Stop This Man! (9 page)

“I got thirty-six pounds—regular pounds like in weighing machines, not troy pounds. At thirty-five dollars a troy ounce, that comes to twenty thousand, one hundred and sixty dollars. On the market, I understand, it’s worth more. About twenty-eight thousand. I’ll give it to you for twenty even. Well?”

“Mr. Catell, I’d like to help you, but that’s more than I can pay.”

“Whaddaya mean, more than you can pay? You broke or something?”

Smith hiccupped and gurgled his laugh for a while and then stopped abruptly.

“No, Catell, it’s not that I’m broke. I’m experienced, though, and while I’ve never handled this large a piece of gold, I predict it’s not going to be easy to move. Please don’t interrupt. You want to tell me that lump gold is one of the easiest things to move. Perhaps. But are you forgetting that this stuff may have radioactive properties? And even if it doesn’t, it still has that reputation. All in all, Catell, the circumstances of the entire deal you pulled tend to limit the number of potential customers quite radically. And that, you know, means more work for me, more risk, and therefore less money for you.”

“How much less?”

“Twelve thousand dollars.”

Catell jumped out of his chair and leaned over Smith’s
desk. “Smith,” he said, “why don’t you go drop dead?” Then he straightened up and started to turn.

“Wait a minute. Sit down, Catell. Now, look. The least you should get out of this is some good advice. How long have you been out of stir?”

“Two months.”

“And you act like it. I can see your point of view. Here you get out, pull a brilliant piece of work, and naturally expect your recognition. Well, times have been changing. First of all, your lone-wolf type of operation doesn’t mean so much anymore. We work by organization these days. Secondly, things have got tight. In money and everything else. Did you know Slater, biggest fence operation in the Frisco area? Well, he’s locked away. Or Jensen in New Orleans, imports and exports, if you know what I mean? He got life. And so it goes. Let me advise you, Catell, count your friends, take your pay, and learn to play ball.”

“I know one thing, Smith: You’re offering me less than that crook Paar. How do you account for that?”

“Catell, please.” Smith sounded pained. “Personally, I like you. In fact, knowing your quality of work, I respect you. Well, look, Catell. What do you say to fifteen thousand? I’m honestly trying to help you. What do you say?”

“No.”

“No? Catell, you’ve got to wake up. There’s nothing else that anybody can do for you. You’re lucky you came to me, because even though you may not know it, I’m taking a personal interest in you. And do you want to know why? Because, like I said, I admire your work. I have good men in my organization, believe me, but they aren’t artists. In fact, artists are getting few and far between. So, call it sentimental if you want, I’d like to do
you a good turn. However, you’re asking too much, Catell, way too much.”

Catell had been sucking on a cigarette, only half listening to Smith buttering him up. What did the bastard want from him?

“Listen, Catell, I just had an idea. Ah, have you ever considered working for us?”

“I’ve had bad moments like that, Smith, but I’m not having one now. Right now, I’m trying to talk a deal with you, nothing else.”

“So am I, Catell, so am I. By the way, you’re broke, aren’t you?”

“I’m getting by.”

“Sure. Just about. Are you getting by enough to say no to five hundred down?”

“Down for what?”

“Here’s what I have in mind, Catell. You want to move your swag? Fine. You want to move it at your price? Fine again. I’ll give you what you ask, twenty thousand. But as I’ve been trying to explain, Catell, I’ll be overpaying you. So it’s no more than a square deal for you to trade me something else. I’m talking about your experience, Catell. Now, shut up a minute. I don’t want you to underestimate yourself, because you have something we can use. I’m not asking you to come in with us. Just hiding out, I’d call it. So here’s the deal: I give you twenty thousand for the gold, and you come in on one deal we’ve got coming up. What’s more, we’ll pay you for your services, and as a friend, here’s five hundred down.”

Smith leaned back in his chair and looked at Catell, putting a hopeful smile on his face.

“It’s no good, Smith. All I want to do is sell my swag.”

Smith’s smile dropped, but he didn’t look disappointed. He just said, “Take it or leave it, Catell.”

There was a cold silence. Catell knew that aside from a slight blow to his pride, nobody was getting hurt in this deal. If Smith was on the level. Smith just had to be on the level. Guys like him paid for services rendered and that was that. And then there was five hundred cash, more cash to come, and all this on top of finally moving the gold.

“When do I get the cash for my gold?”

“After the other deal.”

The bastard!

“And what’s my cut for the other deal?”

“A flat fifteen hundred. No cut out of the swag. Just a flat fifteen hundred. After all, Catell—”

“Plus five hundred now?”

“Minus, Catell. Five hundred now, a thousand after the heist, and the gold deal after that. I’m trying to be generous with you, Catell, really I am.” Smith took a stack of bills out of his desk. He flapped them back and forth against one hand, smiling again.

“All right, Smith, it’s a deal.”

They both got to their feet. They shook hands, exchanged a silent look, and then Smith gave the bundle of notes to Catell. The wrapper was still on them, and it said “$500.”

“I’m sure you won’t regret this, Catell, and I’m glad to have you working for me.”

“I’ll do my job, Smith.”

“Of course you will. Call me in two days and we’ll get together for the briefing. The whole job should be duck soup for you.”

“And now,” said Catell, “I’ll have me a go at this town. And a few clothes would be in order. By the way, what’s that club you mentioned before?”

“The Pink Shell. Topper runs it for me.”

“That figures.”

“Now, there are some other places you probably haven’t seen yet. The Hideaway, or the—”

“Pink Shell sounds fine, Smith. Where is it?”

“You go out to Malibu. Do you know the way to Santa Barbara? It’s on that highway, just the other side of Malibu. A very nice place, Catell, you can have a lot of fun there—that is, if you stay friends with Topper. And I might mention, Catell, I don’t like quarrels in my organization.”

“Listen, Smith, I only—”

“Of course, you’re just here to help me out with one little job, so all this talk is really unnecessary. But while you’re here, Catell, try to keep clear of Topper, eh?”

“Sure, Smith, sure. I’m not going out there to see Topper.”

For the rest of the day Catell kept thinking of the Pink Shell and what he thought he might find there.

Chief Jones watched the teletype ticking out the end of Herron’s sentence: “…therefore requesting your decision for possible change in present plan.”

Jones tore the sheet off the machine, looked at it again, and then stepped over to the window. The St. Louis traffic was crawling along four stories down, and Jones wondered what he would do if he had to find the person with the brown hat who was just crossing against the light, and if he could ever get anywhere with his strategies, scientific methods, trained agents, and what have you, unless of course he had an informer to steer him the right way. Perhaps that man in the brown hat who was now turning the corner by the newsstand was Catell. Or perhaps Jack Herron in Los Angeles wasn’t having any success, not even a false steer, because Catell was dead someplace, dead from radiation, or starvation, or too much liquor, or too many women.

If only they knew a little more about the man. He’d been operating for years and years, he’d been caught three times, but he’d never been so successful or so menacing or so crazy that the name Anthony Catell had meant a whole lot. Catell worked fast, like an expert, and then he’d disappear. He had probably pulled twice as many jobs as he’d ever been suspected of having pulled. Not a very encouraging train of thought. Or let’s say Catell is dead; then what?

The teletype started chattering again and Jones walked over. “…dead man in ravine next to abandoned car. No license plates. Initial check indicates car driven from Detroit. Age of deceased estimated 85. Cause of death, heart failure.”

The thing was sent by the Indiana State Police and there was a brief reference to the FBI’s request that all unusual or unexplained deaths and hospital admittances be reported.

No need to jump at that one. Jones had been getting the lowdown on the death of every bum from here to Hudson Bay and he was beginning to wonder how soon they would all die out.

The machine started to clank again but Jones barely gave it a look. “Diagnosis probable,” it said, and then Jones was back at the teletype, watching the letters creep out. “Admitted 6
A.M.
, Winslow General Hospital, Winslow, Arizona.” Then it gave the name of the patient, a sheriff in a small desert town.

He was alive. Catell was alive and Herron’s first guess might still be right. Jones looked at both messages again. Michigan car abandoned in Indiana. No plates. That would be like Catell. Then he appeared to have shown up in Arizona, making the southerly swing through all the rural stretches he could find. Maybe Mexico next? They would take care of that, and Herron…Leave Herron in Los Angeles.

Chief Jones sent a message to Herron and stepped back to the window. He ran one hand over his face. For a minute there he had felt good, but it was still a wild-goose chase. He stood by the window and down at the street corner. The man in the brown hat was back. Or
was it the same man? It could be one of his own agents, coming back from lunch. Didn’t Malotti wear a brown hat like that?

Jones left the communications room and went back to his office. He picked up the phone and asked for Agent Kantovitz. He wasn’t in. “Tell him to make another local check with his contacts on that Schumacher matter. He’ll know what I mean. And Betty, do you happen to know if Malotti wears a brown hat? He does?…No, it’s nothing. Forget it.”

The phone jangled on Herron’s desk and he looked at it for a second before answering it. Another lead, no doubt. In the movies, they always got leads coming in at the last minute. He picked up the phone.

“Hello, Herron here.”

“Where else? I figured you’d be there, seeing you’re answering the phone.”

“Larry? What in hell you want now?”

“I got a lead for you.”

“I knew it. So you got a lead for me, huh? Where’s it leading to—your newspaper column?”

“Naw, listen. This may be something.”

“I bet. When the FBI needs local copy boys to crack a case for ‘em, then that long month of Sundays has really come.”

“So this is a long month of Sundays. Oh, well, seeing you ain’t interested, I think I’ll talk to somebody worth while. I got a dictaphone here, for instance—”

“All right, tell me. What’s this lead you got?”

“Well, you’ve been telling me you came here to pick up some old-time hood, and so far no luck, right?”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say.”

“Well, this may or may not be anything. I was in Santa Monica last night, down in the Mexican section and had a beer with a hood friend of mine. He’s pretty harmless mostly, but he’s in with some of the lower-rung syndicate punks. So we were talking about this and that, me trying to get a certain thing out of him—nothing special, just something I needed for a cross check—when he ups and says, ‘Larry,’ he says, ‘I don’t know if I ought to be talkin’ to you like this here,’ and he clams up.”

“Larry, that was very nice of you. Real nice of you to call me up and explain about this lead you got. This real hot lead! Any time you feel the urge to—”

“Will you shut up and listen? That is by no means all, you flatfoot.”

“Pardon me, Larry, pardon me. So go on.”

“All right, then. So I say to him, ‘Hood, why the silent treatment? Why this unfriendly relationship?’ So he tells me there are things brewing. ‘What, what?’ I say. I must have sounded eager or something, because he answers, ‘Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell ya.’ So I switch to acting coy and disbelieving. ‘You don’t know nothing and this is just your way of acting big. Show-off, if you know what I mean.’ This gets him. ‘I know plenty,’ he says. ‘Just for instance,’ he says, ‘I know they got an import to handle a deal for them.’ I say, ‘An import? A torpedo? And who’s gonna be pushin’ daisies?’ ‘Naw,’ he says, ‘nothing like that. A jug heavy or something. All the way from out East. But I mean, all the way.’ Then he goes on to brag about a dozen other things he had predicted for me, all of which was a lie, so I bought him a few more beers, but no further info.

“So that’s it, Jackie. Maybe the guy you want is the same guy my hood friend was discussing, His description
sort of jibes with the one you’ve used. Now, did I tell you something?”

Herron didn’t talk for a moment, just patted his hair where it was getting thin.

“Larry,” he said finally, “perhaps you do have something there. I certainly appreciate your calling. I’m going to follow this up. What’s the name of this hood friend of yours?”

“Nix, Jack. Professional ethics, you know.”

“Ethics? Why, you crumb, you wouldn’t have a column, a single sentence of your column, if you had any ethics.”

“I don’t publish ethics, but I get it ethically, Jackie. However, I can’t expect you to follow that. As with all flatfoots—”

“Shut up a minute. Is there anything else, anything, that you could add to what you’ve said?”

“Surely: ‘You’re welcome.’”

“For chrissakes, be serious. Listen, when you say the syndicate, you mean the S. S. Smith operation here on the Coast?”

“The same.”

“From what you know about him, would you say he’d be likely to import independent talent?”

“Why, Jackie, you asking me?”

“Yes, I’m asking you! I’m after popular opinion, so to speak. I got my own data on Smith, but I’m just asking in general. So what do you say?”

“I say, ‘Jackie,’ I say, ‘you’re shouting at me again.’ Your nerves, twittering from long inactivity and suppressed rage at failure, are beginning to show their frazzled little heads. No, I wouldn’t say about S. S. Smith. In general, he might do anything. He’s big enough to seem inconsistent in his doings.”

“What kind of double talk you giving me? I got the distinct feeling you’re getting tired of talking to me. What else do you know?”

“Honest, Jackie, nothing else.”

“Come on, come on!”

“Honest! I got an idea, though. I got an idea you need a little relaxation. How about covering some night spots with me tonight?”

“Can’t make it, Larry. I’ve got to hang around here. There’re a few interviews and so on, then this lead you gave me I’ve got to check, and—well, I just can’t.”

“Jack Herron. This will be on me. My expense account. Come on, now, you just suffer from lead in your pants. What do you say?”

“I’m not a drinking man.”

“Sure, Jackie. Uh—I bet you never did see a movie star in real life.”

“The hell with movie stars.”

“O.K., forget they’re movie stars. They still got the most beautiful rear ends, the most monumental chests. I’m talking about the female ones, of course.”

“No, I don’t think so, Larry. Ah, when are you going, anyway?”

“Meet me at nine. At the paper. You know my office. And then we’ll talk some more. Who knows, something might turn up during the night. I pick up the cu-rayziest items, you know.”

“Don’t I. O.K, Larry, at nine.”

“So long, Investigator.”

Before Herron left the office for the day he went to the communications room again.

“Nothing for me?” he asked the girl who was sorting message sheets at a long table.

“Nothing here,” she said. “But let me check in the back.”

She smiled at Herron and got up. He watched her walk the length of the room, paying close attention to the way her hips moved. But then he looked away, worrying about Chief Jones’s answer to his teletype. Was he going to be pulled off the assignment? Better let Jones know about Larry’s lead right away. Perhaps it did mean something.

Then he saw the girl come back. This time he watched her front move.

“Nothing yet, Mr. Herron…Mr. Herron, I said—”

“Ah, yes, fine. Will you take something down for me, for teletype?”

“Of course, Mr. Herron.”

She sat down and picked up pencil and message form. Herron watched her bare arm as she made date, hour, and name entries. She had a nice brown arm.

“The message, Mr. Herron?”

“Of course. Uh—where’d you get that nice tan so early in the year?”

“Santa Monica, the beach. It’s not really so early in the year for us.”

“Oh, I see. Very nice tan. You must tan beautifully. I mean, on the beach there.”

She looked up at him with a light laugh, but didn’t say anything.

“Ah, tell me. I have an assignment tonight, ah, involving nightclubs. Would you like to—can you perhaps come along? What I mean is, less conspicuous, you know, being a couple. Besides, I would very much like—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Herron. It’s real nice of you to ask me, but I’m married.”

“You’re married?”

“Why, yes. Surprises you?”

“Ah, oh, no, I didn’t mean that. No surprise, actually. But a disappointment. Ha-ha.”

She laughed too and looked down at her message pad again.

“Well, the message, then,” he said. Herron dictated, not looking at her arm.

That evening he went out with Larry.