The Brass Go-Between

Chapter seven

At eleven o’clock the next morning I was standing in a musty phone booth in the lobby of the Eubanks Hotel, a seedy, almost furtive establishment that catered in an embarrassed kind of way to the old who, thirty years or so before, had believed those insurance-company advertisements which had lied about how they could retire comfortably on $150 a month.

Except for a middle-aged room clerk behind the desk who seemed to be suffering from a vile hangover, the only occupant of the lobby was a thin, bald oldster with milky blue eyes who looked to be in his seventies. He struggled out of the depths of a battered couch that probably was called a davenport when it was new and hobbled carefully over to the booth.

“You going to be in there long, son?” he asked. “I gotta make a call and the other phone’s not working. I gotta call my doctor about some medicine for my sciatica. It hit last night right about—”

The phone rang and I picked it up and said hello, closing the door of the booth as I nodded pleasantly at the old man who was having trouble with his sciatica, or who just wanted somebody to talk to.

“Mr. St. Ives?” It was a man’s voice this time, but it seemed fuzzy and blurred, as if he were speaking through a mouthful of wet cotton.

“Yes.”

“The old man who just spoke to you has been paid five dollars to hand you an envelope. In the envelope are instructions. If you follow them exactly, you’ll get the shield back.” There was a click and the phone went dead.

I turned in the booth and looked at the old man, who was grinning at me and nodding happily. It could have been the most fun he had had since the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. I put the phone on its hook, opened the door, and stepped out of the booth.

“You the fella?” the old man said.

“If you’ve got an envelope, I am.”

“They gave me five bucks just to hold it till you got here.”

“Who gave you five bucks?”

“Kids,” he said. “A couple of hippies with long hair and beads. I was sitting here last night watching Lucy when they came in and I figured to myself that they were a little far uptown. But they just looked around and saw me, wasn’t nobody else, so they come over and say they’re going to lay five bucks on me to give an envelope to a gent who’ll be in the phone booth at eleven o’clock this morning. So I says, ‘Let’s see the five bucks,’ and they say okay and give me the five and the envelope. I ain’t opened it neither. You with the FBI?”

“No.”

“CIA maybe?”

I didn’t want to disappoint him. “Treasury,” I said.

“T-man, huh?” he said, and looked around the lobby to make sure that nobody was listening. The only one who could have been was the room clerk, who sat behind the desk with his head in his hands, wishing that the world would end.

“You got the envelope?” I said.

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Another five. I’d make it more, but they’re cracking down in Washington.”

“New administration, huh?”

“Right.”

He reached into the inside pocket of a shapeless gray coat and brought out an envelope. I reached for it, but he moved his hand away. “You said something about five bucks.”

“You’re right again.” I took out my wallet, found a five, and handed it to him. He handed me the envelope.

“I never opened it,” he said. “Can’t say I didn’t think about it, but I never opened it.”

“I’ll mention that to the chief,” I said.

“Aw, shit,” the old man said, turned, and hobbled back to his place on the sofa which was two feet from a television set that crackled happily away with lots of squeals and laughter.

I didn’t open the envelope until I was back in my room at the Adelphi. The contents had been typed on drugstore bond with a manual machine, if that was either a comfort or a clue to Lieutenant Demeter and Sergeant Fastnaught. I felt that it wasn’t. There were numerous x-outs and the style was strictly Monopoly imperative:

I decided that they were indeed professionals. Motels were proving popular in the go-between trade. They were useful for either completing the transaction or for observing how well the intermediary obeyed instructions. A familiar pattern, one which I had followed twice before, was to check into the motel with the money, parking my unlocked car at least six or seven doors away from my room. I waited in my room for a predesignated amount of time and then left, leaving the money in the closet, and the door to the room unlocked. I then went to my car, now locked by the thieves, opened it and looked under the seat for whatever it was that I was supposed to buy back. In both recent cases it had been jewelry. I had been instructed to wait in my car for five minutes until the thieves had the opportunity to make sure that the money was really in the suitcase or the satchel or the airline carryall bag in the closet of the motel room. Then I was free to drive off, bearing the jewels back to their rightful owner, and the thieves could head south to spend the money in Miami or San Juan or Biloxi.

The anonymity that surrounds motels, especially the smaller, cheesier ones that do a brisk hot-bed business, makes them eminently suitable for such transactions. A thief can check in two days before he gives the go-between the instructions to make sure that the police aren’t occupying the rest of the rooms. The go-between’s advantage lies in his ability to get to a phone quickly if he finds that there’s nothing under the front seat of his car. And finally, neither the thieves nor the go-between ever confronts each other, which is primarily to the thieves’ advantage unless the go-between is as cautious as I am.

I read the typed message three times and then picked up the phone and placed a person-to-person call to Frances Wingo in Washington. It went through quickly enough when I identified myself to her secretary.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” I said. “I have some news.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve just received a message from whoever has the shield. They want the money Thursday. That’s tomorrow.”

“All right,” she said. “Where shall I bring it?”

“You?”

“I believe it to be my responsibility.”

“I won’t dispute that. I just thought it might be a little heavy for you. They want it in used tens and twenties and that much money weighs around fifty pounds.”

“I’m sure I can manage,” she said. “Where shall I bring it?”

“To my hotel, the Adelphi.” I gave her the address.

“What time?”

“Any time before three,” I said. “If you make it before two, we can have lunch.”

She ignored the invitation. Perhaps that’s the form for widows of four weeks. “Will you recover the shield tomorrow?” she said.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“Is it probable?”

“Again, I don’t know. I have no idea whom I’m dealing with. The trip down the Jersey Turnpike may be just a dry run to find out how well I follow instructions. Or they may be in a hurry for the money and want to get rid of the shield. You’ve got to remember that it’s not something that they can carry around in their hip pocket or unload at the corner pawnshop. There’s an extremely limited market.” I started to tell her about the fifty thousand that I had been offered by Conception Mbwato, but I decided not to because it was all too complicated and there was no point in listening to questions for which I had no answers.

“I’ll call Mr. Spencer to arrange for the money,” she said.

“When you get through with that, would you also call Lieutenant Demeter and fill him in on what’s happened?”

“I didn’t think that you wanted to involve the police.”

“I’m not involving them; I’m just staying in touch with Demeter because I said that I would.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll call him.”

“What time shall I expect you tomorrow?”

“After two.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

When Frances Wingo hung up in my ear, I decided that we probably would never be close friends, but there seemed to be an excellent chance that we might become polite enemies if either of us wanted to go to the bother. I thought — or brooded — about this during the time it took to find a can of tomato soup and run it through the electric opener. I then poured the soup into a pot, added a half can of water, and placed it over one of the two burners that the Pullman kitchen offered. While the soup heated, I looked up a number in the phone book and dialed it. When a man’s voice said, “Albert Shippo and Associates,” I asked for Mr. Shippo.

“I’m Shippo.”

“My name’s Philip St. Ives. I’d like to see you.”

“What about?”

“Johnny Parisi suggested that I call. He thought you might have something I could use.”

“Parisi, huh?”

“Parisi,” I said.

“You a wholesaler?”

“No.”

“Well, I tell you, I don’t do much retail any more, but if Parisi said to call, then I guess it’s okay. You wanta come over?”

“This afternoon all right?”

“Anytime,” Shippo said. “I’m not doing anything anyway except sitting here trying out a new cure on my athlete’s foot.”

“I’ll be there at two-thirty.”

“Two-thirty, three-thirty, it don’t matter,” he said. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

A few minutes after I got through talking to Shippo, the soup was heated so I took it off the burner, poured it into a bowl, found a box of crackers and a bottle of beer, and laid my solitary midday meal on the hexagonal table that had been designed to comfortably accommodate six at poker.

Albert Shippo and Associates’ office was at East 24th Street on the eighth floor of the George Building, which was as unimpressive as its name. There were two elevators, but only one of them was working under the captaincy of a shabbily dressed old man with a face the color and texture of a worn peach pit and pure white hair that hung down to his shoulders. He jerked the handle when I said “eight,” and when the door didn’t close, he kicked it with a scuffed cowboy boot. The elevator responded, grudgingly, it seemed, and we creaked upward.

At the second floor, he turned to look at me. “Don’t get any ideas, rube. I ain’t one of them just because of the long hair.”

“I didn’t think that you were.”

“Some folks get the wrong idea. I rode with Bill, you know. Madison Square Garden, nineteen-ought-nine.”

“Bill?”

“Bill Cody, you dumb shit. William Frederick Cody. Buffalo Bill.”

“You were in his Wild West show, huh?”

“Damned right I was. We all wore our hair long like this from Bill on down. Now folks think I’m one of them Village punks, but I ain’t. I’m part Indian, too. Chickasaw on my mother’s side.”

“You must have some great memories,” I said as the elevator croaked to a stop at the eighth floor.

“They ain’t so hot,” the old man said.

Eight-two-nine was the number of Albert Shippo and Associates and it was down the hall, past the skip-tracer, the direct mail firm, the manufacturer’s representative, and three empty offices. Albert Shippo and Associates was lettered on the pebbled-glass door and another message on a typed card that was stuck to the glass with Scotch tape read KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING. I knocked and a voice said come in. Inside there was a scarred golden oak desk positioned in front of the single window with a dark green shade. The window needed washing. There were four metal filing cabinets and two chairs. One of the chairs, also golden oak, was in front of the desk. The other one was behind it and contained Albert M. Shippo and, as far as I could tell, all of the associates.

“You the guy who called?” the man behind the desk said.

“Yes.”

“Sit down,” he said. “I’m Shippo.” He was about forty-five with a double chin and a smooth bald head which he drew attraction to with a set of mutton-chop sideburns that fanned out over plump cheeks well below the lobes of his ears. Thick black horn-rimmed glasses covered his eyes, which seemed disappointed when they looked at me, but they may have looked at everything like that. He had a small pink mouth below an ordinary pink nose, and the upper lip of the mouth formed what they used to describe as a perfect Cupid’s bow. Below his double chins was a white shirt collar that seemed too small and a blue and white striped tie that was too narrow.

I sat down and looked around the office. There was a black telephone on the desk, but no calendar on the wall. In fact, there was nothing to indicate whether Shippo had moved in that morning or six years before.

“Like I said over the phone, I’m a jobber and don’t do much retail business any more,” he said. “But since Johnny Parisi told you to call — well…” He let the sentence fade away as if it were just too much trouble to complete.

“I don’t know if you got my name right,” I said. “It’s St. Ives. Philip St. Ives.”

Shippo nodded. “I got it okay.”

“You called Parisi about me six or seven weeks ago.”

“I make a lot of calls. Some guy calls me and says, ‘Hey, Al, whaddya know about so and so?’ and I say, ‘I don’t know nothing about so and so,’ and the guy says, ‘Can you find out?’ and I say, ‘Okay, it’ll cost you ten bucks.’ Or twenty or thirty or whatever I can hit him up for. So I call around and find out what I can and then I call the guy back and say, ‘So and so’s okay’ or ‘So and so’s a bum who owes everybody in town.’ But that ain’t my main business. Like I said, I’m a jobber.”

“Of what?” I said.

“High-class art. Say a guy wants to go into business for himself. You know, he’s got a full-time job but he wants to get into something he can run out of his home. I put him in business. Direct mail. Let the post office do the hustling, I say.” He reached into his desk drawer, took out a sheet of paper, and slid it across the desk to me. “This has been one of my hottest numbers. About a thirty-percent return on this one and that’s goddamned high in the direct-mail business.”

I picked up the letter-sized sheet of paper and looked at it. It was a Xeroxed copy of a handwritten letter and was addressed to “Hi, Friend!” In the upper right-hand corner was the blurred picture of a nude man and woman. The body of the letter read:

It was signed, “Sincerely yours, Sally.”

I tossed the letter back on the desk. “Business pretty good, huh?” I said.

“Getting better all the time,” Shippo said. “I furnish the whole thing: the letter, the photos, and the sucker list. They mail out the letter once they get copies Xeroxed and then sit back and wait for the dough to roll in. They make money, I make money, and a lot of lonely people get their jollies. You want a set of the colored shots? I can let you have them for fifty bucks.”

“It said twelve in the letter.”

“I might throw in a little information,” Shippo said.

“Fifty is still steep.”

Shippo leaned back in his chair which squeaked, placed his fat hands on the bare desk, and smiled at me with yellow teeth that seemed too large and square for his small mouth. “That’s a nice suit you got on,” he said. “I know suits. I figure you’re worth fifty.”

“You remember my name, now?”

“St. Ives,” he said. “It ain’t a name you forget or if you do, you remember it when somebody brings it up. Fifty bucks?”

I nodded. “Fifty bucks.”

“Let me get you your pictures first.” He moved over to one of the files, took out a nine-by-eleven-inch manila envelope, peeked inside to make sure that it was the right one, and then sat back down in his chair. I took out my wallet, found two twenties and a ten, and pushed them over to him. He handed me the envelope. “You want a receipt?” he said.

“Just information. Such as who asked you to call Parisi about me?”

Shippo took the three bills and folded them lengthwise. Then he folded them in half, then folded them again, and tucked them into his watch pocket. “That was a couple of months back, wasn’t it?”

“Was it?”

“Yep, I remember now. It was a couple of months back.”

“In June,” I said.

“In June.”

“Now we have when, let’s try for who.”

Shippo looked around his desk as if he wished that there were some papers to shuffle. There weren’t so he opened a drawer and brought out a bottle of Old Cabin Still and two smeared glasses that looked like they had once contained Kraft cheese spread. He poured them half full and then moved one of them over to my side of the desk. “I always have a drink about this time of day,” he said. “Doctor says it’s good for my blood pressure. I got high blood pressure.” He picked up his glass and drained it, sighed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink up,” he said. I picked up the bourbon and took a swallow out of politeness and then put the glass back on the desk. I don’t care much for bourbon.

“Funny thing the way your name came up, you know,” Shippo said. “Guy I hadn’t seen in five, maybe six years calls up and wants to know if I know anybody who might give him a once-over on a Philip St. Ives, so I tell him that I know lots of people and he says, no, not those kind, he needs somebody who’s got a good reputation, like his word is his bond, who’s respectable and all. So I say how about my good friend Johnny Parisi, is he good enough for you? And the guys says, you know Johnny Parisi? And I tell him that Johnny and me have been friends for a long time.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. He just wanted me to call Parisi and find out about you.”

“Find out what?”

“Find out if you were okay, A-1, and would do what you said you would do. You wanta know what Johnny said about you?”

“No,” I said. “I want to know Who asked about me.”

“Oh, him. He was only good for thirty bucks, but what the hell, it only took a couple of phone calls.”

“All right,” I said. “Who?”

“A guy name of Frank Spellacy, but you gotta understand that he was only calling me about you for a friend of his.”

“Where can I find Spellacy?” I said.

“In the phone book. Manhattan.”

“What’s he do?”

“You mean for a living?”

“For a living.”

Shippo shrugged. “What does anybody do? Me, I think of myself as an art dealer who provides a service for lonely people and believe me, they’re a lot of lonely people around. But you know what those creeps from the post office said I was? They said I was a hard-core pornographer. So I said to hell with them. I don’t use the post office no more. I send everything out by messenger if it’s close by, and Railway Express if it ain’t.”

“They must have hated to lose your business,” I said.

“You mean the post office?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nah. They got so much business they can’t take care of it now.”

“You don’t have any idea of what Spellacy does?”

“He dabbles in this and that.”

“Such as?”

“Well, five or six years ago he was running a securities firm.”

“You mean a boiler room.”

“You call it a boiler room. Me and Spellacy called it a securities firm. I was helping out in the afternoons and we were doing pretty good until there was a misunderstanding and, well, Spellacy had to liquidate. I didn’t hear nothing about him for a couple of years. I think he was out of town.”

“He must have drawn a short sentence.”

“His lawyer wasn’t too hot,” Shippo said. “You gotta have a top lawyer if you wanta survive in the business world which, when you come right down to it, ain’t nothing but a jungle, like Jimmy Hoffa said. Now there’s probably one of the most unappreciated men in the country. And look what they done to him.”

“History will justify him,” I said. “But let’s get back to Spellacy. You don’t have any idea of what he’s doing?”

“He did mention something about real estate, come to think of it. He said he’s got some big development going out in Arizona.”

I got up. “Thanks for the information.”

Shippo didn’t stir, other than to wave his hand. “Glad to oblige.”

I was heading for the door when he called me back. “Hey, your pictures.”

I went back to the desk and picked up the envelope. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s what I really came for.”

On the way to the elevator I looked at the photographs. They were the usual assortment of duets and threesomes and, if I’d had more time, I might have grown interested. When the elevator came with its ancient pilot, I got on and stood at the back.

“You like dirty pictures?” I said.

“Who don’t?” the old man said.

“Here,” I said, and handed him the envelope.

He accepted the envelope, slipped out the first picture, and cackled. Then he placed them under his stool. “I’ll save ’em till I get off,” he said. “How come you don’t want ’em?”

I tapped myself on the chest. “Bad heart.”

The old man turned and grinned at me evilly. Then he ducked down for the envelope, took another peek, and shook his head in admiration. “You’re right about one thing, rube.”

“What?”

“They’re sure as hell dirty.”