Big Shots and Bullet Holes

by B David Spicer

  “So, you think we can trust Brightman? Is he clean?”

  “As clean as any of us are.”

  “That’s not at all reassuring, Tanner.”

  “If Greene is what you say he is, Brightman is the only man in town who can legally do anything about it. And Kissy, anything you do has to be done legally.”

  That made me laugh. “That’s no fun.”

  “Sorry, them’s the breaks.”

  “Well, I guess I’m gonna have to go to work on Brightman.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. Is he there right now? In the building?”

  Tanner laughed. “No. You know how some men like to drink, other men like to get hopped up? Well, Brightman’s vice is baseball. He’s got season tickets for the Reds and never misses a home game. He always says he’s going to lunch, but everyone knows what he’s really up to. He just left for Crosley Field twenty minutes ago.”

  I shot a glance at my wristwatch. “Is he alone?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “We might have to pay him a visit.”

  “Be careful, Kissy. If you get caught, I doubt you’ll live long enough to stand trial.”

  “Will do. Give me your number before I go.” He did. “Okay, time to get to work.” I hung up the receiver. The Cincinnati Police got my next call. I asked to speak to someone in charge and I got connected to a Major Shearwood.

  “How can I help you, Miss ...”

  “It’s ‘Missus,’ so don’t get any ideas. My name’s Inez Winterthorp, and I live on Gilbert Avenue.”

  “Yes, please go on.”

  “Well I read in the paper that the police are looking for spies. Last night there was a whole passel of cops beating the bushes around that damned Elsinore Tower. Was them spies in the tower?”

  “Uh, no ma’am. That was an unconnected search.”

  “Was it? Cause I saw that man you’re looking for, what’s his name? Belvedere? Yes, Belvedere. I saw him at the arch last night.”

  “Yes, as I said, the search at the tower was unconnected …”

  “That’s bull, Sonny, and you know it! The paper said that Belvedere fella shot someone in a garage down by the river, is that right?”

  “I didn’t read the paper, ma’am ...”

  “Well, that’s what it said! You can trust me on that! What I want to know is how he shot all them people at the river at the same time I saw him at the tower? Can you explain that to me?”

  “No, I really can’t discuss ongoing investigations.”

  “The dame he’s all dizzy over, I seen her too. She just stood there smoking butt after butt. She had on a man’s suit too, which just ain’t right.”

  Major Shearwood didn’t say anything for a minute or so. “Now, you’re sure you saw them both at Elsinore Tower?”

  “Sure I am. Didn’t I just say so?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I guess someone’s been lyin’ to you boys.” I lowered my voice to a near-whisper. “I bet it was them Feds. They all seem like sinners to me.” I suddenly screeched into the phone. “Sinners! All of ‘em!”

  I heard him curse on his end of the line. “Mrs. Winterthorpe, can you give me your address?”

  “Sure I can. 1700 Gilbert Avenue.”

  “Thank you. I have to go, but I’ll be in touch.”

  “Goodbye.” I hung up the phone and chuckled. 1700 Gilbert Avenue was the address for Elsinore Tower. How many times could I send the cops running up there before they caught on? I guessed around fifty, more if the sheriff got in on the action.

  I’d burned my way through another cigarette by time the bellboy returned with my packages. I asked him if the tip did him fine, and he just showed me his teeth. I took everything into the bathroom and closed the door. I did an inventory. Dress, check. Shoes, check. Hat, check. Everything else, check.

  I stripped to my bones and climbed into my lady-clothes, frowning at the way off-the-rack items fit. The slate-blue dress matched the shoes well enough. The hat only came in white, as did the gloves, but the handbag couldn’t have been a better match to the dress. I declared myself pleased. My hair hadn’t seen a brush in a dog-year, so when I set to work on it I had a fight on my hands. I finally got it tamed and looked at myself in the mirror. Besides being a lot on the skinny side, I thought I looked passable, if far more feminine than I usually did. I remembered what Norman had said when I’d last worn a dress. You almost look like a woman! I’d never be as pretty as Mary had been, but I thought I could turn a few heads. I put on some red lipstick and opened the bathroom door.

  Paolo had my uneaten ham sandwich in one hand and his jaw in the other. “Kissy, you look gorgeous!”

  “Close your mouth, Paolo.” I set fire to a snipe and gave him a grin. “I had your suit cleaned. Get dressed.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a baseball game.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “You should dress like this more often.”

  I parked the car in the Crosley Field parking area. “You think so?”

  Paolo eyed me up and down. “Yeah, I really do.”

  “Put your eyeballs back in your head. I’m dressed like this to avoid going to the electric chair, not give you a peep show.”

  He looked at the stadium. “We’ll never get in there. It’s sure to be watched.”

  “Here. Put this on your hair.” I scrounged through my handbag and handed him a can of pomade and a comb.

  One of his eyebrows took flight and he stared at me like I had a weasel poking out of my nose. “This is your big plan? Hair jelly?”

  “Yeah. Get on with it, Paolo. We don’t have all day.”

  “So, I slick back my hair, and that’s gonna be enough of a disguise to get us past the cops, through the gate, and all the way to Brightman?” He slimed up his hair and ran the comb through it. “I think you’ve lost it this time, Kissy.”

  I heaved a huge sigh. “Oh, ye of little faith. Can’t you just trust me? This is my game, Paolo. I’ve been playing it for a long time.”

  As we waited, I saw exactly what I wanted to see: a pack of three boys lurking around the stadium, perhaps hoping to find a way to sneak inside and watch the game free of charge. Today they got dealt a pat hand. I whistled and motioned to them. They approached the car warily.

  “You boys interested in seeing the game?”

  The tall one kicked his toe into the dust of the parking lot. “It’s half over now.”

  “Fine, are you boys interested in seeing half of the game?” I looked at them each, tall one, short one, fat one. “I’m buying if you’re interested.” They said they were interested.

  “You’ll have to help me out though.”

  “How?” The fat one had bad breath.

  “Well, you see, my husband here sent our three boys off to military school in Switzerland, and I miss them so very much. So, I’ll pay for your tickets if you call me mom and this bum dad when we’re at the gate. Make it loud, have an argument if you can. That’s what our boys always do.”

  “Lady, you’re crazy!” The short one.

  “Yeah, but if it gets you boys a ticket who cares, right?”

  They all nodded.

  “I slipped on my sunglasses. “Okay, let’s go. Paolo, put on your sunglasses.” The five of us walked toward the ticket gate. A pair of uniformed beat cops stood by the gate looking bored. The boys didn’t disappoint me.

  “Mommy, can I have Cracker Jack when we get inside?”

  “You don’t need any candy, Russell! You’re too fat already!”

  “Mommy! Sean called me fat!”

  “You are fat, Russell.”

  “Mommy! Now Stephen called me fat too! Tell him I’m not fat! Dad! Stop them from calling me fat!”

  I patiently ignored all of them, just like any mother would. I paid for our tickets and herded my bickering brood through the gate. We walked right past the cops without them even twitching a whisker. I rewarded each of my ersatz
sons with a whole dollar and sent them on their way to the candy counter (which I’m sure their real mothers appreciated). When I turned to Paolo, I found him shaking his head.

  “How did that work? Those cops didn’t even look at us.”

  I smiled behind my cigarette. “We weren’t who they were looking for.”

  “But we were.”

  “No, we weren’t. What are they looking for?”

  “You mean who, not what. They’re looking for us.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean. What are they looking for?”

  “I don’t understand.” His brow trenched behind his dark glasses.

  “They’re looking for a man with curly blond hair, and a woman wearing a man’s suit. I’m wearing a dress, and you have straight brown hair.”

  “I do?” His hand crept to his skull. “No, I don’t!”

  I chucked. “The pomade’s still wet, which makes your hair look almost brown, and it took out the curls. So, yeah, right now you have straight brown hair.”

  “Okay, what about the kids?”

  “The folks the cops are after don’t have any. So, as soon as we show up with a trio of snot-nosed sons, we no longer fit the description of what they’re looking for, so they stop looking at us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s impolite to stare. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, you win. Now what?”

  “Now we find Brightman, of course.”

  “Right.”

  “That could take a while, though. This place holds over twenty-nine thousand people.” I glanced around. “Where do we even start?”

  “Well, I like to sit right behind home plate when I come to watch a baseball game.”

  “Right behind home plate?”

  “Yeah, that’s where you get the best view. So, if Brightman is as serious about baseball as Tanner says he is, that’s where we’ll find him.”

  We ambled our way through the stadium until we stood at the top of the aisle-way leading to home plate. Sure enough, Brightman occupied a cozy spot with an empty seat on either side of him. Paolo’s mouth turned down. “He must have season tickets for three or four seats. Look at all that prime baseball real-estate going to waste!”

  It was the top of the fifth, and the Giants already had three runs up on the Reds. Johnny Vander Meer struggled mightily on the mound, but he’d left his arm at home, so his day didn’t look likely to improve. Even the home plate umpire, Beans Reardon, looked dissatisfied with the mediocre quality of Vander Meer’s torpedoes. When you disappoint the ump, you’re not gonna have a good day. Avery Brightman sat on the edge of his seat, shoving handfuls of popcorn into his mouth and lobbing verbal grenades at the visiting team. Paolo sat in the empty seat on one side of him, and I sat on the other side.

  Brightman didn’t even look at us before he shot off his machine-gun mouth. “These are my seats, bought and paid for. So scram, both of ya!” He crammed more popcorn into his maw. “You call that a ball? Can we get an ump that wasn’t born without eyeballs! Christ’s sake!”

  Paolo leaned toward him. “Hello, Mr. Brightman.”

  He finally deigned to look at Paolo.

  “Belvedere? You’re under arrest!”

  Paolo smiled. “That’s not such a good idea, Brightman.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the beautiful young lady sitting to your right might lose her temper, and trust me, you don’t want that to happen.”

  I poked the barrel of the .38 into his side, deftly concealed by my new handbag. “We need to talk, Avery. Do you mind if I call you Avery?”

  “Uh ...”

  “I prefer talking in a more secluded spot. How does that sound?”

  Brightman threw his popcorn onto the ground and sat back in his chair. “You’ll just shoot me if I agree to go with you. So why should I cooperate?”

  I gave him my best smile. “Why, Avery, I’m starting to think you don’t trust us!”

  “I won’t be led to the slaughter like some meek sheep. If you want to kill me, you’ll have to do it right here.” He focused his eyes on the pitcher’s mound.

  I gestured all around us. “If we were really the murderous monsters you told everybody we were, we’d plug you where you sit, and take out as many of these other people as we could, aiming especially for the women and children.”

  His eyes bugged out until they almost pressed against his glasses. “You wouldn’t.”

  Paolo chuckled. “Of course not, because everything you’ve been told about us is a dirty lie told to you by a liar and murderer.”

  “Greene?”

  I pulled the snub of the .38 out of his guts. “Now you’re making sense. So, can we talk someplace a little emptier?”

  He nodded and together the three of us climbed the stairs and left the grandstand. We wandered outside until we found a lonesome bench on the sidewalk and sat down, like three ducks in a row.

  Brightman ran his fingers through his thin hair. “Now, what did you mean by Greene being a murderer?”

  “He killed Braun.”

  Brightman grinned. “You’ll have to do better than that, lady. Braun was in the Bund, and as far as I’m concerned, that makes him the traitor.”

  I lit a cigarette. “I saw him shoot his own man in the head.”

  “Corporal Wills? Greene tells it differently; he says you shot Wills.”

  “I’m not talking about Wills. He shot a different man in the head at the Fritz Brothers’ garage rather than take him to the hospital. Braun shot the guy, then Greene finished him off. His own man. Interesting how you could believe I shot Wills at the airport when Greene and Wills got there before we did.”

  He waved that away. “You say he got there before you did. That’s not proof. We pulled a nice .38 slug out of Wills’ brainpan. A .38, just like the one you have in that little purse, Lisbon.”

  Paolo frowned. “Have you compared it to the bullet in the other guy? The one at the garage?”

  He shrugged. “That place went up like the Hindenburg. Our guys are still picking through the ashes. If we find a corpse that has a bullet hole in it, we’ll check the lead against what we pulled out of Wills. If for no other reason than to prove you two did it.”

  I mashed out my dead snipe. “Have you checked it against the slug they pulled out of John Martingdale?”

  Brightman blinked. “Why would we?”

  “Because Greene shot him, too.”

  “No.” Brightman shook his head. “Why would Greene want to kill Martingdale?”

  “Because Martingdale had half of the list. You know the list I mean?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. He has both halves now.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “I saw them last night, at the airport! Both halves!”

  Paolo shook his head. “Maybe not. Hear her out.”

  “I was hiding in that garage; I saw the whole show. Braun gave Greene the list and then he burned it. I saw him burn it, Avery.”

  Brightman’s brow furrowed. “You’re lying.”

  “Not this time. He took the list, compared the torn edges with the half he took from Martingdale, then burned both.”

  “Why would he do that? That’s nonsense! The names on that list are invaluable to both the Bureau and Army Intelligence. For him to burn the list would be, would be ...”

  “Treason?” I plucked another smoke from the pack and lifted a match to it. “I’m telling you the truth, Avery. I saw Greene burn the list.”

  Brightman stared hard at me so long that I thought about charging him for the privilege. “You can’t prove a word of it, either of you.”

  “What will it take to convince you?”

  “If the bullet we took out of Wills matches Martingdale, you’ll have my attention.”

  “But not your trust?” Paolo rubbed his jawline.

  “I need more. You’ve not given me much to work with, Belvedere. There’s not even anybody
we can interrogate to corroborate your story.”

  “I think I can remedy that.” I huffed out a lungful of tobacco. “Greene called somebody named Commander Holt in Florida. Where was it, Paolo? Do you remember?”

  “Naval Air Station, Jacksonville.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Can you arrange a chat with this Holt fella?”

  “Yes, we can.”

  “Good. Ask him what’s gonna happen at Ponte Vedra Beach on the fifteen or sixteenth of this month, and why he’s scheduling training exercises designed to avoid that beach.”

  That seemed to get his attention. “Ponte Vedra Beach?”

  “Yeah.” Paolo shot me a glance. You know it?”

  Brightman licked his lips. “I’ve heard the name. Did he happen to mention any other locations while you were eavesdropping?”

  I’ve spent years reading people’s faces, and I saw right then that we had him. “He didn’t, but Braun mentioned another place when he was talking to Greene.”

  “Where was it?” He licked his lips again.

  “Long Island.”

  Brightman closed his eyes for a moment, and his mouth quirked up just a little. By the time his eyes opened, his smile became real.

  “What is it, Brightman?” Paolo’s eyebrows scraped the sky.

  “The New York office raided a Bund meeting room a month ago. They found a half-burned list, place names, not people. Both Ponte Vedra Beach and Long Island were on that list, along with about a dozen other sites alone the Eastern Seaboard.”

  That made almost as much sense to me as a soup sandwich. “So, now you believe us?”

  He kept right on smiling. “I’m leaning toward it. By now your Commander Holt has scheduled his training exercise, and if it looks like it’ll leave Ponte Vedra Beach unguarded on the days you mentioned, you’ll have earned my trust.”

  Paolo and I looked at each other, sharing a huge grin.

  “There is just one other thing I’ll need from you.”

  “What is that?”

  He looked right at me. “I’ll need that .38 you’re packing around. We’ll need to compare it against the slug that killed Wills. Just to be sure.”

  I handed it to him without thinking twice.