And the safe-deposit box. Arnold Creber’s safe-deposit box. Containing $700,000 in negotiable, highly portable bearer bonds.
They didn’t even half fill the suitcase. Hardly any weight at all when he carried it back out to the waiting taxi he’d phoned for, got in, and said, “Burbank. I’ll tell you where when we get there.” And turned to watch the road behind.
Nobody followed him.
Ned clasped the suitcase on his lap and smiled, thinking about baccarat tables, haute cuisine, and mademoiselles in bikinis.
He changed taxis near the Burbank Studios — a two-block walk, a phone call, a ten-minute wait for another cab in a fast-food dump — and got off on a side street and walked a while, and was back in the motel room by noon. Plenty of time left.
He redistributed the bonds in his luggage, packed most of the clothes Marie had bought for him, got into a cheap suit — it wasn’t a bad fit, really, but her penuriousness irritated him as usual — put the toy revolver in his belt, and stood before the mirror adjusting the blond wig over his half-bald head.
It didn’t go with his eyebrows, he realized, nor with the dark beard stubble. So he shaved as closely as he’d ever shaved in his life and used the nail scissors from his dop kit to chop his eyebrows down to nearly nothing; then he dusted them with talc. What the hell, they’d grow back in time. Small enough price to pay.
The blond guy in the mirror was a stranger, sure enough. He grinned.
He circled the clunker at a distance. Nobody was watching it. He drove it around the block. Still no surveillance. So he got the suitcases out of the motel room, stowed them in the car, and drove away.
An hour later he was boarding a PSA flight at Burbank Airport, San Diego bound.
The security detector hadn’t sniffed out the toy revolver because it was made of plastic, like all the cheap junk they sold these days. When Ned was a kid even a toy gun used to be made out of real metal, but no more.
Well, never mind. After today he’d be able to buy a platinum gun if he wanted one. But at least the toy looked real. Remember how John Dillinger broke out of prison with a gun he’d carved out of a bar of soap and blackened with soot and ashes.
At San Diego he went along to the Aeronaves counter and got out his ticket, from Marie’s envelope, and the passport. Arnold Creber, citizen of the world. He flashed a confident smile at the dark girl and she smiled right back, but that was when he caught a sidewise glimpse of somebody coming up fast, and he turned to see the two men striding toward him: a uniformed cop and the tall guy with all the brown hair.
The uniformed cop said, “Excuse me. Edward Marks? Like to see you a minute.” The paper in his hand had to be a warrant.
“My name’s not Marks. You got me confused with somebody. My name’s Creber.”
“Sure. Arnold Creber,” said the tall guy with the brown hair. “Just come along, all right’ It won’t take but a minute.” And the tall guy smiled slowly.
Nobody ever said Ned Marks doesn’t think fast. So fast it took the uniformed cop completely by surprise when Ned whipped out the revolver, leveled it at the tall guy, and darted his left hand against the uniformed cop’s throat. He whipped around behind the cop and jammed the revolver against his collar.
“Back off,” he snarled at the tall guy. “Now!”
He heard a quick intake of breath — the airline girl.
But the tall guy only kept smiling that slow infuriating smile. He calmly stepped forward and plucked the gun from his hand.
“You shouldn’t play with toys, Ned.”
“How — how the hell did you know?”
“We’ve got a warrant to search you and your luggage for stolen bonds.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Just a private cop, name of Thurston. My company works for the insurance company you hooked for seven hundred thousand dollars.”
“Nobody followed me here,” Ned said. “Nobody. How could you’ve found me?”
Thurston only answered that one with his slow smile.
Thurston brought the receipt into the office and dropped it on Andy Ibbetson’s desk. “The San Diego police will keep the evidence until they’ve sent Marks to Chino for transporting stolen property. Then we get it back.”
“About time.” Andy pushed the receipt toward his In pile. “Nice job. You can buy a round-the-world vacation on the bonus for this one.”
“For two?”
“You that serious about her?”
“I am. But she may not feel the same way about me when she finds out I read the shopping list in her handbag.”
“That’s how you knew he’d be at the San Diego airport with the loot, huh?”
“In the name of Arnold Creber. In a blond wig. Carrying a toy gun,” said Severn Thurston.
KING’S X
“King’s X” grew out of a rumor that had wide circulation several years ago. According to the rumor — a sort of alligators-in-the-sewer-system allegation, presented as absolute documented fact — the con depicted in “King’s X” was successfully employed half a century ago by a veteran trickster to fleece Tiffany’s (some say Cartier) out of an enormous sum. It’s not a terribly elaborate scam, but there is appeal in its simplicity and daring, and satisfaction in the sting, and I hadn’t seen it elsewhere in fiction.
She found Breck on the garage floor, lying on his back with his knees up and his face hidden under the car. His striped coveralls were filthy. There was a dreadful din: he was banging on something with a tool. When there was a pause in the racket she said, “You look like a convict.”
“Not this year.” He slid out from under the car and blinked up at her. He looked as if he’d camouflaged his face for night maneuvers in a hostile jungle. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. All he said was, “You look better than I do.”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of compliment?”
“My dear, you look adorable. Beautiful. Magnificent. Ravishing.” He smiled; evidently he had no idea what effect the action had on his appearance. “That better?”
“I wasn’t fishing for reassurance. I need to talk to you.”
He sat up. The smile crumbled; he said, “If it’s anything like the last little talk we had, I’d just as soon —”
“I haven’t forgotten the things we said to each other. But today’s a truce. Time out, okay? King’s X?”
“I’m a little busy right now, Vicky. I’ve got to get this car ready.”
“It’s important. It’s serious.”
“In the cosmic scheme of things how do you know it’s any more important or serious than the exhaust system I’m fixing?”
She said, “It’s Daddy. They’ve ruined him.” She put her back to him and walked toward the sun. “Wash and come outside and talk. I can’t stand the smell of grease.”
The dusty yard was littered with odd-looking cars in varied conditions of disassembly. Some had numbers painted on their doors, and decal ads for automotive products. The garage was a cruddy cube of white stucco, uncompromisingly ugly.
Feeling the heat but not really minding it, she propped the rump of her jeans against the streetlight post and squinted into the California sunlight, watching pickups rattle past until Breck came out with half the oil smeared off his face. He was six four and hadn’t gained an ounce since she’d last seen him three years ago: an endless long rail of a man with an angular El Greco face and bright brittle wedges of sky-blue glass for eyes.
“Shouldn’t spend so much time in the sun,” he said. “You’ll get wrinkles.”