'He runs a business on Oakland Park Boulevard.'
Sparco shook his head. 'Don't know him.'
'He has a really rotten temper,' Clark said. 'Alleged to be a wife-beater. A dangerous, violent man.'
'What's that got to do with me?'
'Well, since I've been in Florida I've had the time to poke around a little. I've talked to some interesting people and found out some interesting things.'
'So?'
'So one of the interesting things I discovered is that office you rent up in West Palm Beach.'
The cigar dropped from Mortimer Sparco's mouth onto the desktop. He made no effort to retrieve it but sat rigidly, gripping his chair arms.
'I also discovered,' Clark went on, 'that you've succeeded in turning several of Sid Coe's yaks. Although from what I understand about the man, it probably didn't take much persuasion. My informant tells me you've been clipping Sid Coe for about a hundred grand a month.'
'What the hell's going on here?' Sparco cried.
'It's called blackmail,' Clark said tonelessly. 'I'm sure you've heard of it. Either I get my sixty thousand immediately or I leave your office, go directly to Coe's boiler room, and show him the evidence of how you've been jobbing him.'
'What evidence? You've got no evidence!'
'A signed statement from your landlord in West Palm Beach who copied the license number on your black BMW. A Polaroid photo of the sign on the door
of your office up there. It says Instant Investments, the name of Coe's business. And I can finger the yaks who've been working this scam with you. I figure all that'll be enough to convince Sid Coe. Ten minutes after I leave him, he'll come busting in here with steam coming out his ears. What do you think he'll do to you, Mr. Sparco? I hear he carries a gun.'
Sparco gnawed furiously at his thumbnail. 'Suppose I pay,' he said. 'Just suppose I give you back your sixty grand. How do I know you won't hit me again?'
'Easy,' Clark said. 'You pay me. Then you close down that West Palm Beach office. Tell the yaks the picnic is over. Drop the steal and figure a new way to cheat your friends. I'll be up in Chicago and won't know a thing about it.'
'I haven't got 60K in the office.'
'Sure you have. All you chiselers keep bribe and getaway cash available.'
'I've got maybe thirty grand. No more than that. I'll have to go to the bank.'
'That's okay,' Simon Clark said cheerfully, rising. 'I'll go with you.'
53
David Rathbone had a long, tiring day. He drove to Lakeland in the morning, picked up the fifty thousand in queer from Herman Weisrotte, then turned around and drove back to Fort Lauderdale. On the trip home he stopped for a club sandwich and a bottle of Rolling Rock.
He delivered the cash to Jimmy Bartlett, then dropped in at the Palace Lounge to pay his tab for New Year's Day.
He had one vodka gimlet at the Palace, then started home. On impulse, he pulled off Atlantic Boulevard on the east side of the Intracoastal and parked in the concrete area under the bridge. There were a few other cars there, a few night fishermen dipping their lines in the glimmering channel.
Rathbone lighted a cigarette and tried to unwind. He knew Rita was waiting for him, but at that moment he wanted to be alone, watch the boats moving up and down the Waterway, and think about where he had been, where he was, where he was going.
It had been in his early teens that he had suddenly realized, almost with the force of a religious experience, how stupid most people were. They were just dumb, dumb, dumb, and nothing in his life since that revelation had changed his conviction that the great majority of Americans had air between their ears.
Why, there were people who believed wearing a copper bracelet would prevent arthritis, people who believed they could beat a three-card-monte dealer, people who believed in astrology, flying saucers, and the power of crystals. There were even people who believed professional wrestling was on the up-and-up. How could you respect the intelligence of the populace when a con woman could travel the country collecting contributions by claiming to be the penniless widow of the Unknown Soldier?
Rathbone came to regard this mass stupidity as a great natural resource. Just like oil in the ground, gold nuggets in a stream, or a stand of virgin forest, it was there to be exploited. The ignorance and greed of most people were simply inexhaustible, and a man would be a fool not to harvest that bounty. It was no sin to profit from the mooches' need to believe what they wanted to believe, ignoring reason and common sense.
Now he was in south Florida, a paradise for con men and swindlers. Frank Little had once said that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth but had found the Golden Mooch. The phrase had caught on with the Palace gang; they referred to Florida as The Land of the Golden Mooch. And best of all, hundreds of marks arrived every day, to live in a sunlit, semi-tropical climate, play shuffleboard, and listen to the siren song of the sharks-the human variety.
There just seemed to be no limit to the credulity of Florida mooches. They eagerly gulped the most rancid bait, and the saying amongst Florida sharpers was, 'If the deal is so lousy that even a doctor won't bite, take it to a dentist.' Deluding Floridians, Rathbone decided, was shooting fish in a barrel, and he questioned if he was doing the smart thing to leave the state in six months.
But he recalled the advice of an old slicker he had met when he first arrived in south Florida. This guy had been on the con for fifty years and had accumulated a nice pile for his old age, mostly by wholesaling counterfeit brand-name perfumes he concocted in his bathtub. But he had retired and now, just to keep himself busy, he was running a magic shop in Miami, selling tricks and illusions.
'Remembet, kid,' he had rumbled to David, 'Easy Street goes two ways. You're young now, and you think it'll last forever. It never does. The swindles don't die- the old ones work as well as ever-but eventually you'll get tired of the game. Too much stress, too much pressure, never knowing when a mark might turn nasty and cut you up. Do what I did: Save up a stake, and then take the money and run. The game is really for young guys with balls and energy. But after a while you get to the point where you want to live a straight life, quit looking over your shoulder, and start smelling the roses.'
There was probably some truth in that, Rathbone acknowledged, but he couldn't buy it all because it meant the way he was living now would eventually prove to be unsatisfying.
In six months he might cash in, but he knew that moving to Costa Rica wouldn't be the end of his plots. He'd be a bamboozler till the day he died simply because that's the way he was.
And the opportunities never seemed to end.
Like the fifty thousand in funny money he had just delivered to Jimmy Bartlett, to be salted into a deposit at a Palm Beach bank.
'The German gets twenty percent of the face value?' Bartlett had asked.
'That's right,' Rathbone said. 'I had to lean on him-he wanted thirty-but he finally agreed after I told him there'll be bigger jobs coming.'
'Good,' Bartlett said. 'You're an A-Number-One yak.'
Actually, Rathbone had conned the printer into accepting fifteen percent of the face value of the queer. David planned to skim that extra five percent for himself.
But Jimmy Bartlett, friend and partner, didn't have to know that.
54
