by John Knoerle
“It’s close, right?” The Cuyahoga River was now just three blocks away. And Frankfort didn’t cross it.
“It’s not a place you would expect,” said The Schooler, turning away from me, surveying the chaotic street calmly.
“Where then?”
“Whiskey Island,” said The Schooler to no one in particular. “We go tonight.”
I didn’t have time to ask go where and on what because Frankfort came to a screeching halt and us with it. The Schooler told Ambrose to turn left on West 9th, then said “Hold up!”
A big dark sedan with a red light on the dash took the corner on two wheels, headed east. The car had the seal of the City of Cleveland on the door and two guys in suits in the front seat.
Christ, they had everybody out. The driver raked us with a look and said something to his passenger.
“Go, go, go, go,” I said.
Ambrose launched the Packard south on West 9th, sideswiping a southbound taxicab in a shower of sparks. The dark sedan hooked a U and gave chase. Ambrose leaned on the horn and straddled the centerline. Oncoming cars ducked for cover.
And there we all were. Me, The Schooler and the Mooney brothers, tearing into the teeth of traffic, a ragtag band of bank robbing bandits pursued by a couple of Cleveland building inspectors. It was almost funny.
And a positive knee-slapper when Ambrose, at Henry’s instruction, raced ahead of a lumbering flatbed and Sean and Patrick leaned out the window to shoot out its tires and Ambrose used the shuddering, sideways skidding flatbed to cover his high speed, hair raising, horn honking expedition across the six-way intersection in front of the Detroit-Superior Bridge that climaxed in a hairpin right turn down dark narrow twisty Columbus Road.
No big dark sedan followed. My heart resumed beating. Sean and Patrick whooped and hollered. Ambrose told them to shut the feck up. The Packard wound its way down into the netherworld beneath the span, passing snow-capped mounds of anthracite and square brick buildings so soot-blackened they existed only in silhouette.
“Take a right on Canal and follow it around to Center,” said The Schooler.
“Where’s Canal?” said Ambrose.
“Here.”
Ambrose turned right and followed it around. The bleating screaming squadrols wouldn’t find us down here, I thought. We were home free.
But then we Midwesterners are optimistic to a fault.
Chapter Thirty-eight
A distant burn-off pipe cast a faint hellish glow on the Flats as we approached a narrow, red steel pivot bridge. A bridge used by ore trucks headed east to the steel mills, a bridge used by I-beam and ingot haulers headed west to the docks. It was pivoted in the right direction, across the river. It held no traffic.
Once we crossed the bridge it was a straight shot down Center Street to Whiskey Island. We would pass just below Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house, repository of my one priceless possession, a creased and spattered photo of the All American girl next door.
“Stop here,” said The Schooler at an unmarked cross street that fronted the pivot bridge. He studied the span intently, I couldn’t say why. There was no roadblock in sight, save for the standard crossing gate at the far end. And tempus she did fugit.
I looked behind. Headlights, a few blocks backs, closing fast. I looked ahead. Nothing but asphalt.
“Go for God’s sake.”
Ambrose tromped it. The Packard jumped up off its back axle and rocketed onto the narrow span, spewing a vapor trail of gravel, ice and iron ore dust. The Schooler cursed and ducked his head under the dashboard.
The bridge was clear, likewise Center Street on the far side. What had the Schooler seen that had him cowering on the floorboard?
Maybe it was what he hadn’t seen. There were only a handful of bridges across the Cuyahoga, a handful of choke points. They had everybody out by now. Off duty jailers, bailiffs, high-ranking desk jockeys and every Treasury, Secret Service and FBI agent in town. The Schooler had his head under the glove compartment because he hadn’t seen a roadblock.
I told Ambrose to slow down. I hung my head out the window and squinted against the wind, saw a shack-sized pilothouse on the far side of the bridge. I wiped grit from my eyes and looked again. The guard gate was down.
I looked behind. The following headlights were gone, possibly laying in wait back at the bridgehead. We weren’t going to back up and find out. We had to cross a bridge at some point.
I told Ambrose to slow down some more, looked to my right and saw two very eager young loogans who were likely to blow my head off by mistake if gunfire commenced.
“Heads down, both of you.”
Sean hesitated. I grabbed a hank of hair and did it for him. Patrick took the hint and scrunched down.
It was up to Ambrose and me now, the Gold Dust Twins. I readied Commander Seifert’s little .32 caliber peashooter and felt heft against my hip. Jimmy’s .44 Special. I whipped it out. I was a two-gunned hombre now.
We approached a lone man in the pilothouse at 20 mph. Ambrose took one hand off the wheel and reached into his pocket.
“You drive, I shoot.”
Ambrose returned his hand to the wheel. “You’re no fun.”
We closed to within twenty yards of the pilothouse.
“Ease up, slow down,” I said and settled back in the leather seat of the Packard touring sedan like a well-fed nob headed home to his lakeside manor, his chauffeur at the wheel.
The pilothouse door kicked open. A man in dark clothing stepped out, swinging a Kerosene lantern. He was not in uniform.
“Pull up just shy, make him come to us.”
The man with the lantern was unarmed. But the man who followed behind him held a semi-automatic M1 carbine, the kind with a thirty round clip.
God bless the bumbling Cleveland PD. That the M1 wasn’t ripping us up one side and down the other meant the bridge tenders didn’t have an accurate description of the getaway vehicle.
The man with the lantern approached. I yearned for a newspaper. A portly lakeside nob would have folded up his late edition of the Plain Dealer impatiently before he inclined his head out the back window and said, “Is there a problem?”
I used my best hoity toite accent, somewhere between Boston Brahmin and the Court of St. James. I’m not saying it was convincing exactly but the lantern swinging man slowed his rapid gait. I piped up before he got too close, keeping the battered right side of my face in shadow.
“Who are you? Are you a police officer? Never mind,” I said with a dismissive wave. “I’m hosting a dinner reception for the Lithuanian Ambassador.” I checked my wristwatch. “In twenty minutes time. If I’m late I’m holding you personally responsible.”
This stopped the man in his tracks. He raised his lantern to look at me. “You’re hostin’ the whosie-whatsie?”
“The Lithuanian Ambassador, his Excellency Klaus von Heeberling. He’s going to stand at the head of the table, raise a glass of champagne to his host and I’m not going to be there!”
The poor slob didn’t know what to say to that. He turned to look at the man with the carbine. The man shrugged.
I grabbed my wallet. “Now open that gate, and here’s ten dollars for your trouble.”
Lantern man snatched the sawbuck quicker’n you can say huh and told his pal to hike the gate.
“Shall I drive on sir?” said Ambrose, brightly.
“By all means driver,” I replied.
The gate popped up and we motored west down Center Street. I wanted to duck down just in case the gatekeepers had a change of heart but how would that look? I remained rigidly upright. No shots were fired. Ambrose gave the great beast its head.
“Klaus von Heeberling?”
“Best I could do on short notice.”
I looked to my right. Sean and Patrick were still bent over on the back seat, giggling like schoolgirls.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw that we had another bridge to c
ross, a short two lane cantilevered span from the north end of the Flats to Whiskey Island. But we crossed the bridge without incident. Apparently the authorities weren’t concerned about Whiskey Island, didn’t think much of our chances to make a daring escape across a frozen lake. I tended to agree with them.
Henry directed Ambrose to turn left off the bridge and onto a vast expanse of snowy silt. I had been here before, the dock-side meeting where I’d laid out the plans for the armored car heist. I recognized the Hulett ore unloaders along the canal to my right. I didn’t recognize the set of rickety conveyor belts that climbed the mountains of sodium chloride to my left.
How do you not see a salt mine?
Spies are supposed to be observant. Yet I had managed not to notice that the FBI’s sting op was unfunded, that Mr. Big was a non-existent phantom, and that the cops and crooks had superior knowledge in these matters and were laughing up their French cuffs at yours truly. I had come a ways since then, made the best of some bad situations. But the sight of those mountains brought me up short. Anyone who doesn’t notice a salt mine had better look again.
We rumbled across train tracks and motored west to the tip of the island, past the dock I had visited with Jimmy, Kelly and The Schooler. We drove another hundred yards and parked by a big rusty corrugated shed that stood on wood pilings above the lake.
I looked, I spied, I wore my eyeballs to a nubbin searching for signs. If there was a lonelier place than Whiskey Island in mid-December I hadn’t seen it. I was looking for Jimmy of course. I couldn’t believe we had actually given that cunning Cro-Magnon the slip. We piled out of the Packard and awaited instructions.
“You three come with me,” said Henry to the Mooney boys. He climbed steps and unlocked the shed. The brothers followed him inside. I was left alone with a wine red touring sedan and $900,000.
I had to look. Not that I would have jumped behind the wheel and raced off with enough geetus to buy an entire tropical island much less a villa on a spit of sand. It wasn’t that. I simply wanted to know if The Schooler trusted me.
The car keys were still dangling from the ignition.
I would call it Schroederland maybe, or L’ile de Hal. And I would be a very benevolent despot, overseeing my kingdom from a bejeweled deck chair, the regal Miss Jeannie by my side, a staff of eager lackeys poised to cater to our every whim.
Maybe next time. I returned to the rear of the Packard, stamping my feet to keep warm, eyes sweeping the perimeter. I heard a wrenching angry squeal that sounded like a big rusty hinge. This was followed by a shuck shuck shuck shuck of metal on metal.
I shifted over to see the front of the shed propped up like a garage door, and what looked like a wide steel sluiceway tailing down from the boathouse to the lake. A launch ramp for a boat. Okay. Provided The Schooler had a 10,000-ton destroyer tucked inside that shed. Even a landlubber like me could see that Lake Erie was a block of ice.
The Schooler and the Mooney Brothers trooped down the side doorsteps a moment later and joined me at ground zero. The trunk of the car.
I liked the Mooney brothers, Ambrose especially. It was pleasant to see a young man so well suited to his chosen profession. Kid was a born crook. And therein lay the problem. I didn’t think he would turn on me, but if he made a play his brothers would back him in a blink. And Ambrose, I noticed, had his gun hand in his pocket. I did likewise and backed up two steps.
The Schooler, oblivious to such concerns, stood with his back to the boys and asked, over his shoulder just before he popped the trunk, “What’s your arrangement with these gentlemen?”
“No particular arrangement.”
The Schooler opened the trunk and grabbed a block of fifties. “Fifty thousand okay?”
Sean and Patrick shivered with glee. Ambrose kept a stone face. I answered for him. “Fifty thousand’s okay.”
The Schooler walked over to Ambrose though his brothers were closer. He handed him the tape-wrapped block of currency. Ambrose had to remove his gun hand to accept it. His stone face cracked and fissured in several places.
“It’s hot,” said The Schooler. “Don’t try and move it for at least six months. Are you listening to me?”
Ambrose nodded dumbly, his eyes locked on the block of one thousand fifty dollar bills that he held in his own two hands and was his to keep. His brothers drew closer and clustered to his right, moths to the flame.
The Schooler continued. “Drive off the island and head west…”
The gun blast was loud as a howitzer.
It came from close by, from the direction of the shed. Sean and Patrick pitched over on their faces, their legs cut out from under by a carom shot off the frozen silt. Ambrose dropped the block of fifties and spun on his pivot foot to confront the attacker, his gun hand digging deep.
The attacker rushed forward and laid him out with a shotgun butt to the forehead.
I had my weapon in hand by this time. The one in my right pocket, the .44 Special that Jimmy had given me. I pointed it at the attacker’s head and clicked and clicked and clicked.
Jimmy smiled and swung his pig snout sawed-off in my direction. I said my goodbyes.
The Schooler directed his Beretta at Jimmy’s midsection. “You don’t want to do that Jimmy.”
“Why not?”
Jimmy wore a simian grin that ran up both sides of his face and squeezed his beaked nose down to his chin. He sure looked like he wanted to do it.
I still had Commander Seifert’s gun in my left coat pocket. The Schooler either noticed the drift of my hand or read my mind. Anyhow he signaled, through a squint or a gesture or whatever mysterious way he made his wishes known, that I should stand down, that he would take care of it.
Sure thing. It beat drawing a .32 peashooter left-handed against a scattergun. I kept my arms at my side and waited for The Schooler and Jimmy to decide my fate.
Sean and Patrick lay face down, groaning, semi-conscious. Ambrose was out like a light. Judging by the fat round blood spatters on the frozen silt Jimmy had graduated to buckshot.
I didn’t feel much of anything at the sight of the Mooney Brothers bleeding at my feet, just the remote and icy calm that the smell of blood and cordite conjured in me. I’d seen a lot worse. Saw a kid outside Freiburg get his jaw blown clean off, nothing left of his face but a blood-pumping hole and two bright brown eyes, alive and bright with agony.
All Ambrose had was a concussion, worst case a fractured skull. Sean and Patrick had multiple surface wounds, worst case a severed artery. They were lucky. Lucky that Jimmy didn’t shoot to kill, lucky this wasn’t Hamburg or Cologne or Dresden. Quality medical care could be had in Cleveland, Ohio in December of 1945.
I stood still as a cigar store Indian. Jimmy kept his sawed-off on me. The Schooler kept his Beretta on Jimmy. Not a word passed between them. I filled in the blanks best I could.
Jimmy: Why defend this traitor?
Schooler: You gave him the gun.
Jimmy: It wasn’t loaded.
Schooler: You knew that, I didn’t.
None of this was spoken. All The Schooler said, finally, was, “Trust me.”
Jimmy slowly lowered his shotgun. Why he didn’t call The Schooler’s bluff, why Jimmy didn’t blow me to pieces then and there I couldn’t tell you. But I had a moment’s chance to yank the .32 and blaze away at his big ugly hawk-nosed head and I didn’t do that either.
The Schooler gestured at Ambrose with his gun. “Get him up. We need them out of here.”
I didn’t see why. If and when the coppers searched Whiskey Island the long steel boat ramp would tell them all they needed to know about our escape route.
I bent to Ambrose, scooped up a handful of frozen snow and rubbed it on his face. I scooped up some more and stuffed it down his shirt. His eyelids fluttered but remained closed. I slapped him hard across the face. “Snap to it, ya dumb Mick!”
Ambrose came to. Jimmy put a foot on the kid’s right elbow, dug down in Ambrose’s coat pocket and removed h
is gun. Ambrose propped himself up on his elbows, not sure what was happening but sure he didn’t like it.
Jimmy put the barrel of his shotgun in Ambrose’s face. Ambrose bared his fangs.
“Help me out here Jimmy,” said The Schooler, rolling Sean over on his back. Jimmy trotted off without a backward look. He and The Schooler hauled the two brothers by feet and shoulders into the back seat of the Packard. I saw a large pool of coagulating blood on the frozen silt. Somebody had a serious wound.
I dove into the back seat to assess the damage. Patrick, the gangly youngest brother, had a puncture wound in his right thigh, just below his crotch. I pulled his pants down to his knees and used my handkerchief to stanch the bleeding. The wound soaked through it pretty quick so I pulled off his belt and cinched up a tourniquet.
Middle brother Sean blinked woozily to life and asked what was what. I looked him over. Not too bad, his bloodstains were below the knee.
“Keep a compress on his wound, hard as you can, and keep his leg elevated.”
“Okay. What’s a compress?”
“A towel, a handkerchief, use your coat if you have to, just don’t let him bleed out!”
I climbed out of the back seat to see Jimmy and The Schooler removing blocks of money from the trunk and Ambrose tottering on two legs. I went to him, braced his shoulders and walked him to the Packard.
“You’ll attract too much attention in this heap, I was you I’d ditch it and hotwire something.” I helped Ambrose into the driver’s seat, leaned over and keyed the ignition. “Now go.”
Ambrose tried to shake off the cobwebs, winced at the effort. At minimum he had a concussion. But a fractured skull and a massive brain hemorrhage wouldn’t have kept him from saying what needed to be said.
“Not without our dib.”
Jimmy and The Schooler were carrying the unloaded money to the boathouse. The blood-spattered block of fifties remained where Ambrose had dropped it. I transferred the .32 from my left pocket to my right hand, then walked over and picked up the block of fifties. It didn’t weigh five pounds.