If Tomorrow Comes (18 page)

It was not until the Amtrak train pulled out of Pennsylvania Station that Tracy began to relax. At every second she had expected a heavy hand to grip her shoulder, a voice to say, “You’re under arrest.”

She had carefully watched the other passengers as they boarded the train, and there was nothing alarming about them. Still, Tracy’s shoulders were knots of tension. She kept assuring herself that it was unlikely anyone would have discovered the burglary this soon, and even if they had, there was nothing to connect her with it. Conrad Morgan would be waiting in St. Louis with $25,000. Twenty-five thousand dollars to do with as she pleased! She would have had to work at the bank for a year to earn that much money.
I’ll travel to Europe
, Tracy thought.
Paris
. No. Not Paris.
Charles and I were going to honeymoon there. I’ll go to London. There, I won’t be a jailbird
. In a curious way, the experience she had just gone through had made Tracy feel like a different person. It was as though she had been reborn.

She locked the door to the compartment and took out the chamois bag and opened it. A cascade of glittering colors spilled
into her hands. There were three large diamond rings, an emerald pin, a sapphire bracelet, three pairs of earrings, and two necklaces, one of rubies, one of pearls.

There must be more than a million dollars’ worth of jewelry here
, Tracy marveled. As the train rolled through the countryside, she leaned back in her seat and replayed the evening in her mind. Renting the car…the drive to Sea Cliff…the stillness of the night…turning off the alarm and entering the house…opening the safe…the shock of the alarm going off, and the police appearing. It had never occurred to them that the woman in the nightgown with a mudpack on her face and a curler cap on her head was the burglar they were looking for.

Now, seated in her compartment on the train to St. Louis, Tracy allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. She had enjoyed outwitting the police. There was something wonderfully exhilarating about being on the edge of danger. She felt daring and clever and invincible. She felt absolutely great.

There was a knock at the door of her compartment. Tracy hastily put the jewels back into the chamois bag and placed the bag in her suitcase. She took out her train ticket and unlocked the compartment door for the conductor.

Two men in gray suits stood in the corridor. One appeared to be in his early thirties, the other one about ten years older. The younger man was attractive, with the build of an athlete. He had a strong chin, a small, neat mustache, and wore hornrimmed glasses behind which were intelligent blue eyes. The older man had a thick head of black hair and was heavy-set. His eyes were a cold brown.

“Can I help you?” Tracy asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the older man replied. He pulled out a wallet and held up an identification card:

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

“I’m Special Agent Dennis Trevor. This is Special Agent Thomas Bowers.”

Tracy’s mouth was suddenly dry. She forced a smile. “I—I’m afraid I don’t understand. Is something wrong?”

“I’m afraid there is, ma’am,” the younger agent said. He had a soft, southern accent. “A few minutes ago this train crossed into New Jersey. Transporting stolen merchandise across a state line is a federal offense.”

Tracy felt suddenly faint. A red film appeared in front of her eyes, blurring everything.

The older man, Dennis Trevor, was saying, “Would you open your luggage, please?” It was not a question but an order.

Her only hope was to try to bluff it out. “Of course I won’t! How dare you come barging into my compartment like this!” Her voice was filled with indignation. “Is that all you have to do—go around bothering innocent citizens? I’m going to call the conductor.”

“We’ve already spoken to the conductor,” Trevor said.

Her bluff was not working. “Do—do you have a search warrant?”

The younger man said gently, “We don’t need a search warrant, Miss Whitney. We’re apprehending you during the commission of a crime.” They even knew her name. She was trapped. There was no way out.
None
.

Trevor was at her suitcase, opening it. It was useless to try to stop him. Tracy watched as he reached inside and pulled out the chamois bag. He opened it, looked at his partner, and nodded. Tracy sank down onto the seat, suddenly too weak to stand.

Trevor took a list from his pocket, checked the contents of the bag against the list, and put the bag in his pocket. “It’s all here, Tom.”

“How—how did you find out?” Tracy asked miserably.

“We’re not permitted to give out any information,” Trevor replied. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and to have an attorney present before you say anything. Anything you say now may be used as evidence against you. Do you undersand?”

Her answer was a whispered, “Yes.”

Tom Bowers said, “I’m sorry about this. I mean, I know about your background, and I’m really sorry.”

“For Christ’s sake,” the older man said, “this isn’t a social visit.”

“I know, but still—”

The older man held out a pair of handcuffs to Tracy. “Hold out your wrists, please.”

Tracy felt her heart twisting in agony. She remembered the airport in New Orleans when they had handcuffed her, the staring faces. “Please! Do you—do you have to do that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The younger man said, “Can I talk to you alone for a minute, Dennis?”

Dennis Trevor shrugged. “Okay.”

The two men stepped outside into the corridor. Tracy sat there, dazed, filled with despair. She could hear snatches of their conversation.

“For God’s sake, Dennis, it isn’t necessary to put cuffs on her. She’s not going to run away…”

“When are you going to stop being such a boy scout? When you’ve been with the Bureau as long as I have…”

“Come on. Give her a break. She’s embarrassed enough, and…”

“That’s nothing to what she’s going to…”

She could not hear the rest of the conversation. She did not want to hear the rest of the conversation.

In a moment they returned to the compartment. The older man seemed angry. “All right,” he said. “We’re not cuffing you. We’re taking you off at the next station. We’re going to radio ahead for a Bureau car. You’re not to leave this compartment. Is that clear?”

Tracy nodded, too miserable to speak.

The younger man, Tom Bowers, gave her a sympathetic shrug, as though to say, “I wish there was something more I could do.”

There was nothing anyone could do. Not now. It was too late. She had been caught red-handed. Somehow the police had traced her and informed the FBI.

The agents were outside in the corridor talking to the conductor. Bowers pointed to Tracy and said something she could not hear. The conductor nodded. Bowers closed the door of the compartment, and to Tracy, it was like a cell door slamming.

The countryside sped by, flashing vignettes briefly framed by the window, but Tracy was unaware of the scenery. She sat there, paralyzed by fear. There was a roaring in her ears that had nothing to do with the sounds of the train. She would get no second chance. She was a convicted felon. They would give her the maximum sentence, and this time there would be no warden’s daughter to rescue, there would be nothing but the deadly, endless years of prison facing her. And the Big Berthas.
How had they caught her?
The only person who knew about the robbery was Conrad Morgan, and he could have no possible reason to turn her and the jewelry over to the FBI. Possibly some clerk in his store had learned of the plan and tipped off the police. But how it happened made no difference. She had been caught. At the next stop she would be on her way to prison again. There would be a preliminary hearing and then the trial, and then…

Tracy squeezed her eyes tightly shut, refusing to think about it any further. She felt hot tears brush her cheeks.

The train began to lose speed. Tracy started to hyperventilate. She could not get enough air. The two FBI agents would be coming for her at any moment. A station came into view, and a few seconds later the train jerked to a stop. It was time to go. Tracy closed her suitcase, put on her coat, and sat down. She stared at the closed compartment door, waiting for it to open. Minutes went by. The two men did not appear. What could they be doing? She recalled their words: “We’re taking you off at the next station. We’re going to radio ahead for a Bureau car. You’re not to leave this compartment.”

She heard the conductor call, “All aboard…”

Tracy started to panic. Perhaps they had meant they would wait for her on the platform.
That must be it
. If she stayed on the train, they would accuse her of trying to run away from them, and it would make things even worse. Tracy grabbed her suitcase, opened the compartment door, and hurried out into the corridor.

The conductor was approaching. “Are you getting off here, miss?” he asked. “You’d better hurry. Let me help you. A woman in your condition shouldn’t be lifting things.”

She stared. “In my condition?”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed. Your brothers told me you’re pregnant and to sort of keep an eye on you.”

“My brothers—?”

“Nice chaps. They seemed really concerned about you.”

The world was spinning around. Everything was topsy-turvy.

The conductor carried the suitcase to the end of the car and helped Tracy down the steps. The train began to move.

“Do you know where my brothers went?” Tracy called.

“No, ma’am. They jumped into a taxi when the train stopped.”

With a million dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry.

Tracy headed for the airport. It was the only place she could think of. If the men had taken a taxi, it meant they did not have their own transportation, and they would surely want to get out of town as fast as possible. She sat back in the cab, filled with rage at what they had done to her and with shame at how easily they had conned her. Oh, they were good, both of them. Really good. They had been so convincing. She blushed to think how she had fallen for the ancient good cop-bad cop routine.

For God’s sake, Dennis, it isn’t necessary to put cuffs on her. She’s not going to run away
…

When are you going to stop being such a boy scout? When you’ve been with the Bureau as long as I have
…

The Bureau? They were probably both fugitives from the law. Well, she was going to get those jewels back. She had gone through too much to be outwitted by two con artists. She
had
to get to the airport in time.

She leaned forward in her seat and said to the driver, “Could you go faster, please!”

They were standing in the boarding line at the departure gate, and she did not recognize them immediately. The younger man, who had called himself Thomas Bowers, no longer wore glasses, his eyes had changed from blue to gray, and his mustache was gone. The other man, Dennis Trevor, who had had thick black hair, was now totally bald. But still, there was no
mistaking them. They had not had time to change their clothes. They were almost at the boarding gate when Tracy reached them.

“You forgot something,” Tracy said.

They turned to look at her, startled. The younger man frowned. “What are you doing here? A car from the Bureau was supposed to have been at the station to pick you up.” His southern accent was gone.

“Then why don’t we go back and find it?” Tracy suggested.

“Can’t. We’re on another case,” Trevor explained. “We have to catch this plane.”

“Give me back the jewelry, first,” Tracy demanded.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Thomas Bowers told her. “It’s evidence. We’ll send you a receipt for it.”

“No. I don’t want a receipt. I want the jewelry.”

“Sorry,” said Trevor. “We can’t let it out of our possession.”

They had reached the gate. Trevor handed his boarding pass to the attendant. Tracy looked around, desperate, and saw an airport policeman standing nearby. She called out,
“Officer! Officer!”

The two men looked at each other, startled.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Trevor hissed. “Do you want to get us all arrested?”

The policeman was moving toward them. “Yes, miss? Any problem?”

“Oh, no problem,” Tracy said gaily. “These two wonderful gentlemen found some valuable jewelry I lost, and they’re returning it to me. I was afraid I was going to have to go to the FBI about it.”

The two men exchanged a frantic look.

“They suggested that perhaps you wouldn’t mind escorting me to a taxi.”

“Certainly. Be happy to.”

Tracy turned toward the men. “It’s safe to give the jewels to me now. This nice officer will take care of me.”

“No, really,” Tom Bowers objected. “It would be much better if we—”

“Oh, no, I insist,” Tracy urged. “I know how important it is for you to catch your plane.”

The two men looked at the policeman, and then at each other, helpless. There was nothing they could do. Reluctantly, Tom Bowers pulled the chamois bag from his pocket.

“That’s it!” Tracy said. She took the bag from his hand, opened it, and looked inside. “Thank goodness. It’s all here.”

Tom Bowers made one last-ditch try. “Why don’t we keep it safe for you until—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tracy said cheerfully. She opened her purse, put the jewelry inside, and took out two $5.00 bills. She handed one to each of the men. “Here’s a little token of my appreciation for what you’ve done.”

The other passengers had all departed through the gate. The airline attendant said, “That was the last call. You’ll have to board now, gentlemen.”

“Thank you again,” Tracy beamed as she walked away with the policeman at her side. “It’s so rare to find an honest person these days.”

Thomas Bowers—né Jeff Stevens—sat at the plane window looking out as the aircraft took off. He raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and his shoulders heaved up and down.

Dennis Trevor—a.k.a. Brandon Higgins—seated next to him, looked at him in surprise. “Hey,” he said, “it’s only money. It’s nothing to cry about.”

Jeff Stevens turned to him with tears streaming down his face, and Higgins, to his astonishment, saw that Jeff was convulsed with laughter.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Higgins demanded. “It’s nothing to
laugh
about, either.”

To Jeff, it was. The manner in which Tracy Whitney had outwitted them at the airport was the most ingenius con he had ever witnessed. A scam on top of a scam. Conrad Morgan had told them the woman was an amateur.
My God
, Jeff thought,
what would she be like if she were a professional?
Tracy Whitney was without doubt the most beautiful woman Jeff Stevens had ever seen. And clever. Jeff prided himself on being the best confidence artist in the business, and she had
outsmarted him.
Uncle Willie would have loved her
, Jeff thought.

It was Uncle Willie who had educated Jeff. Jeff’s mother was the trusting heiress to a farm-equipment fortune, married to an improvident schemer filled with get-rich-quick projects that never quite worked out. Jeff’s father was a charmer, darkly handsome and persuasively glib, and in the first five years of marriage he had managed to run through his wife’s inheritance. Jeff’s earliest memories were of his mother and father quarreling about money and his father’s extramarital affairs. It was a bitter marriage, and the young boy had resolved,
I’m never going to get married. Never
.

His father’s brother, Uncle Willie, owned a small traveling carnival, and whenever he was near Marion, Ohio, where the Stevenses lived, he came to visit them. He was the most cheerful man Jeff had ever known, filled with optimism and promises of a rosy tomorrow. He always managed to bring the boy exciting gifts, and he taught Jeff wonderful magic tricks. Uncle Willie had started out as a magician at a carnival and had taken it over when it went broke.

When Jeff was fourteen, his mother died in an automobile accident. Two months later Jeff’s father married a nineteen-year-old cocktail waitress. “It isn’t natural for a man to live by himself,” his father had explained. But the boy was filled with a deep resentment, feeling betrayed by his father’s callousness.

Jeff’s father had been hired as a siding salesman and was on the road three days a week. One night when Jeff was alone in the house with his stepmother, he was awakened by the sound of his bedroom door opening. Moments later he felt a soft, naked body next to his. Jeff sat up in alarm.

“Hold me, Jeffie,” his stepmother whispered. “I’m afraid of thunder.”

“It—it isn’t thundering,” Jeff stammered.

“But it
could
be. The paper said rain.” She pressed her body close to his. “Make love to me, baby.”

The boy was in a panic. “Sure. Can we do it in Dad’s bed?”

“Okay.” She laughed. “Kinky, huh?”

“I’ll be right there,” Jeff promised.

She slid out of bed and went into the other bedroom. Jeff had never dressed faster in his life. He went out the window and headed for Cimarron, Kansas, where Uncle Willie’s carnival was playing. He never looked back.

When Uncle Willie asked Jeff why he had run away from home, all he would say was, “I don’t get along with my stepmother.”

Uncle Willie telephoned Jeff’s father, and after a long conversation, it was decided that the boy should remain with the carnival. “He’ll get a better education here than any school could ever give him,” Uncle Willie promised.

The carnival was a world unto itself. “We don’t run a Sunday school show,” Uncle Willie explained to Jeff. “We’re flimflam artists. But remember, sonny, you can’t con people unless they’re greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can’t cheat an honest man.”

The carnies became Jeff’s friends. There were the “front-end” men, who had the concessions, and the “back-end” people, who ran shows like the fat woman and the tattooed lady, and the flat-store operators, who operated the games. The carnival had its share of nubile girls, and they were attracted to the young boy. Jeff had inherited his mother’s sensitivity and his father’s dark, good looks, and the ladies fought over who was going to relieve Jeff of his virginity. His first sexual experience was with a pretty contortionist, and for years she was the high-water mark that other women had to live up to.

Uncle Willie arranged for Jeff to work at various jobs around the carnival.

“Someday all this will be yours,” Uncle Willie told the boy, “and the only way you’re gonna hang on to it is to know more about it than anybody else does.”

Jeff started out with the six-cat “hanky-pank,” a scam where customers paid to throw balls to try to knock six cats made out of canvas with a wood-base bottom into a net. The operator running the joint would demonstrate how easy it was to knock them over, but when the customer tried it, a “gunner” hiding in back of the canvas lifted a rod to keep the wooden
base on the cats steady. Not even Sandy Koufax could have downed the cats.

“Hey, you hit it too low,” the operator would say. “All you have to do is hit it nice and easy.”

Nice and easy
was the password, and the moment the operator said it, the hidden gunner would drop the rod, and the operator would knock the cat off the board. He would then say, “See what I mean?” and that was the gunner’s signal to put up the rod again. There was always another rube who wanted to show off his pitching arm to his giggling girl friend.

Jeff worked the “count stores,” where clothespins were arranged in a line. The customer would pay to throw rubber rings over the clothespins, which were numbered, and if the total added up to twenty-nine, he would win an expensive toy. What the sucker did not know was that the clothespins had different numbers at each end, so that the man running the count store could conceal the number that would add up to twenty-nine and make sure the mark never won.

One day Uncle Willie said to Jeff, “You’re doin’ real good, kid, and I’m proud of you. You’re ready to move up to the skillo.”

The skillo operators were the
crème de la crème
, and all the other carnies looked up to them. They made more money than anyone else in the carnival, stayed at the best hotels, and drove flashy cars. The skillo game consisted of a flat wheel with an arrow balanced very carefully on glass with a thin piece of paper in the center. Each section was numbered, and when the customer spun the wheel and it stopped on a number, that number would be blocked off. The customer would pay again for another spin of the wheel, and another space would be blocked off. The skillo operator explained that when all the spaces were blocked off, the customer would win a large sum of money. As the customer got closer to filling in all the spaces, the skillo operator would encourage him to increase his bets. The operator would look around nervously and whisper, “I don’t own this game, but I’d like you to win. If you do, maybe you’ll give me a small piece.”

The operator would slip the customer five or ten dollars and say, “Bet this for me, will you? You can’t lose now.” And
the mark would feel as though he had a confederate. Jeff became an expert at milking the customers. As the open spaces on the board became smaller and the odds of winning grew greater, the excitement would intensify.

“You can’t miss now!” Jeff would exclaim, and the player would eagerly put up more money. Finally, when there was only one tiny space left to fill, the excitement would peak. The mark would put up all the money he had, and often hurry home to get more. The customer never won, however, because the operator or his shill would give the table an imperceptible nudge, and the arrow would invariably land at the wrong place.

Jeff quickly learned all the carnie terms: The “gaff” was a term for fixing the games so that the marks could not win. The men who stood in front of a sideshow making their spiel were called “barkers” by outsiders, but the carnie people called them “talkers.” The talker got 10 percent of the take for building the tip—the “tip” being a crowd. “Slum” was the prize given away. The “postman” was a cop who had to be paid off.

Jeff became an expert at the “blow-off.” When customers paid to see a sideshow exhibition, Jeff would make his spiel: “Ladies and gentlemen: Everything that’s pictured, painted, and advertised outside, you will see within the walls of this tent for the price of your general admission.
However
, immediately after the young lady in the electric chair gets finished being tortured, her poor body racked by fifty thousand watts of electricity, we have an extra added attraction that has absolutely nothing to do with the show and is not advertised outside. Behind this enclosure you are going to see something so truly remarkable, so chilling and hair-raising, that we dare not portray it outside, because it might come under the eyes of innocent children or susceptible women.”

And after the suckers had paid an extra dollar, Jeff would usher them inside to see a girl with no middle, or a two-headed baby, and of course it was all done with mirrors.

One of the most profitable carnival games was the “mouse running.” A live mouse was put in the center of a table and a bowl was placed over it. The rim of the table had ten holes around its perimeter into any one of which the mouse could
run when the bowl was lifted. Each patron bet on a numbered hole. Whoever selected the hole into which the mouse would run won the prize.

“How do you gaff a thing like that?” Jeff asked Uncle Willie. “Do you use trained mice?”

Uncle Willie roared with laughter. “Who the hell’s got time to train mice? No, no. It’s simple. The operator sees which number no one has bet on, and he puts a little vinegar on his finger and touches the edge of the hole he wants the mouse to run into. The mouse will head for that hole every time.”

Karen, an attractive young belly dancer, introduced Jeff to the “key” game.

“When you’ve made your spiel on Saturday night,” Karen told him, “call some of the men customers aside, one at a time, and sell them a key to my trailer.”

The keys cost five dollars. By midnight, a dozen or more men would find themselves milling around outside her trailer. Karen, by that time, was at a hotel in town, spending the night with Jeff. When the marks came back to the carnival the following morning to get their revenge, the show was long gone.

During the next four years Jeff learned a great deal about human nature. He found out how easy it was to arouse greed, and how guillible people could be. They believed incredible tales because their greed made them
want
to believe. At eighteen, Jeff was strikingly handsome. Even the most casual woman observer would instantly note and approve his gray, well-spaced eyes, tall build, and curly dark hair. Men enjoyed his wit and air of easy good humor. Even children, as if speaking to some answering child in him, gave him their confidence immediately. Customers flirted outrageously with Jeff, but Uncle Willie cautioned, “Stay away from the townies, my boy. Their fathers are always the sheriff.”

It was the knife thrower’s wife who caused Jeff to leave the carnival. The show had just arrived in Milledgeville, Georgia, and the tents were being set up. A new act had signed on, a Sicilian knife thrower called the Great Zorbini and his attractive
blond wife. While the Great Zorbini was at the carnival setting up his equipment, his wife invited Jeff to their hotel room in town.

“Zorbini will be busy all day,” she told Jeff. “Let’s have some fun.”

It sounded good.

“Give me an hour and then come up to the room,” she said.

“Why wait an hour?” Jeff asked.

She smiled and said, “It will take me that long to get everything ready.”

Jeff waited, his curiosity increasing, and when he finally arrived at the hotel room, she greeted him at the door, stark naked. He reached for her, but she took his hand and said, “Come in here.”

He walked into the bathroom and stared in disbelief. She had filled the bathtub with six flavors of Jell-O, mixed with warm water.

“What’s that?” Jeff asked.

“It’s dessert. Get undressed, baby.”

Jeff undressed.

“Now, into the tub.”

He stepped into the tub and sat down, and it was the wildest sensation he had ever experienced. The soft, slippery Jell-O seemed to fill every crevice of his body, massaging him all over. The blonde joined him in the tub.

“Now,” she said, “lunch.”

She started down his chest toward his groin, licking the Jell-O as she went. “Mmmm, you taste delicious. I like the strawberry best…”

Between her rapidly flicking tongue and the friction of the warm, viscous Jell-O, it was an erotic experience beyond description. In the middle of it, the bathroom door flew open and the Great Zorbini strode in. The Sicilian took one look at his wife and the startled Jeff, and howled,
“Tu sei una puttana! Vi ammazzo tutti e due! Dove sono i miei coltelli?”

Jeff did not recognize any of the words, but the tone was familiar. As the Great Zorbini raced out of the room to get his knives, Jeff leaped out of the tub, his body looking like a rainbow with the multicolored Jell-O clinging to it, and grabbed
his clothes. He jumped out of the window, naked, and began running down the alley. He heard a shout behind him and felt a knife sing past his head. Zing! Another, and then he was out of range. He dressed in a culvert, pulling his shirt and pants over the sticky Jell-O, and squished his way to the depot, where he caught the first bus out of town.

Six months later, he was in Vietnam.

Every soldier fights a different war, and Jeff came out of his Vietnam experience with a deep contempt for bureaucracy and a lasting resentment of authority. He spent two years in a war that could never be won, and he was appalled by the waste of money and matériel and lives, and sickened by the treachery and deceit of the generals and politicians who performed their verbal sleight of hand.
We’ve been suckered into a war that nobody wants
, Jeff thought.
It’s a con game. The biggest con game in the world
.