A Shared Confidence

by William Topek

  Townsend looked down at his desk, a kind of sad, faraway smile on his face.

  “Used to, I did a lot of drinking,” he confessed. “When I was younger. Got myself into some real trouble now and then. Had my last drink with some of my soldier buddies back in the war. It turned out to be their last anything.” He looked up at me. “I made the decision when I came home: I’d leave the booze back there with them.”

  “I hear you, friend,” I said. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  * * *

  I’d already sent Jennings and Verdi back home while I wrapped things up in Baltimore. Now I was back in the hotel lounge where Penny Sills and I had shared a few quiet moments. The piano player spotted me and started hammering out “The Varsity Drag”. I raised my glass and smiled at him, then slipped Penny her cut: ten thousand dollars’ cash.

  “It’s not as much as the twenty you could have walked out with,” I admitted.

  “It’s also not another year or two in the pokey,” she said philosophically. “Besides, this’ll keep me going till another game turns up.”

  “So you’re staying with the trade?” I wasn’t surprised, maybe a little disappointed.

  “This is what I’m good at, Dev,” she said. “You know, I think that means more to me than the money or the excitement even.”

  “You are good,” I agreed. “Just try to be good and careful, huh?”

  “Same old Dev,” she mused. “It was really grand seeing you again.”

  “It was,” I admitted. “What are you going to do with your cut?” Probably blow it on furs, jewels, and high times, I figured.

  “For starters, I think I’m going to have my apartment painted.”

  I frowned, puzzled.

  “You just had it painted, didn’t you? You told me you were having it painted, that night you…”

  Penny's vibrant laugh, I decided, made for a much nicer farewell this time.

  Nathan and I were out on his back porch Friday night, probably one of the last times we’d be doing this for awhile. No war council this time, no pressing business to discuss, no minute details to turn over and look at from every angle. Just two brothers relaxing out back with a glass of something.

  “You’re thinking about Myers and Wiedermann again, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Nathan admitted, puffing meditatively on his pipe.

  “I’d be careful,” I advised.

  “What do you mean?”

  I explained that Myers and Wiedermann weren’t the brightest boys I’d ever come across, that they could still make trouble if they thought there was a chance they could drag Nathan down with them. Yes, I’d cowed them pretty good, but fear is what you use on people not savvy enough to see reason. They wouldn’t be seeing Kelly Shaw again. Out of sight, out of mind – and that fear would evaporate pretty quickly. I suggested to Nathan that he give them the chance to resign. He balked, of course.

  “After what those two did?

  “Make it a short-term offer, Nathan. Firing people causes hard feelings, and down the road they might try to make trouble. If they quit on their own, it’ll be much easier all around.”

  “And supposing they want references?”

  “Then you smile at them and tell them you would be only too happy to speak with anyone who might even be thinking of hiring them. They’ll get the idea fast enough.”

  Nathan scowled and went back to his pipe. He could be pig-headed but he wasn’t stupid. He’d see by tomorrow this was the right way.

  “I’m not sure how you did all this, Dev,” he said after a moment. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “Believe me, you don’t.”

  “Well, it worked. You got me out of an awful mess. I’m sorry it kept you away form your work for so long.”

  “Neither of us expected that. Don’t worry about it.”

  Nathan took his checkbook and a pen out of his jacket pocket.

  “What do I owe you for all this?”

  I looked up at the sky, nodding to myself as though adding up this and that, then threw out a figure at random. A big one. I waited for his exclamations of protest, for demands of a thorough accounting of every penny. To my very great surprise, Nathan didn’t make a sound. He unscrewed the cap from his pen and opened up the checkbook. I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed with him.

  “Hold up, Nathan. I was just playing around. You don’t owe me a thing.”

  “I told you I would reimburse you for your expenses,” Nathan said. “I gave you my word on that, Dev.”

  “Your word’s still good, Nathan. It’s just that there aren’t any expenses that haven’t already been covered.”

  He just stared at me.

  “This is good news,” I explained. “We should be happy. Do you know how to be happy, Nathan?”

  “We’re going to work on that, aren’t we, sweetheart?” Marie came out the back door with warm pan of coffee cake and a few saucers. “We’re going to start by being appreciative, remember, Nathan?”

  Nathan gets easily ruffled when people chide him; at least that’s how I’ve always known him to be. But he nodded in agreement and turned toward me.

  “I owe you everything, Dev. This could have been a disaster for me. It could have ruined me. I didn’t know if you’d really come out to Baltimore. I didn’t know if there’d be anything you could do. I don’t know what else to say except thank you. And maybe to ask you again: Are you sure I can’t pay you something for your trouble?”

  “I’ve been paid, Nathan.” And I had, in more ways than one. “Something bad happened to you and it wasn’t your fault. That happens sometimes. I’m just glad I was able to help.” I wanted to tell him that next time something bad happened to him, not to try hiding it until it was too late. But I think he’d learned that, and anyway, I didn’t want to break the mood of a quiet night under the stars and the smell of warm coffee cake.

  The next morning, I piled into Nathan’s maroon Hudson with the entire Caine clan, stopping at the cemetery on our way to the airport. It was the first time I’d been to our parents’ graves since the funeral. The kids put fresh flowers on the headstone, which was somehow not quite as I remembered it. I looked it over for a moment, finally noticing the engraving beneath the names: “All the days of their lives”.

  “I don’t remember that being there last time,” I said softly.

  Nathan shrugged. “I had it added a few years ago.”

  We drove on to the airport, the whole family coming in to see me off. We sat together in the terminal and had just enough time to say our goodbyes. I started by thanking Marie for all the wonderful meals she’d cooked for me. She responded by telling me not to wait so long until the next time.

  “You have family, Devlin,” she reminded me. “Maybe we haven’t been so good at letting you know that, but you do.”

  They announced my flight and there was a round of hugs and handshakes. There’s nothing that makes you feel more welcome than young children who are disappointed to see you go. I shook Billy’s hand, tousled his hair, then squatted down to say goodbye to Mary.

  “Don’t get the malarity,” she whispered in my ear, hugging my neck tightly.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered back. “I won’t.”

  Finally, I was back in Kansas City, sleeping in my own bed, pushing through the mound of paperwork that had collected in my absence, and listening to the details of Gail’s vacation with her mother over lunch. No, they hadn’t run into any Iranian princes, but they might have seen Clark Gable buying a pack of smokes at a newsstand outside their hotel.

  I had an appointment scheduled with my accountant in a few days. We’d figure up how much business I’d lost being away from the office for over a month, and he’d want to talk to me about all that money I’d had him send to Baltimore. I’d listen to him lecture me for awhile about my irresponsible ways, then just when he got his steam up, I'd slap down four years’ salary on his desk – cash that was sitting in my office safe at this ver
y moment. Yeah, I was looking forward to that.

  My first Monday night back, I went around the corner to Lonnigan’s to enjoy a quiet drink. I sat at the long, wooden bar and sipped a well-earned scotch with ice and just a little water – served by Himself, the best barman in Kansas City. Now I was really home.

  “Sure, an’ you have the luck of the Irish, Devlin Caine,” Lonnigan chuckled, having listened patiently to a few highlights of my recent adventures. “Much as any man I’ve met yet.”

  He wandered off to take care of another customer and I reached into my pocket, fishing out a Liberty silver dollar I’d received from a tobacconist in Baltimore. I turned it over in my hand, rolled it across the backs of my knuckles. I thought back to The Yellowtail Kid, a wizened old con that Pinkerton’s had picked up in Chicago years ago. He was up for some hard time and he knew it. So, like any good con, he made the most of it, spending days on his confession. He had some of the guys running for food and liquor while he bummed smokes in the conference room, regaling us all with the most amazing stories from his checkered career.

  “The thing you got to keep in mind,” I remember him saying as he scratched his heavily-veined nose, “is that all the complicated stuff you throw at the mark, at all that flash and sizzle, it’s just there to distract him. Your basic plan has to be simple. You get those two confused, you try to make your plan complicated as well, you ain’t never going to make a score.”

  The man knew what he was talking about. My play against Stanton had had plenty of window dressing: a young tycoon with money to burn; the purchase of a multi-million dollar building; the Liberty Silver Mining Company hoping to corner the zinc market; an up-and-coming grifter working his own angle as a phony Treasury agent; a pretty young thing from a rival con mob wanting a piece of the action. Yes, plenty of window dressing, but my basic plan had been simple from the start: give Stanton some real checks, then hope he’d cash some fake ones for me. Things only got complicated once the feds showed up, and that certainly hadn’t been my fault.

  I looked at the portrait of Lady Liberty on the face of the coin, then flipped it over to see the eagle on the back. One coin, two sides – pretty much how they come. I’d gone after Stanton, setting myself up as the con man. But in a single turn of the coin, I’d become the mark for Mattling’s play.

  I shrugged and took a drink. It fit with what I knew. I’ve learned it everywhere from boxing rings to battlefields: the minute you attack, you open yourself up to attack. I’d been trying to cover all the angles, but only on one side of the coin, so I never spotted the other fake Giarelli. Two-sided coins. Cops and crooks, cons and marks. Never think you can only be just one.

  What the hell, that was as good a rationalization as any for my having been taken in by my own damn con.

  “What’s funny, Mr. Caine?”

  Jennings slid onto the stool next to me. I looked at my watch, noticed he was dead on time. I signaled Lonnigan to bring the boy a drink.

  “A lot of things are funny, Jennings,” I answered. “I wouldn’t know where to start. But this might give you a chuckle.” I reached into my jacket and took out a fat envelope. Inside was Jennings’ cut: the whole fifteen thousand he’d won in the biggest night of poker in his life. And he’d handed it over without a word of protest. It just wouldn’t have been right to keep it from him. Besides, I still had plenty left.

  Jennings thanked me simply and sincerely, and put the envelope away in his pocket. We raised our glasses to a job well done.

  “So what are you going to do with your share, Mr. Caine? Buy another Caddy?”

  I’d actually thought about that, briefly. Just buying the Cadillac Fleetwood outright from the rental outfit in Baltimore and driving it back to K.C.

  “Nah,” I shook my head. “Not my style. Flashy cars are like flashy women, kid: fun to drive, but you’ll go broke trying to keep one.” I took another slug of scotch. “No, I figure to lease the empty office next to mine, call someone about having a communicating door put in.”

  I turned on my stool so I was facing Jennings.

  “I don’t mind having a partner,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have to look at his ugly mug every morning when I’m trying to do the crossword.”

  Jennings’ eyes widened and his perpetually lazy smile actually got up off the sofa for a second.

  “On the level, Mr. Caine? Is that an offer?”

  “That’s an offer, boy-oh,” I smiled back, raising my glass again. “Are you in?”

  ~ The End ~

  About William Topek

  William Topek is originally from the Midwest, but has lived and worked throughout the United States and overseas. His widely varied career has included serving on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, teaching in a foreign middle school, and conducting regulatory seminars and security training as an employee of the federal government. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas and received his MBA from Willamette University in Oregon. His interests include film, fiction, history and the art of storytelling.

  This is Topek’s second novel. Shadow of a Distant Morning, featuring P.I. Devlin Caine, was published in 2010.

  Acknowledgments

  For their encouragement and generous feedback from conception to final edit, I would like to thank the following people: Patricia and Daryl Copeland, Chuck Lass, Sarah Melching, Steve Cullen, Bernie Carr, and Curtis Craddock.

  While researching this novel, I was fortunate to come across one particularly fascinating and informative book. For anyone interested in learning more about confidence games of the time and the people who played them, I heartily recommend The Big Con by David W. Maurer (copyright 1940 by Universal Studios, Inc.).

  Lastly, I would like to thank Michelle Halket at Central Avenue Publishing, not only for giving my work a home, but for her continued enthusiasm for my writing in general and my character Devlin Caine in particular.

  Other Books By Central Avenue Publishing

  COLD IN CALFORNIA

  Deborah Riley-Magnus

  Twice-baked vampire, Gabriel Strickland, learns he has a chance at redemption when he’s whisked from his final demise into a purgatory secretly tucked in West Hollywood. Sixty creatures, including other dead vampires, pixies, a legendary Navaho stick man and bothersome leprechauns, struggle together to earn brownie points and wait out possible centuries of this purgatory. Gabriel receives dubious advice from the troll who runs the place, but there are always bugs in the pudding and he faces them all. Enter, the beautiful Dori Gallagher, who not only knocks Gabriel off his feet, but also an evil warlock who has designs on her. When menacing forces gather against Gabriel and everything he’s come to respect, it’s a fiery clash of the supernatural in one heroic effort to save his new reality.

  SHADOW OF A DISTANT MORNING

  William Topek

  Kansas City, 1934. Devlin Caine, a WWI veteran and former Pinkerton’s operative, is hired by a wealthy industrialist to check out a potential business partner. The job is simple and the money good, but for Caine, it’s a short step from checking public records to being roughed up in a back alley. When the man Caine is investigating turns up murdered, Caine finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between his client, a competing industrialist, and a local underworld boss – all after a coded notebook Caine found in the dead man’s hotel room. Desperate to unlock the mystery of the notebook (and to protect his client’s beautiful young daughter), Caine plays the three men against each other in an effort to buy time. He knows only one of the three rivals can win this battle, and backing the wrong side will cost lives, starting with his own.

  ARMOR OF LIGHT

  Ellen L. Ekstrom

  George Ascalon, earl of Grasmere, returns from the Fourth Crusade to learn that his father, a man who has forsaken his family and noble title to take up Holy Orders, has assigned him one last battle. There is an evil permeating a neighboring lord’s lands and George is called upon to vanquish it. With a band of followers that include
s his sister, a knight, a fletcher’s wife and a mysterious noblewoman, George sets out to honor the pledge and in doing so discovers that he indeed has dragons to fight, and the person most in need of saving is himself.