Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

My disguise I slipped in a handbag — a white beard, slouch hat, shabby coat. I took a heavy cane and locked the apartment. It was a cheap joint in a poor district, and the rent was paid. I wouldn’t be back.

Before I put on the disguise I took a cab to Moe Silverstein’s. Moe knew every crook in the game, never forgot a face or a gem and was the smoothest double-crosser in the business.

He looked up as I entered his room on the third floor of a smelly tenement. As soon as he saw me he began to rub his hands smoothly together, as though he were washing them in oil. He was fat, flabby, bald, and he stunk of garlic. His eyes were a liquid, limpid brown, wide, innocent, hurt. He had the stare of a dying deer and a heart of concrete.

“Mine friend, ah, yes, mine friend. It is so, mine friend, Ed Jenkins, the super-crook, the one who makes the police get gray hairs, and you have something for me, friend Jenkins? Some trinket? Some bauble? Yes?”

I drew up a chair and leaned forward, over the table, my face close to Moe’s, so close I could smell the gagging odor of the garlic, could see the little muscles that tightened about his eyes.

“A new crook, Moe — a girl with a mole on her left hand. She goes by the name of Maude Enders. Where can I find her?”

His eyes stayed wide, but it took a tightening of the muscles to do it. His hands stopped in their perpetual rubbing.

“For why?”

“Do you know the Weasel?”

His hands began to rub again.

“The Weasel is dead, and I remember no dead crooks. I can make no money from them. It is only the live ones who can make money for Moe Silverstein.”

I nodded.

“Yes, I know all of that; but the Weasel was at my apartment just before he was killed. He came to warn me of this girl with the mole, to tell me that she would trap me; and then he was killed with the words scarcely cold on his lips — killed by crooks who had followed him in a closed car.”

Again he raised his shoulders, ducked his neck and spread his palms.

“But he is dead.”

“Exactly, and the woman with the mole got acquainted with me, and through her I met the man who poses as the head of the new crime trust, the new mastermind of the tenderloin. He is fat with skin that does not move and has eyes that are like chunks of ice. I want to locate the woman with the mole, and, through her, her master.”

Moe stopped all motion. He became a frozen chunk of caution, poised, tense, thinking, pulled out from behind his mask.

“Why?”

“Because this man has some papers I want, papers he held out on me. I want to warn him that unless I get those papers he will die.”

Actually he shrunk away from me, drew back from the table.

“I know nothing of what you speak. There is no girl with a mole in the game. This talk of a new crime trust is police propaganda for more men. You are crazy, Ed — and soon you will be dead, and then I will have to forget you, to lose another fine prospect. You could deliver much to me if you wanted to work, Ed, but you just hang out on the fringes and meddle... I do not know of the people you mention, and soon you will be forgotten. Good-bye.”

As I went out of the door his hands had resumed their rubbing, but his eyes had slipped; they were two narrow slits through which there came stabbing gleams of cold light. I was satisfied.

I went down the steps, doubled back, slipped down the corridor, and hid in a closet, a tight, dark, nasty-smelling closet, and waited.

An hour passed, and then there came the sound of quick, positive steps, steps that pounded down the hall with a banging of the heels, steps that paused before Moe’s door.

Again I peeked.

This would probably be my man. He was broad-shouldered, red-faced, aggressive. A young fellow with lots of pep, quick, positive motions, an outthrust chin, coal-black eyes, latest model clothes and dark, bushy eyebrows. His hands were small, slight, dark, jeweled. His face was scraped, massaged, pink. There was a swagger about him, a bearing.

He vanished within the door, and Moe did not throw him out. There was the soft slur of Moe’s voice, the harsh bass of the visitor’s tones, and I slipped down the hall, down the stairs and out.

The sheik came out in about half an hour, looked cautiously around him, walked a block, rounded a corner and doubled abruptly back, crossed the street, waited a few minutes, and then went on about his business with no further worry about his back-track.

I followed him to the Brookfield Apartments, waited half an hour, picked him up again and followed him to the Mintner Arms, an exclusive bachelor apartment house where only men of the highest references were admitted.

Three hours later I figured he was bedded for the night, and went to a cheap hotel, adjusted my disguise in the washroom and got a room. At daylight I was back on the job in front of the Mintner Arms. My man came out at eight and went into a barber shop and got the works. At nine-thirty he took his complexion out into the open air and headed for the fashionable jewelry district.

I was at the counter in Redfern’s Jewel Shoppe looking at the most expensive stones in the case when he made his spiel to old man Redfern. Five caustic comments on stones handed me had ensured the respectful silence of the clerk who was showing me the stones, and I got most of the spiel.

The sheik introduced himself as Carl Schwartz, held out his hand, grasped Redfern’s and worked his arm up and down like a pump handle, reeling out his talk in the meantime. It sounded good.

He was the representative, the special solicitor, of the Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit, and they were putting on a great jewel exhibit. All of the leading stores were to be represented. Space was to be sold by the foot, the exhibitors furnishing their own clerks and their own guards. Ten policemen would be in constant charge of the crowd. Admission would be by invitation only. The Exhibit would arrange to have the invitations given to the most influential and wealthy society leaders. The Exhibit would furnish music, a free talk each day by an expert on the intrinsic value of gems, the best mountings, the methods of judging stones, the appropriate gems for each occasion, and give photographic lectures on the latest mountings from Europe. The Exhibit would furnish an armored car to take the gems and the guards from each store to the place of exhibit. The Exhibit would also furnish daily flowers for decorative purposes.

After that he let go of Redfern’s hand and produced a diagram of floor space. He was a glib talker, a convincing salesman, and Redfern was falling. The jewel business was pretty quiet, and an exhibit like that would go over big, provided they could get the society women to come, and bring their check books with them.

“Now, Mr. Redfern, I don’t want you to say no right now, and I don’t want you to say yes. I want you to think it over, to study the diagram, to look up my references. Then, if I can convince you that we will absolutely have the cream of the cream there on the opening day; if I can get one of the society leaders to act as hostess on the opening days; if I can convince you that your exhibit will sell over twenty thousand dollars gross the first day, then will you sign up? The space runs from one hundred dollars a day to three hundred, depending on location. The first day we’ll have the society leaders. We’ll get a big write-up. The next day we’ll let down the bars a bit, and finally we’ll let in the New-Rich, the splurgers, the spenders, who’ll come to get in on the social advertising, to get their pictures in the paper, and they’ll buy. That’ll be understood before they get the invitations.”

Redfern placed a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder.