As for Kerns’s glad rags, the custom-tailored Brooks Brothers’ pinstripes and new patent leathers didn’t change the fact that he was built like a street lamp, with an oblong head and a flagpole trunk. His features were well-chiseled beneath whiskey-colored hair, but his pale skin had a vaguely unhealthy undertone, which led Jack to believe the ruddy cheeks were less the result of a brisk walk in the autumn air than an indication he’d dipped his bill a few times already.
“I heard about you through Teddy Birmingham,” said Kerns, holding out a hand.
Jack shook.
The man’s skin was soft, but his grip firm. His age could have been anywhere from mid-thirties to early forties. The expression in his hazel-brown eyes appeared friendly but appraising at the same time, like a scavenging antiques agent sizing up whether a banged-up urn might prove lucrative on resale.
“I understand you helped old Ted out of a fix?”
“That’s right.”
Kerns stared, eyes candidly expectant, waiting for details.
Jack Shepard let him wait.
“Well, Mr. Shepard? I should think you’d like a drink?”
Jack nodded, followed Kerns’s loosey-goosey gait to the private club’s dining room, a stoic, dimly lit arena with a vaulted ceiling and horn-headed beasts affixed to the walls. The setup was white linen and leaded crystal, fine wine and chilled salad forks. Jack let Kerns suggest the best of the menu, order the grape juice, and drive the streetcar.
Kerns’s voice was quiet and even as he directed the conversation, like he was practiced at explaining complicated investments to society ladies. But for Jack, listening to a man with an overly smooth voice was like traveling a continuously flat landscape—it became tiresome fast.
Kerns gave his opinion on national and local politics, cultural events, and the postwar economy. He inquired about Jack’s service, quizzing him about his job in army intelligence. Asked about his work before that as a flatfoot. Jack didn’t especially enjoy talking about himself, but he gritted his teeth and answered every inquiry, knowing full well this wasn’t a social engagement but a job interview.
It never ceased to amaze him how the upper classes did business. Aristocrats, real or aspiring, flinched at anything close to giving off the base, commonplace aroma of work. Even hiring and firing staff was suspect. Consequently, they were perpetually attempting to make business look like anything but.
Eventually, however, Kerns did get down to it.
“…and, as I mentioned before, I’m a friend of Teddy Birmingham, and he recommended you, although for the life of me, I can’t see why Teddy would need a private detective.”
Jack let the repeated question-that-wasn’t-a-question hang between them in the dim light of the fossilized club.
Men like Kerns used silence to great effect. Somewhere along the road, they’d learned what Jack already knew about the parturient pause: Weaker souls tended to feel terrorized by long silences in polite conversation. Pressured by the inferred censure in the paternal lift of the eyebrow, the slight downturn of the mouth, they almost always spilled their guts.
Jack wasn’t a weaker soul.
He picked up his long-stemmed crystal goblet and sipped. The wine was good, full-bodied and sweet- smelling. It reminded him of Sally, a woman he’d known before the war. After two long minutes of Jack’s breathing in perfumed memories, Kerns became the impatient party.
“You won’t share your business with Teddy?” he pressed.
“No, Mr. Kerns,” Jack replied, more than willing to give a straight answer to a straight question. “You won’t find out from me. My discretion comes as part of the service.”
Kerns shifted in his leather dinner chair. “Must I pay extra for your discretion, Mr. Shepard?”
“It’s free of charge.” Jack allowed a small smile. “Part of my per diem.”
“Yes, so you quoted. Twenty dollars a day, plus expenses.”
Kerns began to explain the specifics of the job. It seemed his sister, Dorothy, had gotten herself engaged to a savvy broker who’d claimed he’d made a real killing with prewar investments in steel manufacturing.
“His name is Vincent Tattershawe, or that’s what he calls himself, anyway.” Kerns frowned and shifted.
“Go on.”
“He has pretensions to society, but I’m worried for my sister.”
“I see.” Jack pulled out a small notebook and jotted down Tattershawe’s name.
“My sister has many virtues, but she’s naive about the ways of the world, and far too trusting. Without consulting me, she gave Mr. Tattershawe a considerable portion of her inheritance for him to invest.”
“Why is that naive? You said yourself that this Tattershawe is an up-and-comer with a nose for business.”
“I’m not so sure he really does have the connections and background he recited to Dorothy. Nor can I be sure he actually made a lucrative investment in prewar steel. That’s simply what he told her.”
“So you’d like me to investigate this Vincent Tattershawe? Answer some of your questions?”
“I want you to locate the man.”
“He’s missing?”
“Shortly after Dorothy turned over her money to him, he vanished. I asked around a bit, and I’m troubled by what I’ve learned. I believe this man presented himself to my sister as something he is not. I understand he drinks a lot as well.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “We all drink a lot, don’t we, Mr. Kerns?” During dinner, Baxter had consumed two Scotches, more than half their bottle of wine, and was now nursing a cognac. And Jack suspected the man had knocked back a few before Jack had even arrived.
“There’s a difference between drinking”—Kerns lifted his snifter of liquid gold—“and being a drunk, Mr. Shepard.”
“So you think Tattershawe either took off with the loot or fell back into a bottle?”
“Possibly both. My sister claims she convinced Vincent to give up drinking. But you and I both know that a man will tell a woman almost anything if he wants to…shall we say, grease the wheels?”
Jack sipped his wine. He didn’t share Kerns’s philosophy on dames. Lying to women was a boy’s game; and he always figured any broad that required him to be something he wasn’t, wasn’t worth his time. But in Jack’s experience, telling a disdainful Ivy Leaguer like Kerns that you knew something he didn’t was like trying to crack a manhole cover with a soda straw. Jack saved his breath.
“I’ll have to speak with your sister, Dorothy.”
Kerns leaned forward, his relaxed posture tensing for the first time that evening.
“Listen, Mr. Shepard, I’m going to be perfectly blunt with you. I contacted you because my sister insisted a private investigator be hired. I don’t like the idea myself. I stepped in because she had no idea how to proceed. I want you to find Mr. Tattershawe, but you are not to convey his location to my sister. Tell me and only me what you discover, so I can deal with him.”
“
In Jack’s part of the civilized wilderness, “dealing” with someone usually meant helping them meet with an unfortunate accident.
“His theft of her money,” Kerns clarified. “Dorothy has had a lot of heartache in her life. Her only serious suitor died in the war. Now she’s forty, and far from a beauty. But she’d be better off staying a spinster than marrying a man like Tattershawe, who I believe would cause her harm. I wish to retrieve her money but not at the risk of reuniting her with the man who took it. Do you see what I’m trying to accomplish?”
Jack nodded.
“I’m trying to protect her. You understand wanting to protect someone you care about, don’t you, Mr. Shepard?”
Kerns was still leaning forward, his hazel-brown eyes shining, intense. Clearly, he wanted Jack to understand that although he preferred to avoid the appearance of doing business, when it came to this, he meant it.
“I understand, Mr. Kerns.”
Kerns downed an unfashionably large gulp of cognac, then finally leaned back, his tense limbs going slack again. “I’m not a man who expresses gratitude often. But I do thank you for respecting my wishes.”
