Grifter's Game (7 page)

If anything, Max Treger was the man who looked bad. From Brassard’s point of view, the only man who could have picked him so neatly was the man who knew what he was carrying. Treger had a solid reputation for honesty-among-thieves and all that, but with that big a bundle hanging fire Brassard was undoubtedly suspicious. I hoped he would raise enough hell so that somebody would get mad and shoot holes in his head. It would save me a lot of work.

But I didn’t think it would happen. In a few days Brassard would convince Treger that he wasn’t playing heroin hopscotch and Treger in turn would convince Brassard that he had better rackets under his thumb than petty larceny. The two clowns would put their crooked heads together and come up with an unknown quantity. They would start looking for this unknown quantity, at which time it would be very unhealthy to be me.

I wanted to run but it was too early. The big headache was the goddamned luggage. The bags were ordinary enough but they could be recognized especially when the Red Alert went out on them. I didn’t give a damn if somebody remembered them in a week or so—by that time I’d be snug in New York with my trail as well-covered as it was ever going to be. But I didn’t want anybody to tip until I was as far as possible from Atlantic City.

I gave the railway station a buzz from my room and found out that there was a train to Philly every morning at 7:30. There was another every afternoon, but the morning train was a hell of a lot safer. Everybody is properly asleep at that hour, and at the same time there’s nothing suspicious about checking out then, as there would be for a train leaving at, say, four in the morning.

The less people who saw my bags on the way out, the better I would feel about it. The less chance of Brassard being around, the happier I was.

I called the desk in the middle of the afternoon to leave a call for six the following morning, which must have puzzled the hell out of them. Then I phoned room service for more Jack Daniels and let the afternoon and evening spend themselves in a mildly alcoholic fog. It was gentle drinking. I had nothing better to do, and at the same time I had no overwhelming compulsion to get stoned to the earlobes. I paced myself properly and kept a comfortable edge on until I felt tired enough to sleep. Then I threw down a few extra shots and slipped over the edge so that sleep would come a little more quickly.

Which it did.

My eyes opened the second the phone rang and I came thoroughly awake at once. I took a salt water shower, this time on purpose, and then chased away the salt with cold fresh water. I used up three little towels before I managed to get dry.

I dressed and went downstairs. There was a different monkey behind the desk but he was just as obliging as the first. He gave me no trouble at all. He handed over the attaché case and I gave him my nicest smile in return.

All the way back through the lobby to the elevator and up too many flights to my room I felt as though half the English-speaking world was staring at the attaché case. I actually tried to open it, then remembered locking it and consigning the key to limbo. It was a shame. I couldn’t very well leave either of Brassard’s bags lying around. If the case were open I could transfer the heroin to one of his bags and let the case lose itself. This way I had three bags to carry. It would be no problem at first, but it might be trouble when I switched trains.

I packed all of my stuff and all of Brassard’s stuff into his two suitcases. Since I had come with next to nothing, this wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. Then I went back down to the lobby, let a bellboy carry my bags to the inevitable waiting taxi, and wandered over to the desk. The monkey hoped I had enjoyed my stay.

“Wonderful town,” I told him, lying in my teeth. “I needed the rest. Feel like a new man.”

That much was true.

“Going back home now?”

“Back to Philly,” I told him. I’d used a good address off Rittenhouse Square when I checked in.

“Come back and see us.”

I nodded. He should sit on a hot stove until I came back. He should hold his breath.

I went out the side entrance. The cab was there with my bags nestled together in the trunk. I gave the bellhop a buck and hoped he would forget all about the luggage.

At the railway station I bought a ticket straight through to Philadelphia. I carried my baggage on the train. It was tough to lug three pieces without looking awkward but I managed it somehow. The conductor came by, took my train ticket and gave me a seat check good to Philadelphia. I settled back and let the train chug its way past Egg Harbor and Haddonfield. Then we were in North Philly and I was leaving the train. Me and my three little suitcases. I remembered the story of Benjamin Franklin as a young man running through the streets of Philadelphia with a loaf of bread under each arm and another one in his mouth. I knew precisely what he looked like. And I hoped Philly was used to the sight by now.

I tried to get excited but I couldn’t raise the necessary enthusiasm. There was no problem, no sweat, no headache. Who was going to remember another proper young man with three suitcases? Who would Brassard’s men question—commuters? Conductors?

No problem.

If some cutie-pie figured out the orthographic relationship between L. Keith Brassard and Leonard K. Blake, he might trace me through to the railway station, might find a clerk who knew I’d bought a ticket to Philly. But nobody in the world was going to figure that I’d gone to New York.

No problem.

In less than three minutes I was off the train, down the stairwell, through the tunnel, and on the opposite platform. I waited there for less than five minutes before a train for New York pulled up and I got on. I put my suitcases up on the luggage rack and relaxed in my seat. When the conductor came by I let him sell me a ticket straight through to Boston. It wasn’t necessary, not in the least, but I wanted to play everything to the hilt.

It sounds like a spy movie. Cloak and dagger. Bob Mitchum in a trenchcoat.

I thought about Mona and wondered how long it would be before I saw her again. I thought about the first time on the beach, and the times in my hotel room. I thought about the way she moved and the tricks her eyes played.

She was right as rain with the Bob Mitchum line. I was overplaying things. We had nothing at all to worry about. I was on my way to New York without leaving a trace of a trail. Brassard was out looking for wrong trees to bark up. We had it aced.

All we had to do now was get away with murder.

5

I checked into the Collingwood Hotel as Howard Shaw. The Collingwood was a good second-class hotel on Thirty-fifth Street just west of Fifth. My room was thirty-two dollars a week; it was clean and comfortable. I had a central location without being in the middle of things, the way I would have been in a Times Square hotel. I stood that much less chance of running into old familiar faces.

The door clicked shut behind me and I dropped my three suitcases on the floor. I shoved the attaché case under the bed and decided to hope for the best. The Collingwood was a residential hotel and there were no bellboys to scoop up your bags. Nobody saw the L. K. B. monogram on the luggage on the way up, which was fine with me. Getting rid of the luggage was the next step, of course. It might have been simpler to check them in a subway locker and throw the key away, but they were too good and I was too broke. I ripped the labels out of all of Brassard’s clothing except for what fit me, stuffed the clothes into the suitcases, and went downtown to where Third Avenue turns into the Bowery.

I sold better than three hundred dollars’ worth of clothing to a round-shouldered, beetle-eyed man for thirty dollars. I pawned two suitcases worth over a hundred bucks for twenty-five. I left Brassard’s stuff to be bought by bottle babies, and I went back to my hotel and slept.

It was Thursday. Sunday or Monday they would be coming back to New York. Now they were together at the Shelburne. Probably in bed.

I dreamed about them and woke up sweating.

Friday I looked him up in the phone book. There was a single entry, not even in bold-faced type. It said
Brassard, L. K. 117 Chmbrs . . . . . . WOrth 4-6363
. I left the hotel and found a pay phone in a drugstore around the corner. I dialed WOrth 4-6363 and let it ring eight times without getting an answer. I walked over to Sixth and caught the D train to Chambers, then wandered around until I found 117.

It was the right building for him. The bricks had been red once; now they were colorless. All the windows needed washing. The names of the tenants were painted on the windows—
Comet Enterprises, Inc. . . . Cut-Rate Auto Insurance . . . Passport Fotos While-U-Wait . . . Zenith Employment . . . Kallett Confidential Investigations . . . Rafael Messero, Mexican Attorney, Divorce Information
. Nine stories of cubbyholes, nine stories of very free enterprise. I wondered why he didn’t have a better office. I wondered if he ever came to the one he had.

His name was on the directory. The elevator was self-service and I rode it to the fifth floor. I got out and walked past the employment agency to the door marked L. K. Brassard. The window glass was frosted and I couldn’t see a thing.

I tried the door and wasn’t particularly surprised to find out that it was locked. The lock was the standard spring lock that catches automatically when you close the door, and there was a good eighth of an inch between the door and the jamb. I looked around at Zenith Employment. Their door was closed. I wondered what the penalty was for breaking and entering.

The blade of my penknife took the lock in less than twenty seconds. It’s a simple operation—you fit the knife blade in between the door and the jamb and pry the locking mechanism back. Good doors have the jamb recessed so that this cannot be done. This one was a bad door. I opened it about an inch and looked around again. Then I shoved it open, walked in and locked it behind me.

The office looked like what it was supposed to be. One of the oldest remaining roll-top desks in America stood in one corner. There was an inkstand on it. I looked around hysterically for a quill pen and was almost surprised not to find one.

There were half a dozen large ledgers on the desk and I went over them fairly carefully. I don’t know what I expected to find. Whether the entries were coded or merely blinds I couldn’t tell. It was a waste of time studying them.

The drawers and pigeonholes of the desk yielded a lot more of nothing in particular. There were bills and canceled checks and bank statements. Evidently he had a certain amount of legitimate business in addition to the main event. From what I could make out, he imported a lot of Japanese garbage—cigarette lighters, toys, junk jewelry, that sort of stuff. That fit into the picture. It was easy to see heroin coming through Japan by way of China or Hong Kong or Macao.

I sat in his leather chair in front of his desk and tried to put myself in his place. What hit me the hardest was the very double life he was leading. He was not a crook in the same sense as, say, Reggie Cole or Max Treger.

Everybody who knew Treger knew just what sort of a man he was. He managed to stay out of jail because nobody managed to collect the evidence that would put him where he belonged. But if Treger had a wife, Mrs. T. knew just how her husband kept mink on her back. Some of Treger’s neighbors snubbed him while others pretended he was just one of the boys—but they all knew he was a gangster. The people in Cheshire Point didn’t know that about good old L. Keith Brassard.

I tapped out a drum solo on the top of that very respectable desk and wondered why the hell I had come to his office in the first place. I didn’t know what I’d expected to find, or hoped to find. I wasn’t a federal narcotics agent trying to crack a dope ring. I was a wise guy who wanted to kill Brassard and wind up with his wife. So what was I doing there?

I wiped off everything I remembered touching. It probably would never matter, but I didn’t want to leave my prints in his office in case they ever tied me to him. There was one scrap of paper I’d found with four phone numbers on it and nothing to tell what the numbers were. I copied them down.

He could tell the office had been entered. I did what I could, but I knew there would be some items out of place. I hoped there was a maid with a key—then he might not suspect a search.

On the way back to the hotel I picked up a few pairs of slacks and some underwear. I found a suit and an extra sport jacket and arranged to have them delivered to me at the Collingwood by Monday. All together the clothes came to over a hundred, and left me with not much money. It hurt to spend that much on clothes, but I couldn’t see any way to avoid it. I needed the clothes. And they couldn’t be too cheap or it wouldn’t look right. Then I picked up a fairly respectable looking suitcase for twenty-five bucks. That hurt too.

By the time I got back to the hotel I felt pretty rotten. I was tired and bored and perspiring. The shower took care of the perspiration but the boredom remained. I had nothing to do and no place to go and I did not like myself very much. And I missed her so much I could taste it. I had a good dinner with a drink before and a brandy after. Then I went out and bought a bottle and took it to bed.

Saturday came and went without my accomplishing very much. I went to a barber and got a crew cut, something I hadn’t done in one hell of a long time. When I got back to my room I gave myself a long look in the bathroom mirror. The haircut had changed me more than anything else could have. It made my face rounder, my forehead higher, my whole appearance a good two years younger.

I went down to the drugstore, picked up a handful of paperback novels, went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day reading, and sipping what remained in the bottle. I had time to kill and I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. If I could have spent two days in a coma I would have been glad of it. I didn’t want to think and I didn’t want to plan and I didn’t want to do much of anything. I just waited for the time to go by.

Sunday afternoon I walked over to Penn Station and looked her up in the Westchester phonebook. She lived on something called Roscommon Drive. I memorized the number and left.