Thankfully, more powerful engines had been developed (No, perfected, Dev! Perfected!), engines that could deliver enough thrust to get an all-metal structure off the ground. Modern aircraft like the DC-2 can also fly at much higher altitudes, allowing for a far smoother flight (even if they’re now several thousand times heavier than any bird). At least that’s what the articles said.
I barely had time to glance around at the other dozen passengers (mostly men) when the engines fired, the props made contact, and we were hurtling down the landing strip faster than I’d ever gone before. Pressed back against my seat, I was overwhelmed by the sheer power of the ship, and suddenly we were airborne. I looked out the window and fixed on Liberty Memorial, an intimidating tower that was now a scout camp totem pole and, half a minute later, a spike in the ground. The articles didn’t lie about the smoothness, at least – the DC-2 was a far cry from those rickety flying stagecoaches I’d traveled in for Pinkerton’s. Once we leveled off and I got tired of staring out the window, I went back to my papers and magazines, relaxing in my seat and all but forgetting that I was thousands of feet above the earth inside a six-ton metal tube.
After various stops for refueling and to let off passengers and take on new ones, we touched down at Logan Field a little after eleven that night. I paused on the tarmac to stretch my back and swing my arms a bit, breathing in the humid night air and feeling the grime of extended travel. A couple of porters were loading our luggage onto a wheeled cart. I pointed out my suitcase to one of them, handed him a dollar, and carried it inside the terminal building. It took me only a few seconds to spot the tall, slender, fair-haired man among the crowd of welcomers. He saw me walking toward him a few seconds later and stepped out in front with his businessman’s handshake and his banker’s smile.
“Hello, Dev. Welcome to Baltimore.”
“Hello, Nathan. How’s the family?”
“All doing great. They’re eager to see you.”
We pumped up the chatter a little in an effort to cover the awkwardness. We hadn’t spoken in five years, and it takes more than a little glad-handing to offset that. Still, I was suddenly glad I’d come. Nathan was the only family I had left. He’d clasped my forearm briefly with his other hand while we shook – a rare gesture of intimacy for him.
“How was the trip out?” he asked. “Can I help you with your suitcase?”
“No thanks, I’ve got it. And the trip was fine.”
“Well, then…” he smoothed his hands down the sides of his trousers. “I’m parked just outside.” I followed him out to a maroon-colored Hudson sedan – this year’s model and damned roomy. I wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it stately, but certainly dignified, and carrying the unmistakable message that the man who drove it was doing all right for himself.
“Nice set of wheels,” I commented.
“You like it? I made the purchase after my promotion came through. Did I tell you they promoted me to–”
“Yes, Nathan, you told me.” I threw my suitcase into the open trunk and he closed the lid, looking up at me with an embarrassed smile. The smile disappeared and he gave me a sober nod.
“Thank you for coming, Dev.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Whatever exactly “it” turns out to be, I thought.
Conversation was sporadic during the thirty-minute drive to his house. I didn’t try any harder than he did; I knew Nathan preferred to concentrate on his driving, especially at night. I sat back and tried to pick out the few landmarks I remembered. Baltimore wasn’t my town and I’d barely spent any time here. I did catch sight of the Bromo-Seltzer Tower, the face of the clock lit up against the night sky. I answered the occasional, perfunctory question with drab, colorless answers, telling myself I didn’t want to take Nathan’s mind off the traffic, but maybe I just wanted to make him work harder. He didn’t disappoint. We hadn’t been on the road ten minutes when he started in about Kansas City and how did I manage to live in such a lawless, wide-open place like that? Robberies, murders, and what-all going on practically every day? I could picture him scouring the morning paper looking for such tidbits, nodding soberly and filing them away for whenever he might see me. I tried to assure him it really wasn’t that bad. There were hardly any Indian attacks these days, maybe one or two a year tops. And those were taken care of pretty handily by the armies of mobsters who walked around carrying Tommy guns in broad daylight. Nathan probably wasn’t any surer of how much of a put-on my answers were than I was about how much of a put-on some of his questions were, but neither of us tried narrowing it down.
We entered a nice neighborhood with wide streets and well-kept lawns. Nathan pulled into the driveway of a good-looking, two-story brick house. I got out, helped him with the garage door, fetched my suitcase out of the trunk, and followed him through the backyard gate, down a stone path that led to a cheery back porch. The kitchen light was on and I could see a woman’s silhouette through the window shade.
“Look what I found at the airport!” Nathan held the back door open for me and I stepped inside. Marie, wearing a snug, green robe over silk pajamas, walked forward and gave me a welcoming hug. Over her shoulder I could see a small platter of quarter-cut sandwiches and a pot of coffee on the kitchen table.
“Devlin, we’re do glad you could come!” She kept her voice low as her husband had done; the children would be asleep upstairs. I’d only met Marie a few times, the last being at the funeral five years ago. She hadn’t aged a day. Same pretty, oval face (she hadn’t taken her makeup off yet), same shoulder-length auburn hair, same taste in clothes even if it was just lounging wear. The woman kept herself and her house up, no question. She looked up at me, five-foot-five in her slippers, and asked if I was hungry.
“Matter of fact, I am, Marie. Thank you.”
I put my suitcase in the corner and we sat around the table. Marie poured coffee (“Dev takes his black, honey,” Nathan reminded her) as I helped myself to a few of the sandwiches. Marie ate one or two to be sociable and Nathan ate one or two because his wife told him to, complaining that he hadn’t been eating enough lately. We chatted awhile, Marie being a particularly solicitous hostess considering the hour. Whether it was because I was family or because she thought I might be able to help her husband out of a jam, I wasn’t sure, but she kept the conversation just lively and genuine enough without it feeling forced, and that’s a rare gift.
After the meal, Nathan fetched his pipe from the den and invited me out onto the back porch for a smoke while Marie cleared the table. My brother and I sat in the light from the kitchen window (the porch light would draw moths, Nathan explained). He got his pipe going and I helped myself to a cigarette from my case. I noticed the pipe was one of Dad’s old briars, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why it peeved me to see Nathan smoking it. I’d never even been a pipe man.
“Well,” Nathan began, “as I mentioned on the telephone last night, I’m facing some serious difficulty at the bank.” He drew at the briar, trying to figure out how he wanted to explain it all.
“You hinted at embezzlement,” I said quietly, trying to help get him started.
“I’m fairly certain that’s what it is, all right.”
“How much money are we talking here?”
“Approximately one hundred forty thousand dollars.” I dutifully filled the dramatic pause Nathan offered with a low whistle.
“When did you notice the money was missing?” I asked.
“Well, that’s just it. It’s not, strictly speaking, missing. The funds are all accounted for, just not as they should be.”
I was starting to feel tired from the trip, especially now that my belly was nice and full. I wouldn’t make it through one of Nathan’s professorial discourses.
“Nathan, you’ve lost me already. I told you, I don’t know much about banking. I want to help if I can, but can you put this into a few simple sentences an outsider might follow?”
He took a pull at Dad’s pipe and did a fairly good job o
f summing up. Last Friday he was reviewing his files, same as he does every month. Going through loan applications, approvals, payments, balance sheets, what have you. He came across a signatory on one of the processed loans that he didn’t remember seeing before, didn’t even recognize. He couldn’t locate any collaborating documents for this loan, nor for two other such loans he came across also bearing the names of unfamiliar signatories. He was also certain that paperwork was missing from some of the other loans, but when he ran his checks, everything on those loans balanced perfectly.
Nathan discreetly attempted to find out more about the borrowers for the three mystery loans, calling telephone exchanges that didn’t match up and trying to verify addresses that likewise didn’t. Next, he called up the three different banks holding the accounts to which the loan checks had been deposited. In each case, the account had been closed and the money taken out immediately after the deposited loan checks cleared, no forwarding address left by the customer. Evidently, $140,000 had been loaned out to three small businesses, none of which actually existed.
“Sounds like somebody set this up good,” I said, fishing for another cigarette. “But why do you suspect embezzlement? Your bank couldn’t simply have been defrauded by whomever it was?”
Nathan shook his head stubbornly. “I left out details, but suffice it to say that someone in the banking industry, well-acquainted with how we do things, had to have arranged all this. More specifically, it had to have been someone well-acquainted with how my department does things.”
“Who have you told about this?”
“You. Marie knows I’m having some problem at work, but you’re the only one I’ve elaborated to.”
“You don’t think maybe you should report this to your superiors?” I asked. “Sounds like a pretty big damned deal.”
My brother frowned, clearly conflicted on this point. Normally, he was a by-the-rules man in everything he did; he’d be the first to go racing into the boss’ office if someone forgot to put a period after a middle initial.
“I can’t just go marching into the president’s office and drop this on his desk, Dev. I just can’t. He’d have a dozen questions and I couldn’t answer any of them. It would look bad. At the very least, I’d appear incompetent, not able to keep tabs on the goings on in my own department. At the worst…”
Yes, this was the Nathan I knew. Righteous and rigid, until the moment when following the rules meant he might lose his promotion, might have to trade in that shiny new car for last year’s DeSoto. No…not like that at all, I told myself. I was tired and probably a little concerned about not being able to do anything to help. Yes, Nathan could be a bit of a prig, but he had grit where it counted. If he made a mistake, he’d own up to it whatever the consequences. And yes, he liked his nice house and nice car and nice wife…that was it, I realized. Living alone, without family, you forget how much people worry when a wife and kids are involved. If he was unmarried, Nathan probably would have gone right to his boss last Friday.
“And you think whoever did this set you up to take the fall for it?”
“I do,” Nathan said. “For two reasons. One, it happened in my department.”
“And the second?”
He drew on his pipe, realized it had gone out. He looked up at me.
“Each of the three loan documents has my signature forged on it.”
I woke early the next morning, looking around at strange furniture and trying to place my surroundings before I remembered: the guest room in my brother’s house. I could hear Marie and the children downstairs in the kitchen. I grabbed my shaving kit and walked quickly across the hall to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed up to my vest, I went down the stairs, my stomach tightening in anticipation at the smell of bacon and eggs. A nine-year-old boy seated at the kitchen table, blonde and blue-eyed like his father, was the first to see me.
“Mom, he’s up!” He shouted toward the stove. Marie turned her head over one shoulder, spatula working the skillet.
“I’m right here, Billy, you don’t need to raise your voice.” She smiled up at me. “Good morning. I didn’t expect you up so early after your long trip yesterday. Ready for some breakfast?” I’d seen this woman twice in the last eight hours and both times she’d offered me food. I decided I liked her.
“Yes, ma’am.” I took an empty chair between the boy and his sister, six years old and dark-haired with her mother’s eyes, dressed in a girl’s version of the school uniform her brother wore.
“How do you like your eggs?” Marie wanted to know.
“However you’re fixing them.”
“You’re easy,” she laughed. “Help yourself to some coffee. There’s orange juice in the refrigerator.”
“You’re my Uncle Devlin,” the boy observed.
“And you’re my nephew Billy.”
“I’m your nephew Mary,” the little girl said.
“You’re his niece, stupid,” Billy corrected.
“Billy, watch your mouth,” his mother warned. She gave him a look for half a second and went back to scrambling the eggs. Billy sulked while Mary brightened.
“I’m afraid Nathan’s already left for work,” Marie said. I told her Nathan and I had agreed I would meet him at the bank later.
“Are you really a detective?” Billy asked.
“I really am.”
“Do you carry a gun?”
“Not usually.”
“But you do sometimes?”
“I do sometimes.”
“Have you ever shot anyone with it?”
“Billy!” This time Marie’s look was a glare, and it lasted considerably longer than half a second.
“What do you know about detectives, Billy?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen ’em in movies,” he said, watching his mother’s back carefully. “They’re always shooting people,” he added in whisper.
“And roughing people up!” Mary chimed in, most of her attention on a triangle of cinnamon toast but eager to show off her own knowledge of the rough-and-tumble life of a movie detective.
“Well, that’s just the movies,” I told them. “What I do mostly is try to help people with problems. Maybe find other people or lost items.”
“Like buried treasure?” asked Mary. Billy looked ready to insult her again but waited for my answer. His sister could be right.
“More like important papers that get lost or misplaced.”
“Like secret codes?” Billy asked.
“Oh, sometimes maybe.”
“Breakfast!” Marie called out firmly, walking around to each of us as she scooped out eggs, bacon, and hash browned potatoes onto our plates. “And you children let your Uncle Devlin eat his in peace.” She filled her own plate, put the skillet back on the stove, took her place at the table, and said grace for all of us. The food tasted as good as it smelled and I said so. After breakfast, the kids got their books together, Billy rolling his eyes as his mother helped Mary with her shoelace. I guessed Billy walked his sister to school and wasn’t exactly crazy about it. I offered to help with the dishes, but Marie told me no and I know enough not to argue with a woman in her own kitchen. I used the telephone to call a taxi, then went upstairs for my suit jacket and hat. The taxi arrived and Marie saw me to the door.
“I really am glad you came, Devlin. I know Nathan is having some real trouble at the bank. He doesn’t say much, but I’ve never seen him so distracted.” She looked up at me questioningly, and I felt I had to say something.
“We talked a little last night on the porch,” I told her.
“Is it bad? Is he in trouble?”
“I don’t really know enough about banking to be sure,” I lied, laughing lightly. She didn’t smile. “I’m hoping to find out more this morning, though.”
“Please help him if you can, Devlin.”
“I’ll do everything I can, Marie.” And that wasn’t a lie.
I had the taxi drive me around for awhile, e
xplaining that I was from out of town and wanted to get the lay of the land. You can’t shut most cabbies up with a gun. Give them free license to talk about their cities, and details will rain down on you like a monsoon. We were driving through an area the cabbie had identified as Wyman Park, not far from Johns Hopkins University, when an interesting statue caught my eye. I had the cabbie pull over and keep the engine running while I stepped out to admire it.
It was a life-sized statue of a man seated in a chair atop a stone pedestal. The man was dressed in nineteenth-century garb, including a long coat that fell down past his knees. The left hand was raised (in supplication?) and the head was down in a pained expression of foreboding. I stepped closer and read the inscription at the base: “Dreaming Dreams no Mortal Ever Dared to Dream Before.” Brother, you can say that again, I thought, once I learned the man was Edgar Allan Poe. I’d read some of his stories as a kid and a couple had given me nightmares.
I looked at my watch, got back in the taxi, and had the driver drop me off a few blocks from Nathan’s bank, thanking him for the personal tour.
“Any time, buddy,” he said, eyeing the tip I gave him. “Say, if you really wanna learn about–”
“I really do, buddy, but I’m running late. Got to see a man about a loan. Catch you next time.” I patted the flat of my hand twice on the roof of the taxi and headed down the street.
Two blocks later, I came to a three-story corner building of beautifully cut stone, fitted double doors under a stone-block arch. In the recess of the arch on one side, a blackened bronze plaque – the unblackened letters standing out in sharp relief – proclaimed: “Beldham & Morrissey, Bankers of Baltimore, est. 1837”. Inside was an impressive-looking lobby in marble and dark wood. Sleeve-gartered tellers worked efficiently behind a high counter, and a scattering of men sat at desks behind a wooden railing. An open brass gate toward the rear showed the vault, its heavy steel door open for business. I didn’t make immediately for the tellers, and the first person to notice me was a tall blonde man who’d been standing near one of the desks, talking with another man behind it. The blonde man excused himself and stepped out from behind the railing to greet me.
A Shared Confidence Page 7