“Well—no, I haven’t.”
“The Astoria Hotel not far from you has a swell restaurant. If I came by in about forty-five minutes, might you be ready?”
“Yes, of course. You’re ever so kind, Mr. Aristide.”
“Call me Marcel. I’ll see you in a little while.” Marcel hung up the phone, feeling the pleasant buzz of blood rushing through his veins.
When Marcel arrived to pick the young woman up, she was wearing a print sundress with a matching bolero jacket, and a small straw hat cocked to the side of her dark hair.
“Morning. You look great today,” Marcel said.
Marta’s complexion deepened at his compliment, and she looked down a bit shyly. “Thank you. I’m glad you called. I’m starved.”
“Come on, then.” Marcel led her out to his car, and a few minutes later he pulled up outside the Astoria, giving his keys to the bellhop. He led her inside the most luxurious Negro hotel in the city. He spoke to several people as they passed through the lobby to the dining room. Soon they were seated next to a window.
“This is so nice,” she said, marveling at the draperies and table linen. “This won’t be too expensive, will it?”
He smiled, and managed not to laugh. “No more than the law allows. Don’t worry. Just enjoy the food.”
After the waiter took their orders for scrambled eggs and bacon, Marta found the courage to ask about her missing boyfriend.
“I know you’re doing all you can, but have you heard anything at all about Albert? Please don’t think I’m being a nuisance.” She stared across the table at him, her eyes luminous and full of questions.
Without thinking, he reached out and took one of her hands. “I’ve spoken to some people who recognized Albert’s photo, Marta, but—”
Her mouth opened a bit. “But what? Please tell me.”
“Well, Albert’s real name is Wilbur Lee Payne.”
“What?”
Marcel nodded. “You see, Wilbur had a—a kind of interesting life before he met you, Marta. I’m sure he’d changed and all—”
Her mouth dropped open as she sensed an unexpected revelation. “Changed? From what?”
Marcel tried not to grimace. He hadn’t intended to progress quite so quickly to Albert’s secret life, but he could see there was no backing out now. “I’m afraid he’s a criminal. He served a term at Angola before you knew him.”
Marta slumped in her chair, her complexion suddenly pasty and her eyes dull. She seemed incapable of speech.
“Marta. Marta? Are you all right? Marta?” Marcel anxiously patted the back of her hand. He’d heard that women sometimes fell prey to a malady called “the vapors,” but he didn’t know what a man was supposed to do about it.
Marta shook her head a bit, and her eyes refocused on his. “Oh my. Oh Dear Lord, Mr.—I mean, Marcel. I never knew—I never dreamed—”
Well, you’ve sure loused this up, Marcel thought. “No, of course. How could you? It was a surprise to me, really it was.” He was babbling, thinking feverishly for something to rescue the two of them from this embarrassing tangle. Finally, it was Marta who rescued them. She began to laugh.
Marcel watched her, thinking she might be hysterical, but eventually he realized the laughter was genuine. He began to laugh, too, partly from relief. Others in the dining room looked at them curiously, but neither noticed, nor seemed to care if they did.
“Now I know you think I’m a foolish little goose,” she said when she could speak again. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the edge of her napkin.
Marcel took a sip of water to clear his throat, feeling foolishly pleased. “Well, no. I was thinking what a good sport you are. I thought you’d be pretty cut up about it.”
“Maybe I should be, but I’m not,” the girl said in a more sober voice. “I thought it was something about me that made him leave, but I see now that he was lying to me the whole time about everything. If he had stayed, the Good Lord knows what might’ve happened to me.”
Their food came, and they ate in a contented silence, occasionally smiling at each other. After a while, Marcel asked, “Do you still want to find him?”
She thought about it for a moment. “For some reason, I do. It would be good to just let him know that he can’t come back and fool me again.” She took a sip of coffee, still looking at Marcel. “It would be a way of cleaning the slate for me. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“But do you still think you can find him in this big city? He could be anywhere.”
Marcel smiled. “It’s my town, Marta, and I’ve had a good teacher. I can find him.”
***
It was early afternoon when the bell over the door announced a visitor at the Blue Note Pawnshop. The owner, Theron Oswald, looked up from the issue of Spicy Love Stories he was reading and recognized the visitor as an employee of the Railway Express Agency. He was a chubby white man in his mid-thirties, his skin shiny with sweat, dark circles under the arms of his uniform shirt.
“You Theron Oswald?” he asked as he approached.
“’At’s me,” Oswald replied. He was mildly curious about this occurrence, because he’d never had a visit from REA before. He wondered if the man wanted to pawn something until he saw the package under his arm.
The man put the package on the counter and held out a clipboard. “Sign here.” He offered Oswald his pencil.
Hiding his curiosity behind a poker face, Oswald signed his name on the line with a package number, then handed the pencil back to the driver.
“Thanks,” he said. “Have y’self a nice day, hear?”
“Yeah, sure,” Oswald replied absently. He pulled the package to him and studied the handwriting on the label. There was no return address. He looked furtively around the shop, then pulled a knife from his pocket and used it to cut the tape. He lifted the lid carefully and saw the note. Just seeing Martinez’s name made his blood run cold.
With a shaking hand, he took the four paper-wrapped objects from the box and carefully unwrapped them. When the finely engraved plates were laid bare on the counter, he began to tremble uncontrollably. A series of scenarios raced across his mind’s eye like film in a movie projector. In one, he gave Santiago Compasso the plates. Instead of rewarding him, Compasso became suspicious and killed him. In the second, Oswald took the counterfeit plates to the police, who, knowing his underworld reputation, put him immediately in jail. In the third, Oswald buried them in the back yard, then got on a boat to Central America, where he changed his name and remained there for the rest of his life. Then he heard the bell ring as the door opened, and he had just enough time to shove the package under the display case, wondering if his stark terror could be seen in his face.
***
Special Agent Paul Ewell’s conference in the office of A. J. McCandless was coming to a close, but he recognized that the tension in the room had not diminished in spite of his assurances. He found that interesting.
“Well, Agent Ewell. What happens now?” McCandless asked around his cigarette holder. It was made of yellow ivory and jutted upwards from the side of his mouth like a naval gun. Employees sometimes commented on the resemblance to President Roosevelt when he smoked, but none dared say so in his presence. He hated Roosevelt’s guts.
“We wait. We keep our eyes open,” Ewell replied. “You’re clean, and so are the other banks in town. So far the epidemic of phony bills hasn’t worked its way this far south.”
“That’s good news, I suppose,” Leake said in a voice strangely devoid of emotion.
Max Grossmann held up a finger. “Tell me, Agent Ewell. What does your department make of the fact that so little money has been found in this city when you’ve found so much elsewhere? You have a theory, of course.”
Ewell’s weathered face was sober as he replied to the Jewish banker. “I’m afraid we don’t, Mr. Grossmann. The general belief is that they just haven’t gotten around to us yet. They may not be aware tha
t we’ve begun to recognize the counterfeit bills. I consider it dumb luck that our inspectors spotted it in Atlanta. That tipped us off to the danger, and all our field offices went on the alert.”
McCandless took the cigarette holder from his mouth. “It seems as though you’re up against some pretty smooth customers. What are the chances of finding them?”
“Up until yesterday, I’d say they were pretty bad, but we’ve been able to identify a key man in the operation. His lover was brutally murdered two nights ago. We don’t know why the murder was committed, but we think it’s possible there’s a connection with this case. We’ve got Federal and city police on the lookout for the man in question.” Ewell watched the three men as he spoke. They seemed an uncomfortable bunch, their eyes everywhere but on him. Did the mere whisper of counterfeit bother bankers that much?
“What do you know about this man?” Leake asked.
“He’s a career criminal with a pretty wide expertise. In the past twenty years he’s participated in a half-dozen different kinds of crime that we know of. If he’s been involved with counterfeiting before this, we haven’t heard of it.”
McCandless tapped his fingers restlessly on his spotless desk blotter. “You say he’s a career criminal. Why isn’t he in jail?”
“Because he’s good. He’s smart and doesn’t make mistakes. But the murder of his woman might make him break cover. He’s probably mad and isn’t going to be as careful as he’s been. We needed a break, and this might be it.”
“Hummmp,” McCandless said. “Well, is there anything we can do to assist you in the meantime?”
Ewell uncrossed his legs, recognizing that the interview was coming to a close. “No, sir, I don’t think so. We’ve worked very closely with your head teller and your vault manager. My inspectors are satisfied that they’ll be effective watchdogs. We’ve done the same with the other banks in the city, so New Orleans is as prepared as it can be to resist an onslaught of phony bills.” He stood, picking up his hat from the chair beside him. “We’ll keep in close touch with you, and men from my office will visit the vault from time to time. You can, of course, call my office whenever you wish.”
McCandless stood up, as did Grossmann and Leake just a second behind. The bank president held out his hand and Ewell took it. “Thank you, Agent Ewell. Hopefully, we’ll see the end of this soon.”
Ewell shook hands with the other two men, exchanged goodbyes with all of them, then departed the room.
“That was certainly good news,” Grossmann said. “I suppose we can devote ourselves to the bank’s business instead of all this secret service hugger-mugger.”
McCandless laughed at the big Jewish banker. “Quite right, Max. It’s the bank’s job to make money, not the counterfeiters’. So let’s get out there and make some for our customers.”
Grossmann gave McCandless an ironic smile. “And for ourselves, A. J. Let’s not forget ourselves.” He flashed a grin at Leake, who looked away with a cold expression on his face.
***
It took Jelly about ten minutes to find the hardware store the old man had described. It was a large clapboard building with two stories. There were curtains on the upstairs windows, indicating that the proprietor probably lived upstairs. A large sign proclaimed:
PELECANO’S FRIENDLY HARDWARE EMPORIUM
A smaller sign indicated that fishing and hunting licenses could be purchased there.
She parked the car, got out, and walked through the entrance, fanning herself with a perfumed handkerchief. The inside was dark and cool, and smelled pleasantly of cedar. A slender Greek with a bold hooked nose was ringing up some hardware purchases for a Negro dressed in paint-stained work clothes. As he accepted the man’s money and bid him farewell, the Greek’s gaze fell on Jelly, and his eyes got a pleasant gleam in them.
“Somethin’ I can do for you, miss? If we ain’t got it in stock, we can prob’ly get it for you by tomorra’.” He spoke in a pleasant baritone with a confident lilt.
She favored him with a special smile, and walked to the counter. She was amused by his unabashed admiration. “Maybe. Would you know a gentleman named Martinez?”
The Greek put his thumbs in his vest as he thought about that. “If his front name is Louie, the answer is yeah. I ain’t seen him for a while, though. He used to buy his fishin’ and huntin’ licenses from me, and we did some trade for fishin’ line, shotgun shells, and like that.”
Jelly leaned an indolent hip against the counter and pulled cigarettes from her bag. She offered one to the Greek, took one for herself, then leaned forward for him to light it with a kitchen match. She took in a lung full of smoke then luxuriously blew it back out. “I’ve been out of town, and was hopin’ to find Luis. He seems to’ve moved away and nobody I’ve talked to knows where he went.”
The Greek took the cigarette out of his mouth and tugged thoughtfully at his nose. “Yeah, that’s true. Been a couple years, anyhow, since I seen him. He must be gettin’ his huntin’ and fishin’ gear somewheres else now.”
Jelly smoked in silence, nodding her head. Then she looked up with a gleam in her eyes. “Y’know, I was just remembering something Louie always said—‘luck is where you find it, but I always look for mine down by the river.’ Think he was talkin’ about fishing?”
The Greek rubbed the edge of his jaw with a slender thumb. “Yeah, I used to hear him say that. Sometimes when we’d be playin’ cards. Come to think of it, he had a fish camp upriver somewheres. I never could take enough time off from work to go up there with ’im, though.”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Jelly said solicitously. “He might be there on a day as nice as this. Louie never worked eight-to-five. Salesman or something, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah—come to think of it, I never heard him talk about his work much.” He looked at the sunlight falling through the entrance and sighed wistfully. “Today would sure be a swell day to lay up at a fish camp.” He put the cigarette into his mouth and smoked as he rubbed his curly scalp. As he did so, an idea came to him and he turned back to her. “Y’know, I know somebody who used to go fishin’ with Louie all the time. A colored bartender. Bet he could tell you.”
She gave him a dazzling smile. “See, you had what I wanted and I didn’t have to wait until tomorrow. That’s service, Mr. Pelecano.”
Chapter 7
It was nearly 2:30 when Farrell parked his convertible near Theron Oswald’s pawnshop. The polished bells of trumpets, saxes, and trombones gleamed inside the display window like the gold in Sutter’s millrace, in stark contrast to the hapless, out-of-work musicians who’d pawned them for eating money.
As he entered, a bell tinkled above his head. He saw a sharp-faced Negro with dark yellow skin staring at him from across the counter.
“Long time, no see, Ozzy,” Farrell said.
“Mr. Farrell,” Oswald said tonelessly. “Come to pawn your watch?” An insincere grin caused his droopy black mustache to twitch.
Farrell walked slowly to the glass counter, his hands loose at his sides. He stared into the other man’s eyes, recognizing immediately that Oswald was scared. He enjoyed that possibility. “I’m looking for Luis Martinez.”
“Ain’t seen him.”
“You’re a liar. You and Martinez have been friends for fifteen years.”
“So what? You think that means I keep the guy in my hip pocket? He’s got his life and I got mine.”
The planes of Farrell’s face grew sharp and savage. “I never saw a man talk so hard and say so little. Maybe you haven’t heard that Luis’s friends are turning up dead.”
Oswald stared at Farrell, his fear more pronounced than before. “I’m tellin’ you the truth, man. I ain’t seen Louie in a month of Sundays.”
Farrell put his hands into his trouser pockets and expelled a gust of breath like a boiler letting off steam. He was sick and tired of people lying to him or covering up. The urge to put his hands on Oswald was almost overpowering, but he fought it. “You know who
Santiago Compasso is?”
Oswald decided to see what a little truth would buy him. “Yeah. That’s the spig Louie’s workin’ for.”
“Why does Compasso want to kill him?”
Oswald licked his lips. “Louie and him fell out over a split. Louie told me a few months back that Compasso was nickel-and-dimin’ him. Louie put together the experts for makin’ phony money and Compasso was gettin’ all the gravy. You know Louie ain’t gonna lay down for no fancy-pants spig.”
Farrell listened carefully, watching Oswald’s eyes. The man was shooting straight, but he was holding something back. “That’s not helping his friends, Ozzy. Linda Blanc and Wisteria Mullins were tortured to death, a day apart.”
Oswald rubbed his face, trying to stimulate his brain. He couldn’t be stupid with Farrell. “Christ!”
“Ozzy, Luis hasn’t got many friends. With those two dead, practically all that’s left is you and me. I figure sooner or later, he’s got to contact one of us. That’s if Compasso’s killer doesn’t get to us first.”
It took all of Oswald’s will power to keep from looking at the cardboard box at his feet.
“L-leave me alone, Farrell. I’m a fuckin’ nobody. Why would anybody wanna hurt me? Shit.” He pasted a pathetic grin on his face and tried to laugh, but the noise that came from his mouth was more a strangled wheeze.
Farrell sneered cruelly. “You know too much, Ozzy. Until yesterday I didn’t know anything about a counterfeiting ring operating in the city—the Treasury Department doesn’t even know. But you know all about it.”
“I—I—” Oswald couldn’t get any words past his teeth. Farrell bored in relentlessly.
“You know what I think, Ozzy? I think if Luis gets shoved into a corner, he’ll come straight to you because you know what the game’s all about.” He walked around the counter and put his face close to Oswald’s. “If it happened to get out that you knew all about the counterfeiting mob, where do you think that would put you, Ozzy, old buddy?”
Oswald’s vision was clouding from the pressure he was under. He needed to get Farrell out of there so he could hide the plates, then figure out what to do. “Man, you’re scarin’ me bad. Sure, I know what li’l bit Louie done told me, but not that much. I ain’t botherin’ nobody around here. Hell, I even do a li’l business with Mr. Compasso now and again, handlin’ shit he wants to get rid of and such. Please—what’ve I gotta do for you man? Please tell me.”
Pale Shadow Page 9