“And she’s still here?” I asked.
“Sure, sure. The new folks kept most of the old help. Ruth now nannies for the new folks’ two boys.”
“Can I speak to Ruth?”
The man looked down at his shoes. “I suppose I can see about findin’ her. But I best get back to work soon. The boss wants the place in top shape for the party he’s havin’ this weekend.”
He unlocked the front gate and allowed me to step in.
“Wait here,” he said.
I lit a cigarette and waited until he came back with an old colored woman in her eighties.
“This is the fella that wants to talk with ya,” the man said.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said.
“It’s all right, young man. I need the exercise. What is it you want to speak to me about?”
“Sal Mallon,” I said.
Dismayed by the name, the elderly woman said, “What has that child got himself into?”
“A lot. That’s why any information you can give me would be helpful.”
“I don’t know what I can possibly tell you, outside that the child was disturbed.”
“Disturbed how?” I asked.
“He did sinful things. Things I’d hoped he’d outgrow, but I reckon he never did. There was a time I thought he’d gotten better, but he just hid it from me. When he was about fourteen I found this journal he had. It was full of awful things. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t give it back, and tore up my room looking for it. He found it, but I never saw it again. I’m sure of it that he hid it somewhere.”
“What was in it?” I asked.
“I can’t say for sure. At the time my reading was not so good. I just remember certain vulgar words being in it.”
“Is it okay if I have a look at the room he was staying in?”
The woman sighed. “I don’t see the point. The new folks got rid of everything that was in that room.”
“All the same, can I take a quick look around?”
“Oh, if you must. But you best hurry; the lady of the house will be arriving with the children soon.”
I tagged along behind the woman into the castle that made me feel like I had stepped into the medieval age. She showed the way up a teakwood spiral staircase to the top floor and into one of the towers.
“This was the boy’s room,” Ruth said.
She was right; there was nothing in the room that showed a little boy had once occupied it. Only a reading stand and a lamp decorated the room.
“I’ll be back in a moment, and then you best be going,” Ruth said.
Not knowing what I was expecting to find, I tried to think how a little kid would go about hiding his secrets. Boys that did this would go about it in a detailed, elaborate way, and take pride that their parents or whomever couldn’t find it. Was it worth finding? That depended on what it would be.
I made a swift assessment of the room. Not having time for scrutiny, I checked under the bed, across the floor for hidden cracks, and the walls. I searched everything but the ceiling and found nothing.
Ruth stepped back in the room and told me I had to go. I thanked her for her time and for allowing me to take a look, and showed myself out. Midway to the front gate the groundskeeper came up to me.
“I don’t know if it will help, but I just remember somethin’. It wasn’t too long after Ruth took the diary that the boy came up to me and said he stole it back and buried it under the harbor. Said he got the idea from all the pirate movies his dad took him to see. Told me that I best not say nothing about it if I knew what was good for me. I don’t know why he bothered telling me if he was gonna be all like that.”
“He just wanted someone to brag to,” I said.
“I suppose.”
Thanking him, I allowed him to show me out. I then bought a small shovel at a hardware store in Peter’s Landing, and drove out to Huntington Harbor. Once parked, I peeled out of my suit jacket, and with shovel in hand went out under the pier.
The odds were stacked against me. If Mallon did bury something, he had probably removed it long before he left the place. My outside chance fell on him never bothering to remove his stash.
Half an hour into digging, two young lovebirds holding hands came down the pier, took one look at me and what I was doing, and backtracked the direction they came.
Forty-five minutes later I unearthed a couple bottles, an opium pipe, a shoe, and some fishing tackle. Close to calling it a day over frustration, I plodded on until I uncovered a cut plug tobacco tin box. It was approximately seven inches in length and four inches tall. The box had a painted-on picture of George Washington coated over in a brown tarnish.
I opened the rusted latch to find a gray diary inside. The pages were yellowed, and upon opening it, several aged newspaper clippings fell out. The clippings were from Mallon’s kidnapping, and a follow-up article that had Bill Storm’s grotesque mug shot on it.
I needed only to read the first entry in the diary to have the once-blurry photo of Sal Mallon come into clear focus.
CHAPTER 12
I called Steve Crew to pick me up after I had dropped the heap off at the lot the next morning, and had him drive me back to the train station.
“Have a nice trip?” he asked.
“I can safely say I can go my entire life without ever steppin’ foot back in this city again,” I said.
Crew laughed. “Aw, it ain’t that bad here. The Depression has kind of hit us hard, but things are lookin’ up.”
“I’m sure they are. It just ain’t my city. Never was,” I said.
He got me to the station in good time. I paid my fare, tipped him, and said, “You look out for yourself, kid. If you ever come to New Orleans, be sure to look me up.”
“Will do, mister,” he said, and pulled out.
I made my way to the platforms and picked up on a possible shadow job. He was a young kid in an oversize ten-gallon hat that made him look like a rodeo clown. I went to several different platforms and the kid bumbled around behind me trying hard not to look noticeable. Who the hell would hire such an amateur? I thought as I headed to my platform. I would deal with the kid during one of the stops.
The returning train looked to be much fancier than the one I came in on. Hitched to the green and gold Pacific locomotive were luxury Pullman coaches and a club car with moveable easy chairs to lounge in. Problem was, I wasn’t allowed to do any kind of lounging in them.
I got put in the semi-crowded passenger car next to an old woman that kept talking to me, even when I put my hat over my head and pretended to be asleep.
The train pulled into Greensboro Southern Railway Depot in North Carolina at two a.m. The main building, made of Flemish bond brickwork with Romanesque columns, had three-story brick entry arches.
With twenty minutes to kill, I got out with the unloading passengers to stretch. No sooner had I left the main platform, the rodeo clown was behind me.
Following the crowd through main doors and into the waiting room, I detoured down an empty hall and went into the public bathroom. There, I stood by the door until I heard footsteps coming up to it. I swung the door open, and the kid tried to move back, but it was too late. I hit him with a straight jab that pushed his face back, followed by a left hook that connected with his chin. He fell over like he’d been blackjacked in both knees. I relieved him of his rod, a nickel-plated .38, and went through his wallet. His name was Michael Mooney. Also inside his wallet was a sheet of paper with my description and the flophouse I had been staying at in New York.
The only person I could think of that would have someone following me would be Jack Stein or possibly Mallon, for reasons unclear to me.
I took his boarding pass and replaced it with my business card, and stuffed Mr. Mooney into the bathroom. I got back to the platform in time for the final boarding call. On the train, I found the annoying old woman next to me would not be with me the remainder of the way. Relieved, I reclined the chair and slept until we
pulled into the Birmingham Terminal Station.
The station was of Turkish-style architecture. The main building was made up of light brown brick, with a freestanding dome with ornamental glass and two towers on the north and south wings.
I used the time during the stop to visit one of the barber shops the station provided for a quick trim and shave.
“Had some business in New York, did you?” the older colored barber asked while smoothing his straight razor on a leather strap.
“Yeah, business.”
I leaned back in the chair as he lathered on shaving cream with a badger-hair brush and shaved the two-day growth clean off.
“Your face got a lot of character to it,” he said, as he trimmed my hair in a close-crop style similar to the kind inmates get.
“Is that a kind way of saying I ain’t much to look at?” I asked.
“No, sir! You just look like you been through a lot is all. You were a prizefighter, am I right?”
“Yeah. But that was a long time ago.”
“Must’ve been a heavyweight. Were you any good?” he asked.
“Good enough that the champ and his promoter drew the colored line on me.”
“That’s too bad. Lot of good fighters never got their deserved shot because of shit like that. Maybe Joe being the champ will fix that.”
“Maybe.”
“If you were still in your prime, how do you think you’d fare against Louis?” he asked.
I’d been asked this question many times before.
“The hell if I know. Never came across a fighter like Joe Louis. I fought a lot of Jack Dempsey types.”
“Ah, brawlers.”
“Or the occasional cat that liked to box but couldn’t crack an egg,” I said.
“I suppose you got to work with what you got. If you can’t punch worth a damn you better be good in other areas.”
“That’s the truth.”
“So what are you doing now that your punching days are over?”
“I’m just working with what I got.”
* * *
I spent the following day after arriving back in Orleans updating my activity logs. Paperwork was the single most important aspect of my job and also the most grueling. I had to be as professional and thorough as possible in reports. That’s because there was a good chance they’d find their way to court if I was ever served a subpoena for them—which happens.
There are some investigators that never catch on to the fact that their logs could be looked at in court. Prescott fired his lead investigator when the prosecution got hold of his case logs which contained discrediting personal side notes during an interview of Prescott’s star witness.
Close to being finished with the reports, I got interrupted by Brawley taking my front door down from his pounding. I got up and let him in. I could tell he was not in a pleasant mood.
“Where the hell have you been? New York?”
I nodded.
“It turned out to be a real waste of time and dough, didn’t it?”
“It would have, if I hadn’t gotten a hold of this.” I tossed him the diary. “You want coffee?”
He grunted yes, and pushed his way to a chair outside on the gallery. I came back with his coffee while he flipped through the pages. I sat down in a chair close by and lit my first cigarette of the day.
With a whistle he slammed the book shut. “That’s some pretty intense stuff in there. Mallon wrote this?”
“Yup,” I said.
“It takes all kinds, I suppose.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I said.
“You should know that while you were dickin’ off in New York, him and his chiselers been tearing this place down looking for that broad. They beat up the owner of the Bourbon Street Blues Club, and whattaya know, just as I thought, they were looking for that dead cop killer’s little princess. We put a car out at her house, but nobody was there. The place had been ransacked, though.”
“You know where Mallon is now?”
“Not yet. We bagged a few of his birds, and beat them until they lawyered up, and got some big-shot agency repping them from out of Philly. Goddamn overpaid mouthpieces!”
“Got nothing out of them?”
“Nope. Those birds would’ve cracked. We got a guy that’s real good at makin’ mugs squeal. But these days he’s being busy and all dealin’ with the assault charges and the ACLU.”
“I can see that slowing him down,” I said.
“It’s all political drivel that I’d as soon wipe my ass with than deal with. These flesh pressers and shysters are just gummin’ up the works on our end. It don’t make a bit of difference that these apes killed a cop. We got to play ball and stand around with our thumbs up our asses and to the left until it all gets straightened out in some room full of baby-kissers.”
I laughed.
“You find somethin’ amusing?”
“You know better,” I said, “than to come here and start telling me your sob story about how rough being a cop is. You think those boys uptown are making it rough for you, it ain’t nothing compared to Jim Crow.”
“I don’t give a damn about no Jim Crow, or anybody for that matter, but I do give a damn about Sal Mallon. We got our own problems as is. Ever since Ranalli’s death it’s created a vacuum that criminals are coming out of the woodwork to fill. So we don’t need no outsiders coming in and adding more trouble, understand?”
“Yeah, I understand,” I said.
* * *
Three in the afternoon the phone went off. I had been rereading Mallon’s diary when I took the call. To my surprise, Mallon responded on the other end with an earsplitting yell.
“Where is she, Fletcher?”
“Where is who?”
“Don’t screw with me! I got boys all over that will break your face if I tell them to!”
“Aw, cut it out with the threats, will you!” I said. “By the way, how’s your pal Devland doing? Heard he might be havin’ problems breathing these days.”
“How do you know about him?”
“I reckon there’s a lot of things I know about you,” I said. “See, my job ain’t that hard, just takes a bit of persistence.”
“It ain’t wise to be sticking your head in things that ain’t your business—”
I cut him off. “If you’re going to start bragging about what you did to Roman Perez and Johnnie Ranalli, you can put a muzzle on it. What you did ain’t nothin’ to gloat about, and it sure ain’t anything that’s going to send me running to the hills.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.”
I laughed. “You know, you remind me of a big-headed tomato can I fought once. He talked a big game, but when it came down to gong-to-gong fighting, he couldn’t even make it through the first round without getting KO’d and carried out on a stretcher. Last I heard of him, he got hit so hard he’s spendin’ his days eating paste and staring at walls.”
“You must be dumb as a post if you think that’s me,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been accused of being dumb. But let’s stop square-dancing around things,” I said. “Send your girl Ida over to Jackson Square within the hour. I’ll meet with her, and tell her what you need to know.”
“Why do you want me to send Ida? You like that piece of ass or something?”
“She’s ain’t my type. I’m wanting her to be my go-between, see?”
A pause before he said, “You touch her, and I’ll cut your fuckin’ arms off,” and hung up.
Ida stood on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter when I approached her forty minutes later. I had kept hidden beforehand, making sure that Mallon didn’t leave anyone else behind to shadow. The precautions didn’t matter. If Mallon could get a hold of my number, it’d be just as easy for him to get an address with it. Still, I didn’t want to make it too easy for him.
I took Ida through the flagstone passage of Orleans Alley, which the locals called Pirate’s Alley because it was
believed pirates once bartered their stolen goods in the alley between the St. Louis Cathedral and the Old Spanish Governor’s Mansion.
The alley poured out onto Royal Street, where we cut through to St. Ann, and up to my flat. Inside, I offered to stow the wrap she was wearing, but she refused.
“Now that you dragged me all the way here, let’s get this over with. Where’s this girl he wants?”
“One thing at a time,” I said. “Take a seat, and let us get to know each other. Smoke?”
She shook her head at the offer and sat in the dining chair I had pulled out for her.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“New Jersey.”
“What do you do for work?”
“I don’t work.”
“How long you been pretending to be Mallon’s girlfriend?”
This got some excitement in her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You ain’t his girl. If you were, he’d have never sent you to talk with me. Mallon doesn’t like dames. This diary of his proves that.”
I tossed her the diary. She didn’t open it.
“It’s an interesting read. I happened to find the part where Mallon describes his deep feelings for Bill Storm and the perverse things he’d like him to do to him to be the most telling.”
“I’m done here,” she said, making a beeline toward the door.
“You don’t want to talk to me, okay. I got more than I need. I think I’ll hand this book over to a guy I know that works for the press. I’m sure he’d be more than giddy to run with the story. I’ll make sure to have him do a name drop on you, and word things just right to make it look like you were a willing collaborator.”
It was a ruse. The only person I knew from the press was a rewrite man who sat in his office all day taking down facts from field reports and cobbling them into readable stories. But the deceit seemed to work. She stood at the door, frozen. With her back to me, she said, “He paid me to pretend I was his girl, okay?”
“That’s the stuff,” I said. “Come on back. You sure you don’t want a cigarette?”
“Yes, I would like one now.”
I gave her a cigarette, lit it, then lit my own before sliding a chair beside her.
The Red Storm Page 12