“Irish, was she?”
“And proud of it.”
“And your father?”
“English.”
“Charitable woman, your mother was.”
“That’s how she saw it.” He smiled a bit brighter, told me he guessed that no real harm had been done, advised me to show some sense from now on (“What would yer dear mother say, watchin’ from heaven and seein’ you get yer fool self run over in the street?”), and let me go. I tipped my hat and ambled down the sidewalk without a backward glance at the door with the tiny sign on it. The money was well and truly gone.
I grabbed a bite of lunch before returning to my hotel, where no less than four messages from Nathan were waiting for me. I sighed, walked over to the house phone, and dialed.
“I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” Nathan complained. “Both Myers and Wiedermann left the office right after they came in this morning.”
“They tell you where they were going?”
“Apparently there was some Chamber of Commerce meeting they needed to attend. It sounded suspicious to me, because neither of them had mentioned it to me before.” My brother, the detective.
“How did they seem when they came back?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“All smiles and good cheer? Practically walking on air?”
“Now that you mention it, yes.”
“That won’t last.”
“What do you mean? Have you seen them?”
“Saw them both this morning, and they weren’t at any Chamber of Commerce meeting.”
“I knew it!” Nathan sounded pleased with himself. That wouldn’t last either. “So where did they go?”
“Not over the telephone. Nathan, let’s you and I have dinner downtown tonight, just the two of us. Can you call Marie and let her know?”
“Sure.” He gave me a time and place.
“Make sure it’s a place where you can get a drink, Nathan. You’re going to need one.”
My brother is a patient listener, I’ll give him that. We hadn’t talked since Sunday, and I took him through the whole story in detail. The report I received from Townsend, seeing Stanton with Myers and Wiedermann at the restaurant last night, bribing the waiter after hours, a highly condensed version of Ethan Ryland’s tale, and the whole fiasco this morning – right up to the cop stopping me on the sidewalk. He sat in silence all through dinner, not once interrupting me, his face showing nothing but the polite interest he might have shown one of his customers at the bank. It started to unnerve me a bit. Was he going into shock or was he just not following any of this?
The plates were cleared and Nathan nodded politely to the waiter, indicating he, too, would have coffee to go with his brandy and seltzer.
“Dev, I have a few questions I’d like to ask.” It was his banker’s tone; apparently my collateral was looking a little shaky.
“Shoot.”
“Did you manage to verify somehow that the Clay Stanton you saw at the restaurant last night is the same Clay Stanton your client – Ryland, was it? – that he mentioned?”
“Apart from the description, that he works in Baltimore, and that he advises people to make investments at a phony brokerage firm, no.”
“Baltimore’s a big city, you know. It has a fair-sized population.” Another cow-town crack about Kansas City. I was starting to get a little sick of those. Nathan continued: “And did you manage to verify that this brokerage office you saw today was definitely not legitimate?”
“I didn’t go inside to trade any stock if that’s what you mean.” If I’d tried, Nathan would be posting my bail right about now.
“And I don’t suppose you actually looked in the valise to see if it was filled with money?”
“Yes, yes, Nathan, I did. I asked them real nice-like and they dumped it all out on the sidewalk for me. The three of us sat down on the curb together and counted it. Thank God it wasn’t windy.” Now I was really starting to get steamed. I’d taken time off work, flown all the way out here, done everything I could to try and help, had my initial advice ignored, and tried my best to head off an even bigger disaster. And Nathan had the gall to start talking down to me? Asking me chump questions like I was some school kid lying about his homework? I thought about walking out of the restaurant, sticking him with the bill, and heading right back to K.C. I took a sip of brandy and waited for him to push me over the edge.
“Dev,” Nathan put up a patient, condescending hand, “I’m just saying that it seems all you have here is conjecture. We don’t even know for a fact that Myers and Wiedermann are involved in the disappearance of the money.”
“Then why did they sell you that hooey about the Chamber of Commerce meeting this morning?”
“I’ll certainly speak to them about that tomorrow,” he said firmly. “But maybe they just got hold of a good stock tip and wanted to make an investment on their own. It was wrong of them to leave work to do it, yes, but that doesn’t make them embezzlers, and it certainly doesn’t make them victims of a confidence scheme.”
I sat there almost wanting to laugh, marveling over how my brother’s mind works. Why no, Waiter, we don’t know for a fact that this is food you’ve just served me. All we really know is that it’s a warm, pleasant-smelling substance served on a plate at a restaurant. Let’s not go drawing any wild conclusions now.
“I did mention,” I began patiently, “that the spotter put a cop on me the second I crossed the street? That this cop was on me like gravy on biscuits the instant I tried to talk to Myers and Wiedermann?”
“You were breaking the law,” Nathan answered, his face showing amused bewilderment. “You jaywalked. In front of a policeman, no less. Did you expect him to let you finish your shopping, wait for the right moment to approach you about it? And this spotter, did you even talk with him? He could have been anybody.” There are people who have an answer for everything. More often than not, they’re the kind of people who’ve already made up their minds what the facts are, and long before hearing any of them.
“I’m sorry, Dev,” he went on, “but this whole confidence setup you’re talking about…dozens of men using phony offices and bringing in one victim after another in broad daylight, and no one nearby notices any of this…it doesn’t strike you as a little fanciful?” It’s too bad Marie doesn’t let him smoke cigars, I thought; one would have gone well with the brandy in his hand and the self-satisfied look on his mug.
What Nathan didn’t understand, what most people don’t, is that cities are like mazes: you only see the part you’re looking at every day. And because of that, you forget there are other parts. You may not even be aware of them to begin with. Church-going grandmothers never see the back alley crap games at midnight. Cat burglars never sit in on troop meetings of local boy scouts. Soda jerks don’t watch the county coroner cut open a dead body on a sunny, Tuesday morning. Nobody sees all the levels, all the layers, all the nooks and crannies, even if a few of us see more than most. But that doesn’t make the parts you don’t see any less real.
I had an idea. “Tell you what, Nathan. First off, don’t say anything to Myers and Wiedermann about them missing work today. Give it at least one more day. Promise me that, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Second, check out First Quality Investors tomorrow on Chase Street. Make some calls if you want. Better yet, go down there yourself. Walk in and buy some stock, something small. If you can manage this, it proves the joint is on the up and up, and I’ll admit I’ve manufactured this whole scenario and we’ll start from scratch. Fair enough?”
Nathan’s eyes glittered at the chance to make of fool of me over this.
“Fair enough.”
I didn’t fly back to Kansas City that night. I settled for sticking him with the bill.
Nathan was singing a different tune the next afternoon. Christ, he was sitting in with a whole different orchestra! The trip to Baltimore paid for itself at 1:35 pm on Wednesday, April 3rd, 1935. As long as
I live, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the image of Nathan standing at the sergeant’s desk at the local police station after I’d just posted his bond.
I’ve seen my brother’s indignation more times than I can count, seen him self-righteously lousy with it. But at that moment, I could have lit a cigarette off the back of his neck. I didn’t say a word until we were outside and all the way to my rented car.
“Nathan, when you telegrammed and asked me to fly out here to bail you out of some trouble, I never thought–”
“This is an outrage!” he exploded. “I am a respected member of this community! A vice president at one of the oldest financial institutions in Baltimore! A law-abiding citizen, taken into custody like a common criminal!” Why was I not surprised he worked his position at Beldham & Morrissey into his tirade?
“A little louder, Nathan. One of the shopkeepers might be snoozing in the back room.”
He whipped his to the left and right, mortified, then lowered his voice and hissed at me over the roof of the Terraplane.
“Somebody is going to pay for this! I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t care who I have to go to! I will clear my good name if it takes the rest of my days on earth!”
“Get in the car, Nathan.”
I settled in behind the wheel, wincing as Nathan slammed his door shut. I pressed the starter and pulled into traffic, casually asking: “So what was the charge?”
“Disturbing the peace.” He answered, biting off each syllable with disgust. I damned near had to stuff the end of my necktie into my mouth. “And there wasn’t a soul around except myself and the arresting officer! And what is so damn funny, Mister?”
“I’m sorry, Nathan. This is an outrage. We’ll get a lawyer and fight this thing to the bitter end.”
“Damn right we will!” Two damns in two minutes, two more than I’d heard Nathan use since I got here. He turned to me hotly and demanded: “And what have you been doing all day?”
“Oh, hanging around the hotel, waiting for you to call.”
I could feel him staring at me.
“You knew this was going to happen?”
“Knowing you?” I asked. “I’d have been willing to put greenbacks on it.”
“Then why didn’t you say something last night?!” he demanded angrily.
I turned to look at him while we waited out a traffic light.
“I said a lot of things to you last night, Nathan. You ready to listen to some of them now?”
He chewed that over while I drove him back to the bank (he’d taken a cab over to the phony brokerage office, not sure of the neighborhood and so not wanting to park his own car there). He had a brief panic attack just before we arrived. What if the newspapers got hold of this? What if his employers found out? I calmed him down, assuring him that I knew how to handle this kind of situation. Nobody would find out anything if he did what I told him to, and yes, I promised I wouldn’t breathe a word of this to Marie.
I parked the car half a block down from the bank.
“So where do we stand on the other issue?” he asked.
“Same as before,” I told him. “Don’t say anything to anyone, not until we’ve had a chance to go over the situation in detail.”
“If it really is as you say,” Nathan said, “Myers and Wiedermann will be damn sorry they ever set foot in my bank.”
“Please don’t talk like that, Nathan.”
“What?”
“It’s just that, well, jail hardens a man. I’d hate to see that happen to my only brother.”
He slammed the door again before stalking off. For a moment, I sat there shaking with laughter. When I could drive again, I pulled out my handkerchief, wiped my eyes, and put the car into gear.
After dinner that night at Nathan’s house – and our usual war council on the back porch – I was back in my hotel room, pacing the floor and thinking. Mostly I was thinking about those three altered documents in Nathan’s desk. How would they look in court? My brother would need a good lawyer, and that lawyer would need to pay for a first-rate forgery expert. Bank examiners would have to be brought in to try and trace the missing money, and Nathan’s lawyer would probably have to use a subpoena to get a look at any evidence that was turned up, which could take awhile. Nathan’s reputation and work history would weigh heavily in his favor, but would they weigh heavily enough? Even if they did, it was going to cost Nathan some real dough to get out of this mess. And an outfit like Beldham & Morrissey, where probably at least half the board members had bragging rights to ancestors on the Mayflower? Even if he were cleared in full of any wrongdoing, just the hint of such scandal could cost him his job. Would another bank hire him on? Sure, probably one of them. For a lot less money and responsibility. No more new Hudsons, maybe a smaller house, a lot fewer family dinners in restaurants.
I wanted to throw something but settled for punching my right fist into my left palm. It hurt. Must have flattened a blood vessel, dammit. I massaged my left hand just below the fingers and started thinking all over again. Keep it simple, Dev. Keep it clear. And find a goddamn answer! Your pompous, know-it-all older brother needs you. And so does his family. So unless you want to be responsible for Little Mary Caine sleeping out on the sidewalk and catching the malarity, think of something. Anything.
I started pacing again, looking around the room at various objects, trying to get my brain started. The money is gone. A confidence man named Clay Stanton has it. There’s no way to get it back, not now. The two men responsible have framed Nathan and just might make that stick.
There really isn’t much to look at in your average hotel room. A bed, a desk, a bureau, a few chairs, a picture or two on the wall that you’d be embarrassed to hang in a kid’s treehouse. The contents of my pockets were spread out on top of the bureau. My wallet, a pen, a lighter, half a pack of Camels and the change I’d received from the tobacconist (three ones, a Liberty silver dollar, some quarters, a nickel and a dime), a pocket comb, and a small brown notebook. And the pint of scotch I’d picked up around the corner, close to a third gone now. I looked at the glass in my hand and decided the bottle could spare some yet.
Ideas don’t always start as a faint glimmer, nor do they always blaze suddenly into your head like a bright light. Sometimes they’re just there. And they’re too goddamned silly to bother with, so you ignore them. Only you run out of other options so you keep coming back to them. And each time, without realizing it, you shore them up a little. A four-by-four here, a sandbag there. And each time your mind comes back around to it, your goddamn silly idea is just a little sturdier, gets just a little harder to push away.
For a long time I found myself making notes and drawing diagrams on the hotel stationery. A general notion, bits and pieces forming and reforming in my head as I grabbed a fresh sheet off the bureau, sifted for the right materials to build with now that I had some shoring in place. At the end of two hours, I had a pile of sheets I could take to Webster’s, offer to sell them the whole mess if they needed a new definition for “long shot.”
Because it was a far-fetched plan from the very start, I’ll give you that. The odds of success were never very high, climbing only fractions of a percentage point as I refined the notion. But the thing of it was, the risk was equally low. If it didn’t work – and it almost certainly wouldn’t – Nathan would be no worse off than before. Surely I could convince him it was worth a try?
Or would he even need convincing? Now that my brother’d had a taste of the criminal life, he might be itching for a chance at some real action. I had an image of Nathan on a Wanted poster. Then I had an image of him standing in front of that poster in a neighborhood shop, criticizing the grammar. Then I looked at the more-than-half-empty scotch bottle and decided I’d done enough planning for tonight.
I’d see how my plan looked tomorrow when the sun hit it.
Chapter Ten: The Soft Rackets
Friday morning I was at a vacant office I’d rented the day before. There was a scra
tched-up desk with a battered metal lamp, a short, wooden conference table, a grand total of four chairs, and not much else. I hadn’t bothered to add a lot in the way of furnishings; the austere setting suited my purpose. I sat behind the desk with my feet up, smoking a cigarette and looking at my watch. I was expecting visitors shortly.
Selling my idea to Nathan hadn’t been any easier than expected. Wednesday evening we were on his back porch after another of Marie’s home-cooked dinners. It had been a rough day for Nathan. He knew now that the bank’s missing money was gone for good, and he’d been arrested for the first time in his life. He gave me the basic details, and I was careful not to crack a smile or roll my eyes. It hurt at times, but I managed. Nathan had walked right into the phony brokerage firm as I’d suggested and was basically given the high hat. Raised eyebrows, “Who might you be?” stares, patient yet condescending insistence that they really couldn’t help him. The more they tried to fob him off, the more annoyed and demanding Nathan became. He wanted to buy some stock, damn their eyes! Was his money not as good as anyone’s? They finally called the cops on him (or the spotter did), and Nathan patiently explained to a uniformed bull that he was a free citizen attempting to engage in a lawful transaction, and was being barred from pursuing this for reasons unknown. The cop came on strong, made threats that were at first veiled and then less so, and Nathan basically dared the guy to arrest him. It was pretty much downhill from there. I gather the cops were a bit rough with Nathan (his shock had made him more indignant than usual), and it was a good hour or more before he was allowed to call me at my hotel to come bail him out. At any event, I told him not to worry about the arrest, that I knew how to take care of it and would get on it the next day.
The conversation on the porch that night was lively at times, and Nathan had to fight to keep his voice down lest Marie overhear what we were talking about. Hell, I wished he’d have invited her to join us; she’s a bright woman and might have had some insights. It was tough to tell which was bothering him more, being arrested or the money, but if he had any brains at all (and he had plenty) it was the money.
A Shared Confidence Page 13