The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

“The girl claimed to be a librarian from Milwaukee. Said she was taking a leave of absence and had rented a place near Wautoma for the summer. And since nobody in Wautoma sold the Journal, would he save her copies beginning the third Monday in June. That’s next Monday. She said she’d be in now and then to pick them up, and gave him enough money to cover the first four weeks. She also asked if he knew of any good Italian restaurants.”

  “Sounds like Iris, all right. But she could have lied about where she’d be living.”

  “She wasn’t lying,” Curley told him. “I found a storekeeper in Wautoma who remembers the girl too. Last month she was in his place. First to ask if he sold the Journal, the second time to buy groceries. She gave him the same librarian routine. I thought I’d try the real estate agents next, but their offices are closed now.”

  “St. Clair and Carmelle know this?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to discuss it with you first. Especially in light of the news from Rose.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your friend Shanahan called with some very hot information. Caught her just before she left. For one thing, he has a make on one of the guys who beat Wojac—the balding guy with a face like a hawk. He’s a Philadelphia loan shark named Louie George. No convictions, but plenty of arrests. Dropped out of sight in Philadelphia a year ago, but Shanahan’s learned what he’s doing now. He runs a Giveaway warehouse in Chicago, and his immediate superior is a big guy with a little mustache, name of Claude White. Our Claude. Shanahan doesn’t know any more about Claude yet, but he expects to soon.”

  “Shanahan,” Forbes mused, “seems to have pulled out all the stops.”

  “Hasn’t he though. That brings me to Saralee. What’d she tell you about Maxwell? His excuse for not meeting you this afternoon?”

  “A big lease negotiation came up. He’s closeted in his penthouse with some financiers from the East.”

  “The hell he is. The last thing Shanahan told Rose was that Maxwell canceled all his afternoon appointments. He left Giveaway at about two o’clock. Claude White and Louie George were with him. A couple hours later he phoned his secretary collect from a booth at a toll gate on Interstate Two Ninety-four. Told her he was going out of town, ordered her to cancel a dinner engagement for tonight. And in view of that…”

  Forbes watched through the booth as Saralee walked out of the ladies’ room and headed back toward their table.

  “It looks,” he said, “as though I’ve been had, doesn’t it? Okay, we’ll change plans. Don’t say a word about this to St. Clair and Carmelle yet. But in the morning check out of the hotel. Drive to Wautoma. I’ll meet you there in front of the courthouse at nine. If it’s a county seat, it’s got to have a courthouse.”

  “And Saralee?”

  “After what you just told me,” Forbes said, “I don’t want Saralee within a hundred miles of St. Clair and Carmelle. I’ll take care of Saralee.”

  “Before you hang up—Rose told me something else. Late this afternoon two Homicide detectives came to your office. They wondered if she knew where to find Eric. He’s not at school and he’s not at his apartment. They said it was nothing to get alarmed about, but they just wanted to ask him a few routine questions about Helen.”

  CHAPTER 13

  It was dark when they walked out of the restaurant.

  “Thanks for the dinner.” Saralee pulled a raincoat over her shoulders. “I’m glad you made me buy this. The air’s raw. We’ll be in for it soon. As a child I loved rain, but I don’t any more. I guess because whenever it rains, I start thinking about how much things have changed since then.”

  Forbes opened the car door for her and looked around. He didn’t see another Illinois car in the lot, but that didn’t mean anything. If Claude and Maxwell had followed him here from the motel, their car or cars might not have Illinois plates any more. They wouldn’t have to be in the lot either. They could be anywhere nearby, watching.

  But if that was their game, how had they pulled it off? Forbes had gone to great lengths to shake a tail, and he’d watched the rear-view mirror constantly. Of course, they could have managed it with a small fleet of cars maintaining radio contact. Or even by…

  “I should have insisted,” Forbes said, sliding behind the wheel, “that you have that third martini. I’d like to hear your uninhibited reflections on your childhood. And other things.”

  She smiled. “I’ve met other men in your line of work, but you’re not like most of them. How’d you get into it?”

  “Accident. Circumstance.” They drove out of the lot and back onto Wisconsin 100. No, nobody came out of the lot after them.

  “As a kid,” Forbes went on, “I wanted to be a lawyer. And after the Army I started college. GI Bill. But I was married, and when my son was born I had to quit. So I joined the Chicago Police Department.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “Family tradition. My father’d been a police officer, so’d his. I thought I’d enforce the law and take law courses on the side, but that didn’t work out either. My district captain was a sadistic, petty-minded martinet. He’d had some run-ins with my father, and he got back at my father through me. Gave me all the lousy details. He was also on the take, shaking down petty crooks who wanted to run betting parlors and other illegal enterprises in his district. He had a lot of political clout. He wouldn’t get away with that sort of thing today, but back then nobody could touch him, much as some of his superiors wanted to. Finally I got so disgusted that I quit.”

  “And the private-eye business?”

  “Barry Axburn got me into that. He was teaching a night law course then, just as he does now. I was in his class. He took an interest in me. Found me a job with a big agency that did some work for his law firm. I tried to keep up the law courses too, but I had my hands full taking care of the family. And after a while I made pretty good money. I was Midwest supervisor before I quit to form my own agency, so I could be more selective about the cases I handled.”

  “Tell me about the boy.”

  “He’s a college student. Wants to be a teacher.”

  “That’s wonderful. You must be proud of him. What college does he—”

  “I think,” Forbes said a little curtly, “we’d better stop for gas. The tank’s pretty low.”

  Saralee stared at him and then shrugged. “Okay. I get the message. I’m sorry, I just thought small talk was better than nothing.”

  It was a big station, illuminated by a forest of fluorescent lights. Forbes parked at a premium pump, got out, and told the attendant to fill the tank. Saralee remained in the car. Fine.

  He borrowed a gauge from the attendant and kneeled to check the air pressure in a front tire. He didn’t glance at the gauge though. His eyes scanned the back of the bumper and the understructure of the car itself.

  Damn, it was dark there. What he sought could be just a few feet away and he’d miss it. They made the things with a non-reflecting black finish. He should have a flashlight, but if Claude’s people pulled into the station, the flashlight would give his game away.

  He kneeled at the other front tire and then hiked to the left rear wheel. He kneeled again, and there it was. He reached out and pulled it away, a black object two inches thick and about the length and width of an index card. Twin antennas jutted from it. It had been fastened to the inside of the rear bumper by magnets.

  When he was with the big agency, he had occasionally used these things himself. It was a homing device, a battery-powered bumper-beeper sending out a signal being picked up by one or more cars equipped with receiving units. To receive the signal, the cars could be anywhere within a mile. If they had a radio communications system, some cars might even be stationed up ahead, ready to pick up the signal when he came within range or to move along other roads to cut him off if he changed directions.

  Very professional. It had taken only a few secon
ds to install the thing. They could have done it at the motel, his Loop garage, or even during Helen’s funeral.

  Forbes pretended to check the other rear tire. Then he straightened and strolled toward a Coke machine. Between himself and the machine was a big blue Chrysler, also pointed north. The Chrysler had Michigan plates. The driver, a plump middle-aged man, was fumbling in his wallet for a credit card but wouldn’t be leaving right away. Earlier Forbes had seen the man’s wife and three children trudging to the rest rooms.

  Nearing the Chrysler, Forbes dropped the tire gauge. And as he kneeled to pick it up, he reached out with his other hand and fastened the homing device under the Chrysler’s bumper.

  They followed the Chrysler out of the station. As Forbes had expected, the Michigander continued north on Bypass 100.

  “You mind giving me a rough idea,” Saralee asked, “how much longer we’ll be on the road?”

  “A little while. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “Is it that far?”

  Doggedly Forbes hung on the Chrysler’s tail. Its driver was the super-cautious type, creeping along in the slow lane while traffic whizzed past on the left. Finally they rounded a curve after driving through an intersection just before the light turned red. Behind them not a headlight glowed.

  Abruptly Forbes turned off at the next side street, gunned the motor, swung around a corner, barreled down that block and turned again, tires screaming.

  “My God,” Saralee gasped. “You said sleep—”

  “Sorry. Just being careful. I don’t see how anyone could have followed us this far, but I want to make damn sure.”

  They squealed around a few more corners and then braked at a stop sign. All seemed clear. Forbes eased into traffic on a through street heading back south. A while later he turned onto a westbound street that would take them to within a few blocks of the restaurant where they’d had dinner. Hopefully, whoever had tailed them from Chicago was now bird-dogging the Chrysler. Maybe they’d track it all the way to upper Michigan before they learned of the switch.

  Traffic began to thin. Soon they were rolling through the country on another divided four-lane freeway, but this one didn’t go to Oshkosh.

  “I’m mixed up,” Saralee said. “We’re headed in a different direction now, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. We were going north before. Now we’re going due west, toward Madison. It’s the state capital, roughly eighty miles from here.”

  “That’s what I like—travelogues.” Leaning back, she closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep though. Her breathing was shallow, and the fingers of her right hand beat a nervous tattoo on her left elbow.

  Rain droplets began to fog the windshield. Forbes turned the wipers on.

  Where would he do it? Not on the freeway, it was too well traveled. And not yet, he wanted to get farther into the country first.

  Thirty miles or so from Milwaukee they left the freeway, going south on a state route. He didn’t know where he was and didn’t especially care. The glistening black road twisted and turned. He followed it for about five minutes and then slowed at a wooded intersection with a county trunk.

  Saralee sat up and frowned, peering through the wet windshield as the headlight beams swept across the trees and then splashed into the narrow county road.

  “You’re going down that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is it, isn’t it?” She lit another cigarette. “Where’ve you got him? A farm? That’s all I see around here. Farms. And damn few of those.”

  The road emerged from the stand of trees, wound through crop and pasture land for a few miles and then swung into a wooded ravine. At the bottom of it Forbes pulled to the shoulder, braked, and turned off the motor, wipers, and lights.

  Lightly the rain splattered the car.

  “All out,” he said. “End of the line.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “There isn’t anything. But this is where I’m leaving you. The last farmhouse is about a mile back. You better start hiking because it’ll rain harder soon. How you explain your presence to the people who live in that house is up to you. There weren’t any lights on, they might not even be home.”

  “If this is your idea of a joke—”

  “No joke.” He reached over and opened the door on her side. The roof light went on. Her face was ashen. “I found it,” he said. “The homing device on the bumper.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I swear it. And Morris wouldn’t—”

  “The hell he wouldn’t. He didn’t meet any financiers today. He left his office at two. Claude White and Louie George were with him. And he phoned in later from a booth on Interstate Two Ninety-four to say he was going out of town.”

  “I don’t believe it. He couldn’t do that to me.”

  “You?” Grimly Forbes smiled. “You trying to say Maxwell double-crossed you too? What do you take me for?”

  He got out, walked around the car, opened the back door and began dumping Saralee’s packages to the side of the road.

  “But he did. He…” As Forbes opened her door, she reached up and grasped his lapels. “Look, you’ve got to understand. If Morris told Claude about me—seeing St. Clair was my idea, all mine. You can’t leave me here now. I’ve got to get away, as far from Claude as I can.”

  “You’re a liar. Practically everyone I’ve met while looking for Iris Dean is a liar, and I’m fed up with it. Out.”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Or do I pull you out?”

  “Please…” Woodenly she climbed from the car. Then unexpectedly she sat on the road at his feet, palms flat, her legs half curled under her. “I’m begging you. Claude’ll kill me. He said he would, if I did anything like this. Jesus, how can I convince you, what do you want? I’ll do anything, but don’t leave me alone here.”

  Forbes began to wonder. From all indications she had fallen into a state of profound emotional shock. Maybe she hadn’t known about the homing device. And if so…

  He hauled her up, pushed her against the car and held her wrists.

  “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can stop all this vague double talk and start leveling. Did Claude or his people kill Helen?”

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “He went into a rage when he heard about it. It made you so hot they were afraid to watch your apartment and your office. And Claude was afraid the police might start looking for Iris too, it’s the last thing he wanted.”

  “Who’s Claude? And who are those thugs he orders around?”

  She hesitated. “The Syndicate. The Outfit. The Underworld. They—”

  “Iris Dean. Why do they want Iris?”

  “Because she and that old bastard St. Clair stole a million dollars from them.”

  About a half-mile back on the road they’d just traveled headlights moved with odd deliberation against the black sky and then dipped behind a rise. Three sets. Three vehicles approaching very slowly.

  Farmers driving home after a social evening? Perhaps. But it was uncommonly heavy traffic for this road at this hour.

  “Damn.”

  He left her there, got a flashlight from the glove compartment and played the beam around the car’s underside. Come to think of it, the beeper he’d found hadn’t been too well concealed. They knew he was familiar with homing devices. They might have counted on his inspecting the car, hoping that if he found one beeper he wouldn’t look for another.

  This one, nestled in shadows, was fastened to the gas tank. It was bigger than the first beeper, much larger than any he’d ever seen before.

  Cursing, he pulled the second homing device away, threw it into the woods and hurried back to Saralee.

  “Your friends,” he said, nodding down the road.

  “Claude?” She blinked. “Here? Now?”

  She was slack-jawed w
ith fear, and knowing who Claude was, Forbes could understand it. There was a knot in his own stomach. If they were caught out here, he suddenly realized that Claude would kill him too.

  “Yes. They know we’ve stopped. They think we’re in a house with St. Clair, it’s why they’re just creeping toward us. But when I turn our lights on, they’ll know something’s wrong. Get back in, but understand this. You’re my prize package, you belong to me now. And I’m not letting you out of my sight for more than a minute until you tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  The first of Claude’s cars nosed into the ravine just as Forbes drove out the other side. He floored the gas pedal. The road wound through cropland, and in fifteen seconds or so two sets of headlights whipped up out of the ravine after them. The third car must have stopped to retrieve the beeper.

  Trees closed in again. They swung around a series of curves and skidded into a fork, where Forbes almost lost control before spinning into another forest road.

  “They’ll catch us,” Saralee said numbly. “If they don’t do it now, they’ll do it later. Anyone they want they get.”

  “Don’t be silly. That’s what they want you to think, but it isn’t true. Anyhow, I think we lost one. They couldn’t know which leg of the fork we took. They’d have to separate back there.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. They—”

  “For Christ’s sake, shut up!”

  The road coursed through another stretch of farmland. Yes, only one set of headlights tailed them now. More trees loomed. They climbed a hill, swung down and roared through an intersection with another road. As the trees thinned, Forbes glanced to his left. That side of the road wasn’t fenced. He slowed, drove off the road, parked under a stand of pines and doused the lights.

  A minute passed. No car came up the road after them.

  “We lost the other one too,” he said. “We’ll wait awhile and then get out of this part of Wisconsin as fast as we can. At the moment I’m lost myself, but this road’ll have to come out someplace. You all right?”

  Saralee didn’t answer. Her head was in her hands and she was crying.