A Pure Double Cross

by John Knoerle

  The long-fingered pianist darted in and around her vocal. “You can see ‘em all the time, up and down old Vine, tellin’ of the wonders they can do, hoo hoo hoooo...”

  I nibbled my Rob Roy. It tasted fine, if you liked peat moss.

  “There’s con men, boosters, card sharks, crap shooters, they congregate around the Metropol,” sang the siren as three young men took seats at the bar, four stools down, closer to the door.

  I rested the back of my head against my hand and looked them over. They made a great show of ignoring me. They wore off the rack J.C. Penney suits with hanger peaks in the shoulders and didn’t know enough to remove their hats. Itchy young men, but none I recognized.

  “But their name’d be mud, like a chump playin’ stud, if they lost their old ace in the hole.”

  I was offended. Now that I was comfortably nestled onto a barstool, enjoying the musical stylings of Blondie and Long-fingers, I wanted to hike my eyebrows at Mushy Wexler and have him 86 the riff raff. I pushed my Rob Roy into the bar gutter and ordered a rye rocks.

  The punks drank beer from the bottle. I felt their darting looks on the side of my face. I was safe for now, they wouldn’t try anything inside. The question was why they were here at all. Could be I wasn’t as anonymous as I thought. Could be Mushy Wexler was quite the sharp-eyed restaurateur.

  Nah, it didn’t read right. Mushy Wexler wouldn’t invite the punks inside the high temple. If he knew or cared who I was he’d tell the goons to wait for me outside.

  The torch singer collected her applause on outstretched palms and launched into a sultry version of “East of the Sun.” I ate a salt stick and ordered another rye.

  Had I been tailed? I had got sloppy and didn’t check, didn’t take evasive action on Short Vincent, just plowed straight down the sidewalk. Dumb. But this didn’t smell like Jimmy. Jimmy was a lone wolf.

  I drank my drink and ate the ice cubes. ‘You know what the enemy is planning by the questions he asks.’ You knew the Krauts were planning a U-boat attack near the Orkney Islands because they were asking their agents for shipping schedules in that area. But that rule had a flip side. Note the questions the enemy doesn’t ask.

  The Schooler knew I was determined to get shed of Jimmy. He should have asked me what I planned to do next. He did not. Which might mean he had read me like a book and skipped ahead a few pages. The three loogans might be more of The Schooler’s felons in training, sent to make sure I didn’t tell any tales out of school. They weren’t a hit squad.

  I sat back, relaxed and didn’t fall off the barstool. The rye was earning its keep and Blondie and Long-fingers were easing into something risqué, if their quicksilver grins were any indication. I was happy here. I wanted to live a good long life, die and be buried here.

  The punks were digging into pockets, shagging for quarters. I considered offering to buy them a round of beers, thought better of it, made for the men’s room and slipped out the back door, leaving my vicuna topcoat behind.

  I know what I said about the punks not being a hit squad and all but I’m not always as brilliant as I think I am. I walked east down the alley, the warmth and jollity of the Theatrical carried off in one gust of icy wind. I heard quick following footsteps.

  I pulled my belly gun and pivoted. A tipsy young couple stopped giggling and raised their hands. I put up my gun. The young couple ran the other way.

  When I turned back around the three punks blocked my path. Their dukes were empty. I kept mine the same way.

  “I surmise that you gentlemen have a matter of mutual concern about which you would care to confer.”

  They didn’t know what this meant exactly, but they didn’t like that I smiled when I said it. The oldest one, he had to be all of twenty, sneered like a B movie heavy and started forward, flanked by his two pals. No hardware came out. I was in no condition for hand to hand combat so I reached for my .25.

  The oldest one was quick, on me in a blink, grabbing my gun hand.

  I shot my left elbow at his solar plexus, missed and hit something hard with my funny bone. A gun butt in a shoulder holster. My arm went numb. The other two were on me now, punching my head and grabbing for the gun.

  Shit. What a stupid way to die. I felt the .25 leave my grip. I braced myself for the coup de grace.

  I heard a blast of gunfire, then another. Loud but not close. I felt intense stinging heat in my lower legs.

  I looked up to see the three punks hotfooting it down the alley.

  I looked the other direction. Jimmy Streets slow walked toward me, a pig snout sawed-off swinging at his side, spilling smoke. Wyatt Earp came to mind.

  “Got a call you were in trouble,” said Jimmy when he got close.

  I was bent over, digging birdshot out of my calves. He must have fired a carom shot off the sidewalk.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

  Jimmy grunted and walked away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I crept into Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house before midnight and tiptoed up the stairs. I had returned to the Theatrical to retrieve my topcoat and see if my Lazarus act drew any stares from interested parties. It did not.

  I went to my room, grabbed a pint of rye and my dop kit and went down the hall to the bathroom. I sat on the can and rolled up my pants legs, what was left of them. My blue socks were now purple. Four, six, eight, ten, eleven pieces of birdshot.

  I rummaged in my dop kit. Best I could find was a nail file. I took a good yank, splashed rye on the file and set to work. I offered up the suffering as penance for my sins.

  A drunken tugman in a watch cap stumbled in, hand on his fly. “Piss in the sink,” I said. “I ain’t moving.”

  He looked at me gouging tiny metal pellets from my calves and ankles with a nail file. He struggled to focus and get square on his feet. “Ouch,” is what he said.

  I laughed and passed him the pint. He passed it back. “You need it worse’n I do,” he said and stumbled off.

  I tried to puzzle it out for the umpteenth time. I was used to the sense of power that being a spy provided - you knew all about the enemy, they knew nothing about you. This was the reverse. Who were the three punks working for? How did they know who and where I was? How did they show up so quick? Who called Jimmy to say I was in trouble? And why did he care?

  I soaked a towel in whiskey and swabbed my wounds. The cleansing sting felt good. I stood up and chanced a look at myself in the mirror. Purple fist marks on my cheeks and forehead, a yellowed bandage on my ear. I moved closer to the mirror.

  There. That wasn’t so bad. From neck to knees I was good as new.

  -----

  I awoke the next morning to loud knocking. I got up and stood by the door in my boxer shorts. “Yeah?”

  “Open up laddie.”

  Mrs. Brennan. I threw on some pants and did as I was told.

  “Got shot last night did ya?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I followed bloody footprints to your door. I don’t know what it is you’re doing, Mr. Schroeder, but it seems to me you’re going about it the wrong way.”

  Well. Who could argue with that?

  “I’ll make you a nice breakfast and a cuppa tea,” she said.

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Then you’ll get down on your hands and knees and scrub the carpet. Clean.”

  -----

  I was halfway up the stairs with my scrub brush and bucket when I hit upon a plan. Find the mysterious Mr. Big my own damn self. He was the only one who could unclog this drain. I had lined his pockets with the armored car heist, I had engineered the cops’ raid on his rival gang. Mr. Big would welcome me with open arms!

  How to get to him was another matter. I scrubbed and pondered. The Schooler and his boss figured to have some elaborate communication routine involving pay phones, drop points and carrier pigeons. But what about the proceeds? Cash from gambling, extortion and vending machines. What crime boss worth his salt didn’t want to stroke
the fluted edges of those rubber-banded stacks of legal tender otherwise known as the weekly take? There had to be a point of transfer. And a delivery boy.

  Jimmy collected the shakedown money, probably delivered it too. He and I had collected the merchant payoffs last Friday. Today was Thursday. I had one day to get with Agent Schram and set up a tag team shag.

  I bent to my task, dunking and scrubbing. The blood spots went away. Mrs. Brennan had added a slug of peroxide to the bucket of suds. I wasn’t the first boarder to bleed all over her carpet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Friday, 5 p.m. My sophisticated tag team tail operation pulled up a block from Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house right on time. Moon-faced Wally in a ’39 Hudson. I climbed in and bumped my head on cold steel. The car had no headliner.

  “You’re it?”

  “I’m it,” said Wally.

  I gave him the address. Wally ground the column shift into first gear and the Hudson bucked and snorted up Winslow to W. 25th.

  I had not been able to get Schram on the line the previous day, the Assistant Special Agent was ‘indisposed.’ I’d talked to beefy linebacker Joe Gilliam instead, told him I might have a way to locate the quarry, the elusive Mr. Big. Agent Gilliam said what do you want and when do you want it. Wally the office boy in a ’39 Hudson was the result.

  “This heap have a second gear?” I asked as we crawled south on W. 25th.

  “It’s around here somewhere,” said Wally. We lurched into gear and set sail down the street. Christ, guy even drove with a limp.

  We turned west on Lorain. We passed the St. Ignatius High School baseball diamond. Dozens of kids in knit caps, scarves flying, were ice skating around the infield in the glimmering dusk.

  “Fire department does that every year,” said Wally. “Floods the field for a rink.”

  “Nice.”

  Wally blathered on. About how he loved ice-skating as a kid, where he went to school, how his mother made her famous five-way chili, how he loved baseball and who his favorite players were and how his bum leg kept him out of the service. This took about six blocks. When he came up for air I asked a question.

  “What’s the scuttlebutt around the office Wally? Is someone trying to put the squelch on this thing?” He turned south on Fulton Road. “Agent Schram for instance.”

  “Not him. They put him in the…you know.” Wally pointed at his head and spun his finger.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Wally drove, I puzzled. With Richard Schram out of the picture we should have had half the G-men in the Cleveland District lined up behind us in unmarked cars.

  “If not Schram, who?”

  Wally dawdled behind a double decker bus for two blocks. “Well, I heard something in the men’s room. At HQ. I was on the crapper.”

  “Okay.”

  “Two agents at the pisser, or washing up. I’m not sure. I heard running water.”

  “What else did you hear?”

  “The one guy says to the other guy, ‘You know Mr. Big ain’t who they say it is. It’s not Teddy Biggs, it’s Louis Seltzer.’”

  Hokey smokes. Louis B. Seltzer. Editor-in-Chief of The Cleveland Press, the city’s reigning power broker, Mr. Cleveland himself!

  “And this is based on what?”

  “Dunno,” said Wally. “But the other agent, the one he said it to, he says, ‘Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.’”

  Moo oil. Gossip. Bullshit rumors that circulate through offices like forced air heat. Still, it had a wonderfully perverse logic. The owner of The Cleveland Press issuing fiery editorials demanding the arrest and conviction of himself.

  I told Wally to turn right on Cesco. We approached H&R Manufacturing. “Better pull over here.”

  Wally curbed the Hudson. He turned his trusting moon face toward my mistrusting black and blue one and said, “The thing of it is, is that Louis Seltzer is short, like about five foot. They say he buys his suits in the boys’ department at Higbee’s. Why would they call him Mr. Big?”

  I managed to keep a straight face. “I’m not sure Wally. Could be it’s a joke.”

  Wally carefully considered this possibility. “You know, I’ll bet that’s it.”

  “I’m going in,” I said. “Make a U and park in front of that dump truck. Best guess is he’ll be headed east. If you see a big bruiser drive by in late model black Buick you’re on your own.”

  Wally’s chin trembled. “Whattaya mean?”

  “I mean you take off and tail the Buick to its destination.”

  “Oh geeze.”

  “Don’t sweat it, I’ll be back soon.” I climbed out, leaving poor Wally jacking his jaws like a just-caught fish.

  I didn’t know what to make of the Louis Seltzer rumor. If Special Agent in Charge Chester Halladay believed it was true he would stop at nothing to get Mr. Cleveland’s head mounted on the wall behind his desk. Halladay would, but others above him might not. It was well known that J. Edgar prized favorable publicity above all. From what I’d read in The Cleveland Press Louis Seltzer was doing his bit.

  Crap on toast, another Chinese angle to consider. I mushed my way through the sooty slush and pined for the clarity of war.

  The front door to H&R Manufacturing swung open before I was halfway up the walk. No Pencil Mustache this time. His pomaded young partner from the armored car heist held the door open.

  “Jimmy here?”

  “Umm, I’m not sure.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Ricky.”

  “Try not to blink when you lie Ricky, it’s a dead giveaway.”

  “But I tell you I don’t...”

  I stepped forward and clapped a mitt on his bony shoulder. “Don’t lie to me Ricky,” I said, giving him a moment to take in my gaudy beat-up mug. “I’ve suffered enough.”

  Ricky fought a nervous giggle to a standstill, then led me across the shop floor and down a corridor to a room in the southwest corner of the building. The Schooler’s office door was closed. Ditto the door across the hall. “He’s in there,” said Ricky.

  “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.” Ricky took off. I tippy tapped on the door in the most annoying way possible. I paused and did it some more. God forgive me but I did enjoy taunting this jerk.

  Jimmy threw open the door with a purple face. “What?”

  “Just a courtesy call Jimmy, to thank you again for saving my life.”

  Jimmy flared the nostrils of his great beak and his closed his good eye. Was this supposed to be scary? I gave his glass eye a cheesy grin and looked around. Manila envelopes spilling cash, three leather bound account ledgers, fat stacks of rubber banded fives, tens and twenties waiting to take their place in the three canvas bags below the counting table. The Fulton Road Mob’d had a good week.

  “Need any help in here?”

  Jimmy opened his good eye and came close, he reeked of garlic. Was Jimmy Italian?

  “Get-the-fuck-out,” he said and slammed the door in my face. I was right. Friday was delivery day.

  A thought occurred as I made my way back down the corridor. Anonymous hoods were stalking me for unknown reasons. When I called for reinforcements the FBI sent Wally in a ’39 Hudson. Time to take the money and run? The promised six-figure payroll heist looked like a pipe dream at this point. What was I waiting for?

  I could ambush Jimmy as he loaded the canvas bags into the trunk of his Buick. Sap him down, shoot him in the kneecaps. Carry the cush down the alley to Fulton Road, hail a cab, go to National City Bank, collect the rest of my pile and disappear, apologies to The Schooler, Wally and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  That’s what I was thinking as I walked out the front door of H&R Manufacturing. What I did was slip behind a snowy evergreen at the corner of the building and train an eye on the detached two-car garage in the far corner. I was cold, hungry and happy as a clam, doing what I did best. Spying.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I waited behind the snowy evergreen at
the right front corner of the building, waited for Jimmy to trundle those three canvas bags to the detached garage behind the building, whereupon I would leap into galvanized action.

  A dog barked. A big dog, coming closer. Cripes, I’d forgotten about Hector the hound. He rounded the corner at full gallop, teeth bared. He dug his front paws into the snow and growled from tongue to tail. The fur around his neck stood to attention.

  “Can it pal, I’ve dealt with tougher mugs than you.”

  The dog crept closer, head down, sniffing the ground, sniffing my socks, licking them. Of course. My shot up ankles were bleeding.

  Jimmy marched across the snowy blacktop right about then, cash-filled bags in hand. He scanned right and left as he crossed the open area. I made myself small behind the evergreen. The Hound of the Baskervilles tore at my socks, shredding them. It hurt like hell.

  Jimmy stopped in mid step at the sight of the dog’s snout buried in a snowy evergreen. I lowered my socks, the great hound lapped eagerly at my oozing wounds. If ol’ Slopehead came over to investigate I would take him down, grab the canvas bags and drive his Buick down the alley.

  But Jimmy continued on to the two-car garage, apparently satisfied that Hector was masticating a rat. He wasn’t half wrong.

  Jimmy pushed open one garage door with a fluid muscular movement, then stood back to admire his effort. Ka-bam went the sliding door. I patted Hector’s anvil skull and snickered at the sight of Jimmy showing off for himself.

  So, Schroeder, you a rat or aren’t ya? Jimmy’s busy stowing loot in the trunk, his back is turned. Now’s the time!

  I told myself I should wait to see if I was right about Jimmy being the deliveryman. I told myself there was still a chance we could tail him to Teddy Biggs and collect on this cockeyed scheme. That’s what I told myself. What I did was nothing.

  Jimmy threw the canvas bags into the trunk of a car and slammed it shut. I’d blown my chance. I waited for Jimmy to back out and drive off.