1968 - An Ear to the Ground

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

An Ear to the Ground

James Hadley Chase

Copyright © 1968

One

I
heard this story from Al Barney, a beer-sodden beachcomber who haunts the waterfront of Paradise City, always on the lookout for a sucker to buy him a beer.

At one time, so I was told, Al Barney was the best skin diver on the coast. He had picked up a lot of money teaching diving, spearing sharks and laying the wives of the rich tourists who infest this coast in the season. But the beer rained him.

Al was an enormous man, weighing around three hundred and fifty pounds with a beer belly on him that rested like a balloon on his knees when he sat down. He was around sixty-three years of age, burned mahogany brown by years in the sun, balding, with an egg-shaped head, steely, small green eyes, a mouth that reminded me of a Red Snapper and a flat nose that spread half over his face from a punch he had had — so he told me — from an unreasonable husband who had caught him in the hay with his wife.

I had written a novel that had clicked lucky, and I had now enough spending money to escape the cold in New York, so I had come down to Paradise City which is on the Florida coast, knowing I could well afford to spend a month there before I got back to more work. I checked in at the Spanish Bay Hotel: probably the best and most deluxe of all the hotels in Florida. It only catered for fifty guests and offered a service that fully justified the cost of the final tab.

Jean Dulac, the manager of the hotel, a tall handsome man with impeccable manners and the polished charm that is unique to the French, had read my book. It had made a hit with him, and one evening as I was sitting on the floodlit terrace after one of those magnificent meals the Spanish Bay Hotel always provided, Dulac joined me.

He told me about Al Barney.

Smiling, he said, ‘He’s our very special local character. He knows everyone, knows everything about this City. It might amuse you to talk to him. If you are looking for material, you’ll certainly get something from him.’

After a week of swimming, eating too much, lazing in the sun and fooling around with a number of girls with beautiful bodies but no minds, I remembered what Dulac had told me about Al Barney. Sooner or later, I would have to get down to another book. I had no ideas, so I drove over to the Neptune Tavern on the oily waterfront where the sponge fishing boats docked and found Barney.

He was sitting outside the Neptune Tavern on a bollard, a can of beer in his hand, staring moodily at the boats as they came and went.

I introduced myself, telling him that Dulac had mentioned his name.

‘Mr. Dulac? Yeah . . . a gentleman. Glad to meet you.’ He extended a big grimy paw that was as soft and as yielding as a steel hawser. ‘So you’re a writer?’

I said I was.

He finished the can of beer, then tossed it into the harbour.

‘Let’s go get us a drink,’ he said and heaved his enormous bulk off the bollard. He led me across the quay and into the gloomy, dirty Neptune Tavern. A coloured barman grinned at him as we came in, his eyes sparkling. I could see from his expression that he knew Al had landed yet another sucker.

We drank and talked of this and that, then after his third beer, Al said, ‘Would you be looking for a story, mister?’

‘I’m always looking for a story.’

‘Do you want to hear about the Esmaldi diamonds?’ Al peered hopefully at me.

‘I’ll listen,’ I said. ‘What have I to lose?’

Al smiled. He had an odd smile. The small Red Snapper mouth curved up. He looked as if he were smiling, but when I looked into the small green eyes, there was no smile there.

‘I’m like a beat up old Ford,’ he said. ‘I go five miles to the gallon.’ He looked at his empty glass. ‘Keep me filled up, and I go like a bird.’

I went over to the grinning barman and got that problem straightened out. Al talked for four solid hours. Every time his glass was empty, the barman came over with a refill. I’ve seen drinking in my time, but nothing to match this.

‘I’ve been around this little City now for fifty years,’ Al said, staring at the beer in his glass with its white frothy head.

‘I’m a guy with his ear to the ground. I listen. I get told. I put two and two together. I’ve got contacts with the cops, the newspapers, the guys who know all the dirt. . . they talk to me.’ He took a long drink of beer and belched gently. ‘You understand? I know the stoolies, the jail birds, the whores, the black boys who are always invisible, but who have ears. I listen. You get the photo, mister? A guy with his ear to the ground.’

I said I got it and what was all this about the Esmaldi diamonds?

Al put his hand under his dirty sweat shirt and scratched his enormous paunch. He finished his beer, then looked at the barman who grinned happily and came over to supply the refill. These two worked together like a piston and rod.

‘The Esmaldi diamonds? You want to hear about them?’

‘Why not?’

He regarded me, his little green eyes flinty.

‘You could turn it into a story?’

‘I don’t know. . . I could . . . how can I say without hearing about it?’

He nodded his bald, egg-shaped head.

‘Yeah. Well, if you want to hear about it, it’ll take time, and although you might not believe it, mister, time is money to me.’

I had been warned by Dulac about this very thing, so I nodded.

‘That’s okay.’

I took from my pocket two twenty dollar bills and handed them to him. He examined the bills, heaved a great sigh that raised his belly half off his knees, then put the bills carefully away in his trousers pocket.

‘And beer?’

‘All the beer you want.’

‘A little food too?’

‘Yes.’

For the first time since I had been with him, his smile seemed genuine.

‘Well then, mister.’ He paused to gulp more beer. ‘This is the way it was . . . the Esmaldi diamonds . . . it happened two years ago.’ He rubbed his flat, broken nose as he thought, then he went on, ‘I got all this dope from the cops and from my contacts . . . you understand? I’m a guy with an ear to the ground. Some of it. . . not much . . . is guess work . . .putting two and two together, but most of it is fact. It began in Miami.’

Abe Schulman, so Al Barney told me, was the biggest fence in Florida. He had been in the business for some twenty years, and it was quite a business.

***

When the rich arrived on the Florida coast with their wives, their mistresses and their molls, their women had to be smothered in jewels — a status symbol. If you hadn’t diamond necklaces, emerald and ruby brooches with earrings to match and jewel studded bracelets up your fat arms, you were looked upon as white trash. So the jewel thieves from all over descended on the Florida coast like a swarm of wasps, their skillful fingers collecting a harvest. But jewels were no use to them . . . they wanted cash and here was where Abe Schulman came in.

He dwelt behind a glass door on which was a legend that read in tarnished gold letters:

DELANO DIAMOND MERCHANTS

Miami — New York — Amsterdam

President: Abe Schulman

It was true that Abe did have minor connections with Amsterdam. From time to time he made some kind of deal with certain Dutch diamond merchants: enough to justify a small income tax return and to explain why he dwelt in a tiny, shabby office on the sixteenth floor of a block overlooking Biscayne Bay.

But the real guts of his business was handling hot jewels, and in this he did extremely well, stashing away the cash — it always had to be cash — in various safe deposits in Miami, New York and Los Angeles.

When one of his contacts brought him some loot, Abe was able to say exactly how much this loot was worth. He would then pay one quarter of his evaluation. He would then remove the stones from their settings and walk the stones around to one of the many jewellers who he knew didn’t ask questions and sold the stones for half their market price. In this way, working steadily now for the last twenty years, Abe had accumulated a considerable fortune: enough for him to retire on happily, but Abe just couldn’t resist a bargain. He had to keep on, although he knew he was always taking a risk and the police could descend on him at any minute. But it now had become a compulsive thing with him: something he not only enjoyed, but which gave him the incentive to live.

Abe was a short, roly-poly man with hair growing out of his ears, his nose and from his shirt collar. Little clumps of black hair grew on the backs of his small, fat fingers so when he moved his hand on his desk, you had the impression of a tarantula spider coming towards you.

On a hot sunny day in May, just two years ago, Al Barney told me, Abe was sitting at his shabby desk, a dead cigar clamped between his sharp little teeth, regarding Colonel Henry Shelley with a watchful, blank expression that told anyone who knew Abe he was ready to listen, but not to believe.

Colonel Henry Shelley looked like one of those old, refined Kentucky aristocrats who own acres of land and a number of racehorses, who spend their lives either at every race meeting or sitting on their Colonial porches watching their faithful darkies doing the work. He was tall and lean with a mass of white hair, worn a little long, a straggly white moustache, a parchment yellow skin, deepset, shrewd grey eyes and a long, beaky nose. He wore a cream lightweight suit, a string tie and a ruffled shirt. His narrow trousers ended in soft Mexican boots. Looking at him, Abe had to grin with admiration. It was a beautiful performance, he told himself. He couldn’t fault it. Here, before him, seemed a man of considerable substance and culture: a refined, worldly old man who anyone would be proud to entertain in their rich homes.

Colonel Henry Shelley — that, of course, wasn’t his real name — was one of the smoothest and smartest con men in the business. He had spent fifteen years of his sixty-eight years behind bars. He had made a lot of money and had lost a lot of money. The names of the rich who he had swindled read like a Society Blue book. Shelley was an artist, but he was also improvident. Money slid through his old, aristocratic fingers like water.

Abe was saying, ‘I’ve got the guy you’ve been looking for, Henry. It’s taken time. It hasn’t been easy. If he doesn’t satisfy you, we’re in trouble. There isn’t anyone I can find better.’

Henry Shelley touched off the ash of his cigar into Abe’s ashtray.

‘You know what we want, Abe. If you think he’s right, then I guess he will be right. Tell me about him.’

Abe sighed.

‘If you knew the trouble I’ve had finding him,’ he said. ‘The time I’ve wasted on useless punks . . . the telephone calls . . .’

‘I can imagine. Tell me about him.’

‘His name is Johnny Robins,’ Abe said. ‘Good appearance. Age twenty-six. At the age of fifteen, he worked for the Rayson Lock Corporation. He worked there for five years. There is nothing he doesn’t know about safes, locks and combinations.’ Abe jerked his thumb at the big wall safe behind him. I thought that was pretty good, but he opened it in four minutes flat. . . I timed him.’ Abe grinned at Shelley. I don’t keep anything in it, otherwise I wouldn’t be sleeping so well. He left Rayson and became a racing driver . . . he’s crazy about speed. You’d better know right away that Johnny is a little tricky. He has a quick temper. There was trouble on the race track and he got fired.’ Abe shrugged his fat shoulders. ‘He busted someone’s jaw . . . could happen to anyone, but this guy who got busted happened to be the top shot on the track, so Johnny got the heave-ho. He then got a job at a garage, but the boss’s wife got hot pants for him, so that didn’t last long. The boss caught them at it and Johnny busted his nose.’ Abe chuckled. ‘Johnny sure is a mean hitter. Anyway, the boss called the cops and Johnny busted one of them before the other busted him. He spent three months in a hick jail. He told me he could have walked out any time he wanted. The locks were that simple, but he liked the company. Besides, he didn’t want to embarrass the warden who he got along with, so he stayed. Now, he is rearing to go. He’s young, tough, good-looking and a beautiful baby with locks. How does it sound?’

Shelley nodded.

‘Sounds right to me, Abe. You told him anything about our set-up?’

‘Only that there’s big money in it,’ Abe said, walking his fat, hairy fingers along the edge of his desk. ‘He’s interested in big money’

‘Who isn’t?’ Shelley stubbed out his cigar. ‘Well, I’d better talk to him.’

‘He’s at the Seaview Hotel, waiting for you.’

‘He’s registered there as Robins?’

‘That’s right.’ Abe looked up at the ceiling, then asked, ‘How’s Martha?’

‘Not as happy as she could be.’ Shelley took out a white silk handkerchief and touched his temples with it. It was a trick Abe admired: it showed class.

‘What’s biting her then?’

‘She’s not happy about the cut, Abe.’

Abe’s fat face tightened.