reassigned his clients.
The client list was private, Jack was told, and nobody else he spoke to at the company claimed they knew anything. Jack wasn’t getting anywhere through the front door. So he decided to try the back, trailing Mindy’s shapely tan suit and tawny pumps to the bar after she got off work for the evening.
But the dame wasn’t an easy safe to crack.
“I’m not supposed to talk about him,” she insisted, then swiveled toward the bar again, showing Jack her profile as she picked up her drink.
Jack leaned close to her ear, lowered his voice for a raspy promise. “Nobody has to know, sweetheart.”
“Is that right?” She fumbled with the lit cigarette, tapping too hard to get the stray ash off. “Damn. It’s gone out. Heat me up again, will you?”
Jack struck another match, pulled the flame close to his body, made her lean in. She was really flying now and seemed to enjoy the little tease, following the fire wherever it went. He touched her hand to steady it as he let the blaze reignite the tobacco.
“You’re an attractive woman, Mindy.”
She laughed, raising an eyebrow as he held her gaze. “Don’t buffalo me, shamus.”
Jack let the moment hang as she surveyed his broad shoulders tapering down to lean hips; his square jaw, shaved clean; the dagger-shaped scar, promising a hint of danger.
He blew out the match. “Were you ever more than Tattershawe’s secretary?”
“Yes,” she said.
The unthinking admission alarmed her. She swiveled away to face the bar again, took a long quaff of martini—as if that would make it all better.
Jack leaned back, didn’t press. Now that the cat was out of the bag, he knew she’d spill the rest of the litter. He could see she was dying to. All he had to do was wait.
Mindy drained her glass. He watched her fish the gin-soaked olive out, put it between her small white teeth and squeeze it slowly, savoring those last drops of alcohol.
Cripes, he thought, if Tattershawe had a drinking problem, then he wasn’t drinking alone.
“I need another drink, shamus. You buying?”
“The name’s Jack.” He waved the bartender over and the crystal fountain flowed anew.
“You want to go somewhere more private?” Mindy asked after she’d finished another.
“Sure,” Jack said. “What did you have in mind?”
“This is a hotel. We could get a room.”
Jack didn’t surprise easily, but Miss Corbett rendered him momentarily speechless.
“To talk privately, I mean,” she added in a whisper. “See, the truth is, I care about Vincent, and I think he might be in a jam.”
“WHEN VINNY CAME back from Europe, he took his old job back at the firm, and Ed Thompson let me work for him again. We all pretended like his arm didn’t matter, that he wasn’t a cripple, and I thought things would go back to the way they were.”
Mindy was standing by the hotel room’s window, looking out on the sensational view of a movie house’s dingy brick wall.
Jack’s view was better. Twilight had set in and Mindy Corbett’s hourglass form was nicely outlined against the darkening windowpane, her snug-fitting suit an affecting distraction.
“Go back to the way they were?” Jack repeated, loosening his tie. He was sitting in the room’s only chair—an upholstered number with overstuffed arms. “But not just in the office, right? Out of the office, too.”
Mindy turned to face Jack, leaned her bountiful hips back against the window frame. “Sure, Vinny and me, we always used to have good times together.”
“You mean you always drank together.”
“That’s right. It was fun.”
“But the fun times stopped?”
“We tried to go back to the way it was, but Vinny couldn’t. He was so unhappy after he came back from the war. It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to, honey. I follow. The war changed a lot of men.”
“So Vinny met this Dorothy woman at a New Year’s Eve party, and they hit it off. She’s a teetotaler, but…” Mindy shrugged. “That’s what he preferred, so what’s a girl to do?”
“What
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you sure you weren’t angry about Vincent getting engaged to another woman?” Jack wondered for a minute whether Mindy was truly an innocent, or had she made Vinny disappear?
“No. I swear. I wanted Vinny to be happy. And he sure wasn’t happy with me. And if a guy’s not happy, it doesn’t take long before he makes a girl miserable.”
“I get the picture.”
“But Vinny and I were still good during working hours, so I stayed as his secretary. He was a real swell boss, too—polite, civil. He never ordered me around or barked like a jerk. He always asked like a gentleman. Then I came in one day, and he didn’t. And the next day came and went, and the next…”
“And before you know it, your life’s over,” Jack muttered.
“Huh?”
“Sorry, sweetheart, my mind wandered. A little too much gin.” It was amazing how well this tomato held her liquor. She was a real boozehound, all right. “Tell me now,” Jack said. “Why do you think he left?”
“I’m sure it had to do with the way the business changed since the war.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean…”
Jack watched Mindy’s careless expression begin to change. Her relaxed posture appeared to stiffen, and she began to chew her lower lip.
“What is it, honey? You can tell me. I’ll never repeat what came from that pretty mouth of yours.”
Mindy turned around, faced the window again even though there was nothing in front of her. Darkness had fully descended and the alley she overlooked was black as a coffin.
Jack sat very still. “Remember, you’re helping Vincent now, sweetheart. Tell me what you know.”
Jack waited for her to decide, and she slowly began to spill.
“Vinny…he was used to doing things on the up-and-up, square investment products for square Johns and Janes, you know? But…that’s not how the new management operates.”
She went on to explain how the firm had fallen on hard times during the war years and had been taken over by silent partners. Carter & Thompson’s old, long-standing clients were still set up with good stocks and investment portfolios. It was the best front imaginable for gaining the confidence of new clients.
But for every legit client Vincent and his colleagues managed, there were two or three suckers, set up with shell investment schemes. The scheme would appear to pay off for a while, but the phony venture would soon collapse, netting the firm a hefty profit.
The swindled clients would move on, but the firm would find new rubes, usually uptown types, society ladies, and war widows, brought in through the new silent partners and reassured via the old, long-standing network of legit clients.
“And who are these silent partners?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know. But I think I know where you can find at least one of them.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s an awful lot of packages going back and forth to a place you wouldn’t expect.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the address isn’t a law office, a bank, or a residence. It’s a warehouse, way over on the West Side docks, near Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Mindy, this is very important. Do you remember the exact address?”
Mindy laughed, her tense posture finally relaxing. “I’ve sent so many packages there, it’s practically tattooed to my brain.”
Jack wrote the address on his notepad.
