“How do I get in touch with you?”
“I’m registered at the Hancock House. I’ll wait.”
“How can I be sure it’s the money? This would be a fine way to unload counterfeit.”
Dixon grinned merrily. “Why, if you have any doubts, take one of those fifties to the bank and ask about it, pal.”
“But …”
“It’s legitimate. I’ll give you a clipping with those three sets of serial numbers and you can check. It’s the money. You’ll be buying three dollars for … no, four dollars for every one.”
Catton, lying listless and wasted in bed, had been frightened by the idea. It had taken Paul two hours to convince him. By the time he left, Burt Catton was exhausted. And Paul knew just how far they could go. Forty from Burt and twenty-five from him would strip them almost completely. Sixty-five thousand.
He offered Dixon sixty. Dixon was amused, indignant, enraged. Paul stood firm. Dixon left and made a phone call. He came back and said seventy was rock bottom. Paul offered sixty-five and said it was absolute top. Dixon was gone much longer the second time. He came back and said, “All right. It’s fine. It’s just dandy. I don’t get ten per cent. I get five per cent. Instead of eight grand I get a lousy three and a quarter, so he only nets one and a quarter less than if you took it at seven. The rest of the difference comes out of my hide. Write this down. Ready? Hogan 68681. That’s a Tulsa exchange. Phone any day next week in person, from Tulsa. Ask for Jerry. Have the sixty-five with you in cash. No thousands. When you get Jerry on the line ask him if he knows where you can buy a good used Cad. He’ll take it from there.”
“Tulsa!”
“It’s a city. Like in Oklahoma. You won’t like it. Few people do.”
And as they had parted then, the last time Verney had seen Dixon, Roger had looked at him intently and curiously and said, “It must have really been something.”
“What do you mean?”
“When your toy train went off the tracks. The first major setback in your whole life. It must have really rocked you, Paul. Did you chew up the carpets and run around the walls?”
“I was disappointed.”
“You were more than that, Paul. You were shocked. The whole world was turned upside down. They couldn’t do this to you. Not to the one and only, the unique Paul Verney. Actually. I’m surprised you didn’t kill yourself. Or lose your mind. I had high hopes. I figured you far too brittle to adjust to failure. You see, I can remember the times you got crossed up in little ways. Your reaction was murderous.”
“Your imagination has always been too vivid, Roger.”
Dixon sighed. “I should have known I’d guess bad again. You’ll handle this well. You’ll make a potful. You’ll screw Catton out of his end, and you’ll come out right on schedule or ahead, even. I just have one small hope. I hope I never have to look at you again.”
“You should be able to arrange that, Roger.”
He told no one where he was going. He told his office staff he was going on a fishing trip. Catton, with face like a skull, had managed to totter into the bank and sign for a safety deposit box and carry it into a booth and take out the cash Paul needed. There were no thousand-dollar bills in either reserve fund. It was nearly all in hundreds, with a very few fifties. Verney packed the money in the bottom of his grip, two packets fastened with rubber bands each nearly three inches thick. The night before he left he thought of the money and how all of this might very easily be an intricate confidence game. In the morning he put the money into two cigar boxes and mailed them separately to himself at the Tulsa hotel where he had made a reservation under the name of W. W. Ward, writing on the outside of each package, Hold for Arrival
He reached Tulsa in three days, phoned the hotel, found the packages had arrived and were being held, and he asked they be put in the hotel safe. When he checked in they gave him a receipt for the two packages. He mailed the receipt to himself care of General Delivery at Tulsa. Then, unable to think of any further way to protect himself, he went to a drugstore booth and phoned and asked for Jerry and spoke nonsense about a used car.
He was picked up that night on a dark corner ten blocks from the hotel. He sat in the back seat of a sedan between two men who had no desire to talk. The driver wore a baseball cap and his ears stuck out, silhouetted against oncoming lights as they left the city and drove very fast for a long time. They stopped and the driver got out and opened a cattle gate and drove in and closed the gate and drove another quarter mile to a house. They shut him in a small bare room with the money. It was tightly packed into a cheap dark blue suitcase with a single wide gray stripe. He checked the serial numbers against the clipping Dixon had given him. The money looked good, looked authentic. He made a halfhearted attempt to count it, and estimated it was all there. He knocked and they let him out and he talked in a dark hallway to a stocky man whose face he never saw.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your end?”
“I can’t get it until after nine tomorrow.”
“You stay here tonight and I’ll send you in and you get it and you’ll be brought back out.”
“No.”
There was an understanding silence. “How do you want to do it?”
“I’ll take this in with me. Your people can stay close to me. I’ll turn over my money.”
“I don’t like that.”
Verney suddenly had a better idea. “Take me back to the city now. I’ll meet you, alone, tomorrow, at ten in the morning, at any busy public place you want to name. We will meet and decide where to make the exchange.”
They met in front of a large department store. Verney recognized the suitcase. The stocky man had a broad impassive face, a slightly Indian look. He said, “If you say where, you can have a setup working. Same with me. So where do we go?”
“Let’s get a cab.”
“No cab stands. The first cruiser. It better come quick. This is making me sweat.”
A taxi came by moments later. Verney hailed it and it swung in to the curb. Verney said to the driver, “Where did you take your last fare?”
“Way out on Fernandez. What’s the scoop?”
“What’s the last public place, big place, you took a fare to?”
“What kinda gag is this? Lessee … railroad station.”
Verney looked at the stocky man and he nodded. “Take us there, please.”
They went to the men’s room, rented dim stalls. Verney sat with the suitcase across his knees and opened it. He dug down to be certain it wasn’t a thin layer of money. He snapped it shut and walked out, and the voice from the neighboring stall said sharply, “Watch it! Stay right there where I can watch your feet.” Verney heard the rustle of paper. He waited a full five minutes, cold sweat trickling out of his armpits. The door opened and the stocky man came out, the two cigar boxes under his arm, clamped tightly against him. Verney expected some comment. The man gave a single abrupt nod and left. Verney followed him quickly, but stayed fifty feet behind. When he saw the man shut himself into a phone booth on the far side of the station, he walked quickly out and found a cab and directed him to take him to the hotel garage. He locked the suitcase in the back of the Dodge and drove the car around and parked it in the front. Ten minutes later he was on his way out of town. He was unable to take a really deep breath until he was through Bartlesville on Route 75 north. He felt as though he had handled himself very well indeed. There was three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars in the trunk of the car. Catton, despite the fact he had put up forty of the sixty-five, had agreed to an even split.
They took the calculated risk of putting the money in safety deposit boxes. Once again Catton was driven down to the Hancock Bank and Trust. They shut themselves into one of the larger cubicles and made a careful count of the money. Catton wanted an even division, each man holding onto his share.
“You had better let me hold it all, Burt.”
“No thank you.”
<
br /> “Use your head, will you? You are coming along fine. But you have had a coronary. It’s possible you could have another. Then the court opens your boxes. Where will that leave me?”
“If we do it your way and if I should … have bad luck, Paul, it will be your good luck, won’t it?”
“That is an unkind thing to say.”
“We’ll do it my way, Paul. That will give you a good reason to move as fast as you can on this matter.”
And Verney was not able to change his mind. It was agreed that Paul would take an extended trip in November and December, taking fifty thousand from each share and handling the conversion and reconversion of funds in five South American countries. The monies so obtained would be used as partial payments on the tax indebtedness in January. Paul would set up a dummy transfer of real estate holdings to account for the cash in hand. By that time Catton would be able to travel, and would convert an equal amount. The following summer Paul would convert the balance. By fall all tax claims would be satisfied and there would be a small but comfortable surplus for each of them. Too careful an investigation of the dummy real estate transfers would cause embarrassing questions about where the funds had come from, but it was a chance they felt worth taking. With Paul hitting South America, then Catton hitting Central America, then Paul disposing of the balance on the continent, it was likely that they would stay a long jump ahead of any investigation once the identity of the money was discovered. With both boldness and careful planning, it could be done.
Verney parked his car in the shed garage behind the Center Club, went in the back way, and took the front elevator up to the third floor to his room. All the way back from the camp he had been disturbed because he could not think with the clarity and purpose and method that was so much a part of his nature. He knew that apprehension had given an emotional coloring to his mental processes. Bronson’s tough, knowing face kept intruding.
He prepared himself for thought, for the cold evaluations he depended upon. He put on a worn flannel smoking jacket and sat in the deep leather chair half turned toward the double window. The sky over the city was overcast; the light that came into the room was gray.
The loose mouth of a sick man. The unfortunate choice the sick man’s wife had made in a partner in her sexual adventures. The career and reputation of Bronson. Catton’s precarious health. Seven years Bronson owed the state. The written report that was Bronson’s insurance. These were factors. He examined each one, holding each factor up in turn to examine its texture and its curious shape. There would be a way one would fit against another, and a way to slide a third in place. And in the end there would be a picture, one that he could accept.
Primary assumption: The danger of the situation might very well kill Catton. Any logical development of the situation might kill him. First step: Get the money out of Catton’s safety deposit boxes. But Catton would have to be given a milder reason. Yet a logical one.
Tell Catton there was too much chance the boxes might be opened by court order. Explain constant worry about that eventuality. Say it would be far better to remove the money to a place not only safer but more accessible. Such as the office of Paul Verney.
He decided that could be done, and should be done tomorrow.
Then, with all funds accessible to him, he could pay Bronson the two hundred thousand. If there was no other answer.
If there was an answer, it would depend on an unknown third person, the one who held the written statement Bronson had prepared. What sort of person? Considering Bronson’s background and record, it was unlikely it was a bank or attorney. A close contact. A trusted individual. Bronson would have to be reasonably certain that the one he trusted would not open the envelope, would not learn the actual dimensions of blackmail. He would be unlikely to trust any criminal. And an honest man would not be likely to trust Bronson to the extent that, by holding the envelope, he might become involved in one of Bronson’s schemes. It was logical there would be some other hold. A relative? A woman?
A woman. Though it was pure assumption the idea had the proper ring. Bronson was a type to keep a woman cowed and obedient. That added to the danger. Should something happen to Bronson, she was likely to do exactly as he had directed.
Were there any possible ways of finding out who the person was? Following Bronson was impossible. Trying to backtrack him was unfeasible. Who would know his contacts? Bronson had labeled himself a parole violator. He was wanted. Someone would be making an active investigation, attempting to locate him. Could Bronson be made to talk? Not likely. Very little weakness in him. Get back to the parole officer.
It would be logical to assume that the parole officer would know Bronson’s contacts—would have them watched. Would it be possible to get information from such a man? Perhaps, with the proper lie, the logical and convincing story. He remembered that Marian would have Bronson’s name on the appointment book as of last Thursday morning.
Where is this heading? Suppose it is possible to find Bronson’s contact, and possible to retrieve the envelope.
The only way Bronson could be kept from protecting himself would be to kill him.
This was, then, the last fragment of the puzzle. He looked at it, at the shape of it, trying to see if it would fit. The camp was isolated. Bronson was strong and quick and sly. There was very little time. It might be possible to stall him, but not for long. He wanted the money Wednesday afternoon. Seventy-two hours.
The alternative was poverty and disgrace.
He tried to stand off to one side and look objectively at himself and determine whether he was capable of taking a life. It made his hands feel chilled. Yet there were certain rationalizations. Bronson was a criminal, a wanted man—of no benefit to society, only expense. Surely the investigation of such a death would be half hearted. It would be thought he had been slain by one of his own kind. If risk were the only consideration, Bronson was a feasible victim. The greatest risk would be in that he looked to be a man difficult to kill. Yet, depending on his insurance, Bronson would be off guard.
And it would only be possible if the insurance was no longer valid, and if Bronson was not aware of that.
He knew that this was a very involved and intricate situation. Yet there was one favorable aspect to it. The most dangerous and irrevocable step came at the very end. The other steps could be attempted. If there was no possibility of finding the envelope, of learning who held it for Bronson, then the only recourse would be to pay Bronson what he asked. But if the written statement could be found and destroyed, then Bronson could be destroyed.
He checked back over his reasoning. Would it be worth the chance to kill Bronson without finding the statement first? Only if it was a fair gamble that, upon learning of Bronson’s death, the holder of the statement would read it and try to use it for profit … and be handled in turn.
First things first. Move quickly, but carefully, and plan as you go. One step provides balance and footing for the next.
On Monday morning, after a long conversation with Burt Catton, the money was removed from the safety deposit boxes and transferred to Paul Verney’s office safe.
It was eleven-thirty before Paul Verney learned that Daniel Bronson was responsible to a parole officer named John Keefler. He left word for Keefler to phone him. Keefler called back a few minutes after noon, and said that he was free to stop by and see Mr. Verney at two.
CHAPTER SIX
John Keefler
Keefler had sauerkraut and franks at Mel Stodd’s Courthouse Restaurant, and as he ate he looked around for someone who might know the score on Paul Verney, the man he had to see at two o’clock. Verney had mystified Keefler by mentioning Danny Bronson.
The restaurant was thick with smoke and the rumble of conversation. Keefler knew more than half the customers—county and city cops, newspaper people, politicians, courthouse types. Sometimes he ate at one of the big tables with a bunch of them, listening, contributing nothing. Usually he ate alone at one of the small tables agai
nst the wall opposite the long bar. It did not bother him that he was never greeted as so many of the others were, with wide grins, coarse jokes, and a thumb on the shoulder. He had never tried to win any popularity contests. He thought such actions artificial and ridiculous.
He was nearly finished when a man he knew fairly well came in, a red-faced man in his early fifties named Will Slater. Will had started out as a cop, had quickly achieved detective status, and had studied law at night school. He had been transferred to the Special Detail working under the jurisdiction of the D.A. and later, when he had passed his bar, he had resigned from the force and been taken on as an assistant D.A., a position he had held for over ten years despite a change in administration. He apparently had no desire to enter private practice.
Slater stopped at the bar and Keefler went up and tapped him on the shoulder. Slater turned, his grin fading slightly, and said, “What’s on your mind, Johnny?”
“Spare a minute?”
Will told his friends he’d be right back and he went over to the small table, bringing his big stein of black beer along.
“One of the guys I got the file on is on the run, Will. Danny Bronson, Name mean anything?”
“Not a hell of a lot. One of Kennedy’s boys. Husky blond, isn’t he?”
“That’s the one. Quit his job and give up his room and took off. I got a pick-up out on him. None of them are going to fool around with Johnny Keefler.”
Will Slater looked at him somberly. “I hear things here and there, Johnny. Maybe you don’t remember you’re not a cop any more.”
“I got a book. It’s got the rules in it. Anyway, here’s what I want to ask. I get a call from a lawyer. I got to see him at two. He says it’s about Bronson. His name is Paul Verney. You know him?”
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