The Con Man

Eight

The Hotel Carter was, in many respects, a very sleazy dump.

On the other hand, to those of its inhabitants who had recently arrived from skid row, it had all the glamour and impressiveness of the Waldorf Astoria. It all depended how you looked at it.

If you stood on the sidewalk at the corner of Culver Avenue and South Eleventh Street, and it happened to be raining, and you happened to be a cop out to make a pinch, the Hotel Carter looked like a very sleazy dump.

Brown sighed, pulled up the collar of his trench coat, remarked to himself silently that he looked something like a private eye, and then walked into the hotel lobby. An old man sat in a soiled easy chair looking out at the rain, remembering kisses from Marjorie Morningstar under the lilacs. The lobby smelled. Brown suspected the old man contributed to the smell. He adjusted his nostrils the way he would adjust his shoulder holster, glanced around quickly, and then walked to the desk.

The clerk watched him as he crossed the lobby. The clerk watched him carefully. An April fly, not yet feeling its summer oats, buzzed lazily around the desk. A brass spittoon at the base of the desk dripped with misaimed spittle. The smell in the lobby was a smell of slovenliness and dissolution. Brown reached the desk. He started to open his mouth.

“I’ll give it to you straight,” the desk clerk said. “We don’t take niggers.”

Brown didn’t even blink. “You don’t, huh?” he asked.

“We don’t.” The clerk was a young man, his hairline receding even though he was not yet twenty-six. He had a hawkish nose and pale-green eyes. An acne pimple festered near his right nose flap. “Nothing personal,” he said. “I only work here, and those are the orders.”

“Glad to know how you feel,” Brown said, smiling. “Trouble is, I didn’t ask.”

“Huh?” the clerk said.

“Now, you have to understand there’s nothing I’d like better than a room in this hotel. I just come up from a cotton patch down South where we fertilize our cotton with human excrement. I lived in a leaky tarpaper shack, and so you can imagine what a palace your fine, splendid hotel looks like to me. I think it would be too much for me to bear just being allowed to stay in one of your rooms. Why, just being here in the lobby is like coming close to paradise.”

“Go ahead,” the clerk said, “make wise cracks. You still don’t get a room. I’m being honest with you. You should thank me.”

“Oh, I do, I do,” Brown said. “I thank you from the bottom of my cotton-pickin’ heart. Is there a man named Frederick Deutsch registered here?”

“Who wants to know?” the clerk asked.

Brown smiled and sweetly said, “I want to know. Jus’ li’l ol’ cotton-pickin’ me.” He reached into his back pocket and flipped his wallet open to his shield. The clerk blinked. Brown continued smiling.

“I was only joking about the room,” the clerk said. “We got lots of Negro people staying here.”

“I’ll bet the place is just packed with them,” Brown said. “Is Deutsch registered here, or isn’t he?”

“The name don’t ring a bell,” the clerk said. “He a transient?”

“A regular,” Brown said.

“I got no Deutsches in my regulars.”

“Let’s see the list.”

“Sure, but there ain't a Deutsch on it. I know my steadies by heart.”

“Let’s see it anyway, huh?” Brown said.

The clerk sighed, dug under the counter, and came up with a register. He turned it on the desktop so that Brown could see it. Rapidly, Brown ran his finger down the page.

“Who’s Frank Darren?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Frank Darren.” Brown pointed at the name. “This one.”

“Oh.” The clerk shrugged. “A guy. One of the guests.”

“How long’s he been here?”

“Couple years now, I guess. Even more than that.”

“He register as Darren when he checked in?”

“Sure.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Tall guy, kind of skinny. Blue eyes, long hair. Why?”

“He in now?”

“I think so, yeah. Why?”

“What room’s he in?”

“312,” the clerk said. “I thought you was looking for somebody named Deutsch?”

“I am,” Brown said. “Give me the key to 312.”

“What for? You need a warrant before you go busting in on—”

“If I have to go all the way home for a warrant,” Brown said levelly, “I’ll also pick up one for violation of PL 514, excluding a citizen by reason of color from the equal enjoyment of any accommodation furnished by innkeepers or—”

Hastily, the clerk handed him the key. Brown nodded and crossed to the elevator. He stabbed at the button and waited patiently while the elevator crept down to the lobby. When it opened, a blonde chambermaid stepped out of it, winking at the elevator operator.

“Three,” Brown said.

The elevator operator stared at him. “Did you see the clerk?”

“I saw the clerk, and the clerk saw me. Now, let’s cut the bull and get this car in motion.”

The elevator operator stepped back, and Brown entered the car. He leaned back against the back wall as the car climbed. Darren, of course, might very well be Darren and not Deutsch, he reasoned. But an elementary piece of police knowledge was that a man registering under a phony name — especially if his luggage, shirts, or handkerchiefs were monogrammed — would generally pick a name with the same initials as his real name. Frederick Deutsch, Frank Darren — it was worth a try. Besides, the RKC card had given this as Deutsch’s last address. Maybe the card was wrong. Or, if it was right, why hadn’t the mastermind who’d figured out where Deutsch was staying also have mentioned the fact that he was registered under an alias? Brown did not like sloppy police work. Sloppiness made him impatient. Slow elevators also made him impatient.

When they reached the third floor, he said, “Doesn’t it hurt your eardrums?”

“Doesn’t what hurt my eardrums?” the elevator operator asked.

“Breaking the sound barrier like this?” Brown said, and then he stepped into the corridor. He waited until the doors slid shut behind him. He looked at the two doors closest to him in the corridor, to ascertain which way the numbers were running, and then he turned right.

302, 304, 306, 308, 310...

He stopped outside room 312 and reached under his coat. He pulled the .38 from its shoulder rig, thumbed off the safety, and then took the key the clerk had given him and inserted it into the latch with his left hand.

Inside the room, there was sudden movement. Brown turned the key quickly and kicked open the door. There was a man on the bed, and the man was in the process of reaching for a gun that lay on the night table.

“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.

There would be a close-up, and the close-up would show a hand suddenly breaking the surface of the water, the fingers stiff and widespread.

And then a body would appear, and the water would nudge the body until it washed ashore and lay lifeless with the other debris while the rain drilled down unrelentingly. The con men would have written it with flourish and filmed it with style, and they had a fine day for the plying of their trades.

The men of the 87th Precinct weren’t con men.

They only knew they had another floater.