I stood up and walked toward her in some vain hope that I could get a word in before the arrest, tell her not to say anything until she got herself a lawyer. She spotted me from ten feet away and called out.
“Hey, hon, got any good deals on the Good Book today?”
In an instant, two Pinkerton’s men were on either side of her, taking her roughly by the elbows as two more plainclothes policemen and three or four uniformed bulls closed in. It took her all of a few seconds to figure out this was real. She didn’t scream or curse, didn’t even seem angry, and she didn’t cry. But the vitality was gone from her face since the first time I’d seen her. The cops handcuffed her and led her away. She cast one subdued glance back over her shoulder at me, but I couldn’t read it; her face was still blank with shock. I walked off the platform, repeating those two words that never seem to help much in these situations: “I tried.”
A pair of scented arms hugged my shoulders from behind and I felt a warm kiss on my cheek.
“Sold any Good Books lately?” a female voice whispered in my ear.
I stood as Penny stepped around in front of me. Five-foot-two, eyes of blue, I thought to myself. Her blonde hair was in the same short pixie style she’d worn back in Dubuque, and her eyes were still as wide and bright. She showed off her nicely compact frame in a short black dress with full sleeves, and she’d put on make up, including bright red lipstick. You’d never have recognized her as the spinster beating the tambourine an hour ago.
“How have you been, Penny?” We sat down together around the low table.
“I been just grand, Dev. How you been?”
“Can’t complain.” I flagged down a passing waitress who took Penny’s order for rum over ice. I asked what she’d been up to.
“Little of this, little of that,” she answered breezily.
“Saving lost souls?” I asked.
“Nah, that’s just my pocket money between gigs.”
“You’re still in the game then?”
She gave me a sly smile. “Why? Going to arrest me?”
“I didn’t arrest you last time,” I said, a little defensively. “In fact–”
“Oh, lighten up, Dev,” she laughed. “I’m just giving you the needle. I already told you I don’t blame you for that. Hell, you tried to warn me off.”
“Sorry it didn’t take.”
“Yeah, me too.” She leaned forward a moment. “I never told anyone you tried, though.”
“I know.”
She tilted her head. “How?”
“Because if you had, someone would have talked to me about it. No one ever did.”
Her drink arrived and she raised her glass to me.
“To good times ahead.” I drank the toast with her and tried to feel the situation. Had she really never blamed me for doing ten months’ hard time? Or had she at first but gotten over it? She didn’t seem like the type to hold grudges. Looking at her now, she seemed the same cheerful young woman I’d met in Dubuque. Maybe she was just one of those rare people who make up their minds early on in life to be happy, and stick to that regardless of the occasional obstacle.
“So what are you up to these days? Still with Pinkerton’s?”
I shook my head. “I left there shortly after I saw you last.”
Penny raised her eyebrows. “Wracked with guilt over sending an innocent young girl to the slammer?”
“Nah, I’d already done that lots of times when you came along. I was just getting sick of working for a big firm.”
“So how you making rent these days?”
“Same thing, only I work for myself.”
“No kidding?” she laughed. “You got an office here in Baltimore?”
I shook my head. “I’m just here visiting. Seeing the sights. What about you? Who you working for when times aren’t so slow?”
She shrugged. “Got a couple of mobs I’m in good with. I never get anything real important to do, but if they need a pretty face or just a pair of eyes to help out, I get money coming in.”
“You mean confidence mobs?”
“Christ, yes!” she laughed, almost spitting out her drink. “You think I’d work for the mafia?”
“I think you like excitement, Penny.”
“Sure, the kind a girl gets to live through.”
We chatted on awhile longer as I kept weighing the risks in leveling with her at least a little. Penny would know a lot about the con mobs in this city, who was into what and maybe any big scores that were going down. Her kind of knowledge could be invaluable to me. But was there any real way I could get it out of her without giving up too much of my own? She could sink my amateur scheme in two seconds with a word in the right ear. Would she want to? And how would I know whether she did? I had to remind myself that this girl was now twenty-seven, and had nearly an extra half-decade of experience in the trade. Four years of learning under masters how to use her looks and charm. More if you counted her time in the penitentiary. Sure, she’d only done ten months, but when you’re surrounded twenty-four hours a day by every kind of seasoned criminal imaginable, it’s like going to night school while you’re attending university full-time during the day.
Penny took another drink of her rum, her blues fixed on my browns.
“You want to ask me something, don’t you, Dev?”
“I do.” I sat my drink down on the table. “And you didn’t invite me here just to hash over old times.”
“I didn’t.” We smiled at each other for a few seconds until she asked: “So who’s going to show first?”
I gestured with an open hand. “Ladies first, always.”
I had breakfast at my hotel Saturday morning before driving the Cadillac over to an apartment house on the north side. Penny was having trouble with her landlord. Too many complaints from the neighbors over loud parties and gentlemen callers at odd hours. He wanted her out by the end of next week. She didn’t want to move. She liked her apartment and the location was ideal, close to public transportation and the night spots she favored. She considered going to some of her colleagues over the matter, but such a petty problem might make her seem like a flake, not reliable enough to be counted on when it mattered. Also, most of them didn’t know where she lived and she wanted to keep it that way. Plus she’d owe them a favor. Now she’d owe me one.
When it came my turn, I leveled with her a little. Told her I was interested in a big con operator who went by the name of Clay Stanton. She knew the man, or knew of him, and promised she could find out more. I admitted I’d already met Stanton but under an assumed name, and that Stanton didn’t need to be hearing my real name from anybody. She said that was no problem. I hoped she was telling me the truth.
I parked the Caddy in the street outside a clean-looking building, walked up a short flight of steps and down a hall to an office. I pressed the buzzer by the door a few times and heard the landlord shuffling around inside his apartment across the hall. An unshaven man with squinty eyes opened the door. He checked out my suit and shoes and told me he’d be right with me. A moment later he appeared in a hastily-tied necktie, his suspenders back up over his shoulders, and escorted me into the office.
“You come to see about an apartment?” he asked, settling in behind his desk and shuffling through some papers. I took the chair across from him, leaning back in the seat with my leg crossed at the knee and my hands folded loosely in my lap.
“Matter of fact I am,” I answered easily.
“Got a coupla nice ones. You looking for one bedroom? Two?”
I explained that it wasn’t about an apartment for me, it was for one already occupied by a friend of mine. A Miss Penelope Sills. He blew out a tired sigh.
“Look, Mister, I gave her her chance. Plenty of warnings. She’s too noisy. Got parties going on, fellas coming in all hours of the day and night. Neighbors don’t like it. We got kids in this building. Sorry, but she’s out.”
“I could talk to her for you,” I offered. “Get her to tone it down. She
listens to me. Like I said, we’re good friends.”
“Sorry, Mister. Like to help you, but I already got someone waiting for her place when she vacates. Now if that’s all you came here for–”
“Sit back down.” I said it softly but firmly and waited for him to comply. “Like to handle this the easiest way possible,” I told him.
“Aw, Christ, you gonna get tough now?” He seemed more fatigued than frightened by the possibility. One more problem he didn’t need along with late rent payments and leaky pipes.
“Getting tough is for the unimaginative,” I smiled, running a hand along my jaw as I looked around the office. “Tell you the truth, Mister…?”
“Gables,” he said finally.
“Tell you the truth, Mr. Gables, I haven’t really decided what my next move will be. Do I have a call put in to the Fire Chief, have him come down here and make the toughest inspection he’s ever made in his career? Do I have the Treasury folks drop in and spend a week going through your tax records, and let my contacts at the newspaper know about it? Do I go to the bank that holds the lien on this building and have them review the lease paperwork, find a problem that will make the owners uneasy? Or do I start small, have one little old lady after another fall over your front steps and let the lawsuits pile up?”
I had an easy smile on my face the whole time, and my tone wasn’t the least bit threatening. Just a man mulling over all the possible solutions to a minor problem.
I dipped my head slightly and said: “Or maybe a combination of these, one following the other, all nice and spaced out so they look like coincidence. Just plain old bad luck that never seems to let up.” He stared at me hard, weighing me up. Smiling gently, I sat back and let him.
“Who are you, Mister?”
“Name’s Kelly Shaw.”
“You somebody in this town?”
“Getting to be.”
“So how come I never heard of you before?”
“’Cause you never had trouble with me before.” I stood up and smoothed the front of my jacket. “Think it over, Mr. Gables. I can give you a day or two. I’m at the Lord Baltimore Hotel if you want to reach me.”
He picked up a pencil. “What room number?”
“They know me there.” I walked slowly to the door, almost making it.
“Hold up.” He threw the pencil down on the desk and ran a hand through his hair. “Like I care where the twist flops. She can stay if she likes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gables,” I said graciously. “I appreciate your understanding in this matter.”
“Uh huh.”
“What does Miss Sills pay in rent to you each month?”
“Thirty-five dollars.” His squinty eyes narrowed, concerned I was going to come after him from another angle. He watched as I took out my gold money clip, pulled off a hundred-dollar bill and dropped it on his desk.
“She’s usually pretty good about paying on time,” I mentioned casually. “But if she gets busy, forgets or something, take anything you need out of that.” I didn’t have to tell him there was more where that came from.
He looked at the bill for a moment, his veined hand finally creeping across the blotter to snag it.
“I ain’t gonna have no trouble?”
“With me?” I flashed him my dazzler. “Hell, you did me a favor, friend, that’s all I know.”
I touched the brim of my hat and walked out the door.
I was on Nathan’s back porch Saturday evening, after another excellent meal from Marie’s kitchen.
“The Baltimore Trust Company Building on Light Street,” Nathan said, answering the question I’d just asked him. “The building just went up six years ago and they had to file for bankruptcy two years ago. They’re likely to go into receivership any day now.”
“That could work.” I wrote the details down in my brown notebook.
“This fits into your plan?”
“Uh huh.”
“Would you care to tell me how?”
“Huh uh.”
“Dev–”
“Nathan,” I interrupted him, “I know the waiting is tough. Just a few more days. By the end of this week I’ll know if it’s going to work or not. If it doesn’t, that still gives you time to go to your superiors before the first payment is due on any of those loans. With luck and a little finesse, you’ll be able to steer the bank examiners to Myers and Wiedermann without incriminating yourself.”
“And Myers and Wiedermann will tell them–”
“All kinds of gobbledy-gook. Desperate men usually do. But there’ll be nothing to back up anything they say. Kelly Shaw will have disappeared. The office I’m renting will be bare. Nobody at the Lord Baltimore will know anything of Mr. Shaw’s connection to two bankers. And nobody outside of a different hotel and a car rental lot will have ever heard of Devlin Caine.” I realized I was setting this up like a professional con, ready to fold and disappear without a trace if it went south. Maybe that was a good sign.
“And if your plan does work?” Was that hopefulness in Nathan’s voice or just his natural inclination to cover all aspects of a potential business deal?
“The bank gets its money back, the phony documents disappear, no one’s ever the wiser.”
“And Myers and Wiedermann?”
“That’s your call,” I said. “If I were you, I’d drop some pretty strong hints that they’d be happier working someplace else.”
“So they’ll basically be getting away with what they did,” he sulked.
“Jesus, Nathan, you can have Myers and Wiedermann sent up for embezzlement or you can keep this quiet. You can’t have both.”
He puffed at his pipe for a moment, irritated.
“What all have you been doing this week?” he asked.
“Working my tail off, pal. How about you?”
There was another silence. I was hoping Marie might appear with drinks or coffee or sandwiches, but I guess she’d gone to bed early. When enough time had passed so it wouldn’t look like I was stalking off, I rose from my chair.
“I need to get some sleep.”
“You’re welcome to stay here.” I was about to explain to Nathan that it wouldn’t save any money on my hotel bill even if I didn’t spend the night there. Then I calmed down and realized that it was a sincere offer, that he was trying to make nice.
“I appreciate that, but I have a lot to do tomorrow. For starters, I need to pick up the business cards I ordered today.”
“You found someone who can have them ready in one day?” Nathan asked, surprised. “They must be nice ones.”
“I expect they will be. The guy I ordered them from is a world-class forger, so he should be able to handle a box of business cards.”
Chapter Thirteen: New Players, New Problems
That Saturday afternoon, after I’d paid a visit to Penny’s landlord and before my dinner with Clay Stanton – and my second dinner at Nathan’s house – I was walking down the street of a particularly seedy Baltimore neighborhood. I’d taken the bus so the Cadillac wouldn’t be picked up by spotters. Kelly Shaw was getting closer to the big play, and Stanton was sure to have people keeping an eye on him to see that he didn’t slip the hook.
I found the run-down-looking storefront I knew from the photos Townsend had given me. Inside would be the jeweler who doubled as a fence, the print-maker who doubled as a forger, and the lawyers who didn’t need to double. I’d decided I needed to see the forger for a couple of reasons. Myers had gone to see Ferrier last week, and you didn’t have to know trigonometry to figure out why: Ferrier was the one who’d altered the three loan documents with Nathan’s original signature on them. Myers had probably been delivering the final payment when one of Townsend’s men had snapped his photo.
The hallway inside smelled about as far away from fresh paint and new carpet as you can get. Dried flakes of wallpaper had collected in the thick dust along the baseboards. The rug running the length of the hall was sun-bleached where it met the door, and r
ats had been at it farther down. The lawyers’ office was closed. Hands on a cardboard clock said they’d be back in forty-five minutes. I passed the open door to the jeweler and glanced inside. An uncomfortable-looking woman was waiting while a stoop-shouldered man hunched over a glass counter, a loupe screwed into one eye as he carefully appraised a pendant on a gold chain. At the end of the hall, the glass window in the door read simply “Printing Done.” Clearly the printer wasn’t a man to waste letters.
I stepped inside, hearing the tinny clap of a cheap bell on the back of the door. There was a “Be right there,” and half a minute later, a man stepped out from a back room and up behind the counter. He was short and of medium-build, with thinning hair and thick glasses. He looked up at me inquiringly. I told him I needed some business cards and we spent a couple of minutes looking through his book of templates. I settled on one and he gave me a price, telling me they’d be ready Wednesday.
“I need them tomorrow.”
“I’m not open tomorrow.”
“I’ll pay triple.” He sighed and agreed, then wrote me out a slip and disappeared into the back room again. I gave it ten seconds and followed him back. The cramped room looked like Santa’s workshop if Santa had the elves working on fake raffle tickets and doctored passports. Benches were packed with all kinds of printing machines, and a large work table sat against one wall littered with works in progress, different-sized magnifying glasses, a desk lamp with a bright fluorescent bulb circling a magnifying lens, and a half-eaten sandwich on wax paper. The smell of fresh ink was almost dizzying.
“Hey, this is private back here!” he complained, looking up and seeing me standing there.
“Good, then we won’t be disturbed.” I closed the door behind me. I stood there a moment, not coming any closer, my face neutral. His eyes flashed briefly to the filing cabinet across the room, which told me his gun was too far away.
A Shared Confidence Page 17