[Lady Justice 01] - Lady Justice Takes a C.R.A.P.

by Robert Thornhill

  Stinky!

  Once a carpet is soiled, it’s almost impossible to completely eradicate the smell.

  And fleas! I was in the building once when Mary was going in to clean up a room. I heard an ungodly scream and found Mary frantically swatting at her legs that were black with the little critters.

  Whole house extermination.

  When we arrived, Mary met us at the door. “I walked by Billy Bob’s door, and the smell damn near knocked me down,” she snarled. “That boy’s either dead or got a cat in there. I can smell a cat a mile away.”

  “Let’s go take a look,” I said. The three of us climbed the stairs to number nine.

  Mary was right. Halfway down the hall our noses started to burn. I knocked on the door. “Open up, Billy Bob. It’s me, Walt.”

  No answer.

  “Okay then,” I said. “Willie’s here, and if you don’t open this door, I’m going to have Willie do it for you.”

  “Oh all right.” We heard the deadbolt click. Billy Bob opened the door, and we were nearly overcome with the stench that hit us in the face. I looked in and saw not one but three cats curled up on his bed. The litter box in the corner was so full that no self-respecting cat would use it, so they didn’t. Little land mines were scattered throughout the apartment, and a bowl of sour milk sat curdling in the corner.

  “Billy Bob,” I said, “I think you know what this means. This is a violation of your lease. You and your buddies are going to have to move.”

  “But Mr. Williams,” he pleaded, “I like cats.”

  “I like cats too, you asshole,” Mary chimed in. “How about we exchange recipes?”

  “Okay, Mr. Williams,” Billy Bob said. “I’ll be out as soon as I find another place.”

  Nope! Been there, done that. They never seem to find another place.

  “Well, Billy Bob,” I said, “I don’t think that’s acceptable. We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. You can either pack up your stuff, and you and your friends are on your way, no harm, no foul, or I can call animal control and they will come out and take your cats to the pound. And when they see how you’ve been caring for them, they will certainly file a complaint for cruelty to animals. Your choice.”

  He thought for a minute and said, “Okay, I’m packing.”

  “Wise choice! I’ll just leave Willie here to make sure you don’t forget anything.”

  “Oh man, Mr. Walt,” Willie wailed. “If I stick around here much longer, I gonna have to shower fo a week jus to get de stink off me.”

  I never enjoy the role of the tough guy landlord, but I learned a long time ago if you let the creeps run your building the good tenants will all move out, and soon you have nothing left but a building full of creeps. That’s how slums get started.

  Mary and I went downstairs, leaving Willie grumbling in the hall. “You hurry up and get yo’ skinny white ass outta here befo’ I puke.”

  I sat down in Mary’s apartment, and we talked about the riddler case. She had been following it in the paper, and Willie had given her his version of events. I shared with her the latest riddle. “What’s black and white and red all over, 9/6, B-2?”

  “Well, hell,” she said. “The first part’s easy. I been doing puzzles and riddles for years. That one’s as old as the hills. I’m surprised you didn’t get it right away.”

  “Okay, enlighten me.”

  “It’s a newspaper, silly. The print is black on white paper, and when people get it, it’s read all over. See, read, not red. That’s what fools you. But I don’t know nothing about that last part.”

  “Okay. 9/6 sounds like a date. B-2 might be the section and page number. Do you still have last week’s newspapers?”

  “Yep, got them tied in a bundle waiting to put them out on recycling day. Let me go get them.”

  She returned with the stack of papers, and I shuffled through them until I found the September 6th edition. I turned to the second page of section B and looked at the column headlines. Then I found it.

  “Rival syndicates vie for territory in northeast Kansas City.” The article went on to say that while northeast had, for years, been under the control of the Italian mafia, Russian mobsters had been making inroads. Prostitution, bookmaking, and protection rackets that had once been run by the Italians were now under the Russian influence.

  It all fit. The import company’s primary overseas contacts were in Asia and Eastern Europe. It wasn’t a stretch to believe that Blanchard and Grissom had fallen under the influence of the Russian mob. They had strong-armed the partners into printing the money and laundering it through the export company.

  I could imagine Blanchard and Grissom wanting out of the deal, and the mob hanging Blanchard was a warning to Grissom. They, of course, set it up to look like a suicide to divert attention from themselves.

  Grissom, fearing for his own life, burned the printing warehouse to bring the operation to a halt and went into hiding. But where were the engraving plates? Two Kansas City guys would certainly not have the resources to produce quality plates, so the mob must have supplied them.

  Ah yes! Grissom had the plates, and he was holding them hostage to protect himself and his family. His message to the mob was, “You hurt me or my family and you’ll never see your plates again.”

  So now they were at a stalemate. Grissom was in hiding with the plates, and the mob was trying to find both.

  Probably at the time they fired at Ox and me, they didn’t know Grissom had the plates, and they didn’t want us locating them in the burnt rubble.

  The pieces all fit. But what now?

  I saw Willie escorting Billy Bob and his menagerie out the door to a waiting cab.

  Good riddance!

  I thanked Mary and Willie and I headed home. We had to roll the windows down to blow the stink off of Willie. He wasn’t a happy man.

  The next morning I showed the captain the newspaper and told him my theory on the case. He agreed and said he would pass the information on to the task force.

  Just as Ox and I were leaving, an officer brought in another letter. The note inside read, “Now you have the pieces of the puzzle. I’m sure you can put them all together. You must know they are looking for the engraving plates. They will be put where no one would think to look. Everyone wants this to be over. The next riddle will tell you where the plates will be. Use this information to catch the Russians: ‘The man who invented it doesn’t want it. The man who bought it doesn’t need it. The man who needs it doesn’t know it.’ Good luck! But hurry! Time is running out.”

  We, of course, had no idea what the riddle meant. Each time we had to let the words rattle around a bit and then brainstorm to try to make sense out of it. Then it struck me. Who solved these riddles? Ox and Willie and Mary and the professor, that’s who. I pointed this out to the captain and told him I had an idea. I wanted to get all these good folks together and see if we could come up with an answer. He agreed.

  I told Ox to pick up Vince and come to my apartment. I called Maggie and told her I would pick her up. I called Mary and told her that I would pick her up. I called the professor and told him to come up to my apartment. Now that I had my team in place, we would put our heads together and figure this thing out. I did a quick mental calculation. Together, we had over four hundred years of experience.

  The Russians didn’t stand a chance.

  CHAPTER 26

  We all gathered together in my apartment. I ordered pizza, and as we sat there scarfing pizza and slurping soda, I looked around at our little group.

  In addition to Ox and Vince, our honest to goodness cops, there was Willie, a sixty-six-year-old street hustler who had helped capture the Gillham Park mugger and solve a riddle. There was seventy-five-year-old Mary, tough as nails but with a heart of gold. She helped take down Louie at the Seniors’ Prom and had solved a riddle. There was the eighty-five-year-old professor who, with his wit and wisdom, had kept us heading in the right direction. And, of course, Maggie, my sixt
y-six-year-old sweetie, who’s always by my side, lifting my spirit, licking my wounds, and telling me how great I am.

  Although they would never wear the blue and carry a badge, these were the real heroes. This was my team. They would never be an official part of the City Retiree Action Patrol, but in my mind they were honorary C.R.A.P.ers.

  Roy Rogers had Gabby Hayes. The Lone Ranger had Tonto. Marshall Dillon had Chester. Batman had Robin. Walter Williams has the Crappers, and they’re scrappers, every one.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s time to get down to business. We have a riddle to solve. We know this riddle will give us a clue as to the location of the hidden engraving plates. Let’s take the first line. ‘The man who invented it doesn’t want it.’ So it has to be a physical object of some kind. But why would someone invent something they didn’t want to use?”

  “Well, that’s easy,” Mary said. “There’s all kinds of stuff out there that people have invented and hope they never use. Somebody invented the thing they use for a colonoscopy, but who really wants a camera stuck up their butt?”

  Good point.

  “Then what we’re saying is that the thing is useful or needed, but it has a negative connotation for the ultimate user,” I said. “Let’s go on to the next line. ‘The man who bought it doesn’t need it.’ So whoever bought it has purchased it for someone else’s use.”

  “Yeah,” Willie chimed in. “It’s like when your old lady sends you to de store for some of dem ‘my time of de month’ things. I buys ‘em, but I sho’ don’ need ‘em.”

  “I see your point,” I said, “but that doesn’t fit with the last clue, ‘He who needs it doesn’t know it.’ If your lady friend sends you to the store, it’s because she knows she needs it. It almost seems to imply that the ultimate user needs whatever the product is, and someone else gets it for him, but he’s unaware of it --- maybe because he’s unconscious.”

  “Or dead,” muttered the Professor.

  We all sat in silence as we let these words sink in.

  I was running the clues over in my mind. “What would a dead man need that someone would buy for him that the inventor hopes he never has to use? Dead people don’t need anything. They’re dead!”

  “They need a place to rest,” Ox said.

  “A coffin!” we all shouted at once.

  It fit.

  The guy who invented it sure doesn’t want to use it. Someone has to buy it for the dead guy. And the dead guy sure isn’t aware he needs it.

  At least that’s the theory.

  Who did we know that was dead? Blanchard!

  The note said that the plates would be hidden where no one would think to look and that time was running out. Who would look in a casket? Blanchard’s funeral was two days away.

  But how could we use this information to catch the Russians?

  The next morning Ox, Vince, and I sat down with the captain and shared our theory. We were at a loss as to how to use the information to lure out the Russians. We concluded that what we needed now was to have Clark Grissom come forward with the plates.

  An officer came in with another letter addressed to me. We opened it, and it read, “I hope you were able to solve the last riddle. If you were, then you know you will need help and cooperation to catch the Russians. Solve this last riddle and you will know who I am. If you are willing to grant immunity, you may contact me. If not, I will deny everything. ‘You do not want to have me, but when you have me, you don’t want to lose me.’ Good luck!”

  Here we go again.

  The four of us sat and pondered the riddle. It’s something you don’t want to have, but if you get it, you don’t want to lose it.

  “I think the key word here is lose,” I said. “Not ‘get rid of’ or ‘throw away’ but ‘lose.’ Normally, if you lose something, you’re not aware of it until you miss it, but the riddle says, ‘you don’t want to,’ and that implies knowledge.”

  “There’s another definition of lose, Vince said. “Lose can also mean ‘not to win,’ as in a football game.”

  “True,” I said. “But that doesn’t fit with the first part about not wanting it in the first place. Usually you want to play a game. What else can you lose but really don’t want in the first place?”

  “How about a lawsuit?” Shorty asked. “You never want one of those, but if you have one you certainly don’t want to lose it!”

  Bingo!

  Ox, Vince, and I headed to the computer room and logged on to casenet.com. This is a Web site maintained by the Circuit Court that tracks past and pending lawsuits. At any given time, there are hundreds of civil suits pending, so we each took a computer and started wading through the current cases, looking for something that would tie into the riddler case.

  After an hour with no success, I found it. The case read, “Laura Grissom vs. Clark Grissom, Petition For Dissolution of Marriage.”

  Laura Grissom was the riddler.

  We reconvened with the captain. It would appear that Laura Grissom had actually been in contact with her husband while he was hiding from the Russians. She had been safe because the Russians didn’t want to take a chance on losing the plates.

  The Grissoms wanted to come forward but could not do so without implicating themselves in the crime, so Laura anonymously sent clues so that we could uncover for ourselves the seriousness of the situation. They were hoping the police would be willing to grant them immunity to bring down the Russian mob. If not, Laura could deny everything.

  The captain took the information to the joint task force. They agreed to immunity in exchange for the plates and cooperation in bringing down the mob. The city attorney drafted an immunity agreement, and we were ready to set our plan into motion.

  We had to contact Laura Grissom but suspected that the mob would be watching the house for Clark and maybe even have the phones tapped, so we enlisted Maggie’s help.

  Maggie came into the station, and after we brought her up to speed, she made the call.

  “Hello, Mrs. Grissom,” she said in her most professional realtor voice. “My name is Maggie McBride. I’m an agent with City Wide Realty. We have a mutual friend, Walter Williams. Walter told me you were dissolving your marriage, and I know that can often involve liquidating your home. I would like to offer my services.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. In one sentence, Maggie had told her that I had solved the last clue and was ready to help.

  “I might be able to use your services,” she said. “However, being a businesswoman myself, I always like to have everything in writing. Do you have something in writing that would explain your services in detail?”

  She was looking for the offer of immunity.

  “Absolutely,” Maggie replied. “I have a document prepared that I believe will meet all your needs. Perhaps we could get together at my office to discuss it, and if you don’t mind, your old friend Walter would like to drop by and see you.”

  She agreed, and an appointment was set up for that afternoon.

  We were gathered in Maggie’s office when Laura arrived. When she entered, I shook her hand and said, “The riddler, I presume.” She smiled and nodded.

  I asked her why she had sent all the riddles to me personally.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked. I shook my head. “Well, do you remember Laura and Jim Maxwell? You sold us our house twenty-two years ago. Jim passed away, and I married Clark. I saw you and your C.R.A.P. program in the paper, and I remembered what a good job you did for us. I trusted you back then. I figured I could trust you now. It turns out I was right.”

  Lady Justice has a long memory.

  Who knew a sale twenty-two years ago would help bring down a crime syndicate twenty-two years later? It boggles the mind.

  Laura Grissom had discovered her husband and Blanchard’s involvement with the Russians. She wanted no part of it and told them so, but they were in so deep they figured the Russians would never let them out alive, and of course they were cor
rect.

  Laura wanted to distance herself from the mess, so she filed for divorce. The threat of losing his wife caused Clark to convince Blanchard to pull away. That got him killed.

  So now, with the immunity, if we could wrap up the syndicate, the Grissoms could get back together.

  This was our plan. We knew the Russians would be watching every move that Laura made, in case Clark contacted her. We had to expose Clark and the plates so the Russians would make a move to nab them without endangering Clark. The Russians knew Clark was going to hide the plates, so we put together an elaborate scheme to draw them out.

  Myron Blanchard’s funeral was scheduled for the next day. He was a respected businessman, so the funeral would be well attended. Laura, of course, would be there, so we knew the mob would be watching closely. Since Blanchard was murdered, police presence would be expected, so any Russian attendees in the crowd would keep a low profile.

  We would arrange for Clark Grissom to make an appearance with a package under his arm. As he paid his last respects to his former partner, he would slip the package in the coffin but do it so that it could be seen. We were sure the mob was aware that there was a BOLO out on Grissom, so we would take him into custody after he planted the plates, thus ensuring his safety.

  The mob would know the location of the plates but couldn’t retrieve them with all the witnesses. The coffin would be buried, and our hope was that the mob would unearth it in the dead of night to get their precious plates.

  Our plan was to hide officers at strategic locations throughout the cemetery and arrest the Russians after they unearthed the coffin and retrieved the engraving plates.

  The task force decided to have both uniformed officers and officers dressed in civilian clothing scattered among the mourners at the funeral home. I was assigned to be in civvies.

  Willie and Mary asked if they could come to the funeral. They had been such an integral part of the operation to this point that I didn’t have the heart to say no. With all the law enforcement on the premises, I figured they would be in no danger.