by John Knoerle
There had to be a witty rejoinder to this idiotic remark but I was too busy keeping my head perfectly still to think of it. The receptionist rescued me a moment later. She escorted me through the maze of hallways to Agent Schram’s office. My red badge of courage didn’t win me any snappy salutes. The agents I passed all looked the other way.
Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richard Schram was waiting at his open door. Head Special Agent Chester Halladay was seated behind Agent Schram’s desk. Uh oh.
“How bad is he?” I said, referring to the fallen agent disguised as an armored car guard.
“Three broken ribs,” said Halladay.
Agent Schram closed the door behind me and stood to my right, hands clasped behind his back. I stood there, stone still, a rusty knife lodged in my frontal lobes, my severed ear throbbing with every pulse beat. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
No reply. Well screw ‘em.
“If the armored car guard had done as I suggested, instead of playing his part with a wink and a smirk, shots would not have been fired!”
Schram chewed his lips raw waiting for his boss to formulate a response. Halladay consulted an incident report, found what he was looking for. “Why didn’t you return fire when the mobster fired upon our agent at point blank range?”
“He was wearing a flak jacket, I knew he’d survive. Why did your agents pursue us and rake us with machine gun fire?”
Agent Halladay looked to Agent Schram.
“You wanted a convincing performance, remember?”
I forced a smile. “Well, what’s a few broken ribs and a severed ear in the big scheme of things? The good news is that the Fulton Road Mob is now sold on the program and ready for more.”
Special Agent Halladay pulled a monogrammed hankie from his pocket and dabbed at his upper lip. Agent Schram kept still as a coiled snake. “And you know this from Mr. Big himself?” said Halladay.
“Indirectly,” I said. Halladay winced. Wrong answer. “I’ll get to him before the next go round.”
Agent Halladay looked to Agent Schram. Agent Schram uncoiled.
“There won’t be another go round. The Executive Assistant Director of Criminal Investigations in Washington has called a halt to this operation. Too dangerous.”
I struggled to keep my voice in a lower register. “Agent Halladay, Agent Schram, we’ve dangled the bait but we haven’t planted the hook. There is no, I repeat no way I can get to Mr. Big without the final heist!”
Special Agent in Charge Chester Halladay hove to his feet. Assistant Special Agent Richard Schram opened the office door.
“Stay in close contact,” said Halladay. “Report any mob plans.” He stopped to shake my hand and make meaningful eye contact. “I’ll see what I can do.” Halladay shot his cuffs and left the room.
Agent Schram and I faced one another, alone at last.
“Sir I believe I did good work out there, I put myself in harm’s way to defuse a bloody firefight. I don’t understand why the brass would call a successful operation ‘too dangerous’ when everyone involved in that operation is still in one piece.” I flicked a hand across my bandaged ear. “Mostly.”
Agent Schram jabbed his index finger into my chest. Hard. “ You’re the reason that Jimmy Streets shot our agent.”
“I don’t follow.”
Schram angled his head away. “I thought you had it all figured out, Schroeder, knew all the angles, smooth operator like you.” His lips peeled back in a grotesque parody of a grin.
“Guess not.”
Schram bobbed his head side to side like a boxer. “No?”
“No sir.”
Agent Schram continued to bob and weave, regarding me from several angles. I kept my face blank as plaster.
“You told Jimmy Streets you were working for the Bureau.”
“Yes sir, I did.”
Schram looked immensely pleased with himself. “You see it now? Pieces falling into place?”
“No sir, not really.” Schram blinked several times, his eyes got milky. Christ, not this again. “The pieces are not falling into place and I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sir.”
Schram didn’t seem to hear me. He turned to the window above St. Clair and went there and looked out. I waited a suitable time before I let myself out.
I wandered the maze of corridors and wondered what the hell was going on. I passed the moon-faced guy headed the other way. He walked with a limp. “Leonardo!” he said.
“Hey,” I said and grabbed his arm. I nodded at the water cooler down the hall. “Buy you a drink?”
“Well, just one. I’m on duty.” His hearty guffaw tripped depth charges deep inside my skull. I closed my eyes and waited for the explosions to subside. “Rough night, eh?”
“You could say that.”
I walked to the cooler, he hobbled alongside. I introduced myself. His name was Wally. I handed him a paper cone of water.
“I’m hoping you can put me in the know. I just had a confab with Agent Schram and he seemed…distracted, kept staring off.”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Richard Schram was a reserve Colonel in the 21st Infantry, called up in ’44. He called the shots in the Leyte campaign, in the Philippines.” Wally knocked back his water like a double shot. “Breakneck Ridge.”
“Well, that would explain the thousand yard stare.”
Wally nodded and limped off. I fought back an impulse to return to Schram’s office and tell him I understood, tell him I knew what it was like.
But I didn’t really. I had seen bloody chaos on a grand scale and in grotesque detail, from bombed out cities to a headless child floating in a ditch. But I had never had to do what Richard Schram did. I never had to order 19 year old kids, kids who looked to me for fatherly reassurance, to charge up razor-back spurs into the teeth of dug-in Jap snipers and machine gun nests. I had heard the story in some detail. A thousand GIs died taking the crest of Breakneck Ridge.
I wound my way back through the maze of corridors, down the elevator and the stone steps of the Standard Building. The arctic chill had moved east, bright winter sunlight assailed me. I closed my eyes and tried to think. What had Schram been trying to tell me? What did ‘You’re the reason Jimmy shot our agent’ mean? My brain was in no mood to co-operate.
I walked two blocks to Public Square. It took days.
A group of just-home GIs spilled out of Terminal Tower trailing giddy wives, parents, cousins, nieces, nephews, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Scorch. The city of Cleveland was their oyster. They would stop at the War Service Center on the Square and pay tribute to the posted list of the honored dead. They would walk over to St. John’s Canteen and accept the beer and blessings of the Archdiocese of Cleveland. And they would go home.
Home to a city untouched by buzz bombs and grass cutters, home to a city whose worst post-war problem was too much money in the pockets of six-shift war workers chasing too few big ticket Christmas gifts as Fisher Body and General Electric retooled from tanks and radar to Chevys and washer dryers.
I tried to be happy for them, going home and all, sweethearts on their arms. But I was jealous as a Turk.
Chapter Eleven
I took the Rapid Transit east to Shaker Heights. Nice ride, a high-class streetcar for a high-class burg. We sped past block after block of Tudor mansions with ribbon windows and arched double doors and more chimneys than a rolling mill. Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more big houses, there were. And bigger. Where in the world did people get all that money?
I got off at Shaker Square. It was lined with shops selling Irish linen and Wedgwood china and Belgian chocolate. Not a Bohunk in sight. I looked around for street signs. I had an appointment to meet The Schooler at 2 p.m.
Shaker Boulevard was hard by Stouffer’s Restaurant. I turned right and walked down the block to a neighborhood of apartment buildings that mimicked the Tudor and Georgian mansions nearby. They had separate addresses,
the apartments in the Moreland Courts. I stood in the entryway and rang the bell for 2925. A smoky female voice on the buzz box said, “Yeah?”
I identified myself, the door buzzed open. I walked up the stairs and knocked. She took her time answering and it was worth the wait.
She had black black hair and white white skin. That was the first thing you noticed. That and the body that looked as if it had been poured, drop by drop, into her V-neck jade green Chinese silk dress. The eyes weren’t bad either. Big as a cat’s and the color of the Caribbean Sea.
“Henry will be here soon,” she said and wandered off.
Henry. Yeah, that fit.
I crossed the threshold and glimmed the layout. Danish modern and Art Deco. Not the dark rumpled scatter you’d expect for an old gent like The Schooler. But then I hadn’t expected a black-haired beauty with blue-green eyes. Was there a Mrs. Schooler? This the mistress in her pied-a-terre? The black-haired beauty returned, pushing a cocktail table on wheels.
“What’re you drinking?”
“Whisky.”
“Jim or Jack?”
“They’re both good company.”
She selected a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured it into a stainless steel cocktail shaker that looked like a Buck Rogers’ rocket ship. She tonged in several ice cubes and added a dash of sweet vermouth. She shook it up. Perhaps a little bit longer than was absolutely necessary. She leaned down low to pour and said something I didn’t hear, what with all the distractions. She said it again.
“So you’re the G-man?”
“I am. What’s your name?”
“Lizabeth, no E.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Lizabeth poured herself a dram of Chambord and a splash of soda and sat down on a stiff S-shaped sofa. I parked my weary bones on a chair that had no arms.
“What’s her name?”
“Who’s that?”
“The woman you’re pulling this crazy get-rich-quick scheme for.”
“Why does there have to be a woman?”
Lizabeth lit a long black cigarette that smelled like French perfume. “Young men don’t really care about money. They want power. Only women and old men really care about money.”
I tipped the hat I didn’t have. “I call her JJ.”
Lizabeth crossed her legs, dangling a high-heeled slipper from her toes. I took a bite of cocktail. The spiked jibbet encasing my skull relaxed its grip.
“What’s she like?”
“She’s married.”
“A lot of that going around.”
She smoked. I drank. She was good. Sometimes silence is the most effective form of interrogation. I waited as long as I could.
“She’s a wisenheimer. She’s a wisenheimer and a tomboy and a choir girl and a sucker for puppies and old timey music and she’s always, always up for a dare.”
“The All-American girl next door,” said Lizabeth, dryly.
“And then some.”
She smoked. I drank.
“It must have been quite a shock to find yourself a member of the Brush-Off Club.”
“I don’t blame her. I was gone a long time.”
Lizabeth gently, almost accidentally, kicked that high-heeled slipper right off her foot. She rubbed the sole of her foot absent-mindedly, sparing me the heavy artillery, keeping those aquamarine heaters on the far wall. “And you weren’t worth the wait?”
I heard the scratch of a key in the door. I shot to my feet. The Schooler entered.
If he objected to the casual intimacy of the scene he didn’t show it. He took off his gray homburg and his topcoat and hung them in the closet. Lizabeth replaced her shoe and shook up another Manhattan. She set it on the cocktail table and drifted away.
The Schooler took her place on the couch and slapped down a copy of The Cleveland Press.
“Robbing the Poor Box!” screamed the headline. “Time to call in the Bulldog?” was the sub-head, accompanied by a photo of J. Edgar Hoover. He really did look like a bulldog.
“You knew about this,” said The Schooler. It wasn’t a question. He draped his arm over the back of the couch and waited.
“The feds want to make the Fulton Road Mob look as bad as possible so that when…”
“I understand that,” said The Schooler. “Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”
I was too tired to lie. “Because you might have said no.” The Schooler snorted and shook his head. “Not that it matters,” I said. “The royal grand vizier of criminal ops in Washington has called a halt. Thanks to Jimmy Streets.”
The Schooler showed no sign of surprise or disappointment. “I have spoken to Jimmy.”
“When was that I wonder?” I polished off my drink and plunged ahead, drunk on exhaustion, Tennessee sippin’ whisky and truth.
“My superior at the FBI said Jimmy shot the agent because Jimmy knew I worked for the feds. Yeah Jimmy knew, so what? I couldn’t figure it at first, so obvious I couldn’t see it. The so what is that Jimmy knew he could do whatever he damn well pleased. He knew the feds wouldn’t arrest him and expose me and their undercover scheme before a packed courthouse. So long as I’m around,” I said, thumbing my chest, “Jimmy thinks he’s bulletproof.”
“As you say, so what?”
I kept on. “But I wonder if shooting the guard wasn’t Jimmy’s idea. I wonder if maybe someone in authority told Jimmy to pull the trigger, to test my loyalty, to see if I’d shoot him in return.”
I sat back in my armless chair, head spinning, waiting for the angry denial or confirmation I had baited.
The Schooler looked at his drink and didn’t drink it. He shook his head sadly and said, “Such a mistrusting young man.”
Was this how The Schooler kept his itchy young men in line? Posing as a stern father confessor, dispensing shame and blessings? It worked in my case. I felt like a kid caught filching from the poor box. Me!
“It took the FBI a lot of time and manpower to chart this course. They’ve invested a lot of money and prestige.”
Was this a question? The Schooler encouraged me with his eyebrows. I riddled it out aloud.
“Let’s see, the Cleveland Press is raising the roof about the heartless thieves who stole Christmas, the Cleveland PD is red-faced and cheesed off and…and if the feds call a halt right now the Fulton Road Mob makes off with sixty grand and the FBI is left holding the bag.”
“Which means...?”
I liked the stern father confessor better. At least I didn’t have to answer all these bloody questions. “It means that, uhh, we do nothing and wait for the feds to come around.”
The Schooler inclined his head ever so slightly. “Would you like your money now?”
What a question.
The Schooler climbed to his feet. I resigned myself to another blindfolded ride to an abandoned factory but he returned a minute later carrying a fat pigskin satchel that he deposited at my feet, saying, “Thirty-two thousand six hundred and forty dollars.”
I opened the satchel. The cash was neatly stacked and rubber-banded. It was more money than I had ever seen. But where the hell was I going to put it?
“Count it,” said The Schooler.
“No need,” I replied cheerily. “You’re an honest crook.”
The Schooler liked that. Leastwise he cracked a smile for the first time that afternoon.
“You’ll want a cab,” he said and went to make the call.
A tiny alarm bell sounded, barely tinkled, in the lower chambers of my skull. Something to do with The Schooler keeping a big wad of hot cash under his own roof. But I paid that tiny bell no mind. I was too busy zippering up my fat pigskin satchel.
I picked it up and looked around for Lizabeth. A faint wisp of perfumed cigarette smoke was the only trace of her.
A yellow cab was waiting at the curb when I bounded down the steps of the Moreland Courts, my fat pigskin satchel in hand. I scanned the four corners for a late model black Buick and climbed in the back seat. The hackie lowere
d the flag and asked me where to.
“East.”
We set sail down Shaker Boulevard. I kept my eyes peeled for a bank. Some discreet Shaker Heights’ establishment that would welcome a well-dressed young man with a fat pigskin satchel and no questions asked.
They say all good things come to those who wait but they, in my experience, are full of shit. There had to be a way to move the ball down the field. The FBI wasn’t going to approve a big deal payroll heist so long as hothead Jimmy was in the picture. And the Fulton Road Mob wasn’t going to bench Jimmy on my say so. Not yet anyway.
We passed a bank. I let the hackie drive another three blocks. “I need you to hang a U-turn at the next intersection,” I said. “And use your turn signal.”
No cars slowed, no cars followed. “Slow down a bit.”
I looked out the back window. “Now speed up and turn right at the next street.” I saw no sign of Jimmy’s Buick, no sign of a plaster. “Stop here.”
I paid the fare, gave the hackie a fat tip and lugged my pigskin satchel across Shaker Boulevard and into National City Bank to inquire about a safe deposit box.
Chapter Twelve
I tried to sneak out of Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house the next morning, almost made it too. I was two steps down the stoop when I heard, “Mister Schroeder.” My rent was paid in full, I was free, white and twenty-one. I could have continued on my way without a backward look. But I stopped short, the back of my neck all prickly.
“What is it Mrs. Brennan?”
“Turn around now.” I did so. “Where’s the rest of your ear? And your roughneck friend, come to mention?”
“Mrs. Brennan, listen, I…”
“ You listen, boyo, I run a respectable rooming house.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you now?” said Mrs. B, meaty arms akimbo. “Then how do you explain yourself?”
This wasn’t a question I got asked every day. I entertained several creative responses that withered and died under Mrs. Brennan’s baleful eye.
“I can’t explain myself just yet, Mrs. Brennan.”
“Then you’ll pack your grip. I’ve got GIs come in here every day, war heroes, looking for a place to hang their hats.”