A Shared Confidence (8 page)

“Does that ever happen?” Nathan asked, and the hope in his eyes kind of hurt to look at.

“Pretty much anything you can imagine happens, Nathan, and every day. But I wouldn't count on it.”

“Dev, if a handwriting expert can attest that those are my actual signatures on the documents, can't a document expert of some kind give testimony that the documents have been altered?”

“Absolutely. What he wouldn't be able to verify is that the documents were altered after you signed them. It would still look pretty bad for you.”

Nathan's chin sunk slowly into his chest. This was no good, I was here to help him.

“Maybe I should just burn those documents,” he said softly. I was taken aback that my brother would even suggest something like this. Poor guy must really be tied up in knots.

“You don't need me to tell you that's a bad idea, Nathan. There could be photostats somewhere. There could be other little traps set up that could lead back to evidence that you destroyed. You'd just be making it worse.”

“Dev, what should I do? What
can
I do?”

I crushed out my cigarette in the small metal tray.

“Go to your superiors, Nathan. Tell them what you've told me. Get the ball rolling and get some experienced bank examiners and some good fraud men on this. They'll sort it out.”

“Go to them with what?!” Nathan flushed slightly as the people near us looked up from their plates. He continued more quietly: “Go to them with what, Dev? A huge amount of money missing? Three forged loan documents with my signature on each one? Not a clue how any of this happened in my own department? Right under my very nose?” His blue eyes, my father's eyes, were desperate. I always thought I'd enjoy seeing this. I couldn't have been more wrong.

And how good were these guys, whoever they were? Had they set Nathan up too perfectly? Could he end up taking the fall for this, incriminated by damning paperwork and no hard evidence on his side? He could be taking a hell of a risk by doing the right thing. People often do, and they sometimes lose. I decided my brother was right: he needed to know more, which meant I needed to know more.

“How long can you stall on this?” I asked.

“The first payment on those loans isn't due for another three weeks.”

I nodded. “Nathan, it's almost a certainty you'll have to go to your bosses at some point before this is all over. The longer you wait…”

“I know, I know. But I've got to have something, Dev. I've got to.”

Seeing a man taken down a peg or two is one thing. Seeing that sincere pleading in his face was something else, and I wanted no more of it. What was another few days? Maybe Nathan got busy and pulled out his fine-tooth comb a week later than usual; he could still go racing right to his superiors the minute he discovered any discrepancy.

Nathan was my only family and somebody was trying to put the screws to him. And he'd asked for my help for the first time in his life. Was I really the best person to help him right now, or did I just want to be? Just a few days, Dev, I told myself again. Just long enough to size up the situation and help him decide what to do next, that's all.

“I'm going to need the home addresses for your three men,” I told him. “And a look at their personnel files.”

His shoulders stiffened.

“Personnel files are highly confidential,” he said. “Allowing anyone but a senior officer at the bank to see them…well, what you're suggesting is highly inappropriate.”

“So's embezzlement, Nathan. Don't bust my chops.”

I laid
it out for Nathan on our way back to the bank. He could not, repeat not, let onto anyone that he knew anything, especially to the three men under him. Don't try to draw them out with pointed questions or otherwise trip them up – it would make them suspicious and we'd lose the advantage. Keep a damned sharp eye on them, yes. Especially if one of them suddenly stopped showing up for work. But otherwise, it was business as usual.

“So the plan is we do nothing?”

“The plan is you do nothing. I need time to check a few things out.”

I grilled him a bit more about his three employees. Had any of them been more talkative than normal, come to him with special problems or unusual questions? Had any of them missed work lately, even a few hours here and there? Who had spent the most time in his office with him? Had anyone been in his office recently without him? As I expected, Nathan had examples covering all such circumstances and for all three men.

Nathan Caine had another short conference in his office with Kelly Shaw, me examining the personnel files hidden inside larger, less conspicuous folders while he kept an eye out for anyone passing by the office window. I discreetly copied down the three men's home addresses and an additional detail here and there. I asked Nathan for the make and model of the car each one drove. Myers and Wiedermann, anyway, Soames didn't have a driver's license and took the bus.

Nathan saw me to the door of the bank and shook my hand again.

“I certainly hope you'll consider doing business with us, Mr. Shaw,” he said. “I'm confident that Beldham and Morrisey can serve you reliably and with discretion.”

“I like what I've heard so far, Mr. Caine. I'll be in touch.”

I left the bank and walked a few blocks until I found a drug store with a telephone booth in the back. I asked the operator to put me through long-distance to my office in Kansas City. A moment or two later, Gail came on at the other end and agreed to accept the charges.

“It's nice to hear from you, boss. How's Baltimore?”

“The fish is good. Statues are kind of moody. How's the office?”

“Running smoothly. You probably heard, we have this hotshot field operative giving us a hand.”

I laughed. “Jennings giving you any trouble?”

“Nah, he's a funny kid. You should hear some of his stories.”

“I've been in some of his stories. Is he there? Let me talk to him.”

A few seconds later, Jennings picked up the phone in my private office.

“What's doing, Mr. Caine?”

“Just working, kid. What's doing back there?”

“Got a couple of cases,” he said proudly. “The D.A.'s assistant wants me to deliver a summons and some guy wants me to tail his wife. Thinks she's stepping out on him.”

“You think she is?”

“If she's not she ought to be. From the picture he showed me, she's a doll.”

“Just make sure it's not with you. That kind of thing is bad for business.”

“You speaking from experience, Mr. Caine?” I'd have smacked him one if I'd been there, probably because he was right. I gave him a few more instructions, told him I'd check in again in a few days.

“Keep the doors open and the lights burning, Jennings.”

“Will do, boss.”

I roared suddenly into the mouthpiece: “And get your feet off my desk!”

There was a loud double-clump, then Jennings' voice again:

“How did you–”

I hung up the phone, smiling, then walked back over to the counter and asked the druggist where I could hire a car for a few days. The place he gave me was walking distance, and a quarter of an hour later I was tooling down the city streets in a dark blue, smooth-riding Essex Terraplane, a map of the city thoughtfully provided in the glove compartment. I pulled into a service station and had a look at the map, finding the addresses for Nathan's three employees. It took me close to two hours to run them all down. I just cruised by for a look at the two houses and the one apartment, I wouldn't be up for any breaking and entering today. Still, I figured it was a good idea to know where they were if I needed to come back to one of them.

It was just after six when I pulled into Nathan's driveway. Marie answered the bell and she wasn't smiling. Her tone seemed distinctly cool as well.

“Hello, Devlin. Please come in. We're having dinner at six-thirty if you'd like to wash up first.” I stepped inside, and after closing the door behind me, Marie walked quickly back to the kitchen. Had I left the water running? I passed through the living room and saw Billy sitting in a chair facing the corner. He peeked over his shoulder at me, jerking his face right back to the wall the instant our eyes met.

Not knowing what else to do, I went upstairs to the guest room. From the staircase, I could hear Mary keeping her mother company in the kitchen. When I opened the door to my room, I knew right away what was up. My suitcase was in a different spot on the floor from where I'd left it that morning. I hefted it onto the bed and opened the lid. Everything was there but not in the right place. Especially the Colt .32, which I'd left under a blue shirt, not a white one.

So what was the deal, I thought, sitting down heavily on the bed. Billy had come home from school, let curiosity get the better of him, and had a snoop through Uncle Devlin's suitcase. His mother must have caught him, which would have embarrassed her, her child going through a guest's things. If she'd seen the gun, she'd have been scared as hell, too, and probably at least a little put out with me. Best to wait here in my room until Nathan comes home, I thought. Let those two talk things over.

I closed the suitcase, put it down on the floor, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

“Marie, I know you're busy fixing dinner, but could I talk to you on the porch for just a quick minute?”

“Well, I…yes, just give me a second.”

“I'll be outside.”

I stepped onto the porch, wanting a cigarette but figuring I'd wait till after dinner. Marie came out behind me, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I saw the suitcase upstairs,” I told her.

“I'm sorry, Devlin. Billy's not normally the type to…to snoop through other people's…I mean, I like to think we've taught him better than that.”

“Boys that age get curious. He found my gun, didn't he?”

She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment, then started talking quickly. “I was walking by the open door and I saw him in there holding a gun and I got such a start. I wanted to shout but I was afraid if I did he might hurt himself with it. I told him to put it down and come over to me, and then…” She looked guiltily down at her feet. “Then I slapped his face pretty hard. I probably shouldn't have but I was so scared. I gave him a good talking to and sent him downstairs to sit in the corner. He's been there for over an hour now.”

“You're still a little scared,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And you're angry at me for bringing a gun into your house.”

She looked up at me, her brow furrowing.

“Yes, Devlin, I am!” Her green eyes flared briefly and I thought of my mother when she got that “fire in her belly” as Dad called it.

“You have every right to be. I should have thought about that, coming to visit a house with young children. I should have talked to you and Nathan, made some kind of arrangement. I'm sorry, Marie. I wasn't thinking.”

“Well,” she tilted her head slightly, “you don't have children of your own.” She seemed to be wondering if that was too personal a thing to say. “I just don't like guns.”

“I don't like them much myself,” I admitted, chuckling at the surprise on her face. “But sometimes in my line of work…Anyway, you can rest easy. I'm going into town after dinner and checking into a hotel.”

“Oh, no Devlin! You don't have to–”

“No, it's not that, Marie. Nathan and I have already discussed this. I need to be closer to downtown, closer to his bank so I can give him a hand.”

“Give him a hand with what exactly? Nathan won't tell me. Won't you? Please?”

That's the trouble with straight talk: once you're into it, it's hard to put the brakes on. I let out a sigh, wondering what I should tell her.

“It looks like there's some money missing at the bank,” I said, settling for the truth. “Nathan didn't take it.”

“Of course he didn't.”

“But someone's made it look like he did.”

She raised the back of her hand to her mouth.

“They believe Nathan, don't they?”

“Well, nobody knows about this but Nathan and myself. And whoever really took the money. It's going to get sorted out,” I assured her.

“Sorted out with a gun?” she asked.

“No,” I laughed. “I don't expect to need it. Just a habit when I travel. No, Nathan and I just need to find out a few more things before he reports this.”

“Such as what?” she asked.

I finally managed to find the brake pedal.

“Marie, I've already told you a lot more than I should. It's Nathan's place to decide what he wants you to know. It's just that in my experience, well, people sometimes worry less when they have some idea what's going on. Gives their imaginations a rest.”

She nodded, and I knew she wouldn't say anything to Nathan.

“Thank you, Devlin. Now about you going to a hotel–”

“Honestly, Marie, it's just so I can be closer to downtown, that's all.”

Marie looked at me dubiously.

“You'll still come by for meals?”

“For your cooking?” I smiled. “Every chance I get.”

F
or the second time in
as many days, I woke to strange surroundings. I rose on one elbow, looking around at the hotel furniture to get my bearings. A comfortable, medium-priced room in a place about six blocks from Nathan's bank. I'd checked in late last night under my own name, figuring the Kelly Shaw ruse would be just for visiting Beldham & Morrissey.

I kicked off the bedclothes, stretched, and walked over to the window. Three floors below there were plenty of cars in the street and about as many pedestrians on the sidewalk. The city was already up and moving. I padded over to the center of the room and did a few minutes of jumping jacks, then splayed my feet up on two chairs, put one hand on the rug, and did ten slow pushups with each arm. A hot shower and a cold rinse had me feeling even more awake. Shaved and dressed, I found a nearby diner for some bacon, eggs, and coffee.

Nathan and I had talked things over on the porch last night while the children helped Marie clear the table. I explained that our first concern was to find out more about the recent movements of his three employees. Nathan agreed to write out a list of dates and times for me, any incidents he could remember or verify (casually, not drawing attention) when any of those men had missed work in the last month or so.

“Whoever did this didn't go it alone,” I assured him. “We need to find out where the help came from.”

“What about people coming in to see them?” he asked.

“Make a note of it, yeah, but I doubt that'll help. Safer for everyone if the co-conspirators stayed clear of the bank.”

Nathan was pulling nervously at his pipe, probably the closest he came to fidgeting.

“How long before we find something out do you think?”

“No way to know, Nathan. Sometimes you pick up a lot in a few hours, or we may never find out anything. I'm sorry, but that's how it works.” He nodded stoically, but I could see his nerves were working on him. “We'll give it till Tuesday. If we don't have anything to go on by then, it may be time to rethink going to your bosses.”

Marie was kind enough to bring us coffee on the porch, and accommodating enough to go right back inside. I blew over the rim of my cup, an image coming back to me.

“That document that Myers spilled coffee on,” I said. “You see it?”

“Yes.”

“How closely did you examine it?”

Nathan blinked at me. “How closely did I examine a stained piece of paper?”

“That's what I thought. That was one of the three right there, Nathan.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean someone made deliberately ruined a fake document to get you to sign a second original. You thought you were making a duplicate, but the original never had coffee spilled on it, and the second one you signed was altered. One of the three fakes sitting in your desk.”

“So it was Myers!”

“I'd say that's likely, but he could have just been a stooge. Wiedermann or Soames bumped him at the right moment, or spilled the coffee themselves and arranged for him to take the blame.”

Nathan thought carefully for a few minutes.

“I don't remember any other ruined documents in the past month, Dev.”

“That's because there weren't any others.”

“How can you know?”

I took a drag from my cigarette, watching the tip glow red in the semi-darkness.

“These people know you, Nathan. They know you're smart and that you have a good memory. You damn sure remembered that coffee spill. If the same thing happened two or three times, it'd be set in your brain like a marble engraving.”

“Then the other two documents?” he asked.

I shrugged and blew out a puff of smoke. “Don't know. Some other trick they managed to get by you. Some other trick that they also didn't dare to use more than once. A tack-on to some other loan that they altered later like we've already discussed.”

Nathan's face lit up with a new worry, one I'd already considered and dismissed.

“Do you suppose there could be more than just the three forgeries?”

“Doubt it. For one thing, forgeries like those are expensive, the fewer the better. They didn't want to risk grabbing your attention with the whole hundred and forty thou, they had to aim for just below your threshold. Sixty here, forty there, another forty over there. No, I think they picked three as the magic number to avoid arousing your suspicions. Three tricks, three forgeries they had to pay for.”

“Four forgeries,” Nathan corrected. “You're forgetting the coffee spill.”

“Three,” I counter-corrected. “They did that one themselves. They didn't need to pay a pro to whip together something you were only going to see as a sodden mess.”

I'd been going over the conversation in my mind while I sat in the diner, working leisurely at my scrambled eggs. The waitress took my plate and I had a cigarette with my coffee. My next move was to have Nathan's men tailed for a couple of days. I'd have done it myself but they'd already seen my face. Hell, I'd had myself introduced to them as a prospective new loan customer. I hadn't expected to do any real legwork on this, just talk to Nathan, see if anything struck me, give him whatever advice I could. Only he didn't want the advice I'd given him so far. A regular client, I'd just wash my hands of it at that point, maybe recommend someone else he could go to. Hard to do that with family, though.

Back to the matter at hand, I told myself. My problem was simple: I needed to follow three men who might recognize me. The solution seemed equally simple: I'd hire a private detective.

I found Townsend in the diner's telephone directory. His ad wasn't too big or overblown, but he had one. A short drive later I was introducing myself to his secretary. She was polite and the offices were clean but not ostentatious. Townsend himself was a six-footer in a plain brown suit with strong shoulders, level gray eyes, close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and a firm, dry handshake. He was articulate but not chatty, polite but not overly diffident. His office didn't smell of booze and he didn't mind working weekends. And he knew what questions to ask. I didn't play coy with him; I showed him my private investigator's license and told him what I wanted.

“You don't want to tail these birds yourself?” Townsend didn't have an accent, not one I could place, anyway.

“I'm from out of town,” I explained. “You know the city better. Besides, they've seen my face.”

“Slip?”

“No, I introduced myself. Using another name.”

He nodded once, looking at the three names he'd written down.

“Rough trade?”

I gave a turned-down smile and shook my head. “These joes are bankers.” I gave him descriptions of the three men, the name and address of the bank they worked at, their home addresses, and what kinds of cars two of them drove. No, there wasn't anything else I wanted to tell him for now. Just a standard shadow, see where they go, who they talk to. If I needed more later, I'd tell him more later. He caught me looking past his shoulder at the medals on the wall behind him.

“Infantry,” he said. “Thirteen months in the trenches. You?”

“Courier in the Signal Corps.”

“See any action?”

“Not much. More than I wanted to.”

“Didn't we all.”

Townsend said he had a couple of reliable men he could put on this starting tomorrow, Saturday. We worked out a few other details. If we ran into each other on the street, he was to ignore me unless I approached him. If I did come up to him, he wasn't to use my name unless I dropped it. We settled on a fee, a little expensive, this being the East Coast, but I got the feeling he was giving me a break just the same. I offered him some money up front. He told me that wouldn't be necessary. Professional courtesy, I guessed. I shook his hand and told him I'd drop by Monday afternoon to see what progress had been made.

I spent the next few hours breaking bills at the three different banks where the $140,000 had been sent (and immediately cleaned out). There wasn't a lot to be gained from this, but I'm the visual sort – the more I see, the clearer I can usually think. I didn't risk trying to pump anyone about the closed-out accounts. Bank examiners might end up doing that soon enough and I didn't need my mug stuck in someone's recent memory because I'd walked in off the street asking questions. Asking to break a ten-spot wouldn't seem out of place. Mostly it was an excuse to look around, see if just maybe there might be a teller I could smooth-talk, set up a potential ally for down the line if the situation became ripe.

“Just visiting,” I said, in answer to the pretty young girl behind the cage. “Any places I shouldn't miss while I'm in town?” She rattled off a few. There was the Hippodrome, of course. If I was a history buff, I might want to pay a visit to Fort McHenry. A battle there over a century ago inspired what officially became our national anthem a few years back. And say, did I know that Baltimore was the home of the famous writer, Edgar Allan Poe?

“No kidding? You think maybe I could get his autograph?” She saw I was putting her on and laughed.

“Knowing Poe,” she said, “I'd say if you could get any writer to come back from the grave to sign your autograph book, it'd be him.”

“I could put it right next to the postcard I got from Houdini last summer.”

She laughed again and I thanked her politely for her suggestions, tapped my money on the counter, and left. There's a fairly simple secret to charming strange women: don't talk to them like they're stupid. Three banks and I had maybe one ally who wouldn't connect me to the embezzlers, along with a wallet stuffed with ones and fives.

There was nothing new to be gained by dropping in at Beldham & Morrisey. Besides, if Mr. Shaw made too many visits over a loan that would never materialize, that could make Nathan look like he couldn't seal a deal. I had a light lunch at the same diner where I'd had breakfast, then went back to my hotel to check for messages. Nathan had called while I was out. I thanked the man behind the desk and went over to the house phone. Mr. Shaw's call to Mr. Caine was put through quickly.

“Have you found out anything so far?” Nathan asked immediately. Christ, I thought, it's been what, maybe six hours into the day?

“No, but I've put a man on it. We might pick up something over the weekend.”

“You have people in Baltimore?”

“I have people pretty much wherever I need them, Nathan,” I told him. Same as anyone who can read a telephone directory, you mook. “What did you call about?”

Nathan told me that Wiedermann had a dentist appointment for this afternoon at four o'clock. Apparently, the guy was having some real trouble with his choppers lately; this was his fourth dentist appointment in the last month.

“Are you going to follow him?” Nathan asked. “To make sure he's really going to the dentist?”

“Now there's a thought.”

“Make certain he doesn't see you.”

“Thanks for the tip, Nathan.” I hung up the phone.

I drove over to Wyman Park and killed an hour or so mulling on a bench. My profession has made me an analytical man, but you have to be careful when there's not much in the hopper to analyze. Otherwise, you'll do so much grinding and sifting you'll end up turning half-baked theories into facts without even realizing it. I glanced over at the statue of Poe from time to time. Frozen with his head down in an eternal brood, Mr. Nevermore seemed a great deterrent against letting one's imagination run amok. I considered walking over and asking for his autograph, but that was just an excuse to think about the pretty teller again.

At three-thirty, I drove over to Beldham & Morrisey, parking several spaces down from the entrance. I waited twelve minutes for Wiedermann to emerge, then started my engine as I watched him cross the street and climb into a black Ford. He pulled into traffic and, once I had his direction down, I put the Terraplane into gear and followed him. We drove about three miles. He wasn't checking his mirror and he didn't make any sudden turns to shake a tail. The Ford pulled into a small office park next to a residential neighborhood. One of the signs out front boasted: “A. Enright, D.D.S.” I circled the block before pulling into the same lot and grabbing a spot several spaces down from the Ford.

I skimmed the local paper in my rented car until Wiedermann came out forty minutes later. When I was sure the coast was clear, I sauntered up the stairs and into the second-floor reception room. A perky brunette in starched whites smiled up at me from behind a windowed counter.

“Good afternoon. May I help you?”

“I'd like to speak to Dr. Enright if he's in.”

“Do you have an appointment?” She rubbed the eraser end of a pencil under her lower lip flirtatiously.

“No appointment and no toothache,” I smiled, rapping the wooden counter lightly. “More in the nature of a personal business matter. Just take a minute. And no, I'm not a salesman,” I added, putting my hand up.

“Let me see if the doctor is free just now.” She stood up and walked slowly toward the back, giving me a good view of easily swaying hips. The people in this neighborhood probably had the cleanest teeth in Baltimore. I wast treated to another couple of views, coming and going, as she returned to lead me back to the dentist's office. A middle-aged man with neatly parted hair and glasses looked up from his clipboard, all business in his white tunic.

“Dr. Enright?”

“Yes? What can I do for you?”

“My name is Devlin Caine,” I told him. “I'm a private detective.”

The slump of his shoulders was slight, sudden, and unmistakable. He sighed and placed the clipboard down on a counter full of stainless steel implements and models of teeth.

“My wife hired you.” It was a statement, not a question, a heavy note of resignation in it. I put the insurance fraud story I'd concocted on the back burner and shifted to a higher mental gear.