The Ross Forgery

by William H Hallahan

  “You bastard. You always did notice the hole in the other guy’s socks. I’m listening because I see a chance to make a bundle in my business this year, but my credit is at its limit, and I need a certain piece of very sophisticated electronic equipment.”

  Ross reached in his jacket pocket and, glancing around the barroom, hunched over his hands. “Watch.” He held paper currency in his hand. “One hundred-dollar bill, right? OK. Two hundred. Three hundred. Pretty? Four—four, nice, fat hundred-dollar bills. Here comes five. Five hundred. Six, Bobby. Okay? Six. And sevenzy. Nice, lucky seven. Eight. Niner, Bobby-cakes. Niner, and there. Number ten. A grand. An iron man. A barn burner, gulley washer, wall-banging, sonofabitching grand. Put it in your pocket. See how it feels in your wallet.”

  “Edgar, you missed your calling.” Bobby Denoy put the money in his pocket.

  Townsend watched him stow the money in a side pocket of his pants. “Bobby, we’ve never seen the house.”

  Bobby froze, his hand still deep in his pocket. “What does that mean?”

  “We don’t know anything about the burglar alarms and such.”

  “You don’t? I do.”

  Townsend smiled doubtfully. “What does that mean?”

  “He didn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Tell you what business I’m in?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I install burglar alarms.”

  16

  Denoy went up Grand Central Parkway to Whitestone Expressway, over the Whitestone Bridge, and picked up Route 95 to Rye. It was drizzling.

  If he was very, very careful, it would be OK. He’d take a good, long time looking over the place, and if it looked wrong to him, he’d break off. Maybe he could pretend that the timing was bad. He’d stall the two of them for a couple of weeks and meantime buy that unit with their grand.

  Route 95 was the New England Throughway, and it skirted Pelham Manor, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, past Rye. A piece of cake. No traffic with the rain, and no patrol cars.

  As he drove, Denoy took mental inventory of the equipment he’d brought in the rear trunk.

  Maybe it would be a piece of cake. He knew just the guy to fence some hot stuff to.

  17

  Winding Way was aptly named. It was a sinuous, one-lane road that roved past one large estate after another, each on its multi-acre lot, then ran along the edge of a celebrated golf course. It dead-ended at the garage door of Ajax Matthews III.

  Denoy didn’t like that. It was dark, and when he stopped at the edge of Matthews’ circular drive he could hear the trees dripping a dark, muttering rain. None of the estates he’d passed were awake. But the setting violated one of his primary rules—more than one escape hatch. He had to follow the same road back out for more than a mile. A perfect police trap.

  The hell with it. He wasn’t going to touch it. Slowly, he rolled up the circular drive, his headlights showing the flawless facade of the Georgian architecture that had often appeared on the society pages.

  At the edge of the building, the headlights picked up something and passed by. Denoy stopped and rolled back. The headlights picked it up again. A path. A track. It rolled away and down, following a slight incline away from the mansion. It twisted away through a copse of winter-nude trees, then along a wash, and disappeared in darkness.

  Denoy smirked to himself. He knew where it went. To the clubhouse, naturally. So Ajax Matthews III didn’t like a cul-de-sac either.

  Matthews could follow the track in a golf cart right from his home, or escape nosey reporters or nosey neighbors right through the golf greens.

  Denoy put on his parking lights and slowly followed the track. It fell away to the copse of trees, ran along a declivity, and climbed a steep, short bank. About a thousand yards ahead was the clubhouse, softly lighted in the dark rain by a series of sentry lights.

  He rolled onto a main path now, and followed its twisting way to the clubhouse. The parking lot was empty and puddled. The swimming pool was drained and cold looking in its cyclone fencing. The tennis court nets were in winter storage.

  The rambling main building was carefully lighted. A patrol car could circle it, checking the interior from all angles as it slowly rolled around.

  A chain between two stumps blocked the main road, but there was ample room to go around it. There was a lighted telephone booth at the end of the drive, right where the city streets began. Denoy got out and dialed the house number. It rang four times.

  “Matthews residence.”

  “Yes. I wonder if you could take a message for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “My name’s Mitford. John Mitford. I’m calling from Los Angeles. I’d planned to write a note to Jax Matthews, but I didn’t get to it, and I’m leaving in about five minutes for Hong Kong. Will you tell Jax that I’ve gone? I expect to be in India during most of May, and I’ll see him in the latter part of June. I expect to be back on June 26. And I believe he said he’d be back on the twenty-first.”

  “I rilly couldn’t say, sir. His household staff will return sometime in June, but I don’t know when.”

  “I see. This is his answering service, I take it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. Give him that message, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Denoy hung up. That kid Townsend was right. The house was locked up.

  Denoy retraced the path through the golf greens to the side of the mansion. Perfect. He could make several more trips without being noticed by any neighbors. Better.

  Much better.

  18

  The original system was old. Quite old. But there had been additions. Regular additions that had kept up with developments in protective alarm systems.

  It was good. All a tree branch had to do in a high wind was crack so much as one pane and the alarm system would go off like a Chinese fire drill.

  All panes were tracked. In the foggy drizzle, Denoy used a pencil flashlight to check them, noting the neat workmanship of the old system.

  Denoy checked the cellar windows, checked the wet grounds around the foundation for pressure circuits, and the doors. There was a front door, a kitchen door, French doors to a sitting room, a door to the patio from the living room, and another door with a piano next to it.

  All the doors had excellent locks. Several were brand new, of untarnished, new brass. Mr. Matthews had had his system thoroughly revamped before he hauled his little fanny off to wherever-it-was.

  Bobby Denoy looked up at the second-floor windows. He gripped some strands of English ivy that grew up the side of one wall and speculated about the windows up there. Odds against that.

  Denoy stood back from the house, frowning. He was trying to draw a mental schematic of the circuitry. Where could he cut in? He strolled along the building, brushing against the dripping bushes. And he looked again at the strange unit that went through the wall under a window. He touched it.

  It was vibrating softly. He put his ear to it and listened. An electric motor. He studied the metal casing. An air-conditioning unit and a dehumidifier, rigged on separate circuits. A rubber flange covered the seam where the box entered the wall.

  Denoy turned back a piece of the rubber flange. He checked the joint very carefully across the top seam. The dripping from the trees drummed on the metal casing. He checked one side, then the other. Next, he sat on the ground and checked up under the bottom seam, feeling the ground water soaking the seat of his work pants.

  Nothing. No circuits. No wires. Could it be inside? He checked the bolt settings. Eight hexagon bolt heads that passed through a metal flange against the wall and into metal sleeves set into the brick and masonry and peened over.

  Denoy stood up. It was a good half mile or three-quarters of a mile back to the clubhouse. The nearest house was possibly a quarter of a mile away.

  If he pulled that unit out and it was wired, one of three things would happen. That big alarm up on the side of the
building would sound off. An alarm would go off at the protective system office. Or both.

  He wouldn’t know if he’d tripped an alarm circuit until he pulled the whole unit out through the wall and studied it.

  He stepped back and looked at the alarm box.

  Would be kind of nice to break through the alarm system. Give the competition a very hard time with one of their best customers. There wasn’t a guy around who could rig a pad he couldn’t get through, given enough time.

  Go.

  First, a ladder. He went back to his station wagon and pulled a six-foot stepladder out. He stood it next to the portico and climbed up. He boosted himself up on the portico roof; then, prone, reached down and gripped the top step. He pulled the stepladder up and opened it up on the flat portico roof. Ah-ha. It reached. He climbed it until his shoulder was level with the alarm box. The pencil flash showed him an old, round alarm with a clapper tip on a wire arm. A real noisemaker that could be heard for a mile or two.

  Denoy reached a pair of long-snout wire cutters into the grill and snipped off the clapper ball. It fell down inside the grill.

  He quickly lowered the stepladder over the side of the roof and stepped down. He returned the stepladder to the car and got out a set of socket wrenches. He knelt down and broke the setting of the first bolt. He took several quick turns to back it off half an inch and quickly looked for wire grounds or circuits under the head. No. He backed the bolt out completely. Over four inches long. He did the second and the third bolt, finally removing all eight.

  Nothing yet.

  Denoy turned and studied the track to the clubhouse, then turned and peered as far as he could down Winding Way.

  Abruptly, it began to rain hard. Beautiful. He was going to leave tracks all around the foundation that he’d have to rake out. No sense showing the competition how he’d broken through their defenses.

  Now he was ready to pull. He had to get the whole unit out fast, check it for any telltale circuits; and if he found any, he was going to go like hell across the links.

  He squatted and gripped the metal casing. He tugged. It moved, backed off. The whole unit appeared to be on greased tracks. He gave another tug and it moved lightly at command. That did it. If there was a circuit, he’d broken it.

  He eased the unit back, back to the very edge, and felt the terrible weight of it on both thighs as he squatted. He was pinned, locked into a squatting position by the weight. For a moment he felt panic. He could imagine the alarm ringing in the protective system center. He took a breath and got hold of himself.

  He listened for any telltale rattling up in the alarm box. Nothing. Then he pushed on the unit, and it began to slide back into the wall. He got up, stretched his legs, and returned quickly to the unit. He pulled, and with all the strength in both arms, slowly let the unit tip down and rest at an angle on the ground.

  He studied the sleeve of the unit quickly. Nothing. He examined it more carefully. Still nothing. He sighed.

  He’d cracked their system.

  19

  Denoy bent over and crept part way into the hole in the wall. The weak light of the pencil flash showed bookshelves. Home run. The library. He stuck his head all the way through and looked for circuitry all over the wall. All clear. Now the carpet.

  He checked the molding then, with a screwdriver. Still standing outside in the rain, he stretched his other arm into the room. He slipped the blade of the screwdriver down between the molding and the carpeting. He felt the wooden strip with the upright tacking that held the carpeting. The screwdriver blade popped an edge of carpeting off the tacks. He felt as though he were being bent in two through the metal tunnel. He was soaked with rain and sweat.

  He wrenched at the carpet and peeled back a corner of it. With the pencil light he examined the floor underneath. Great. No mesh under the carpet. He pulled himself into the library and stood up. He quickly shone the pencil light around the room, seeking any contact circuitry. None. And no space alarms.

  Bene. A piece of cake, after all.

  Bobby Denoy reached in his pocket and got the list of books that Townsend had given him. The heading said Bring Any One.

  20

  The freight elevator oozed upward in its shaft.

  Townsend snorted and grinned at the name felt-penned above the floor buttons: Creeping Jesus.

  Ross sighed at it. “I could grow teeth faster than this.” The elevator at last reached the third floor, and Ross led the way to a locked door. On the glass was the company name: FOCUS ENGRAVING.

  Ross unlocked the door and snapped on the lights. They were in a reception area. Beyond it was a double row of salesmen’s desks. Beyond that, doors that led to various parts of the photoengraving operation.

  “That your brother?” asked Townsend, nodding at the door.

  Ross read the legend: M. H. Ross, President. “Yeah. Kid brother.”

  Ross led the way across the salesroom and into the plant proper. There was a strong smell of chemicals. Ross snapped on banks of lights and the whole plant lit up. “You’re familiar with this operation?”

  Townsend nodded. “Yeah. They can do both metal engraving and photo-offset stuff?”

  “Sure. Everything, including color separations. We even have an electronic color scanner from Germany. When Denoy gets here, we’ll use this camera. I can make the shot I need in a couple of minutes, and he’ll be on his way back to Matthews’s house. Then I can take my time making negative blowups of the alphabet.”

  Townsend nodded. “Meantime, we wait.”

  “Yeah. Wait.”

  21

  Denoy found over half the titles on Townsend’s list. All of them in specially made, felt-lined binders with the titles on the binder spine. He took the first one down and paused. A sound? A flash of light?

  He listened. No. He could feel his pulse beating in his ears. That old sense of exhilaration came back. Wait, wait. He opened the library door and looked out. Absolutely dark. Couldn’t make out a thing.

  Check it later.

  Denoy lay down on the carpeting and put his legs through the wall, then turned over on his belly and stepped out into the heavy rain. Dribbling water from an eave went right down his collar. Cold. It raised gooseflesh up and down his back. He pushed the volume into its case inside his jacket and zipped up.

  Now. The wall unit. Heavier than a coffin with a dead preacher. Denoy squatted down, gripped the side edges near the bottom corners. He locked his arms, raised his head, and lifted. It raised a few inches and stopped. He lowered it. A triple hernia, at least.

  He shifted his feet, changed the positioning of his hands, and tried again. It rose. An inch. A foot. More. Then he felt it slide into its tracks. He exhaled fully and pushed. The unit ran back into the wall like a morgue drawer.

  Denoy fitted the rubber flanges around the unit, then scuffed up the mud underneath. A few minutes more of the downpour would obliterate the tracks.

  He hurried back to the car and sat for a moment, listening. So far, so good. He started the car and followed the track to the clubhouse.

  In his pocket he carried the eight bolts.

  22

  “Your brother own this whole lash-up?”

  Ross nodded. “Yep. And he can have it. Riddled with ulcers, and enough money in the bank to live on hummingbird tongues for the rest of his life.” Ross shook his head angrily. “If I had a tenth of what he’s got—” He took a deep breath. “If I had a tenth of what he’s got, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, Mickey-cakes. I’d be in Europe right now. Knocking out one great typeface after another.”

  “Yeah? What’s so special about Europe?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you can design typefaces right here and now. I’ve seen some of the faces you’ve designed. I saw that one you did for the airline and the new magazine—”

  “The one that folded after two issues. Wasn’t that a great break?”

  “So what’s with designing faces in Eu
rope?”

  “Ah! You talk like my wife. If it’s all so easy, how come you’re not doing what you want to do?”

  Townsend lowered his head and studied his hand thoughtfully. “I am. At least I think I am.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine. I’ve got everything done for my Ph.D. but the dissertation. That’s what that study on the Restoration England bookseller is all about. Doctor’s thesis, and then maybe publication. I’ve had six or eight articles done on literary detective work. I’ve got my summers in London, and with some breaks, I’ll be a full-time literary detective.”

  Ross smirked at him. “Yeah? How come you’re selling yourself out to me, then?”

  Townsend looked at Ross angrily. “Are those all your teeth, Ross?”

  Ross raised both hands. “Oh-ho! Got a little temper, after all.”

  “You like to pick scabs off wounds, don’t you, Ross? Mockery. The laughter of a failure who loves to find failure in others.”

  “Who’s a failure?”

  “You are.”

  “Why, you dirty son of a bitch.” Ross stood up.

  “Sit down. Sit down, Ross.”

  Ross leaned over the table and held an admonishing finger under Townsend’s nose. “You listen to me—”

  Townsend brushed the finger away. “No. You listen. If you can’t take it, don’t hand it out. The next time you give me a verbal groin kick like that, I’ll stuff you into a milk bottle. That’s the last snotty remark you get off. OK?”

  Ross sat down slowly, with a smirk. “Why you goddamned hypocrite. You’re sitting here, working on a forgery with me. Committing a crime. That makes you a literary prostitute. And you accuse me of kicking you in the groin.”

  “Up yours, Ross.” Townsend stood up. “You know, you’re right. This is prostitution. And you know something else? I’m leaving. Right now.”

  “Hey! Whoa!” Ross stood up. “Come here, dummy. Take it easy.”