He remembered the address of Sam’s house and got the phone number from a friend with the company. Sam answered on the first ring, sounding nervous, and Nick asked, “How’s it going?”
“Velvet? Where are you? The police are here.”
“Good,” Nick said, knowing a detective would be listening in. “You did the right thing calling them. I don’t know why I’m getting you off the hook, but tell them Solar’s killer is in Room 334 at the Wilson Hotel on Seventh Avenue.”
“You found him?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “But he didn’t have any money either.”
The Theft of the General’s Trash
“NICKY,” GLORIA SAID ONE evening, looking up from her beer, “you never take me anywhere.”
Nick Velvet, relaxing in the back yard as he soaked up the mild April weather, asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Well, you’re always traveling someplace—Paris, London, Florida, California, Las Vegas. And never with me.”
“I take you sailing on the Sound.”
“But that’s in the summer. I want to go somewhere now, Nicky.”
He sighed and put down his glass. Perhaps she was right. He had been neglecting her. “Where can we go in April?”
She thought about it for a moment. “How about Washington to see the cherry blossoms? We haven’t been back there since we first met.”
It was true. He’d taken Gloria to Washington for a weekend ten years ago, when they were just getting to know one another. It had been a busy ten years for Nick, but for Gloria the time had brought only a monotonous sameness centered around their house and boat. “Sure,” he said, making a quick decision. “Let’s fly down for a week. We’ve got nothing to keep us here.”
They arrived in Washington on a sunny Monday morning, rented a car at the airport, and drove downtown to one of the newer hotels. Nick guided Gloria to the registration desk through a lobby bristling with diplomats and businessmen. They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Velvet, as they had ten years before, and were given a room on the seventh floor.
“The city has changed, Nicky,” Gloria said as she stood by the window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Some,” he admitted. “But the country has also changed in the last ten years.”
“Let’s go look at the cherry blossoms.”
He still felt good with Gloria walking at his side. She had retained the vigor that first attracted him to her, and a decade’s time had actually improved the loveliness of her face. He always felt a touch of pride when others turned to look at her as they strolled by.
It was a good day, a reminder of how it had been when they first met. But when they returned to the hotel he was surprised to find a message awaiting him, giving only a phone number to call. “Who knows you’re here, Nicky?” Gloria asked. “We didn’t tell anyone we were coming.”
“I’ll see who it is.”
While Gloria stepped into the bathroom he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed the number he’d been given. The phone at the other end rang twice and was answered by a gruff-voiced man. “Yes?”
“I was given this number to call.”
“Would you be Nick Velvet?”
“That’s correct.”
The voice relaxed into friendliness. “I’m Sam Simon, the columnist. This is my private line. I have to see you.”
“How did you know I was in Washington?”
“My staff checks all hotel arrivals. It’s often good for an item.”
“I’m no item,” Nick said. “I’m on vacation.”
“This is business. I want to hire you.”
“For what?”
Sam Simon sighed. “I don’t think it’s wise to be more specific. Not on a telephone. Let’s just say it’s your specialty. You’re a famous guy in some circles, you know.”
Nick glanced up at Gloria as she re-entered the room. “All right, I’ll meet you.”
“My office, tomorrow morning at ten. I’m on Virginia Avenue. I’ll give you the number.”
Nick jotted it down and hung up to face Gloria.
“What was all that, Nicky?”
“Some business. A man who heard I’d checked in offered me a job.”
“Nicky, we’re here on vacation!”
“I know. But it just involves running over to Maryland to look at a new plant site. Maybe I could do it in the morning and be back in a few hours. You could take one of those bus tours that stops at the White House and the F.B.I.”
“Without you?”
“Then wait for me. It’s just tomorrow morning, and I won’t be long. I promise.”
Sam Simon was a little man with a balding head and sharp, deep-set blue eyes. Nick had read his column on Washington politics occasionally in the New York papers, and had often seen his name mentioned in other news dispatches. Some called him a second Jack Anderson in his ability to ferret out leaks in government departments. He stopped at nothing in what he printed. “It’s investigative journalism,” he once told a critic. “Hell, if it won the Pulitzer Prize for Anderson it can do the same for me!”
Now he sat behind a desk cluttered with newspapers and books and the latest wire-service dispatches, flanked on his right by a handsome young assistant with long hair and a bushy mustache. “Glad to meet you, Velvet,” Sam Simon said abruptly. “Good of you to come. This here’s Ronnie Arden, my legman and Number One writer. On days when I’m too lazy to do a column, he takes over for me.”
“Glad to meet you both,” Nick acknowledged. “But as I told you on the phone I’m here on vacation.”
“We want a job done,” Sam Simon said, ignoring Nick’s resistance. “Your kind of job.”
“What kind is that?”
Ronnie Arden answered. “You’re a thief, Velvet. Let’s quit playing games. You’re, a thief and we want something stolen.”
Nick smiled: “I only steal things of no value. I couldn’t take government documents or anything like that.”
“Would a bag of garbage be valueless enough for you?” Arden asked.
Nick turned to look at Simon. “Is that it? A bag of garbage?”
“Yes.”
“I charge twenty thousand dollars. For that kind of money you could buy a truck and collect it yourself.”
“There are—well, complications,” the columnist admitted.
Nick wasn’t surprised. In his business there were always complications. “The garbage is at the Bureau of Engraving?”
“No, no! It’s real refuse, of value to no one.”
“No one but you.”
Sam Simon smiled. “No one but me. Tell him about it, Ronnie.”
The mustached man cleared his throat, as if about to deliver a lecture. “The refuse is that of General Norman Spangler, the President’s adviser on foreign affairs.”
“Military secrets are out of my line.”
“No military secrets. I’m sure he has a paper shredder at his office for those. This would be at his home—the apartment where he and his wife live alone. He’s on the fourth floor of the Potomac Arms, just a few blocks from Watergate.”
It was almost two years since the Watergate scandal first burst on the Washington scene. Careers had been destroyed, men had been imprisoned, some of the highest officials of the government had resigned and been replaced. “I don’t want any part of another Watergate,” Nick said. “My business doesn’t lend itself to testifying before Senate committees.”
“This isn’t another Watergate,” Ronnie Arden said. “You can take our word for it.”
“Where does the general dispose of his trash?”
“That’s the problem. That’s why we need you. Every morning he waits for the mail to arrive. It comes early, around nine, because the building has it picked up at the post office. Spangler checks his mail, leaves his apartment a few minutes later, then drops his daily bag of garbage down the incinerator chute. Then he gets his car and drives to the White House, arriving at his desk by nine thirty.”
&nb
sp; “Incinerator chute,” Nick mused. “I see.”
“Naturally he can’t know his garbage is being stolen, so you can’t hold him up or take it by force.”
“Which day do you want it?”
“We don’t know exactly. Let’s say every day for a week, starting tomorrow.”
“That might cost you more than twenty thousand. It would mean more than one theft.”
Arden glanced at his boss. “Can we go a little higher?”
“We can go higher if you deliver what we need, Velvet. Twenty should buy us the first two days, at least.”
“Agreed.” They shook hands and Nick started for the door. Then, as a final thought, he turned and asked, “How is security at the Potomac Arms? I’m sure you’ve checked it out.”
“No problem once you get by the doorman. And that shouldn’t be difficult for you.”
Nick nodded and left.
The problem was with Gloria.
He’d never had her along on a job before, and the idea of sneaking off for two mornings and leaving her alone was something he hadn’t reckoned with.
“Where are you off to now?” she asked the following morning as he tried to dress in the darkened hotel room without awakening her.
“More business. I’ll be back before ten.”
“Nicky, this is supposed to be our vacation!”
“I know. But if I can make a little money at the same time, I should take advantage of it.”
She turned over and buried her head in the pillow. He sighed and finished dressing.
It was not yet eight o’clock when he reached the Potomac Arms, a white T-shaped apartment building near the river. He’d scouted it the previous day, making note of the service entrance at the side. He’d already decided there was little chance of getting by the doorman more than once, and tenants’ keys were needed for the other entrances.
He’d made certain purchases the previous day and hidden them from Gloria in the trunk compartment of their rented car. There was a pair of white pants with a jacket to match, such as milkmen usually wore. He changed into these in the car and brought out the wire milkman’s basket he’d also purchased. He filled this with a dozen cartons of milk he’d picked up on the way over. From past experience he knew that only milkmen and newsboys could gain admittance to these luxury apartment buildings, and he was too old to pass as a newsboy.
He entered through the service entrance, carrying his milk, and immediately came to a locked inner door with a buzzer. He pressed it and waited till the building superintendent made his appearance. “What’s this?”
“Milkman,” Nick said.
“Where’s Eddie?”
“I’m helping him out, learning the route. He’ll be along, too.”
The superintendent grunted and let him pass. Nick covered the first floor quickly, leaving cartons of milk at random doors. The incinerator room was at the center of the building where the wings joined in their T shape. He entered the oversized closet and found a small door set in the wall. It opened directly into the chute. He stuck his head in, hoping no one would choose that moment to drop something from above. The chute was metal, with curved sides, and he could smell the fire below.
He went up on the third floor, checking that incinerator room to make certain it was the same. Then he set to work. The time was 8:30.
Nick was downstairs at nine when General Norman Spangler descended in the elevator to pick up the morning mail. Though he wore civilian clothes, his slim boyish good looks and stiff military bearing were long familiar to television viewers. Like other generals who functioned as White House aides, Spangler was retired from active duty. He’d joined the staff as one of the Secretary of State’s assistants and had managed to stay on during the upheavals of the past year.
He smiled at Nick as he passed him in the hall, carrying a handful of mail back into the elevator. Nick took the next elevator to the third floor, checked the incinerator room once more, then used the fire stairs to climb to the next floor. He had taped the third-floor door so he could return that way.
On the fourth floor he opened the fire door just wide enough to see the door to Spangler’s apartment down the hall. He had only a few moments to wait. The general emerged carrying a brown paper bag of trash. He paused at the door to kiss a pretty dark-haired woman who seemed twenty years his junior. “I’ll be late tonight, dear,” he said. “Don’t wait dinner.”
“So what’s new?” She closed the door after him.
Nick let the door close silently and ran down the steps to the floor below. He made it to the incinerator room with just seconds to spare, closing the hall door so no light would shine into the chute in case Spangler looked down before dropping his bundle. He heard the incinerator door open on the floor above, waited an instant, then shoved the wire milk basket into the chute, effectively blocking it a second before the general’s trash dropped. The paper bag landed on the basket.
Nick held his breath, waiting to hear any sound from the floor above. But the general had more important tasks to do than listen to his garbage hit bottom. The chute door was already closed and he was on his way. Nick gingerly pulled in his prize and set it on the floor of the incinerator room.
There was no time to waste now. He stripped off his white coat and wrapped it around the bag. Carried just right, it looked like a laundry bag. He might have been a tenant going downstairs with his wash, and even the white pants didn’t look that odd. The cartons of milk had already been left at doorways. The wire carrying basket he left behind a stack of old newspapers in the third-floor incinerator room. With luck it would be there the following day. If not, it was no great loss. He couldn’t risk the milkman ruse two days running anyhow. Besides, maybe what Sam Simon wanted so badly would turn up in the first batch.
It didn’t.
Simon and Ronnie Arden carefully spread out each bit of the general’s trash on an office work table, but they were openly disappointed. Two empty beer cans, an empty wine bottle, some frozen food cartons, envelopes, crumpled shopping lists, junk mail—the usual daily accumulation of modern living.
“All right,” Simon said, reflecting his disappointment. “We couldn’t really expect to score the first day. But it would have been nice.”
“You want me to do the same thing tomorrow?”
“The same thing. Let’s hope for better luck.”
“If you’d tell me what you want, maybe I could get it from his apartment.”
“No.”
“All right,” Nick said with a sigh. “But if nothing turns up tomorrow, we’ll have to talk about more money.”
That afternoon he took Gloria down the Potomac to Mount Vernon and they basked in the spring warmth as they strolled across the great lawn to the house where Washington had lived.
“Nicky,” she asked, “what are you thinking?”
He didn’t really know how to answer the question. “Maybe just about how much simpler things were in George Washington’s day.”
“Things were much simpler just two years ago.”
“I know. We live in fast times. Not changing so much as fast, like a rocket headed toward a brick wall.”
She took his hand. “Nicky?”
“What?”
“I want you to know I know. About you.” She tried a little smile. “I guess I’ve known for years.”
“How?” That was all he could manage to say.
“Oh, a lot of little” things, I guess. All the trips you’ve taken, and the time you had to get me out of the house because someone was coming to kill you. And the time you were kidnaped for a couple of days. Your explanations don’t fool me any more, Nicky. Not after ten years.”
“I’m glad you know.”
“Will you be going out again in the morning?”
“Yes. For a little while.”
She squeezed his hand. “Nicky, be careful.”
That evening he took her to the most expensive restaurant he could find, and they talked no more of Nick’s work.
The following morning Nick approached the locked side entrance to the Potomac Arms with key in hand. He waited only a minute before a middle-aged lawyer type came out the door swinging his attaché case. The man smiled at him and held the door open. Nick raised his key in salute and walked in. The key was to his hotel room, and he dropped it back in his pocket.
The wire basket was gone, picked up with the rubbish, but Nick didn’t really need it. The easiest way was still the best. He watched General Spangler open his apartment door, kiss his young wife goodbye, and walk down the hall with the bag of trash. Nick retreated to the third-floor incinerator room, opened the door to the chute, and stuck his arms in. Seconds later the bag fell into them. As simple as that.
This day Sam Simon was alone in his office when Nick arrived. “Ronnie’s off on assignment,” the little columnist explained. “These are busy days on the Washington scene. Let’s see what we’ve got today.”
The assortment was much like the previous day’s haul. Two more beer cans, a milk carton, assorted wrappers and scraps of paper, a few dead flowers, some leftover food in a clear plastic bag, a crumpled letter from a distant relative, envelopes, soggy paper towels.
“Nothing here,” Simon remarked gloomily.
“Those apartments all have disposal units in the sink. Maybe he ground it up.”
“No, not this.”
Nick sighed. “It’ll cost you an extra ten thousand for another day. The risks keep increasing.”
“That’s a lot of money.” Sam Simon scratched his head. “You’re into me pretty deep already.”
“Isn’t it worth it?”
“I guess so, for one more day.”
“Want to tell me what we’re looking for?”
“When we find it. If we find it.”
“It’s the mail, isn’t it? Something he gets in the mail.” To Nick there seemed no other reason why he simply couldn’t enter the general’s apartment and steal whatever it was Simon wanted. “Or rather, something you’re expecting him to get in the mail.”
Thefts of Nick Velvet Page 18
