Suspended Sentences (14 page)

Nobody followed him.

Ned clasped the suitcase on his lap and smiled, thinking about baccarat tables, haute cuisine, and mademoiselles in bikinis.

He changed taxis near the Burbank Studios — a two-block walk, a phone call, a ten-minute wait for another cab in a fast-food dump — and got off on a side street and walked a while, and was back in the motel room by noon. Plenty of time left.

He redistributed the bonds in his luggage, packed most of the clothes Marie had bought for him, got into a cheap suit — it wasn't a bad fit, really, but her penuriousness irritated him as usual — put the toy revolver in his belt, and stood before the mirror adjusting the blond wig over his half-bald head.

It didn't go with his eyebrows, he realized, nor with the dark beard stubble. So he shaved as closely as he'd ever shaved in his life and used the nail scissors from his dop kit to chop his eyebrows down to nearly nothing; then he dusted them with talc. What the hell, they'd grow back in time. Small enough price to pay.

The blond guy in the mirror was a stranger, sure enough. He grinned.

He circled the clunker at a distance. Nobody was watching it. He drove it around the block. Still no surveillance. So he got the suitcases out of the motel room, stowed them in the car, and drove away.

An hour later he was boarding a PSA flight at Burbank Airport, San Diego bound.

The security detector hadn't sniffed out the toy revolver because it was made of plastic, like all the cheap junk they sold these days. When Ned was a kid even a
toy
gun used to be made out of real metal, but no more.

Well, never mind. After today he'd be able to buy a
platinum
gun if he wanted one. But at least the toy
looked
real. Remember how John Dillinger broke out of prison with a gun he'd carved out of a bar of soap and blackened with soot and ashes.

At San Diego he went along to the Aeronaves counter and got out his ticket, from Marie's envelope, and the passport. Arnold Creber, citizen of the world. He flashed a confident smile at the dark girl and she smiled right back, but that was when he caught a sidewise glimpse of somebody coming up fast, and he turned to see the two men striding toward him: a uniformed cop and the tall guy with all the brown hair.

The uniformed cop said, “Excuse me. Edward Marks? Like to see you a minute.” The paper in his hand had to be a warrant.

“My name's not Marks. You got me confused with somebody. My name's Creber.”

“Sure. Arnold Creber,” said the tall guy with the brown hair. “Just come along, all right' It won't take but a minute.” And the tall guy smiled slowly.

Nobody ever said Ned Marks doesn't think fast
. So fast it took the uniformed cop completely by surprise when Ned whipped out the revolver, leveled it at the tall guy, and darted his left hand against the uniformed cop's throat. He whipped around behind the cop and jammed the revolver against his collar.

“Back off,” he snarled at the tall guy. “
Now!
”

He heard a quick intake of breath — the airline girl.

But the tall guy only kept smiling that slow infuriating smile. He calmly stepped forward and plucked the gun from his hand.

“You shouldn't play with toys, Ned.”

“How — how the hell did you
know?
”

“We've got a warrant to search you and your luggage for stolen bonds.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Just a private cop, name of Thurston. My company works for the insurance company you hooked for seven hundred thousand dollars.”

“Nobody followed me here,” Ned said. “Nobody. How could you've found me?”

Thurston only answered that one with his slow smile.

Thurston brought the receipt into the office and dropped it on Andy Ibbetson's desk. “The San Diego police will keep the evidence until they've sent Marks to Chino for transporting stolen property. Then we get it back.”

“About time.” Andy pushed the receipt toward his In pile. “Nice job. You can buy a round-the-world vacation on the bonus for this one.”

“For two?”

“You that serious about her?”

“I am. But she may not feel the same way about me when she finds out I read the shopping list in her handbag.”

“That's how you knew he'd be at the San Diego airport with the loot, huh?”

“In the name of Arnold Creber. In a blond wig. Carrying a toy gun,” said Severn Thurston.

KING'S X

“
King's X” grew out of a rumor that had wide circulation several years ago. According to the rumor
—
a sort of alligators-in-the-sewer-system allegation, presented as absolute documented fact
—
the con depicted in “King's X” was successfully employed half a century ago by a veteran trickster to fleece Tiffany's (some say Cartier) out of an enormous sum. It's not a terribly elaborate scam, but there is appeal in its simplicity and daring, and satisfaction in the sting, and I hadn't seen it elsewhere in fiction
.

She found Breck on the garage floor, lying on his back with his knees up and his face hidden under the car. His striped coveralls were filthy. There was a dreadful din: he was banging on something with a tool. When there was a pause in the racket she said, “You look like a convict.”

“Not this year.” He slid out from under the car and blinked up at her. He looked as if he'd camouflaged his face for night maneuvers in a hostile jungle. He didn't seem surprised to see her. All he said was, “You look better than I do.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of compliment?”

“My dear, you look adorable. Beautiful. Magnificent. Ravishing.” He smiled; evidently he had no idea what effect the action had on his appearance. “That better?”

“I wasn't fishing for reassurance. I need to talk to you.”

He sat up. The smile crumbled; he said, “If it's anything like the last little talk we had, I'd just as soon —”

“I haven't forgotten the things we said to each other. But today's a truce. Time out, okay? King's X?”

“I'm a little busy right now, Vicky. I've got to get this car ready.”

“It's important. It's serious.”

“In the cosmic scheme of things how do you know it's any more important or serious than the exhaust system I'm fixing?”

She said, “It's Daddy. They've ruined him.” She put her back to him and walked toward the sun. “Wash and come outside and talk. I can't stand the smell of grease.”

The dusty yard was littered with odd-looking cars in varied conditions of disassembly. Some had numbers painted on their doors, and decal ads for automotive products. The garage was a cruddy cube of white stucco, uncompromisingly ugly.

Feeling the heat but not really minding it, she propped the rump of her jeans against the streetlight post and squinted into the California sunlight, watching pickups rattle past until Breck came out with half the oil smeared off his face. He was six four and hadn't gained an ounce since she'd last seen him three years ago: an endless long rail of a man with an angular El Greco face and bright brittle wedges of sky-blue glass for eyes.

“Shouldn't spend so much time in the sun,” he said. “You'll get wrinkles.”

“It's very kind of you to be concerned about my health.”

“Anybody tell you lately how smashing you look?”

“Is that your devious way of asking if I'm going with someone?”

“Forget it,” he said. “What do you want, then?”

“Daddy's lost everything he had. He was going to retire on his savings and the pension — now he's probably going to have to file bankruptcy. You know what that'll do to him. His pride — his blood pressure. I'm afraid he might have another stroke.”

He didn't speak; he only looked at her. The sun was in her eyes and she couldn't make out his expression. Stirred by unease she blurted: “Hey — Breck, I'm not asking for myself.”

“How much does he need?”

“I don't know. To pay the lawyers and get back on his feet? I don't know. Maybe seventy-five thousand dollars.”

He said, “That's a little bit of money.”

“Is it,” she said drily.

“I might have been more sympathetic once. But that would've been before your alimony lawyer got after me.”

“You always loved Daddy. I'm asking you to help him. Not me. Him.”

“What happened?”

“He was carrying diamonds and they arrested him. It was all set up. He was framed by his own boss: He's sure it was an insurance scam. We can't prove anything but we know. We just know.”

“Where is he?”

“Now? Here in town, at his place. The same old apartment.”

“Why don't you give him the money yourself?”

“I could, of course. But then I'd just have to get it back from you, wouldn't I?”

“You mean you haven't got that much left? What did you spend it on — aircraft carriers?”

“You have an inflated opinion of your own generosity, Breck.”

She smiled prettily.

He said, “I can't promise anything. But I'll talk to him. I'll finish up here about five. Tell him I'll drop by.”

The old man blew his top. “I'm not some kind of charity case. I've been looking after myself for seventy-two years. Women. Can't even trust my own daughter to keep her nose out of my business. Breck, listen to me because I mean it now. I appreciate your intentions. I'm glad you came — always glad to see you. But I won't take a cent from you. Now that's all I've got to say on the subject. Finish your drink and let's talk about something less unpleasant.”

The old man didn't look good. Sallow and dewlappy. His big hard voice was still vigorous but the shoulders drooped and there were sagging folds of flesh around his jaw. It had been what, two years since Breck had seen him? The old man looked a decade older. He'd always been blustery and stubborn but you could see now by the evasiveness in his eyes that his heart wasn't in it.

Breck said, “I'm not offering you money out of my pocket. Maybe I can come up with an idea. Tell me about the man you think set you up. What's his name? Cushing?”

“Cushman. Henry Cushman.”

“If he framed you for stealing the money, that suggests he's the one who actually got the money.”

“Aagh,” the old man said in disgust, dismissing it.

“Come on,” Breck said. “Tell me about it.”

“Nothing to tell. Listen — it was going to be my last run. I was going to retire. Got myself a condo picked out right on the beach down at Huntington. Buy my own little twenty-two-foot inboard, play bridge, catch fish, behave like a normal human being my age instead of flying all over the airline route maps. I wanted a home to settle down in. What've I got? You see this place? Mortgage up to here and they're going to take it away from me in six weeks if I can't make the payments.”

“Come on,” Breck said. “Tell me about it.”

“I worked courier for that whole group of diamond merchants. I had a gun and a permit, all that stuff. No more. They took it all away. They never proved a damn thing against me but they took it all away. I carried stones for forty years and never lost a one. Not even a chip. Forty years!”

Breck coaxed him: “What happened?”

“Hell. I picked up the stones in Amsterdam. I counted them in the broker's presence. They weren't anything special. Half-karat, one-karat, some chips. Three or four bigger stones but nothing spectacular. You know. Neighborhood jewelry store stuff. The amount of hijacking and armed robbery lately, they don't like to load up a courier with too much value on a single trip.”

“How much were the stones worth altogether?”

“Not much. Four hundred thousand, give or take.”

“To some people that's a lot.”

The old man said, “It's an unattainable dream to me right now but hell, there was a time I used to carry five million at a crack. You know how much five million in really good diamonds weighs? You could get it in your hip pocket.”

“Go on.”

“Amsterdam, okay, the last trip. We wrapped them and packed them in the case — it's the same armored steel attaché case, the one I've carried for fifteen years. I've still got it for all the good it does. The inside's divided into small compartments lined with felt, so things don't rattle around in there. I had it made to my own design fifteen years ago. Cost me twelve hundred dollars.”

“Amsterdam,” Breck said gently.

“Okay, okay. We locked the case — three witnesses in the room — and we handcuffed it to my wrist and I took the noon flight over the Pole to Los Angeles. Slept part of the way. Went through Customs, showed them the stones, did all the formalities. Everything routine, everything up-and-up. Met Vicky at LAX for dinner, took the night flight to Honolulu. In the morning I delivered the shipment to Cushman. Unlocked the handcuffs, unlocked the attaché case, took the packets out and put them on his desk. He unwrapped one or two of them, looked at the stones, counted the rest of the packets, said everything was fine, said thank you very much, never looked me in the eye, signed the receipt.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. I went. Next thing I know the cops are banging on my door at the hotel. Seems Cushman swore out a warrant. He said he'd taken a closer look at the stones that morning and they were no good. He claimed I'd substituted paste stones. He said the whole shipment was fakes. Said I'd stolen four hundred thousand dollars' worth of diamonds. The cops put an inquiry through Interpol and they got depositions and affidavits and God knows what-all from the brokers in Amsterdam, attesting the stones they'd give me were genuine.”

Breck said, “Let me ask you a straight question then.”

“No, God help me, I did not steal the damn stones.”

“That's not the question.”

“Then what is?”