The Flimflam Affair

25 Quincannon

The building on the corner of Twenty-fourth and Church Streets was a low rectangle of pocked, weathered red brick. Electric light showed behind a plate-glass window next to the front entrance on Twenty-fourth; painted on the glass were the words JOB PRINTING, with no mention of the proprietor’s name. A glance through the window showed no one visible either in front or behind a bisecting counter. From somewhere toward the rear of the building Quincannon heard a steady percussive sound — part metallic thud and part hiss-and-hum. Unmistakably the sound of a printing press in operation.

Adjacent to the building on that side was an awning maker’s establishment, an alleyway separating the two businesses. He strolled to the corner and turned it to reconnoiter the Church Street side. A dispenser of paints and varnishes was the print shop’s neighbor there, but there was no passageway between the two shops.

Quincannon went back around to Twenty-fourth, crossed the moderately busy street. He stood leaning against a lamppost, pretending to pack his pipe while he debated.

Walk in through the front door as if he were a customer? No. He had no guarantee that Otto Appleby was alone in the shop, and even if that were the case, he would have to put Appleby under the gun in order to gain access to the printing plant at the rear. Someone might enter unexpectedly, or a passerby spy him and his weapon through the window and run for the police. A stealthy approach from the rear was a safer option, one that gave him the element of surprise if he were able to achieve admittance that way.

He recrossed the street. When the sidewalks on both sides were free of pedestrian traffic, he stepped into the alley and followed it to where it emerged into a courtyard just large enough to accommodate a delivery wagon. He listened at a stout rear door recessed into the brick, again heard the thud-and-hiss muted by the thickness of the wall. Inside, he judged, the noise would be loud enough so that whoever was operating the printing press would be unable to hear much of anything else. Pounding on the door to gain the printer’s attention was not an option.

His expectation was that it would be securely locked, necessitating the use once more of his trusty set of picks. It might even be barred within, in which case he would have no choice but to enter through the front. But when he pressed down on the latch, the bolt released with a minimum amount of pressure. A dark smile bent the corners of his mouth. Appleby’s carelessness made his task that much easier.

Quincannon eased the door open and it swung inward. Any sound it made was lost in the pounding beat of the press. He widened the opening enough for daylight to penetrate the darkened space inside. Storage room. Cartons of paper, tins of ink, and other material of the job-printing trade were stacked along the walls, the middle of the room free of obstacles between the outer door and a closed inner one.

When he shut himself inside, he was enveloped by thick darkness broken only by a thin rind of light showing beneath the inner door. The distance across to it was a dozen or so paces; he took them carefully, heel to toe, the light strip guiding him. As soon as his extended hands touched the door, he unholstered the Navy.

This latch gave as easily to a downward tug as the outer one had. Quincannon inched the door free of its jamb. The machinery noise, then, was almost deafening. When he laid an eye to the opening, he was looking into a large, open room lit by electric ceiling bulbs. No wonder the new batch of bogus hundred-dollar certificates were of such high quality: the printing press was not one of the old-fashioned single-plate, hand-roller types, but rather a small steam-powered Milligan that would perform the printing, inking, and wiping simultaneously through the continuous movement of four plates around a square frame. Along with its accessories — bundles of paper, tins of ink, a long workbench laden with tools and chemicals — the press took up most of the far half of the room.

The man operating it was middle-aged, squat and sallow-faced, wearing a green eyeshade and a leather apron. Quincannon opened the door a little wider, until the entire room was within the range of his vision. The pressman was its only occupant.

With a clank and a hiss, the Milligan press shut down. The silence that followed the racket was acute. The printer removed what was obviously a batch of finished counterfeit bills from the feeder tray, and when he turned to set them on the workbench, Quincannon stepped through the door with the Navy raised and called out loudly, “Otto Appleby!”

The squat man jumped as if goosed, spun around. The sight of a large, piratically bearded stranger leveling a pistol at him twisted his features into an expression of terrified disbelief.

“Stand fast, Appleby. Hands high.”

Appleby flung his hands up with enough force to have wrenched his arms from their sockets. Unlike his half brother, he was no ruffian ready to offer fight or resistance. A mouselike squeak came out of his open mouth, followed by tremulous words.

“Police? You’re the police?”

“Worse than that for you. A representative of the United States Secret Service.”

Appleby’s sallow features lost all color. “I knew it,” he moaned, “I knew we’d never get away with a scheme like this. But he didn’t give me any choice, he just showed up one day and demanded that I... oh, God, I shouldn’t have let him bully me into doing it.”

Some bunch of crooks these birds were, Quincannon thought disgustedly. A half-wit, a sniveling coward, and a sailor’s bane turned thief and purveyor of stolen goods. Bah. Their blasted coney racket had been doomed to failure from the start.

He motioned with the Navy. “Stand away from the bench.”

Appleby obeyed, his movements as shaky as his voice and his upthrust hands. Quincannon crossed to the bench, picked up one of the counterfeit notes, held it up to the light.

“Tolerably good work,” he said. “How did you manage such accomplished bleaching and bill-splitting?”

“The other bills, they showed me how.”

“What other bills?”

“The old ones he gave me.”

“Paddy gave you — Paddy Lasher, your half brother.”

Convulsive head bob. And another self-pitying moan.

“Counterfeits. Made from old-fashioned engraved zinc plates.”

“Yes.”

“How many were there?”

“Not many. Half dozen.”

There was no need to ask where Lasher had gotten the bogus notes. Dinger Jones must have found a small cache of them in the trunk along with the anastatic plates. That explained how Appleby had been able to manufacture counterfeits approximating the quality of Long Nick Darrow’s: he had simply studied the original plates and used them as a model for his new set. A talented printer and forger in his own right, to his everlasting sorrow.

Quincannon said, “How many new bills have you made?”

“Only... only a few hundred.”

“Where are the rest?”

“In that carton there on the floor.”

“Paddy must have taken some with him for his rendezvous in Oakland. A bundle or a just a few samples?”

Appleby squeezed his eyes shut before saying, “Christ, you know about that, too.”

“A bundle or a sample?” Quincannon repeated.

“Sample.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“No particular time. He wasn’t sure how long the meeting would take.”

“But he will be coming here?”

“I think so. Do you—”

“Intend to wait for him? That remains to be determined. Who has charge of the genuine cash accumulated from passage of the counterfeits? Paddy?”

“No. He left it with me.”

“Trusting soul, eh? Where is it?”

“The safe in my office.”

“Does Paddy have the combination?”

“Yes. Just him and me.”

“Let’s have a look.”

The office was a boxlike enclosure sandwiched between the printing room and the customers’ section. Appleby knelt before the safe, an old black Mosler, Bahmann, and fumbled shakily with the combination lock. It took him several tries to get the door open.

The spoils were a mix of stacked greenbacks and bagged gold eagles and double eagles. A fair lot of both — enough to tell Quincannon that there were quite a few more bogus notes in circulation than Mr. Boggs’s estimate.

“How much is here, Otto?”

“I... I’m not sure,” Appleby said.

“Yes you are. Paddy would have kept tabs and so would you. How much?”

“Almost eight thousand.”

“And your share? One-third?”

Appleby’s eyes glittered briefly, a residue of greed. “More,” he said. “An even split with Paddy.”

“What about Dinger Jones?”

“A smaller share. Twenty percent. He... he didn’t like it, but he’s afraid of Paddy.”

So was Appleby. Fear of his bullying half brother as much as the lure of illicit riches was what had toppled him from the straight and narrow.

Quincannon ordered him to close the safe and then to change the combination, a precaution against Lasher getting his hands on the loot before Mr. Boggs’s operatives could confiscate it. That done, he herded Appleby back into the printing room.

There was a pair of ink-stained gloves on the workbench. Quincannon holstered his weapon — Appleby was no threat to attack or flee — and picked up and donned the gloves. Then he backed away to the Milligan press, located and detached the new set of counterfeit plates. Back by the bench, he found a piece of burlap sacking in a waste barrel and wrapped the plates in it. He slid them into his coat pocket, then removed the gloves.

“The zinc plates,” he said then. “Where are they?”

“I destroyed them. He told me to.”

“And the old counterfeit notes?”

“Those, too.”

“Well and good. Now then, we—”

Quincannon broke off because Appleby’s gaze shifted away from him, eyes widening, jaw hinging open. That was enough to alert him. He was pivoting, reaching again for the Navy, even before he heard the scrape of a boot sole on the linoleum floor.

He had a swift glimpse of the thick-mustached, black-suited brute who had emerged from the front part of the shop, the leveled pistol in his hand thrust forward at arm’s length. Quincannon was starting to crouch and dodge, his own pistol only halfway free of the holster, when Paddy Lasher fired.

The bullet brought a sharp cut of pain as it slashed close along the side of Quincannon’s head. Appleby shouted something that was lost in the roar of a second shot. That one missed entirely, for Quincannon had thrown himself to the floor. He landed on his left shoulder and rolled, clearing and lifting the Navy, as Lasher’s pistol cracked for the third and last time, his aim once again poor.

Quincannon’s aim was far better. The Navy bucked twice and both rounds found their mark. Blossoms of blood appeared on the front of Lasher’s vest; he staggered, fell hard enough to his knees to jar the weapon from his clutch, and toppled forward on his face.

Appleby ran to his half brother’s side, leaned down as if to touch him, then quickly pulled his hand back. His face was ashen now. “You killed him,” he said, but the words were without emotion of any kind.

Quincannon slowly picked himself up. He was aware of warm wetness on the side of his head and neck, of throbbing pain in the vicinity of his left ear, but his first thought was of Lasher and Lasher’s pistol. He went to gather and then pocket the weapon. Lasher still hadn’t moved; his head was turned just enough so that one staring eyeball was visible. Dead, right enough.

Appleby continued to stare down at the corpse. He said dully, “He must have come in while we were in the office and heard us talking. He always did walk soft.”

Quincannon only half heard him. Fired upon twice in the space of a single week, he was thinking, one would-be assassin wounded and one dead in retaliation. Two close calls, this one very close. Too damned close. He reached up an exploring hand, felt the sticky wetness of blood matting his beard and trickling down his neck into his shirt collar. His fingers traced a furrow of burned and bloody flesh along the hairline. Wincing, he touched the ear — and a small, cold tremor passed through him.

The earlobe was missing. Lasher’s first bullet had torn it off.

He fished out his handkerchief, pressed it tight to stanch some of the blood flow. “Appleby,” he said. “Appleby!”

The printer blinked, turned his head, blinked again. “You’re bleeding.”

“That’s right, blast you. Do you keep any medical supplies here? Carbolic acid, iodoform, bandages?”

“It looks as though you need a doctor—”

“Medical supplies! Yes or no?”

“Yes. For emergencies—”

“What the devil do you suppose this is. Where are the supplies?”

They were in a small room opposite the office containing a cot and other furnishings; evidently Appleby lived as well as worked on the premises. Quincannon dampened a large ball of cotton with carbolic acid. When he applied it to the wounds, he was forced to bite down hard to keep a pain-cry locked in his throat. Another soaked cotton ball, a gauze pad, and strips of adhesive tape made a temporary makeshift bandage.

“Where is the nearest doctor?” he demanded then.

“Two blocks from here.”

“Good. Take me there. Don’t try to run away — you’ll regret it if you do. And don’t say a word to the doctor when we get there. I’ll do the talking.”

“What about Paddy?”

“He’s not going anywhere,” Quincannon growled. “We are. First to the doctor’s office, then to the U.S. Mint. Now move!”