“Also Phil Danby-that’s Castleton’s right-hand man. Milton Castleton, I mean. Go to work on him too.”
“You want these guys followed?”
“That isn’t necessary. Basically, I just want information. How you get it is up to you. Consider you got a free hand.”
“That’s pretty broad. What, specifically, do you want?”
“I want the dope on these guys. I want the dope on Castleton Industries. Look for anything that might give me a lead to my client. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Worse than that, ’cause the needle I’m looking for may not exist. Right now, I just want data. Somewhere in it maybe I’ll find a clue as to why this girl did what she did.
“One other thing. Maybe I’ll get a lead as to someone who might have been running her.”
“Running her?”
“Yeah. Suppose it’s a badger game like I said, but the girl isn’t the principal, she’s only a pawn in the game. Someone programmed her to set Castleton up.”
Taylor frowned. “Set him up for what? A settlement check he can’t cash?”
“That may not have been the idea, Mark. The idea may have been to put Castleton in an embarrassing position in order to gain some leverage. I may actually have scotched that plan by rushing in and getting an immediate settlement.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, either. The girl came to you. She sent you to Castleton. She agreed to the settlement. In fact, from what you said, she would have settled for less. If settling would have scotched the deal, why would she agree to it?”
“I don’t know, Mark. That’s the problem. The whole thing makes no sense at all. That’s why I need the information. First off, I’d like to find my client-which is probably next to impossible. Barring that, I want all the information I can get.”
“This is getting to be a bad habit with you,” Taylor said.
“What’s that?”
“Not knowing who your client is. Remember the Bradshaw case?”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“In that case I never met my client. All I had was an anonymous letter. Here, I’ve sat with my client, talked with her face to face, and I still don’t know who she is.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do. You got that description?”
Tracy passed over a sheet of paper. “Right here.”
Taylor took it, read the description, whistled. “Some plum assignment. My men will be falling all over themselves to be the first one to find her.” He cocked his head, grinned. “This is not a bad description, Tracy, but don’t you think ‘generously endowed’ is a trifle euphemistic?”
Tracy gave him a look. “You expect me to put ‘big tits’ in a memo?”
Taylor raised his eyebrows and fluttered his fingers in front of his mouth as if he had a cigar. “You can put ’em anywhere you like.”
Steve groaned. “Jesus Christ.”
“My Groucho that bad?” Taylor said.
“Frankly, yes. But not as bad as this damn case.” Steve shook his head. “And I’ve got a feeling it’s only gonna get worse.”
10
Mark Taylor was on the phone when Steve Winslow and Tracy Garvin walked into his office late that afternoon. He grunted acknowledgment, motioned them to sit down and kept on talking. The conversation was unilluminating as far as they were concerned. It consisted of Taylor grunting, “Uh huh,” and scribbling notes on a pad. Finally he hung up.
“Okay. Thanks for coming up,” Taylor said. “I can’t leave here ’cause I got stuff coming in all the time.”
“On my case?” Steve asked.
“Sure. I got eight operatives out now.”
“Eight?”
“Sure. You said I got a free hand, so I’m using it. I got people going over newspaper files, I got people digging into Castleton Industries, I even got an operative primed for personal contact.”
“With whom?”
“I got a girl’s gonna make a play for David Castleton.”
“Oh yeah? They make contact yet?”
Taylor shook his head. “Too early. What time is it, five o’clock? No, she’s in place to pick him up when he leaves work. Which should be any time now.”
The phone rang. Taylor scooped it up, grunted a few times, scribbled a few notes and hung up.
“See,” Taylor said. “It’s been like this all afternoon. Little dribs and drabs. But it adds up to a lot of dope. Not that it’s gonna do you any good. As far as finding your client, I mean. But aside from that you should love it.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, this Castleton’s a character. Milton Castleton, I mean. The girl’s typin’ his memoirs, it’s gotta be one hell of a book.” Taylor flipped the pages of his notebook. “Milton Castleton, self-made man. Naturally. Born in Brooklyn in 1912 of poor but honest immigrants. Father ran a fruit stand. Mother took in wash. Fourth of five children. Never finished high school. Dropped out and joined the army. Got out just in time to get hit by the Depression.”
Taylor shrugged and smiled. “Which is when he came into his own. Wouldn’t you know it. Whole country’s going bust except for Milton Castleton. Sets himself up in business as guess what?”
“What?”
“Shoe-shine boy. Don’t you love it? Whole world’s gone bust, no one can afford a quart of milk, people really gonna waste their money on a shoe shine. But Milton Castleton takes the money he saved up serving his stint in the army and opens a hole-in-the-wall-shoe-shine parlor on Flatbush Avenue. By rights he should go bust, right?”
“Right.”
“Wrong. He prospers. The whole world goes in the toilet and Milton Castleton cleans up.”
“Shining shoes?”
“No. I would imagine that wasn’t so prosperous. But Milton Castleton had a sideline.”
“What’s that?”
“Bathtub gin.”
Steve stared at him. “You’re saying he was in the mob?”
Taylor shook his head. “No. That’s the remarkable thing. He wasn’t. He was totally independent.”
“No shit. How the hell’d he do that? You move into that territory, you’re just asking for it.”
Taylor shrugged. “Apparently Milton Castleton could walk on water. He was smart, he didn’t make waves, he didn’t step on anybody’s toes. Plus he was protected. If there were problems, they were on a lower level. It never got up to him.”
“Jesus Christ. How long did he get away with it?”
“Till repeal. Which, of course, was the end. That’s when the mob had to diversify, get into other things. Gambling had always been big, and drugs were the coming thing. A lot of bootleggers started leaning that way.
“But not Castleton. ’Cause all through the Depression he’d been using the money he’d been making to snap up real estate at bargain-basement prices. Now, with the economy slowly beginning to recover, he was able to rent out space to businesses- Castleton Realty. Also to start a few small businesses on his own-Castleton Manufacturing.
“At the same time he’d been dabbling in the stock market. He had a genius for it. He was making money hand over fist. So much so, people were noticing. People started coming to him for advice, which he was only too happy to give. As long as they wanted to join the fold-Castleton Investments and Securities.
“By the time World War Two came, Castleton had a lot of real estate, a lot of manufacturing companies, and a lot of friends in high places, and guess who wound up with a whole bunch of lucrative defense contracts?”
Taylor shrugged. “It goes on and on. Castleton Industries just kept growing, gobbling up property and business. Mergers, buyouts, hostile takeovers, what have you.”
Taylor turned the page. “Now, here’s where we gotta talk. You told me I got a free hand. That’s fine, but let’s get serious here. A preliminary look into Castleton Industries tells me I could investigate it till doomsday. He’s been pulling shit for nearly sixty years. That fifty-thousand dollar settlement’s nothing. I could use up your share and your client’s share, and never even scratch the surface. I figure what you want is whatever’s most recent, so that’s what I’m looking into. I’ll give you what I got.