1972 - You're Dead Without Money (22 page)

Joey drew in a long, deep breath. So all that danger, risk, the threat of the cops was now finished, he thought. He would have to be careful how he explained it all to Cindy. Maybe if he explained it right, she would come to her senses, see that their way of life was the best way of life. He sat down limply in a chair, feeling suddenly depressed and very tired, but he knew - he was sure - that he had done the right thing. Who wanted all that money? You didn’t have to have money to be happy, he assured himself. He closed his eyes and began to rehearse what he would tell Cindy.

* * *

‘Being a writer, Mr. Campbell,’ Barney said as he finished what must have been his sixteenth beer, ‘I don’t have to tell you that every story has some loose ends. Now, this may surprise you, but when I tell a story, I like to be neat. I like to tie up as many loose ends as I can.’

I said that was the hallmark of a good writer and it did him credit. He squinted at me suspiciously, not quite sure if I were conning him or not, but finally he decided I wasn’t.

‘Telling a story is like painting a picture,’ he went on. ‘You finally finish it and you sit back and look at it and you find there are still a few touches to make it perfect . . . right?’

I nodded.

‘Well, I’m going back to a corner of my picture that you might think I’ve neglected.’ He scowled across the smoky, crowded bar and waved an urgent hand.

Sam shoved his way through the crowd, carrying the seventeenth beer and another vicious looking hamburger.

‘Are you eating again?’ I asked, not because I begrudged paying for this horrible abortion, but because I found it hard to believe any man, at one sitting, could work through three of these soggy messes, plus two dozen mouth exploding sausages.

‘My midnight snack,’ Barney said gravely. ‘If I don’t eat well, I don’t sleep well. If there’s one thing I like, apart from beer and talking, it’s sleeping well.’

I said I understood.

‘Well, now,’ he said as he began to cut up the hamburger. ‘I’m going to shift the scene just for a moment to the two hippies I told you about at the beginning of this story: Larry and Robo.’ He chewed, then looked inquiringly at me. ‘You remember them?’

I said I remembered them. They were the two Vin had run into when he had first met Judy Larrimore: the two Vin had fought with and had kicked around, busting Larry’s nose.

Barney nodded approvingly.

‘That’s what I like about a professional,’ he said. ‘You keep track. You know something? I often tell punks a story and when I try to remind them of something I’ve told them, I find they are asleep.’

I said this was always a danger when telling people stories.

‘Yeah.’ He brooded darkly for a long moment, then went on: ‘Larry and Robo: two stupid young punks who chased the chicks, smoked reefers, threw their weight around and generally made a nuisance of themselves. Not that there is anything unusual about that. They just followed the trend.’ Barney swirled his beer around in his glass and shook his head. ‘The trouble today, Mr. Campbell, is that it is too easy for young punks to earn money. When they’ve got it, they get into mischief. These two punks made money in a rattlesnake factory. Their job was to skin the snakes while other punks put the snakes in cans. Doesn’t sound much of a job, does it? But you’d be surprised. What with their union and the rest of it they made around a hundred and twenty dollars a week. That’s nice money, isn’t it?’

I said nothing would induce me to touch a rattlesnake, dead or alive.

Barney pursed his lips.

‘That’s because of your artistic temperament, Mr. Campbell. These punks aren’t made like you.’

I said that was just as well for the canning factory.

‘Yeah.’ Barney ate more of the greasy hamburger. ‘Well, these two were discharged from hospital at the identical moment Vin was getting into his Jaguar to call on Radnitz. Larry had got his nose fixed, but it was still sore and Robo had stopped passing blood. Vin’s punch in his kidneys had upset his waterworks. They had only one thought in their minds and that was to get even with Vin. Not only had they had a bad time in hospital - the matron had made them wash themselves - but they had lost money because when they stopped skinning snakes they stopped earning. So they were in a pretty mean mood. They had talked it over while in hospital and they had come to the conclusion that Vin was too tough for them to try to beat up. They weren’t going to risk another spell in hospital. They decided to find out where he lived, wait until he had gone out, then break into his place and wreck it: smash everything and pour acid on all his clothes. They liked this idea because it was without risk to themselves and it would make Vin flip his lid. The first move then was to find out where he lived.

‘Now the State hospital is within a stone’s throw of the Belvedere hotel. As these two were coming down the steps of the hospital they spotted Vin’s blue Jaguar pulled into a parking bay outside the hotel. They watched Vin lock the car and walk up the steps of the hotel to the imposing entrance. They looked at each other. The same thought had occurred to them and without hesitation, they crossed the road and approached the hotel.

‘On arriving outside the hotel, Vin found that he wasn’t as confident as he should have been. He remembered Elliot had warned him about Radnitz. Elliot had said:
He’s big time and dangerous. He could put you on the ball of his thumb and make a smear of you on a wall
. Although Vin had scoffed at this, it had made an impression on him and now that he was about to come face to face with Radnitz he felt uneasy. He would be crazy, he told himself as he drove along Paradise Boulevard, to take the stamps into the hotel. Radnitz might have a gunman around who would take the stamps off him and then throw him out. This would have been Vin’s mode of operation had he been in Radnitz’s place. He pulled up by the kerb and taking the plastic envelope containing the stamps from his pocket, he lifted the floor mat of the car and slid the envelope out of sight. He refixed the mat, telling himself no one would think to look in that hiding place.’ Here, Barney paused to look scornful. ‘I’m sure a gentleman of your intelligence, Mr. Campbell, would never leave stamps worth a million dollars in your car. You would take in the possibility of the car being stolen, but Vin, as I have already pointed out, had little intelligence and was a slow thinker. So that’s what he did.’

‘And now,’ I said, ‘you’re going to tell me the car was stolen?’

Barney gave me a glassy stare, hitched himself forward and ignoring my interruption, went on, ‘Vin asked for Mr. Radnitz and sent up his name. He wasn’t kept waiting and this did something for his wilting confidence. Radnitz received him in his big living room.’

* * *

As soon as Holtz had shut the door, leaving the two men alone, Radnitz said abruptly, ‘You have the stamps?’

‘I have them. You’re offering a million dollars for them . . . right?’

Radnitz nodded.

‘Before parting with them,’ Vin said, still very unsure of himself, ‘I want the money credited to my bank in New York.’

‘That can be arranged,’ Radnitz said and held out his hand. ‘Show me the stamps.’

‘You don’t imagine I have them with me,’ Vin said, forcing a grin. ‘I don’t trust anyone. We’ll meet at your bank this afternoon. That’ll give me time to get the stamps from where I’m keeping them. Before a witness, I’ll show you the stamps, you will then instruct your bank to telex my bank in New York, crediting me with a million dollars and then you get the stamps, but not before.’

Radnitz regarded him and the chill in his toad like eyes made Vin shift uneasily.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Come to the California & Mutual Bank at three o’clock. Ask for Mr. Sanderson.’ He paused, then went on, ‘Describe these stamps to me.’

Vin described the stamps.

‘There are eight of them?’ Radnitz asked.

‘Yeah.’ Vin found it hard to believe that this man seemed so unconcerned about paying this enormous sum without some quibble. He wondered if he dare try to up the price, but there was something about Radnitz that scared him. After all, he told himself, sweating with excitement, a million, goddamn it! was a million!

‘I must warn you that if you don’t produce the stamps and you are wasting my time,’ Radnitz went on in his quiet guttural voice, ‘I will make you wish you had never been born.’

This threat shook Vin.

‘You give me the money and I’ll give you the stamps.’

‘Then at three o’clock this afternoon,’ Radnitz said and made a gesture of dismissal.

Vin took the express elevator to the ground floor. What a mug Elliot was! he thought. All this fuss! This rich punk hadn’t hesitated, hadn’t even quibbled about paying for the stamps. He was so elated that he wanted to dance a jig. As the elevator doors swished open, he glanced at his watch. The time was 12.55. He had two hours to kill. What did a man do to kill time when he was worth a million dollars? Vin asked himself and he knew the answer: a man bought himself a drink and a fancy meal, and that’s what he was going to do. He took out his billfold and checked his money. He had twenty-five dollars: all the money he owned. He would blow the lot on a slap-up meal. Why should he worry? In two hours he would be worth a million!

Unaware that Larry, half-hidden behind an open newspaper, was watching him, Vin strode into the bar and called for a double whisky on the rocks. While waiting, he beckoned to a waiter and told him he wanted a table in the restaurant.

The waiter said this could be arranged.

Larry had moved to the bar entrance and had overheard the conversation. He walked briskly across the lobby and out into the sunshine where Robo was waiting.

‘He’s going to stuff his gut,’ Larry said. ‘We’ve lots of time. There’s a drug store down the road. Go, buy a roll of gauze bandage and hurry it up.’

Robo grinned and ran off.

After his drink, Vin swaggered into the restaurant and was conducted to a single table. The rich clients, shovelling food into their faces, looked at him and raised their eyebrows. This brash, shabbily dressed man wasn’t in their class, but Vin couldn’t care a goddamn. He sat down and surveyed the crowded restaurant with a sneering little grin. He was as good as any of these slobs, he told himself. In two hours’ time he would be worth a million dollars! In a month or so he would have his own house and his yacht. This would be the last time he ate alone. Every dollie within a five-mile radius would be fighting for his favours once the word got around how rich he was.

He was a little dashed that the menu was in French, but the suave Maître d’hôtel was at his elbow to help him. He finally let the Maître d’hôtel choose the meal of smoked eel and the breast of chicken in lobster sauce.

While he was eating, Robo came back from the drug store and joined Larry, waiting at the hotel car park.

Since these two had been in hospital and had been forced to wash themselves, their long hair and their beards, they now looked as respectable as any of the kids on vacation in the City and no one paid any attention to them as they converged on Vin’s Jaguar. With Robo shielding his movements Larry removed the cap on the gas tank, quickly unwound some of the bandage and inserted one end into the tank. He then paid out a long length of bandage which he concealed under the car. All this was a work of seconds. Striking a match, he set fire to the gauze which began to smoulder, running up the length of the bandage towards the gas tank.

They had about two minutes to get clear which was ample time. By the time they had reached some distant clump of palm trees, the Jaguar’s gas tank, along with a million dollars’ worth of stamps, went up with a bang, shattering some of the hotel’s windows.

* * *

‘Well now, Mr. Campbell,’ Barney said, ‘that’s about the whole story.’ He looked at his empty glass and then at the wall clock opposite him. The hands pointed to 02.15. ‘It’s getting past my bed time.’

‘There are still some loose ends to tie up,’ I said. ‘How about one for the road? I’m having a whisky. How about you?’

Barney’s little red snapper of a mouth moved into a smile.

‘I’ve never said no to a drop of Scotch,’ he said and flapped with his enormous hand in Sam’s direction.

‘First, what happened to Judy Larrimore?’ I asked.

Barney’s fat face showed his disapproval.

‘You’ll find her at the Adam & Eve club any time you look in there. She’s just the same . . . looking for boys with money, maybe a little fatter, maybe a little less attractive, but still in the same old groove.’

Sam came over and took the order for whiskies.

‘And Vin?’

‘I don’t have to tell you that Vin flipped his lid when the doorman came into the restaurant asking if anyone owned a blue Jaguar with New York plates. The way Vin rushed out of the restaurant lowered all records for the hundred yards sprint. The sight that met his eyes turned him to stone. The car was a complete write-off and he realized his dream of a million dollars was now just a dream. He stood there, white faced, scarcely breathing, watched from a safe distance by Larry and Robo who were squirming with joy. Then a hand on his arm made him turn. Holtz, by his side, asked quietly, “The stamps were in the car?” Vin nodded dumbly. “Then I am sorry for you,” Holtz said and returned to the hotel to report to Radnitz.

‘Later, the cops picked Vin up as he was trying to hitch a ride to Jacksonville. Without money, without even his few belongings, he was in trouble. The cops had received a tip-off and I don’t have to tell you from whom the tip had come. The Miami hotel dick picked Vin out at an identity parade and Vin went away for five years: robbery with violence.’

Sam came with the whiskies. With drunken dignity, Barney leaned forward, tapping his glass against mine.

‘Your health, Mr. Campbell,’ he said. ‘Your very good health.’

‘And Elliot?’ I was wondering if the whisky would prove too much for Barney and I wouldn’t hear the end of this story, but I needn’t have worried: Barney’s capacity seemed without limit.

‘Elliot?’ Barney lifted his heavy shoulders. ‘You didn’t read about it? When Joey told him and Cindy what he had done and why, and when Elliot realized there would be no more money coming to him, he gave a wry grin, shrugged and told Joey he had done the right thing.