Spy and the Thief (25 page)

“A hundred in advance. The other hundred after I talk to him.”

She thought about that, but not for long. “It’s a deal. When do if you want to see him?”

“As soon as I can. The book’s deadline—”

“Visiting day is Sunday. I’ll talk to him then.”

“All right.”

She hesitated. “There’s one thing he might not tell you.”

“About the piracy?”

Madge O’Donnell nodded. She seemed even more tired. “About the two men who died.”

“What about them?”

“They were my brothers.”

The warden of the Federal Penitentiary at Meadville was a stout balding man named Perkins, who looked like a small-town politician. He touched his fingertips together very carefully and said, “You understand, Mr. Nicholas, that within certain well-defined guidelines each Federal prison operates under its own rules and regulations. What might be approved in one prison could be forbidden in another.”

“I understand that,” Nick agreed. “But I only want to interview John O’Donnell for my book. Surely that could be arranged.”

The warden shrugged. “If he wishes, you could certainly see him on Visitor’s Day.”

“I don’t mean with a screen between us. I mean sitting and talking as we are now, perhaps in his cell.”

Warden Perkins chuckled at that. “Out of the question! Even his lawyer couldn’t visit him in his cell.”

“Then in a private office somewhere?”

“Well …” The warden thought about it. “I might agree, if certain security precautions were taken. A guard would have to be present at all times, and you would have to be thoroughly searched before each meeting.” He shifted nervously in his chair before adding distastefully, “We’ve been having some trouble with narcotics being smuggled in.”

“Agreed,” Nick said, as if he’d expected such conditions all along. “How would next week be for my first visit—perhaps Monday?” He couldn’t appear too eager, but he hated putting off the first meeting for even those few days.

“I think that could be arranged,” Warden Perkins said.

Nick allowed himself a slow smile as he stood up. So far his plan was working.

Nick spent the weekend carefully working out three possible methods of reaching John O’Donnell’s cell. One of them involved extreme personal danger, and he placed that third on his list. He was a clever man, but not a foolish one.

The method he decided to try first was a slow and trying one. It involved two preliminary meetings with John O’Donnell at which Nick did nothing but ask questions and take notes for his mythical book. O’Donnell proved to be a mean-looking man whose weatherbeaten features made him appear much older than his 27 years. He’d been raised as a Catholic, educated in a parochial school, and still wore a somewhat incongruous religious medal that showed at the open neck of his prison shirt. He did not particularly trust Nick Velvet, and his answers to questions were cautious and terse.

Nick had been searched before each of the half-hour meetings, and on the third occasion the routine was the same. He took his seat in the small barren room—a room usually reserved for convicts and their lawyers—and waited until John O’Donnell was brought in. As usual the uniformed guard seated himself against the wall. He seemed bored by the whole affair.

O’Donnell was a bit more talkative this time, and seemed to be relaxing in Nick’s presence. “If your book’s a success do I get a cut?” he wanted to know.

Nick smiled. “You’ll be taken care of.” He’d noticed that O’Donnell always brought a pack of cigarettes with him and that he smoked continuously while they talked. On previous occasions Nick had taken one of the cigarettes, and he reached for the pack now. The guard shifted in his chair, still looking bored.

“What else do you want to know?” O’Donnell asked.

“We’re up to the robbery now. The two that were killed—they were your wife’s brothers?”

“Yeah. The Gaetano brothers. It was too bad about them.”

“You told the officials the loot went into the water with them.”

O’Donnell scowled at Nick before he answered. He was fingering the medal around his neck. “That’s what I said and that’s what happened.”

“What did you do during the hours before your capture?”

“Sailed around and looked at the scenery.” He ground out his cigarette. “That’s all you’re gettin’ from me, wise guy! You’re starting to sound like a detective.”

Nick shrugged and watched while the guard stepped forward to take O’Donnell back to his cell. It was a routine he’d seen before, and he observed it casually now. The guard gave O’Donnell a quick haphazard frisk and then unlocked the door. They left the room without another word to Nick.

Nick waited, slowly finishing his cigarette, and then stood up. Three minutes. Time enough for O’Donnell to be almost back to his cell.

Then Nick stepped into the corridor that led to the front gate. “Guard, guard!”

The uniformed man on duty turned, looking up from the newspaper he was reading. “What is it, Mr., Nicholas? Are you ready to leave?”

“I think I’ve been robbed! I think O’Donnell took a little penknife I was carrying.”

The guard cursed softly under his breath. “You stay right there. I’ll go and get the warden.”

Within five minutes Warden Perkins was on the scene, breathing hard. “Now what’s all this, Nicholas?”

“I was carrying a small penknife and it’s gone. I think O’Donnell stole it somehow while I was talking to him.”

Perkins glared at the guard. “You let this man see the prisoner while he had a knife in his pocket?”

Nick hastened to intervene. “It’s not his fault. It’s one of these little round knives that looks just like a coin when it’s closed. It was with my keys. The guard missed it, and I never thought about it. I used it to cut a hangnail and O’Donnell must have noticed it while we talked. I don’t know how he managed to get it away from me.”

The warden was angry and redfaced. “This will be the last of your sessions with the prisoner, Mr. Nicholas. Your visiting permission is revoked, effective immediately.” Then, to the guard, “Come on. We’ll have to search his cell.”

Nick tensed. This was the crucial moment. “Shouldn’t you take me with you?” he asked, trying to keep his voice natural. “The guards might miss it again in the search, but I can identify it.”

Warden Perkins glared at him.

“For all I know you slipped the knife to O’Donnell on purpose.”

“Would I be telling you about it if I had?”

The warden thought about that, his face growing redder by the minute. “Guard, search this man again. Carefully this time! Make sure he doesn’t have this little knife on him somewhere.”

The guard did as he was told, running his hands through Nick’s pockets, up and down his body; “No knife on him, Warden;” the man reported finally.

“All right,” Perkins decided. “We’re going up to the cell. Bring Mr. Nicholas along, but don’t take your eyes off him.”

Nick felt his whole body relax at the words. It had been a 50-50 chance at best, but now it was working. So far.

The warden led the way, with Nick in the middle and two guards bringing up the rear. They passed through three barred gates and a steel door before they finally reached the cellblock proper. Here they had to climb a spiral staircase to the second tier of cells, and Nick could feel the prisoners’ eyes on them as their shoes clattered up the steel steps.

They went halfway down the line of cells, past staring faces that lined the barred doorways, pausing finally in front of John O’Donnell’s cell. “Open this one,” Warden Perkins ordered. A switch was thrown at the end of the line and a key inserted. They entered O’Donnell’s cell.

The man with the weatherbeaten face was waiting for them. His cellmate, a thin man with a shaved head, stayed on his bunk, trying to ignore the sudden intrusion. “What’s all this?” O’Donnell asked.

“We want the knife,” Perkins said quietly.

“What knife? What in hell you talking about?”

“The penknife you stole from Mr. Nicholas.”

“You’re nuts! I got no knife!”

“Search him,” Warden Perkins said. “Search him, search the cell, search the other one too.”

The guards went to work, and Nick allowed his eyes to wander to the wall. The calendar was in place, just where Burma had said it would be. The days of early September had been crossed out with large black
X
’s, right up to yesterday.

Nick edged his way into the cell. A guard said, “Stay out of the way,” and he flattened himself against the wall, his back to the calendar.

It took one of the guards just two minutes to find the pack of cigarettes and feel the weight of it. He ripped it open and scattered the cigarettes on the bunk blanket. A shiny coinlike object dropped among them, its golden face twinkling in the light.

“That’s it!” Nick said loudly.

“What the hell!” O’Donnell turned to him, snarling. “What kind of a frame is this? You slipped that in my cigarettes!”

Warden Perkins turned the object over in his hand, using a thumbnail to pull open the inch-long knife blade. “Couldn’t do much damage with this,” he decided. “It’s not even sharp.”

“I’m sorry about the whole thing,” Nick said.

Perkins grunted, beginning to relax. “You should be. Come on, let’s get out of here. This will go on your record, O’Donnell. I’ll deal with you later.”

Ten minutes later Nick Velvet was walking through the main gate of the Meadville prison, with John O’Donnell’s calendar beneath his coat, held snugly by the pressure of his left arm. If O’Donnell noticed its disappearance, he might blame it on a guard. In any event he wouldn’t be likely to complain.

Later, in his car, Nick studied the pages of John O’Donnell’s calendar. It was from a law firm, as Burma had said, and as Nick flipped back over the past months he saw that every date had indeed been
X
’d out. One date, however, had a circle drawn around it—April 25th. Nick wondered what had happened to John O’Donnell on that date to make him vary his daily routine.

There was no writing or marking of any kind on the calendar. Nick flipped through the twelve pages, holding them up to the sunlight and examining them carefully. But it was just a calendar and nothing more—a calendar worth $20,000 to Samuel Croft …

Nick met Croft by arrangement the following morning, this time in the parking lot of a shopping center in White Plains. He was surprised to see Burma in the car too. He hadn’t realized the men were partners in this venture.

“Did you get it?” Croft asked.

“Of course. I told you I would.” Nick slipped the calendar out of a large brown envelope and handed it over. “I’d like the balance of my money. Cash on delivery, as agreed.”

Croft flipped over the pages, nodding his head. “Yes, yes. Very well. Burma here will take you to the money. We couldn’t risk bringing it in the car.”

“Where is it?”

“Just over there,” Burma said. “In my station wagon.”

Nick didn’t like it, but he had no choice. “All right. Let’s get it. I want to get out of here.”

As soon as they had left Samuel Croft’s car, the gray-haired man started the motor and drove out toward the divided highway. Nick watched him go, wishing now that he hadn’t parted with the calendar quite so readily. They reached the blue station wagon and Burma opened the door.

In that instant Nick knew it was all wrong. Nobody leaves the larger part of $20,000 in an unlocked automobile. He tried to back away but it was too late. Burma had the pistol in his hand. It was a .22 target model equipped with a silencer, no good at long range, but deadly at three feet.

“Get in the car,” Burma ordered.

Nick slid into the front seat, keeping his hands in view. “What is this? Where’s my money?”

The ex-convict slid behind the wheel, keeping the gun level but below the windshield. Around them cars were carrying unsuspicious people on their day’s shopping. “Mr. Croft don’t trust you, Velvet. He’s heard too many stories about how you double crossed your clients. He doesn’t want you taking the twenty grand and then beating him to the jewels.”

“The loot? Then it didn’t go into the sea.”

“You know damn well it didn’t. O’Donnell told me so himself—bragged about it in prison. He buried it somewhere, just like a real pirate. But he’d never tell me where. Just before I got out I asked him what would happen if he died without telling anyone. Guys are always dying in prison, even young guys. A knifing in the yard, an accident in the shop, anything like that. But O’Donnell said he’d taken care of it. He said his calendar would tell where the loot was hidden.

“I spent all one night looking over the damned calendar and I couldn’t find anything. Just a lot of dates crossed out. But when I got out and told Croft about it he called me a fool. He said he had to see the calendar to figure out the clue that O’Donnell had left there. So he hired you to steal it, Velvet. He didn’t trust you from the beginning, but he knew no one else could do the job.”

“Who is Croft?”

“He financed O’Donnell and the Gaetano brothers with the boat. Croft was supposed to get a share of the loot. That’s why I went to him when I got out of Meadville. I figured he’d pay for the information I had that the loot was hidden somewhere. He’s gonna cut me in.”

“I’ll bet,” Nick said. “Just like me. He’s halfway to the jewels now, while you sit here and keep babbling.”

The gun rose an inch. “I’ll take care of Mr. Croft if and when the time comes,” Burma said. “Right now I’m taking care of you, Velvet.”

Nick tensed to jump him, but he knew that in the cramped front seat he had no chance of dodging a bullet. Then, suddenly, out of the corner of his eye he saw a gray sedan bearing down on them. He had an instant’s glimpse of a woman’s face behind the wheel before the car hit them broadside.

Burma was thrown into Nick by the force of the crash. He was still trying to bring up the silenced pistol when Nick hit him with a Judo chop on the neck. He stuffed the pistol in his pocket and climbed out the passenger’s side to survey the damage.

“Oddly enough, I want to thank you,” Nick said to the woman.

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Just take me to the jewels.”

It was Mrs. O’Donnell, of course.