The Scarlet Ruse (2 page)

It took Fedderman a few moments to pull himself together. "Eighteen months ago, a little longer ago, I guess, this man phones up, his name is Frank Sprenger, he wants to have a talk with me about investing in stamps. He says he heard about me from so and so. I knew the name. Excuse me, I don't like to give out names. It's a confidential relationship. So I drove over to the Beach, and he's got a condominium apartment, like a penthouse, in the Seascape. It's in the afternoon. There is a party going on, girls and laughing and loud music and so forth. Sprenger comes and takes me into a bedroom down a hall and shuts the door. He is big and broad, and he has a great tan. He has a great haircut. He smells like pine trees. He is not going to tell me what he does for a living. It is entertainment, maybe. Like with girls or horses or importing grass. Why should I care who I deal with? The protections are there. I do a clean business and pay my taxes. I give my sales talk. He listens good. He asks the right questions. I show him a sample of the agreement and a sample receipt like I sign to show the total investment and a sample inventory list like he can have if he wants. He says he will let me know. He finally lets me know it is yes. We meet at the bank and set up the box, and I sign the agreement, and we get it notarized. He says he can't say how much or how often, but it will usually be cash and is that okay? I tell him okay. He gives me forty thousand in cash in a big brown manila envelope right there, and I put it in my business account. Who wants to walk these streets with money like that? He had the two fellows who came with him waiting in the car. I'm alone. The items I showed you, that's not Sprenger's account. Sprenger said he didn't want anything well known, any special item that dealers would know on sight. I said it would make a little more volume. He said okay, but keep the volume down."

"Did his request mean anything to you?" I asked Fedderman.

"What do you mean?"

"He planned to turn over cash in unpredictable amounts for merchandise which couldn't be traced. Did you make any guesses about him from that?"

"Guesses? A man can do a lot of guessing. Why should I care? I can prove the money turned over to me from my copy of the receipt and from my deposit record. I can show where it went, show my percentage for my own taxes. Suppose it isn't his money. Suppose he's getting ready to run. Any time he wants, he can meet me at the bank, give me back my signed agreement, take the merchandise home."

"What did you invest in?"

"Superb unused blocks of four without plate numbers. High values. Columbians, Trans-Mississippi, Zeppelins. Some larger multiples, like a beautiful block of nine of the two-dollar Trans-Miss, mint, sixty-five hundred it cost me. Same kind of purchases of Canadian Jubilee in the high-dollar values. Also some older stuff when they were perfect singles, used or unused, like a nice mint copy each of Canada numbers one, two, five, seven, nine, and thirteen. Twelve thousand, five hundred right there. Value." He leaned toward me. "It is the most valuable stuff, Mr. McGee, on a size and weight basis, the world has ever known. Some years ago Ray Weil and his brother, Roger, bought a Hawaiian stamp at auction for forty thousand. Very thin paper. Some newspaper guy in New Orleans, I think it was, figured out that it came to one and a half billion dollars a pound."

"I'm impressed."

"It doesn't come with bubble gum."

"I said I'm impressed, Mr. Fedderman."

"Call me Hirsh, please."

"Hirsh, I want to know what happened. How did you get taken? Or did you get taken?"

"You know those early Canadas? The way I came onto them, there was this old guy up in Jacksonville, he-"

"Hirsh!"

"Okay, I'm sorry. They were switched."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what I said! Sprenger did a lot of business with me. A lot! I had to really hustle to find the right stuff. I know the figure by heart. Call it nineteen months. Three hundred and ninety-five thousand. My ten percent on top of that. Four hundred and thirty-four thousand five hundred, that's what he has in it. Cash every six to eight weeks. Right now I've got about nineteen hundred and fifty dollars of his money to spend. It can't come out perfectly even, right?"

"It was switched, you say?"

"Let me show you something," he said. He got up and trotted out of the office into the store and came back in a few minutes and closed the door again. He put a slim, handsome album in front of me. It was in a black fiber dust case. The album was of padded blue imitation leather. The pages had transparent slots for stamps, and Mylar interleafing.

"This is a brand made abroad. Lighthouse. Same color and size as Sprenger's. I provide it, after making the first investment. Right here on the front bottom corner, in gold, his book says Frank A. Sprenger. I get it done at the luggage place in the next block. This size fits nice in a middle-size safety deposit box. Here is the procedure. I buy something for Sprenger's account. Mary Alice keeps the records on the investment accounts. Mary Alice McDermit. Missus, but separated. She's been with me almost five years. Very sharp girl. Okay, I turn the item over to her, and she fixes up a Hawid or a Showguard mount or mounts and posts the price from the invoice in the ledger, on the page for Sprenger's account. She puts the item in the safe, and then when Sprenger can meet me at the bank, Mary Alice comes along too, and we take the box into one of the bigger rooms where there is room for three to sit down at a table. I show Sprenger what I bought for him and answer questions if he has any, and Mary Alice puts the item or items in the album just like this one as we sit there. Then it goes back in the box, and we get an attendant, and it gets locked into the hole in the wall and we leave."

"He comes alone?"

"He comes alone into the bank. Yes. There is usually somebody else in his car."

"The stamps were switched?"

"Listen. Almost two weeks ago, the seventh. Thursday. He was able to make it at eleven in the morning. I walked over with Mary Alice. I had some Zepps and some early colonials. Barbados and Bermuda. Solid investment stuff. Thirty-three thousand worth. Too much to keep here. Okay, it was like always. We went in. I showed him what I had. No questions. Mary Alice put them in the stock book. She wondered if she should put the Barbados on an earlier page with other Barbados. She looked back at that page. She had to turn some pages to find what she wanted. I got a look at the pages. Meyer, like I told you, I thought my heart was going to stop. I've got eyes like an eagle. Fifty years I've been looking at stamps. Across a room a diamond dealer can tell a good stone. Right? I'd bought prime merchandise for Sprenger. And I am looking at junk. It is not so obvious Mary Alice could tell. Sprenger couldn't tell in a year. What am I looking at? Bad centering. Some toning and staining. Some pulled perfs. Instead of very fine to superb, I am looking at good space fillers, if that. I felt for a minute like the room was spinning. What saved me, I didn't have any breath to say anything. Then my mind is racing, and I get hold of myself. When Mary Alice has put the new buys in, I take the stock book and leaf through it, saying something about Sprenger will never be sorry he made the investment. It is worse than I thought. Blocks reassembled from singles. Repairs. Scratches. Little stains. Not counting what Mary Alice had just put in, I had bought three hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars worth of standard classics. Mostly superb condition. Total catalog would run maybe three hundred and twenty-five. I was looking at stuff that was one fifth and one sixth and one tenth catalog anywhere. Sixty-five thousand at the best. Somehow I got the strength to walk out of there on my own legs. You think I've had a night's sleep since then?"

Meyer said, "Hirsh got in touch with me."

"It had been too long since I saw you last," Fedderman said. "What is the matter with the world? Old friends don't see each other. What I wanted, Meyer, was to borrow your mind. Such a logical mind! I get excited, and I can't think two and two."

"I listened to the story," Meyer said, "and it made me wonder if Frank Sprenger might be the kind of barracuda who'd steal his own property and make Hirsh pay him for the loss. The deposit box is in a busy bank. Hirsh here is not an unusual type. His signature isn't complex or ornate. Sprenger would know the way Hirsh usually greeted the different vault attendants. Sprenger had an inventory list of everything in the investment collection. I asked Hirsh if defective duplicates would be hard to find. He said some of them would take awhile, mostly no. So it began to seem plausible that Sprenger had somebody accumulate the same items, and then they went to the bank together and switched, took the good ones out of the stock book, and put the defective ones in. Somebody successfully passed as Hirsh Fedderman."

"You like that assumption?" I asked Meyer.

"I don't like it any better than you do. It is a very touchy thing. Hirsh goes there often. Somebody gets uneasy and steps on the silent alarm, and Frank Sprenger is in a special kind of trouble. Anyway, it didn't happen."

"Vault records?" I asked.

Fedderman beamed at me approvingly. "I keep a careful record of every time I go to the vault. I made a list. I went to see my friend Mr. Dobson and gave him the list and asked him to find out if I'd been there more times than on the list, because maybe I had forgotten to write down a visit, and that's why my inventory was sort of messed up. There was no extra visit at all."

"And your next guess?" I asked Meyer.

"Hirsh's practice is to turn the items over to Mary Alice McDermit. She keeps the records, puts the items in mounts. I suggested the switch took place in this shop, item by item, before they even got to the bank. Hirsh went up in blue smoke."

"Not her. Believe me! Anyway, I always personally showed the new items to Sprenger. I couldn't help seeing if they had turned to some kind of junk. Could she make the switch right there in front of both of us? No! A stock book like this one has double-sided pages. It holds a lot. Here is the inventory list. To add up to that much without buying well-known pieces, there are almost seven hundred items. No. That's ridiculous. Even if she wanted to do it, there's no way."

"Next guess?" I asked Meyer.

"The next thing was try to talk you into taking a look. You said no. Today you said yes."

I frowned at Fedderman. "What happens if Sprenger decides to ask you for cash money, according to your agreement?"

"Don't even say it out loud! I have to find four hundred and fifty thousand. Where? I can sell out my investments. I can empty the bank account. I can borrow. I can liquidate inventory. Maybe I can make it. Then I can get some salvage from that junk, pay back the loan. Maybe I end up naked like the day I was born."

"What if he wanted to cancel and the stamps hadn't been switched?"

"No problem. You have no idea how hungry the auction houses are for prime merchandise. I could borrow, interest free, seventy-five percent of anticipated auction prices. That would be close to four hundred. I would come out ahead on the whole deal. The older an investment account is, the better off I am if the client wants out. If a client wanted out, I would have to advise him he'd be better off selling the items on the open market. I'd handle that for him without commission. It's part of the agreement. I'd get him the best price around."

"When did you look through that stock book previously, Hirsh? Can you pinpoint a date when everything was in order?"

"I tried. Four times this year I met Sprenger there. February, May, July, September. It was in February, or it was November last year, I looked through the book. Everything looked good. I think it was February, but I can't be sure."

"So… it couldn't happen, but it did."

"I… I just don't know what I…" His voice got shaky. His face started to break up, and he brought it under control, but for a moment I could see just how he had looked when he had been a boy.

"I'll think about it and let you know," I told him. It wasn't what I had opened my mouth to say. Meyer knew that. Meyer looked startled and pleased.

They talked about the market and the elections. Maybe once upon a time it had been meaningful. They had probably met here when they had worked in the area, when the area had been important, when the hotel had been shining new. So now they came in from their retirement at this time of day, dressing for the part, to nurse a couple of sixty-cent drinks and find out who had died and who was dying.

We carried our drinks over to a table under a tile mural of an improbable orange tree.

"So Fedderman got in a bind, a bad one, and he took Sprenger's money and bought junk and pocketed the difference," I said. "All along he knows there is going to be a day of reckoning, and because Frank Sprenger sounds hard case, it could be a very dirty day. If, by getting help, he can give himself the look of being a victim, he could save his skin."

Meyer smiled. "I went down that road. It doesn't go anywhere. Not because he is an honest man, which I think he is, but because he is a bright man. He buys for old customers, not under any special agreement. They take his word on authenticity. He could slip junk into those collections, and there would be no recourse against him. He is bright enough to know that you don't fool around with the Frank Sprengers of this world. Maybe you shouldn't deal with them at all. He rationalizes by saying that what he does is honest. He likes action. Sprenger is a lot of action. Fedderman likes having big pieces of money to invest. He likes phoning London and talking to his friends at Stanley Gibbons."

"How do you know him?"

"Ten years ago I invented an economic indicator I called the Hedge Index. Activity in works of art, antiques, gold, silver, coins, rare stamps. I felt it could be done on a sampling basis. Fedderman was one of the people who agreed to help. He was absolutely candid. No tricks, no lies, no exaggerations. When I had the bugs ironed out, I ran the index for two years and then published a partial report. There was a direct correlation between rate of inflation and hedge activity, with the hedge activity being a lead indicator of major rises in the announced cost of living by about ninety days. It's been picked up by the big boys and refined. I wanted the kind of built-in warning they used to have in France. When the peasants started buying gold and hiding it, you knew the storms were coming."

"Are they coming, O Great Seer?"

"What do you think we are standing out in the middle of with neither spoon nor paddle? Anyway, I've dropped in on Hirsh when I've been in the neighborhood ever since I gave up running the index. I said something to him once about having a friend in the salvage business. It was in connection with a customer whose valuable collection had been stolen. That's why he phoned me when this came up."

"If he's such a specialist and so bright, why isn't he rich?"

"He's seventy-two years old. His wife died of cancer twenty years ago. He gives a lot of money for cancer research. Both his sons emigrated to Israel and married there. He has seven, I think, grandchildren. He visits once a year. He gives to Jewish Relief, Bonds for Israel. He's set up an educational insurance policy for each grandchild. He's big in the temple. Special work and special gifts. He runs the store because he likes it. He's used to it. His work is his hobby. He's very proud of his reputation for fair dealing. He's proud of having so many good friends scattered around the country. He overpays his help. He lives in an apartment hotel, so called. He knows everybody within four blocks of his store in any direction. Why isn't he rich? I think maybe he's as rich as he wants to be."

"Maybe he ought to sell the business and retire and leave for Israel next week."

"That's the last thing Hirsh would ever do."

"If he could do it, he would have already done it."

"Right."

A huge old man came lumbering over to our table. "Don't tell me," he said. He bent over and peered into my face. "Don't tell me. You were six years witha Steelers. Then you got traded to the Eagles. This your second year witha Dolphins, right? Like fourteen years in pro ball. You lost the speed, and you're not as big as the ones coming up, but you got the cutes, boy. You got the smarts. You got those great patterns and those great fakes. In a minute I'll come up with your name. You'll see. Who's this with you?"

"One of the trainers."

"Trainer, eh? Good! Worse thing you can do is consort with a known gambler, right? They'll throw your ass out of the league."

When he reached for a nearby chair, I stood up quickly and said, "Nice to meet a knowledgeable fan, sir. See you around."

"Any minute now I'll remember your name, fella."

"Want some help?"

"No. I don't need any help. I know you good."

The sun was gone when we went out into the muggy evening. Meyer sighed as we started toward the parking place and said, "You look like a hero, and I look like a known gambler."

"Nature plays fair. You're the one with the good head."

"The good head says you are going to try to get a line on Sprenger first."

In September the Amalgamated Lepers of Eurasia could negotiate special convention rates at any one of fifteen brassy hostelries along Collins Avenue. Bellhops even smile when tipped.

I found a handy spot for old Miss Agnes and told Meyer to be patient. I could work it better alone, and it might mean several hotel lounges before I could put anything together. I tried the Fountainbleu first, that epic piece of decor a Saturday Evening Post journalist once described as looking like "an enormous dental plate."

When my eyes were used to the gloom, I spotted a bar waitress who used to be at the Eden Roc. Kay. Nice eyes, big smile, fat legs.

"Hey, where you been hiding, McGee?"

"What are you doing working here?"

"Oh, I run into kind of a personal problem the other place. It was better I should try another place. It's okay here."

"How are the twins?"

"In the second grade! Would you believe?"

"I bet they're beautiful."

"They are, if I say so myself, but they're hellers. Look, I got to go take care of my station."

"Come back when you get a chance. I want to ask you something."

"Sure."

When she came back to the bar and touched me on the shoulder, I turned on the stool and said, "I was trying to get a reading on somebody. I was looking for somebody like Brownie."

She leaned warmth against the side of my thigh and said, "I know. But they say he's dead."

"How long?"

"A year, maybe. He just stopped showing, and when somebody checked his place, there was nothing there. So nobody got a postcard even, and they say he was dropped in the ocean, and somebody cleaned his place out so it would look like he left. Maybe he had too many readings on people. You know."

"Is Willy still over at the Contessa?"

"Sure. He knows all, that guy. But he won't say."

"Maybe he owes me one."

"If he does, he won't remember. You know how he is."

"I'll give it a try."

"You come back, hear? I'm off at nine tonight."

"Wish I could, Kay. I really do. But this one is priority."

The desk tried to brush me off. I told the cold-eyed old man to check with Mr. Nucci before he made it final. He went over and murmured into the phone, studying me as he talked. He hung up and came over and told me that if I would go to the Winner's Circle Bar, Mr. Nucci would join me there in a few minutes.

It was more like twenty minutes before he slipped onto the stool beside mine. He wore a brown denim suit with lots of pockets and ropes and zippers, and a yellow velvet shirt, open to the umbilicus. His face was bland-brown, hairless as his brown smooth chest. Sleepy eyes, languid manner, a thin little mouth, like a newborn shark.

Willy Nucci started as a bus boy and now owns more points in the Contessa than anyone else. This is an unlikely Horatio Alger story along the oceanfront. He managed it by making various pressure groups believe he was fronting for other, just as deadly, pressure groups. He did it by expert intelligence work, brass, guile, persistence, and hard work. Nearly everyone thinks he is a front for New Jersey money, money that comes down to be dry-cleaned and flown back or flown abroad. I am one of the very few people who know Willy is clean and that he owns the biggest piece of the hotel. Maybe the IRS knows.

The motif of the bar is horse. Everything except saddle horns on the bar stools. In season it is a good place for the winners to spend and the losers to cry.

"I kept you waiting," Willie said in a flat voice. Statement of fact. I nodded. Silence is the best gambit with Willy Nucci, because it is one of his useful weapons. He makes people edgy by saying nothing. It's always handy to use the other man's tricks, because he never knows if he is being mocked.

I outwaited him, and finally he said, "It's your dime, McGee."

"Look at the edge of my glass."

He leaned toward it, tilting his head, and saw the little pale pink smear of stale lipstick. He called the barman over and chewed him in a small terrible voice. The man swayed and looked sweaty. He brought me a new drink, delivering it with a flourish and a look of splendid hatred.

"What else is bothering you?" Willy asked.

"I have a name, an address, a description, and I want a fill-in."

"I don't know many people anymore. The Beach keeps changing."

"You have to know, Willy."

"All I have to do is run this place and turn a dime on it for the owners."

"Willy?"

He gave me a quick, sidelong glance. Silence. A barely audible sigh.

"Willy, there is a young lady with a lot of energy on the paper in Lauderdale, and she keeps after me, saying she wants human interest stories about playtown, USA. She digs pretty good. She knows how to use courthouse records."

He got up slowly, looking tired. "Come on, damn you."

We went out past the guard and the empty pool and up the stairs to the roof of the cabana row of the Contessa Hotel. These are the days of exotic bugs, induction mikes, shotgun mikes. People like Willy Nucci talk in the open, at night, near surf roar or traffic roar. Or they rent cars and turn the radio volume high and drive around and talk. They never say anything useful over the phone, and they put in writing the bare minimum information required by the various laws and regulatory agencies.

We crossed the recreation roof to the ocean side and stood side by side, leaning on the railing. Freighters were working south, inside the stream. The sleepy ocean whacked listlessly at the little bit of remaining beach, with a little green-white glow of phosphorescence where it tumbled.

In my Frank McGee voice instead of my Travis McGee voice, I said, "When Willy Nucci quietly acquired his first small percentage of the Contessa Hotel, it was laboring under the crushing burden of a sixth and a seventh mortgage. Today, hiding behind a bewildering maze of legal stratagems, Mr. Nucci is not only the principal owner, but he has managed to pay off most of the indebtedness-"

He responded, his voice rising with exasperation. "Look. Okay. I wanted to tell somebody. I wanted to brag. We had a lot of time and nothing to do, and neither one of us figured we had a chance of getting out of there once it was daylight and they could use those goddamn rifles."

"Wouldn't you like other people to know?"

He calmed down. "Sure I would. But it would cost me. I get nibbled pretty good. The unions, the assessments, the graft, the public servants on the take, the gifts you make like insurance premiums. But there's restraint. They have the idea that if the bite gets too big, some very important muscle is going to come down here and straighten some people out. If they knew it was just Willy Nucci, owner and operator, there would be a big grin, and they'd smack their lips and move in very tight and close. I don't have much margin to play with. I've got sixteen years invested. The books look good right now. Last season was good, and this one will be better. You might as well know this too. I'm going to try to move it this season. I can come out well. And cut out of here. How come I always run off at the mouth to you, McGee?"

"I win friends and influence people."

He frowned at his private piece of ocean. "You could have used what you know, but you haven't. Except you use it to leverage me."

"Not often."

"I make this the third time. In three years. Maybe this time I can't help you."

"The man is big and broad and suntanned. Officially or unofficially, he's in a penthouse at the Seascape. He moves around with some fetch-and-carry people. Frank Sprenger."

Silence. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked up at murky stars.