Gangster Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

“That him.”

  “Okay, good. What about these two? Have you ever had any sense of either of them?”

  George peered closely at the pictures of Angela and Bobby. After thoughtful consideration, he shook his head. “No.” He moved all three photos back toward Sam.

  “All right. Thank you, George. You’ve been very helpful.”

  George immediately pushed himself up off the chair.

  Lacey slid the sandwich platter his way. “Would you like a bite to eat?” she asked. “We’ve got plenty.”

  A faint pink bloomed underneath the sun-browned skin. “No, thank you. I… thank you.” He stepped away from the table, bowing hastily, and left them.

  “Okay,” Sam said, reordering the photos so Harcourt’s was on top. “Now we have our man. We just need to figure out what happened to him.” He looked over at Lacey. “How about we take another walk after lunch?”

  “Works for me,” she said with a grin.

  ~~~

  TEN

  As soon as they were all sated, Sam got to his feet and stared out across the expansive lawn. Lacey gathered up the papers and shoved them into her pack.

  “I’ll get the cart,” Glenn said.

  They motored up the hill. Lacey was hopeful. It wasn’t unusual for Sam to do a second walk with early bits of information, information that he could sometimes fold into a new “conversation” with a ghost. Knowing who the man was gave them half of what they needed. If Sam was lucky, he could reinterpret the stuck energy in a way that explained the story.

  Glenn parked in front of the little building and they all got out. Lacey dug in her pack for her phone while Sam approached the front wall.

  As before, he stood in front of the door but didn’t go in. Instead he went around the corner to the side wall and raised one palm close to the block, then began a slow walk down the side. He took a few steps, stopped, advanced again. Lacey could see no change in his expression until he neared the back corner.

  There he stopped again and she saw his lips thin and his jaw tighten. Filming on her phone, she stayed a few feet behind him, ready to move quickly if need be.

  “It’s this corner,” he said. “This is where it’s anchored.” He stooped down and held his palm over the ground directly outside the block. His hand reminded Lacey of a Geiger counter, scanning for radiation. But she heard no beeping. And Sam showed no emotion.

  He stood up suddenly and turned on his heel. “Inside,” he said. Lacey backed out of his way, then followed him in through the door. He turned on the bare overhead light and made his way to the back wall.

  He couldn’t get to it, not completely. The wooden shelves and all the paraphernalia piled on them barred the way. He went to the same corner where he’d felt the strongest pull outside. The rolling metal toolbox was in his way.

  He looked back at Glenn. “Can we move this?”

  Glenn nodded, coming forward to help. While Lacey filmed, the men positioned themselves on either end of the toolbox and muscled it out of the corner. There wasn’t a lot of empty space to work with, so they rolled it—the wheels protesting, as if they hadn’t turned in years—into the center of the room but as much to a side as they could in order to maintain a pathway.

  “That’s good,” Sam said, and Glenn stepped back.

  Sam approached the corner. He hunkered down again and held both palms out toward the back wall, inserting them over objects on the wooden shelves.

  “Charles Harcourt,” he said in a low tone. “We know you’re here. We know your anger ties you here. But the source of your anger is gone. You can leave it behind. Go on. Move forward.”

  For a moment he crouched there, his hands still, head down, barely breathing. Lacey tried to imagine a ghostly presence, a thin, hazy essence, but saw nothing.

  Suddenly Sam drew his hands back and leaned down. With his face only inches from the concrete floor, he felt the joint where the floor met the side wall, then where it met the back wall. He brushed dust and dirt aside and ran his hand over the concrete.

  Lacey was just zooming in when he rose abruptly to his feet and backed up a few steps.

  “Glenn, you got a tape measure?” he asked.

  Glenn looked startled. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

  Sam nodded absently, then backed up so his heel was against the bottom shelf. He paced the length of the building to the front door, then immediately went outside to pace off the length there.

  “The dimensions are different,” he said.

  “Different?” Glenn repeated.

  “Yeah. The outside is about a foot and a half longer than the inside. I can’t be sure without a tape measure, but there’s a difference.” He strode back inside and stood staring at the back wall, his hands on his hips.

  “Hang on,” Glenn said. He trotted to the cart and picked up a radio. Keying the button, he called for George. Lacey heard the gardener’s tinny voice, then Glenn asked him to bring a tape measure. George’s voice didn’t respond right away, but then replied in the affirmative. Glenn set the radio down and returned to the open doorway.

  “He’s bringing a tape.”

  “Good.”

  While they waited, Sam made a closer inspection of the wooden shelves. There were four of them all across the back wall, locked firmly in place with sturdy L-brackets and masonry screws. Sam tugged on one shelf but it didn’t budge.

  “Can we move all this stuff?” he asked, waving at the supplies.

  “Uh, sure,” Glenn said. He came forward and grabbed a couple of paint cans and took them outside.

  Lacey switched off her camera and came to help. Shoving her phone in her pocket, she grabbed several paint cans by their wire handles and followed Glenn. Soon all three of them were offloading the shelves, piling tools, supplies and bags of fertilizer outside against the front wall.

  In minutes, George joined them, slightly out of breath from his jog up the hill. He held out a contractor’s tape measure. Sam took it, clapping the man on the shoulder.

  “Thanks, George. Would you mind sticking around? If you sit here in the cart, you’ll be safe.”

  George’s eyes darted about uneasily, but he nodded and took a seat in the cart.

  Sam took the tape measure to the outside wall. “Glenn, would you hold this?”

  Without a word, Glenn took the end of the tape and set the metal tab around the corner of the building. Sam walked the length of the side wall, pulling the tape taut as he went. At the back corner, he read the distance.

  “Nineteen feet six inches.”

  Glenn released his end of the tape and it retracted into the base in Sam’s hand. Then they moved inside.

  Sam took the tape to the back wall and held the end there. He handed the container to Glenn. Through the screen of her phone, Lacey thought she saw relief on Glenn’s face that Sam was taking the position at the back wall. The assistant pulled the tape taut and checked the measurement through the door at the outside of the front wall.

  “Seventeen feet eight inches,” he read.

  Sam nodded. “Almost two feet different.” He released the tape so it retracted back to Glenn. “Okay. Now can we pull these shelves off the wall?”

  Glenn tossed the cart key to George so he could go get a couple of battery-powered drills. Surprisingly, the gardener returned with three, and all three men attacked the heavy masonry screws that held the shelves. Lacey gathered up loose screws as they went, then helped guide the lengths of wood out the door. In record time, the wall was clear.

  Sam stared at it moodily, his hands on his hips. Finally he turned to Glenn and George.

  “You got a sledge hammer?”

  Glenn’s mouth dropped open. “Sledge hammer?”

  “Yeah.” He waved to the wall behind him. “The answer’s in there. In that space.”

  “Uh, but I think we should wait for Mr. Gregory. I’m not sure he—”

  “He hired us to solve this mystery,” Sam said in a clear voice. “The answer is in there. Either we
bust through this wall or nothing changes.” He crossed his arms and stared pointedly at Glenn.

  George edged behind Glenn and made his way to the rolling toolbox. Opening the large bottom drawer, he pulled out two sledges. He kept one for himself and handed one to Sam.

  “Here,” he said. “Where start?”

  ~~~

  ELEVEN

  Sam laid his hand on the wall for the first time. He stared down at the concrete floor, then stepped toward the center of the wall. “Here,” he said. “We’ll start here.”

  George moved up next to Sam, his sledge on his shoulder.

  “Uh, what about the roof?” Glenn asked nervously. “What if that wall is load-bearing?”

  “It’s not,” Sam said. “This wall was added later. The finishing of the floor around this wall is different than the side walls.” He glanced over his shoulder at George. “Ready?”

  The gardener nodded.

  The sound wasn’t as bad as Lacey feared; more dull thuds rather than a sharp ringing. What was bad were the small particles of concrete and dust that exploded out in all directions.

  “Hey, can you guys get some goggles or something to protect your eyes?” she asked.

  She covered her mouth and nose with one hand and stepped back closer to the open door so she could continue to film without putting her phone in jeopardy. Glenn stood with her, similarly covering up. George glanced back at Lacey’s entreaty and saw them waving away the cloud of dust. He stopped for a moment and dug four paper face masks and two pairs of safety goggles out of the toolbox. He handed a mask each to Lacey and Glenn, then gave a mask and goggles to Sam and finally donned his own. Then he returned to pulverizing the wall with Sam.

  When the first big chunk of wall fell out, Sam cleared the loose debris from the hole and peered in.

  “Got a flashlight?” His voice sounded muffled from behind the mask, and in the haze of the concrete dust, with the goggles on, he looked like a refugee from a dystopian movie.

  George, ever resourceful, found a flashlight in the toolbox. He turned it on; it was weak, probably needed batteries, but it worked. He handed it to Sam.

  “Thanks.” Sam leaned down and shone the light in the hole. Lacey could clearly see concrete blocks on the far side of the space, but nothing else. Sam shone the light obliquely, as far left and right as he could, then reached into the hole. He plucked something from the gray, dusty floor of the narrow space and pulled it out.

  A cigarette butt.

  He turned and tossed it to Lacey. She caught it with her left hand and examined it by the light coming in the door. Glenn crowded close so he could see, as well. Faded letters around the barrel of the cigarette, near the filter, read Pall Mall.

  Sam turned off the flashlight and laid it aside. “Keep at it,” he told George.

  They widened the hole little by little. Where large chunks fell out, Sam slid them across the floor and Lacey and Glenn tossed them outside. Glenn found a pair of gardening gloves for Lacey, holey, but serviceable.

  Finally Sam and George had a hole almost four feet square. Sam laid down his sledge and got the flashlight again. He put his whole head and shoulders through the hole and flashed the light left, then right. He trained the light, held it steady, and exhaled heavily.

  “I think we found Harcourt.”

  ~~~

  TWELVE

  Lacey took pictures of the skeleton. It rested against the side wall, half dressed in faded, decaying clothing. Truly that was the only way it could recline, since the space was too narrow for any other configuration. There was only an inch or two between the points of the shoulders and the walls on either side. Harcourt could have paced the long, narrow passage and barely turned around, but that was all. Cigarette butts and spent matches littered the floor.

  She tried to imagine the rage when he found himself bricked up in the small space. The powerlessness, the impotence. This man who had commanded a city, who defied the law and ordered executions with impunity, suddenly completely powerless. He would die, slowly, and could do absolutely nothing about it.

  After taking as many pictures as she thought useful, she went outside and joined the others. They were waiting for the police to arrive.

  “They had to have this all planned,” Sam was saying. “Gillette had to have all the block, the mortar, everything. As a matter of fact, he might have had most of the wall already built, just stuffed Harcourt in and then finished it.”

  “Harcourt wouldn’t have stood still for that,” Lacey said. “They must have either knocked him out or killed him first to get him in there.”

  Sam shook his head. “He wasn’t dead—yet. They had to knock him out. Maybe with a drug so he didn’t wake up until hours later. But no, he was alive. And absolutely livid.”

  She nodded. The rage, the incredulity, the complete shock at finding himself in that situation. She remembered Sam’s first walk. He had spoken of the cycle of shock, disbelief, and rage. Over and over; around and around. The man could do nothing else as he waited to die. Just pace and smoke; smoke and pace. Waiting for the slow process of starvation to do its work.

  “And way out here,” Glenn said, motioning to the acres of open space, “no one would hear him. If anyone looked in the shed, they’d see no sign of anything disturbed. Gillette probably piled a bunch of stuff up against the new wall. No one would suspect it was shorter inside than outside.”

  The police were clearly astonished by the discovery. More so by the fact that Sam and Lacey knew who it was and how he got there.

  “Here,” Lacey said to the detective that interviewed her. “Here’s the history of the story in these pages. The man is Charles Harcourt. He disappeared on October 5, 1929. He was walled up by Bobby Gillette and Angela Edson, who then left the country. They were never seen again.”

  Other officers swarmed the small building and the surrounding area. When more detectives arrived, they determined to widen the hole in the wall and remove the bones. George, Sam and Lacey helped clear more stuff out of the building, and George loaded up the cart to take the supplies to another location.

  Glenn walked a short distance away, talking on his cell phone.

  When George returned with the now empty cart, he brought bottles of water for everyone. Sam and Lacey sat in the back seat and sipped the cool liquid. The dull thud of sledge hammers drifted out the door of the shed along with clouds of dust.

  George turned so he could face Sam and Lacey. “He gone now?” he asked, pointing over his shoulder at the shed.

  “I’m not sure,” Sam said. “I’ll check again after the police leave with the remains. Being discovered may be all that was needed, but we’ll make sure.”

  “Good,” George said. He nodded once, decisively, as if that put an end to it. But as he turned back to watch the police effort, Lacey saw his back spasm with a chill.

  After several minutes, Glenn joined them. He lowered himself into the front passenger seat and took a bottle of water from George. After taking a long drink, he swiveled to face Sam and Lacey.

  “Well, Mr. Gregory is not happy he missed this,” he said. “He would have liked to have been here.”

  Sam shrugged. “It’s not like we knew what we’d find.”

  Glenn stared at him, his expression blank, but Lacey thought his mind was racing. She had a feeling Glenn wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of his boss’ annoyance.

  He turned around and faced frontward, sipping water and wiping dirt from his face. “How long do we have to stay here?”

  “They’ll let us know,” Lacey said. “They should be bringing out the remains soon.”

  It wasn’t too long before a panel truck drove up the hillside and parked nearby. The insignia of the Newburgh Medical Examiner was emblazoned on both side doors. Two officers brought a large box from the shed—a black bag mounding up over the top—and slid it into the back of the truck. With lights flashing, but no siren, the truck headed back down the hill.

  After almost one
hundred years, Charles Harcourt would finally be laid to rest.

  ~~~

  Dinner was a subdued affair. After welcome showers and a change of clothes, Sam, Lacey and Glenn settled on the patio. Paloma and her staff brought plates of Beef Wellington with all the trimmings.

  Lacey sipped her glass of red wine and eyed the feast before them. The amount of food was obscene.

  “Mr. Gregory will be back tomorrow afternoon,” Glenn said. “He’s flying in as early as he can. Do you think you could hold off on your last walk until he gets here?”

  Sam continued cutting his meat as if he hadn’t heard. Lacey had the distinct feeling Glenn’s question was not really a question.

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  “Good.” Glenn’s voice sounded relieved. He hunched forward, his shoulders more relaxed, and took a bite of his dinner. Chewing carefully, he shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. That guy in there all these years. That’s just crazy.”

  “Pretty crazy,” Sam agreed.

  “Have you guys ever found a body like that—remains, I mean—before?”

  “Once or twice,” Sam said. “Usually the body is long gone, but not always.”

  “Sure makes you wonder what the rest of the story was. Why they did it.” Glenn’s gaze drifted off to the night sky above the pool.

  “There’re only a couple of scenarios I can figure,” Lacey said. “Either they were wanting out, and they knew Harcourt would never let them go, or… they were having an affair. And my guess is he wouldn’t have given his blessing.”

  “Whichever it was,” Sam said, “he never saw it coming. Totally blindsided. He probably trusted them completely.”

  “I sure wish we knew,” Lacey said. “I think I’ll take a look at that ex-cop’s book again tomorrow. See if he had any insight.”

  “Good idea,” Sam said. “It’s interesting, isn’t it, how people in power are so often betrayed by the people they trust the most?”