A Shared Confidence (28 page)

I
spent another couple of
days at the F.B.I. field office in Baltimore, sitting around a conference table telling Mattling and a few federal lawyers most of the story. We kicked it around the table, figured out what stuff they could use, what I'd be willing to swear to, and then we went to work on my deposition. True to his word, Mattling kept my real identity out of the official report, on the understanding that, if pressed, I might have to reveal myself and even return to Baltimore to testify in open court. But Mattling was willing to swear that everything I'd done had been with his knowledge and approval – even by his direct order, if necessary – and he really doubted it would ever come to that. Stanton would see the mountain against him, take the smart play and serve a few years.

I saw Stanton once in the hallway, being brought in for yet another round of questioning. I'd learned his real name by now, but I still thought of him as Stanton. I wondered if he still thought of me as Shaw. He looked at me and his eyes narrowed, then he gave the slightest bow of his head, a salute from one con to another. I made damn sure I bowed my head in return; the man was as good as any I'd ever seen or heard about.

I saw Straker in that same hallway a day later, carrying the letter of commendation he'd been chasing since he got here. He looked up and saw me and his face hardened for a second, but he was in too good a mood. He smiled, clapped me on the shoulder, babbled on about what great work we'd all done on this very important case, and breezed on down the hall, reading his name over and over again on the letter. I never said one word, but I did manage to throw his retreating figure a salute of its own.

Friday morning I stopped by Townsend's office for the last time. He sat at his desk, crisp and professional-looking as when I'd first met him.

“So it all worked out for you?” he asked.

“It's looking very much that way,” I admitted.

“You got pretty lucky, Caine, if you don't mind my saying so.”

I didn't mind. I'd survived the war, but Townsend had done so fighting in trenches when friends of his didn't. He would know luck better than most men. When it came time to make out the bill, I made it clear to him that I didn't need any favors. I paid the full amount in cash, then placed another three thousand dollars down on his desk.

“What's this?”

“Bonus for you and your men. Split it up however you want. I couldn't have done this without you guys.” I had to push a little, assure him it wasn't money anyone would come looking for, told him he could go ahead and add it to the bill if he wanted a record of it. He did.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said, reaching into the briefcase I was carrying and taking out a document. “A little wallpaper to brighten up the office.”

I handed the document to Townsend, who read it to himself. A nice little letter of appreciation for his involvement in helping bring down a notorious criminal, signed personally by J. Edgar Hoover.

“This real?” he asked, almost laughing.

“It is. Bunch of us got them. You know how the feds are about congratulating everyone at the end of an operation like this.”

“I suppose it couldn't hurt the trade,” he said, eying the wall behind him.

“I'm putting mine up soon as I get back,” I told him. “Now how about that drink I promised you?”

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 very 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.