A Shared Confidence by William Topek Page A

what customers I can, but I think I can keep my doors open and stay out of the poorhouse.”
    â€œIt sounds like a grand start, Mr. Ryland.”
    â€œIt just occurred to me…what do I owe you, Mr. Caine?”
    I shrugged. “Pick up my tab tonight and we’ll call it even.”
    â€œYou mean that?”
    â€œAll I gave you was some advice, Mr. Ryland. That comes pretty cheap.”
    â€œIt was good advice,” he admitted, then grinned. “Not so easy to stick to, though.”
    â€œGood advice usually isn’t. Unless it’s what you want to hear, which is rarely the case.”
    There’s an old saying that you can’t cheat an honest man. That’s baloney, of course – honest people get cheated all the time. It is, however, nearly impossible to con an honest man. An honest man knows he can’t get something for nothing, and if he stays honest, he’ll make it a habit to open any gift horse’s mouth, going over the teeth inside like an accountant checking his ledger. Ryland had started off as an honest business man, but he’d gotten greedy and let himself lapse (aided down this path by two expert confidence men). I didn’t say this last part to him, figuring he’d realized it on his own or he wouldn’t be going back to Lincoln. He had the right attitude now and I didn’t want to risk any tinkering. We chatted amiably for an hour or so and he paid for our drinks, shook my hand, thanked me again, and walked out the door. I signaled Lonnigan for a beer and he brought it over.
    â€œThere’s a fella’s lookin’ a damn sight better than he did Tuesday last,” Lonnigan observed, nodding toward the door.
    â€œHe’s in a fix, right enough,” I said, “but not nearly the fix he thought he was in.” There wasn’t anyone nearby and I threw Lonnigan a few details (he’d never be so crass as to pump me for them). I try to be discreet about the troubles of the people who come to see me, but Lonnigan works his bar like a professional: his ears have always been larger than his mouth. Besides, I knew he must have been genuinely concerned about Ryland to send him to me in the first place.
    â€œHard luck,” he said at last.
    â€œHe’ll bounce back. My money says so, anyway. I’m pretty sure he learned his lesson.”
    Monday morning I was back in my office. A man wanted his wife followed, a lawyer I knew wanted me to deliver a court summons, a lawyer I didn’t know wanted my help in tracking down a possible heir to part of an inheritance (“As executor of the estate, Mr. Caine, I have to be able to show that I made a reasonable effort.”), and Gail wanted some time off next month for a vacation. I told her I didn’t see a problem. Minutes later, she came back into my office with a telegram. I reimbursed her for the quarter tip she’d given to the Western Union boy and opened the folded yellow paper.
    I rarely even blink at coincidences these days, but they still catch me now and then. Just last week I’d listened to Ethan Ryland’s tale of woe, his misadventure in Baltimore. Naturally, I’d thought of my brother who lives in that city. We’re not that close; I hadn’t really heard from him in years. Not until the telegram, that is.

Chapter Four: The Ties That Bind

    I looked first at the sender’s name. Nathan Caine spent money on a telegram? Must be bad news. I quickly scanned the brief message:
    COULD USE YOUR HELP WITH PROBLEM STOP PLEASE TELEPHONE ME AT HOME THIS EVENING STOP NUMBER IS CASTLE 2247 STOP REVERSING CHARGES OKAY END
    I reread the telegram several times as I reached for a cigarette, trying to glean a bit more out of those four short sentences. A telegram and not a letter, so he didn’t have time to wait for the mail. Yet it wasn’t urgent enough for him to telephone (or had he tried?). What kind of problem? Nathan was an officer at a