A Shared Confidence

by William Topek

  Twenty minutes later we walked out of the bank carrying a satchel with two hundred thousand dollars cash and a smaller satchel containing fifty dollars worth of silver ingots at that day’s valuation.

  “What was the point of the silver?” Stanton asked once we were back in the car.

  “Tokens,” I answered. “Something to hand out to my business partners at the Liberty Silver Mining Company once I make it back out to Colorado.”

  “Why bother with that now?” Stanton asked. “I thought that venture was at least over a month away.”

  “Things change fast in business,” I said. “I’d tell you more, but you’ve already threatened to queer my building deal.”

  “I was in rather desperate circumstances,” Stanton responded apologetically. Now that we had Giarelli’s money, he was calmer and reverting back to his more genteel self. “I’m sorry if it seemed–”

  “It didn’t seem, Stanton. It was. But don’t worry about it. That’s in the past.”

  We drove a few more miles in silence, then Stanton asked casually, “You’re still wanting to have me invest the remainder of the money you set aside?”

  I didn’t answer, apparently distracted by other thoughts. Let him sweat awhile, I thought.

  We stopped for lunch in a small cafe just inside the Maryland border. We’d each taken a bite of our sandwiches and I told Stanton I’d take my thirty thousand dollars now.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Shaw?”

  I rolled my eyes at the obvious evasion.

  “I’ve made you the loan as I said I would. The deal was fifteen percent interest upfront. I want that money before we go to see Giarelli.”

  “I didn’t bring it with me,” he answered.

  “Fine, we’ll stop and pick it up on the way.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to, that is, you told me you didn’t want the money until Monday at the earliest. That being the case, I made some stock purchases with it yesterday.” Typical con man, I thought. Now that he thought he was out of danger, or would be soon, he was loathe to hand over the same money he’d almost thrust into my hands the other night. Typical con man or typical business man?

  “Then you can sell some shares when we get back into town,” I said simply, and went back to my meal.

  “Yes, well, the thing is, Mr. Shaw–”

  “The thing is, Mr. Stanton, you’ll give me my thirty thousand dollars today or Giarelli doesn’t get his money.”

  He looked at me askance for a moment.

  “Wouldn’t that put us both in a rather untenable situation, Mr. Shaw?”

  “Yes, it would. Both of us. Are you willing to risk that?” I looked back at him calmly. It was a game of chicken now.

  “You’d risk your life over thirty thousand dollars? A man of your means?”

  “The question is, Mr. Stanton: Are you willing to risk yours to find out?”

  I was sitting in the car outside First Quality Investors, waiting for Stanton to cash out some stocks. I smiled to myself, wondering how hard he was having to work to sell this to the shills inside. Just another thirty thousand boys, the same thirty I brought back to you yesterday. I’m this close to collecting another three hundred thousand from the mark, free and clear. Just stick with me another day or two and you’ll all get a cut.

  He came back out with my money. I counted it in front of him. Slowly. Twice.

  “It’s too bad we don’t know any counterfeiters,” I mumbled.

  “What on earth for?”

  “So we could stiff Giarelli,” I said.

  “Have you taken leave of your senses, man?”

  “Think about it, Stanton. You said it yourself, that Secret Service agent wants out of there. He knows the only way he’ll gain his freedom is to authenticate our next payment. We could walk in there with Confederate bills and he’d swear it was real money.” I laughed aloud at this. “Think of it, we’d be replacing counterfeit counterfeit money with real counterfeit money.” I laughed again and Stanton looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “And when Mr. Giarelli took this money elsewhere, to a bank, say, and discovered it to be counterfeit?”

  “He’d probably be all the way back to Chicago by then. Anyway, it was just a thought.”

  “It doesn’t strike me as very clear thinking, sir, I must tell you.”

  “No matter. About the other two hundred thousand or so I want to stash for awhile…”

  “Yes?” he asked hopefully.

  “I’m still in with our original deal. But I still want to wait until we know Giarelli is off our backs.”

  Stanton wouldn’t be able to complain too much. He’d be getting his own two hundred thousand cash back from Giarelli in less than an hour, plus the considerable advantage of no longer having Giarelli interested in him. And he had more than that amount to look forward to courtesy of entrepreneur Kelly Shaw.

  “Splendid,” said Stanton, and I put the car into gear.

  We both strolled into the Lord Baltimore and asked the front desk to call up to Mr. Giarelli’s room. The dignified concierge leaned in close and lowered his voice.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Giarelli has stepped out for the afternoon,” he explained. “May I ask, Mr. Shaw, if this is your associate Mr. Stanton?”

  “He is,” I answered.

  “Ah, excellent. Mr. Giarelli has asked me to inform both of you that he will return at seven p.m. this evening, and that he will expect you, both of you, to call on him at that hour.”

  “Thank you for the message,” I said. “Would you mind placing this in the hotel safe for me? I’ll pick it up this evening.” I handed over the satchel of money. After the concierge had dutifully accepted charge of it and taken it to the back room, Stanton looked at me concerned.

  “Was that wise, Mr. Shaw?”

  “We’ve got some time to kill and I plan to use it. Alone. Now we don’t have to worry about being out of one another’s sight with the money. We both know where it is, right? See you here at a quarter till seven, Mr. Stanton.”

  My nerves were getting the better of me and I availed myself one last time of the elegantly appointed gentleman’s club several blocks away. I took as much hard exercise as I could stand, using the wall weights on pulleys, the India clubs, the medicine ball. I jumped rope for twenty minutes and then grabbed some gloves and worked the speedbag in the corner (either there for show or for the rich members who’d been part of some Ivy League boxing club). I gripped my way across the parallel bars, doing a few low dips before turning around and coming back, then found the chin up bar and pulled myself up seven or eight times, extending my arms fully and letting myself hang deadweight before pulling back up. It had been awhile since I’d earned a steam this hard, and I sat in my towel with my back against the warm, wet tile, occasionally pulling the chain for more steam and feeling the hot moisture soothe every muscle. I followed that with a cold sitz bath and then hit the shower. Dressed and back in my suite, I ordered up another haircut and manicure along with a light meal. The exercise had been to burn off nervous energy and to keep myself sharp mentally. The pretty manicurist and the sauteed quails’ eggs were a luxury; I knew I wasn’t going to be living the life of Kelly Shaw that much longer. I hoped like hell I’d at least be able to return to the life of Devlin Caine.

  At seventeen minutes to seven, Clay Stanton showed up in the lobby. I greeted him, dressed as usual in one of Shaw’s expensive suits. He looked down at the small case in my hand.

  “You’ve collected the money already?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I figured we’d do that together.”

  “Then that?” he asked, pointing to the case.

  “Insurance,” I said.

  “What kind of insurance?”

  “Never mind. Hopefully we won’t need it.”

  We collected our money from the hotel safe, took it to a corner of the lobby to verify the contents, then walked together to the elevator where I told the boy to take us up to Six. Another long walk down th
e corridor (I was checking behind me frequently along the way) and we came up to Giarelli’s suite. One of the goons answered my knock and ushered us inside. He started to frisk Stanton, looked at me, clearly remembered his last attempt, and gave up.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Boss’ll be out in a minute.” From behind the bathroom door I could hear the shower running.

  Stanton and I took seats, he holding onto the satchel, I to my case. I caught stares from the two goons now and then and thought about making idle chit chat. Maybe asking how the local sports team had done today. I decided against it. After several minutes, the water shut off and Giarelli stepped out in a padded bathrobe, drying his black hair on a towel. He didn’t look at Stanton or myself for a minute or two, playing the part of the powerful man who likes to make people wait right in front of him. He talked to one of his nodding goons casually in Italian, then put his wristwatch and rings on. Finally he grabbed a cigar out of the humidor, sat heavily into an armchair, and looked over at us.

  “You bring my money?”

  “No,” I answered right away. “We brought you six jars of olive oil. ’Case you want to comb your hair while we wait.”

  It may have been the exercise and quail’s eggs, and having to wait through Giarelli’s Important Man routine. I heard Stanton catch his breath and one of the goons came over and cracked me a hard one across the face. I grunted and rubbed my sore cheek. Giarelli turned to Stanton.

  “Okay, we heard from the funny man. Let’s hear from you.”

  “I have your money, Mr. Giarelli,” Stanton answered quickly. He began to open the satchel. The goon who’d hit me grabbed it out of his hands and handed it to the boss. Giarelli opened it and rifled through the banded stacks of bills. He looked up at the goon.

  “Get the Treasury Man.”

  The goon walked to the bedroom, opened the door, beckoned, and Jennings came walking out. He’d been wearing the same clothes for nearly two days now, and his collar had a wilted look, but he still seemed in good shape. Again our eyes met, and again, neither of us gave the slightest reaction.

  Without a word, Giarelli handed him the bag. Jennings took it and spent several minutes going through the contents, randomly selecting stack after stack, pulling out bill after bill. He ran his fingers across the surface, held them up to the light, held his hand up to one ear and rolled the bills between his fingertips, listening as though judging the leaf of a fine cigar. He licked his thumb and tried to smear the ink, then took a hundred dollar bill from his own pocket and compared it intently with a sample from the satchel, using a small jeweler’s loupe he’d taken from his pocket.

  Finally, he turned to Giarelli and nodded.

  “It’s real. All of it.”

  “So that’s it,” I said. “The deal’s done. We don’t owe you a thing.” I pointed to Jennings. “Now let that kid go.”

  Giarelli narrowed his eyes at me.

  “What’s he to you?”

  “He’s a federal agent,” I explained. “I want to know that you’re planning to let him go free. Because if you’re not, then I know you’re not planning to let us go, either.”

  Giarelli’s eyes glittered pig-like in the shine from the lamp. He reached for a match and lit his cigar.

  “Maybe I’m not,” he said casually.

  “You might want to rethink that,” I advised him.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  I bent down to open the case I’d carried in, gesturing for the goon nearest me to be patient, moving slowly to show I wasn’t reaching for a weapon. I took the top off the wire recorder and let them all see it.

  “Know what this is?” I asked. No one answered. “It’s a wire recorder. Know what’s on it?” Another silence. I had the machine keyed up to where I wanted, to Stanton’s and my conversation with Giarelli the night Ryland was murdered. I played the recording and let them listen to the whole thing.

  “You kill a man in my room,” I heard my own voice say, “and then you try to blackmail me?”

  Everyone in the room heard it: recorded evidence of Casper Giarelli confessing to the murder of Ethan Ryland.

  I turned a switch and the recording stopped. For a moment, no one did anything. Then one of the goons came over and raised his foot over the machine as if to smash it under his heel.

  “Go ahead,” I told him, unconcerned. “I’ve only made about nine copies already. Stashed in all sorts of places around this city.” I turned my attention to the fat man in the bathrobe. “Anything happens to me, Casper, anything happens to any of us, you’ll never make it outside this hotel. You’ll have more cops on you than Carter has liver pills.”

  Giarelli puffed meditatively on his cigar for another moment. His large frame started to shake, lightly at first and then more vigorously. But not from fear – the man was laughing! To the point where he actually had to wipe his eyes after awhile.

  At a nod from his boss, the same goon returned to the bedroom door and beckoned like he had for Jennings.

  Another man came out, and Stanton and I both dropped our jaws in unison.

  Standing before us, looking remarkably better than when last we’d seen him, was none other than Ethan Ryland.

  “What the hell?” I said softly, to no one in particular.

  “Hope those copies didn’t cost you too much,” Giarelli snorted, and the snort became an explosive guffaw. I continued to stare up at Ryland, who was looking at me with an expression that was difficult to read. A mixture of shame and guilt, maybe.

  “I don’t understand,” Stanton said. “When Mr. Shaw and I were here just the other night…”

  “You weren’t, not really,” Giarelli said dully.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You were here, but not with Shaw,” the big man continued. “You were here with this guy.” He pointed at me with his cigar, then yelled for yet another man to come out from the bedroom. I knew this other man as well: a local private detective named Townsend.

  Giarelli pointed his cigar at me once more and asked Townsend: “This the guy?”

  “That’s him,” Townsend answered, standing there in a simple gray suit. “Only his name ain’t Shaw. It’s Devlin Caine. He’s a private dick, works out of Kansas City.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Raspberry Jam and Applesauce

  Once the initial shock dissipated, a few things were pretty easy to figure out. Obviously, Ryland had made a deal with Giarelli to save his own skin, and the two of them had done a convincing job of faking Ryland’s death for Stanton and myself. I remembered the two goons carrying the “corpse” to the bathtub. Obviously, they couldn’t risk Stanton or I catching it breathing while we chatted with the mobster. It had worked, though, because Stanton had moved heaven and earth to get Giarelli his money. Ryland was still looking pretty nervous, no sign of smugness or being pleased with himself. It was clear that he wasn’t out of danger yet, either.

  I glanced over at Stanton, a seasoned confidence man who was more than adept at putting facts together quickly and adapting to rapidly changing circumstances. Everything I was thinking would be going through his mind as well. He wouldn’t know who the newcomer in the gray suit was, other than someone who could identify me to Giarelli. As for Townsend, he seemed to have no problem meeting my eye; this was just another job to him.

  “Giarelli paying you pretty good for this?” I asked him.

  “Good enough.”

  “I’m not certain I understand,” Stanton said.

  “Who cares if you do?” shot back Giarelli.

  “You’re a police officer?” Stanton asked, turning to me.

  “Nah,” Townsend said. “He’s private. A gumshoe like me.”

  Giarelli asked who I was working for, waited for me to answer. I didn’t say anything.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You can tell us later. And you will. Right now, I don’t have time to listen anyway.”

  I cast a quick glance over at Jennings. As expected, the boy might have been sitting in on a du
ll family reunion from the level of concern showing on his face.

  Giarelli dressed while Stanton, Ryland, and I were herded into the bedroom. Townsend and both of Giarelli’s torpedoes had their guns out to show they meant business. The bedroom door was locked from the outside and the three of us stood there in silence for a moment.

  “Why are we being kept here?” asked Stanton. Ryland looked like he knew something, but he kept silent.

  “Nice job with the blood,” I said to Ryland. “Ketchup and corn syrup?”

  “Raspberry jam mixed with applesauce,” he answered quietly, absently touching the back of his head. “Mr. Giarelli said it would give the right color and consistency.”

  “Well, a guy like him would know.” I reached for a cigarette, figuring Giarelli wouldn’t mind me smoking in his bedroom and not really caring if he did. “What was the point of it?”

  Ryland looked down at his feet and continued speaking quietly.

  “He knew I didn’t have the money to pay him back. He knew Mr. Stanton did.” Ryland looked at Stanton. “He wanted to…impress upon you the urgency of meeting his demand.”

  “So why not just kill you for real?” I asked. “That would have been pretty goddamn impressive.” I took a drag at my cigarette and the answer dawned on me. “Giarelli’s not through with you yet, is he, Ryland?”

  Ryland looked down again and shook his head slowly.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Know what his plan is?”

  “Not exactly. He wants…I know he wants that Secret Service agent out of the way.” Ryland suddenly looked up at Stanton and asked why on earth Stanton had attempted to give Giarelli counterfeit bills the first time.

  “I most certainly did not!” protested Stanton. “The money I brought over the other night is perfectly good.”

  Ryland kept looking at Stanton, confused.

  “Then why did the man from the Secret Service say it was counterfeit?”