“I’ve been here since last spring, Andy, and I’ll bet you’ve known that all along.”
A pained expression came over Spangler’s face. “Now, Jack, you know I don’t like being called Andy. Are you saying you’re not in Indianapolis any more? But you’re still with Wellington’s, of course?”
“Come off it, Andy. You know I wouldn’t leave the agency, and you probably knew I was being transferred before I got the word myself.”
“Jack, Jack, Jack. You give me far too much credit, but then you always have.”
“The man isn’t alive who could give you too much credit, pal. But what’s with you these days, staying in town while a job’s being pulled?”
“A job? You’ve lost me, Jack.”
Their thrust-and-parry word game continued awhile before Jack got around to introducing me to Spangler. We sized each other up while shaking hands. There was something in his pale gray eyes that told me he wasn’t just another man with the taste and money for fancy clothes. Smooth as silk on the outside, hard as nails underneath. Again William Powell came to mind, this time playing the role of Nick Charles in The Thin Man.
I tagged along when Jack Eddy set out again for the jewelry store. When Jack flashed Spangler’s photo, the employees recognized him immediately. He had been in several times and a few days earlier had purchased an expensive diamond stickpin.
The thieves had bypassed one display case completely, taken only a few items from another, several more from a third. It was no smash-and-grab job.
With the help of an alarm system schematic given him by the manager, Jack showed me things I had missed on my earlier visit. He pointed out how carefully the holes had been cut in the glass of each showcase, coming close to and yet missing the all-but-invisible wires that would have triggered an alarm. And how in getting to the cases the thieves had worked their way through a maze of wiring concealed under a blue carpet that had since been rolled back.
Even more impressive was the hole bored in the wall from the store next door. The thieves had entered a rear door of the adjacent room, first disabling a simple alarm. Once inside they had gone to work on a wall that to me appeared much like any other. In reality it was laced with wires that looked a lot like strips of narrow electrical tape. The hole, about twenty inches square, was in the one wire-free place at a convenient height for squeezing through. Anywhere else, or an inch the wrong way in any direction, and a squad of policemen would have awaited them in the jewelry store. One thing was obvious: all fat men could be crossed off the list of suspects.
“Does Spangler have X-ray eyes or what?” I asked. “How could he do it?”
“Maybe with a copy of this,” said Jack, drumming a finger on the schematic. “Maybe not. I don’t know how the guy works but I’d give my right arm to learn his secret.”
I went back to the showcases. “It gets me how little they took. Once you’re inside a place, why not just load up with all you can carry away?”
“Because Spangler doesn’t do business with any ten-cents-on-the-dollar fence. If that were the case, buddy, we’d have nailed him and his boys long ago. He’s interested only in the best stones, ones that can be re-cut or reset without being identifiable. He’d ignore the Hope diamond unless he was certain it could be reworked in a way that no one would be the wiser.”
“No more than they took, is it worth all the trouble?”
Jack gave a tense laugh. “Believe me, friend, it is. But it takes a certain type of man, not your everyday thief. Fortunately Spangler is the only one of them around right now. And you can bet he was choosy in picking his crewmen and didn’t leave anything to chance in training them.”
“If Spangler’s as good as you say, how did you find out he even exists?”
“He made a mistake on his first job a dozen years ago in Indianapolis. He was sixteen at the time.”
“Kind of young for a master criminal, isn’t it?”
“Spangler was born with more know-how than most thieves acquire in a lifetime. He had it all figured out by his junior year at Shortridge High.”
“So what was that one mistake?”
“Took more than he should have, then went to a ten-cents-on-the-dollar fence. Live and learn, buddy.”
After supper at the boardinghouse on Dudley Street that was home to both of us, Jack Eddy crossed the hall from his room and rapped on the door of mine. He shook his head when I said, “Getting anywhere on the jewel robbery?”
I was spiffing up for a date with Sue Baney. Jack sat on the edge of the bed and watched as I knotted my necktie. The tail was too long so I had to undo it and start over. Jack laughed when a third attempt proved necessary. He said, “I can’t figure it out, friend.”
“I’ve been trying to use the crease from the last time as a guide but it won’t come out right.”
“I’m not talking about that remnant from a horse blanket you call a necktie. Anderson Spangler, I can’t figure why he stayed in town while his crew pulled the heist. By the way, at the time he was in an all-night poker game at the Portage Hotel with a real estate broker, a city councilman, and a bigshot at General Tire. His hanging around doesn’t add up unless he picked a store in Akron just to get my goat.”
“That would be a sap’s play, Jack. You’re flattering yourself thinking it’s a personal thing between the two of you. In a risky situation there’s only one thing that would make a man step out of character and that’s a woman.”
He was shaking his head. “What makes this different is that I’ve been on Spangler’s tail for years.”
“And he always stuck to his routine. Why change now?”
Lost in thought, Jack didn’t reply. When I was ready to leave, he got up, grinning, and gave me a one-knuckle punch on the arm, the kind that stings like a shot from a dull needle. “Maybe I’m slipping, buddy. I’ve got an operative on him at the Mayflower, so we should know before long if you’re right about its being a dame. If you are, lunch is on me tomorrow.”
I was so confident I could already taste the spaghetti at the Walsh Brothers’ place downtown.
It had been a great evening until we stopped for sodas at Kesselring’s far out on Triplett Boulevard near the airport. When we went outside again, my ’32 Chevy wouldn’t start. There was nothing to do but call a cab, drop Sue Baney at her apartment, and continue home.
While paying the cabbie I saw Jack Eddy peering out the oval window of the front door. “Now what?” he said, smirking. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. Your clunker gasped its last breath, and you were somewhere on the outskirts of town at the time, right?”
“And you find that amusing, do you?”
“Buddy, I’ve been telling you for months to junk that rust bucket. Now maybe you’ll listen.”
He led the way to the parlor where at first glance pudgy Mabel Klosterman, the only one who hadn’t gone up to bed, appeared to be reading The Ladies’ Home Journal. Behind it I saw she was holding Jack Woodford’s latest sexy novel. The excitement of it was making her squirm around on her chair.
Jack handed me the back section of the Times-Press, then turned to the used car ads in the Beacon Journal. I didn’t find much of interest but looked up when he began chuckling. “Here’s one for you. A 1931 Essex, thirty-nine bucks.”
“Very funny. Not much available in my price range.”
“In your price range you should be looking under bicycles.”