the afternoon before they returned to the library. “I suppose we should get down to business,” Todhunter said. He found their card and read it again.

  “I feel unhappy about imposing on you, sir,” Hancock said. “After your great kindness.”

  “You’re a busy man, sir,” Luis said, “so the greatest kindness we can do you is not to waste your time. I’ll be brief. The problem here is a little, shall we say, tangled? But the solution is blessedly simple. It seems that twenty years ago your father, the late Mr. Todhunter, made a trip to the East Coast. New York City, to be precise.”

  “Manhattan,” Hancock said. “The Waldorf-Astoria.”

  Forty minutes later, Todhunter opened his safe and gave them six thousand four hundred and twenty dollars. “I don’t like banks,” he said. “Banks fail.”

  “You have acted very wisely, sir,” Luis said. “By avoiding banks, your decision leaves no paper trail for the gutter press to seize upon. If only others were as prudent.”

  He saw them to the door. The butler gave them their hats. “What did you say this terrible illness is called?” Todhunter asked.

  “Neurostatic hypoplasia,” Hancock said.

  “The B strain,” Luis added. “It only affects the young.”

  “How terrible.” But Todhunter looked relieved.

  “And thanks to you, sir,” Hancock said, “the boy’s chances are good.”

  It was a business. They did a lot of research, and as in all industries, 90% of it was wasted. Not exactly wasted, but discarded. The obituary pages in the LA newspapers were a start, and you could guess a lot from the photograph: a dark suit, a sober tie and a Marine Corps haircut won a lot of marks. The deceased had to be respectable—no actors, no sportsmen, no musicians. Who cared if Errol Flynn slept around? Promiscuity was a mark of honor in some trades. But Todhunter senior had been in banking, and good bankers didn’t go to Manhattan to get their rocks off with some floozie. The Wall Street Journal disapproved of that.

  Luis and Hancock never poached in the same pool twice. Too risky. Their targets said the scandal would always be a family secret, but people lie. People go to a party, sink a Scotch or three too many and tell their friend, “Who’d have thought the old man had it in him? Took a trip east and knocked up a maiden fair. Cost me a few bucks to keep a lid on that item …” whereon the friend says that’s funny, he heard exactly the same last week about old Sam, used to be president of the golf club; and next day they go talk to a guy they know in the DA’s office.

  LA was big enough to minimize the risk of gossip. Luis and Hancock kept moving: they scored in Pasadena and then went 20 miles east to Claremont. Next they picked out a recent bereavement in Newport Beach, 25 miles south. After that, Palos Verdes was the same distance up the coast. They changed the place of impregnation too, from New York to Boston or New Haven or even Wilmington, Delaware, if the deceased did business with du Pont. And they changed business cards. Eagleston, Chappell and Hart became Bunker, Delancey and Scott, or Noble, O’Hagan and Church. Names are cheap. Luis learned that from de Courcy.

  They didn’t score from every strike. Once they got laughed at. “Go ahead, blacken the old bastard’s reputation,” his son told them. “I’ll follow behind with a jazz band and free balloons.” Hancock tried to protest: the boy needed urgent treatment. “Anyone dumb enough to live in New York deserves all he gets,” the son said, and pointed to the door. Twice the con went smoothly up to the point where Luis explained that the life-or-death urgency of Swiss treatment required an immediate cash transfer. No dice. They took a check, payable to Eagleston, Chappell and Hart. Worthless. But they thanked the donor and promised to keep him informed of the young man’s medical condition. Most people said: “That won’t be necessary.” They’d paid to forget the whole affair.

  In ten hits, Luis and Hancock made thirty-six thousand dollars.

  2

  The air in LA had the defeated taste that comes at the end of a stifling day in the big city when too many people have breathed it. Don’t expect any breeze off the ocean because this is one western where the cavalry never comes galloping over the hill.

  Milton Gibson stood on his forecourt and looked at his stock. Couple of dozen high-price foreign cars: status symbols yesterday, junk today. He couldn’t give them away. Not even the Bentleys, never mind the Alfa-Romeos, the Jags, the Jowett Javelins, the pre-war Mercedes and Hispano-Suizas, the Morgan two-seaters … As of today it was illegal to start their engines because the goddamn Air Pollution Control District of Los Angeles goddamn County had brought in crappy new rules about exhaust emissions. Now each and every import was standing, getting shat on by the seagulls, useless until he paid to get it modified and certified clean by Transportation Department inspectors, who were sorry sonsabitches you couldn’t buy for fifty bucks. This city had turned into Bureaucratsburg. It was Moscow with palm trees.

  He locked up. The seagulls were circling high above, waiting for him to go so they could poop on a Bentley. He couldn’t even shoot the little bastards. LA cared more about its wild life than about its citizens. He didn’t want to go to the steam room. He wanted to go and sit in his pool with a bourbon and ginger ale and listen to the big ice cubes make that happy crackling noise as they melt. Maybe tomorrow he could lay poison for the seagulls. That was a good thought. He walked to the Helsinki Hotel.

  Earl Moody was waiting in the steam room.

  “You look worse than Capone, and he’s been dead six years,” he said softly. “Stay off the juice, Milton, and drink your own sweat for a week, it must be stronger than Bushmills, I can smell it from here.”

  “I’ve had a shitty day,” Gibson said. “Worse than you know.”r />
  “God is testing you. No TV in heaven, he has to make his own entertainment. What you got?”

  “Struck gold. Wasn’t easy, but you know me. Mister Tenacity. Never quit.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I stick my neck out for you, Agent Moody.”

  “Well, don’t think the Bureau ain’t grateful, cus it ain’t. Show me this gold you struck.”

  “I deserve a better deal,” Gibson grumbled. “I take all the risk, diggin’ the dirt, an’ you get all the credit. Bonus too, probably.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. You spill your guts, now, or tomorrow the Hot Car Squad turns you over. Their fingernails are a disgrace. Your limos are liable to get all scratched-up.”

  Gibson sighed. “Counterfeiting,” he said. “Your couple in Santa Monica Canyon Road are here to run a bum dollar mill. In cahoots with the Fantoni mob from back East.”

  “Cahoots,” Moody said. “Cahoots went out with spats.”

  “Go ahead, laugh. These guys blow holes in guys like you. It lets the joke out.” That’s good, Gibson thought. That’s damn good.

  “Who told you all this?” Moody asked. Gibson leaned forward and looked at his feet. He worked his toes. “You’re right, better I don’t know,” Moody said. “Go back and get more. It matters. America is the dollar and the dollar is America. You’re smart, you know that.” He got up and padded away. Flattery was a wonderful lubricant. It costs so little, yet it means so much.

  Gibson wiped his face with a towel. What Moody wants, the sonofabitch gets. Gibson forgot him. He thought instead about seagull poison. Who sells seagull poison?

  3

  Willard J Stagg, Aviation Pioneer, Dead at 48, said the Los Angeles Times. Sterling Hancock had clipped the item. A couple of months later he clipped a report in the Business Section: Michael J. Stagg, only son of the late Willard, not having inherited any interest in flying machines, had unloaded the stock in Stagg Aviation he’d inherited, in exchange for an estimated large piece of loot.