The Flimflam Affair

21 Sabina

She was thinking of silencing the rumblings in her stomach with a meal at the tearoom around the corner when John came bounding in. Just in time, or so she thought at first. The prospect of having more filling fare in his company in Pop Hoffman’s Café or another good restaurant brightened her welcoming smile. But food was not what was on his mind.

“Ah, you’re still here,” he said as he closed the door. “I was afraid you might have gone out.”

“I was just about to. Now you can join me for luncheon—”

“No time for a leisurely meal today, my dear. I need you to do me a favor this afternoon if you have no plans.”

“What sort of favor?”

“Interview a woman whose son has been passing those counterfeit hundred-dollar bills.”

“Oh, so you’ve uncovered a firm lead. I thought you might be on the trail when you came and went so swiftly earlier.”

“A lead, yes, thanks to a stroke of luck. But a stalled one at the moment.” He went on to explain about the information given him by Barbary Coast scruff Owney, the Red Rooster prostitute Mollie, the tailor Funderburke, and Esther Jones’s friend Vera Malone.

Sabina said dubiously, “And you think I may be able to convince Dinger’s mother to reveal his whereabouts, is that it?”

“You stand a better chance than I do. A woman is apt to confide more readily in a member of her own sex.”

“Not in this case. I’m as much of a stranger to her as you are. Chances are she wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“She might, with the proper approach.”

“Meaning the use of feminine wiles.”

“Of which you’re blessed with a considerable amount.”

“Oh, bosh. Frankly, I don’t much like the idea of resorting to trickery to deceive a protective mother.”

“The son she’s protecting is a criminal helping to take honest citizens for a ride. Mrs. Jones’s loyalty is misplaced.”

“Perhaps so, but no matter how I approached her or what I said, it’s quite unlikely that I could induce her to betray him. And you know it.”

“I have great faith in your abilities, my dear, as I hope I made clear on Saturday evening.”

“Soft soap has no effect on me, John. You ought to know that, too, by now.”

“Even if you’re unable to pry loose Dinger’s whereabouts, you may have success in finding out from whence came the trunk Vera Malone mentioned. That knowledge could prove to be important.”

“What are you thinking it contained besides old books?” Sabina asked skeptically. “Counterfeit bills made by Long Nick Darrow?”

“Not many, if so. The ones currently being passed were manufactured by a photoengraving process not in use ten years ago.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted. “Perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I have a hunch Dinger’s involvement in the new coney game is somehow connected to that trunk.”

A hunch, she thought wryly — the male equivalent of feminine intuition, which he had been known to scoff at.

“If I’m wrong,” he went on, “then that avenue of investigation can be eliminated. But I won’t know if I am or not until I know who sent the trunk and for what reason.”

It seemed to Sabina that the wisest course of action was to turn over to Mr. Boggs what he’d discovered about Dinger and Paddy Lasher. But John was mulish when he was on the trail of lawbreakers, and inclined as always to chase personal glory as well as the causes of justice. Not that he had any intention of attempting to prove his methods superior to those of the Secret Service and his former chief. It was ingrained in his nature to act as he did, right or wrong, and she had long ago given up trying to change him. But on the other hand, she didn’t have to aid and abet him, did she?

He smiled at her and said in gently cajoling tones, “So will you please make an effort to see Esther Jones and find out whatever you can?”

She sighed. The answer to the question she’d just asked herself was yes, she did, at least in this instance. “Very well,” she said. “But it will cost you.”

“Cost me?”

“Dinner at a restaurant of my choosing. Delmonico’s, perhaps.”

John winced — Delmonico’s was among the city’s most exclusive dining emporiums — but he knew better than to argue. “Anywhere you like, my dear. Your wish is my command.”

The gallantry was a trifle forced, but she appreciated it nonetheless.

Seventeen-ten Clay Street was a large two-story structure, once a private residence, now a middle-to-low-income boardinghouse. It was the sort of neighborhood Sabina had expected from the address, and justified her decision to remove the jeweled barrette from her upswept hair, her seed-pearl earrings, and her Charles Horner hatpin, and to don a less stylish cape, before leaving the agency. The decision was further justified by a ROOM TO LET sign on the front gate: it gave her just the right opening gambit for the ruse she intended to employ. Now if Mrs. Esther Jones was home and in a receptive mood...

She was. Sabina found her sweeping the floor in the front hallway, a thin middle-aged woman with sad eyes, careworn hands, and a lined and wrinkled face. A woman who had known considerable sorrow in what had not been an easy life, she judged.

“I’m Mrs. Jones, the landlady. What can I do for you, miss?”

“I saw your sign,” Sabina said, smiling. “How large is the room being let?”

“Good-sized. Second-floor rear, overlooks a bit of a garden. Nice and airy.”

“And how much are you asking?”

“Twenty-five dollars a month.”

“Mmm. I’m not sure I can afford that much just now...”

“Breakfast included.”

“Well... may I see it?”

“Take you right up.”

Sabina followed Mrs. Jones up the uncarpeted stairs, down a bisecting hallway to a door bearing the numeral 3. The room was more or less as the woman had described it, functionally and somewhat skimpily furnished, spotlessly clean. Esther Jones was a punctilious housekeeper.

Time for the ruse. Sabina felt a pang of regret at the need for deception — she disliked lying, especially to honest, hardworking individuals who had already suffered hardships — but if the woman’s son was involved with the counterfeiting ring as John believed, it was in a just cause.

“It’s a nice room,” she said. “That wall there would be perfect for my books. That is, if you have no objection to bookcases being brought in.”

“Well... how many bookcases?”

“Two or three, depending on the exact measurements.”

“You must have a lot of books, miss.”

“Yes, I do. I’m employed in a secondhand bookshop downtown, you see, and my employer lets me have unsold volumes either free or at nominal prices. Nothing rare or valuable, of course.”

“He must be a good man to work for.”

“He is. Have you many books yourself, Mrs. Jones?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m not much of a reader.”

“The reason I asked,” Sabina said, “is that my employer is always in the market for new acquisitions. I thought that perhaps you might have some for sale.” She feigned a self-deprecating smile. “I sometimes act as a scout for him, for a small stipend to supplement my salary.”

Mrs. Jones brushed at a loose strand of graying hair. “What kind of books is he interested in?”

“Oh, all kinds, especially rare volumes and sets. Do you have any you’d be willing to sell?”

“Well... a trunkful my sister had come to me a while back.”

“Really? I wish I had a relative who was that thoughtful.”

“Wasn’t a matter of being thoughtful. She died three months ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, she was in poor health for some time. A widow like me, didn’t have much. Put in her will that I was to have the family mementos she’d stored up, photographs and such and our pa’s old books.”

“Did she live in this area?”

“No. Up north.”

“The Pacific Northwest, by any chance? I have a relative in Seattle.”

“That so? Seattle’s where Maureen lived.”

“Small world,” Sabina said through her fixed smile. “May I ask what business her husband was in?”

Wrong question, too personal. Esther Jones’s face closed up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Sabina said. “I guess I’m just a nosey parker.”

One thin shoulder lifted, dropped. “No offense. You want to look at the books? I doubt they’re worth much.”

“They may be, one can never tell.”

“They’re down in the basement.”

A flight of stairs led from the ground floor into a musty, gaslit basement dominated by an old coal-burning furnace. At one end was a wire-fenced storage area — four separate units with padlocked doors, one each for Mrs. Jones and her tenants. The largest of them, which she proceeded to unlock, contained a jumble of items, one of which was an old, battered, brassbound trunk set atop a rickety table.

“Books’re in there,” Mrs. Jones said. “Didn’t see any reason for my son to take ’em out.”

“Oh, your son lives here with you?”

A tic fluttered the woman’s left eye. “No, he don’t. Not anymore.”

Sabina said brightly, “I hope he didn’t move too far away.”

“Why would you hope that?”

“Why, for your sake, Mrs. Jones. Mothers always like to have their children close by. Mine certainly did.”

“He’s got his own life to live,” the woman said with more than a trace of bitterness. “Go on in, miss. Trunk’s not locked.”

The subject of the son was now closed as well; any more questions would only arouse suspicion. Sabina stepped inside and bent to the trunk.

A large label on its top confirmed that it had been shipped from Seattle. It provided the name and address of the drayage firm, and was stamped with the date of shipment, slightly more than three months ago. She committed the information to memory as she lifted the trunk’s lid.

The books were in a haphazard jumble, as if they had been taken out and then tossed back by the handful. Dinger Jones’s doing. No reputable drayage firm would pack in such a careless fashion. Sabina removed them a few at a time, some threescore in total. There was nothing else in the trunk.

“Worth anything?” Mrs. Jones asked.

Sabina was hardly an expert, but she knew books well enough to judge that this lot was composed entirely of inexpensive editions of populist fiction and nonfiction. Her feelings about this were mixed. The books’ relative worthlessness made it unnecessary to keep up the pretense of interest in them and relieved her of any further responsibility, but she also felt sorry that Esther Jones would receive no money for them. If they had had value, she would have felt obligated to notify a reputable secondhand book dealer on the woman’s behalf.

She said truthfully, “I’m afraid not.”

“Figured as much. Walter said they were just junk.”

“Walter?”

The question earned Sabina nothing but a headshake.

She returned the books to the trunk, stacking them neatly. When she was finished, Mrs. Jones relocked the wire door and led the way upstairs. In the foyer she said, “About the room, miss. Yours if you want it.”

“I do like it, but... I have to make sure I can afford the rent before I decide.”

“Don’t take too long. There’s other interest.”

Which, if true, was a salve on Sabina’s conscience. She said, “Thank you for showing it to me, Mrs. Jones, and for allowing me to look through your books. I really am sorry they’re not valuable.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t expect any different.”

When Sabina stepped off the trolley on Market Street, she went straight to Western Union where she composed a wire to the Pinkerton office in Seattle. She included the information she’d gleaned from the trunk label, and requested that at the expense of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, an operative be directed to trace the shipper and determine the name of Esther Jones’s deceased sister. She also requested background data on the sister and her family, in particular any known or suspected criminal activity.

John was at his desk when she entered the agency. What she’d learned from Mrs. Jones satisfied him, though he would have been more pleased if she had managed to uncover a lead to Dinger’s whereabouts. Fortunately for him, he didn’t say so. He praised the cleverness of her book ruse, but he was less enthusiastic when she told him of her request to the Seattle Pinkerton office.

“An operative on the task full-time will cost us dearly,” he said, “and with no chance of reimbursement from the government.”

“We can afford it. And it was the only way to find out what you need to know. Of course, I can wire a cancellation if you’d rather turn the matter over to Mr. Boggs.”

“No, no. I don’t want to burden him with what may turn out to be a false lead.”

“But you don’t think it will be. Nor do I. The fact that Seattle was the trunk’s origin indicates it contained more than just old books and family mementos.”

He admitted that it was likely. His stubborn determination to be the one to track down Dinger Jones and Paddy Lasher remained undaunted. Like a bloodhound on the scent, he refused to give up the chase until his quarry was tracked down — an admirable quality in a detective when it wasn’t carried to extremes.

“Was Long Nick Darrow married?” Sabina asked.

“No. At least, not that I was able to determine during my investigation. Were you thinking that Esther Jones’s sister was Darrow’s widow?”

“The possibility occurred to me. Assuming, of course, that Darrow did in fact die that night ten years ago.”

“Even if he didn’t, what possible connection could he have had with the married sister?”

“An illicit affair?”

“Unlikely,” John said. “He was a loner as well as a villainous cuss, and evidently confined his interest in women to prostitutes. I find it hard to believe he would have entrusted anything to any woman, much less material related to his coney racket.”

“If the sister did have such material in her possession, she may not have known she had it.”

“Hidden in her belongings without her knowledge? Possibly. But not by Darrow, I’ll warrant.”

“A confederate of his, then? He did have confederates?”

“Yes, several. All now either dead or in prison.”

“One could have filched some of the counterfeit bills,” Sabina pointed out, “and a cache of them what Dinger found.”

“True enough, but as I told you earlier, the queer being passed now is not the same as the ones manufactured by Darrow’s gang.”

“Could the new bogus notes have been made using his old ones as a prototype?”

“It’s possible to copy Darrow’s method of bill-splitting,” John said, “but in order to produce such certificates as the one Mr. Boggs showed me, a new set of plates would be needed.”

“Could duplicates be made from the plates Darrow used?”

“Yes, if the engraver was skilled enough. But as I also told you, those plates were destroyed in the fire.”

“Are you absolutely sure of that?”

“The printing press and a stack of counterfeit notes were in plain sight in the warehouse when the other agents and I entered. So was Thomas Cooley, the engraver who made the plates, so they must have been there, too. Darrow wouldn’t have let them out of his sight.”

“What happened to Cooley?”

“Killed in the raid, by one of the other agents’ bullets.”

Sabina spread her hands, palms up. “Well, then, what could have been tucked away in the trunk that Dinger found and that led to the current counterfeiting operation?”

Rhetorical question. John wagged his head, fluffed his beard.

“The Pinkerton report may provide a clue,” she said. “But if it doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll pry the answer from Dinger. Or Paddy Lasher.”

“If you can find them.”

“I’ll find them,” he vowed. “One way or another.”