1968-An Ear to the Ground Page 5

  Henry watched Johnny and Gilda as they swam together.

  ‘And another thing, Martha, Gilda has fallen in love with him,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Do you think I care?’

  ‘I like Gilda. . . a pretty girl. I wouldn’t want her to get hurt.’ Then seeing Martha wasn’t interested, Henry went on, ‘When he comes back, I’ll say yes to his terms . . . right?’

  ‘So long as he doesn’t get the money, you can say yes to anything.’

  ‘You let me talk to him.’

  Martha heaved herself to her feet.

  ‘I’m going to take a nap.’ She hesitated, began to say something, decided not to and stumped off the terrace.

  Half an hour later, Johnny and Gilda came up the steps. Johnny paused near Henry.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s all right, Johnny. We’ve talked it over,’ Henry said. ‘Of course, she didn’t like it, but she knows when she’s licked. You get $200,000.’

  Johnny stared at him. The cold eyes made Henry a little uneasy, but he retained his calm expression.

  ‘Okay,’ Johnny said. ‘But listen . . . I know all about you. Abe told me. . . one of the smartest con men in the racket. Don’t try to con me. That’s a warning.’ He stared again at Henry and then walked off the terrace to his bedroom.

  Henry took out his silk handkerchief and touched his temples.

  Gilda lay down on the Li-Lo.

  ‘I suppose she’s hoping to gyp him,’ she said, putting on her sun-goggles. ‘Don’t you do it, Henry. I like you. I couldn’t care less if he twisted her fat neck, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’

  Henry regarded her beautiful body.

  ‘Thank you, my dear. I wish I were twenty years younger.’

  Gilda laughed.

  ‘You men . . .’

  An hour after dinner, Martha came out on to the terrace where Gilda was catching the last rays of the sun and Henry was working on his Stock Exchange calculations.

  Johnny had remained in his room for the past three hours. Gilda had seen cigarette smoke drift out of his open window from time to time and she wondered what he was doing. She wasn’t worried about her share when the share-out came.

  She trusted Henry who had promised her ten per cent of the take: that meant, with any luck, $60,000. That would be enough. With that kind of money and with her looks, she reckoned she would never be in want. She admired Johnny for demanding the bigger sum. Anyone who had the guts to stand up to Martha won her admiration.

  ‘Where is he?’ Martha demanded, settling herself in the wickerwork chair, causing it to creak.

  ‘In his bedroom,’ Henry said, putting down his notebook. ‘Look, Martha, don’t let us have any unpleasantness. This boy can handle the job — we can’t. So we must pay for it.’ The heavy eyelid closed and opened.

  This little speech Martha realised was for Gilda’s benefit.

  ‘Oh, well, all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave it to you,’ and she picked up her embroidery frame. ‘We are having Maryland chicken for dinner.’

  ‘Good.’ Henry opened his notebook again. ‘Flo is one of the best cooks we’ve ever had. She . . .’ He paused as Johnny came out on to the terrace.

  Johnny was wearing a lightweight blue suit and he was carrying a small overnight bag in his hand. He came across the terrace and stood in front of Martha.

  ‘I want three hundred dollars,’ he said.

  Martha stared at him. Henry put down his notebook, and Gilda half sat up, supporting herself on her arm.

  ‘You want — what?’ Martha’s voice went up a note.

  ‘Three hundred dollars,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to Miami. I’ve got things to fix.’

  ‘You’re not getting three hundred goddamn dollars out of me!’ Martha shrilled, her face turning red.

  Johnny stared at her, his eyes ice cold.

  ‘Listen to me, you stupid cow,’ he said, his voice soft but vicious. ‘Do you or don’t you want to swing this job?’

  Martha reared back in her chair as if he had threatened to hit her. Henry got to his feet and walked over to Johnny. He put himself between Johnny and Martha and looked levelly at him.

  ‘That wasn’t a nice thing to say, Johnny. You don’t talk like that. I won’t allow it!’

  Johnny half-lifted his clenched fist. Henry remained motionless, looking straight into Johnny’s hot, angry eyes. The two men, one frail and old, the other powerful and young, regarded each other for a long moment, then Johnny suddenly grinned and relaxed.

  ‘I like guys with guts,’ he said. ‘And that’s what you’ve got, Colonel.’ He stepped around Henry and said to Martha, ‘I apologise, but I still need three hundred dollars. I can’t walk into Raysons and put their electrics on the blink without money.’

  Henry took his roll from his hip pocket and gave Johnny three one hundred dollar bills.

  ‘Here you are, son,’ he said. ‘What are you planning to do?’

  ‘I’m going to Miami. . . I’ll be away three days . . . Thursday evening we will make the raid.’

  ‘That still doesn’t tell me what you are planning to do.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I come back,’ Johnny returned, then without looking at either Martha or Gilda, he walked off the terrace.

  No one said anything until they heard the Hertz rental car start up and drive away, then Martha said, ‘I’ll fix that sonofabitch if it’s the last thing I do.’

  ‘Make sure he doesn’t fix you first,’ Gilda said. ‘I’d back him any day against you!’

  ‘Ladies!’ Henry said sharply. ‘Please . . .’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly time for dinner.’

  The next two days dragged interminably for Gilda. She found life in the villa and in the City flat and dull without Johnny around. She swam and sunbathed and listened to Henry’s old world chat with a boredom that she found intolerable. Martha ate and worked on her embroidery, sullen and bad tempered.

  On the evening of the third day, after dinner, they heard a car drive up and they all stiffened, looking at each other. A few minutes later, Johnny came out on to the terrace.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Henry said. ‘How did it go?’

  Johnny sat down, lit a cigarette and looked directly at Martha. He had given only a casual glance at Gilda who had put on a white linen dress especially for his arrival. Henry, when she came out on to the terrace, declared she looked beautiful, but the impact of her beauty seemed lost on Johnny.

  ‘It’s fixed,’ Johnny said. ‘I had to put Raysons’ electrical equipment on the blink and I had to do it so they wouldn’t know. The answer was a time switch clock. I talked it over with Abe. He has contacts everywhere. He sent me to a guy who fitted me out with the uniform of the Paradise City Electricity Corporation. I bought a toolbox on a sling and a time switch clock. Abe sent me to a makeup artist who put fifteen years on my face, plus a moustache. I then went along to Raysons. Their equipment is in the basement and during the day it is not in use. I told the janitor there was a failure and he let me have the run of the basement. It was dead easy. So now, tonight, at nine o’clock, the time switch turns off the electricity. All we have to do is to walk in, find the files, photocopy them, remove the time switch clock and we’re away.’

  Two days after Johnny had got the blueprints, Martha came down on to the big terrace where the others were reading the papers.

  Martha was feeling in good shape. Flo had given her one of her favourite breakfasts, consisting of grapefruit, three lamb chops each set on crisply fried bread, surrounded by a bed of watercress. She couldn’t remember when she had had better lamb chops and she was in such a good mood that she even nodded to Johnny instead of scowling at him.

  She sat down.

  ‘Now listen to me,’ she said. ‘I have a short list here.’ She waved a sheet of paper. ‘The trick with this operation is this: we empty the safe and the owners don’t know for some weeks that they have been robbed. In this way we can work four or even five safe
s and we’ll be on our way before the cops get into the picture.’ She paused while the other three regarded her. ‘There’s no miracle in this. Now I’ve got the names of the people who own good jewellery, I’ve found out what they are doing and where they are. There’s nothing smart about this: I got the dope from the Society Column of the local rag. For instance, Mrs. Lowenstein who owns $180,000 worth of jewellery is in a clinic and she will be there for three weeks. We have the blueprint of her Raysons’ safe. We go there, pick up the stuff and Mrs. L. won’t know she’s lost her loot until she’s returned from the clinic. So she’s the first one we’ll hit. Now the second one . . . Mrs. Warren Crail. She owns $650,000 worth of jewels. At the end of this week, she and her husband are going on a fishing trip and they won’t be back for five weeks. So we fix her safe. Then there’s Mrs. Alex Jackson, who owns $400,000 worth of jewellery. She is also going off on a yacht. There’s a chance she will take some of her jewellery with her, but not all of it. All these slobs have faith in the Raysons’ safes. So they leave their jewellery. . .anyway, why should they worry? It’s all insured. Are you getting the photo? There’s Mrs. Bernard Lampson who owns $350,000 worth of jewels. She is off to the Bahamas for skin diving. She won’t be taking her stuff with her, so we’ll get it. How do you like it?’

  Henry had heard all this before. He nodded and looked across at Johnny who was staring off into space.

  ‘Yes,’ Johnny said, ‘if your facts are right.’

  ‘This is where Gilda does some work,’ Martha said. She looked at Gilda. ‘Now this is what you have to do . . .’

  ***

  Baines had been Mrs. Lowenstein’s butler for ten years. He was an import from England and in the past had served two of the best titled families during his sixty-eight years. He had been seduced by the enormous salary Mrs. Lowenstein had offered him and he had agreed to come to Paradise City to run her establishment. . . he had regretted it ever since.

  However, he was a man of integrity and he also had a conscience so in return for his salary that was five times as much as any English Duke could afford to pay him, he endured Mrs. Lowenstein’s vulgarity, her shrieking voice, her dreadful clothes and her frightful friends.

  Happily, ever year, Mrs. Lowenstein went into a health clinic where they worked on her bulk and generally cleaned her inside and out, and then returned her after a month to her magnificent home to begin eating and drinking again with renewed vigour. Baines looked forward to this month when he had the house to himself. The rest of the staff took their vacation at this time. Everything was put under dust wraps and Baines settled down happily in his suite on the top floor that consisted of a bedroom, a sitting room, a bathroom and a kitchenette. Baines was a TV addict. He spent nearly all his free time staring at the lighted screen.

  Around eleven-thirty one morning as he was arranging his lunch with loving hands, he heard the front doorbell ring.

  Baines was in his shirt sleeves, but he was always immaculately dressed. He was a short, stout, pink-faced man with snowy, thin hair and calm blue eyes — the perfect picture of what an English butler should look like. He frowned, turned off the gas that was heating the Coq au Vin he had prepared the previous day, put on his tailcoat and went down in the elevator to the front door.

  A dark haired, severely dressed girl stood on the doorstep. She wore a blue frock with white collar and cuffs and heavy sun-goggles. Her jet black hair made a neat helmet for her well-shaped head.

  The wig and the dress completely transformed Gilda into an efficient, serious looking young business woman.

  ‘I am from the Acme Carpet Cleaning Co.,’ she said and handed Baines a printed card that Abe had supplied.

  Baines read the card with an aristocratic lift of his eyebrows.

  ‘I think there must be a mistake . . .’ he began.

  ‘Mrs. Lowenstein telephoned from the clinic,’ Gilda explained. ‘Mrs. Lowenstein has asked for an estimate for us to clean the carpet in the main living room and also the carpet in her bedroom.’

  As Mrs. Lowenstein never ceased to use the telephone at the clinic this came as no surprise to Baines. Many a time when he was enjoying a good TV serial the telephone would ring and he would have to listen to Mrs. Lowenstein’s whining complaints with one eye on the TV screen.

  ‘I understand,’ he said and opened the front door wide. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘May I see both carpets? I will have to measure them for the estimate.’

  Baines liked the look of this girl. She was neat and respectful. He approved of her. He let her in and watched her as she measured the living room carpet with a foot rule. Then he took her up to Mrs. Lowenstein’s bedroom where all the furniture in the enormous room was under dustsheets.

  Gilda measured the carpet and as she closed her notebook, she said, ‘Mrs. Lowenstein won’t be back then for a few days?’

  ‘Madame won’t be back for at least three weeks,’ Baines said, thinking Glory be! but not saying it.

  ‘That gives us plenty of time.’ Gilda smiled brightly. ‘We will send Mrs. Lowenstein the estimate and if she agrees to it, I’ll let you know when we can collect the carpets. Would that be all right?’

  Pleased with her good manners, Baines said that would be quite all right. As he conducted her down in the elevator, she said, ‘Are you all alone here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Baines said with a contented sigh. ‘The rest of the staff are on vacation.’

  ‘I’m sure you appreciate the quiet,’ Gilda said, moving from the elevator. ‘It must be nice to be on one’s own for a little while — especially in such a beautiful house.’

  Baines warmed to her.

  ‘It’s a pleasure.’ He opened the front door. ‘I always say you can never be lonely with the telly.’

  ‘Are you a fan?’ Gilda turned and looked through her sun-goggles at him. ‘So am I. When I get home, I turn it on and that’s it until I go to bed. Goodbye.’

  Baines watched her walk down the steps to the white Opel car. Then remembering he had his Coq au Vin to heat up, he shut the front door, shot the bolt and took the elevator up to his quarters.

  That night Johnny and Gilda raided the house. Gilda had no trouble in climbing to the first floor. Johnny stood in the moonlight and watched her as she went up the side of the house as if she were walking up a flight of stairs. She lowered a knotted rope down to him and he came up that way, hand over hand, joining her on the balcony. She had described to him the lock on the window and Johnny had brought along the necessary tools to open it.

  With the blueprint from Raysons, it took them only a few minutes to locate the controls, another minute or so to open the safe. Both wore surgical gloves. Johnny emptied the glittering gems from their cases into the small sack he had brought with him. The job lasted less than five minutes. Then they left. Johnny relocked the window from the outside, then they slid down the rope, jerked it free and were away.

  The first raid of the big take was accomplished.

  Three

  To get this story in its right perspective,’ Al Barney said, ‘I now have to take you back three years. We’ll come up to date before long, but I want you to get it into your mind, we are going back three years.’

  I said I understood.

  Al nodded and took some beer.

  ‘Well, now. . . I want to tell you about Harry Lewis. . .

  ‘At the age of thirty-eight, Harry Lewis became the husband of one of the richest women in the world. He didn’t make any effort to marry her — she married him. The moment she set eyes on him, he was a dead duck. She wanted him as her husband, and when Lisa Cohen wanted anything, she always got it. Harry wasn’t anything special in the brain-box line nor was he particularly bright in business. But he had looks. He was one of those tall, husky, handsome guys you see on the movies — a Gregory Peck type. He had loads of personality, sex appeal and a smile that rocked the kind of girls he associated with. Make no mistake about it, Harry had a stable full of girls who dropped flat on the
ir backs when he gave the signal. But apart from his looks, Harry was no great shakes, and he was grateful that more by luck than hard work, he had become the manager of one of Cohen’s Self-Service Stores, right here in Paradise City.’ Al paused to look at me. ‘Maybe you’ve heard of Sol Cohen?’

  I said I had heard of him — who hadn’t?

  ‘Yeah . . . well, here was Harry walking around the store, showing his teeth to the girls who worked there, giving some of them who would stand for it a quick feel when no one was looking and earning around six thousand dollars a year. He had more or less made up his mind he wouldn’t get beyond this income bracket, and this was as far as he would go in his career. This didn’t worry him too much. . . he wasn’t the ambitious type. With six grand coming in steadily, he could amuse himself, have all the girls he wanted and pay the rent of a two-room apartment that faced the sea and that was pretty cosy over the weekends when he would sun himself on the balcony with a girl on his lap or near enough for him to reach for should the idea come into his mind.

  ‘I don’t ever want you to imagine Harry was dumb. No one who ever worked for Sol Cohen could be dumb, but Harry wasn’t anything special. He did his job and got by.

  ‘Well, one hot, sunny afternoon something happened that was to turn his life upside down and inside out. Imagine Harry wandering around the store, keeping his eyes on things, giving his favourites his sexy look, pausing to have a word with the customers, feeling like a captain on his ship when the sea is nice and calm, when a woman comes up to him.

  ‘I’ve seen Lisa Cohen a number of times, so let me describe her to you. She was small, dark and skinny. She had big eyes — her best feature — and her father’s nose that took up most of her face. She had a mouth and chin that showed temper and aggression. One thing you can be certain about, Lisa Cohen would never make the centre spread in Playboy. You could bet your last buck on that and not have a sleepless night. At the time she first met Harry she was twenty-nine years of age. She was wearing a pair of white slacks and a blue sweat shirt that made her look like a half-grown teenager.