The Naked Typist

10

Mark Taylor was on the phone when Steve Winslow and Tracy Garvin walked into his office late that afternoon. He grunted acknowledgment, motioned them to sit down and kept on talking. The conversation was unilluminating as far as they were concerned. It consisted of Taylor grunting, “Uh huh,” and scribbling notes on a pad. Finally he hung up.

“Okay. Thanks for coming up,” Taylor said. “I can’t leave here ’cause I got stuff coming in all the time.”

“On my case?” Steve asked.

“Sure. I got eight operatives out now.”

“Eight?”

“Sure. You said I got a free hand, so I’m using it. I got people going over newspaper files, I got people digging into Castleton Industries, I even got an operative primed for personal contact.”

“With whom?”

“I got a girl’s gonna make a play for David Castleton.”

“Oh yeah? They make contact yet?”

Taylor shook his head. “Too early. What time is it, five o’clock? No, she’s in place to pick him up when he leaves work. Which should be any time now.”

The phone rang. Taylor scooped it up, grunted a few times, scribbled a few notes and hung up.

“See,” Taylor said. “It’s been like this all afternoon. Little dribs and drabs. But it adds up to a lot of dope. Not that it’s gonna do you any good. As far as finding your client, I mean. But aside from that you should love it.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, this Castleton’s a character. Milton Castleton, I mean. The girl’s typin’ his memoirs, it’s gotta be one hell of a book.” Taylor flipped the pages of his notebook. “Milton Castleton, self-made man. Naturally. Born in Brooklyn in 1912 of poor but honest immigrants. Father ran a fruit stand. Mother took in wash. Fourth of five children. Never finished high school. Dropped out and joined the army. Got out just in time to get hit by the Depression.”

Taylor shrugged and smiled. “Which is when he came into his own. Wouldn’t you know it. Whole country’s going bust except for Milton Castleton. Sets himself up in business as guess what?”

“What?”

“Shoe-shine boy. Don’t you love it? Whole world’s gone bust, no one can afford a quart of milk, people really gonna waste their money on a shoe shine. But Milton Castleton takes the money he saved up serving his stint in the army and opens a hole-in-the-wall-shoe-shine parlor on Flatbush Avenue. By rights he should go bust, right?”

“Right.”

“Wrong. He prospers. The whole world goes in the toilet and Milton Castleton cleans up.”

“Shining shoes?”

“No. I would imagine that wasn’t so prosperous. But Milton Castleton had a sideline.”

“What’s that?”

“Bathtub gin.”

Steve stared at him. “You’re saying he was in the mob?”

Taylor shook his head. “No. That’s the remarkable thing. He wasn’t. He was totally independent.”

“No shit. How the hell’d he do that? You move into that territory, you’re just asking for it.”

Taylor shrugged. “Apparently Milton Castleton could walk on water. He was smart, he didn’t make waves, he didn’t step on anybody’s toes. Plus he was protected. If there were problems, they were on a lower level. It never got up to him.”

“Jesus Christ. How long did he get away with it?”

“Till repeal. Which, of course, was the end. That’s when the mob had to diversify, get into other things. Gambling had always been big, and drugs were the coming thing. A lot of bootleggers started leaning that way.

“But not Castleton. ’Cause all through the Depression he’d been using the money he’d been making to snap up real estate at bargain-basement prices. Now, with the economy slowly beginning to recover, he was able to rent out space to businesses- Castleton Realty. Also to start a few small businesses on his own-Castleton Manufacturing.

“At the same time he’d been dabbling in the stock market. He had a genius for it. He was making money hand over fist. So much so, people were noticing. People started coming to him for advice, which he was only too happy to give. As long as they wanted to join the fold-Castleton Investments and Securities.

“By the time World War Two came, Castleton had a lot of real estate, a lot of manufacturing companies, and a lot of friends in high places, and guess who wound up with a whole bunch of lucrative defense contracts?”

Taylor shrugged. “It goes on and on. Castleton Industries just kept growing, gobbling up property and business. Mergers, buyouts, hostile takeovers, what have you.”

Taylor turned the page. “Now, here’s where we gotta talk. You told me I got a free hand. That’s fine, but let’s get serious here. A preliminary look into Castleton Industries tells me I could investigate it till doomsday. He’s been pulling shit for nearly sixty years. That fifty-thousand dollar settlement’s nothing. I could use up your share and your client’s share, and never even scratch the surface. I figure what you want is whatever’s most recent, so that’s what I’m looking into. I’ll give you what I got.

“Four years ago you got a hostile takeover of Fielding Tool and Die. Castleton bought up a controlling interest in the stock, then liquidated the company, took a tax loss and is using the shell of it for one of his other ventures. Fine on paper. In practice, it put ten thousand employees out of work. That’s just one instance, one of the more recent. If you’re looking for people with a grudge against Milton Castleton, you’d have to rent a football stadium to seat ’em.

“Three years back there was a scandal at Castleton Investments and Securities. Insider trading. Two vice presidents actually indicted. Nothing was proved, and the charges were eventually dropped. Both guys were promptly fired. Frank Heckstein and Alan Carr. Young men in their thirties, aggressive go-getters with a little too much initiative. Still, with the charges dropped, their dismissal has to be a kick in the teeth. I mean, what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“That doesn’t work with employers. What else?”

“Two years back you got another scandal. Castleton Investments and Securities. A mere matter of a hundred-and-some-odd-grand embezzlement. That time the charges weren’t dropped. The bookkeeper, one Herbert Clay, took the fall and is currently doing five to ten.”

“Anything to that?”

Taylor shook his head. “The guy may be sore, but he’s got no beef coming. He liked to play the ponies, apparently wasn’t too good at it. Typical embezzlement situation. Misappropriation of funds. Hands-on bookkeeper diverts money into his own pocket for gambling-no problem if he wins and can pay it back. Faced with an audit, he plunges, loses, and that’s all she wrote. Anyway the people who would have a beef would be the people who got ripped off, but Castleton made good on it, so that’s that.”

Taylor looked up from his notes. “Now, that’s just scratching the surface. There’s a lot more to get and I’m trying to get it, but I’m telling you, it’s gonna be overwhelming. Castleton was a ruthless businessman. There’s gonna be people he screwed on business deals, people he drove out of business, companies he bought and liquidated like this tool-and-die place, employees he fired and screwed over. A real mess. Anyway, I’m looking into it.

“Castleton retired two years ago, shortly after the embezzlement fiasco. That’s why it’s the last thing I dug up. Anything more recent would be while his son, Stanley Castleton, was in charge. Not that it necessarily makes a difference, but there you are. Anyway, in the last two years there’s been nothing significant enough to hit the papers. But, as I say, we’re still digging.”

Taylor ran his hand over his head. “And that’s just the business side.” He flipped through the notebook. “On the personal side, the guy’s been married four times. Two of the marriages ended in divorce. Two of his wives died.”

“Anything there?”

“Suspicious, you mean?” Taylor shook his head. “One was cancer. The other was a car accident.”

“The car accident sounds promising.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t. This was over thirty years ago. His third wife. A four-car pileup on the Major Deegan. Three people killed, she was one of them. Now, with a one car-accident you can say, sure, maybe someone tampered with the brakes or something. But a four-car pileup, you gotta figure it’s legit.”

“Yeah, I guess so. What else?”

“The four marriages produced one child. Stanley Castleton, currently running the company. That was with his second wife, Ellen. She’s still alive, by the way, living quite happily on her alimony, thank you very much. She’s ten years younger than Castleton, which makes her sixty-eight.

“The other wife still alive is wife number four.” Taylor grinned. “Betsy Ross, if you can believe that. She’s a lot younger than Castleton. Like forty years. She married him when he was sixty-four, stayed with him for two years and hit him up for a pocketful of change. All of which was spelled out in the prenuptial agreement, by the way. No illusions there. In her case, he didn’t buy, he leased. Anyway, she’s currently residing in California, where she calls herself an actress. She’s not getting any work, but with the terms of her settlement she doesn’t ever have to.

“Aside from the marriages, there were numerous affairs and assignations. All of which, I gather, were to be detailed in the memoirs your client was typing. Whether there’s anything in that, I don’t know.”

“I don’t, either, but it’s an interesting thought. Is that it?”

“That’s it so far. As I said, I’m still digging.”

“All right. What about my client?”

“A big zero. As expected, Kelly Blaine’s not her right name. Not unless she skipped some of the usual things people do, like getting a driver’s license, applying for a social security number or getting born.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, but it’s what we expected. Only hope I see is through the personal contact.”

“Which is happening now?”

Taylor looked at his watch. Shrugged. “Any time now.”