by Graham Marks
Joe waited, but Bowyer remained silent. “What did you say, boss?”
“I told Mario I already had the film…and that I’d gotten rid of it.”
“What?”
“I know, I know – like I already said, he was shouting at me. And since you found out who actually has the pictures, it’s even worse!” Bowyer sat up and squared his shoulders, like he was trying to throw off all his feelings of dejection and failure. “So there’s only one thing for it.”
“There is?”
“Yes,” Bowyer leaned forward. “You are going to catch the next train to Chicago… I don’t care how much it costs, or what you have to do, Joe – I do not care – just get that film back!”
8 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, CHICAGO
It had been almost too easy to become pals with Alex Little. The kid was desperate, having recently moved west from Manhattan – which, Trey gathered, he had not wanted to do – and he didn’t know a soul in Chicago. Figuring the simplest way to go about things was to introduce the new arrival to Trey’s own group of friends, it hadn’t taken much ingenuity to engineer the crossing of their paths during lunch break.
Finding common ground was also not a problem. Generally, all guys who Trey hung around with liked cars, so when he’d struck up a conversation about the four-door Packard with the classy paint job he’d seen Alex come to school in the day before, that was it. Job done.
By the time classes were ready to begin again for the afternoon, Trey knew that Alex was, like him, an only child; that his father was some kind of businessman who ran a construction company; that Alex was a baseball fanatic, who naturally supported the New York Yankees (which was okay), and he could recite batting averages till the cows came home (which was less so). Best of all, though, was the fact that he was keen on photography. Real keen.
Taking a leaf out of Gramps’s book – he was fond of saying that there was no time like the present – Trey caught up with Alex as they were leaving at the end of the school day and invited him to come over after classes on Friday. He could, Trey said, help him develop a film and make some prints, if he wanted.
Alex wanted.
They exchanged telephone numbers, agreed to get their respective parents’ permission and were about to part company when the two-tone Packard four-door pulled up at the kerb and the uniformed chauffeur got out.
“You want a lift home?” Alex blurted out eagerly. “I live quite close to you…we could run you there.”
Trey, who was normally dropped at school by his father, usually walked home, but this opportunity to maybe find out a few more details was too good a chance to miss. “Sure,” he nodded. “Why not.”
It was only a short journey, during which the only information Trey was able to glean was that the chauffeur’s name was Davis. This was mainly because his attention was elsewhere, as he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being followed. But, what with the afternoon traffic being so heavy, he hadn’t been able to spot anything out of the ordinary. And so by the time the chauffeur pulled up outside The Tavistock, Trey’s apartment building, all there was left for him to do was say his goodbyes.
Trey scanned the street as he watched Alex’s car drive away, but saw nothing worth commenting on. Saying hi to the doorman, he crossed the building’s marbled foyer and got the elevator guy to take him up to the tenth floor.
That evening, as the maid came in to clear away the dinner plates, Trey asked if it would be all right to have a friend over the next day, after school.
“Who, dear?” his mother said, carefully placing her cutlery in the I-have-finished position on her plate.
“Alex. Alex Little.”
“Is he a new friend?” asked Trey’s father. “I don’t recall you mentioning him before.”
“He’s just moved from New York, Pop. This is his first week at Mount Vernon.”
“Well I’ve got a short trip to make, won’t be back until late Saturday – Sophia?”
“I’ll be out tomorrow night, but I’m sure that will be fine; although you must let Cook know that there will one extra, Trey.” His mother dabbed the corners of her mouth with a white damask napkin. “You know how she hates surprises, dear.”
“I’ll do that, Mom.”
“Well, son,” Trey’s father picked up his Chicago Evening Post, “I’m glad to see that you’re abiding by the school motto.”
“I am?”
“You must see it every day: Societas cum fiducia – fellowship with trust.” His father opened the paper. “Would that more of our politicians lived by that credo.”
“Oh…right…” Trey wasn’t at all sure where politicians came into things, or that what he was doing fulfilled any part of the school motto, no matter which way you looked at it.
“What does this Alex Little’s father do?”
“He has a construction company.”
“No doubt called Little Skyscrapers Inc., eh, Sophie!” T. Drummond MacIntyre II raised both eyebrows and grinned broadly at his wife, who smiled sweetly back and rang the bell for the dessert to be served.
Joe Cullen came into the diner from parking up the Chrysler; the fastest way of getting to Chicago had ended up being to drive rather than waiting for a train. As days went, this had been a pretty decent one, apart from when he thought the kid had spotted him. He’d had to drop the auto way back in the traffic, and stay there the rest of the journey, just in case; it was somewhat easier following a mark who was a pedestrian, he had to say.
He walked over to the booth and sat down on the opposite side of the table from Dewey McGuigan. Dewey was nineteen and by no means the sharpest blade in the knife drawer, but – and it was a very big “but” – he was family. Kind of. He was Joe’s wife’s sister’s son. And Joe had taken him on as a favour, as Dewey was, so his wife’s sister said, “getting in with the wrong crowd” and needed someone to take him in hand. His not-so-bright father wasn’t around to do the job himself as he was behind bars and only ten months into a five-year stretch for attempted bank robbery. As Dewey was proof positive that the apple never fell very far from the tree, Joe had chosen to bring him along on this job, because to leave him alone and unsupervised in Topeka would’ve been an act of supreme foolishness on his part.
Joe picked up the menu. “What’s the special tonight, Dewey?”
“Liver, Joe. With gravy, potatoes and peas.”
“That so…? Think I’ll have to go with the Salisbury steak, then.”
“Right, good choice, Joe…” Dewey took out a cheap spiral-bound notepad and flicked through a couple of the lined pages. “You want all the notes and stuff I wrote down?”
“I’ll look at them later, Dewey, but you did real good.” Joe smiled encouragingly, glad that the kid hadn’t figured out that he’d basically spent the day on a make-work task, designed to keep him out of his hair and out of trouble. “You ordered?”
Dewey shook his head. “Waited fer you, Joe. I’ll have whatever you have.”
“Good choice.” Joe signalled the waitress, ordered two Salisbury steaks, all the trimmings, and two black coffees, then sat back and lit a cigarette. “How the other half live, eh, Dewey?”
“How d’you mean, Joe?”
“These kids, they get ferried here and there in fancy cars, with chauffeurs, no less; they live in fancy duplex apartments…” the waitress delivered the coffees and Joe reached for the sugar dispenser, “…they got cooks and maids, flunkies in the foyer and someone to press the elevator button for them. Nice life, right?” He poured a long stream of sugar into his mug and jangled the spoon around.
“Mr. Dunne, he has a pretty good life, too.”
“Mr. Dunne worked hard for what he’s got, Dewey.” Joe stubbed out his cigarette. “Types like the MacIntyre kid, they get born with it all right there in their lap and don’t appreciate what it is they been given – and, what’s more likely, probably never will.”
The waitress arrived carrying two plates of food in one hand and cutlery wrapp
ed in paper napkins in the other. “Two Salls-berries, all the trimmings. You boys want sauce? We got the full choice: yellow, brown or red.”
They ate in silence, Dewey taking Joe’s lead in the matter. Only when they’d finished the apple pie à la mode Joe ordered, and were waiting for their third refill of coffee, did Dewey ask what they were going to do next. He’d been busting to find out as, frankly, he had no idea how they were going to get the film off a kid who lived ten floors up in a two-storey apartment with a uniformed doorman and all. It wasn’t as if they could simply stroll into the place and take it.
“What we gonna do?” Joe offered Dewey a cigarette, which he declined. Of all the bad habits his mother worried about him picking up, smoking wasn’t one of those he had. “Tomorrow we get that film and get us back to Topeka.”
“We do? How?”
“Go right up there,” Joe flicked a match alight with his thumb, “and take it.”
Dewey was dumbstruck for a second or two. “We do?”
“Sure. We wait till the boy and his father leave, then, when the mother goes out, we go in.”
“How do we know she’s gonna go out?”
“Did she go out today, like I told you?” Dewey nodded. “Then we’ll be fine.”
“But what if she doesn’t tomorrow, Joe?”
“She will. I made inquiries, she goes out every day.”
“What about whoever else is up there?”
Joe leaned across the table. “Some maid’s gonna stop us? I don’t think so. Not with a gat stuck in her face, right?”
“Yeah, right.” Dewey grinned: tomorrow looked like it was going to be some kind of day. “Sounds like a plan, Joe!”
“It do, don’t it.”
9 THE BEST-LAID PLANS
Joe’s fisherman grandfather, so his own da had told him, was very fond of a phrase that went something like “If anything can go wrong at sea it generally does so, and sooner rather than later”. And today that old and long-dead gentleman had been proved correct yet again. Notwithstanding that he and Dewey were on dry land and not on a boat.
Everything had looked like it was copacetic – the boy and his father had left the building, to the minute, the same time as they did the previous day, and then, a couple of hours later, a taxicab had pulled up and the mother had gone. Having impressed upon Dewey that he had nothing to do but look menacing, Joe checked that his piece was loaded – even though he didn’t think he’d actually have any cause to use it – and they were ready to go.
Parking the car pretty close to the Tavistock building, should they need to exit at some speed, Joe straightened his hat and strolled up the sidewalk with Dewey at his heels. In his coat pocket there was a sealed heavyweight parchment envelope, the kind he knew lawyers used; it had the words “Mr. Curtis D. Marttensen” – the name of the person living below the MacIntyres’ – typed on it, along with the words “PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL” underlined in red. In his wallet was a business card he’d made up the night before, using the little Kelsey printing kit he’d purchased, along with a cheap portable typewriter, from a stationery store. It claimed he was J.D. North and showed the details of a fake Detroit law office.
The story was that he had to deliver important legal documents to the said person, in person. Joe knew – because he’d gotten Marttensen’s phone number from the book and called ahead – that the man was out of town, but he would insist that he, and his assistant, should deliver the letter to the apartment nonetheless. They would then stop the lift at the eighth floor, as expected, and walk up the couple of flights to the MacIntyres’ apartment on the tenth, and get to work.
The doorman had done his job to perfection, but then the tight-lipped, starch-collared type at the front desk heaved a real spanner in the works by refusing point-blank to let them take the letter up, and demanding it was left with him. Short of creating some sort of scene by slapping the guy’s snoot or getting out his gun (which, as he aimed to do this job as quietly as possible, was not the way he wanted to play it) Joe had had little choice but to make an exit and come up with some kind of Plan B.
When the attempt to get into the building from round the back, where groceries and suchlike were delivered, also failed – neither of them looked remotely like delivery boys – Joe decided to retreat to the diner for a rethink and a late lunch of meatloaf, gravy and carrots. There was no way he could consider, deliberate and decide what to do next on an empty stomach.
The same as the day before, the two-tone Packard was waiting outside Mount Vernon when school let out, and although Trey would have preferred to walk, today was the day Alex was coming home with him, so he accepted a ride. Waiting on the back seat was Alex’s camera, in its case.
Trey kept a weather eye out for signs of anyone following them, but saw nothing and got not one single tickle or twinge to suggest somebody was. A fact that was, he had to say, disappointing. As Mr. Little wasn’t in the car, Davis, the chauffeur, let the boys get out by themselves at the Tavistock.
“Thought I’d bring this with me.” Alex picked up his camera. “You know, just in case…”
“Sure,” Trey grinned, “I know.”
Alex slung the strap of the leatherette camera case over his shoulder. “You don’t have to bother to come pick me up,” he said to Davis as he got out. “It’s only a couple of blocks. I’ll walk home.”
“You sure?” Davis queried.
“If I could do it in Manhattan, I can do it here, whatever my mom thinks. But don’t tell her, right?”
“Not unless she asks.” Davis shifted the car into gear. “I like this job.”
Trey had only developed a film and made prints once before, so, while they ate the sandwiches and cookies that had been prepared for them, he and Alex pored over the “teach yourself” manual that had come with the darkroom equipment. When they were both sure they pretty much knew what they were doing, the two of them decamped upstairs to Trey’s room and got to work organizing everything they were going to need.
“Okay…” Alex pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned, “…I think we’re ready.”
“Fine.” Trey picked up his camera. “You figure out how much developer and fixer we’re gonna need and I’ll go in the darkroom, unload the film and put it in the tank…”
Half an hour later a strip of negative film with twenty-four pictures on it was drying off in the darkroom – a record of the events Trey had thought worth recording during the last week or so of his stay on the Circle M. (He’d had the rest of his films developed and printed down in Topeka.)
As soon as the film was dry they set to work making the prints. They stood side by side staring at a liquid-filled tray, Alex rocking it slightly, as they waited for the first couple of prints to develop in front of their eyes. It all began very, very slowly, but then, in the deep red light, they could make out the images beginning to appear one after the other on the blank sheets of paper.
“Kind of like magic, right?” Trey said, watching as the last picture he’d taken at the T-Bone ranch birthday party – the one of the man called Tony Burrell posing with the Duesenberg – came into view. “I mean, I know it’s all chemicals and such, but still…”
“That looks like Uncle Mario’s car!”
Trey’s hand stopped in mid-air as he dropped the print into a rinse bath. “That’s your uncle’s car?”
“Yeah, you know, the pretend kind of uncle who’s your dad’s friend?”
Trey put the black-and-white print in the stop bath, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. How many people called Mario could there be who owned a two-seater Duesenberg boat-tail coupé? “Is your uncle’s car blue, with red leather seats?”
“Yeah, it is…why?”
“Just wondered…” Trey said, all the time thinking, If “Uncle” Mario is as much of a wise guy as he looks, then Alex Little’s father certainly knows some people. He rinsed the print again and put it in the fixer bath. “Is he in the construction business, too, your Uncle Mario?”
“No, he’s in haulage, my dad says…look, it is Uncle Mario!” Alex peered at the second print, pointing at the woman in the picture. “Wonder who that is with him?”
“Think I heard him say it was his secretary…”
“Jeepers!” Alex looked at his watch, examining it in the red light. “That the time? I’d better get my skates on or my mom’ll start wondering where I am and have the St Bernards out looking for me. Again…”
Dewey McGuigan was so bored his brain hurt; not to mention he’d run out of chewing gum. Joe had got him watching the darn apartment building, again, while he did something else. Joe hadn’t cared to mention what that something involved, but Dewey was certain that it had to be entirely more interesting than what he’d been up to.
He checked his watch. It was not the most reliable timepiece (in that it lost about an hour a day, except it did so as regular as, well, clockwork) but, that being said, it showed he’d been hanging round for three some hours, since before the two boys had been dropped off – in a chauffeur-driven car, exactly like Joe had told him. He was going to need his shoes resoled if he did much more pavement-pounding (Joe had also told him to keep on the move, so he didn’t look suspicious; and to keep the front entrance of the building in sight at the same time – which was no mean feat, he had to say).
And then everything started to happen at once. He saw a boy come out of the Tavistock in a uniform he recognized. At first Dewey was confused – he couldn’t tell from behind which one of the two boys it was – then he spotted the camera case slung over his shoulder, and he figured this was when he should use his gumption. So he began following the boy.
Dewey was in the middle of trying to figure out whether he should carry on tailing the kid, or whether he should simply run up and grab the camera, when he saw Joe driving down the street in the Chrysler, and he had an idea. He waved excitedly, pointing at the boy and then at the car. Joe waved back out of the open window, giving him the thumbs up, and slowed down as he steered towards the sidewalk.