The Scarlet Ruse

by John D. MacDonald

  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.

  Three.

  Meyer and I strolled through the golden sunshine of evening, and through the residual stink of the rush-hour traffic, now considerably thinned out We walked a halfdozen blocks to a small, dark bar in an old hotel. Elderly local businessmen drank solemnly, standing along the bar, playing poker dice for the drinks. At first glance they looked like an important group, like the power structure.

  But as eyes adjusted to the dimness after the hot brightness outside, the ruddiness became broken veins, collars were frayed and dingy, suits cut in outmoded style, the cigar smoke cheap, the drinks especially priced for the cocktail hour.

  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 wit ha Steelers.

  Then you got traded to the Eagles. This your second year wit ha Dolphins, right? Like fourteen years in p
ro 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 land 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 out waited 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 play town 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 righ
t 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 me 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."