The Rag, The Wire And The Big Store

By Duane Lindsay

Two Grifters, Off to Fleece the World...

Robin Hood? Not these two. Meet Leroy Logan, a young man who’s going to be the best con artist ever and Katherine “Fast Kate” Mulrooney, a young woman with even bigger dreams of her own. Together and apart, for sixty years of living large, Kate and Leroy will embezzle anything, con anyone and love each other without reservation.

In a twelve brilliant, funny, romantic short novellas, follow the (mis)adventures of the most exciting anti-heroes you’ve ever met.
From selling a US battleship, scamming fake Faberge eggs, funding a retirement for the widow of the only FBI agent who ever caught them, to conning Elvis and the Colonel, running an Atlantic cruise con, inventing computer scams (well, somebody had to) and growing old in style, Leroy and Kate are forever.

The First Six Stories:
1945 - Young and green, they’re out to con the Navy. (Not the whole Navy, mind you; just one ship. Twice)
1949 - A lesson in ethics – You can’t cheat an honest man, though Leroy’s certainly willing to try.
1953 - You can’t stop time –but you can slow it down. Leroy and Kate in Nebraska, trying to sell a man a horse.
1959 - Elvis Presley, a shipboard romance, Gracie Allen and George Burns.
1964 -The rock and roll music scam and – at last – prison.
1969 -One giant leap for mankind, one small bank for Leroy and Kate.

There’s Such a Lot of World...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Duane Lindsay
• Release date: Aug 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370956463

Duane Lindsay

I wrote my first novel in college at the University of Wyoming, played lead guitar in Pinky’s bar as a member of “Suzy Q and the Quad City Ramblers,” Got an English degree, then an engineering degree, worked a lot, got married to Traci (probably the best thing to ever happen), wrote several books with Raymond Dean White, retired recently from said engineering and started writing again.Now I write cheerfully demented novels about con artists and overweight PIs, play guitar a lot (on a very well used and loved 1954 Martin D-18 (for those of you who have guitar lust—centerfold picture available on request) and generally am having the best retirement ever.

Book preview

The Rag, The Wire, And The Big Store

Volume One

Copyright 2013 Duane Lindsay

Published by Duane Lindsay at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: One Mississippi...Two Mississippi...

CHAPTER TWO: The Red Hot Yellow Bugatti

CHAPTER THREE: It’s All Fun And Games Until Somebody’s Married

CHAPTER FOUR: A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On

CHAPTER FIVE: The Nut Comes Off the Head of The Joint

CHAPTER SIX: How High the Moon

ABOUT:

OTHER BOOKS BY DUANE LINDSAY:

CONNECT WITH DUANE LINDSAY:

Chapter One

ONE MISSISSIPPI…TWO MISSISSIPPI…

SEPTEMBER 1945

Seaman First-Class Leroy Logan, as fresh and green as a sprout of new grass, first notices the redhead, not because she’s beautiful, though she is, in a scarlet dress setting off green eyes that certainly make this Woolworth counter shine, but because she’s scamming a middle-aged man at the watch counter.

He decides it’s his business to butt in. He says, Excuse me, but we don‘t allow this sort of thing, playing like he’s the house dick. He takes her by the elbow, sees those eyes widen. Fortunately, he’s in civilian clothes; a crisp charcoal suit he bought tailored in Singapore before sailing home - seven dollars US and worth every penny.

What’s all this? says the victim, blustery as a walrus with his thick mustache and outraged expression. A banker for sure, thinks Leroy, who shakes his head sadly at the girl. I thought we told you to peddle your wares someplace else.

You got me mixed up with someone else, she says, trying to pull away. Gimme back my arm.

Leroy explains to the mark, This lady’s after your money, sir. She’s a local con artist.

What? Emotions show under all that lip hair; outrage, indignation, denial, all the classic responses.

Let me guess, says Leroy. She tells you she’s got a sick mother and no money for car fare. She’s got to get to Mercy Hospital before the old broad croaks. Am I right?

The mark’s face says he is.

What happens next is you’ll front her taxi money and while you’re paying the cabbie she’ll dip your wallet before it’s back in your pants.

The man eyes her like she’s a Tenderloin hooker and gasps his thanks to Leroy.

That’s all right, sir. How much would she get you for? I ask because over fifty dollars I can get her taken down for felony bunko. May I see your wallet, please?

Certainly, detective, says the mark, hustling it out. Leroy thumbs one-handed through a wad that would choke War Admiral on Derby day, counting better than two hundred in twenties. He whistles, awed that anyone would carry that kind of cash. What was the guy planning, buy the Golden Gate Bridge?

He shakes the woman and she responds as expected, making a scene. I’m innocent,’ she bellows. You got nothing on me." In the struggle the wallet falls to the floor, the banker dives for it, comes up puffing from the rare exercise.

Leroy says, We’ll need your co-operation, sir; put this woman where she belongs…

But this woman’s carrying on and the mark will have none of it. I can’t, he says, tucking the billfold, backing away. There’s no need. She didn’t get…I can’t be seen…never mind. He turns tail and scurries from the store.

The canary stops singing and Leroy let’s go of her arm. She eyes him like he’s last week’s leftover hash, then turns away and Leroy follows to a door in the rear, noting it as a very good exit. They step out into an alley.

Kate, he says and she steps into his arms, giving him a kiss like he only imagined all those long nights on ship. His eyes cross and he’s short of breath when she finishes.

When did you get in? And why, she slugs his arm, hard, "Didn’t you call me?" Then she kisses him again which makes for some very mixed feelings.

Later, at a bar down on Castro Street she says, I didn’t need your help, you know.

I know. He grins, amused, loving the freedom, loving her. It feels so good to be with a woman again. That was a nice move, swapping the money with paper.

A simple switch, she scoffs. You think I can’t get along without you, Logan? Hell, I’ve been hustling since you went to sea.

Sure.

Small time, but it keeps the wolf from the door.

It does.

I mean, a girls’ gotta live.

Right, he agrees, having no desire to argue. How much did you get?

That brings out the smile. She’s got a gap between her upper front teeth like a secret entry through the Great Wall, maybe let the invaders in, maybe not, as she counts the money on the table.

All of it, she beams.

Nice, Leroy tells her, But now that the war’s over it’s time to think big again.

She doesn’t go for the obvious joke. Instead, What do you have in mind?

I was thinking about stealing a battleship.

That’s bigger, she acknowledges seriously. Which one?

The one I rode in on, he says, deadpan, no big deal. Like it’s his already, a battleship.

"The Mississippi? She laughs suddenly, a hiccup of surprise and delight. A United States Navy battleship?

Yes.

Later still, both of them smoking in the narrow twin bed at her furnished studio, she muses, I wonder…do they leave the keys just laying around?

How much, Leroy asks Little Freddy, is scrap metal going for?

Freddy Kocher, a fat man with a ring of beard around his thick-lipped mouth, like he fell face down in a bowl of chili, clucks his tongue and considers. Twenty bucks a ton – give or take.

And how much does a battleship weigh?

"Which battleship? The baby destroyers out of Kaiser’s shipyards? Or the big ones like the Missouri?"

"Like the Missouri."

Freddy does the thing with his tongue again as he consults some internal filing system. Too fat for the services, even at the end of the war when they were taking any man with a pulse, Freddy spends his time fencing stolen goods out of a rundown brick warehouse south of Market Street. He has a memory that won’t let him forget a fact and a body odor that keeps all but the most determined person at a distance.

Um...about...fifty thousand tons?

You saying or asking? Leroy, still dapper in his pin-stripe suit, slips a finger into the vest pocket and taps his belly.

Freddie inhabits a tent-like expanse of faded white shirt and a ratty tie, loose knotted around his thick neck. A Lucky Strike burns into ash in a sand-filled can near his elbow, spectral smoke rising like the spirits of graft.

Guessing, he admits, though with a shrug. It could be higher, but certainly that’s close. He studies Leroy, a man he’s never met. An acquaintance set up the meeting, which is as it should be. The underworld, like the good old boys network in the straight world, relies on connections. Why?

No reason. Leroy picks up a gold pocket watch from the crowded glass counter. How much?

Can’t let it go for less than a sawbuck.

Ten dollars? Leroy sputters, shakes his head with awe. God Damn. Everything costs so much these days.

Tell me about it, says Freddie. Scrap steel for twenty bucks a ton.

Kate, shocked, says, That’s almost a million dollars.

Uh-huh. Leroy grins, looking about twelve years old, just a skinny little kid about to play a prank. He watches Kate, waiting for approval, which does not immediately appear .

You’re out of your mind, she says, picking off points on fingers with long red nails crooked like talons. "One, it’s too big. Two, nobody’s ever done it before because three, it can’t be done and four...let me finish...! there’s how many military police around here?"

There’s a lot of cops, Leroy agrees. If that bothers him he doesn’t show it.

"A lot, Kate says. With guns and stuff."

And stuff. They’re sitting in the lounge of the Empire Hotel, a swanky place a couple of blocks off Lombard that features a piano bar and a torch singer named Doris LaVerne. Leroy glances over from time to time as he guzzles beer from a tall Pilsner glass. Kate, in a coffee colored dress with white polka dots and brown beret, occasionally sips a Martini.

Lots of ‘and stuff,’ admits Leroy. Doris is singing Stardust and he hums along absently. The bar is dark and smoky with an almost audible hint of promise running through it like an electric wire. These are the days of expectation; the war is over and anything is possible.

But you’re going to do it anyway, right?

Well...yeah.

That’s my guy. Kate’s tired of being the girl waiting in port. She’s worked at this and that – more often that, since she has an aversion to waking early, amorous foreman and hard labor. Smiling with sensuous promise she runs her sharp nail across his cheek and Leroy shivers as if it’s suddenly cold in here.

Logan, listen to me. I know you have plans to become a con man -

A grifter, he corrects.

Whatever. And I’m happy to be your moll. But this is huge.

He leers, she rolls her eyes, says, Oh, shut up!

But if I pull it off -

Kate, sighing, thinks it’s like talking to an avalanche; unstoppable. The idea delights her. Then you’d be the best.

That’s right. So here, says Leroy, raising his glass to the future, is to the best.

He turns on his stool and leans his elbows back against the bar, his attention so focused on Doris LaVerne that he misses Kate’s mutter.

Don’t even think about it, Buster.

I wish I was older.

Leroy reaches out to touch the front of Kate’s dress. The sheath is tight and as red as the waves of her hair, bound up in some current style, with sequins that glisten like silver in the light of the San Francisco afternoon.

Why? Absently, she slaps his hand. She bends to adjust her stocking, aware of his interest. Barely eighteen, alone three years now since she ran away from her parents’ one bedroom flat near Chicago’s Midway, Kate deliberately prolongs the moment, running slender fingers up the seam to the clasp of the garter belt. She smiles wickedly and lets the hem fall.

Because I can’t pull this off looking like I do. He yanks his eyes from her legs and studies his reflection, noting the lack of age lines, the sparse facial hair that, despite being eighteen and a veteran, still doesn’t need a razor. He frowns at the blue eyes that say, Trust me, when no, you shouldn’t. Who’d believe this face?

I love this face, says Kate, caressing it. She leans close and Leroy feels the gentle breath on his neck. Sixteen months at sea, the war finally over, the Germans broken and the Japanese surrendered, Leroy is on his final leave before being, like a million other sailors, soldiers and marines, dumped back into the world of the civilian.

The security of life aboard a battleship is over and now he has to sink or swim, root hog or die. The idea both terrifies and elates him.

Kate smoothes the collar of his crisp starched white shirt and loosens the knot of his blue tie, her touch tender and disturbing.

This face can’t do what I need it to, says Leroy.

Sooo? She asks, stretching the word.

So, I need to find a face that can.

Leroy gets to the Colonel the same way he reached Freddy: a friend of a friend. In this case the guy is a security bull at the Plaza Hotel, fat with graft, fat with a disability pension and fat.

He says, I’m not promising, boyo. I hear he’s a prime jackass, but he’s aces playing the long con.

Thanks. Leroy slips him a deuce and is on his way with a number on the bar napkin: Fairfax 7 – 3241.

The Colonel, when Leroy sets up a meet, is a jackass.

You’re going to run the Eiffel Tower?

Yep.

The Eiffel Tower. The Colonel sniffs, like he’s smelled something funny. Son, you’re either an idiot or a fool.

The Colonel – not a rank, just an affectation – is Walter P. Edens, a dignified looking man of middle years, wearing a slightly out of fashion serge suit and a homburg hat. Leroy meets him at the corner of Divisidero and Valencia at a curbside metal table. The day is cool and windy and he has to keep placing things on the napkins to keep them from blowing into the bay.

Walter studies Leroy through a Chesterfield haze, drawing smoke deep into his lungs, holding it, then blowing it out through his nose like a bull.

An Eiffel, he says, sadly. His voice is that of a retired judge or a bank president; someone immediately trusted, which isn’t right. The Colonel would steal the pennies from the eyes of your dead grandmother. I thought you’d have something worthwhile.

Selling a battleship isn’t worthwhile? Leroy doesn’t like the guy, not that it matters. He’s here because he needs a face, not advice, which the guy seems to want to give anyway. Leroy sits back, resigned.

If you could do it, which you can’t. Listen. The Eiffel tower scam was run only once, back in 1925 by Victor Lustig. He convinced scrap dealers he had the ins to sell the tower since it was intended only as a short time exhibit for the Paris World’s Fair. He conned scrap dealers into bribing him to get the contract. People bought that story then because it was new.

Leroy knows all this but that’s just the idea. Who’d expect something so bold in this modern age? Nobody, that’s who.

The Colonel doesn’t think so. "Son, if you even tried something like this you’d be a laughing stock. So would anybody dumb enough to play along with you. Do I look stupid to you? Do I?"

Leroy considers the question. No, he thinks, you look like just what you aren’t; trustworthy and respectable, which is what I need more than I need this kind of lip.

So I take it you’re out.

The Colonel laughs out loud, startling a waiter cleaning the next table. A coffee cup tips over and the guy scowls, huffy, and scoots away.

No, sonny; I am most definitely not out. I’m in.

Leroy thinks what the hell - ? as the Colonel tells him, I’m in for sixty percent. And let me tell you why. It’s because this plan of yours is crazy, that’s one. Then there’s the fact that, without me, you couldn’t pull off scamming a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint. You got the face of a twelve-year old! Who’s going to believe you? He’s obviously on a roll, thinking he’s teaching the kid something.

Leroy’s getting hot now, not listening anymore, just ready to get up and go before he starts throwing things. Sixty percent! The gall of the man is infuriating. Leroy thinks of the hours he’s spent aboard ship coming up with the plan, working out the details, ironing out any little wrinkle that didn’t fit. Now this big bazoo wants to cut himself in for sixty?

Before you go off half-cocked, says the Colonel, seeing the expression and correctly reading it. Even if you tell me no, you’re not going to do this. Do you want to know why?

Leroy won’t say it so the Colonel, smirking, tells him anyway. Because I won’t let you. I’ll spread the word to every grifter, every scam artist in California. I’ll get you so greased that you’ll never – and I mean never! – run a con in your life.

A long silence follows as Leroy thinks of the best comeback. Clobber the guy? Why bother? He’s made his point clear. So he says, You finished?

Sure.

Then thanks but no thanks. I’ll do it on my own.

You don’t think I can stop you, kid? There’s a tone of menace, a thinly veiled warning like the silence just before the snake starts to rattle. He shouldn’t do it but he’s had enough. Leroy busts open.

Listen Grandpa; I don’t think you‘ve got the juice. I think you’re all mouth and no moxie. You think you run the hill? Well, I think you’re over it. He stops to light a Pall Mall as the Colonel, red faced as a warthog, chews his mustache. Veins are popping and his brow’s furrowed like a Kansas wheat field but he pulls it together to say, Let me tell you something else.

Oh good, thinks Leroy; I love it when people tell me something else. He’s just finished sixteen long months in Uncle Sam’s navy being told something else by every ensign, mate, and seaman who outranked him, which was almost everyone by the time he’d gotten busted down the third time.

If you’re foolish enough to go ahead with this without me – Leroy’s expression says he is – I won’t just blackball you with the grifters; I’ve got pull with the cops. You spit on the sidewalk they’ll run you in. You cross the street they’ll tap you for jaywalking. He laughs, a nasty turn. Hell, sit at home playing solitaire and the bunco boys’ll get you for gambling.

Leroy sips the last of his coffee, puts a quarter on the table for the brews and a nickel for the tip. Go screw, he says and walks away down the steep hill, the Colonel’s voice following him

No one’s gonna back your play, kid! he calls after him. Not no one. Not no how.

A week later Leroy’s discovering this to be true; he can’t put together a string for love or money. Evidently the Colonel’s been both busy and a loudmouth because the word is out. Leroy’s been scoffed at, ridiculed, reviled as an idiot and out and out laughed at by as sorry a collection of misfits as he’s ever imagined.

Case in point: a small-timer named Benny Lipps, supposed to be smooth