A Shared Confidence

by William Topek

  True, he had been gracious enough when I’d asked for a few words in private with Mr. Ryland at the end of our meeting. Mattling had thanked me for my assistance and left my suite without a backward glance, allowing me a tense few minutes with Ryland. I wanted to read him the riot act for not letting me know he’d lost mob money in Stanton’s con game – that would have altered my approach to all this drastically! But I didn’t. I settled for firing several specific questions at him – all of which he seemed to answer truthfully – and giving him a few instructions that I assured him wouldn’t interfere with any assistance he was getting from the feds.

  The gist of it was that Ryland had been keeping in contact with Giarelli (certain business associates really take offense to being ignored). When Ryland mentioned a trip to Baltimore, Giarelli let it be known that he was headed that way, too, and that he’d expect to meet up if Ryland was still in town. That scared Ryland plenty but pleased the feds. At their behest, Ryland had agreed to stick around and make the meeting with Giarelli. He didn’t have much choice if he wanted the man off his back.

  I stared down at the room service tray again. The diorama wasn’t helping. I was having a hard time remembering whether Myers was apricot or blackberry, and I’d smoked three of the S.E.C. guys. I realized I was drunk when I moved one of the tiny jam jars to the edge of the tray and waited to be kinged.

  I stripped off my hundred-and-forty-dollar suit and climbed into bed.

  I spent a good deal of Monday morning on the telephone in my suite, putting my plan into action. Around eleven o’clock I walked into the phony brokerage office on Chase Street and made another investment per Stanton’s latest instructions. The clerk handed me my eleven hundred dollars’ return when I sold the stock an hour later. I was to meet Stanton for lunch, then return that afternoon to reinvest.

  I picked at my food with little interest, nodding absently over Stanton’s latest hot tip. I let him build up some steam before cutting him off as politely as I could.

  “Mr. Stanton,” I began easily, “please don’t think me ungrateful for what you’ve done for me. You’ve been a pleasant and amiable companion, and I’ve enjoyed helping you out with a few small errands in return. However…”

  “Yes, my boy?” Stanton was all ears, his face showing genuine concern for a friend.

  “Pardon my being a bit blunt, sir, but…well, a few hundred here, a few thousand there, it’s pocket change to me. It’s been a whirl, but I have some big deals coming along and if I want to keep my businesses thriving, I really need to get back to them.”

  Stanton apologized. Not stiffly, not profusely, but eloquently and graciously without overdoing it. The man really was an artist. He didn’t act hurt, didn’t try to make me feel sorry for him in the slightest.

  “I’m embarrassed to say, Mr. Shaw, that I’ve not given you your due. Sending a man such as yourself off on errands any competent clerk could handle for me. Shameful, really. Oh, in my defense I have been quite busy with several dozen other deals, but that’s no excuse to intrude on your time and good will as I have. Can you forgive me?” His gentle tone and gentler smile kept it from getting maudlin.

  I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief, offering my hand.

  “I’m so very glad you understand, Mr. Stanton. You’ve been a hell of a friend and the last thing I want to do is leave you in the lurch. Of course, I realize that even these small deals are important in the larger scheme of what you’re trying to do. Naturally, I’ll be happy to return to the brokerage office this afternoon and reinvest this per your instructions.” I tapped my breast pocket.

  “Not a bit of it.” The man was positively magnanimous. “Consider that a fee for services rendered. Tut tut, my boy, I won’t hear another word on the subject. We shall finish this delicious lunch together and I shall wish you a very happy return to Chicago.” He returned to his food without a care in the world. The guy was really, really good.

  We picked our way leisurely through the rest of the meal, talking of politics and the news of the day. Out of polite interest, Stanton casually asked me about my upcoming business deals. If he wasn’t being impertinent in inquiring, of course.

  “I’m trying to buy a building,” I explained.

  “Indeed? A house?”

  “No,” I laughed. “A skyscraper. Place right here in Baltimore, in fact.”

  “You don’t say?” I did say. I told him of a sweet deal I was getting ready to move on, a very new property that had already bankrupted out and was heading for receivership.

  “I’m just buying a piece of it, really,” I explained. “Better to share the risk with a few partners on something like this.”

  “A wise policy in most circumstances,” Stanton assented.

  I nodded absently. “I pretty much have it together. The only minor snag is…well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “I sincerely doubt that it is, Mr. Shaw. Not among friends.”

  “Well, what I really need is a way to stash about three or four hundred thousand for a few weeks.”

  “Put it away for the investment, you mean?”

  “Quite the contrary,” I admitted. “If my partners know how much I have at hand, they’ll want me to go in on a larger share. I’m trying to manipulate my share down to where I want it without giving them the impression that I might be holding back on them because I’m not a hundred percent sold on the purchase of the building.”

  I lowered my eyes to my plate for a second, then looked back at him with what I hoped was just the right hint of uncertainty.

  “You must think me quite a crook,” I said.

  “Rubbish,” Stanton said, his expression quite serious. “You’re behaving like any prudent and sensible investor. Fortunes do not remain long with the reckless, my young friend.”

  “That’s how I figure it.”

  Stanton picked up his wine glass and swished the amber liquid around inside, seemingly lost in thought for a second.

  “There’s a possibility, Mr. Shaw, that I might be able to assist you.”

  I had this part planned out well. My reaction, my protestations over leaning on Mr. Stanton’s generosity in this way, my reluctantly being worn down by his assurances, and my glitter of greed when I accepted. I’d actually practiced this part in front of the full-length mirror in my hotel suite, but I never got to use it.

  “Hey, Kel!” A woman’s voice called out from behind me. I turned in my seat and was kissed squarely on the mouth. I couldn’t even tell it was Penny until she pulled back a bit.

  She was dressed nice and sat down at the empty chair next to me, helping herself to a breadstick.

  “Who’s your friend?” she asked.

  There wasn’t much else I could do at that point.

  “Mr. Clay Stanton, allow me to introduce–”

  “Penelope Sills,” she said cheerfully, offering her hand and using her real name, which surprised me. “My friends call me Penny.”

  Chapter Fifteen: G-Men, T-Men, and P-Men

  I was at the hotel lounge where Penny and I had shared a drink on Friday, waiting for her to show up. The piano player was pounding out a lively version of “The Varsity Drag,” singing along in his high falsetto. Well, I thought, at least he’s getting closer to the modern era. That song swept college campuses a few years after I graduated. I wasn’t in the mood for picking over old memories today, though. What he hell had Penny meant by crashing my meeting with Stanton? And introducing herself by her real name? No way to tell, and she’d be here soon enough to clue me in. It seemed like a good time to review things as they stood so far.

  I’d come to Baltimore because someone had embezzled from the bank where my brother worked and tried to frame him for it. The embezzlers were Myers and Wiedermann, two men working under Nathan who’d taken the money in hopes of making a quick killing in the stock market. Only the embezzlers, still unbeknownst to them so far as I knew, hadn’t really invested the money; they’d had it taken from them by a master con artist
calling himself Clay Stanton. This same Stanton had conned a man who’d recently visited my office, Ethan Ryland. Cleaned him out in fact. And Ryland was back in Baltimore, originally at my request, I thought, but really for reasons of his own. Ryland had introduced me to Stanton as a potential mark, and so far Stanton had taken the bait and I’d been playing the sap for him, letting him prep me for the big play. I’d met Ferrier, the forger who doctored the now worthless loan documents Nathan had originally signed, and had him do a little work for me. I was working a threadbare scheme of my own against Stanton in hopes of getting the bank’s money back, or as much of it as I could anyway. I’d been introduced to Stanton, Myers, and Wiedermann (and Soames, another of Nathan’s employees who I didn’t think really figured in this) as Kelly Shaw, a big wheel from the Midwest. Ferrier knew me by that name, too. I’d later reintroduced myself to Myers and Wiedermann as Kelly Shaw, a big shot federal law man who’d threatened them into keeping quiet, claiming to be after bigger fish (Lord, the irony!). I’d run into Penny Sills, a con I met in Iowa five years ago who’d done hard time for grifting (and maybe blamed me for it), who was still in the game and who’d promised to help me. I’d squared things with her landlord as my part of our bargain. Was there anything else up to that point? Other than another potential ally in the form of a private detective named Townsend and the fact that a dentist named Enright was giving it to his receptionist, I couldn’t think of anything.

  That all seemed complicated enough to me, but I guessed the gods of fate had been getting extra bored lately. Yesterday I found out that a U.S. senator from Maryland named Cumberland had also been fleeced by Stanton and had taken it personal. Thanks to his careful machinations, no less than three federal agencies were now coordinating their efforts to bring Stanton to justice. Pinkerton’s had been called in to offer assistance, owing to their years of experience with confidence schemes and the people who ran them. One of their “top men” from Chicago – a slimy career climber who grabbed for credit like a life preserver and who would sell his own children into the jute mills if it meant a promotion – had been brought in along with two of his own. And then Joshua Mattling, Special Agent In Charge of the F.B.I.’s Divisional Headquarters in Baltimore, had met with me in secret. He wasn’t all that interested in Stanton; he was interested in Ethan Ryland’s erstwhile business partner. Mattling wanted me to keep playing the mark for Stanton and had gone so far as to offer protection for doing so. And he’d said all this in front of nobody reliable and could deny it at any time.

  I took a sip of my drink and ran down the list in my head. My brother Nathan, the victim here. Myers and Wiedermann, two amateur embezzlers running scared over a bad investment. Stanton, a master of the big con, expert and very long in the game. Ferrier, a shifty little forger but a good one. Mattling, a career fed who may even be on the level. Townsend, a capable private eye who would help if it was nothing illegal. Penny, a sharp, fun-loving con girl who claimed to be my ally. Ethan Ryland, a played mark still very much in the soup and damned scared about it. And, of course, I couldn’t forget Ryland’s partner, Casper Giarelli, a Chicago mobster who was coming to Baltimore. Beldham & Morrissey, First Quality Investors, Pinkerton’s, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and God help us all, the mafia. I’d seen no harm in dipping my toe into the soft rackets, win or lose. Now I wasn’t so much running with the big dogs as I was surrounded by them, and losing had become a whole hell of a lot riskier. I thought back to what Townsend had said to me the last time I visited his office: “That’s why I don’t work with family.”

  Penny showed up at last, sat down and ordered a drink. I waited for it to be served so we wouldn’t be interrupted.

  “Mind telling me what the hell that was all about?” I asked. “You crashing my meeting with Stanton?”

  She put her glass down and smiled brightly. “I’m helping you, remember?”

  “Helping me how? You could have queered the whole deal. You’re in the game, too. Stanton could know that.”

  “Of course he knows that,” she laughed. “Or if he doesn’t he will by tonight. The man’s not stupid, you know.”

  “And letting Stanton see me on intimate terms with another con artist is going to help me how exactly?”

  “Intimate terms?” She smiled provocatively. “It was just a kiss.”

  “Get on with it.”

  Penny outlined her plan for me. As she said, Stanton either knew or would know soon that she was a con herself. He’d believe another mob was trying to put the touch on the young millionaire Kelly Shaw. That alone might make Stanton work a little harder to get to Shaw first, keep him on the hook for whatever I was attempting. However, she explained slyly, if she could hint that she was less than satisfied with her current group, that she had talent but was never given anything really big to sink her teeth into, that she might be looking around for someone new to shill for…

  “Don’t you get it, Dev? Even if he just strings me along so he can keep watch on me, maybe learn more about what the competition is doing, I’m still in the picture. I can still be your eyes on the inside.”

  “And if he sees you do have some real talent,” I said with mock enthusiasm, “then you could end up with a better job.”

  “There’s that, too,” she purred.

  “And this all came to you when?”

  “When I was passed by the restaurant you two were having lunch at. I was on my way here to meet you and I happened to look in the window and saw you both sitting there and it all just kind of came to me. It’s called improvising, Dev. We do a lot of it in my trade.”

  “We do a fair bit of it in mine, too,” I told her sharply. “When we don’t have a better plan already in place.”

  “Yeah? What what was your plan? Introduce me to Stanton later as your secretary?”

  “No!” I lied. Of course that had been my plan. I was starting to see what Penny meant about not getting the chance to show her stuff.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “Well, obviously we’re stuck with your plan.” I paused for a drink before admitting: “Lucky for us, it’s a pretty goddamn good plan at that.”

  Her blue eyes glittered and the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.

  “Did it hurt to say that, Dev?”

  I put a hand to my throat and rasped out: “Can’t talk now.”

  If someone tries to tell me I’m in heaven and there isn’t the sound of a pretty woman’s laughter, I’ll know he’s lying.

  I did a lot of planning and preparation over the next few days. I had to give Stanton time to check out Penny, hopefully take her on in some fashion, and to work out a new play for me. He knew now that he didn’t need to set up some complex, precisely-timed investment backfire; I’d practically asked him point blank to take a large sum of cash off my hands.

  I spent a lot of time in my suite on the telephone and driving around to check out the building I was purporting to buy. I didn’t see Mattling or any of his people. I saw a few of what could have been Stanton’s, making sure the mark was doing what he said he’d be doing. I took a little exercise and some steam at the club when I could manage it, relaxing into idle chat with the other movers and shakers and trying to learn a bit more from them that I might be able to use.

  I answered the telephone in my suite Thursday afternoon and was almost surprised to hear Nathan’s voice. Strange as it sounds, I’d almost forgotten about him.

  “Coming over for dinner tonight, Dev?”

  “Oh, hell, Nathan, I really don’t know. I’m pretty busy with all that’s going on.”

  “Oh.” His voice fell flat, like he didn’t know what else to say. Was he disappointed? It had been awhile since we’d met up. He’d have a heart attack if I told him everything that had been going on, but surely I could take a few hours to ease his mind a bit?

  “You know what? I’m not that busy. Sure, yeah, dinner tonight sounds great.”
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br />   “Wonderful,” he perked up. “Can we expect you around seven?”

  “Look for the shiny black Cadillac pulling into your drive right about then.”

  I got tied up with other details and didn’t notice the time until it was almost too late. I had to break a few speeding laws to make my dinner date at Nathan’s, but I figured Kelly Shaw could afford a traffic ticket. I chuckled to myself behind the wheel, idly wondering how far Shaw’s reputation had spread in this city. Was there a chance the traffic cop might have heard the name?

  Marie had gone all out on dinner. A succulent smoked ham, baked sweet potatoes, fresh ears of corn, a crisp green salad, and the lightest, fluffiest dinner rolls I’d ever eaten. I’d dined in some of the best restaurants in town recently, but you can’t beat a hot, home-cooked meal made by people who care about you.

  I didn’t realized how much I’d missed Billy and Mary until I was seeing them again, all shined up in new clothes. They’d given me hugs at the door and led me to the table, one on each hand. Marie was in a nice dress with pearls, her hair carefully brushed.

  “Special occasion?” I asked.

  She gave me odd smile. “Of course. You’re here.”

  It was a great meal, not just the food but the company. I asked the kids all about how school was going, they asked if I’d had to return any library books lately, and their parents both asked if I might be free for a movie this weekend. I told them I’d sure try, but that I was sorry not to be able to promise it.