Thefts of Nick Velvet (18 page)

“It still will bring them flocking,” she said.

“I suppose it will. I thought you were awfully cooperative about showing me the palace, and getting me an invitation. Of course that’s why Vonderberg told me to contact you, so you could help ease the way for me. Was the prince in on it, too?”

“Of course not! It was all my idea. I own property here. The island means something to me.”

“But you made the mistake of hiring a Communist named Vonderberg to arrange matters. He had other ideas. New Ionia would make a nice Red base off Greece, and if King Felix were assassinated when the crown was stolen, a real pretender to the throne could appear after all.”

“I never thought he’d do a thing like that. I had no idea he was in with the Reds! But when I heard of the assassination this morning, I realized what a fool I’d been, playing into their hands.”

She met his eyes. “I thought you were one, too.”

“No,” he answered. “Only a simple thief.”

“What do you want, to keep silent?”

“My freedom. And the money Vonderberg promised me. I imagine it’s in his pocket.”

“And if I say no? Would anyone believe you now that Vonderberg’s dead?”

“I think so. You showed no emotion just now when the crown was smashed. You say that Prince Baudlay knew nothing of the plot, but I’ll bet if someone examined that glass they’d find it of recent make. You wouldn’t take a chance on the real crown being damaged in the robbery. You’d have arranged for the substitution of a false one. So somebody in the palace knew about it.”

“You guess very well, Nick Velvet.”

“It helps me stay alive. I’m no detective, only a good guesser when I have to be.”

She turned away, sighed, and then turned back.

“Take this ferry back to Corfu,” she told him finally. “I’ll see that you aren’t bothered.”

“And the money?”

“You devil.”

“Exactly,” he said, and waited while she got the envelope from the dead man’s pocket.

“Come back some time. As a tourist.”

Nick Velvet smiled at her and turned away, looking off across the sea toward Corfu. “I don’t think I could afford the rates.”

N
ICK VELVET HAD BEEN
home for weeks, in a state of brooding inactivity, when the summons came. It was from a man in Brooklyn whom Nick had once helped, and his voice was raspingly familiar on the phone.

“It’s for a friend of mine in Miami,” the man told him. “If you can fly down there tonight he’ll meet you at the airport.”

Nick hesitated only a moment. “I’ll be there. What’s his name?”

“He’ll be using the name of Mason.”

“How will I recognize him?”

“He’ll recognize you.”

Nick went upstairs to the fancy yellow bedroom and began to pack. After a while Gloria came in with two cans of beer. “You’re not going away again, Nicky?”

“I have to look over some new plant sites in Florida. Should be back by the end of the week.”

She leaned against the door frame, her long hair tumbling over the softness of her face. “I was hoping we could go sailing now that the weather’s warm.”

“We’ll go as soon as I get back,” he promised. “I won’t be long, really. I have to make some money for us, don’t I?”

“Sure, Nicky. Send me a postcard, will you? Something pretty, with an orange grove on it.”

He kissed her lightly on the lips and went downstairs with his suitcase.

The flight down the Atlantic coast was smooth and uneventful, and the skyline of Miami was much as he remembered it from his last visit during the 1972 political conventions. That time he’d stolen something for the staff of an unsuccessful presidential candidate, and he liked to think his action may have altered the course of the convention.

This trip started out in a much more prosaic manner. He was met at the airport by a beefy-cheeked man in a rumpled summer suit who ushered him into a waiting car. “Mr. Mason is sorry he couldn’t meet you in person,” the man said.

“Are we going to his home?”

“A hotel room. He conducts all his business in hotel rooms.”

“I see.”

The man, who said his name was Jimmy, spoke little until they reached their destination, a third-rate hotel north of the city and near the Hialeah racetrack. “Room 26,” Jimmy said. “I’ll wait out here for you.”

Nick found the door to Room 26 slightly ajar and pushed it open. He was utterly unprepared for the sight that greeted him—a man in garish clown’s makeup and wearing an old tuxedo sat in a chair facing the door.

“You’re Nick Velvet? Come in, come in!” The voice was obviously disguised.

“Mr. Mason?” Nick asked, stepping forward uncertainly. He could see nothing of the man’s face beneath the heavy layers of makeup. The skin was dead-white, with big red lips, red spots on each cheek, and a red rubber ball for a nose.

“Mason is the name I use. You’ll forgive the clown makeup, but I find it necessary at times to conceal my appearance and identity. I was told by a friend in Brooklyn that you’re an expert thief who specializes in the unusual.”

“I steal anything without value—never money or jewels. My fee is $20,000—in cash.” Nick’s eyes roamed the hotel room, searching for some clue to the man’s identity. All he saw was a briefcase pushed half under the bed. He thought the initials on it were JKS.

“Could you steal a circus poster?” the clown asked.

“Certainly.”

“It’s part of a collection owned by a retired old clown named Herbie Benson. He lives near Miami. I’ll give you the address.”

“Why is it worth so much to you? Is the poster a collector’s item?”

“Be curious on someone else’s time, Velvet.” The harsh words seemed, somehow incongruous with the grinning clown’s face. “Here’s a down payment, along with Herbie Benson’s address and a description of the poster I want. How long will it take you?”

“Seems fairly simple,” Nick replied. “This is Monday. Let’s say Thursday night, or sooner. I’ll come here with the poster.”

“Fine.”

Nick shook the man’s gloved hand and left the room. Jimmy, the driver, was lounging by his car, and Nick gave him the address of a moderately priced hotel on Biscayne Bay. Heading downtown, he opened the envelope and counted ten hundred-dollar bills inside. Then he put Benson’s address in his wallet and read over the description of the circus poster he’d been hired to steal:

Great National Circus Poster of the 1916 season, with five acrobats at top, rhinoceros and clowns at bottom.

Nick put it back in the envelope with the money. At the hotel entrance he thanked Jimmy for the ride and checked into a room overlooking the bay. There were hotel postcards in the drawer, and he mailed one to Gloria.

The town of Snake Creek was north of Miami, along a canal that ran inland from North Miami Beach to the edge of the Everglades. It was a rural area, barely touched by the spreading suburbs of the city proper, and as Nick drove his rented car down the main street he might have been in any part of the South, far removed from the luxury hotels of Miami Beach.

Herbie Benson seemed much like the other retired residents of Snake Creek, and at first glance there seemed nothing about his sagging face and dull eyes to suggest a former circus clown. He lived in a small white house with peeling paint and steps worn to the bare wood by the passage of feet. He was a little man, aging like his house, and his weak eyes focused on Nick with difficulty.

“Do I know you?” he asked, standing at the front door behind the protection of the screen, a few strands of thin white hair drifting over his forehead.

“My name is Nicholas. I understand you were once a circus clown.”

The old eyes sparkled for an instant behind their thick glasses. “That was long ago. Nobody’s interested in old clowns any more.”

“I’m interested,” Nick said. “May I come in?”

“You’re not going to rob me, are you? Person can’t be too careful these days.”

Nick chuckled. “Do I look like a thief?”

The man studied him. “No, I guess not.” He unlatched the screen door. “Come on in.”

The little house was surprisingly cool after the warmth of the street. Furnished in a worn drabness that seemed to reflect the years of Herbie Benson’s life, it was still a place for pleasant relaxing.

Nick suddenly realized they were not alone in the house. There was a noise from the kitchen and a young tawny-haired woman appeared carrying a glass of fruit juice. “This is my granddaughter, Judy,” the old man said, wiping his old-fashioned spectacles with a soiled handkerchief.

Nick nodded and introduced himself. “Nicholas is my name. I have an interest in circus lore, mainly as a hobby. I couldn’t pass through town without stopping to see Mr. Benson.”

“He lives here alone,” she answered bluntly. “He shouldn’t be opening his door to strangers.” He guessed her age at about 23, and she wore the cool unsmiling expression one saw on so many other young faces these days.

“Now, Judy,” the old man started to protest.

“It’s true, Grandpa! What do you know about this man? If I weren’t here he could hit you over the head and steal everything in sight!”

“He looks honest, Judy.”

“I can assure you—” Nick began, but she waved him into silence. Her long tawny hair swirled as she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Don’t mind her,” Herbie Benson said. “She just grows tired of all the circus talk sometimes.”

Nick sat down, feeling more welcome. “This is a nice little town you have.”

“I like it. Close to Miami, and not too far from Winter Haven and Sarasota, where a lot of circus people spend the winter.”

“You still see your old circus friends?”

“I see the ones that are left. I joined the circus back during the First World War, when I shoulda been in school.” His old eyes clouded for an instant. “Most of the people I knew are dead now.”

“You were a clown that long ago?”

“No, no, not at first. Believe it or not, Mr. Nicholas, my first circus job was carrying water for the elephants, just like in all the old stories. But I was a clown before I was twenty, and I stayed a clown for nearly forty years, till my first heart attack. I was there. I saw it all. I started with the Great National Circus in their final years, and then switched to Barnum and Bailey.”

Judy Benson came back carrying another glass of fruit juice. “This is for you,” she told Nick. Then she sat down, still unsmiling.

“Thank you. Your grandfather was just telling me about his early circus days.”

She eyed Nick in silence and Herbie Benson continued, “I think those early days with Great National were the best of all. They had a really big spread, with acrobats and lions and even a Wild West show. Come in here, I’ll show you some of their posters.”

“Grandpa,” Judy cautioned, but the old man was already on his feet, leading Nick into the next room.

It had been a dining room at one time, but when Nick passed through the swinging door he saw that it was now given over completely to the memories and trophies of a lifetime. There were garish circus posters and framed programs dating back more than 50 years, along with dozens of photographs of a sad-faced clown with groups of children or greeting some celebrity or simply alone in a circus ring. A cluster of limp balloons bearing the words
Herbie the Clown
hung over a picture of two clowns inscribed
Herbie and Willie
.

But it was one of the circus posters that interested Nick. Yellowed with age and curling at the edges, there could be no doubt this was the poster he’d been hired to steal. Five stiff-bodied acrobats at the top flew through the air with awkward grace, with the one in the foreground sporting a Teddy Roosevelt mustache that made him seem the twin of the one high on a trapeze in the background. A slim banner beneath them read:
The Flying Fantini Brothers
.

In the lower portion of the poster a faded purple rhinoceros glowered out from a swampy setting of trees and ferns. “I never saw a purple rhino,” Nick said, recalling the famous verse by Gelett Burgess about a purple cow.

“These posters are real Americana,” the old man told him. “I’ve been offered a thousand dollars for my whole collection intact, but of course I would never sell.”

“How much would an individual poster be worth?”

“Alone? Not much—next to nothing, unless you came across some kind of a crank collector. They reprint these things too much nowadays. Who’d want to pay good money for an original when he could buy a reproduction at the local bookstore for a dollar or two?”

“You’ve got something there,” Nick admitted. He pointed to the 1916 poster. “This must have been early in your career.”

“The year before I joined Great National,” he answered with a trace of pride.

“You must have known a lot of clowns in your day.”

“All the big ones. Willie was a special friend.”

“Ever know one named Mason?” If a man wore clown makeup, it seemed logical to Nick that he might be a former clown.

“What circus was he with?”

“I don’t know. I could have the name wrong.” His eyes strayed back to the purple rhino and the clowns and the five acrobats. “You know, there’s something peculiar about that poster, but I don’t know what.”

“They’re funny-looking by today’s art standards, I guess, but I love every one of them.”

They chatted a while longer and then Nick rose to leave. Stealing the poster seemed so simple that he wondered why the mysterious Mr. Mason hadn’t simply hired the first crook he could find and pay him $50 to do the job. Herbie walked him to the porch and they shook hands. “You’ve brightened my day,” the former clown said. “I always like to talk circus. Come back sometime and I’ll put on my clown makeup for you.”

“I’ll do that,” Nick said, and waved goodbye.

He was just starting the car when Judy Benson came running out of the house. “Mr. Nicholas, could you give me a ride down to the store? I have to do some shopping for my grandfather.”

“Sure. Climb in.”

“Nice car you have.”

Nick nodded.

“You don’t talk like a southerner. Are you from this area?”

He pulled slowly away from the curb, aware that her sudden friendliness was in sharp contrast to her earlier coolness. “No, I’m from up north. Just driving through.”