chapter two
I thought about it for an hour after he left, and suddenly felt in need of a drink and a little company. I put on my jacket and went down to the Green Street bar, the Green Lamp.
Dolly was there. She was a nice-looking blonde of twenty-one or two. She had a dimple in her left cheek when she smiled. She had a body like you usually find only in your imagination. She’d already had a couple of drinks, and she joined me at a back booth, sitting snug at my side.
She didn’t mention Byrd. Neither did Mike. Mike just served the drinks. Dolly just sat tighter.
"Baby, you’re lovely tonight," she told me.
"You’ve had an extra drink."
"I felt like an extra drink. And you’re lovely. Am I lovely?"
"You’re lovely too."
"You’re not paying attention," she said, wriggling so that I would.
Any other time I would have, but my mind had drifted back to Thomas Byrd and the proposition he’d made.
"I’ve got a proposition on my mind," I explained to Dolly.
"Well, go ahead and try. This could be the night."
"Sounds like a movie I saw once."
"It’s supposed to sound sexy. I’m no movie. I’m real."
"So I notice."
"Baby," she said.
But my mind was turning now. I was feeling that old urge for something new. It was the thing that had started in me years ago. It was why I couldn’t stand still, always had to keep moving. Ten thousand, maybe. A lot of money. The unreality of a twin brother out of the past, of his proposition, became very real once again.
"Baby," Dolly said, "I’ll just bet you’re not even an engineer at all. You don’t look like an engineer."
"What do I look like?"
"Not an engineer. What could you engineer, anyway?"
"You name it."
"How about me?"
I looked at her, my mind coming back to the present.
"Baby," she purred softly.
"Honey," I said disentangling myself, "I’ve got to beat it."
I stood up, and she looked up at me as though she couldn’t believe it. "Weren’t you going to walk me home?" she asked.
"Some other time, sweetheart."
"Some other time! Why – " I was halfway to the door when I realized she’d thrown her drink at me. It landed a foot to my right. I won’t repeat what it was she said I couldn’t engineer. She’d get over it, I knew.
*
I called Byrd that night. The next day we went over the details of his plan. By the following day I knew enough about brother Byrd’s habits and background to be sure I could move in for him – as long as I didn’t run into someone who knew him too well. I took five hundred cash of the expense money and bought two good suits, some shirts and ties.
At eleven-ten in the morning of the third day, I walked into the waiting room of the Ferry Building at the bottom of Market Street, outfitted as Byrd and I had planned the day before.
I wore a false blond mustache – not a conspicuous one, but a thin, neat upper lip of whiskers that had a startling effect in changing my looks. I also wore black-rimmed glasses with plain lenses, a shaggy tweed jacket and gray slacks. I’d topped things off with a short-brimmed hat that had been crushed at the crown in a pork-pie effect. It had all been Byrd’s idea, and I was surprised to find how right he’d been when he said it took only a few reasonably conspicuous trimmings to make a man look entirely different.
Byrd had wanted the disguise at this point for a couple of reasons. He was worried about one of his friends accidentally showing up in San Francisco and spotting me as Byrd before I left. Since I would be impersonating him in Reno, he could not risk appearing to be in two places at the same time and so had decided to hole up in a cheap hotel in Sacramento, halfway between San Francisco and Reno. Since we’d decided to travel on the same train, to make sure that only one "Byrd" was traveling to Reno I would wear the disguise until it was time for him to get off. Then we’d switch – he’d go into Sacramento in my disguise and I’d go on to Reno as Thomas Byrd.
I spotted him on the far side of he waiting room, and I suddenly knew another reason why he wanted things done this way – it was a redhead. She wore a mink stole, and something knitted and form-fitting underneath. She was hanging onto Byrd’s arm and looking at him in a way that made me wish we’d already carried out the identity switch. Byrd stood beside her, immaculately dressed in a good conservative gray suit, hatless and debonair, and I knew damn well the redhead was not his wife. Byrd, I figured, was not as worried about running into any of his friends from down south in Beverly Hills as he was about making a legitimate exit in front of the eyes of the redhead. If I’d gone on to Reno ahead of him and without disguise, he would have been forced to leave in disguise – to avoid being in two places at once – and thereby miss saying good-by to the redhead and risk getting her sore enough at him to stop the fun and games.
I bought a paperback and read until they blew the whistle for the ferry. The redhead, I saw, boarded the ferry with Byrd, and for the moment I could hope that since he and I would be switching places on the train, she might just come along with the package. It was a pleasant thought and kept me whistling to the other side of the bay and into the roomette I’d reserved, one car up from Byrd’s. The redhead got right on the train with Byrd, but when the train started moving I saw her waving at Byrd’s car from the platform. Well, you can’t win ‘em all.
I relaxed on the ride across the land legs, past Martinez, into the valley. Then on schedule a porter handed me the telegram Byrd had asked Mike Chickory, the Green Lamp bartender, to send. It was addressed to Joseph Weatherly, the name under which I’d gotten my train reservation and the name Byrd would use in Sacramento. Byrd had told Mike it was a gag on a friend of his. The wire said: Emergency. Go to Sacramento at once. Edward. I told the porter I was getting off at Sacramento.
As the train began to slow, I gave my bag to the porter and told him I wanted to stop in the washroom before getting off. I told him to leave the bag on the platform and gave him a tip. Then I went up the aisle, out of sight from him, and kept on walking into the next car.
When I stepped into Byrd’s compartment, he was grinning broadly.
"So here’s where I become Thomas Byrd," I said. "I can see why you’re happy. The gunmen aren’t waiting for you in Nevada. They’re waiting for me."
"Think of the money you’re going to earn," he said, fitting on the small mustache after I took it off my own upper lip. I took off the shaggy tweed coat, and he put that on. I gave him the glasses and hat, and in a moment he looked just as I had when I’d boarded the train. He was now officially Joseph Weatherly, ready to check into the Valley Hotel in Sacramento. And I had become Thomas Byrd. My own real identity had, for the moment, dissolved completely.
Byrd took a look at himself in a mirror then turned and grinned again and touched his hat. "Good luck, old man. I know you’re going to do this perfectly."
"Yeah," I said. "How come you couldn’t have talked the redhead into the ride?"
"I could have, my good fellow. I could have."
I nodded. "Thanks for nothing."
"Well," he said, "we never were too close, you and I, now were we?"
"No," I said, "and I’ve got a feeling we never will be."
He handed me an envelope and put out his hand. "Good luck, brother."
I ignored the hand. "Lot’s of luck to you, brother. And now I suggest you tail out of here before I call the whole thing off."
"Brother," Byrd said, "I’m gone."
He was. I opened the shade and watched him stride down the Sacramento platform in the hat, glasses, mustache and tweed coat, then climb into a taxi. I pulled down the shade and opened the envelope he’d handed me just before he left. It contained five checks, blank except for Byrd’s signature. Four of the checks were for one bank in San Francisco; the account contained the balance of the expense money: $2,500. The fifth check was for a second bank, and that account contained the sixty thousand earmarked for the gamblers and whatever cut I could shave off in the bargaining.
I daydreamed for a moment about filling in my own name and cashing the one check for the full sixty thousand. Then I remembered what he’d told me when we were going over the details of the plan – that he had informed the bank with the $60,000 account not to accept my name as payee. They were also told not to accept the names of Mike or Dolly, or of anybody else that he had uncovered as my friends. And since I could count my friends on fingers of one hand, he had me really well covered. When I’d cinched this deal, he was to write a check to me for the amount of the cut I’d been able to get – and I had to depend on the fact that he would do it. I was not too nervous about it. If he failed, I would simply go after him. I was sure he wouldn’t argue about it face to face.
In addition to the checks, there were a number of identification items: Byrd’s driver’s license, a country-club membership card, an old 4-F draft card.
I opened the valise he’d carried aboard. It contained the two expensive, severely conservative suits I’d bought in San Francisco. I put on one of them, a dark brown model. I looked at myself in the mirror, admiring the expensive look. I was no longer Mark Steele, self-styled wanderer and pincher of plump barmaids. I was now my brother, Thomas Byrd, paragon of wealth and expensive ribaldry.
I pushed a button. A moment later a curtain opened.
"Scotch and water, please, porter."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Byrd!"
I lit one of Byrd’s brand of cigarettes and sat there waiting for the drink, grinning.