A Pure Double Cross (10 page)

“Get-the-fuck
-out,”
he said and slammed the door in my face. I was right. Friday was delivery day.

A thought occurred as I made my way back down the corridor. Anonymous hoods were stalking me for unknown reasons. When I called for reinforcements the FBI sent Wally
in a '39 Hudson. Time to take the money and run? The promised six-figure payroll heist looked like a pipe dream at this point. What was I waiting for?

I could ambush Jimmy as he loaded the canvas bags into the trunk of his Buick. Sap him down, shoot him in the kneecaps. Carry the cush down the alley to Fulton Road, hail a cab, go to National City Bank, collect the rest of my pile and disappear, apologies to The Schooler, Wally and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That's what I was thinking as I walked out the front door of H&R Manufacturing. What I did was slip behind a snowy evergreen at the corner of the building and train an eye on the detached two-car garage in the far corner. I was cold, hungry and happy as a clam, doing what I did best. Spying.

I waited behind the snowy evergreen at the right front corner of the building, waited for Jimmy to trundle those three canvas bags to the detached garage behind the building, whereupon I would leap into galvanized action.

A dog barked. A big dog, coming closer. Cripes, I'd forgotten about Hector the hound. He rounded the corner at full gallop, teeth bared. He dug his front paws into the snow and growled from tongue to tail. The fur around his neck stood to attention.

“Can it pal, I've dealt with tougher mugs than you.”

The dog crept closer, head down, sniffing the ground, sniffing my socks, licking them. Of course. My shot up ankles were bleeding.

Jimmy marched across the snowy blacktop right about then, cash-filled bags in hand. He scanned right and left as he crossed the open area. I made myself small behind the evergreen. The Hound of the Baskervilles tore at my socks, shredding them. It hurt like hell.

Jimmy stopped in mid step at the sight of the dog's snout buried in a snowy evergreen. I lowered my socks, the great hound lapped eagerly at my oozing wounds. If ol' Slopehead came over to investigate I would take him down, grab the canvas bags and drive his Buick down the alley.

But Jimmy continued on to the two-car garage, apparently satisfied that Hector was masticating a rat. He wasn't half wrong.

Jimmy pushed open one garage door with a fluid muscular movement, then stood back to admire his effort. Ka-
bam
went
the sliding door. I patted Hector's anvil skull and snickered at the sight of Jimmy showing off for himself.

So, Schroeder, you a rat or aren't ya? Jimmy's busy stowing loot in the trunk, his back is turned. Now's the time!

I told myself I should wait to see if I was right about Jimmy being the deliveryman. I told myself there was still a chance we could tail him to Teddy Biggs and collect on this cockeyed scheme. That's what I told myself. What I did was nothing.

Jimmy threw the canvas bags into the trunk of a car and slammed it shut. I'd blown my chance. I waited for Jimmy to back out and drive off.

But he stepped out of the garage, slid the door shut, yanked open the other garage door and backed his Buick onto the slushy blacktop. The razor-wired front gate rolled open by remote control. The Buick took a right on Cesco, headed east. Jimmy
wasn't
the Fulton Road Mob's delivery boy.

I raced toward the closing gate, didn't get there in time. I craned my neck to see the '39 Hudson pull away from the curb as Jimmy drove past. I flagged my arms and hollered but Wally didn't hear me. The Buick and the Hudson turned north on Fulton Road.

I had another opportunity now. One better suited to my cowardly nature. Pop open the trunk of the delivery vehicle, grab the weekly take and go. I was good with locks, Hector was my puppy now, he wouldn't object. It was a lead pipe cinch. And I couldn't make myself do it.

I didn't take any moral comfort in this you understand. I am definitely a rat, just not a very good one.

What now? I had to do something to redeem myself. I knew where the weekly take was stashed but had no way to follow it to Mr. Big.
Unless
I opened the trunk and climbed in, a foolproof plaster if ever there was. That I could do. Hiding took my kind of courage.

But that opportunity escaped me too. Hector, who had followed me to the gate, spun and bounded off, barking his fool
head off. I darted back to the cover of the snowy evergreen as The Schooler stepped out a side door and stopped to ruffle Hector's fur.

The Schooler was the Fulton Road Mob's bagman. Of course he was. He was the mug in the middle, the buffer between Mr. Big and Jimmy and the itchy young men. So long as The Schooler was the one to lay treasure at the feet of the monarch his position was secure.

You should've doped this out earlier, Schroeder, should have thought it through. Maybe then you'd have a better vehicle for tailing the Packard to its destination than two bloody ankles on blistered feet.

The Schooler drove his Packard past the rolling gate and turned right. I managed to squeeze through the gate this time and watch the Packard turn south on Fulton Road. I slow-footed my way down to the streetcar stop, fumbling in my pockets for the fare home, hoping I still had some rye left in that pint.

I was waiting for the rattler when I saw the '39 Hudson nosing back down Fulton Road like a shot-up B-17 limping home to base. Wally saw my wave and pulled to the curb. I ran across the street and jumped in.

“I lost him, I'm sorry.”

“Forget it, just get this heap in gear. Head south to…what's the next major east-west?”

“Uh, Denison.”

“Take a left on Denison.”

It was a long shot. The Schooler had a five minute head start to an unknown destination. But he'd be taking it slow and careful with all that cush on board and his Packard would be easy to spot. He figured to be headed in the direction that money headed in this town. East.

Wally drove south on Fulton, past Johnny's Bar and St. Rocco's Church. He waited for a slow moving truck to clear
the intersection before turning left on Denison. I resisted the urge to push him out onto the pavement and grab the wheel.

Wally found third gear eventually and gave the '39 Hudson its head. Such as it was. We wove through traffic, we passed a cement truck, its rear end churning. We drove through a slump shouldered neighborhood of Cleveland doubles and three flats, crumbling mortar making their brown bricks look like rotting teeth. We approached fifty miles per hour.

“The guy in the Buick musta spotted me,” said Wally, woefully. “He hung a U on Fulton, then he took off down an alleyway. By the time I got turned around he was gone.”

“My fault, I had the wrong guy and the wrong car.”

Wally's eyebrows crept up hopefully. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Our pigeon is up ahead somewhere. Keep an eye peeled for a dark red Packard.”

Wally stepped on the gas, whipped around a slow moving sedan, passed on the right, skidded on a patch of ice, got the chassis square and raced through the E. 71
^st
intersection on the last wink of amber in the overhead traffic light.

“You said a red Packard, am I right?” said Wally.

“Uh huh.”

“Well, I'm colorblind, but I know a Packard when I see one.”

I followed his look. A wine red Packard was purring along in the #2 lane, fifty yards ahead.

“Get over,” I said. “Close in.” Wally did so. “Now back it down some. And don't hunch over the wheel, he'll see your face.”

“Right,” said Wally, settling back, on the job, in the hunt.

I eyeballed the Packard's trunk and reconsidered my plan. It had sounded plausible at the time. Find Mr. Big and convince the crime boss to sideline Jimmy so that the FBI would approve the final heist.

Now that reality was approaching at 40 mph I began to see some flaws. As in how to gain entry to a highly guarded
compound and then win the confidence of a recluse whose hideout you have located by means of tailing his trusted first lieutenant?

A tough sell. And if Mr. Big really was Louis Seltzer, well, by this time tomorrow I'd be at the bottom of Lake Erie.

I eyeballed the Packard's trunk some more. I should have grabbed the geet when I had the chance.

A flat bed truck stacked with clattering wooden pallets pulled in between the Packard and us. I looked upstream. We were approaching another traffic light. I told Wally to swing into the #1 lane.

The traffic lamp turned amber. We were ten yards from the E. 93
^rd
intersection, the Packard five yards ahead on our right, slowing down for the light. I slid down as we pulled alongside.

“Should I stop or go?”

“Stop,” I said, sure that our tail was unmade.

We braked just as the Packard's V-12 roared to life. I sat up in the passenger's seat to watch The Schooler tear across the intersection just ahead of the cross traffic and disappear down the road.

-----

Wally was looking woeful again as he pulled the Hudson up to Mrs. Brennan's rooming house. “What do I tell ‘em? Downtown.”

“Not a thing, I'll be in on Monday to file a report.” I opened my door, clapped Wally on the shoulder and said, “We'll get ‘em next time.”

Wally nodded and drove off. I felt bad for him. It wasn't his fault he was paired with a numbskull. I also felt hungry enough to eat a horse. Thank God for small favors, horsemeat wouldn't be hard to find around here.

I let gravity take me down the hill. I kept my balance by flanging out my feet like a circus clown, crunching through the corn snow, skidding on ice. I managed to remain upright for
two blocks. To Elm Street, to a blue and white sign with a mermaid on it.
The Harbor Inn.

Valhalla.

The Harbor Inn had a bar about a mile long. There were a million different beers lined up on a shelf above it, arranged alphabetically. By the time I reached the end of the bar I had devised a plan. I would start with a cold bottle of Anchor Steam and work my way down the line, concluding my evening with a frosty Zipfer Bier. An ambitious undertaking, no question, but I had a hog wallow of self pity to dive into.

The ruddy deckhands throwing darts and the sooty steelworkers wide-elbowed at the bar shot me sideways looks as I ambled by. The vicuna topcoat was inappropriate attire maybe. So I took a stool at the far end, dug out a Ulysses S. Grant and said those stirring words every barfly longs to say. “Drinks all around, on me.”

What the hell, I was flush.

The barmaid palmed the fifty like this happened every day and started taking orders. The tugmen and steel smelters to my left had surprisingly refined tastes. The barmaid had to climb a stepstool to retrieve dusty bottles of Johnny Walker Black and Remy Martin VSOP. I got some
skol'
s and
prosit'
s, and one freckled rascal raised his glass with “May the best of your past be the worst of your future.”

I smiled, nodded, and ordered an Anchor Steam. A waitress crossed behind me carrying something that smelled like heaven on a plate. I snagged her on the way back and ordered the same. She returned to the kitchen. I cleaned the bar with a drink napkin, it came up red. Ore dust.

You ever have one of those days when you're the butt of the joke and you don't know why? You've got a big piece of spinach in your grille maybe, or someone's pinned a ‘kick me'
sign to the back of your coat. That's the way it had been since I arrived in Cleveland. Everyone in on the joke but me.

Did The Schooler make us in the '39 Hudson or was he just performing standard evasive maneuvers? I didn't know.

Did Jimmy somehow stage manage my rescue outside the Theatrical or just catch a mystery call for help at the last second? I didn't know.

Did Special Agent in Charge Chester Halladay recruit me to infiltrate the Fulton Road Mob only to have his chain yanked by the Director because I was getting too close to Mr. Big, a.k.a. Louis Seltzer? I didn't know, didn't have a blessed clue.

I did know that the steaming platter of cabbage rolls and browned to perfection walleye perch that the waitress slung down on the bar in front of me was a thing of beauty. I admired it for half a second.

I was barely into the C's - Carling Red Cap Ale - when the barmaid asked me if I was Hal Schroeder.

“Who wants to know?”

“Some guy,” she said, indicating the wall phone, its earpiece dangling.

I went over and picked it up. “Who's this?”

“Jimmy.”

“How'd you find me?”

“Your landlady said you were out. I called the nearest bar.”

“Smart boy. What do you want?”

“Thought we could have a little chitchat,” said Jimmy and laughed, loudly.

I held the earpiece at arm's length. Jimmy laughing? I didn't figure he knew how. He was obviously deeper into the alphabet than I was. I heard him say something. I pressed the earpiece to my unbandaged ear. “Say again.”

“Fats Navarro. Heard of him?”

“Yes I have.” Every jazzhead in America had heard of Fats Navarro, hard bopping trumpeter extraordinaire.

“He's in town tonight, down on Central. Wanna go?”

There was only one answer this question. I wanted to find out what Jimmy was up to, sure, why he was making nice after I had taunted, humiliated and outfoxed him at every turn. But I
really
wanted to hear Fats Navarro in the flesh. “What's the name of the club, I'll meet you there.”

Jimmy laughed again. Twice in one night!

“This isn't a grease job, G-man, it's a night on the town.” His voice grew husky. “With a coupla very
friendly
young ladies.”

“Jimmy I'm not…”

“Pick you up at nine,” he said and rang off. I held the ear-piece at arm's length and examined it carefully.