Behind a large desk, a blonde woman of forty-odd years hammered away on an old Remington typewriter. Her thick glasses magnified her eyes into two enormous blue pools that exactly matched the color of her blouse. She turned and threw a practiced smile at me.
“Good afternoon. How can I help you?”
I shot her a vapid grin of my own. “Hello there. I have a telegram for a Mr. Joe Shultz. I was told I could find him here.” I held the envelope aloft.
The blonde clicked her tongue and shook her head. “I’m sorry but Mr. Shultz doesn’t work here anymore.”
“Oh dear! What am I to do now?” I twisted my face into an agony of dejection. “My boss told me if I couldn’t deliver this telegram, I shouldn’t even bother to come back!” I sniffled and dug a handkerchief out of my bag to wipe my eyes. A single tear trundled down my cheek. “I’ll lose my job for sure!” My chest heaved as my breathing stuttered.
The blonde rushed over, took my arm and guided me to a chair. “Oh my! It’s not as bad as all of that!” She patted my shoulder kindly, but she’d clearly had onions with her lunch. “It’s really not as bad as all that.”
I flashed my wet eyes at her. “What will I do? Oh, what will I do?” I piled it on thick, but she finally got the idea.
“Well, look here miss, I have Mr. Shultz’s home address over there in my desk. How about I just write it down for you? That way you can deliver the telegram to his house. I’m sure your boss would find that acceptable.” She patted my shoulder again.
“Oh! Thank you so much!”
“Of course, my dear, of course.” She returned to her seat behind the desk, opened a black leather address book, and copied out the address for me. She handed me the note and smiled. “Here you are, miss. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding it.”
I held my breath as I took the note from her but thanked her kindly when I got a few feet of fresh air between us. I left the room and pulled the door closed. I heard a man’s voice rumble inside. I pressed my ear to the door frame, hoping desperately that they couldn’t see me through the frosted glass.
“Who was that?”
The blonde answered. “Just a telegram-girl. Said she had a telegram for Shultz.”
“Now that’s interesting. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Did she say who sent the telegram?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“You should have asked her. It could be important.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Martingdale. I wasn’t thinking. She was just a scared wisp of a girl, afraid she’d lose her job. I gave her Shultz’s address.”
“I see. I think I’d better get in touch with Colonel Greene. He’ll want to know who’s sending Shultz telegrams and why.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get him on the telephone for you.”
“Thank you, Agnes.”
I couldn’t hear any more, so I hurried back down to the street. Norman slouched against the wall and I waved him into motion. “Come on. We have to go!” I kept walking while that sunk through the thick bone of his skull.
“Huh?” He jogged to my side. “Kissy? What’s wrong? What did you find out?”
“Keep moving, Norman.”
He did, but not silently. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why are we running away?”
I turned back toward the building and saw a gray-templed man watching us from a third story window, Martingdale presumably. He had a telephone pressed against his ear. “Because I think we should.” We walked another block and I sketched out for Norman what I’d overheard Martingdale say.
“Guy must be in some sort of trouble if the lawyer called the cops.” He scratched his head thoughtfully.
“I don’t think it was the cops he called.”
“Then who was it?”
“The Army. He mentioned a colonel; that sounds like Army to me.”
“Oh, jeez, Kissy. This is starting to sound like a bad deal. If the Army is after Shultz, he must be dangerous. Think he’s a spy? I mean, he is a kraut after all.”
I frowned. “Norman, you’re a kraut too. Or did you forget that ‘Osterhagen’ was a German name?”
“Hey, just because I was born in Germany doesn’t make me a kraut, Kissy! I’ve lived here since I was a kid and I’m one-hundred-percent American!” He thumped his chest proudly.
“Don’t have a stroke. I’m just pointing out that Shultz isn’t necessarily a spy.”
“He could be though. Why would the Army be interested in his telegrams if he wasn’t?”
I shrugged and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know.”
“Kissy, this is too big for us. I mean, come on! We could get arrested. Or killed.”
“There’s no denying that. We’ve stepped into something way bigger than a wayward daughter.”
“What if she’s in it with him?”
“In what?”
“The spy racket.”
I exhaled smoke thoughtfully. “We don’t know there is a spy racket, not for sure. If there is, well, all the more reason to find her.” We walked in silence for a while until I stopped to take off my shoes. “My feet hurt. Let’s get a cab, then some supper. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fine, but then what? What do we do next?”
I took a long drag on my cigarette. “I think I need to pay Mr. Shultz a visit.”
Chapter Three
I sat on my bed staring at the gun in my hand until the sun went down. Billie Holiday’s voice sang out of the radio and across the hall from Norman’s room and I knew that meant he’d finished his bottle of rye whiskey. He’d be asleep before long, so I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket, put on my hat and made my escape as quietly as I could.
Shultz’s house sat along a squalid little street just off Beachmont, and I had the cabbie drop me two blocks away. The houses along either side of the street looked shabby and forlorn, several had “For Sale” signs in the yard, and one had recently burned down. Despite the drizzling rain, I strolled down the sidewalk slowly with my hands in my trouser pockets, taking in the sights, not that the view had much to offer. I saw two galoots sitting in a car smoking cigars and trying to be unobtrusive. Of course, the house across the street from their car was Shultz’s.
I walked past the car without looking at the mugs in it, crossed the street at the end of the block and continued until I was out of sight. I stood and thought, huffing tobacco beneath a burned-out streetlight. Who were the men in the car? Police? Feds? Army? Could be any of them. Someone besides Mrs. Kendall wanted to find Shultz, that much was certain. I took a final drag of my smoke and threw it into the wet street.
A filthy rut too narrow to be called an alley ran behind the row of houses. I stepped around garbage, dead rats, and worse before I found the rear of Shultz’s house. The gate stood ajar, so I let myself into the yard. The sodden grass hadn’t been mowed in a long while and I was drenched from the calves down before I managed to get to the back door. I peered through the dirty glass and saw that the lights in the kitchen were on. The icebox, an old model, stood in one corner. A smallish table had been set with cracked white dishes. Not a soul in sight though.
I turned the doorknob and, somewhat surprisingly, the door creaked open. I bit my lip in indecision, but only for a moment. Dew falling from my trousers irrigated the brown tile of the floor, making little rivers. The ceiling hung low, barely a foot over my head; it lent a feeling of suffocation to the room. Robins, blue jays, and whole flocks of printed birds peeled off the walls in curling strips. “Hello? Is anybody home?” I waited for a reply, none came. “Hello, Shultz?” Silence. The door latch clicked loudly when I closed it, making me jump. My ears strained but registered only the deafening roar of nothing. A whole lot of nothing.
The room sweltered at about one degree above Hellfire and Perdition, and I found out why. A gas oven smoldered in the corner opposite the refrigerator. I snatched a towel off the cluttered counter
and opened it. Whatever dinner had been, a beef roast or meatloaf, had been reduced to charcoal. I shut off the gas and opened the window above the sink. A tin bowl of half-peeled potatoes sat in the sink itself.
I stepped through the door that led to the front of the house. The living room swaddled itself in darkness, but that was fine with me. There wasn’t much to see anyway, just a threadbare davenport and a little table with a decrepit radio on it. The curtains, however, looked new, clean with gay embroidered flowers on the edges. I stepped to the window and edged the flowers back enough to let me see out the gritty window. The two men still lurked in the car across the street.
When I turned around, the radio caught my eye. The dial glowed like a miniature sunset, which meant that the power was on. I twisted the volume dial and, sure enough, music spilled into the darkened room. Classical music. Wagner. Das Rheingold. I shushed Wagner and moved toward a hallway that burrowed further into the heap.
I found the bathroom first. A string hit me in the face when I took a step into the room. I gave it a yank, and a sickly yellow lightbulb reluctantly woke up. The usual amenities, none too clean. A brassiere and linen slip hung from the shower-curtain rod. They both felt damp. Damp, but not truly wet. “Hmmm.”
Directly across the hall from the bathroom, a black doorway gaped. I groped for and found the string to the lightbulb. This room, unlike the rest of the house, was neat as a pin. The walls looked recently painted, a bright shade of sunflower. The carpet on the floor wasn’t exactly new, but it still had some life left in it. The bed waited, neatly made, and was topped with a handmade quilt: not the utilitarian kind of quilt that poor folks make out of old clothes, but rather the kind of quilt rich old women made in quilting circles.
Opposite the door stood a dresser that might have been expensive at one time, but now held itself together with spit and hope, and hope was running out. On top of it I found a framed photograph of a young blonde woman and a man with short-cropped blond hair of his own. He had his lips puckered up as he kissed the girl’s laughing face. I took the snapshot of Heloise Kendall out of my jacket pocket and compared it to the laughing face on the dresser. The same girl, without a doubt. The puckered man would be Shultz then. I took it out of the frame and slipped both photos into my pocket.
I opened the top drawer of the dresser and found neatly folded undergarments of the feminine sort. They felt expensive as I pawed through them. At the bottom of the drawer, I found a rumpled paper pamphlet titled How Can You Serve the Reich? My stomach churned as I flipped through the pages and saw illustrations of young boys and girls giving the Hitler salute with one hand and holding little American flags with the other. Blazoned on the back page was “Printed by The Friends of Teutonia, New York Chapter, 1933. Rolf Weber, editor” followed by a downtown address. I copied the address into my notebook. I could have just taken the whole pamphlet, but it made my skin crawl. I carefully wiped my fingerprints off of it and the picture frame with Heloise’s underpants. Suddenly I didn’t want to be associated with Kendall or Shultz in any way, fingerprints included.
The closet door hung ajar, and I opened it with the toe of my shoe. A couple of dresses dangled off wire hangers: one linen, one silk, both expensive. I took the silk one out of the closet and pressed it against myself. Heloise must’ve been shorter than I am, or maybe she just liked short dresses, because the green stopped above my knees. I chuckled and put it back in the closet. I straightened my jacket and tugged the light off.
The last bedroom began where the hall ended. I stepped into the room, but my foot got tangled up in something and I went sprawling. I scrambled to my feet; I had an idea what I’d stumbled over. I found the pull and the light sputtered to life. The body on the floor wore a navy blue suit and lay face down with one arm stretched forward. He’d been shot once in the temple and twice in the back. A river of blood had trickled out and soaked into the floorboards, dried, and was rather tacky now. Lucky for me, I’d tripped over his feet and fell away from the blood; otherwise I’d look like I’d just butchered a hog.
My stomach gave a lurch, but I forced my gorge down. Who was this guy? Short blond hair, blue eyes. Seemed familiar. I took the photo I’d found in the other bedroom out of my pocket and held it next to the dead guy’s face. Looked like I’d found Joe Shultz. I sighed and slipped the photo back into my pocket. Then I went through his.
I found an unopened pack of Camels in the first pocket I tried. The second pocket had a piece of paper with an Over-the-Rhine address written in pencil. After the address, tomorrow’s date, Saturday June 6th, had been scrawled in ink along with the time, 12:00 P.M. I rolled him over and found him stiff as a straight shot of whiskey. His shirt ran red and oozing and I had to be careful to stay out of it. His inside jacket pocket had a roll of fifty-dollar bills, $200 worth of them. I whistled and tucked them in my own pocket. “Where did you get the dough, Shultz?” The rest of his pockets were as empty as a politician’s promises, so I rolled him back on his belly.
I stood over him, tugging my lip as I do when I’m thinking hard. Dead, but with cash in his pocket, so not a robbery. Shot twice in the ribs, fell to the floor and then shot in the head. An execution? A chill ran down my spine. “Who wanted you dead, Shultz? What did you do to deserve this?”
I took a look at his outstretched arm. It seemed like he’d been reaching for something at the moment he’d been shot in the head. Kneeling, I searched under the bed. He’d been reaching for a gun, a big Colt revolver. Beside the revolver lay a slip of paper, which wasn’t nearly as dusty as the gun. It said, “When presented to the cashier of the Bremen Street Club, Pay to the bearer $1000.00.” My jaw swung open and I had to read it several times before I could believe it. A marker for a thousand bucks!
That went into my pocket along with the Camels and the other slip of paper. Just then, I heard the front door creak open. I snapped off the light and darted to the other bedroom, where I hid in the closet. My pistol, a .22 Colt Ace automatic, felt heavy and unwieldy in my suddenly sweaty fist. Footsteps thudded through the house like a herd of bison. Voices then, deep and harsh. “I’m telling you I saw a light in here!”
The second voice had an accent. “Vell, vhere is it then?”
“I dunno.” The bathroom light flickered on. “Someone was in this house.” The light snapped off again.
“Perhaps Herr Shultz turned on ze light?” A chuckle.
“Not funny, Gottlieb.” The bedroom light sputtered on. The floorboards squeaked as the men entered the room and my grip on the pistol tightened. “Check the closet.” My guts felt like ice-water just then.
Gottlieb sighed. “Herr Braun, there is nobody here except Herr Shultz, and he is dead.”
“Fine, I’ll check the closet myself.” I heard a sound like a razor being stropped and then a cannon blasted into the wall beside my head, spitting splinters into my face. I yelped, how could I not? Through the new hole in the door I saw a man’s face. He scowled at me.
“Come on out of there! Drop your heat first!”
My pistol plunked onto the floor. “All right! I’m coming out! I’m not armed!” My heart ran a marathon in my chest as I struggled to stand.
“A dame? What the hell?” Braun tore the door open and jabbed his Mauser into my face. “I’ll be damned! It is a dame!”
Braun had dark hair and a face that not even his mother would spit on. Gottlieb’s bald head glistened with sweat, but his icy blue eyes twinkled from behind his round spectacles. “Guten abend, fräulein.” He sketched a little bow. “Vhat are you doing here?”
Braun picked up my pistol and slipped it into his pocket, then he grasped my arm with all the gentleness of a hyena. “Move to the kitchen. Try to run, and I’ll drop ya like a moose. Got it?”
Gottlieb chuckled through his thick mustache. “Herr Braun, you are a man of infinite politeness. Ja?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” He shoved me toward a chair at the kitchen table. “Now, you’re gonna tell me who you are and what you
’re doing here. If I don’t like what I hear, I’ll put you back in that closet. Permanently. Got it, sister?”
Chapter Four
“Start talking, lady.” The Mauser bobbled up and down as he spoke. I figured I had one way to get out of this mess with my skin unperforated.
“Nothin’ doin’, buddy.”
Braun blinked a few times and looked over at Gottlieb. “You ain’t got a choice, sister.” He tickled my ribs with the pistol’s barrel. “I’m losin’ patience with you.”
Very slowly, I pulled a cigarette out of my breast pocket and lit it with a match. Braun watched me, rage and incredulity blurring together on his bulldog puss. I took a long drag and spouted the smoke at him. “Here’s the problem, Jack, I come to visit my good friend Heloise Kendall and what do I find? Her fiancé pickling in his own juices on the bedroom floor. Next thing ya know, you two chumps come busting in waving iron around like it was nothing. I note, gentlemen, that you weren’t at all surprised to find Shultz dead, seemed to know all about it.” I sucked in another lungful of tobacco. “So, until I get an earful of who you are, I ain’t got a name to tell ya. Got it?” I held Braun’s eye until he looked away. My heart thumped so hard I thought it’d jump out between my ribs and run off down the street.
Gottlieb guffawed and slapped Braun on the back. “She’s not afraid of you, Braun!”
“Dames these days, I tell ya, it ain’t right.” He crammed the Mauser in his shoulder holster. “You run your mouth awful free, so you must be somebody. Or think you are. My name’s Braun. The bald one is Gottlieb.”
The bald one clicked his heels together and stood erect. “Charmed, fräulein!”
They both got a dose of my eyeball. “Not cops. Not Feds either. Why’d you kill Shultz?”
Gottlieb fielded that one. “Oh no, fräulein, you misunderstand. Ve did not shoot the unfortunate Herr Shultz. Ve came here to pick him up for the meeting ...”
Big Shots and Bullet Holes Page 3