The Ross Forgery
The Ross Forgery
William H. Hallahan
To My Father
ONE
1
Congratulations, Mr. Tank:
It is my considerable pleasure to welcome you to Chamber’s International Course on Private Investigation.
Your credit references have proved to be most exemplary, and I look forward to supervising your progress through a course of profitable study that has already enriched many thousands of young men just like yourself.
One of the most appealing advantages of study by mail is your control over your own rate of study. However, I do urge you to progress as rapidly as possible through your lessons so that you can begin to earn an immediate Private Investigator’s income right in your own community.
The texts and study equipment are being rushed to you by separate package along with your monthly payment book. It all should reach you in the next day or so. Please proceed immediately to Lesson One.
Congratulations, Mr. Tank, on a wise decision.
Yours for greater crime prevention,
J. INGERSOLL INGERSOLL IV
Institute Director
Private Investigator’s License # 1-343-578-48795
2
The March wind still had the bite of winter in it. Occasionally it sprinted across the long rolling lawn and past the stiff shrubs to throw a burst of frozen rain at the mansion.
Just inside the open front door, the locksmith sprung the trigger bolt on the door lock repeatedly with his finger. “See, Mr. Matthews? This lock can’t be ’loided. First, there’s a metal baffle here, and second, if they do get a piece of celluloid past it, the spring on the trigger bolt will hold and they can’t pop the lock. See? Right here. And right above is your mortise lock with this unbeveled bolt. This one can’t be ’loided and it can’t be jimmied.” He shut the door against the seething wind and stepped back into the thickly carpeted center hallway. “Now. Let’s see. We checked your burglar alarm system, the window locks …”
Mr. Matthews watched the man count on his fingers. “I still want to get that space alarm system when I get back from Cascais.”
“Well, like I said, Mr. Matthews, them space alarm units can feel the movements of the burglar inside the house. That’s what sets off an alarm in our data processing center, and we’ll have a car here in minutes. So, like I said, with the kind of valuable art and books you got, it represents a good investment. Pulls your insurance rates way down. But for the time being, you’re OK. Every possible entry into this house including the chimney is locked and electronically booby-trapped. If anyone puts so much as a jimmy in a lock, we’ll know it and cover your house in seconds. Tell you what. When you get back, I’ll even install a new unit that’s just been developed. It’s a mesh. Like a fisherman’s net. We’ll take up the carpet in your den here—” He crossed the hallway to the den doorway and looked in. “See? We’ll take up that carpet and put this electronic mesh down; then we put the carpet back down. I’m telling you—not even a canary can put his foot on that rug without raising hell with our computer alarm system. The best in Westchester County.” His eyes roamed over the shelves of books behind the sparkling glass doors. “Tell you what. I bet fifty bucks there isn’t a crook in the country that can get past your present security system.”
He started toward the front door, nodded. “Oh. By the way. Remember. Don’t tell the local police you’re going away. OK?”
Mr. Matthews smiled. “Professional jealousy?”
The locksmith shook his head slowly. “Police are crooks,” he said.
3
In the darkness, the flickering fire in the steel drum reddened the walls of the warehouse. It bronzed the figure of the watchman.
He stood, listening angrily to the chirping and squeaking down on the railroad tracks.
Finally, he yanked a burning brand from the fire. He swung it like a bat several times, fanning the flames. Then he marched to the end of the loading platform and swung it in a downward arc at the garbage-strewn tracks. The squeaking stopped abruptly, and a horde of brown rats fled across the switching yard into the sodden night.
“Rats!” He yelled into the wind. “Goddamned rats! I hate you bastards!” He rammed the burning beam back into the barrel just as the mad March gale spun off the warehouse and into the barrel, raising hot rags of flame. He backed away, coughing and rubbing his eyes.
“Rats! Bastards!” He coughed again and pulled up the collar of his peacoat.
The fire cracked and hissed, the panting flames threw the man’s batlike shadow on the factory wall, and the wind moaned. The watchman pushed his hands into the slash pockets of his jacket. For the time, the squeaking was gone.
Another jet rolled across the sky and coasted into Newark Airport. He watched the string of lights slowly descend, feeling the earth shake and the vague discomfort in his ears from the shrieking jet engines. He watched the plane course along the runway to the passenger terminal.
Silence returned, and he listened again for the rats.
4
A man came out of the warehouse doorway. The wind set his coattails streaming and he quickly put a hand to the crown of his hat. “Keerist! It’s like winter all over again.” He stepped closer to the fire, buttoning his expensive overcoat with one hand. “Who’s winning, Louis? You or the rats?”
“Rats. I hate them goddamned things. I’ll be glad when we move the crap game back to Brooklyn. You can have this godforsaken Jersey. How’d you make out?”
“Like a Chinese fire drill.”
“Yeah? Got cleaned, huh?”
“Not me, Louis. There’s a real yo-yo in there who’s dropping a bundle, and that Moose is lending him money as fast as he asks for it. I bet he’s dropped more than three grand so far.”
“Is that the guy who’s kind of bald, with the sour face?”
“Yeah. Ross. His name is Ross. I gotta go.” He pushed a ten-dollar bill into the watchman’s peacoat pocket. “Here. I lay you eight to five the rats win.”
“Nah. The dogs’ll get the rats.”
“The dogs?”
“Yeah. Wild dogs. A whole pack of them.” He patted his pocket. “Thanks. Watch the ice in the parking lot.”
“Ice! Keerist, it really is winter again.”
The watchman turned back to the red glow of the fire. His shadow rose twelve feet up the reddened brick wall, swaying and swelling like a Mephistophelean specter. He scanned the rows of tracks in the switching yard, looking in the darkness for the dogs and listening for the rats.
5
Twenty-five men silently stared at the upraised fist of the crapshooter. They stood around a long wooden trestle table before untidy piles of money in bad light cast by a bare bulb on the wall.
The dice clicked in the man’s fist, and he flung them the length of the table. They hit the concrete wall under the bulb and bounced back.
“Eight. Your point’s eight, Ross.”
The redhaired Englishman retrieved the dice and pitched them back down the table.
Ross raised his fist again and rattled them.
“Come on, Ross. Shoot!”
“Let’s go, babe!”
The Englishman glanced at the gallery of human portraits on both sides of the table. He settled his shoulders inside the well-cut tweed jacket and leaned against the wall.
“Come on, payday,” intoned Ross. The dice danced down the table past the piles of money and bashed against the wall.
“Six. Point’s still eight.” The redhaired Englishman recovered them and pitched them back to Ross.
Ross bunched his lips and fired again.
“Six again. Come on, Ross. Let’s see that eight.”
The Englishman tossed the dice back. The word
masochist crossed his mind. A man who wants to lose. He looked again at the faces around the table under the glaring factory lights. Faces eager, faces rapacious, faces of men making a Friday night killing.
Ross picked up the dice, rattled them, and tossed. Hard.
“Craps! Seven and out.” A number of men hooted gleefully.
The Englishman watched Ross back away from the table as his pile of money was snatched up. Another player stepped into the slot, eagerly reaching for the dice.
“I’ll shoot two hundred.”
“I’ll fade you.”
“I got a piece of him. Here’s a hundred.”
“You’re faded, mate.”
Ross walked along the row of bunched backs glumly, with his hands in his pockets. He stopped before a man who stood with one foot on the seat of a rickety wooden chair. “How about another grand, Moose?”
Moose deliberately took a cigar from his mouth and looked at the ash. Carefully, he broke it off on the back of the chair. Then he looked at another man and nodded. “Give him a grand, Mr. Tank.”
“OK. Here.” Tank held out a ballpoint pen and a pad of promissory notes.
The Englishman watched Ross take the pad to the concrete wall. And he watched Tank’s skillful examination of Ross. Tank read the sullen expression. Self-pity. Bitterness. Recklessness. Tank noted the slope of Ross’s shoulders, guessing at the softness of the muscles in the coat sleeves, glancing at the eyes, ears, nose for telltale boxer’s scars. Then he studied Ross’s hands. Strong hands, long, thin, fingers, no calluses, no scars, and thin, deft wrists. Violinist’s hands. Or a painter’s.
No trouble for the collector.
Tank’s eyes went from Ross to Moose. He watched—and the Englishman watched—Moose take a thick billfold from an inner pocket, open it, and remove a wad of bills. Quickly, he counted out ten 100-dollar bills and returned the billfold to his pocket.
Tank looked back at Ross.
“Today’s my fortieth birthday,” said Ross, handing the pen and paper to Tank.
“Happy birthday,” said Tank. “You now owe five grand.” Tank returned to the pamphlet he was reading.
CHAMBER’S INTERNATIONAL COURSE
ON PRIVATE INVESTIGATION.
Duties of the Private Investigator. Paragraph 5A: Credit Collections. Occasionally, collecting money becomes the duty of every investigator. Two points must be immediately ascertained. The debt must be legal and enforceable at law (see Legal Instruments, Section 128, Part 8). In most states, it is illegal for anyone to collect an unenforceable debt such as monies owed to a loan shark. Secondly, the methods of collecting the debt must be within the bounds of law. Physical beatings, offers of beatings, battery, blackmail, and other unethical methods must never be used if you value your license.
Ross stepped back to the table, pushing one shoulder through the crowd. He had had no luck with even-money play on the table so he decided to make odds-on side bets. His eyes met the redhead’s.
“Happy birthday,” said the Englishman.
6
The rats were back, and squeaking. The watchman, in mounting fury, began to study the pieces of burning lumber. Then the squeaking stopped. Abruptly. The watchman paused, listening. He waited as a heavy, ground-shaking jet from Newark Airport took off. He studied the brightly lit passenger terminal and the control tower and the rows of landing lights that marked off the perimeters of the airfield.
The noise got louder. The ground shook. The scream of the laboring jet engines forced him to put his hands to his ears, and he shouted in pain. The sound quickly faded.
He listened. No squeaks. The gale soughed along the edges of the roof. In a lull, he listened intently. No squeaks.
He checked his fire for brands, then, squinting, peered intently into the night, scanning the pitch-dark switching yard. And he saw them. The wild dogs. Runaways, castoffs, and wild-born offspring whelped in the burrows under the railroad embankments—half starved, cunning, and vicious, come to hunt the garbage-fattened rats and anything else they could bring down, less than a half mile from one of the world’s major airports.
The lookout watched them slinking closer. He gazed about the platform and found the tin bucket and club he sought. Quickly, he put a hand inside his pea jacket and withdrew a neck lanyard with a whistle on the end of it. He beat the club back and forth inside the bucket and blew the whistle. It emitted a piercing shriek high above the range of human ears. The sudden bucketing frightened the dogs, and the whistle pierced their skulls with pain. They turned and followed the lead dog quickly down an embankment and back through a scrap-iron yard behind the dining room of an airport motel. They ran north, paralleling U.S. 1, in the bitter wind, over frozen terrain. Spring was far away.
7
At 2 A.M., Ross shambled out of the warehouse. The lookout read the familiar slouch of the busted.
“Wish me a happy birthday,” said Ross.
“Yea, sure,” said the lookout.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Up yours.”
Ross reached in his pocket and pulled out two singles. “Here, you might as well finish the job.” He buttoned his overcoat and put his head down against the gale.
“Watch your step. That parking lot’s a sheet of ice. And watch out for them goddamned dogs.”
“OK, I know.”
“Someday they’re going to kill somebody.”
8
At his car, Ross heard his name called. He turned and saw the man with the English accent.
“Yeah?”
“I have a message for you,” said the Englishman.
“Tell it to your friendly local bartender.”
“You know where the Nassau Club is, in Manhattan?”
“So?”
“Be there for a breakfast meeting at 8 A.M. today. Someone has an irresistible offer to make to you.”
“Come on.”
“It’s a bona fide offer, and quite irresistible.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re a graphic arts specialist by the name of Edgar Ross.” He tapped Ross’s chest lightly. “You be there, and I can promise you, you won’t regret it.”
Ross stood in the bitter wind, silent, fascinated.
“Ask for Mr. O’Kane. Mr. O’Kane at 8 A.M. at the Nassau Club. Wear a tie. And—Ross. A last word of advice.”
Ross stood silently, waiting, watching the man pull on a pair of fur-lined leather gloves.
“Never, never, never give two to one odds when your point’s eight. I have a thousand of your dollars in my pocket for proof. Nighty-night.”
The Englishman walked carefully across the thin sheet of ice to a Lincoln Continental and got in.
The wind had gotten right to the marrow of Ross’s bones, and he got into his car, shivering.
He drove down the truck lane to U.S. 1, got on an overpass, and drove north on 1 to the New Jersey Turnpike access road to the Holland Tunnel.
Happy goddamned birthday.
TWO
1
In a row, on cots, wrapped in sheets, lay fourteen bodies.
An orderly in white entered by a side door and walked along the edge of the Olympic-size swimming pool, reading the tags on each cot.
He found the one he sought: MR. O’KANE—6:30.
He leaned over the cot and found a pair of piercing blue eyes looking at him. “Six-thirty, Mr. O’Kane,” he said. Softly, on rubber-soled shoes, he returned along the tiled walk to the locker room door.
Emmett O’Kane’s eyes studied the reflected light undulating on the ceiling. Veins and coigns shimmered, thrown by the lapping pool surface. He listened for a moment, hearing the alcoholic snores of the other sleepers—heavy, slack-jawed, adenoidal breathing that portended bad hangovers. A strong odor of chlorine filled the tiled room. Distantly, locker room noises sounded.
He brushed back the sheet and lithely stood, then walked along Drunkard’s Morgue, as it was known to the club members. He shook his head at them.
“No room at the inn,” said Emmett O’Kane. “I was out late last night.” He smiled. “You’ve got quite a few dead to raise, Lazarus.”
The attendant held forth one of the face masks tentatively.
“I said I was out late, not out drunk.”
The attendant nodded.
O’Kane looked around him. Hangover Alley was ready. From the cot at poolside to the oxygen mask, with throbbing heads and trembling hands, hoarse-voiced, squint-eyed, and rank of breath, they would come. From the oxygen mask to the steam room and orange juice and seltzer water; from the steam room to the masseuse, from the masseuse to the barber’s shave; back to the oxygen mask and the sun lamp; then, into the freshly cleaned and pressed suits and laundry and so to breakfast.
O’Kane shook his head. He pulled on his gym clothes and went up to the gymnasium for his morning workout.
2
Ross mounted the broad marble staircase and stopped at the entrance to the dining room. He looked in.
Morning sunlight poured through the great windows, arched and fretted with carved wood. The entire room, walls as well as ceiling, was paneled in a dark handrubbed wood. From the high ceiling, graceful cones of rosewood held crystal chandeliers. The room was a field of starched brilliant white tablecloths. On each table was a cut glass vase of fresh flowers.
Singly and in twos and threes, members sat murmuring and conning the morning’s financial news, pink jowled, sleekly paunched, fitted with superbly cut suits of imported cloth.
Ross looked at the waiters passing among the tables, carrying trays of silver coffeepots and silver-covered dishes, juices, pots of jam, crisp newspapers, and silver tubes of expensive cigars.