“Better leave it where it is,” Brown said.
“What is this?” the man asked. He was somewhat better looking than his photo, but not much. He looked a little older, possibly because the photo had been taken many years back when he’d been mugged and printed before his arraignment. He wore a white-on-white shirt open at the throat, the sleeves rolled up just past his wrists, bulging with the cuff links, which had been rolled up with the material. A small monogram was on the man’s left breast pocket, the red letters FD in a black diamond.
“Put on your coat,” Brown said. “I want to talk to you back at the squad.”
“What about?”
“Swindling,” Brown said.
“You can just blow it out,” the man said.
“Can I?”
“Damn right you can. I’m as legitimate as the Virgin Mary.”
“Is that why you carry a gun?” Brown asked.
“I’ve got a permit,” the man said.
“We’ll check that back at the precinct, too.”
“Go get a warrant for my arrest,” the man said.
“I don’t need any goddamn warrant!” Brown snapped. “Now, get the hell off that bed and into your coat, or I’ll have to help you. And you won’t like my help, believe me.”
“Listen, what the hell—”
“Come on, Fritzie,” Brown said.
The man looked up sharply.
“It is Fritzie, isn’t it?” Brown asked. “Or is it Dutch?”
“My name’s Frank Darren,” the man said.
“And mine’s Peter Pan. Put on your coat.”
“You’re making a mistake, pal,” the man said. “I’ve got friends.”
“A judge?” Brown asked. “A senator? What?”
“Friends,” the man said.
“I got friends, too,” Brown said. “I got a good friend who runs a butcher shop in Diamondback. He’ll be as much help to you as your judge. Now, come on, we’re wasting time.”
The man slid off the bed. “I got nothing to hide,” he said. “You got nothing on me.”
“I hope not,” Brown said. “I hope you’re clean, and I hope you’ve got a permit for that gun, and I hope you went to confession last week. In the meantime, let’s go back to the precinct.”
“Jesus, can’t we talk here?” the man asked.
“No,” Brown said. He grinned. “They don’t allow niggers in this hotel.”
The man’s license and registration were made out to Frederick Deutsch.
Brown looked them over and said, “All right, why were you registered under an alias?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Deutsch said.
“Try me.”
“What the hell for. I’m innocent until I’m proved guilty. Is there any law against using a phony name to register in a hotel?”
“As a matter of fact,” Brown said, “it’s a misdemeanor, violation of PL 964. Use of name or address with intent to deceive.”
“I wasn’t trying to deceive anybody,” Deutsch said.
“I can get a court injunction without any proof that you’ve deceived and misled anybody.”
“So get one,” Deutsch said.
“What for? I don’t care if you use the name forever. I’d just like to know why you felt it was necessary to hide behind an alias.”
“You hit it, cop,” Deutsch said.
“If I hit it, I don’t know it,” Brown answered. “What’s the story?”
“I’m going straight,” Deutsch said.
“Hold it a minute,” Brown said. “Let me get the string quartet in here. We’re going to need violins for this one.”
“I told you you wouldn’t understand,” Deutsch said, wagging his head.
Brown studied him seriously for a moment. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“I took a fall in 1950,” Deutsch said. “I was twenty-four years old. I’d been working the confidence game since I was seventeen. First time I fell. I got off with eighteen months. On Walker Island.” Deutsch shrugged.
“So?”
“So I didn’t like it. Is that so hard to understand? I didn’t like being cooped up. Eighteen months with every kind of crazy bastard you could imagine. Queers and winos and junkies and guys who’d ax their own mothers. Eighteen months of it. When I got out, I’d had it. I’d had it, and I didn’t want anymore of it.”
“So?”
“So I decided to play it straight. I figured I take another fall, it ain’t going to be eighteen months this time. This time it’ll be a little longer. The third time, who knows? Maybe they throw away the key. Maybe they begin to figure Fritzie Deutsch is just another guy like these queers and winos and junkies.”
“But you weren’t,” Brown said, a faint smile on his mouth.
“No, I wasn’t. I conned a lot of people, but I was a gent, and you can go to hell if you don’t believe me. Working the game was the same as having a job with me. That’s why I got so good at it.”
“I imagine it paid pretty well, too,” Brown said.
“I’m still wearing the clothes I bought when things were going good,” Deutsch said. “But what’s the percentage? A few years of good living, and the rest of my life cooped up with slobs? Is that what I wanted? That’s what I asked myself. So I decided to straighten out.”
“I’m listening.”
“It ain’t so easy,” Deutsch said, sighing. “Guys don’t want ex-cons working for them. I know that sounds corny as hell. I see it in a lot of movies, even. Where Robert Taylor or somebody can’t get a job because he once was a con. Only, of course, with him, it’s like he was a con by mistake. You know, he took the fall when he was really clean. Anyway, it’s true. It’s tough to get a job when you got a record. They make a few phone calls, and they find out Fritzie Deutsch done time... Well, so long Fritzie, it’s been nice knowing you.”
“So you assumed the Frank Darren alias, is that right?”
“Yeah,” Deutsch said.
“And you’ve got a job now?”
“I work in a bank.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m a guard.” Deutsch looked up quickly to see if Brown was smiling. Brown was not. “That’s how come I’ve got a permit for the gun,” Deutsch added. “I ain’t snowing you. That’s one thing you can check.”
“We can check a lot of things,” Brown said. “What bank do you work for?”
“You going to tell them my real name?” Deutsch asked. A sudden fear had come into his eyes, and he put his hand on Brown’s arm, and the fingers there were tense and tight.
“No,” Brown said.
“First National. The Mason Avenue branch.”
“I’ll check that, and I’ll check the permit,” Brown said. “But there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“I want some mooches to meet you.”
“What for? I ain’t conned anybody since—”
“They may think differently. If you’re clean, you won’t mind them looking you over.”
“At the lineup? Jesus, do I have to go to the lineup?”
“No. I’ll ask the victims to come down here.”
“I’m clean,” Deutsch said. “I got nothing to worry about. It’s just I hate the lineup.”
“Why?”
Deutsch looked up at Brown, and his eyes were wide and serious. “It’s full of bums, you know that?” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “And I ain’t a bum anymore.”
Murder will out, and it was a fine day for the outing of murder. The fiction con men could not have chosen a better day. They would have written it just this way, with the rain a fine-drilling drizzle that swept in over the River Harb, and the sky an ominous, roiling gray behind it. The tugboats on the river moaned occasionally, and the playgrounds on the other side of the River Highway were empty, the black asphalt glistening slickly under the steady wash of the rain. The movie con men would have panned their cameras down over the empty silent playgrounds, across the concrete of the River Highway, down the slopes of the embankments leading to the river. The sound track would pick up the wail of the tugs and the sullen swish of the rain and the murmur of the river lapping at rotted wooden beams.