I knew Hadley professionally. He was Max’s lawyer. He had handled all of Max’s problems, except when they nailed Max two years ago as one of the big wheels behind the bookmaking parlors. Then Hadley had called me in. He’d never had much experience in the criminal courts and he figured I’d be able to do more for Max than he could.
I tried. Every man is entitled to his day in court. I fought hard enough. I used every legal stratagem provided by the law and some that weren’t, to no avail. Max was guilty and they had the evidence to prove it and the jury shipped him over.
That was that.
Now he was out on parole.
“I found him,” Max said. “You were right.”
Hadley looked at me and shook his head.
Max reached out suddenly and grabbed hold of my lapels. He twisted them into a knot and lifted me six inches off the floor. I weigh a hundred and eighty pounds, and I’m six feet tall, yet my toes were actually dangling in the air.
Max’s growl became words. The words grated harshly. “Where are they, Jordan? Where did you hide them?”
“Cut it out, Max. What are you talking about?”
He loosened his grip and I landed heavily on the floor. The slip of paper he took out of his pocket was a telephone message from the hotel on a standard form. He read aloud:
“The box was empty. Jordan.”
His eyes burned at me. “I had two hundred grand in that box. Negotiable securities, bonds and stocks. What the hell do you mean, empty.”
I said, “Take it easy, Max. Slow down before you split a seam. And listen to me before you go off half-cocked. I tried to reach you on the phone, but you were out. That’s why I left the message.”
“It’s a lie—”
“No, it isn’t, Max. Let me state it simply. You’re out on parole. You’re not allowed to leave the state. You have a safe deposit box in Newark. You gave me a power of attorney to open the box and bring you the contents. You did that because Hadley here was tied up and couldn’t get away. And also because you trusted me. I’m a lawyer, Max. I wouldn’t violate that trust, not if—”
“So all lawyers are honest,” he said, bitterly.
“I never said that. This lawyer is, though. Your box was empty when I opened it, Max. Cleaned out. But not by me. Hell, if I had pulled a caper like that, I wouldn’t be here telling you about it. I’d be in Mexico somewhere, probably in Acapulco, soaking up the sun. Look at me, Max. Do I look like a pinhead? Do you honestly think I went south with your securities?”
His eyes kept burning at me through horizontal slits. He was considering possibilities. If he ever concluded with certainty that I had actually double-crossed him, payments on my insurance policy were going to fall due at once.
He was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head violently. “Two hundred grand. Down the drain.” He wheeled suddenly and faced Hadley. “What do you make of it, Paul?”
Hadley was frowning. He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “Beats me. Never heard of such a thing, Max. Can’t imagine how anybody could empty out your box.”
“How about Jordan here?”
“Oh, come now, Max. You’ve got to believe his story. Whatever he might or might not do, this is one stunt he wouldn’t dare to pull.”
Max Gilian swung around. His neck inched out of his collar. A slow surge of blood congested the veins in his face. His voice was deliberate. “What were you doing with Lucille tonight? What cooks between you two?”
“Absolutely nothing, Max. Believe me. I met Lucille for the first time while I was defending you. She came to court every day during your trial and sat in the front row. After you were convicted and sent up, I didn’t see her again until this evening. She called my office today. I found the message when I came back from Newark late this afternoon. She said she wanted to see me. I thought it might be something about your safe deposit box. I went to her apartment. It was late and I took her to dinner.”
“What did she want?”
“A divorce, Max. She said she was no longer satisfied with a separation. She asked me to handle the case.”
His eyes were dark, the pupils contracted. “You work pretty fast, don’t you, counselor?”
“You mean because you saw me kissing her? It doesn’t mean a thing. A man kisses a woman good-night, what the hell, Max, there’s nothing to it.”
The tight line of his mouth loosened. His shoulders sagged. He looked parched and empty.
“Yeah,” he said, his tone suddenly listless. “I know. I was watching.” He started to pace slowly around the room. Then he stood looking out the window for a long moment. Hadley met my eyes and gestured helplessly. After a while Max Gilian turned and came over to me.
“They tell me you know how to find things out, Jordan. Any truth in it?”
“Some.”
“Find out who took that dough. Come to me and tell me about it. I’ll get it back and I’ll cut you in.”
“Twenty-five percent, Max.”
“Agreed.”
“You heard him, Hadley.”
“I did,” he said.
“Good enough. Bankers are a close-mouthed bunch of individuals, Max. I’ll need an authorization giving me the right to investigate.”
He pointed at the desk. “Write it out.”
I sat down and found a piece of hotel stationery. Five minutes later I handed him the pen. His fingers shook a little when he signed. He was trembling from impotence and frustration.
“Take it easy, Max,” I said. “Don't burn yourself out.”
He demonstrated his vocabulary. He knew most of the words and he spoke them with feeling. He was still going strong when I walked through the door.
Banks arc closed at night. There was nothing I could do until morning. I went home and got some sleep.
Max Gilian operated outside the law. At any time he might be the subject of an investigation. I suppose that was one of the reasons he had studded his safe deposit boxes in neighboring cities, easily accessible to Manhattan. I knew that he had several in Connecticut and one in White Plains. The Newark box was in the heart of the business district.
I stood outside the Merchant’s Trust, a squat box of granite, solid and functional, large and impersonal, with bronze doors and an armed guard and tellers behind cages. Inside everything was neat and antiseptic. A great business, banking. You let them hold your money at two and one half percent and they lend it out for six. How can they lose?
The armed guard referred me to a man seated at a desk behind the rail. His name, according to the placard, was Ambrose George. Calm and sober and unhurried, the executive type, with one eyebrow perpetually higher than the other.
He listened to my recital and now both eyebrows were high. First he looked incredulous, then he looked patronizing. “Well, now,” he said, “look here. All this is quite impossible. Nobody can get at a safe deposit vault but the legal box-holder. It simply can’t be done.”
“Sure,” I said. “Theoretically. Let’s check the records.”
He reached for the interphone, touched a buzzer, and held a brief conference with the mouthpiece. Then he sat back to wait. He looked at me for a while and then he shifted his focus to the ceiling and drummed his fingers on the desk. He was hoping he could prove his point and I was hoping I could prove mine.
We didn’t have long to wait. A tall thin junior executive appeared with a slip of paper and a card. Mr. Ambrose George held one above the other, studied them, compared them, and a slow smile of satisfaction moved his lips.
“Here it is, counselor. Max Gilian visited the bank six months ago and spent ten minutes in a private room with his box. He signed in on this slip of paper. You can compare his signature with the original card he signed when he leased the box.”
He laid them in front of me, side by side. I am not an examiner of questioned documents, which is the technical name for a handwriting expert. But those two signatures were close enough to fool anybody without a microscope.