Highbinders (7 page)

“Because I’m going to have to talk to him.”

“That isn’t really necessary, Phil,” Eddie Apex said.

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

I sighed. “Eddie, I’m thinking of going in on a deal that you’re in on. And although I think you’re a real nice guy and are probably sweet to your lovely wife, I’m not going into any deal that you’re in on until I check it out. Do you really blame me?”

Eddie Apex gave me his best grin, the one that was so charmingly honest that it made you want to do something nice for him, such as buying his entire stock of gold bricks. “No,” he said. “I don’t blame you. If I were dealing with me, I’d do the same thing. His name’s Robin Styles. Styles with a y.”

“Where can I find him?”

“During the day he moves around a lot. After ten or eleven at night you can always find him at Shields.”

“What’s Shields?”

“One of our newer gambling hells. It’s on Curzon. All the cabbies know it.”

“Can I get in?”

Apex nodded. “I’ll fix it.”

“If you’re satisfied after talking to our client, Mr. Styles, does that mean you’re in?” Uncle Norbert asked.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Not too rich for you, eh?”

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be helping to restore a national treasure to France. What you do with your money is your concern. I’ll pay taxes on mine.”

“Well, that’s wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful, Ned?”

“Wonderful,” Ned Nitry said.

“I might need that hundred thousand ransom in a hurry,” I said.

“We’ve got it,” Uncle Norbert said.

“Have you got any pictures of the sword?”

Ned Nitry reached into a jacket pocket and handed me an envelope. I took out several color prints that had been taken with a Polaroid. One of them showed Eddie Apex holding the sword out as if he were about to lead the next charge on the Saracens. The others were close-ups of the sword, or at least as close up as the Polaroid could get and still focus. I could see the big diamond in the pommel and the Nitry brothers were right. It was as big as an egg laid by a healthy hen. It didn’t look like a diamond to me, but then I’m not too familiar with what rough diamonds look like.

“How do I identify the thing?” I said.

“Identify it?” Uncle Norbert said. He looked puzzled.

“That’s right. These pictures are okay, but suppose the thieves found themselves an old swordsmith around who could run them up a fake.”

“Not likely,” Ned Nitry said.

“I like to be sure.”

The Nitry brothers looked at each other. Then Uncle Norbert got up and came around the table to where I sat. He pointed to the photo that was the best one of the hilt and pommel. “You see right here?” he said, pointing to the hilt just below the pommel.

“Yes.”

“Well, get yourself a little magnifying glass. And use it to look right there. You’ll see a tiny NN scratched into the gold. But get the glass because you can’t see it with the naked eye.”

“That sounds as if you’d been expecting something.”

Norbert shook his head. “No, lad. It’s just habit. We always put our initials on the paintings that we substitute for the real ones so we won’t have a mix-up. They just look like scratches on the frames.”

I looked at my watch again. It was nearly two-thirty. “Well, I suppose I’d better go back and get to work.”

“Doing what?” Uncle Norbert asked.

“Waiting for the phone to ring.”

“What if the thieves call before you’ve seen Styles?”

“I’ll stall them until after I talk to him.”

“We don’t want any slips,” Ned Nitry said.

“There won’t be any.”

“I’ll have Tom run you back,” Apex said.

I shook my head. “I’d rather walk.” I rose. “By the way, Eddie. Where do you fit into the family business?”

He smiled. “I’m the customers man. We go after much of our business, you know. My job is to make ever so discreet calls on the stately homes of England. You’d be surprised at how many fake old masters are hanging on those stately walls. Shocking, really.”

“Eddie’s a wonderful salesman,” his wife said.

“That’s because he probably believes in what he’s dealing in,” I said.

“I deal in what I’ve always dealt in.”

“Greed?” I said.

“That’s right,” he said. “Greed.”

B
ACK AT THE HILTON
I made three phone calls, set up two appointments for later that afternoon, and then called down and asked room service to send up some hot chocolate.

While I waited I went over to the window and gazed out at Hyde Park. It looked green and inviting in the May sunshine as did the rest of what I could see of the city from my tenth-story room and I wondered why I had never grown fond of London. I decided that it may have been the language. If they had spoken something incomprehensible such as Bulgarian, I probably would have found it to be all very quaint and charming. But because they spoke English, they should know better, and what would have been quaint in Sofia was only inconvenient in London.

There was a knock at the door and when I opened it, it wasn’t the waiter with the chocolate, it was a man of about thirty-five dressed in a dark brown suit with blue shirt, striped tie, brown shoes, and cop written right across his thin, still face.

“Mr. St. Ives?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“My name’s Deskins.”

He was about to say something else, but I said, “Not Deskins of Scotland Yard?”

Something started across his face, surprise perhaps, but he caught it and brought it back before it got too far. “It shows, does it?”

“A little. Come in.”

He came in and looked around the way that all cops look around in hotel rooms, as if they knew that they could get the goods on you if they could just take a peek under the bed. After that he seemed to make a mental estimate of how much the room cost and then glanced at me as if trying to decide whether I could afford it.

“Would you like to see some identification?” he said.

“No.”

“I watch some of the Yank programs on the telly. ‘The FBI.’ I watch that sometimes. They’re always whipping out their identification.”

“It’s a rule they have,” I said.

There was another knock on the door. Deskins almost looked pleased. “Expecting someone?”

“That’s right.” I opened the door and the waiter wheeled in the hot chocolate in a silver pot that looked as though it held enough for four. Next to it was a plate of those cute little sandwiches with all of the crust sliced off.

“I didn’t order the sandwiches,” I said.

“No charge, sir. Compliments of the house.”

“Thank the house for me,” I said and signed the bill, adding enough tip to produce what sounded like a sincere thank you very much, sir, from the waiter.

“Like a cup?” I said to Deskins.

“Tea?”

“Hot chocolate.”

“Is it now? I haven’t had a cup of chocolate in years.”

“Neither have I.”

I poured two cups and handed him one. “Have a sandwich,” I said, prying up the bread on one to make sure it wasn’t tomato. It was ham. Deskins shrugged, picked up one, and took a bite of it. I hoped he had got the tomato. “Missed my lunch,” he said.

I took another sandwich, sat down in a chair, and waited. Deskins also took another one and sat down on the bed.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re off the booze, Mr. St. Ives.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Strange thing, coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just pulling up to the Magistrates’ Court this morning on Marylebone when you came out and hopped into that gray Rolls.”

“That’s pretty strange, all right.”

“So I said to myself, what would an American gentleman be doing coming out of Magistrates’ Court at ten in the morning and hopping into Eddie Apex’s Rolls?”

“How’d you know I was an American gentleman?”

“It shows.”

“I suppose it does.”

“So I went in and found out who you were and where you were staying and why you’d been in court. Drunk, you were, they said.”

“That’s what they said.”

“You don’t look like a boozer.”

“We come in all shapes.”

“Well, I’m a bit interested in Eddie Apex and his friends. Have been for years. So I called a colleague of mine in New York.”

“You must have a loose budget.”

“Not really. He and I’ve worked together before. I had another matter to talk with him about anyway.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lieutenant Dontano.”

“Fraud squad.”

“That’s right. You know him, don’t you?”

“We’ve met.”

“Lieutenant Dontano told me what line of work you’re in. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a go-between before—not a professional type who makes a living at it.”

“There’re a few of us around. Not many, but a few. There’s been some talking of forming a union, but so far it’s only talk.”

He looked at me narrowly with those cop blue eyes of his. “That must be a joke.”

“A small one.”

He sighed. “I like a good giggle as well as the next, but I’m not much on American humor. I watched that program of yours a time or two on the telly—‘Laugh-In,’ I think it’s called. I had to ask the wife why the people were laughing. She tried to explain it to me, but I still didn’t see anything to laugh at.”

“I think it’s gone off the air.”

“No great loss, I’d say.”

“Not much.”

“Well, Mr. St. Ives, I was wondering if you might tell me what brings you to London and into the company of Eddie Apex?”

“Why don’t you ask Eddie?”

“Eddie doesn’t talk much, especially to me.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be too cooperative either.”

“May I assume that you’re working?”

“You can assume anything you want.”

“You know Eddie rather well, don’t you?”

“I once interviewed him for a paper that I worked for.”

“Then you know what he is.”

“I know what he was. He was a confidence man.”

“Was?”

“He retired.”

“Did he now?”

“That’s what he told me.”

Deskins finished his hot chocolate. “Well, I suppose you met the missus?”

“Whose?”

“Eddie’s.”

“I met her.”

“I see old Tom’s still driving for Eddie. Did you meet Jack?”

“The butler?”

“Yes.”

“I saw him.”

“Still getting about, is he?”

“Seems to be.”

“I suppose old Jack would be long before your time, unless you made a study of such things,”

“What things?”

“Famous thieves, for example. Know much about them?”

“A little.”

“Ever hear of a Gentleman Jack Brooks?”

“You’re kidding. That old man?”

Deskins nodded. “That’s him. Worked the Riviera before the first war. New York in the twenties. Mayfair any time. Probably the best jewel thief who ever lived. Slowed down when he got to be fifty. They caught him coming out of Brown’s in the summer of forty-three dressed up in a general’s uniform and his pockets stuffed with some Indian nabob’s jewel case. A fortune in diamonds, I’m told. They also tell me that old Jack certainly looked the part. Of a general, I mean.”

“What happened?”

“To Jack? He did ten straight without remission at Wormwood Scrubs. When he got out he went to work as a butler for the Nitry brothers. Have you met Eddie’s father-in-law, Ned Nitry?”

“We met.”

“And Uncle Bert?”

I nodded.

“They’re a pair,” he said. “Bent out of shape if ever I saw. Know how they got started?”

“No.”

“They damn near ran the black market in the East End during the war. Those two and a couple of American captains who supplied them. Sugar, tea, coffee, beef, stockings, chocolate—they had the lot. Sold it by the ton, I’m told, and made a fortune.”

“They ever get caught?”

“Never. They spread it around too thick to get caught, if you know what I mean.”

“I think so,” I said. “What happened after the war?”

“To the Nitrys? It went a treat after the war. For them, at least. They invested everything in West End property, moved to Knightsbridge, and even hired old Tom when he got out of the nick.”

“Tom,” I said. “You mean Eddie’s chauffeur.”

“Back in the late twenties and early thirties he was a race driver. Raced anything—bikes, cars, what have you. He raced in Europe mostly. Then in the late thirties, I’d have to say that old Tom fell among evil companions. A smash-and-grab gang working out of Soho. He was their driver, their wheelman, I think you’d call him, and probably the best ever.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got caught one night when a tire went. He spent the war and then some in the Scrubs, too. When he got out, who should hire old Tom Bates but Ned and Norbert Nitry.”

“They sound like real humanitarians.”

“Mmm,” Deskins said and rose from the bed. He looked at me with his frosty blue eyes that somehow went with that still, thin face and its tight mouth, worried frown, fox nose, and a chin that I could hang my hat on. “I’m not here to tell you who you should be keeping company with, Mr. St. Ives. But I don’t mind telling you that the Nitry brothers are a nasty lot.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

He reached into a pocket and handed me a card. “If you think of something interesting that you’d like to tell me, ring this number.” I looked at the card. There was nothing on it but his name, William Deskins, and a telephone number.

“All right,” I said. “If I think of something interesting.”

He moved to the door and opened it. “Good-bye, Mr. St. Ives. And thank you very much for the chocolate.”

“Not at all,” I said.

When he was gone I went over to the phone and called the number that was on the card. There were two double rings and when a voice answered, a man’s voice, with a snappy, “Fifth Division, Constable Akers,” I hung up.

W
HEN MY FORMER WIFE
and I had lived in London that year at the very beginning of the 1960s, when all fine things had seemed possible, even my becoming sort of a wisecracking Walter Lippmann, I had grown knowledgeable and even authoritative on a number of things English such as clotted cream, Parliament, the Royal Family, Lyons Corner Houses, and the London Underground. Having got the underground down cold, I had set out to master the city’s bus system only to fall back in utter confusion after a couple of weeks.