I gave them a minute or two to get well into it, then folded the newspaper I’d been pretending to read and rose to stroll casually across the room as if headed for a phone booth that had just become free.
“—the rest when I get the car,” Dawes was saying.
Shorty in the checked sportcoat hesitated. “Let me see the money,” he said.
Dawes took an envelope from his pocket and opened it briefly to show the green inside.
“All right,” Shorty said. “You got a deal.” He reached for the envelope. Instinctively, Dawes drew back.
Shorty’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, what is this?” He caught hold of one end of the envelope while Dawes clung fiercely to the other. For a minute it looked like a real tug-of-war could develop, but I stepped in quickly.
“I’ll take that,” I said, closing my hand over the middle of the envelope. Startled, they both let go at once. “Police,” I declared. “This is a bust.”
Without a flicker of hesitation, Shorty bolted for the door. I shouted after him and drew my gun, but the terminal was too crowded for any shooting and after only a moment’s delay I took off after him.
Dawes started to follow, hut I called back over my shoulder, “No! You stay here and when the others catch up send them after us!”
There was the usual noontime crowd on the street, but an alley led back to the parking lot behind the terminal and I cut down it after Shorty and caught up with him just as he was getting into his car. The door on the passenger’s side was unlocked, and I scrambled in beside him.
He was panting as he fumbled the key into the ignition. “God damn it, Charley,” he said, “why can’t we do this the easy way just once? Just tell the mark we got his car and collect the ransom without all this yelling and running.”
“What?” I said. “And never know if the real cops are going to be waiting? You got to be kidding! Besides, the exercise is good for you. Now let’s get out of here before Dawes realizes no other cops are going to show up unless he calls them.”
As we drove away I counted the money in the envelope. There was only three hundred dollars. I tell you, it’s disillusioning. You can’t trust anybody these days.
The Man Who Flim-Flammed Hiwassee County
by William M. Stephens
We don’t get many professional swindlers in Balsam Gap, and it was just my luck to get involved with a real humdinger. Kent “Parrot” Barrone was a rogue and scoundrel of the first water. He not only conned the sheriff and the judge; he conned his own lawyer — who happened to be me.
It was in 1951, not long after I’d passed the bar and hung my shingle out, when Parrot Barrone came into my office above the drugstore. As far as I know, he picked me entirely by chance. It had nothing to do with my being female. In fact, I doubt if he knew. The sign on the outside of the building gave no hint. It just read: LEE MURPHY — ATTORNEY AT LAW — UPSTAIRS.
Parrot Barrone would attract attention anywhere in rural East Tennessee because of his slick look and high-heeled cowboy boots. In Nashville, of course, you’d take him for just another musician, but Balsam Gap is a far cry from Nashville. He was slender and catlike and wore tight pants and a fancy jacket. I’m not sure where he came from. He claimed to be a Texan, and he had a Latin air, but with his talent for dialects and mimicry he could have been from anywhere. My first impression of him was that he was as phony as a three-dollar bill.
That afternoon I was typing up a will. He came up the stairs so quietly I didn’t hear him coming and had no time to get into my lawyer’s chair before he came through the door. Consequently, we had to go through the routine of my explaining that I was not the secretary; I was the lawyer.
We went into my tiny private office. He said, “This is all very embarrassing, Miss Murphy — I don’t know where to begin.” He examined his long, delicate fingers. “We were just passing through — Kathy and I — and, due to an unfortunate chain of errors, Kathy was arrested on suspicion of passing bad checks.”
I nodded sagely. “How big were the checks, and who cashed them?”
“One was for seventy-five dollars and one was for fifty. We stopped last night at the Limestone Bluff Court. Kathy cashed a check at the gift shop, and another this morning at the office. After we left we had car trouble and had to get a wrecker to tow us to a garage. The sheriff arrested Kathy there and impounded our new Packard convertible.”
I made little sounds of sympathy. “You picked the wrong place to pass bad checks, Mr. Barrone. The Limestone Bluff is owned by Clem Ricketts, who happens to be the sheriff’s brother.”
“My God!”
“Did you gas up there too?”
He nodded. “A burly man with close-cropped hair filled the tank and checked the oil.”
“That was Clem. I imagine he pulled a distributor wire or something to put you out of commission while he had his brother check you out.”
He shook his head ruefully. “Welcome to Tennessee, huh? So that’s the way you treat tourists around here.”
“That’s the way some folks treat you when they think you’re trying to take them to the cleaners. These backwoods rubes are not as dumb as they look, Mr. Barrone.”
“My mistake.” He looked at me speculatively. “You’re not a native of this region, are you?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. I’m strictly a local yokel — born and raised in Happy Valley, ’way back in the sticks about ten miles from here.”
“But you went to Harvard Law School?” he said, glancing at the diploma on the wall.
I nodded. “I’m still a hick, though.” Pushing my chin forward, I went on, “Suppose you level with me, Mr. Barrone. How many worthless checks is the sheriff apt to come up with if he keeps your car in hock and your wife in jail for a few days while he investigates?”
“Oh, you misjudge me,” he said with a pained expression. “What do you take me for?”
I smiled. “You look like a client to me. But if you want me to represent you, I need to know all the facts.”
“Of course,” he said earnestly. “Let me explain how this preposterous situation came about.”
“That would be nice.”
“Kathy and I are on our honeymoon.”
“Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy.”
He looked at me quickly, then went on. “Before we were married, Kathy had her checking account at the Bank of Houston. But since I was a director of the Oilman’s National, she closed out her account. This week, however, due to the excitement of our honeymoon trip and the news that Kathy’s mother has been critically injured in an accident so that we had to change plans suddenly and head for the hospital she’s in Birmingham—” He paused to take a deep breath. “Kathy’s a very delicate girl. She tends to lose her equilibrium under strain. In her anxiety, she completely forgot she had closed out her checking account. So—” he shrugged “—in all innocence, she wrote those checks.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said charitably. “However, writing a check on a nonexistent account is a felony in this state.”
He slumped in his chair.
“This is more serious than I thought. I assumed we could simply make restitution.”
“Well, restitution would help,” I said. “If the checks were paid off, the attorney general might agree to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor. Your wife might get off with a fine.”
He bit his lip. “How much money are we talking about?”
“It’s hard to say. The fine could be hundreds of dollars. The checks come to a hundred and twenty-five. Getting her out on bond will be expensive too. How much is the bond?”