Brass Go-Between

by Ross Thomas

“Tell me something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Were you and the two spades really going to shove a hot curling iron up the kid’s kiester?”

  “I don’t know anything about a curling iron, Lieutenant. Or two spades.”

  He nodded and puffed on his cigar twice. “Tell me something else. Just how big would it have to be for a three-way split? I mean for a big-time New York go-between.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “How big would it have to be for a robbery-squad lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know either,” he said. “I don’t really know. I hope to God I never find out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE HUMIDITY MUST HAVE been nudging the hundred mark the next morning when I came out of the Metropolitan Police headquarters at 300 Indiana Avenue. Gray, fat clouds moved slowly to the east, taking their time like plump brokers on the way back to the office after a big lunch and a thoughtful speech. It was 11:15 and I was late and there was a tickle in my throat because I had been answering questions for a solid hour and some of my answers had even bordered on the truth.

  I hailed a taxi and it deposited me at the entrance of the Coulter Museum at 11:27. At 11:30 Frances Wingo’s young Negro secretary was holding open the door to her employer’s office. There was no smile this time. I decided that she handed out that smile only to the prompt.

  At four o’clock that morning, as I lay in a rough nest of twisted sheets, it had all seemed unambiguous, clear-cut, even simple. But as I went through the door into Frances Wingo’s office everything crumbled and what had seemed simple in that awful hour between four and five in the morning, now seemed impossibly far-fetched and complicated.

  Frances Wingo and Winfield Spencer were seated at the far end of her office occupying two of the chairs in the cluster of comfortable furniture that was grouped around the fireplace. I noticed that the Klee was gone. In its place was a chilly blaze of electric blue squares by someone I failed to recognize. Frances Wingo wore an off-white dress that was trimmed in black. Spencer wore what seemed to be the same gray suit with vest that I’d seen him in before. His shirt collar was un-frayed this time, but his hair still seemed to have been trimmed with the garden shears. He also had on a different tie, a blue polka dot butterfly bow that clipped neatly on to his collar. It must have cost all of seventy-five cents. They both wore those politely pained, frosty expressions that are adopted by busy persons who have been kept waiting for half an hour by someone who isn’t busy.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had to give the police two statements and it took longer than I thought it would.”

  “While we were waiting,” Frances Wingo said, “I informed Mr. Spencer about the call that I received from Lieutenant Demeter at one o’clock this morning. He told me about apprehending the two suspected thieves and recovering the money. It would seem that you might have let me know that the money was missing when we spoke on the phone last night, Mr. St. Ives.”

  “I would have,” I said, “but you hung up in my ear.”

  Spencer once again fixed his green gaze on my forehead. “If I understand correctly, the money is safe, the thieves are caught, but the shield is still missing. That is a brief but I hope succinct summary of the current situation, is it not, Mr. St. Ives?”

  “It is,” I said.

  “Then it would seem that you did what you said you would not do.”

  “What?”

  “Help catch the thieves.”

  “Yes, it does seem that way, doesn’t it?”

  Spencer nodded and shifted his gaze to the coffee table that lay between the two of them in their chairs and me on the couch. “We are, of course, deeply disappointed.”

  “I’m sure you must be.”

  “The shield—not the money, not the thieves—but the shield was the most important thing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It would appear so.”

  My head started to throb again, not as bad as the night before, only a dull, deep throb—something like a distant artillery barrage.

  “Our problems are further compounded,” Frances Wingo said, “by the impossibility of keeping the theft from the press any longer. After I informed the Jandolaean Embassy this morning, they insisted that the news be released.”

  “That’s understandable,” I said. “Who’s going to announce it?”

  “I regret that we must,” she said.

  “When?”

  “This afternoon. I’ve scheduled a press conference. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police will be on hand as will a representative of the Jandolaean Embassy.”

  “Isn’t that a little unusual?” I said.

  “Yes, but I think you’ll agree that the circumstances are unusual.”

  I looked around for an ashtray, but found none. Frances Wingo, once more reading my mind, crossed to her desk and came back with one which she placed on the table before me. I lit a cigarette and ignored the mild look of disapproval that appeared on Spencer’s face. It only made him look a trifle more forbidding than normal.

  “As thefts go it was unusual,” I said. “Very unusual. Four people were killed—five if you count the guard’s wife who hanged herself. That made it unusual enough to assure it a biennial spread in True Detective for years to come. But what made it really unusual was that there was never any thought of returning the shield. At least not to the museum.”

  Spencer chuckled. I had never even seen him smile so the chuckle caught me off guard. It sounded dry and dusty, as if he used it once or twice a year at most, perhaps at Christmas Eve. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m just recalling that rather lengthy lecture that you gave us when we first approached you about serving as our intermediary. At that time you went to great pains to disavow your responsibility for either the apprehension of the thieves or the solution of the theft. But it seems that last night you actually turned the two thieves, a man and a woman, I understand, over to the police and now you are displaying a certain amount of deductive reasoning in the most Holmesian manner to explain the motive behind the theft. I’m sorry, Mr. St. Ives, but I find it amusing. Why not play your new role to the hilt and tell us that you have deduced where the shield is?”

  I ignored him. It’s not easy to ignore a billion dollars, but I did my best. “The theft was planned by Mrs. Wingo’s late husband,” I said.

  “That’s not true,” she said, but there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.

  “I think it’s true,” I said. “The police think it’s true and the two thieves know it’s true. They told me so last night. Your husband never intended to return the shield to the museum. He did intend to grab the ransom money though. His share would have kept him in heroin for a while and after that, there was always the chance for blackmail.”

  “Whom would he blackmail, Mr. St. Ives?” Spencer said.

  “The person that he stole the shield for.”

  “And I assume that this unnamed person now has the shield?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “Not really.”

  “So all we need is the name of the person and we can turn him over to the police.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “And you no doubt know who this person is?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “You think so; you’re not sure?”

  “Fairly sure.”

  “Would you tell us?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Spencer, and then, as chairman of the museum’s executive board, you can determine what steps to take. But Mrs. Wingo was married to the man who planned and engineered the theft. As such she comes under suspicion as either an accomplice or an accessory.”

  “That is ridiculous,” she said.

  “Not ridiculous,” I said. “Not even farfetched. Your husband had an expensive habit. He had exhausted all funds—both yours and his and this was the only way that he could get more. A lot more. As director of the museum, you were in a position to introduce h
im, casually I assume, to Sackett, the guard. From there on he handled it all except that you were also in a position to tell him about that one door that wasn’t electrically sealed from the inside. The police say it was an inside job. Perhaps they just haven’t figured out how deeply inside it was.”

  She stared at me and there was nothing but contempt and loathing in her gaze. I smiled at her, but it was a feeble smile. “It does hang together, you’ll have to admit.”

  “You mentioned that you thought that you know who now has the shield,” Spencer said.

  “I also said that I’d tell you, but not Mrs. Wingo. If she is an accomplice, and if I’m right about who has the shield, she could easily tip him off.”

  “You don’t believe that she has it, do you?” Spencer said.

  “Tucked away in the attic perhaps where she can admire it, even gloat over it, during long winter evenings.” He chuckled again for the second time that year.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, Mr. St. Ives, let’s get it over with. My dear, if you’ll excuse yourself.”

  She rose and without looking at me or saying anything walked quickly to the door, opened it, and left. Spencer watched her leave. After the door closed he looked at me and this time his green eyes met mine for the first time and held.

  “All right, St. Ives. Who?”

  I took a deep breath, but it came out as a croak anyway. “You,” I said. “You’ve got the shield.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AT 4:36 THAT MORNING, alone in my hotel room, it had been a much better scene. Spencer had blanched, confounded by the inescapable logic of my accusation. A few drops of perspiration had formed on his upper lip. A tiny vein had started to throb in his temple. Afraid that his hands would develop a telltale tremor, he had thrust them deep into his pockets. Guilt had seeped from every pore and its odor lay heavy in the room. That was at 4:36 A.M. At 11:47 A.M. he did nothing of the kind. For a moment he looked a trifle disappointed, but politely managed to cover that up. His eyes moved away from mine, as if embarrassed. Not for him, but for me.

  “I see,” he murmured, and then looked around the room as though he hoped to find something else to talk about, something that would help us both pretend that I wasn’t an utter fool.

  It occurred to me then that I would have never made a good cop. There was something lacking. My concept of crime and punishment was skewed. Vengeance was not mine. I was cheerleader for the crooks and a cynic when it came to law and order. And finally, somewhere along the unimproved secondary road that was my life, I had discarded proper veneration for The Job at Hand, a veneration shared in common by all good crooks, cops, and, for that matter, county agents. As a go-between I was an economic grasshopper, a social cipher who in one breath had just accused a billion dollars of being a thief and was about to apologize in the next.

  “It all works out,” I said lamely.

  “Really,” Spencer said, not at all interested, gazing out the window at the Capitol and frowning slightly as if he thought it could use a new coat of paint.

  “First,” the Relentless Inquisitor continued, “you were one of the few persons who knew that George Wingo was an addict. You also knew that he was desperate for money to feed his habit.”

  “Mmm,” Spencer said, getting really interested now.

  “Second,” I said, “you had enough money to feed it. I don’t know who suggested that he get the guard hooked. I don’t think it matters. At least not to me. But in Wingo you had your engineer and in Sackett your inside man. Through a man named Spellacy in New York Wingo found the thieves. And your go-between.

  “Third motive,” I said.

  This time Spencer smiled slightly. “Ah, yes, Mr. St. Ives. Motive. I did have one, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “I suddenly became totally captivated by the shield, by this crude, tawdry piece of brass. I had to possess it at all costs. It was an obsession. That seems to be in keeping with the rest of your rather fanciful ramblings.”

  “No,” I said. “It was Eldorado.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Eldorado.”

  “Eldorado Oil and Gas. It’s one of your companies.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before the revolution in Jandola broke out it was negotiating for mineral rights. Oil. A lot of it and most of it is under what some call Komporeen. The Library of Congress was most helpful.”

  “I see.”

  “Now the real villain enters. Your villain anyway. It’s a Dutch-British combine. It was after the oil rights, too, and it offered the Jandolaean government a far better deal. You matched it. The combine topped your offer and the Jandolaeans sat back content to let you fight it out. In the midst of the negotiations, the revolution broke out and because the oil reserves or whatever you call them are in Komporeen, the negotiations for the rights came to a standstill. I am correct so far?”

  “In a crude way,” Spencer said.

  “For a while it looked as if the Jandolaeans would finish the fight in a week. But it dragged on. The Komporeeneans fought better than was expected. Some help started coming in dribbles from France and Germany. If the Komporeeneans could hold on another two months or so, they might even win independence. Or at least, with recognition from France and Germany, keep the fighting going for years, and if they did, then you would have to negotiate with their government. If they lost, you’d be back where you started, bidding against the Dutch-British combine. You needed an edge. And the shield was it. You knew its importance to both Komporeen and Jandola. You would arrange for its theft, and then at the appropriate time, use it as a bribe to secure the oil reserves from whoever won.”

  “And how would I explain that it came into my possession?” Spencer asked.

  “Simple,” I said. “You bought it from the thieves, using your own money.”

  “I see,” Spencer said again, and stared out the window some more.

  “I don’t think you had anything to do with the four deaths,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “They just got greedy and after the deal was set up, they followed it because they didn’t know what else to do. None of them was too imaginative. They stole the shield, dumped it into the back seat of a car, and it was whisked away to you. None of them knew that you were involved. No one but Wingo knew that.”

  “But you think that you do?”

  “I know you are.”

  “And your next move?”

  “I could do several things,” I said. “First of all, I could tell the cops. They might laugh at me at the beginning, but they’d check it out. It might take a while, but they’d get around to it and even if they never proved it, it would be a considerable nuisance to you. But that’s just one thing that I might do. The other would be to let the Jandolaean Embassy in on my speculations. That would really tear it for you. You could never use the shield as a bribe then. They’d know you’d stolen it—or had had it stolen.”

  Spencer rose from his chair and crossed to the window. He stood there in his 1939 suit and his bowl haircut, a billion dollars on the hoof, and looked out at the Capitol. “How much do you want, St. Ives?” he said.

  “Not how much, but what.”

  “All right then. What?”

  “The shield. I want it today.”

  There was perhaps fifteen seconds of silence. I assumed that he was rapidly weighing it all, totting up the costs, figuring the losses, poking at the loopholes. He turned from the window. “What do you intend to do with it?” he said.

  “That’s no longer your concern.”

  “I can, of course, beat any price.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So it’s not price?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand it.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “What assurance do I have that you will continue your silence?”

  “None.”

&nb
sp; “Yes,” he said. “I did expect that.” He thought some more, for all of five seconds. “Eight o’clock tonight.”

  “All right,” I said. “Where?”

  “My home in Virginia. It’s not far from Warrenton.” He spent thirty seconds giving me directions. I wrote them down.

  “You will come alone, of course?” he said.

  “No.”

  Spencer didn’t like that. He frowned his frown, pursed his lips, and jutted his chin. “I must be assured some measure of privacy, Mr. St. Ives.”

  “Four, maybe five persons have died because of the $250,000 ransom for that shield, Mr. Spencer. According to the financial and oil and gas journals that I went through at the Library of Congress, the oil underneath Komporeen is worth maybe $200 billion or more. I guarantee that the person that I’ll bring with me won’t violate what you call your privacy. He will, however, make me feel a little more secure.”

  “He’s not of the police, is he?”

  “No, he’s not a cop. He’s just insurance as far as I’m concerned.”

  “And you really think you need it—this insurance?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I really think I do.”

  I was back in my hotel room by twelve-fifteen dialing the phone. A voice, a deep familiar one, answered on the first ring with a bass hello.

  “Mbwato?”

  “Mr. St. Ives. How good of you to call.”

  “You’ll get your shield at eight o’clock tonight.”

  There was a long silence. “You are positive?”

  “I’m not even positive that the earth isn’t flat.”

  His deep laugh rolled over the phone. “According to our legends, it is a cube.”

  “Stick with them,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, and there was another pause. “There is a saying in your country about a gift horse.”

  “It’s no gift,” I said. “I’ve got a price.”

  “You restore my faith in human nature.”

  “I thought I would.”

  “And your price?”

  “Six hundred and eighty-five dollars. Those are my out-of-pocket expenses.”

  “You are joking, of course.”