Operation Bamboozle (16 page)

“Chicago,” Hancock said. “Summa cum Laude.” Todhunter looked at the back of the card for more information. None. He nodded, which gave his jowls a workout. Luis thought:
This man leads a dull life.

They introduced themselves. Todhunter didn't smile or shake hands, but he gestured toward kingsize armchairs. They sat.

“Harvard,” Luis said. “Not only a fine school, but also a guiding philosophy of life. Or so my Harvard friends tell me.” He smiled with his eyes. “Alumni reunions must be enjoyable.”

Todhunter thought about alumni reunions and came to no firm conclusion. He took out a pipe and looked into it and put it back.

“I know I speak …” Hancock cleared his throat. “I speak for all the partners at Eagleston, Chappell and Hart …” More throat-clearing, “… when I express my sorrow for your loss.” He blinked his sympathy.

“A trying time,” Luis said. “So much to be done. The legalities to be observed, the loose ends to be tied. A very testing experience.” His brow wrinkled as a measure of the test.

“It was only after serious discussion,” Hancock said, “that Eagleston, Chappell and Hart decided that we should come here.”

“Not to add to your grief,” Luis said. “But to help you eliminate a tiresome problem.”

Somewhere a clock struck twelve. They sat and listened. The chimes sounded as if they had been wrapped in fog. Todhunter sighed, perhaps happily, perhaps not. “I hope you chaps are allowed a drink while on duty,” he said, and rang for the butler.

“Bless my soul,” Luis said. “Isn't that a pedigree Labrador above your mantelpiece?” Todhunter got up and fetched the picture. It was lifesize. Luis shook his head in admiration. “My mother used to breed them,” he said. The butler appeared. “Drinks,” Todhunter said. “And fetch the dogs.”

There were four: two bitter-chocolate, two honey-blond. Todhunter talked Labradors, without haste, for twenty minutes. He took his visitors through their pedigrees and proved it with several photo albums. The dogs grew restless. The library had french windows, opening onto lawns. “Perhaps a little romp on the grass?” Luis suggested.

The dogs romped for fifteen minutes, while the men watched, and compared Labradors with lesser breeds.

“Can you stay for lunch?” Todhunter asked. “I'd like to show you my stamp collection. There's some early Brazilian air mails I'm rather proud of.”

It was nearly three in the afternoon before they returned to the library. “I suppose we should get down to business,” Todhunter said. He found their card and read it again.

“I feel unhappy about imposing on you, sir,” Hancock said. “After your great kindness.”

“You're a busy man, sir,” Luis said, “so the greatest kindness we can do you is not to waste your time. I'll be brief. The problem here is a little, shall we say, tangled? But the solution is blessedly simple. It seems that twenty years ago your father, the late Mr. Todhunter, made a trip to the East Coast. New York City, to be precise.”

“Manhattan,” Hancock said. “The Waldorf-Astoria.”

Forty minutes later, Todhunter opened his safe and gave them six thousand four hundred and twenty dollars. “I don't like banks,” he said. “Banks fail.”

“You have acted very wisely, sir,” Luis said. “By avoiding banks, your decision leaves no paper trail for the gutter press to seize upon. If only others were as prudent.”

He saw them to the door. The butler gave them their hats. “What did you say this terrible illness is called?” Todhunter asked.

“Neurostatic hypoplasia,” Hancock said.

“The B strain,” Luis added. “It only affects the young.”

“How terrible.” But Todhunter looked relieved.

“And thanks to you, sir,” Hancock said, “the boy's chances are good.”

It was a business. They did a lot of research, and as in all industries, 90% of it was wasted. Not exactly wasted, but discarded. The obituary pages in the LA newspapers were a start, and you could guess a lot from the photograph: a dark suit, a sober tie and a Marine Corps haircut won a lot of marks. The deceased had to be respectable—no actors, no sportsmen, no musicians. Who cared if Errol Flynn slept around? Promiscuity was a mark of honor in some trades. But Todhunter senior had been in banking, and good bankers didn't go to Manhattan to get their rocks off with some floozie.
The Wall Street Journal
disapproved of that.

Luis and Hancock never poached in the same pool twice. Too risky. Their targets said the scandal would always be a family
secret, but people lie. People go to a party, sink a Scotch or three too many and tell their friend, “Who'd have thought the old man had it in him? Took a trip east and knocked up a maiden fair. Cost me a few bucks to keep a lid on that item …” whereon the friend says that's funny, he heard exactly the same last week about old Sam, used to be president of the golf club; and next day they go talk to a guy they know in the DA's office.

LA was big enough to minimize the risk of gossip. Luis and Hancock kept moving: they scored in Pasadena and then went 20 miles east to Claremont. Next they picked out a recent bereavement in Newport Beach, 25 miles south. After that, Palos Verdes was the same distance up the coast. They changed the place of impregnation too, from New York to Boston or New Haven or even Wilmington, Delaware, if the deceased did business with du Pont. And they changed business cards. Eagleston, Chappell and Hart became Bunker, Delancey and Scott, or Noble, O'Hagan and Church. Names are cheap. Luis learned that from de Courcy.

They didn't score from every strike. Once they got laughed at. “Go ahead, blacken the old bastard's reputation,” his son told them. “I'll follow behind with a jazz band and free balloons.” Hancock tried to protest: the boy needed urgent treatment. “Anyone dumb enough to live in New York deserves all he gets,” the son said, and pointed to the door. Twice the con went smoothly up to the point where Luis explained that the life-or-death urgency of Swiss treatment required an immediate cash transfer. No dice. They took a check, payable to Eagleston, Chappell and Hart. Worthless. But they thanked the donor and promised to keep him informed of the young man's medical condition. Most people said: “That won't be necessary.” They'd paid to forget the whole affair.

In ten hits, Luis and Hancock made thirty-six thousand dollars.

The air in LA had the defeated taste that comes at the end of a stifling day in the big city when too many people have breathed it. Don't expect any breeze off the ocean because this is one western where the cavalry never comes galloping over the hill.

Milton Gibson stood on his forecourt and looked at his stock. Couple of dozen high-price foreign cars: status symbols yesterday, junk today. He couldn't give them away. Not even the Bentleys, never mind the Alfa-Romeos, the Jags, the Jowett Javelins, the pre-war Mercedes and Hispano-Suizas, the Morgan two-seaters … As of today it was illegal to start their engines because the goddamn Air Pollution Control District of Los Angeles goddamn County had brought in crappy new rules about exhaust emissions. Now each and every import was standing, getting shat on by the seagulls, useless until he paid to get it modified and certified clean by Transportation Department inspectors, who were sorry sonsabitches you couldn't buy for fifty bucks. This city had turned into Bureaucratsburg. It was Moscow with palm trees.

He locked up. The seagulls were circling high above, waiting for him to go so they could poop on a Bentley. He couldn't even shoot the little bastards. LA cared more about its wild life than about its citizens. He didn't want to go to the steam room. He wanted to go and sit in his pool with a bourbon and ginger ale and listen to the big ice cubes make that happy crackling noise as they melt. Maybe tomorrow he could lay poison for the seagulls. That was a good thought. He walked to the Helsinki Hotel.

Earl Moody was waiting in the steam room.

“You look worse than Capone, and he's been dead six years,” he said softly. “Stay off the juice, Milton, and drink your own sweat for a week, it must be stronger than Bushmills, I can smell it from here.”

“I've had a shitty day,” Gibson said. “Worse than you know.”

“God is testing you. No TV in heaven, he has to make his own entertainment. What you got?”

“Struck gold. Wasn't easy, but you know me. Mister Tenacity. Never quit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I stick my neck out for you, Agent Moody.”

“Well, don't think the Bureau ain't grateful, cus it ain't. Show me this gold you struck.”

“I deserve a better deal,” Gibson grumbled. “I take all the risk, diggin' the dirt, an' you get all the credit. Bonus too, probably.”

“Okay, here's the deal. You spill your guts, now, or tomorrow the Hot Car Squad turns you over. Their fingernails are a disgrace. Your limos are liable to get all scratched-up.”

Gibson sighed. “Counterfeiting,” he said. “Your couple in Santa Monica Canyon Road are here to run a bum dollar mill. In cahoots with the Fantoni mob from back East.”

“Cahoots,” Moody said. “Cahoots went out with spats.”

“Go ahead, laugh. These guys blow holes in guys like you. It lets the joke out.” That's good, Gibson thought. That's damn good.

“Who told you all this?” Moody asked. Gibson leaned forward and looked at his feet. He worked his toes. “You're right, better I don't know,” Moody said. “Go back and get more. It matters. America is the dollar and the dollar is America. You're smart, you know that.” He got up and padded away. Flattery was a wonderful lubricant. It costs so little, yet it means so much.

Gibson wiped his face with a towel. What Moody wants, the sonofabitch gets. Gibson forgot him. He thought instead about seagull poison. Who sells seagull poison?

Willard J Stagg, Aviation Pioneer, Dead at 48,
said the
Los Angeles Times.
Sterling Hancock had clipped the item. A couple of months later he clipped a report in the Business Section: Michael J. Stagg, only son of the late Willard, not having inherited any interest in flying machines, had unloaded the stock in Stagg Aviation he'd inherited, in exchange for an estimated large piece of loot.

Luis and Hancock found him in a penthouse suite of the Sheraton-Ritz.

He was a good looking young fellow, wearing a soft faded-blue shirt, chinos, no socks, and old tennis shoes.

He listened carefully. He had no Smalltalk: Luis gave up looking for ways to soften the news. Quite soon, they reached his late father's visit to Boston in 1935. Luis said: “This led to a liaison with a young lady.”

“Which in turn resulted in progeny,” Hancock said.

“Progeny?” Stagg said sharply.

“Offspring,” Luis said. “A child.”

“Oh. Yeah, progeny. Sure. You made it sound like a legal offense.”

“Strictly speaking, it was,” Hancock said. “Fornication being a crime in Boston.”

“So I've heard. This was more of a miracle than a crime. You say it happened, what, 18 years ago? Well, I'm 25. They wanted a big family, but I was the first and the last. After me, dad became impotent. They tried, but … no joy.”

That was where Hancock showed his fast footwork. He turned to Luis, frowned, and said, “It's Klein versus Klein, Illinois 1928, isn't it? Or maybe Stonehaven versus Stonehaven and Beaufort, California 1948, is even closer?”

“Yes … That was a case of sporadic impotence, wasn't it? Sporadic …” Luis took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “We are swimming in very deep waters here, Mr. Stagg. Be assured, we wish to cause no offense. But there is ample precedent. A husband may be unable to consummate his marriage, yet in a totally different environment, perhaps stimulated by the excitement of illicit sexual congress …” He shrugged.

“Dad banged like a rabbit?” Stagg said.

“The mind is a powerful motor,” Hancock said. “Sometimes in reverse, sometimes full speed ahead.”

“Or maybe permanently stalled. Where's your evidence?”

Luis said, “I had hoped to avoid this aspect, but …” He shrugged. “Your father displayed his new-found virility to several witnesses, not least to the young lady whom he … uh … pleasured.”

“Who is now the wife of an Episcopal bishop,” Hancock said. “Did we mention that the child is aged seventeen and dangerously ill?”

“Neuroplastic hypostasia,” Luis said. “That is what has brought us here.”

“The B strain,” Hancock said. “Unfortunately.”

An hour later they were standing outside Stagg's bank. “If I may say so, you have been very prudent,” Luis told him. “Now we can draw a line in the sand below this very human experience.”

“As for the gutter press,” Hancock said. “It never happened.”

“Sporadic impotence,” Stagg said. “Thank God I didn't inherit that.”

They had parked nearby. Hancock offered to drive Stagg back to the Sheraton-Ritz but he said he'd walk. He watched them drive away. The Oldsmobile had a Kansas license plate, unusual
in California, not illegal of course but odd just the same. He spoke the number aloud and repeated it while he found a pen and some paper. Today had been a strange day. He felt the need of some kind of record.