“Well, I’m glad to see you’re off the booze, Mr. St. Ives.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Strange thing, coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was just pulling up to the Magistrates’ Court this morning on Marylebone when you came out and hopped into that gray Rolls.”
“That’s pretty strange, all right.”
“So I said to myself, what would an American gentleman be doing coming out of Magistrates’ Court at ten in the morning and hopping into Eddie Apex’s Rolls?”
“How’d you know I was an American gentleman?”
“It shows.”
“I suppose it does.”
“So I went in and found out who you were and where you were staying and why you’d been in court. Drunk, you were, they said.”
“That’s what they said.”
“You don’t look like a boozer.”
“We come in all shapes.”
“Well, I’m a bit interested in Eddie Apex and his friends. Have been for years. So I called a colleague of mine in New York.”
“You must have a loose budget.”
“Not really. He and I’ve worked together before. I had another matter to talk with him about anyway.”
“What’s his name?”
“Lieutenant Dontano.”
“Fraud squad.”
“That’s right. You know him, don’t you?”
“We’ve met.”
“Lieutenant Dontano told me what line of work you’re in. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a go-between before — not a professional type who makes a living at it.”
“There’re a few of us around. Not many, but a few. There’s been some talking of forming a union, but so far it’s only talk.”
He looked at me narrowly with those cop blue eyes of his. “That must be a joke.”
“A small one.”
He sighed. “I like a good giggle as well as the next, but I’m not much on American humor. I watched that program of yours a time or two on the telly — ‘Laugh-In,’ I think it’s called. I had to ask the wife why the people were laughing. She tried to explain it to me, but I still didn’t see anything to laugh at.”
“I think it’s gone off the air.”
“No great loss, I’d say.”
“Not much.”
“Well, Mr. St. Ives, I was wondering if you might tell me what brings you to London and into the company of Eddie Apex?”
“Why don’t you ask Eddie?”
“Eddie doesn’t talk much, especially to me.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be too cooperative either.”
“May I assume that you’re working?”
“You can assume anything you want.”
“You know Eddie rather well, don’t you?”
“I once interviewed him for a paper that I worked for.”
“Then you know what he is.”
“I know what he was. He was a confidence man.”
“Was?”
“He retired.”
“Did he now?”
“That’s what he told me.”
Deskins finished his hot chocolate. “Well, I suppose you met the missus?”
“Whose?”
“Eddie’s.”
“I met her.”
“I see old Tom’s still driving for Eddie. Did you meet Jack?”
“The butler?”
“Yes.”
“I saw him.”
“Still getting about, is he?”
“Seems to be.”
“I suppose old Jack would be long before your time, unless you made a study of such things,”
“What things?”
“Famous thieves, for example. Know much about them?”
“A little.”
“Ever hear of a Gentleman Jack Brooks?”
“You’re kidding. That old man?”
Deskins nodded. “That’s him. Worked the Riviera before the first war. New York in the twenties. Mayfair any time. Probably the best jewel thief who ever lived. Slowed down when he got to be fifty. They caught him coming out of Brown’s in the summer of forty-three dressed up in a general’s uniform and his pockets stuffed with some Indian nabob’s jewel case. A fortune in diamonds, I’m told. They also tell me that old Jack certainly looked the part. Of a general, I mean.”
“What happened?”
“To Jack? He did ten straight without remission at Wormwood Scrubs. When he got out he went to work as a butler for the Nitry brothers. Have you met Eddie’s father-in-law, Ned Nitry?”
“We met.”
“And Uncle Bert?”
I nodded.
“They’re a pair,” he said. “Bent out of shape if ever I saw. Know how they got started?”
“No.”
“They damn near ran the black market in the East End during the war. Those two and a couple of American captains who supplied them. Sugar, tea, coffee, beef, stockings, chocolate — they had the lot. Sold it by the ton, I’m told, and made a fortune.”
“They ever get caught?”
“Never. They spread it around too thick to get caught, if you know what I mean.”
“I think so,” I said. “What happened after the war?”
“To the Nitrys? It went a treat after the war. For them, at least. They invested everything in West End property, moved to Knightsbridge, and even hired old Tom when he got out of the nick.”
“Tom,” I said. “You mean Eddie’s chauffeur.”
“Back in the late twenties and early thirties he was a race driver. Raced anything — bikes, cars, what have you. He raced in Europe mostly. Then in the late thirties, I’d have to say that old Tom fell among evil companions. A smash-and-grab gang working out of Soho. He was their driver, their wheelman, I think you’d call him, and probably the best ever.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got caught one night when a tire went. He spent the war and then some in the Scrubs, too. When he got out, who should hire old Tom Bates but Ned and Norbert Nitry.”
“They sound like real humanitarians.”
“Mmm,” Deskins said and rose from the bed. He looked at me with his frosty blue eyes that somehow went with that still, thin face and its tight mouth, worried frown, fox nose, and a chin that I could hang my hat on. “I’m not here to tell you who you should be keeping company with, Mr. St. Ives. But I don’t mind telling you that the Nitry brothers are a nasty lot.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
He reached into a pocket and handed me a card. “If you think of something interesting that you’d like to tell me, ring this number.” I looked at the card. There was nothing on it but his name, William Deskins, and a telephone number.
“All right,” I said. “If I think of something interesting.”
He moved to the door and opened it. “Good-bye, Mr. St. Ives. And thank you very much for the chocolate.”
“Not at all,” I said.
When he was gone I went over to the phone and called the number that was on the card. There were two double rings and when a voice answered, a man’s voice, with a snappy, “Fifth Division, Constable Akers,” I hung up.
Chapter Ten
When my former wife and I had lived in London that year at the very beginning of the 1960s, when all fine things had seemed possible, even my becoming sort of a wisecracking Walter Lippmann, I had grown knowledgeable and even authoritative on a number of things English such as clotted cream, Parliament, the Royal Family, Lyons Corner Houses, and the London Underground. Having got the underground down cold, I had set out to master the city’s bus system only to fall back in utter confusion after a couple of weeks.
But the underground had remained my specialty and I had delighted in giving detailed, even painstaking instructions to visiting Americans on how they could best go down to Kew in lilac time, or east to Upminster on the District Line, or west to Uxbridge on the Piccadilly, or even the Metropolitan.