Highbinders

by Ross Thomas

  The cops got there first. They always do.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THEY DIDN’T EXACTLY DEPORT me. After asking me questions for two days, and not believing half the answers I gave, they mentioned that it might be nice if I were to go on out to Heathrow and catch the next Pan Am flight to New York.

  Furthermore, to make sure that I had no trouble finding the airport, they were sending their man Deskins along as guide.

  I think William Deskins was the only man in Scotland Yard who believed me. He had sat in on some of the questioning and after that he had conducted his own investigation based partly on the answers that I had given. Now over a drink at the airport he was brooding about some of the questions that still remained unanswered.

  “The Nitry brothers had almost never heard of you,” he said. “You were a friend of their late son-in-law who dropped by for tea a time or two, but they weren’t really sure what line of business you were in.”

  “And Ceil?” I said.

  “Well, according to Ned Nitry, his daughter was so overcome by her husband’s death that she had to go abroad for her health and he wasn’t really quite sure what country she was visiting, although he expected a postcard any day now and as soon as it arrived, he’d let me know. And good God, no, they didn’t know shit about any ancient sword. They’d never heard of it. Furthermore, they weren’t interested.”

  “What about old Tom and Gentleman Jack Brooks? You get anything out of them?”

  He shook his head. “Those two old lags? Old Jack went senile on me. He’s about as senile as you are. Tom said he was driving his governor along Waterloo Bridge when they spotted this altercation. That’s what Tom calls it. Altercation. The governor jumped out to see if he could be of assistance, and the next thing he knows he’s stabbed by this American chap which only goes to prove, Tom says, that one should never step into a fight between foreigners.”

  Deskins was silent for a while as he rubbed his thrusting chin. “Doctor Christenberry,” he said finally. “I went to see him, too.”

  “Is he still hungry?”

  “You know what he was doing when I called in? He was sitting there in front of a brand new color telly with the biggest box of chocolates I’ve ever seen, cramming them into his mouth, and giggling and laughing at this children’s program. It was an American program, too. I didn’t understand it. There were a lot of strange-looking puppets.”

  “‘Sesame Street’?” I said.

  “What?”

  “The name of the program. Was it ‘Sesame Street’?”

  “I remember it was some kind of a street. It looked like a slum. But Christenberry was har-har-haring away at it. He wouldn’t turn it off either.”

  “What did he say?”

  Deskins sighed. “He said what his solicitor had told him to say. He said he had been engaged to consult the late Mr. Apex on a matter of a highly confidential nature, which he could not reveal without the permission of Mr. Apex or his heirs. Well, Eddie Apex’s heir is his wife.”

  “That sounds weak,” I said.

  “It is, but he’s seventy-six years old and God knows what his heart would stand. So what do you want us to do, take him downtown and punch him around a bit until he talks? Besides, I don’t think he would tell us anything that you haven’t already told us.”

  “Well, good luck to you,” I said.

  Deskins nodded. “I wonder where it really is?”

  “What, the hundred thousand pounds that the Nitrys paid to ransom that fake sword?”

  “Oh, she’s got that. Tick-Tock’s blond bint that you told us about has got that money all right.”

  “No trace of her though?”

  “We don’t even know who she is. Tick-Tock changed his women the way you’d change your sheets. All we know is that she’s blond and young and wears too much green eye shadow. There can’t be more than a million of them like that in London.”

  Deskins looked down at his drink and then up at me. “Which one do you think it was?”

  “Which one what?”

  “Which sword do you think it was that you chucked into the river, the real one?”

  I grinned at him. “It’s got you, hasn’t it? You’re hooked. You really think there were three swords, the real one and two fakes.”

  “You got it from the lips of a dying man, St. Ives.”

  “I got it from the lips of a man who’d forgotten how to tell the truth. Eddie Apex wasn’t comfortable with the truth and I think he wanted to die comfortably and one last con would help.”

  Deskins shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it. He could have used a second fake sword. It would have fitted right in.”

  “How?”

  “All right, I’ll tell you.” He paused to take a swallow of his drink. “Wes Cagle was the one who set it all up to begin with, right?”

  “He introduced Robin Styles to Eddie.”

  “And you think Cagle bowed out after that?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “They had to pay that lad, Robin Styles, fifty thousand pounds, didn’t they?”

  “That’s what Styles told me. The Nitry brothers backed him for that much at the tables.”

  “And he was unlucky?”

  “He wasn’t just unlucky. He was a lousy poker player.”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” Deskins said.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. You leaned on somebody at Shields, did you?”

  Deskins nodded. “A couple of the dealers that I’ve had a little trouble with before and who’re in my debt. They had their orders. They were to take young Styles for fifty thousand as quick as they could. It wasn’t hard. He didn’t play poker too well, as you say.”

  “So where does the second faked sword fit in?”

  “If it had been me, I would have used it to keep Cagle happy. They needed to steal the sword in the first place to make a single copy. Then they were going to return the real sword to the Nitry brothers for the one-hundred-thousand-pound ransom. After that, Eddie would switch the real sword for a faked one. Now guess who was supposed to keep the real sword until it was sold?”

  “Cagle,” I said.

  “Right. So Eddie and his wife planned to pull a double switch. They would hand over to Cagle the second faked sword, keeping the real one for themselves. Except that Eddie’s wife, if what you say is true, decided to cross her husband. She went to old Billy Curnutt with that torn jack and her story about how Curnutt shouldn’t hand over the sword to anybody except the proper Christian who had the other half of the torn playing card.”

  “The one that Robin Styles had,” I said.

  Deskins reached into his pocket and brought out a torn card, half of a one-eyed jack of spades. “They found this on Tick-Tock’s body. They didn’t know what it was so they turned it over to me.”

  “You mean Ceil Apex was in with Tick-Tock? I don’t believe it.”

  “She was out to get that sword for herself. She tore two one-eyed jacks, gave one-half to Styles and one-half to Tick-Tock and one-half to Billy Curnutt. I think Tick-Tock was the Christian, as you say, who got to Curnutt first and got the real sword.”

  “Then what was he doing there that night?”

  “He needed the faked sword. He knew that there were two of them and he needed one to turn over to Ceil Apex.”

  “And he thought she’d think it was real?”

  “Long enough for Tick-Tock to disappear with the real one. That’s all he needed. Maybe six hours.”

  “So where’s the sword? I mean the real one?”

  The look that came into Deskins’ eyes was dreamy. “Somewhere in Paddington,” he said. “We don’t know where Tick-Tock went after he left that place of his where you found him. But it’s someplace in Paddington. He never lived anywhere else. Cheap lodgings, probably, maybe even two or three to a room. You know how those coloreds are.”

  “And that’s where you think the real sword is, huh?”

  Deskins didn’t try to disgu
ise it anymore. I don’t think he could have, even if he had wanted to. The greed spread across his face and settled down in his eyes. “It’ll turn up,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Perhaps in Shaftesbury Avenue. Perhaps in the Fulham Road. Perhaps one of those wogs will need some cash one Saturday and flog it down on Shaftesbury Avenue for a quid or two.”

  “And you’ve got a new hobby, haven’t you?” I said. “Sword collecting.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’ve got a new hobby.”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and took them out and handed them to Deskins. “Here,” I said. “These’ll help with your new hobby.” They were the Polaroid shots of the Sword of St. Louis that Ned Nitry had given me.

  He stared at the color photographs and licked his thin lips twice. “So that’s what it looks like?” he said. “That’s what three million quid worth of old sword looks like.”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “You don’t believe it, do you? You don’t believe that it’ll turn up?”

  “No. I don’t. I believe that it’s at the bottom of the Thames in about ten feet of muck. Maybe twenty.”

  Deskins shook his head. “It’ll turn up. It’ll turn up one of these days.”

  “On Shaftesbury Avenue,” I said.

  “That’s right. On Shaftesbury Avenue.”

  They called my flight then and Deskins stuck out his hand and I shook it. “Well, good luck, St. Ives.”

  “Pleasant dreams,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  EDDIE, THE ADELPHI APARTMENT-HOTEL’S bell captain, greeted me warmly. “Where you been?”

  “London,” I said.

  “Whadja wanta go there for?”

  “To look at the Queen.”

  “Yeah, well, that lawyer of yours got here earlier, so I let him into your place. I don’t figure he’ll steal nothing.”

  “Not enough to worry about anyway.”

  Myron Greene had lunch ready, all spread out on the poker table. I was touched. He had bought some Filipino beer that I like, some thick roast beef sandwiches, potato salad, and even some Polish dills. “What’s the occasion?” I said.

  “It’s May nineteenth.”

  “What’s May nineteenth?”

  “It’s the feast day of St. Ives.”

  “I didn’t know you were Catholic, Myron. You don’t much look it.”

  “He’s the patron saint of lawyers.”

  “I didn’t know that”

  “His emblem is the cat.”

  “I didn’t know that either. And I don’t think you did until you looked it up.”

  “My secretary looked it up actually,” Myron Greene said, pouring himself some beer. “After I got that letter of yours, I had her look up St. Louis and while she was at it, I decided to find out about St. Ives.”

  “Well, thanks for the feast day.”

  “St. Louis was real enough,” Greene said, “but according to a friend of mine at the Metropolitan Museum, his sword is nothing but rumor.”

  I tried the sandwich. It was excellent. “Well, tell your friend that three million pounds’ worth of rumor is lying at the bottom of the Thames. That’s just my opinion though. Somebody else thinks it’s going to turn up any Saturday now in a secondhand store on Shaftesbury Avenue.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me about the rest of it,” Myron Greene said. “About what happened after you wrote me that letter.”

  So I told him and when I was through, he said, “Well, you won nearly as much as your fee would have been. I didn’t know you played poker quite that well.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I was betting a cinch hand. That’s not real poker because you’re not gambling anymore. It’s a form of licensed stealing, something like an insurance company. But it’s free money, isn’t it? The tax people don’t have to know about it?”

  Myron Greene sighed. “Hand it over, will you? Yesterday I got a call from our friend at the IRS. It seems that Inland Revenue in London has gone to a great deal of trouble to notify Washington of just how much you won. Our friend at IRS thought we’d like to know.”

  “It really does go with death, doesn’t it?” I said. “Taxes, I mean.”

  Myron Greene shifted in his chair and looked uncomfortable, the way that he always looks when he thinks that I’m going to try to say something profound. “What were you going to do with the money?” he said. “I mean the money that you weren’t going to tell the tax people about?”

  “I was going to spend it,” I said.

  “How?”

  “I had this fantasy coming back on the plane. I always have fantasies on planes. There’s this guy out in Vegas who calls himself Amarillo Slim and is supposed to be the world’s champion poker player. Well, in this fantasy I was going to take the money and fly out to Vegas and challenge him for the title.”

  “That’s a good fantasy,” Myron Greene said.

  “There was only one thing wrong. I couldn’t think of what to call myself. I needed something snappy and halfway sinister like Amarillo Slim.”

  “How about Philosophical Phil?” Myron Greene said.

  I told him I would have to think about it.

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  copyright © 1974 by William Morrow & Company, Inc.

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