The Dead of Winter

by William H Hallahan

  “And … ?”

  “Ready?”

  “Yes, man, tell us.”

  “Forty-three—”

  “Forty-three what?”

  “Forty-three million dollars.”

  Basche lay on Lyons’ floor with his glass of champagne on his chest. He watched it shudder as he laughed. “Such a nice thing,” he crowed. “Those dirty sons of whores worked so hard pushing dope, loading dice, macing union members, adulterating food and the whole catalogue of sins and they lost their profits. It’s got to be a red-letter day in the world’s history. One of those rare days when the bad guys get lumped. Oh, bless all the warts in hell. Those dirty bastards …” He laughed heartily, gurgling on champagne.

  “As a professional philosopher,” said Joe Tyler, “I have to rejoice in the poetic justice. They did it to themselves. They used their customary methods of secrecy and beatings, and they destroyed their own money. Marvelous!” He laughed. “Oh, Jesus. Justice! Such justice!”

  “Twenty-seven accounts, Lyons.” Basche sat up. “That’s twenty-seven of the leading hoods of America—the very top bananas. And a lot of scratch. Ho boy. Here, goddam it. Here’s to Vinny Reece’s defective memory. May the gods of chance send us more such events.”

  “What are we going to do with it?” asked Lyons.

  “With what?”

  The money.

  Basche stood up. “You mean—we can get that money?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You’ll find complete instructions in this magazine article.”

  Basche sat down again. “Imagine. We’re forty-three millionaires.”

  Tyler frowned thoughtfully, tugging at his mustache, then abruptly laughed with glee and clapped his hands together. “Hallelujah!”

  Basche waggled his glass at Lyons. “Next time someone says to you, If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?’ have you got an answer for him!”

  Tyler hefted the empty second champagne bottle. He looked at Lyons.

  “In the cabinet,” said Lyons.

  Tyler went over to the cabinet and examined Lyons’ bottles of liquor.

  Basche looked at the assorted papers and notebooks pushed under a chair in an untidy pile.

  “What’s with this laundry receipt, Lyons? Have you had a chance to figure it out?” He snatched one from the pile and looked at it.

  “Just columns of figures like an adding machine,” said Lyons. “See—sheets for digits: pillow cases for tens—eight pillow cases equals eighty dollars; towels for hundreds; nine towels equals nine hundred dollars; face cloths for thousands, so four face cloths equals four thousand; shorts for tens of thousands—two shorts equals twenty thousand —and undershirts for hundred thousands.”

  “Wait now. Let me figure this. This receipt is for—Holy God! One hundred thous—one hundred thousand—no, one hundred twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and eighty—almost a hundred and twenty-five grand. Jesus! If the FBI could have tied this money to Pell …”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s why they didn’t want any records.”

  “But this is a record,” said Basche.

  “Yes. That had me puzzled for a while. But I think it was intended as a receipt of transmittal.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ha Ha didn’t trust anyone, especially couriers. So he devised the laundry sheet. The courier would count the money and give a laundry slip as a receipt. Once Charlie Ha Ha got the money, he’d confirm it and this receipt was to be destroyed. Pell was a little sloppy about keeping them around.”

  “Be damned. And when Reece died and Ha Ha died they must have been frantic. Forty-three million hanging by a thread.”

  “Little scratches with a needle in some floor varnish,” said Lyons.

  “Yeah, Lyons, that mind of yours.” Basche looked pointedly at him. He was beginning to breathe heavily from the liquor. “Sometimes it scares me. Don’t you ever turn it off? I don’t feel comfortable when you’re thinking and I’m not.”

  Tyler tumbled some Scotch into Basche’s glass.

  “Easy, Roger. Easy.”

  “No. Let him talk,” said Lyons.

  “I’m not talking. It’s just that … Look, we’re all in this together—and now we’re in deep. Really deep. Agreed? O.K. We have to put our trust and confidence in each other. It’s like Joey said. ‘Once in, never out.’ So we’re married—for life. And sometimes I wonder to myself, ‘What’s he thinking about now?’ It scares me—and I’ll tell you why. Things are never simple around you. There are angles and angles. For example, if we’d knocked Fleagle over and not found that notebook, that would have been the end of it. We’d have evened things up for Vinny. But your brain didn’t let it stop there. You see what I mean, Lyons, don’t you?”

  Lyons shrugged.

  “Here’s to Lyons’ brain,” said Joe Tyler. He splashed Scotch into Lyons’ half glass of champagne. Lyons sipped it and put it down in disgust.

  “Hey,” said Tyler. “We still haven’t figured out what to do with that dough. Let’s have a short thinking session here.” He sat down on the floor and pulled the pile of papers out from under the chair. He idly leafed through them.

  Roger Basche sat down and scowled thoughtfully through a window. Distantly he heard Christmas-bell carols from a church.

  The blasted doll, torn to a pulp with shot, lay on the ground again. And that chilling snicker of a cocked rifle behind him. He turned in his chair. Nothing but a wall. He looked at the other two. Tyler sat on the floor, shuffling through the papers attentively. Lyons was pouring a can of beer from the refrigerator.

  Merry Christmas. From Daddy.

  “I got it.” Joe Tyler arose and poured three fingers of Scotch into the glass. “Solved the whole problem.” He looked at the other two. “Are you ready?”

  “Shoot,” said Basche.

  “Let’s copy it—the whole thing. Then send it to the FBI with a note. Then in one shot the FBI jails twenty-seven of the worst crime bosses in the country. Great?”

  “Yeah.” Basche nodded at him.

  “What do you say, Lyons?”

  “Good. Good idea.”

  “I was thinking of blackmail,” said Basche. “But the very idea scares me. Can you imagine trying to blackmail these guys?”

  “Maybe we could continue to operate the bank,” said Tyler.

  “Forget it. I’d rather sleep with a basket of snakes.”

  Tyler went back to the papers on the floor.

  “What an opportunity!” said Basche.

  “Yeah.” Tyler stroked his mustache and glanced calculatedly at the two. He drew a breath, thinking. Then he stood up. He paced up and down several times. “Look. I have something to say. O.K.?”

  “Sure, Joey,” said Lyons. “Go.”

  “Well, we’ve run this string out. I mean this money-laundry group. They’re all dead. Now we have to decide what to do next. Right?”

  “Nothing,” said Lyons.

  “Now wait, Dan. Let me talk. You see what’s up there. Forty-three million. And that’s a drop in the bucket. Organized crime is bleeding us financially while it’s destroying our moral fiber. Crime is going to tear down the mightiest civilization in the world.

  “It has to be stopped. Somehow that money up there—that forty-three million—we can form an underground organization that will fight crime everywhere. We can establish cells in major cities—just like every other revolutionary movement, like the early Christian Church. We could destroy organized crime in five or ten years.”

  Basche sat up alertly. “Count me out. Take the money and godspeed. I’m not cut out for it. I’m very good at wining and dining customers and talking television rate cards, gross rating points. Nielsen Trendex—broadcast. Good salesman. Lousy crime fighter.”

  “You’re great! Not lousy. You’re a tremendous asset. You’ve got guts and steady hands. And you have all the instincts of a hunter. And that’s what w
e are. Hunters—of criminals.”

  “No, Joey. This has nearly ruined me already. I can’t handle it. I can’t hack it.”

  “Dan”

  Lyons looked from one to the other. “Joey, that’s a brilliant solution. It gives us a new direction. It plays right off what you believe in. I’m sure you can raise an army of high-minded people with it.”

  “Yeah, but … I can feel it coming.”

  “Well, Mrs. Raphael said it the other day. People—societies—get exactly the kind of law and government they deserve.”

  “Oh, I see. Let George do it. A good idea but not for you. Right?”

  “Something like that.”

  Tyler poured more Scotch into his glass and sat down again with the papers. He glanced once at Basche, then at Lyons.

  “Shit.”

  Roger Basche slopped more Scotch into his glass as he lay sprawled in the armchair. He took a sip, then slowly laid his head back and gargled loudly.

  “Hey!” cried Tyler. “That’s ten-dollar Scotch.”

  “Oh, pish, sonny. We got forty-three million.”

  “Have we?”

  “Well. Yeah. You know. Why don’t we take just a teeny-weeny bit of that loot and build ourselves the grandest hunting-and-fishing lodge the world ever did see—up in Canada? High-priced stuff. We’ll cater only to the rich—exclusive high-class hunting and fishing. We’d get rich—and live fantastic lives. Great?”

  “How much?” asked Tyler.

  “Oh, a million. One and a half? Something like that. Man. That’s the dream of my life. You know, I’d be very good at that. I’m an expert hunter and fisherman. I know how to handle people, how to put them at their ease, how to make them comfortable. I’ve got pretty good taste, and I know I could put together a hunting lodge that real hunters would flip over. A real man’s pad.”

  “Tell you what, Roger,” said Tyler, “you go do that while I form my underground group.”

  “O.K. Now what about silent Sam over there?”

  “Yeah.” Tyler stood up, unsteadily for a moment. “What’s going on in that head that Basche worries so much about?”

  Lyons looked at him. “Joey, I bet that hamstringing organized crime is a lot easier than it sounds. Major corporations have a tough time finding leaders. I’ll bet crime is short on real brains, too. In fact, I’ll bet if we could kill those twenty-seven customers of Ha Ha’s we’d knock crime on its ass for ten years.”

  “Ah-ha. You’re leading up to something.”

  “Yeah. Well. Maybe. I’ve got an idea that—well, maybe it’s got some poetic justice in it that appeals to me. These twenty-seven guys made their wads with crime—by preying on victims of crime. Wouldn’t it tickle a philosopher’s sense of balance and justice if the twenty-seven themselves became victims of crime—destroyed by their own weapons, killed in their own traps?”

  “Go on. What?”

  “Suppose we raised up twenty-seven assassins. Each one gets the contents of his victim’s Swiss bank account. Those twenty-seven would flee all over the world, trying to hide from assassins more relentless than all the law-enforcement agencies in the world. Results guaranteed. The twenty-seven would be rendered ineffective immediately and would die violently after running like animals—terrified, hiding animals. Doesn’t that picture appeal to you—twenty-seven ruthless bastards finally getting theirs, an army of money-hungry criminals and killers, their former buddies and underlings in full cry after them, eager to kill them?”

  The two looked solemnly at him. Neither spoke. Then Roger Basche laid back his head and laughed. He chortled. Then choked, then giggled. Then laughed. Loudly. He banged his hands together.

  “Jesus, Lyons, I hope I never get on your shit list.”

  12

  The whistle of the freighter at the end of the street woke him. It was snorting like a Itethered bull. He lay listening to the winches and cranes.

  He got up and put on heavy clothes and walked through the still-dark, bitter-cold streets toward the harbor. It was a handsome Swedish freighter being loaded with containerized cargo. Under multitudinous small lights, it was covered with small human beings like a steel Gulliver.

  Lyons had a strong inclination to board her. Just sail with the tide. No ceremony.

  For all their efforts, Vinny Reece had gotten his own vengeance. Simply by dying he had taken from the infamous twenty-seven the very thing they worshipped most. Money. His three friends had merely committed four pointless murders.

  As he watched the ship loading he knew he’d been dreaming all night of the black rider on the black horse with its stepping gait forever pursuing him. Upraised cavalry sword. If it wasn’t death, what was it? Who was it?

  He was cold.

  That forty-three million dollars. Absurd. Just scratches on a floor. Forty-three million in monsters’ money. He wondered how many casts of the dice it represented, how many cc’s of heroin, ounces of marijuana and rascal’s grass, how many numbers plays and horse bets, sleazy passions on dirty sheets in back rooms, how many bashed skulls, slashed pockets, stolen wallets, heisted home furnishings, looted warehouses, hijacked trailers. How many?

  A ten-cent one-inch paintbrush and a thirty-five-cent can of paint remover. Four or five brush strokes on the floor varnish and the hideous information would disappear before his eyes. Into a bubbly slurry. Then gone forever.

  Teresa Raphael was right. He was ready for a freighter ride to the Mediterranean. To the sun-filled Aegean.

  The cleansing of sunlight.

  At dawn the campanile loudspeaker commenced the day’s Christmas-bell caroling.

  Basche awoke in a sweat. Tormented again by the shattered doll. His prized terrain, his solace, his private world destroyed permanently. All those years of sitting in ad-agency waiting rooms, slouching through long cab rides, monotonous plane flights when, with a flick of his eyes, he’d donned his hunting gear and stepped through the high brown grass of his mind into his terrain.

  Just a slight effort of concentration and he’d flush an impala. In a boggy thicket near a wallow he’d catch a trio of water buffalo, walking into the red ball of sunrise, ready to drowse the day away in the shadow of shrubs, flicking flies and dozing with full bellies. He tracked a female lion, a favorite, a cunning yellow-eyed hunter herself. He raised with a rifle shot a flight of white water birds that spread as far as the eye could see.

  Now, a doll, shredded like Vinny Reece’s couch. No longer his hunting preserve. Now a terrain of torment, a stage for his bad dreams. The doll terrified him. The snicker of the rifle made sweat prickle on his back.

  And he awoke with a formidable question, forgotten but now recurring: Who had stabbed Pell’s chauffeur and housekeeper?

  The pin oaks still held the leathery brown leaves on their downward-sloping branches. And the feather grass, like massed Indian plumes, streamed in the slow cold air. The ground water in the Canarsie Marsh where it drained into Jamaica Bay was frozen. Like cloudy white glass. The wind susurrated through the dried stalks, through the nodding plumes and the dead brown oak leaves. A sighing, scraping sound. Forlorn.

  Basche stood on the cinder parking lot. He didn’t want to be a frozen, bloated body in that dead rock-hard marsh. The ice crystals in the cinders crackled under his feet, and he walked toward the wall of ditch grass that led down the slope-sided edge of the cinder parking lot.

  Crunch. Crunch. And the murmuring wind.

  He skidded and slipped and hopped down the slope to the bottom. His eyes found the tree, and he stepped along the hard bottom of the marsh, along boards frozen into shallow water, on unyielding hummocks of grass, on rocks and patches of old cinder dumpings. The air reached down through his hunting-jacket collar and made his back muscles shudder. He pressed his hands deep into the pockets and walked on, looking for the body.

  And at all times he listened for the snicker of a rifle.

  Salt rime spumed from the surf and blew stingingly. across the strand of winter-hard beach sand. A weary
, flopping, retiring surf at ebb tide. Sea birds flew fast and hard along the edge of the surf with soft mews, hunting in the lean times, knowing of the North Sea gales that rolled across the Atlantic toward them.

  It was achingly cold in the breath-taking wind, and Basche walked in a half crouch inside his hunting jacket. His boots left a long weaving trail behind him along the edge of the sea.

  He must have long ago passed the spot. He turned and walked with his back to the wind, looking more intently now. Not a trace in the surf. No upraised crooked elbow, no coattail protruding from the sand. No mound or depression in the surf esplanade.

  It was as though someone were tidying up after them. Putting the toys back in the toy box, sweeping away the bodies to get the stage ready for the next act.

  He felt exposed. Vulnerable. No longer the solitary hunter, the loner who took care of himself. He was with two others and he didn’t like the feeling of relying on them, of trusting their steadfastness, of believing that they wouldn’t become conscience-stricken and suddenly self-compelled to confess. They had dark secrets. They were each other’s keepers now. A bad arrangement.

  Basche paused and looked out to sea, east by northeast toward Europe in winter. The high-riding, unbridled North Atlantic, Ireland, Germany, the Black Forest, the steppes. Hunting. Good hunting. Clear. Clean. Uncomplicated.

  A hunting lodge was no joke. A magnificent lodge in the conifer country north in Canada, shared with other hunters. To track the great white stag until oblivion claimed him. That money was a sore temptation.

  Basche decided he disliked mankind.

  The white seltzer disk plopped into the clear glass of water and skimmed back and forth to the bottom, giving off a cloud of air bubbles. The second disk plopped after it, making the glass seethe with turbulence.

  Joe Tyler squinted at it with one bloodshot eye. Champagne and Scotch. He was hung over and tired, very tired. He’d awakened as soon as he’d slept off the alcohol and stayed awake the rest of the night. Hounded, nagged, prodded into wakefulness by the money. The money. Jesus God on the mountain!

  He could be what every philosopher dreams of being. A man of action. A manipulator of genuine power. The declaration of a holy war. The youth of the nation. Formed in groups in each city. Secret. Carefully assembling dossiers. Building files on each criminal. Discovering how they circumvented the law, escaped punishment and used the law’s provisions for endless delays. Preparing a guerrilla war in each city. Ending the brazen flaunting of criminal activity on every street corner.