A Shared Confidence (20 page)

The thug's eyebrows raised a fraction. At least he knew his name. He snorted once, no doubt in derision at the rich dandy in imported clothing standing in front of him. I stood there with my hands in my pockets, sighing inwardly. I had real problems to deal with. Still, to be fair, this was my fault. I'd ignored Myers and Wiedermann for too long now, let them build their courage back up. Well, I could fix that.

“So that's how it is, is it?”

“That's how it is.” Wiedermann took a puff from his cigar and leisurely blew a smoke ring.

“Let me ask you one thing,” I said, picking up the heavy glass candle bowl from the table top. I turned it over and looked at the bottom. “Do you have any idea where this was made?”

Myers and Wiedermann looked at one another, trying to figure what I was getting at.

“Neither do I.” I brought the candle bowl down in the center of the thug's face and broke his nose, then jabbed him hard in the throat with it. Blood was pouring down his face as I put my palms on his cheeks, wrapping my fingers around his ears and giving them a good, solid yank. My thumbs found his eyelids. I applied just enough pressure to make him let out a yelp, then leaned in close to one ear.

“Back to the pool hall, rummy!” I hissed. “I see you again, I'll hurt you for real.”

The thug rose from the table with an effort, almost blinded from eyes watering with pain, and shambled as quickly as he could out the door. I put my hands back in my pockets and looked casually back at Myers and Wiedermann, who were paler now than I'd ever seen them. I don't enjoy hurting people, but the thug was big and he'd heal just fine. If I'd given him half a chance at a fair fight, it would have been a case of having to hurt him a lot worse or get busted up myself. And people believe what they see. Myers and Wiedermann had just seen a man make short work of their insurance without breaking a sweat.

I ran a hand over my face tiredly and sat down.

“No, don't get up,” I said tiredly. “I'll tell you when you can leave.” Neither man had moved, but now each was scared thinking the other had.

“Either of you two ever hear of Lon Kruger?” They shook their heads. “About six-foot-six and over two hundred and eighty pounds. Biceps as big around as my damn leg and enough hair on his back alone to make two Indian blankets. Murdered his whole family with a pair of scissors seventeen years ago. And every day since then he's been in a prison cell. He's given up all hope of ever seeing a woman again. However,” I glanced at Wiedermann, “he still likes brunettes, fat boy.

“Now any ordinary day, a fella breaking his solemn oath with me, well, you'd already be sharing that same cell with Kruger, and doing your goddamnedest to make yourself pretty for him so he wouldn't hurt you any worse.” Wiedermann was sweating so badly now I could have put the cigar out on his forehead.

“Lucky for you two I'm busy these days,” I continued in the same lackadaisical tone. “I've put a lot of effort into my plans and I don't have time to put out more working around you two jerks. It would put me behind schedule, and I hate being behind schedule.”

Both men seemed plenty scared, but I'd made that mistake before. I calmly took the cigar out of Wiedermann's hand, then grabbed him by the tie and yanked him forward, holding the lit end of the stogie an inch or two from his left eye for a second.

“What's your favorite eye, Wiedermann? Right or left?”

“Please.” He shut his eyes tight and you could barely hear him.

After another few seconds I let him go. He slumped back in his chair and I took out a cigarette, lighting it from the end of the cigar.

“Not that it concerns you two small fry,” I puffed, “but I have plans for your Mr. Ferrier as well. Those documents I collected from him are what we in the law enforcement profession refer to as ‘evidence'. Maybe you two geniuses have heard of that concept before.

“Point is, this is your
last
last chance. My offer's still good. You play ball with me, you walk. But if either of you ever tries to pull a stunt like this again–”

“We won't!” They said it almost in perfect unison.

“Don't interrupt me. If you ever try this again, you'll be locked up inside of five minutes, and you'll stay locked up, from city to county to state to federal, while your lawyers make noise, take your money, and forget about you. And just as soon as I can arrange it, you'll be sharing a cell with Lon Kruger, playing house with that burly, hairy, sweaty psychopath until he gets tired of you and you wake up one morning with a pair of scissors in your neck.”

I turned to Myers again. “That goes for you both of you. You're a team now. This joker does something and you don't know about it, tough. Kruger will still be able to add bigamy to his list of crimes. You both catching my drift on this?”

They assured me they were.

“This is the last time we have this conversation. I mean the very last.”

I stood up and walked out.

I stepped
into Ferrier's back office noisily enough for him to look up from his work table. Without a word I dumped his two-hundred-dollar printing machine onto the floor where it hit with a loud smash, rollers and cogs and gears scattering across the linoleum. Then I stomped across to his filing cabinet and found his gun, taking out the magazine and clearing the chamber before dumping it back in the drawer. I took the shell from the chamber, walked over to Ferrier, grabbed him roughly by the hair, and forced it into his mouth. I took out my Colt and pressed it against his forehead. My voice was low and cold.

“Swallow it.”

He stared at me, his eyes wide.

“Five, four, three…”

He swallowed. It would do him no harm, of course, but there's something about making a man swallow a bullet.

“My business with you is private. You don't talk to bankers, you don't talk to a living soul about it. It ever happens again, you'll eat another bullet, one that'll be coming a hell of a lot faster.”

I let go of his hair and he slumped back, his shoulders drooping like he was too exhausted even to shrug.

I walked out.

Penny was
waiting for me at our spot at the hotel lounge, along with the Campari and soda she'd ordered for me. I sent it back for a scotch over ice. Kelly Shaw might be a fan of Campari, but Devlin Caine had had a rough day. After leaving Ferrier's print shop, I'd found a drugstore and called Nathan.

“It's all sorted out,” I told him. “Myers and Wiedermann will be back in tomorrow, on time and probably with an apology. Try to keep them busy, won't you?”

“I'll do my best with whatever I can trust them with these days. But what if they leave again?”

“I really don't think they will, but let me know the minute I'm wrong.”

“Don't I usually?”

I snorted into the phone reflexively. Nathan making a joke had caught me off guard.

“Hang in there,” I told him. “Everything is on schedule and it shouldn't be much longer.”

The waitress brought me my scotch and I took that first cool sip. Kelly Shaw was a Nancy Boy, I decided, if he preferred Campari to this. I realized that, when I wasn't actually being Shaw, I tended to think of him as a real but separate person. Probably happens to a lot of cons, I figured. I put the question to Penny.

“Oh sure,” she said. “I mean, first off, you have to make the character real, believable. How you gonna make the mark believe in him if you don't? And you play a part long enough, over time you naturally find yourself building the character up more. Thinking about what he likes to eat, where he goes to church, what his family's like.”

“Probably the same with actors,” I said.

“Probably,” she agreed.

I knew from my time at Pinkerton's that it wasn't just the character. There came a point in big confidence games where the con man had to believe it himself. Only way to sell it. I don't mean like self-hypnosis – there's always a part of you that knows what's real and what isn't – but there are moments when the con actually does con himself, makes himself think that whatever he's doing is really as he's presenting it to the mark. It's hard to explain, but I realized now how often over the last several days I'd been thinking as Kelly Shaw. About my summer house and my closet full of imported suits and even about the building I was going to buy. Christ, I was even catching glimpses in my mind of the faces of my partners who didn't exist, the ones who were going in on this building with me. It started as just making sure I had the details right, but damn if it hadn't started to feel real. I ran this by Penny, too.

“Sure,” she said. “You can't live in a world every day without it becomes real to you after awhile. No matter how many times you pat yourself on the back for being clever or make fun of the mark who's only getting what's coming to him, you still gotta live with yourself. And the more real you make that world, the easier it is to do that.”

And I realized how dangerous that could be, coming to believe in your own lies. Oh sure, people do it all the time, one way or another. But in the game I was playing, that seemed like a quick way to blind yourself to dangers on the horizon. Of course, at the other extreme, if you thought of yourself as some big-time operator who knew all the angles, thought you were too sharp ever to get off course, you could be blinded that way, too. How the hell do people do this for a career? I wondered. Without ending up half crazy?

“You make it to the bank?” I asked Penny.

“Sure did, lover.” She opened her purse and handed me a cashier's check for the amount of twenty thousand dollars. I put it in my coat pocket with the cashier's check for ten thousand I'd picked up on my way to see Jennings.

I stared at Penny for a moment until she started laughing.

“You thought I was gonna make off with the twenty gees and never come back?”

“I wondered,” I smiled lazily, downing another drink of scotch.

T
uesday morning I met Stanton
at the little diner across from First Quality Investors, the same diner I'd used to stake out the phony brokerage office the day I saw Myers and Wiedermann get taken. It occurred to me that had been a Tuesday also, and I hoped this one went better. Stanton did his best to hide his disappointment that I was bringing him only thirty thousand dollars, and in the form of two cashier's checks instead of cash. I explained that I had to cover the forty thousand that had been stolen from my hotel suite, which meant I had to divert funds from another deal. Reminding Stanton of the stolen money also made it easy to convince him that I was no longer comfortable carrying large sums of cash around this city.

“It just holds me up a day or two, that's all,” I told Stanton, assuring him that I was still wanting to invest half a million dollars with him this week. “Handle this for me today,” I instructed, gesturing at the two checks in his hand, “and we'll do the rest Thursday and Friday. Two checks each, just like today. One investment in the morning, the other in the afternoon. I don't want to go over a hundred thousand for any single investment. That way, if my partners find out, it won't look like I'm stashing cash.”

“These other four checks will also be cashier's checks?” Stanton inquired.

“They will. I'd rather not use any checks with my name on them for this. In fact, you mentioned that the investments needn't necessarily be made in my name?”

“There are numerous ways we can work around that, Mr. Shaw,” Stanton assured me. “All of them perfectly legal.”

“Mr. Stanton, would it be asking too much for you to handle the investments personally? To purchase the shares yourself at the window? In your name? I know you're a busy man and all, and that you don't like your competitors to see what you're buying, but–”

“I'd be happy to take care of it for you, Mr. Shaw.” That Stanton was a prince. “Besides,” he added with a slight smile, “the stocks I'll be putting your money into aren't related to the larger investments I'm working on. If any of my competitors do observe me making the purchases for you, it's very likely to give them a false impression. Help throw them off my scent, as it were.”

I smiled in return. “Sounds like it works out well for both of us.”

We made arrangements for Stanton to stop by my hotel tomorrow evening for a late supper. He could bring me the receipts for the stock he'd purchase today – they'd be in his name, he explained, but I'd at least have the dates, numbers of shares, and prices – and the two of us could relax and talk about the remaining investments for later in the week. The receipts would be as worthless as every prop in that phony brokerage office, of course, but he didn't know I knew that.

Stanton was pretty happy when I left him. He'd be even happier this afternoon when he rushed off to the bank and cashed those checks, which were both perfectly good. Thirty thousand dollars' real money. Money I'd never be able to pay back on my own. Now my plan had to work.

That afternoon
I was seated in the hotel suite where I'd first met Agent Mattling and assorted fellows from his and other government agencies. Straker had telephoned me at the Lord Baltimore and asked if I could come around for a visit. The fact was, I needed to speak to Mattling again, but I let Straker keep believing the notion was all his. Of course, being Straker, he'd have kept believing that if the Almighty Himself had set up the meeting.

The suite was empty save for Mattling, Straker, and myself. We sat around the low table, a glass of bourbon and water over ice for Mattling and me, and plain seltzer for Straker. There was a lot I wanted to ask Mattling, but I still wasn't sure how far I could trust him. I knew how far I could trust Straker.

Mattling leaned back comfortably in his chair, his drink untouched, his bland face appraising me for a moment before he spoke.

“Mr. Straker tells me you might be interested in coming to work for the Bureau.”

I picked up my glass and thought over possible answers to this. Four whole seconds passed before Straker butted in.

“Come now, Dev, no need to be shy with Agent Mattling. I can tell you, he's a man who appreciates real talent.” Either Mattling was too bored to roll his eyes or he'd been long enough in Straker's company to learn to tune the man out.

“I'll put it this way,” I hedged. “I'm not the kind of man to rule out anything, not during times like these.”

“Practical attitude,” Mattling observed.

“Agent Mattling and I have been batting it around,” Straker said. “I think we've pretty much come to the same conclusion. If you're able to help us with the Stanton case, well, that would really give Agent Mattling something to sell to his superiors in terms of taking you on in a more permanent fashion, so to speak.” Most people would risk tearing something trying to sound deferential and arrogant at the same time. Straker'd been doing it so long he probably didn't even notice.

I looked at Mattling and shrugged. “I'm still keeping Stanton on the line, playing the mark for him like we talked about.”

“Giarelli hasn't scared him into hiding yet?” Mattling asked it almost casually.

“Not so far.”

“You must have fashioned a pretty tempting lure for him.”

I didn't say anything.

“They say never try to con a con,” Straker chuckled. “So naturally, that'd be your first instinct, wouldn't it, Dev?” He turned to Mattling. “He's innovative, Agent Mattling. You have to give him that. And frankly, I think innovation is something the Bureau could use a bit more of, if you'll pardon me for saying so.” Mattling pardoned Straker by ignoring him.

“Here's my situation, Mr. Caine,” Mattling began. “We need to catch Stanton at something big, something he'd definitely serve time for. That's the only thing that will appease Senator Cumberland. Tracking Stanton's every petty con just keeps us all at this for months while we wait to collect enough small stuff to put together. And frankly, some of us have more important work we need to be getting back to.”

I appreciated Mattling laying it out for me like this, but this was still going to take some delicate handling.

“Much as I want to help the F.B.I., Agent Mattling, I was hired by a paying client to do a job and, well, there are some professional ethics involved here.”

“I'm afraid that's our fault,” Straker grinned smugly. “We really drill that into our boys at Pinkerton's, the importance of maintaining the highest ethical standards at all times. Of course,” he added, his voice dropping as he looked at me (Straker's idea of a subtle hint), “nothing must take second place to upholding the law. Pinkerton's history of lending assistance to law enforcement when and where needed is unsurpassed.” As is Pinkerton's history of lending assistance to private companies with labor problems, I thought, but that was another story. Straker always spoke like a public relations man when he wanted to impress someone, which was most of the time. He'd have been better off sitting in an office and typing out press releases, but there's no prestige in that, and you don't get to tell other people what to do.

Mattling politely asked Straker to give us a few minutes alone. Straker rose from his chair, patting me on the arm on his way out and saying, “Listen to what this man has to say, Dev. He can help your career.” Mattling and I looked at each other in silence for a moment, a silence he was clearly happy to have me break for him.

“How are things going with Giarelli?” I asked.

“We're watching him,” he shrugged. “Not much more I can tell you than that. He causing you any problems?”

“Not so far. Are you hoping to get Stanton out of the way first to give you a clearer field of fire at Giarelli? Or the other way around?”

“Either works for us,” Mattling said. “We'll take what comes.” Something wasn't adding up right. Mattling told me the other night in my hotel suite that all the F.B.I. really cared about was nailing Giarelli, that they'd been dragged into this federal posse formed by Senator Cumberland and that they didn't want Giarelli to get away while they were busying themselves with a simple con man. But Mattling didn't seem all that worried about such a possibility now. Unfortunately, I couldn't ask him a lot about it without tipping too much of my own hand.

“So what's your plan with Stanton?” Mattling asked.

“I'm trying to get some of my client's money back,” I answered truthfully.

“How much money?”

“I'm shooting for two hundred thou.”

“Pretty big score. How do you plan to pull that off?”

“Haven't quite got the details worked out yet,” I told him.

He nodded stoically, took a drink.

“You're hoping,” I surmised, “that what I'm doing is big enough for you to haul Stanton in. Make him do some real time.”

“Maybe.”

“Not sure how that would work,” I admitted. “I mean, if I'm the one taking money from Stanton instead of the other way around…” I let the sentence trail off. “I sure as hell don't want to go to jail for employing a confidence scheme.”

“I'm not even sure there is any law against conning a con man, Mr. Caine,” Mattling said, which was hooey. That's like saying there's no law against robbing robbers or murdering murderers.

Mattling kept staring at me, not hard, not soft, just staring.

“There's some other reason you're holding back on playing ball with us.” It was a statement.

“I'm worried about what happens if I do. I do all this work for my client, and the money I'm trying to collect for him gets seized as evidence. He'd likely never see it again.”

“Your client seems perfectly willing to cooperate with us.” I knew Mattling was talking about Ethan Ryland, and I damn sure wanted him to keep thinking Ryland was my client. I didn't need the feds to know about my brother's embezzlement problems. “Besides,” Mattling continued, “we're after Stanton, not the money. Hell, maybe the money just disappears before we move in and nobody ever knows what happened to it.”

“You want Stanton more than Giarelli?” I prodded.

“Separate cases,” he said flatly. “We want them both.”

I took a drink, thinking of all the things I wanted to ask but didn't dare.

“How do you have a case against Stanton if you can't prove money changed hands?” I asked.

“We don't always need to show the money to a judge to prove money changed hands. We have some of the brightest accountants in the country working for us, Mr. Caine. That's not our weak side.”

“What is your weak side, Agent Mattling? What do you really want from me?”

Mattling took a pull from his drink, put it down on the table, leaned forward, and told me, in a few simple sentences and with Straker out of the room, exactly what he really wanted.

I thought it over for a moment. “And you'd need me as a witness after the fact, I guess?”

“A sworn deposition from a private detective recruited by the Bureau, attesting to the salient facts, yes, we'd need that. I don't see that we'd have to drag you all the way back out here to give testimony in court.”

Mattling picked up his drink and leaned back in his seat again, taking another swallow. “I don't know that we'd even have to give the detective's actual identity. We have a lot of latitude these days in our pursuit of lawbreakers.” I wondered if that thought scared Mattling as much as it did me.

Mattling's request had been straightforward. And in exchange for my help, he was basically telling me I could run my own con against Stanton, keep the money for my client, swear to a written statement that didn't even have to include my name, and breeze on back home. Even in the unlikely but possible event that all that was true, I knew how fast the Bureau's hospitality would dry up if anything went wrong. I could go from walking away free and clear to sharing a prison cell with Stanton.

“Let me make sure I'm following,” I said to Mattling. “We all know Stanton's a confidence artist. We all know his brokerage firm on Chase Street is just a ‘store'. The money he took from Cumberland and Ryland would be big enough to land him in the pen, only those two scores are in the past and nobody was collecting evidence at the time they went down. But if I do this thing for you, you'll have what you need and you can move on him. Is that about the size of it?”

“That's it exactly, Mr. Caine.”

“And then Cumberland, Treasury, and the S.E.C. are all happy and you can get back to focusing on Giarelli.”

“And a number of other criminals at large.”

“But even with my help and a sworn deposition about it later,” I said, thinking aloud, “you still need to be there at the kill. Catch Stanton red-handed at something.”

“That we do, Mr. Caine. I see Straker hasn't been exaggerating about how quickly you put things together.”

“He's really been trying to sell me to you, hasn't he?”

“He has,” Mattling admitted. “And not without some success, I'll admit.” He paused for a moment and asked: “
Are
you interested in working for the Bureau full-time, Mr. Caine?”

I paused to be polite, taking a quick drink.

“No. Look, I appreciate the work you fellows do, but running down public enemies, gangs full of criminals loaded down with Tommy guns, that's not my idea of a good time.”

“We have other jobs,” Mattling said. “Desk jobs. Analysts, researchers, people like that. We're always looking for sharp minds with your kind of experience.”

“I appreciate that, Agent Mattling. But I have a job and I like it just fine.” Most of the time, I thought. “Despite whatever Straker's telling you, you don't need to sell me a government job to get me to help you.”