A Shared Confidence (9 page)

“Professional ethics, Doctor, I said. “I can't reveal the identity of a paying client.” I tried to hit just the right note of caginess that would validate his assumption. Enright sighed again and sat down on a stool near the dentist's chair.

“I never meant for it to happen,” he said, looking down at a tray of sterilized jabbers and pokers. “You probably hear that all the time.”

I tilted my head in a kind of agreeing nod.

“You know the real irony here?” he asked, looking at me now.

“What's that, Doctor?” Come on, Doc, I thought, open wide.

“I was going to break it off with her tonight after work. I doubt she'd really be all that upset. Cora's young and vivacious, as I'm sure you saw for yourself. I'm sure she never had any long-range designs on a man of my age.”

“She seems the friendly sort, all right,” I agreed. “Kind that doesn't have too much trouble finding company.” My speech was lazy but my brain was working okay. So the dentist was stepping out with his receptionist. He'd had his fun and knew it wouldn't last, only now his old lady had gone and hired a private dick. Now to turn this to my advantage. I leaned against a counter, still holding my hat and running my fingers absently along the brim.

“I haven't reported anything to your wife so far, Dr. Enright,” I said truthfully.

He looked up at me, the disdain in his eyes magnified through his glasses.

“How much do you want?”

“I don't want your money,” I said, sounding hurt.

He blinked once in surprise. “What then?”

Now it was my turn to make with the resigned sighs. I put my hat on the counter and rubbed a hand through my hair.

“I do a lot of this kind of work, Dr. Enright, as I'm sure you can imagine. I don't like it. I see a lot of marriages go bust. Good ones as well as bad, unfortunately. People get tempted, make mistakes, but real forgiveness seems in awful short supply these days.” I let out another sigh. “Just once I'd like to walk away from one of these things and have nothing come of it.” I pushed out a hollow laugh. “Hell, I could tell a story like that at a Detectives' Convention.”

I walked up to the dentist chair and put one hand on the armrest, looking down into Enright's eyes, searching.

“You really mean it that this was an accident, don't you?”

“I swear it was,” he said, staring me back level in the eye, forcing every bit of sincerity he could muster. The spot he was in, he'd have given me that same look if he'd been swearing he was the King of Spain.

“And you really are going to break it off, aren't you?”

“This very evening, as God is my witness.” His eyes never wavered, and it really was pathetic, the guilty philanderer suddenly elevated to the status of a man of mercy, doing his part to help restore a beaten-down private eye's faith in humanity.

“I've already been paid,” I shrugged. “Cash, so no one will see a check. Oh, and my rates are quite reasonable, I assure you.”

“I'm sure they are,” Enright answered, still assuming a tone of comforting sincerity.

“What if…” I began, thinking aloud.

“Yes?” He leaned forward eagerly.

“What if Cora was seeing one of your patients? That could go a long way toward explaining a lot of misunderstandings and false impressions. After all, this patient comes in a lot more often than he really needs to – you know, to get to see her more – so you're having to stay longer hours to accommodate him.” Enright was nodding his head slowly, admiring how it all fit together.

“Anyone would do,” I added. “Hell, who was the last guy you had in your chair?”

Ten minutes later, I had everything Dr. Enright knew about Miles Wiedermann, including the fact that he had two cavities that would need filling soon and a crown that would need replacing in the next six months.

Enright saw me to the door. His receptionist had already left for the day, which was a tough break. Now he'd have to wait till Monday to set her free. Or maybe the day after.

“I want to thank you for this, Mr. Caine,” Enright said, warmly shaking my hand.

“Believe me, Doctor, you've helped me as much as I've helped you.” Which, like nearly everything else I'd said to him, was the truth.

“Oh, Dr. Enright,” I said, pausing at the door, “I wouldn't see any point in mentioning to your wife that you and I ever met.” Enright gave me a condescending smile.

“Exactly how dumb do I look, Mr. Caine?”

I smiled back and put my hat on. Just dumb enough, friend, I thought. Just dumb enough.

Dinner at
Chez Caine that evening was a succulent roast chicken with mashed potatoes and homemade gravy. How did my brother stay so thin? I wondered. If I had a wife that could cook like this, I'd have to be a longshoreman to keep fit. Conversation around the table was lively, the children showing off for Uncle Devlin but without being brats about it. Billy seemed in good spirits. Evidently nothing had come of his snooping apart from that couple of hours sitting in the corner. More importantly, Mom hadn't told Dad. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and he also knew to be grateful for it.

“So there I was,” I told the kids, having been goaded into telling them a real, old-fashioned detective story. “Half a block away from the streetcar and not one dime in my pocket!”

“And you had to get that book back to the library!” Mary piped up.

“It was three days past due!” Billy added, picking up the spirit of the thing.

“Four days!” I corrected him. Mary dramatically put a hand up to her mouth and gasped loudly.

“What ever did you do, Devlin?” their mother asked.

“I knew I had one chance,” I continued, speaking like a narrator on the radio. “The streetcar was already moving, but I knew it would make another stop two blocks later. I took off at a dead run down the sidewalk, dodging old ladies and jumping over baby carriages, pumping my legs as hard as I could in the blistering heat.”

“But it was February!” Billy cried out.

“Icy wind whipping at my face!” I corrected. “But you see, years ago I spent four months in deepest Africa, sweltering on a dirty cot in the tent of a traveling missionary, fighting for my life against a bout of malaria. Even today sometimes, even in the bitterest cold, I can still feel that awful, pounding jungle heat. Oh, the horror! The horror!”

Billy and Mary put arms across their foreheads and pretended to swoon.

“I spotted a news stand at the next corner. It was my only chance! I poured on more speed, running through the frozen air, only the memory of the sweltering Congo to keep me warm.”

“Where you got the malarity!” Mary chimed in.

“Malaria!” Billy corrected.

“I got them both, and I beat them both, and I was going to catch this streetcar and return that copy of
Tips on Weekend Gardening
to the public library or die trying! But there was someone in front of me at the news stand! A short, fat, old woman with wooden dentures and hair on her knuckles.”

Mary shrieked with laughter and Billy asked if I socked her one.

“I never hit a lady,” I told him solemnly, putting one hand over my heart. “I came up behind her, tapped her on the shoulder and said ‘Beat it, Sister! I'm contagious! I got the Spanish Influenza! I got the shingles! I got dry scalp! Save yourself! Run like the wind!' And she took off down the street like the tax man was after her. I slapped a dollar down on the counter and told the man I wanted today's paper. And a pack of smokes. And some gum. And a licorice whip. And one of those penny tin whistles. No, the green one, you ninny!”

“Was this a news stand or a candy store?” Billy asked, laughing.

“I knew better than to ask, Billy. A fellow can get killed asking the wrong kinds of questions in my business. The vendor picked up my dollar with a pair of ice tongs and handed over my change in a fish tank net.”

“He didn't want to get the malarity!” guessed Mary.

“Or the shingles!” called out Billy.

“Or the Spanish Influenza!” Marie this time.

“Or the dry scalp!” Nathan now, surprising me a little.

“He didn't want ANY of it!” I yelled, cutting the air in front of me flat-handed. “I scooped up my goods and turned for a quick peek at the streetcar. Thirty feet from the next stop and I had another block to run. I poured on steam like the coal tender on the Rock Island. I came to within a dozen yards of the stopped streetcar and let out a piercing blast on my whistle.”

“That you got for a penny!” Mary called out.

“Give that girl a cigar!”

“I don't smoke cigars!”

“That's okay! I'll take it!” She squealed in laughter and Billy prodded me.

“So you made it to the streetcar?”

“Yes, yes I did,” I said, speaking slowly now, my eyes fogged over with painful memory. “I made it to the library, but when I got there it hit me: I'd used up the last of my change riding the streetcar. And I owed a seven-cent fine for the overdue book.” They all sat around the table, waiting.

“So how did you pay?” Billy demanded.

I leaned back in my chair, folded my arms, and put on a smug smile.

“Charm, boy-oh. I paid it with seven cents worth of manly charm, and enough left over for a three-cent stamp.”

“But what about–” Billy began.

“The end.” I said it firmly and with a smile, and bowed my head theatrically. All four of them applauded.

“Tell us another!” piped up Mary.

“Maybe another night he will,” Marie told her daughter gently, “if we don't wear him out this time.”

Both children started to protest until their mother quieted them. We all enjoyed coffee and cake (milk and cake for the kids), and after complimenting the cook and insisting on helping at least clear the table, Nathan and I went out onto the porch. None of Nathan's problems had changed in the last twenty-four hours, but a little laughter had done him some good.

I sat in silence and let Nathan get his pipe going. After several puffs, he commented: “I'm really glad the children are getting a chance to see you. I'm glad we all are.”

“They're terrific kids, Nathan. You two are doing a great job with them.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling quietly.

We talked over the events of the day, scant as they were. Nathan showed me the list he'd compiled, partly from memory, partly from his own calendar notes, about the times over the past month or so when his men had missed work. The biggest chunk was from Myers, who'd taken a week-long vacation about a month ago. Nothing unusual, he'd had the time coming and had planned it well in advance. He'd taken a cruise down to the Florida Keys for a sunshine holiday. The rest of the list was the usual mishmash of doctor and dental appointments, illness, maybe one request for time off to entertain visiting relatives. Any of these could have been ruses, but on the surface they seemed normal enough. And there weren't many of them to start with, not for such a short period. Contrary to popular myth, bankers don't really take all that many holidays, no more than the rest of us anyway.

“I take it Wiedermann really did go to the dentist this afternoon?” Nathan asked.

“As a matter of fact he did,” I told him, thinking back to my conversation that afternoon with Dr. Enright. “However…”

“Yes?”

“You say this was his fourth appointment there in the last month?”

“That's right.”

“Well, this is the first one he actually made it to.”

I
spent the weekend with
Nathan and his family (careful to leave my gun at the hotel). There wasn't much I could do on Nathan's problem until Monday, so it seemed an opportune time to catch up more with the relatives. Most of Saturday we spent working in the yard – mowing, clipping, trimming hedges and trees, weeding Marie's garden out back, that kind of thing. All four of them did this routinely as a family, Nathan explained, elucidating his point with the old chestnut that “Many hands make light work.” I'm not saying Nathan's never had an original thought, but I was probably away in the service that year. Standing on a stepladder next to a deciduous that grew at the side of the house, sweat running down my back as I tried to position the shears, I remembered doing this as a kid on those occasions when we had a yard. I didn't care for it then and I didn't care for it now, but it did make me feel I was earning my keep. Of course, I was supposed to be earning my keep by helping Nathan, but as I tried to remind him now and then, I could very well end up getting nowhere with that.

I watched Mary struggle with a wheelbarrow half-filled with small branches while Billy raked up the leaves and their father pushed the mower. We all took a break when Marie came in from her garden to make a pitcher of fresh lemonade and a plateful of the small sandwiches she'd had waiting the night I arrived. Something right out of Normal Rockwell. I tried to picture this family Saturday as part of my normal routine, and found my thoughts turning immediately back to the gun in the bureau of my hotel room. I supposed during the winter months, family Saturdays were spent oiling the woodwork in the house and polishing the silver.

We finished up mid-afternoon and I suggested taking the family out to dinner. The kids were all for it, and I could tell Marie was enjoying the prospect of not slaving over a hot stove after working in the yard all day. We cleaned ourselves up, dressed nicely, and piled into Nathan's new car for a trip to a little Italian place. The Caines often went there as a family, which made things smoother. Everyone else already knew what he or she wanted, and I've never been one to dawdle over a menu. The grownups shared a bottle of Chianti while the kids sipped on soda pop. We'd all worked up a pretty good appetite and the food was good. My hat was off to Nathan and Marie – the children were well-behaved, yet cheerful and outgoing, and that takes the right kind of attention and plenty of it. We didn't let loose like we had in the family dining room the night before – this was a public place – but we enjoyed ourselves. Nathan and his wife seemed to make a good team. I had her pegged as the serious-minded type herself, but with a gentle openness that could probably loosen Nathan up some when he needed it. Like when the sun was out.

The check came and Nathan made a grab for it, but I was ready for him and my hand moved like a magician's. He started to say something as I took my wallet out but I shushed him with a “Let's not argue in front of the children, Nathan.” My light, clipped tone got a giggle out of the kids; it was probably just how their mother said it.

We ended the night with a game of Old Maid at the kitchen table while Marie popped corn on the stove. Once the kids were in bed, Nathan and I had our evening smoke on the back porch. Marie joined us, sitting on the planks with her arms wrapped around her knees, relaxing under the stars as the three of us chatted about nothing in particular. I was glad she was there; Nathan and I didn't need to keep going over the same ground, not until we had something new to discuss anyway.

There was a comfortable lull in the conversation, broken by Nathan asking around the stem of his pipe: “How come you've never married, Dev?”

“Somebody forgot to load the shotgun.”

Marie guffawed, covering her mouth a second later.

“Just don't want to be tied down with responsibilities?” Nathan pressed. Maybe he didn't mean it as a subtle assault on my character. Maybe I was just tired.

“Oh, I don't know.” I took a drag from my cigarette. “Guess I just never felt that spark so strong I thought it could last for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Dev!” snorted Nathan, clearly amused at my being so naïve. “Grown men and women don't spend their days waiting for some kind of magic spark. You look for a mate, someone with good character traits, someone compatible. Like I was lucky enough to find with Marie. I took the trouble to figure out exactly what kind of woman I wanted, down to the last detail.” He stopped for a puff, and I wondered if it was just Dad's briar or if Nathan was always a pontificating bastard when he had an audience. “Once I had the mold set,” he continued, “I knew right away when I'd found the perfect match for it.” Marie blushed and looked at her toes, so I guessed that was pretty mushy talk for a banker.

“Oh, I don't know,” Marie said, coming to my defense. “I think it's kind of sweet to want a spark.”

“Of course it is,” agreed Nathan airily. “But that's what I'm saying. With a spark, you have to wait for luck, whereas companionship builds slowly and steadily.”

“A less risky investment with a steadier rate of return,” I expounded to Marie, who stifled another giggle.

“If you want to put it that way, I agree,” said Nathan. “It all comes from taking the time to work out the details. The details about yourself and the kind of person you want to end up with.”

“I don't see anything wrong with that,” I admitted. “It's just not for me. Maybe I'll meet someone some day, but right now I don't want to know what she'll look like or how she'll think or what she'll believe in. I'd rather find all that out as we get to know each other.”

“Well,” Nathan pulled a face like he was evaluating a chancy loan, “I doubt you get too many complete strangers who get together and make that kind of spark right off.”

“Mom and Dad did.” That shut him up. For a few seconds anyway.

“They were very lucky,” he countered.

“Yes, they were.”

Marie allowed that we both made good points.

“Perhaps there's no wrong way to find love,” she suggested. Nathan gestured at her with his pipe.

“Women are the true diplomats,” he said.

“You're telling me,” I agreed. “She didn't even let on that you lost.”

In the
morning we all went to Mass together. I hadn't been to one in years, but I remembered from my childhood what to say and when to kneel. Listening to the endless drone of the priest's Latin made me reevaluate my position on the excitement of doing yard work. I kept to my pew when the others went up to receive the Host and nothing was said about it. Nathan had asked me rather bluntly that morning if I was still a practicing Catholic, and I reminded him rather bluntly that I never really had been.

We went out for lunch immediately afterward, which seemed to surprise Marie (I learned from her later that Nathan always takes the family to visit our parents' graves after mass), then drove downtown to a movie house, which I gathered was another of my brother's family rituals. Before the main feature started, there was a cliffhanger serial about some detective who had narrowly escaped death by poison in the previous episode. This one ended with the detective trapped in a chamber, facing certain doom as the walls closed in on him. I caught Billy and Mary stealing glances at me, as though trying to test the accuracy of the story from my reactions. When the hero shot the gun out of the bad guy's hand from thirty feet away and then swung from a chandelier to land on two other goons, I gave a judicious nod of approval. Yeah, that's pretty much how we do it.

I drove back to the hotel that night after Nathan and I had another after-dinner conference on the porch. I outlined my plan for the next couple days and told him again not to bother his men at work with questions. The culprits thought they were getting away with this so far, and we had to let them keep thinking that for now. Nothing turns a warm trail into a dead end faster than making a guilty party nervous.

“You're still not ready to bring your superiors in on this?” I figured it was worth another try. Nathan gave a slow, resolute shake of his head.

“I need to wait till I know something, Dev.”

“You know their money's missing.”

“But who took it? And how? And why? And how did they manage to get this by me? I need to have those answers before I break news like this.”

I don't claim to know as much as Nathan about how the banking business works, but I thought he was making a big mistake. Sitting on a problem and trying to keep it quiet rarely helps. I was convinced that getting experienced people on this before the trail grew too cold was the bank's best bet, but I was damned if I could make Nathan see it that way.

To hell with it, I thought. I've told him more than once what he should do. It's his funeral if this goes sour because he waited too long. Another day or two, and unless something major happened, I'd head back to Kansas City and let him figure it out.

I phoned my office Monday morning to check in. Things seemed to be running smoothly. Jennings was out serving a summons, so I only talked with Gail. According to her, the boy was really taking to things. Showing up early for work every day in a suit with his hair oiled, greeting the clients with a firm handshake, escorting them back to the private office where their troubles could be discussed confidentially. She laughed admiringly about how he talked to the clients, patiently explaining “how we do things in this business.” Stuff that he'd mostly heard from me, she guessed. She helped him with the contracts and the billing and whatever else he needed, and he made decisions but he listened to her and didn't talk down to her. He was enjoying himself, but not getting a big head about it. I wondered, not for the first time, about whether I could use a full-time partner. Gail also reminded me that her vacation was coming up soon. I told her I expected to be back before the week was out.

After lunch I dropped by Townsend's office. The secretary sent me right in and Townsend stood, shook my hand, and offered me a seat. He opened a manila folder on his desk that contained a typewritten surveillance report, some handwritten notes, and a several photographs.

“I put one of my people on the married man, Wiedermann,” he said. “Just as well – he stayed home all day Saturday and never left his house. I put another guy on Soames and I took Myers.”

“What made you pick Myers?” I asked, curious.

“Dunno. Hunch. Nothing much to report for Soames. Saturday, he went to the library in the morning and a garden show in the afternoon. He was home for dinner by seven and didn't go out again. Stayed in all day Sunday. Myers was out and about Saturday, too. Most of it was routine stuff. A visit to the cinema, a glass of beer at a local saloon, also home fairly early. In the middle of the afternoon, though, he drove to a low-rent neighborhood and disappeared inside a pretty seedy-looking building for maybe fifteen minutes.”

“Any idea what's in this building?” I asked.

“A jeweler, a printer's shop, a couple lawyers. None of them people you'd use if you had other choices.”

“Why do you say that? Apart from the neighborhood?”

“I've been working this town long enough,” Townsend admitted. “The jeweler's a known fence. Not high-quality, but if you've got a hot watch or a stolen engagement ring, he'll move it for you on consignment. As for the guy in the printer's shop, he makes business cards, letterhead, and for a price, pretty much anything else you want.”

“You mean he's a forger?”

“Pretty good one from what I hear.”

“What about the lawyers?”

“To start with, they're lawyers,” he said simply. “And these guys…try driving an ambulance down that street. It's even money whether they'd come running out the door or just bust through the window.”

“How did Sunday go?”

“Got a little more interesting,” he admitted. “I ran into my man Biggs. He was tailing Wiedermann, and Wiedermann met up with Myers, whom I was tailing. I sent Biggs out for chow while I did the watching. They were having lunch together at a ritzy joint on the harbor. A third man joined them.” At this point Townsend slid some black-and-white glossies across the desk toward me. I picked them up and flipped through them slowly. At an outdoor table, Myers and Wiedermann were smiling and raising their glasses to a third man who had his back to the camera. The angles changed in successive shots as Townsend had edged his way around the perimeter for a better view of the third man. He looked somewhere in his late fifties, impeccably dressed in a long black overcoat and white scarf, a black bowler squarely on his head. The younger men seemed to be hanging on his every word, staring across the table at him with rapt expressions.

“Any idea who this third guy is?”

“I talked to the waiter after they left, made like I thought I might know the guy. The waiter told me the man was a regular there but didn't know his name.”

I went through the photos a few more times and Townsend asked: “Get what you were after?”

“Not sure yet. A little maybe.”

“Want me to keep on it?”

I nodded slowly, still staring at the mustached man in the bowler.

“For today and tomorrow, anyway.”

“Anything more you want to tell me about this?” he asked.

“Not right now. If it goes past tomorrow, I'll need more and I'll tell you more.”

“Fair enough.”

I took cash out of my wallet and paid him what I owed him so far (asking for a receipt; Nathan might want to see it). I took the photos and the typewritten report with me, complimented Townsend on his work, and left his office.

I'd considered putting Townsend on this man in the bowler as well, but I wanted to keep things simple and less expensive for now. I could handle it myself; this man hadn't seen me. I called Nathan at the bank, told him I wouldn't be home for dinner tonight, thought how odd that phrasing sounded after just a few days, and headed back to my hotel. Nathan was full of questions, but I didn't give him much. Told him I was following a lead and to get to bed early, I'd call him tomorrow.