Highbinders

by Ross Thomas

  “Soon,” I said, lying as well as I could. I turned to Robin Styles. “Come on,” I said. “You can ride shotgun.”

  “What? Oh, yes, I see. Of course.”

  “I’ll get you a cab,” Cagle said.

  “Thanks.”

  I turned and headed for the door, Robin Styles close behind.

  “One more thing, St. Ives,” Cagle called after me.

  I didn’t stop. “What?” I said over my shoulder.

  “Remember where you won it, and tell your friends. If you’ve got any.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE INVITATION TO BREAKFAST at Robin Styles’s was issued so politely and hesitantly and with such diffidence that I couldn’t bring myself to turn it down. But first I had the cab stop by the Hilton where I handed what I had won over to the desk for safekeeping.

  It wasn’t far to Styles’s place. It was just north of Bayswater Road near Lancaster Gate. As I paid off the cab, Styles stood looking up at the three-story building. “A bed-sitter in Bayswater,” he said. “Some friends of mine knew a chap who killed himself because he was afraid he would end up like this.”

  “When you get all that money you can move out to Hampstead where you belong,” I said.

  We went up two flights of stairs to the bed-sitter that was home to Robin Styles. I couldn’t help comparing it to my own “deluxe” efficiency in the Adelphi. It was with a sense of shamed relief that I decided that mine was far better. But that was because along the way an architect had had something to do with its original design. And, too, I lived where I did out of a kind of perverse choice, while Styles lived where he did because he had to and because he was one of those persons who are just basically unlucky.

  It had been a bedroom in a large townhouse at one time and even then it must have been small, good enough perhaps for the upstairs maid, but certainly not for nanny.

  It was about nine by twelve feet and it had one window. There had been a closet, but it was now the bath although if you sat down on the toilet you had to sort of slide onto it and then the washbasin was in your lap. The kitchen was in one corner of the room and consisted of a wooden chest that held a two-burner gas stove that was not quite a hotplate. The refrigerator was a three-foot-high Frigidaire, the 1936 model, I thought, that might have brought a few dollars in New York as a campy sort of antique.

  The furniture was not quite bad enough to be awful, but almost. There was a single bed that doubled as a sofa, a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs, an “easy” chair that looked anything but that, a bridge table that seemed to be serving as desk, dining table, and a place to practice poker hands, a gray rug, and a large old armoire that must have held Styles’s wardrobe.

  Styles didn’t apologize. He only said, “It was about what you expected, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re very neat, aren’t you?” I said, which was the only thing I could say that came close to being nice.

  “Habit,” he said and opened the wooden chest that supported the two-burner stove, took out a bottle of Scotch, and poured two drinks into glasses that I suspected had once held jam. Or maybe marmalade. He ran some water from the bathroom basin tap into the glasses and handed me one. “Sorry, but I don’t bother with ice because the Fridge only makes six small blocks.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  Although I didn’t time him, I think it took no more than four minutes, and possibly less, for Robin Styles to serve up one of the best omelets I have ever had. He moved like a skilled chef in that corner that was his kitchen. He broke four eggs into a bowl, using only one hand to do it, a trick that I’ve never been able to master. While he was beating them, he had a large copper omelet pan, possibly the best piece of furniture in the place, heating on one of the burners. When the pan was hot, he dropped in a chunk of butter and went back to beating his eggs with a wire whisk, stopping only to dump in a pinch of this and a pinch of that from some containers that looked suspiciously like old cold cream jars.

  The eggs and the butter were ready at the same time, something else I’ve never been able to arrange, and he poured the eggs in and then began moving the pan back and forth over the flame while using a rubber spatula to stir the top portion of the eggs so that they would cook properly. It was a little like rubbing your stomach and patting the top of your head at the same time—far harder to do than it looks.

  In less than a minute, and probably closer to thirty seconds, he removed two plates that had been warming, set them on the card table, brought the pan over, gave it a sharp rap with a knife, and I watched the omelet fold over perfectly. Then we sat down and had Scotch and possibly the world’s best omelet for breakfast. Or late supper.

  “You do a lot of things well, don’t you?” I said.

  “Not really.”

  “Do you ride?”

  “I once did, but I had to give it up. Too expensive, you know. There was a little talk about my entering international competition, but it was only that. Talk. I also shoot and I once went in for a bit of amateur sports-car racing; I’ve sold a few paintings and even some rather stylish photographs. I’ve written a few reviews for The Observer. And I play the piano a little like Duchin and poker like a guppy.”

  I leaned back in the wooden chair and lit a cigarette.“You could really enjoy it, couldn’t you?” I said. “Being rich, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. Definitely. There are any number of splendidly expensive things that I have done and could still do, if I had the money. Although I do all of these other things rather well, I just can’t gamble. I don’t know why, but the more badly I play, the more I must. Simply must.”

  “I’ve known some who’ve quit,” I said. “Compulsive gamblers.”

  “Not ahead?”

  “No, not ahead. They’d lost it all.”

  “How were they? After they’d quit, I mean.”

  I thought about it. “Paler, I suppose. And quieter. Much quieter. It seemed as if they were listening for something.”

  Styles was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I thought it was all going to be so simple. I mean after they told me what the sword really was. I thought I was going to be enormously rich and that I would put most of it away somewhere so that I couldn’t touch it and live off the income. Live jolly well, too.”

  “Maybe you still can,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all grown so damned complicated. Tonight, for example.”

  “Tonight was simple,” I said. “I won a lot of money. Wes Cagle lost a lot. You dealt.”

  “Not that. It was when you showed him that half of a playing card. I didn’t think I should say anything then. I’m not sure why, but—” His voice trailed off.

  “But what?” I said.

  “Well, this,” he said. He brought out his wallet and flipped something onto the table. It was half of a playing card, half of a one-eyed jack of spades. He watched as I reached into my own wallet, took out the half I had, the half that I had lifted from the wallet of the dead Billy Curnutt, locksmith, and moved it across the table until its torn edge reached the other half. They fitted perfectly.

  “Where’d you get yours?” I said.

  Styles looked uncomfortable. “I’m not really sure that I should tell you.”

  “You’d better,” I said, “or Eddie Apex is going to be looking for a new go-between.”

  “I don’t understand it really,” he said. “You see, this torn card was given to me just after I was first approached by Apex and the Nitrys. It was just a few days after that, before the sword had even been stolen. I was flushed with how rich I was going to be, so I really didn’t think much of it. I suspect that I thought that it was all part of the romance and intrigue that seemed to envelop the entire thing.”

  “Who gave it to you?” I said.

  “It was given to me one afternoon—when we were alone. And the person who gave it to me said that if anything ever happened and the deal for the sword didn’t come off, and somebody simply tried to hand me
back the sword and advised me to go peddle it somewhere else, through legal channels, I suppose, I was not to do so. Not unless the matching half of this card was presented to me along with the sword.” He paused. “It was all—well, so melodramatic that I really didn’t pay much attention. But now you have the missing half. And I don’t understand.”

  “Who gave you the torn jack?” I said.

  He bit his lip and I don’t think he was much of a lip biter. “Well, it was Ceil. Ceil Apex. Eddie’s wife.”

  “She was the one then, wasn’t she?” I said. “The woman that you had to have that afternoon that Eddie Apex told you how rich you were going to be. It wasn’t a whore. It was Eddie Apex’s wife. That must have added a touch of titillation.”

  “It wasn’t that way. I’ve known Ceil for years. I knew her before she ever met Apex. We were very close, in fact, at one time. Very close, and then we just drifted apart—the way it happens. Then when we met at Apex’s, we both knew it was going to happen again. At least once, anyway. And when it did, she gave me the torn card and told me just what I’ve told you. But from the look on your face, I don’t think you believe me.”

  “That’s just another one of the reasons that you shouldn’t play poker,” I said.

  “Then you believe me?”

  “Yes, I believe you.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  I took my half of the jack and put it back in my wallet. “I’m going to give you some advice. You do exactly what Ceil Apex told you to do.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t accept the sword if they try to turn it back to me?”

  “Not unless the other half of that jack of spades goes with it.”

  “But you’ve got the other half.”

  “That’s what I mean,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE RINGING PHONE AWOKE me at eleven o’clock that morning and on the other end was the aged Apex butler, Jack, once known as Gentleman Jack Brooks, notorious jewel thief and scourge of the Riviera.

  “The pram cost fifty-two quid, sir,” the ex-scourge said.

  “You must have bought the best.”

  “Bottom of the luxury line at Harrods. That’s always the best buy, sir.”

  “You downstairs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have everything else?”

  “It’s all tucked into the pram.”

  “Well, you’d better come on up.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  The tea and toast that I ordered beat Jack to my room. I was just pouring a cup when he knocked at the door and wheeled in what may have been the fanciest baby buggy in London. It was a glistening black with a convertible top, big wire wheels with white rubber tires, and little round clear plastic windows so that its small occupant could look out at the trees when the top was up.

  Old Jack seemed proud of his selection so I said, “Very nice. Very nice indeed. Did they throw in a tape deck?”

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  “Why don’t you have some tea while I count the money?”

  “Thank you, sir. I wouldn’t mind a cup.”

  This time the money was in a large attaché case that was tucked up all nice and warm under a pale blue blanket. I took the case over to the top of the TV set, opened it, and counted the money. It was all there so I tucked it back up in the pram.

  “Everything all right, sir?”

  “It’s fine. Thanks very much, Jack.”

  “Oh. One more thing, sir. Mr. Ned asked me to give you this.”

  He reached into his pocket and brought out a large, round magnifying glass. “You forgot it the last time out,” he said.

  “So I did.” I took the glass and slipped it into my bathrobe pocket.

  “I was just thinking, sir, on the way over from Harrods. I could have used a gentleman in your line of work once. Old Tom and I were talking about it the way a couple of old lags will; no offense, sir.”

  “I’m flattered. You were one of the best. They never did tag you to that New Weston job you pulled in twenty-nine, did they?”

  The old man stiffened and then relaxed. Then he smiled and I decided that he must have had a lot of charm and style at one time. “There’s only one person that could have told you about that, sir.”

  I nodded. “Sammy Farro. I spent a couple of days with him after he got out of Dannemora in sixty-three.”

  “I didn’t even know he was inside. Old Sammy.”

  “He killed a man on Park Avenue in thirty-two. There was an emerald necklace that Sammy had his eye on. The man and his wife came home early, the man pulled a gun, there was a fight for it, and the man got shot. Danny got life. He did thirty years.”

  “The New Weston Hotel,” the old man said in a dreamy tone. “We made a proper haul that night.”

  “They tore it down,” I said.

  “How’d he look when he got out?”

  “Bad,” I said. “His mind was going, but he remembered you. He said some nice things about you.”

  “Oh, he was a smooth one, Sammy was. Is he still about?”

  “He died a year after he got out,” I said. “Alone in a room. They didn’t find him for a week.”

  The old man put his tea down and rose. “Too bad you weren’t around back then, sir. We might have done some business.”

  “We might have at that,” I said.

  After Gentleman Jack Brooks left, I had room service bring up a typewriter. I sat before it in my bathrobe, unshaved and unwashed, and typed steadily for three hours, much like a suicide who never gets around to killing himself because he keeps thinking up new and compelling reasons why he should. I filled nearly ten pages of Hilton stationery and put them into an envelope that I addressed to Myron Greene. I wrote air mail and par avion all over it, mixed a weak whisky and water, and sat there in my bathrobe, thinking about whether what I had written made any sense. I thought about that until it was time to get dressed and go buy back the Sword of St. Louis.

  At twenty minutes to three I was pushing a baby buggy containing an attaché case stuffed with £100,000 east on Mount Street toward South Audley Street wondering if, at thirty-eight, I really deserved all those smiles and encouraging nods that came my way.

  I dawdled along, arriving at the park at five minutes to three. It was a nice little park with a large iron gate that made it look as if it should be forbidden to the public, but it wasn’t. It was shaped like a pot with the handle tapering off east toward Berkeley Square. It had always had a soothing effect on me and I had used it, years ago, as a place to compose myself after a fight with my ex-wife. I had got to know it rather well, there toward the end.

  They had her dressed up as a nanny, sitting on the bench that she was supposed to be sitting on, the one that had been donated by the American woman out of gratitude for having been allowed to sit in a public park. The dressed-up nanny’s pram, I noticed with a twinge of envy, was bigger than mine, but it would have to be, if it were to hold a sword whose blade was thirty-four-and-a-half inches long.

  Her head was turned, but when I pulled up beside her she looked at me and although somebody had dressed her up as a nanny, she didn’t look much like one, unless it was the nanny in a blue movie I had once seen. She still wore too much green eyeshadow and I don’t think that she had washed her face since I had first seen her, which was when she had opened the door of Tick-Tock Tamil’s establishment in Paddington.

  “Hello, love,” I said. “Is the poor little tyke over his cold yet?”

  “You’re not clever,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “In a case under a blanket to keep warm.”

  The two prams were drawn up side by side. She rose and moved over to mine, bending from the waist as if to peer in at its darling occupant. “Don’t try nothing,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” I said and bent over the pram. I pulled back a blanket, a pink one this time, and there it lay, wedged in at an angle. It didn’t look like a million pounds or so, but I
was no judge. I heard a click then and I looked down. An open switchblade knife was in the girl’s right hand.

  “Don’t try nothing,” she said again.

  “All you have to do is count up to a hundred,” I said. “If you can’t go that high, I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Clever bastard,” she said and went on counting the £1,000 packets.

  I took the magnifying glass from my jacket pocket and examined the hilt just below the pommel. There were two tiny scratches there all right, shaped like the letters NN. I took the Polaroid shots from my pocket and compared them with the sword that lay in the baby buggy. They duplicated it in every detail.

  I straightened up. “Okay,” I said. “I’m satisfied.”

  She snapped the lid closed on the attaché case with her left hand and drew the blue blanket over it. Her right hand still held the switch blade. “I go first,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said, my eyes on the knife. “I just noticed something though.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got rubber baby buggy bumpers.”

  “You’re balmy, you are.”

  “No,” I said, my mouth and throat suddenly dry. “I just wanted to see if I could say it.”

  She backed slowly away from me, one hand pulling the £52 pride of Harrods, the other holding the open knife down by her side in the folds of her dress that wasn’t quite a uniform. When she was about five yards away, she closed the knife and dropped it into the pram. She stared at me for a moment, as if to make sure that I wasn’t going to try something tricky. Then she turned the pram around and walked east, pushing her £100,000 toward Berkeley Square.

  “Tell Tick-Tock I said hello,” I called after her, but she didn’t respond, she just kept on walking, her hips swaying a trifle too much for a nanny. Not too much for a Swedish au pair maybe, but too much for a proper nanny. I turned and pushed my pram toward South Audley Street, crossed the street, and moved on to Number 57 where the gray Rolls with old Tom at the wheel was waiting in front of Purdey, the gunsmith. I wrapped the sword up in the pink baby blanket as well as I could and climbed into the rear seat, leaving the pram at the curb.