“It’s very kind of you to be concerned about my health.”
“Anybody tell you lately how smashing you look?”
“Is that your devious way of asking if I’m going with someone?”
“Forget it,” he said. “What do you want, then?”
“Daddy’s lost everything he had. He was going to retire on his savings and the pension — now he’s probably going to have to file bankruptcy. You know what that’ll do to him. His pride — his blood pressure. I’m afraid he might have another stroke.”
He didn’t speak; he only looked at her. The sun was in her eyes and she couldn’t make out his expression. Stirred by unease she blurted: “Hey — Breck, I’m not asking for myself.”
“How much does he need?”
“I don’t know. To pay the lawyers and get back on his feet? I don’t know. Maybe seventy-five thousand dollars.”
He said, “That’s a little bit of money.”
“Is it,” she said drily.
“I might have been more sympathetic once. But that would’ve been before your alimony lawyer got after me.”
“You always loved Daddy. I’m asking you to help him. Not me. Him.”
“What happened?”
“He was carrying diamonds and they arrested him. It was all set up. He was framed by his own boss: He’s sure it was an insurance scam. We can’t prove anything but we know. We just know.”
“Where is he?”
“Now? Here in town, at his place. The same old apartment.”
“Why don’t you give him the money yourself?”
“I could, of course. But then I’d just have to get it back from you, wouldn’t I?”
“You mean you haven’t got that much left? What did you spend it on — aircraft carriers?”
“You have an inflated opinion of your own generosity, Breck.”
She smiled prettily.
He said, “I can’t promise anything. But I’ll talk to him. I’ll finish up here about five. Tell him I’ll drop by.”
The old man blew his top. “I’m not some kind of charity case. I’ve been looking after myself for seventy-two years. Women. Can’t even trust my own daughter to keep her nose out of my business. Breck, listen to me because I mean it now. I appreciate your intentions. I’m glad you came — always glad to see you. But I won’t take a cent from you. Now that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. Finish your drink and let’s talk about something less unpleasant.”
The old man didn’t look good. Sallow and dewlappy. His big hard voice was still vigorous but the shoulders drooped and there were sagging folds of flesh around his jaw. It had been what, two years since Breck had seen him? The old man looked a decade older. He’d always been blustery and stubborn but you could see now by the evasiveness in his eyes that his heart wasn’t in it.
Breck said, “I’m not offering you money out of my pocket. Maybe I can come up with an idea. Tell me about the man you think set you up. What’s his name? Cushing?”
“Cushman. Henry Cushman.”
“If he framed you for stealing the money, that suggests he’s the one who actually got the money.”
“Aagh,” the old man said in disgust, dismissing it.
“Come on,” Breck said. “Tell me about it.”
“Nothing to tell. Listen — it was going to be my last run. I was going to retire. Got myself a condo picked out right on the beach down at Huntington. Buy my own little twenty-two-foot inboard, play bridge, catch fish, behave like a normal human being my age instead of flying all over the airline route maps. I wanted a home to settle down in. What’ve I got? You see this place? Mortgage up to here and they’re going to take it away from me in six weeks if I can’t make the payments.”
“Come on,” Breck said. “Tell me about it.”
“I worked courier for that whole group of diamond merchants. I had a gun and a permit, all that stuff. No more. They took it all away. They never proved a damn thing against me but they took it all away. I carried stones for forty years and never lost a one. Not even a chip. Forty years!”
Breck coaxed him: “What happened?”
“Hell. I picked up the stones in Amsterdam. I counted them in the broker’s presence. They weren’t anything special. Half-karat, one-karat, some chips. Three or four bigger stones but nothing spectacular. You know. Neighborhood jewelry store stuff. The amount of hijacking and armed robbery lately, they don’t like to load up a courier with too much value on a single trip.”
“How much were the stones worth altogether?”
“Not much. Four hundred thousand, give or take.”
“To some people that’s a lot.”
The old man said, “It’s an unattainable dream to me right now but hell, there was a time I used to carry five million at a crack. You know how much five million in really good diamonds weighs? You could get it in your hip pocket.”
“Go on.”
“Amsterdam, okay, the last trip. We wrapped them and packed them in the case — it’s the same armored steel attaché case, the one I’ve carried for fifteen years. I’ve still got it for all the good it does. The inside’s divided into small compartments lined with felt, so things don’t rattle around in there. I had it made to my own design fifteen years ago. Cost me twelve hundred dollars.”
“Amsterdam,” Breck said gently.
“Okay, okay. We locked the case — three witnesses in the room — and we handcuffed it to my wrist and I took the noon flight over the Pole to Los Angeles. Slept part of the way. Went through Customs, showed them the stones, did all the formalities. Everything routine, everything up-and-up. Met Vicky at LAX for dinner, took the night flight to Honolulu. In the morning I delivered the shipment to Cushman. Unlocked the handcuffs, unlocked the attaché case, took the packets out and put them on his desk. He unwrapped one or two of them, looked at the stones, counted the rest of the packets, said everything was fine, said thank you very much, never looked me in the eye, signed the receipt.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. I went. Next thing I know the cops are banging on my door at the hotel. Seems Cushman swore out a warrant. He said he’d taken a closer look at the stones that morning and they were no good. He claimed I’d substituted paste stones. He said the whole shipment was fakes. Said I’d stolen four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds. The cops put an inquiry through Interpol and they got depositions and affidavits and God knows what-all from the brokers in Amsterdam, attesting the stones they’d give me were genuine.”
Breck said, “Let me ask you a straight question then.”
“No, God help me, I did not steal the damn stones.”
“That’s not the question.”
“Then what is?”
“How come you’re not in jail?”
“They couldn’t prove it. It was my word against Cushman’s. I said I’d delivered the proper goods. He said I delivered fakes. He had the fakes to show for it, but he couldn’t prove they hadn’t been substituted by himself or somebody working for him.”
“Did they investigate Cushman and his employees?”
“Sure. I don’t think they did an enthusiastic job of it. They figured they already knew who the culprit was, so why waste energy? They went through the motions. They didn’t find anything. Cushman stuck to his story. Far as I can tell, none of his employees had access to the stones during the period of time between when I delivered them and when Cushman showed the paste fakes to the cops. So I figure it must have been Cushman.”
“Did the insurance pay off?”
“They had to. They couldn’t prove he’d defrauded them. Their investigator offered me a hundred thousand dollars and no questions asked if I’d turn in the stones I stole. I told him he had five seconds to get out the door before I punched him in the nose. I was an amateur light heavyweight just out of high school, you know. Nineteen thirty-one. I can handle myself.”
Right now, Breck thought, he didn’t look as if he could hold his own against a five-year-old in a playpen. But what he said was, “What else do you know about Cushman?”