Red Rag Blues (6 page)

“Not with me. There are six ways to break a man's arm without using weapons and I invented three of them. I taught unarmed combat to Commandos all through the war. Scots were
the worst. Pain threshold so high it went off the clock. God help the Glasgow police if any of my pupils survived.”

“How many arms did you break?”

Harding looked away. His mouth curled; he almost smiled. “Official secret. More than a few, let's say. Blood all over the floor, sometimes. If you bleed on my carpet I'm stuck with the stain. Consulate's on a very tight budget.” He unlocked a desk drawer and took out money. “First, I need to know where we can contact you.”

Luis briefly thought of giving a false address: the Athletic Club, or the Pierre Hotel. But what if London tried to buy his memoirs? Philby might find the other 900 dollars. Perhaps even more. He wrote Julie's address on the blotter.

Harding gave him four twenties, a ten and two fives. “Britain has a desperate foreign-exchange crisis,” he said. “Nobody's allowed to take more than twenty-five pounds a year out of the country. What you've got is the funds for an average family's foreign holiday.”

“Can't stand around chatting,” Luis said. “Lunch calls. A dozen
escargots,
some
coquilles St. Jacques,
a nice
blanquette de veau,
and a little
tarte aux citron
to finish.”

“May it rot your guts like battery acid,” Harding said pleasantly. “My secretary will show you out.”

When Luis had gone, Frobisher came in. “All on tape, sir,” he said. “Rather a smooth customer, I thought.”

“Slippery. According to Philby, the man is a naturally gifted liar. Can't tell the truth to save his life.”

“So he's lying about his memoirs?”

“Probably. But London thinks it's worth a hundred dollars to find out. Officially, Philby's retired, so he's got time to worry about posterity's opinion. He wants to know what Eldorado's written. So do we. Here's the address.”

Frobisher copied it from the blotter. “I never realized you were expert in unarmed combat, sir,” he said. “Is it hard to learn?”

“No idea. All codswallop. Can't break wind, let alone break arms. And Gandhi in a kilt and lipstick—all tosh. Fooled him, though. Nobody more gullible than a liar.”

“How very true.” As Frobisher smiled at Harding, he thought:
Which makes you gullible too.
But he said nothing more.

A plate of veal and peppers cost 75 cents. Peach pie and ice cream was 30 cents. Coffee, a dime.

Luis had followed some men who looked like truck drivers into a diner off Seventh Avenue. Truck drivers knew the best places to eat; well-known fact, and it turned out to be true. When he was full of good American grub, New York ceased to be a battlefield and became a parade ground where talent and opportunity marched side by side. Success was simply a matter of picking your partner.

He had invested a nickel in the
Herald Tribune
and now he checked out the employment pages. Clearly, the economy was buoyant. Thousands of jobs. Accountancy, law firms, banks, hospitals, real estate, airlines, construction, all were clamoring for help, expert help, qualified help, experienced help. That wasn't Luis. He read Art Buchwald's column, didn't understand the jokes, left a fat tip and went out into the streets again. He felt less buoyant than the economy and he didn't know where he was going.

Somewhere in the low Fifties, between Madison and Park, he saw a sign that said JOBS and headed for it, mainly because his feet were hot and he wanted to sit down. By the door a brass plate, tanned olive by carbon monoxide, identified the Aace Employment Bureau. He climbed three flights of stairs, the last uncarpeted. The door was open. A man in his twenties sat in an oldfashioned barber's chair with his feet on a desk. He wore khaki pants, tennis shoes and a faded blue windbreaker with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He was reading a book called
Pro Secrets of the Hollywood Songwriters.
He put it face-down on the desk. “One good number on the Hit Parade,” he said. “That's all it takes, and then you retire on the royalties … I'm Mike Morgan. You're looking for a job.”

“Correct. Luis Cabrillo.”

“What sort of job?”

“You seem pretty comfortable. I'll take yours.”

“Cost you ten grand. That includes seven years remaining on the lease. And the name, Aace Employment. My old man's idea. First listing in the Yellow Pages. Please …” He waved Luis to a chair.

“Despite which,” Luis said, “business would seem to be less than hectic.”

“Who needs hectic? I get the first week's pay as commission. Two clients a day keeps me afloat.” Morgan took a small steel gyro, a toy, and made it spin on the desk. The thing hummed as it wandered. “Dad left the business to me. He died while I was in Korea, defending freedom, justice and democracy. We looked all over, but we never found any freedom, justice or democracy to defend. Ain't that funny?”

“Strange indeed.”

Morgan shifted a coffee mug before the gyro could bump into it. “If you had ten grand you wouldn't be here. So … got any marketable skills?”

Luis thought of saying:
I can lie convincingly.
But he shook his head.

“Go wash windows, then. Schlepp garbage cans. Be a messenger. Sell newspapers. There's a hundred ways to make a buck out there.”

“Messenger? Like a courier?”

“No. Like a guy who delivers documents, stuff can't wait for the mail. Everyone uses messengers. Ad agencies, lawyers, banks, brokers, even me sometimes. I can fix you up with a job. You want to be a messenger?”

They watched the gyro. It was running down, developing a wobble. It flirted with the edge of the desk, came back for a second look, toppled and tumbled to the floor.

“Wise choice,” Morgan said. “Messengers get paid peanuts.”

“Thank you for your time,” Luis said. Morgan picked up his book.

Luis stood on a corner and looked at Madison Avenue. If this was the Mecca of American advertising, it went about its work very discreetly. All he could see was banks. Big solid banks. First National City. Marine Merchant. Chemical Bank. He craned his neck and searched for more. Manufacturers Hanover. Dime Immigrant. Was that a bank? It had a Wells Fargo truck outside.

All these banks, all that money.

Luis, daydreaming, remembered Willie Sutton's reason for robbing banks. “That's where the money is,” Willie had said. Here, now, in this one sunny stretch of Madison Avenue, there
must be fifty million dollars doing nothing in those banks. Just lying in bundles of notes, getting older, going nowhere, buying nothing. Luis had another thought. Those notes kept shrinking in value. Inflation nibbled like mice. Even at only one percent per annum, fifty million dollars was worth half a million less than a year ago. Yet nobody caused an uproar about that. Nobody sent the FBI to Washington DC to arrest the Willie Suttons in government who had quietly siphoned off the loot. Nobody complained, so presumably nobody suffered. Bank robbery, like everything else in life, was relative. Do it with a gun and you go to jail. Do it with statistics and they let you teach at Harvard Business School. Amazing.

Luis went for a stroll. He had the whole afternoon to kill.

Without really looking, he saw a couple of messenger agencies, so Morgan was right. Then, somewhere near Lexington Avenue, on 49th Street, he passed a tired-looking building that advertised offices to rent by the week, day or hour. He wondered what type of business would rent its premises by the hour. Several possibilities suggested themselves. One generated half an idea. He walked around the block and developed the idea further. Then he went into the building and rented a small room on the second floor for two hours. It cost him ten dollars.

Next he went to Bloomingdales and bought a pair of light leather gloves. He wore them when he visited a stationery store and bought ten large, strong envelopes, a block of writing paper and a ballpen. He borrowed a Manhattan phone book and looked up ten banks with branches no more than a few blocks from his office. He wrote ten messages in block capitals, put one message in each envelope, sealed them, and addressed the envelopes to the banks. As an afterthought he wrote “Any Teller” on the envelopes.

He went to a messenger agency he'd noticed on Lexington Avenue. “I need ten messengers,” he said. “They must deliver these ten envelopes at exactly 2:45 p.m. and take what they're given and bring it to me immediately at this address. Is that possible?”

“Strictly routine,” the man said. “Deliver, pick up, deliver. Where's the problem? Forty-five bucks.”

Luis recoiled. “Isn't that a bit steep?”

“You want it good or you want it cheap? My guys do good work. Cheap, you can get elsewhere.”

Luis paid.

*

Messengers were a mixed bunch. Some had just left school with no qualifications except the ability to make a delivery and, if necessary, wait for a reply. Others were elderly men with sore feet who needed the pay to boost their Social Security benefit. A few were recent immigrants with little English. All had one thing in common: boredom. Walk around Manhattan all day, carrying stuff you don't know what it is, soon you switch off the brain. What's to get excited about? Ain't gettin' paid to think. Paid to walk.

Billy Ogilvy was seventeen, six feet two, waiting for the army to claim him. Interested only in sex, at which so far he had had limited success. If he saw a good-looking girl his pupils would dilate spontaneously. Otherwise he had no reason to put his face to work. His features were heavy. They fell into a natural scowl and he left them where they felt comfortable.

He went into a branch of First National City Bank at 2:45 p.m., as ordered. He joined the shortest line. It took him four minutes to reach the teller. He gave her the big envelope. First half of his job done. She was young and pretty and his eyes widened to get a better view. He rested his elbows on the counter.

She slit the envelope, took out the paper, read the message:
I have a gun. Put all your money in envelope and seal it. Do it now. No alarm! Gun is loaded.

Instinctively, she glanced at Billy Ogilvy. He looked her in the eyes. He was frighteningly calm; he might have been waiting for a bus.

The bank had a simple policy for this situation: give the robber your money and let him go. On average, a hold-up cost less than a thousand dollars. For that, it wasn't worth risking anybody's life, especially a customer who might get caught in the crossfire. She took all the paper money in her tray, stuffed it in the envelope, sealed it with sticky tape, gave it back, and held up her hands, palms outward: empty. Billy turned and left. It was the first time she had been robbed and she suddenly found herself frightened, breathless, trembling. It took her an absurdly long moment to find the silent-alarm button. By then Billy was gone, lost in the crowd. As instructed, he delivered the envelope to Luis in his rented office on 49th Street, got his signature (G. Washington) on the job sheet, and went away. Two more messengers delivered bulky envelopes to Luis in the next ten minutes. Maybe more were on
their way. Or maybe trouble was coming. Enough was enough. Luis quit.

He walked out of the building, carrying all three envelopes in a Bloomingdales bag. The day had changed: now colors were brighter, sounds were sharper. As he reached the corner and looked for a taxi, a police siren screamed and wailed. Another siren did battle with it. A taxi saw Luis and swung to the curb. He got in. Two police cars bullied through the traffic and stopped halfway down the block. Their sirens faded into a long, low sob and died. Cops ran into the office building. “Goodness!” Luis said. “What's all that about?”

“Late for their coffee break, I guess,” the driver said. He was black. He wore a knitted woolen cap and he chewed a toothpick. “Uptown,” Luis said. He didn't laugh. He didn't smile. He was beginning to feel like a New Yorker.

*

For the NYPD it was rapidly turning into a busy afternoon in Manhattan. Two shootings, one fatal, in Spanish Harlem. East River Drive closed near Bellevue by a multiple pile-up. Anonymous bomb threat to City Hall. Knife fight in Chinatown: three victims. Truckload of furs hijacked near Penn Station. Shots fired at 125th Street and Columbus; passing fire truck hit. Plus minor crimes and misdemeanors all over the city, such as the lady on West 12th Street who threw her husband out the window without opening it first. He landed on a passing musician. Sheer bad luck. She was a big woman, and unrepentant. She flattened three patrolmen before she was cuffed and led out. By then a crowd had gathered. Kids on the roof tossed garbage cans at the patrol cars, missed, killed a dog. Officer fired warning shots. Small riot. It was that sort of a day.

The officers who responded to alarms at ten midtown banks flooded the area. At five banks the robbers had got away. The rest were old, slow and bewildered; they willingly gave up their envelopes and their instructions. Police found an empty office, rented in the name James Madison. “He was a regular guy,” the office manager told them. “Dressed nice. Paid cash.”

“You didn't suspect anything?” a detective said. “You never heard of James Madison before?”

“Sure. I go to the fights. That's the guy built Madison Square Garden, right? Could have been a relative. How should I know? Ain't clairvoyant.”

The last two messengers turned up, bearing envelopes, which they refused to release unless somebody signed their work sheets. “You're looking for a James Madison, right?” the detective asked them.

“Hell, no,” one said. “Thomas Jefferson.”

“James Monroe,” the other messenger said.

“Let me out of here,” the detective said. He drove to the messenger agency and questioned the boss. “Ten messengers, to go to ten banks. Didn't that strike you as unusual?”