by Jack Kline
“Ask Patterson if I’m joking and make sure you’re looking at his smashed up face when you do.”
“I will,” he said. “But who’s this Beverly Cresto?”
“Ask Patterson that too. And let me know what he says. Then we can talk some more about my case.”
“Believe me, I will. And don’t forget, I can help you, Morris.”
“I won’t, Chief. Thanks for your offer.” I hung up, no bridges burned. And I thought I handled that as well as a guy who just got beat up by the cops could be expected to.
I looked at my sheets and scratched out the arrow from Colin Hardy to the Irish mob and darkened the one pointing to the Black Hand. Next to Myers, I wrote in parentheses “good guy” and added a second question mark. There were good cops, lots of them. My dad was a good one. And though Myers was a pompous asshole, maybe he wasn’t one of the crooked ones.
Jill was at the doorway again. “How’d it go?”
It was a good question. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Chief Myers might be trying to help out this time.”
“Seriously?” The look on Jill’s face might be worth some dough if only I had a Polaroid.
“Yeah, I’m serious. I guess some pigs can fly.”
She laughed. “Coffee?”
“Sure, thanks.”
I was sipping from a steamy second cup when Rusty knocked on the office door. He knew why we kept it locked. Jill let him in and saw his colorful face. She fawned over him like a mother goose who’d found her lost gosling. Rusty looked over Jill’s head across the office at me and winked. He was enjoying himself.
Eventually, Rusty put his arm around Jill’s tiny waist and led her into my office. He offered her the spare chair. She shook her head. “No, I have work to do.”
At the doorway, she offered us a final shot. “Aren’t you a pair to draw to? I pity the poor client who hires you two punching bags.” She returned to her desk and her typewriter began to chatter.
Rusty eased into the chair across from my desk. “Pretty surly staff you got here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “With an emphasis on the pretty.”
“So you let her get away with all of that bad-mouthing?”
“I have to. She runs the place.”
Rusty leaned way back in his chair straining to catch a glimpse of Jill at her desk. “Yeah, well if you ever decide to cut her loose, I got first dibs.”
I allowed my head a slow, careful shake of disgust. “I think you’ve made that abundantly clear to both of us, Russ.”
I lit up a Lucky and offered him one. He shook his head.
“You do some poking around today?” I asked.
“Yep,” Rusty said.
“Learn anything?”
“Some. You?”
“Don’t be coy, Russ. Give.”
“You first.”
I told him about my lunch with Colleen, about which earned me the disapproving eye-roll and head-shake combination. I said she knew more than she admitted about Miss Cresto, but that she did give me the spot where the kid kept his fancy new car. And then I laid out my visit to the Star office and the information Dominic provided and the quid pro quo deal we crafted.
“The Pulitzer, Phil? Slathering it on thick, don’t you think?”
“One never knows. Pulitzer’s within the realm of possibility.”
“Extreme outer edges of the realm, maybe.” Rusty leaned forward and planted his elbows on my desk. “So what do you make of the fire? Think the Mick mob is mounting an offensive?”
“Maybe. Dominic seemed to think so.”
“And what’d your rich little chippy think?”
“I told you, all she said was that it must be somebody getting revenge. And she’s not a chippy.”
Rusty grinned big. “Wait a second. No horizontal cha-cha with the twist yet?” He raised his arms up toward the ceiling. “What’s this old depressed world coming to? Our king is dead.”
“She’s a client, Russ.”
“Yeah, a wealthy gorgeous one, who, as the story goes, will lay down for anything in wool trousers, if it works to her advantage.”
“I believe we’ve already waded through this swamp. Your message has been received. Now you need to trust me to handle her the way I would any other client.”
Rusty wrinkled his lips and looked up at his eyebrows like a judge considering the option of life in the stir or death by hanging. “Like any other client, huh? All right, if you’re sure you want to guide the Titanic through these waters, captain, be my guest.”
“Good. Now what you been doing today?”
The elbows came back on my desk as he leaned forward. “I’ve been poking around amongst my Hibernian friends.” I guess my confusion showed because he added, “Irish friends, Phil.”
He hadn’t shaved that morning and the red stubble that hid amongst his freckles was nearly translucent. “Once I found out whose warehouse got torched, I wanted to see what they would say about it,” Rusty said. “And I wanted to find out if any of Tommy’s ex-pals knew our friend Beverly. If Marty Connors had met her, I wondered if any of the others had.”
I lit another butt and waited for his narrative. Turns out nobody admitted to anything related to the big blaze. Rusty said that normally those young mob punks would act real smug and wink their eyes, do everything but brag about the deed and who’d done it. If the Hibernian—I liked that word—kids had known anything, they would have given something away, Rusty related. So he believed that either what’s left of the Irish mob hierarchy kept a tight ship, kept the arson from even their sons, or somebody else was responsible.
“Internal power struggle amongst the Black Hand mob?” I asked. That seemed to perplex Rusty so I added “Black Hand is the Sicilian mob, Russ.”
“Huh? Okay. Yeah, maybe. And maybe your boy Tommy got stuck on the wrong side of it.”
“What about the girl?”
“Almost nothing. None of them had ever heard the name. So I figure she wasn’t in the picture until after the kid started playing with the gentlemen from Sicily.”
“Beans. Nothing?”
“Almost nothing. One of them says he saw the kid a couple weeks back driving through the Plaza district in his fancy car with a gorgeous long-haired blonde. The kid said he’d never seen her before.”
“He give you a description?”
“Gorgeous. Long, straight, blond hair.”
“That’s it?”
Rusty looked irritated. “That’s what I asked him. The kid answered ‘Hey, man, they were driving by in a car. What’d ya expect?”
I showed Rusty my sheet of scribbled Tommy tie-ins. He looked at it for a bit, then picked up my pen and darkened the arrow lines between Tommy and the Italian mob, and the triangle between Tommy, Cresto and the cops. “I’m thinking these hold the most promise: an internal—Black Hand, did you say—struggle, or the cops and the girl.”
Rusty met my gaze and held it. “Either way,” he said, “he’s probably dead.”
He was right too. The fact was there was no ransom note after more than a week. That put the chances of him still breathing a filly-at-the-Derby’s long shot. I nodded my acknowledgment.
Rusty shrugged. “What now?”
“I figure we go take a look at the kid’s car.”
“Then we clean up, grab something to eat and head over to the auditorium.”
I didn’t have a clue. “Auditorium?”
Rusty’s head turned to share his incredulity with an invisible pal across the room while he waited for me to make the association. I had nothing but a shoulder shrug to give.
Motionless, he looked at me for maybe ten seconds, trying fruitlessly to coax recollection.
“The Battler Bryant – Larry Shull fight.”
“Oh yeah. I’d completely forgotten. But I’m not sure that we have time for that.”
Rusty acted like I was trying his patience. Me trying his patience for a change. “Phil, everyone will be there. Every. One. Who knows who we might see?”
“You’re right, Russ. We ought to make an appearance.”
“It happens.”
“What happens?”
“Me being right.”
We both laughed.
At the office, we told Jill we wouldn’t be back in today. And I allowed Rusty a couple minutes of flirt-and-innuendo time. Jill was a terrific foil for his cocky bravado. In the elevator I prompted Henry to talk about his ball-playing boy, then leaned back and enjoyed Henry’s glow and Rusty’s authentic interest and encouragement as they traded baseball stories.
Western Auto hadn’t been out yet to take care of my flats, so we took Rusty’s car down to Southwest Boulevard. The streets were blocked around the scene of the fire, and we had to detour to go west. We found the garage Colleen told me about easy enough, only it wasn’t Alberto’s, but Garvey and Sons, Ned Garvey proprietor.
When we entered, the only person there had his head under the hood of a Model T.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Hang on a second, Bud. I’m almost done here.”
A second turned out to be close to five minutes, which included some derogatory comments made toward the uncooperative engine. Rusty and I took a look around the place. There was room to work on four or five cars at once, and the place had garage doors both front and back. I took a peek out the window of the back one onto an alley. A sheet of the Star newspaper skittered past, propelled by the late afternoon breeze. Nothing special there, an alley with trash cans.
“Okay, boys, what can I do for you?”
“You Ned?” Rusty asked.
“Nope, I’m the ‘and Son.’ Name’s Albert. Folks call me Al.” He vigorously wiped his hands on a rag that had been draped over the car’s fender. “Car problems?”
“No, sir. I’m Rusty Callahan and this is my pal, Phil. Does Tom Holloway Junior keep a car parked here?”
Al’s brows furrowed and his neck brought his head back like a turtle does when it sees someone coming. “I’m not sure I follow. This is a repair garage, not a parking garage. Why would we let someone park a car here?”
I stepped forward, not close enough to intimidate, but close enough to give pause. “Probably because someone pays you good money, I’m thinking. Look, Mr. Garvey. Tom’s sister Colleen says he keeps it here. We’re not looking for trouble. But Tom hasn’t been home for a few days and his family worries.”
His demeanor changed. “Well, okay. Yes, young Mr. Holloway keeps his car here. A nice Stutz. Must have set his old man back plenty.” Al set the rag back on the fender then looked at his palms. “Look, fellas, I’d shake hands with you but …” He showed us why not.
“Tom gives me a sawbuck a month and I gave him a key to the back garage door. I leave that back space open for him. He’s a good kid and doesn’t make any trouble. He pays on time too—cash. He asked me to keep this quiet. That’s why I hedged your first question.”
“That’s okay; we understand. When’s the last time you saw him or the car?”
“About a week ago. He took the Stutz and said that he would be gone for a while. Even gave me next month’s sawbuck two weeks early.”
While I pulled out my billfold, Rusty asked if Tommy had said when he’d be back.
“I’m not sure whether he did or didn’t. If he did, I don’t remember. Course I was all excited about an extra ten bucks in my hand.”
I pulled a business card and a five out of my wallet. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Garvey. Here’s my card, along with a token of the family’s appreciation for helping us out. There’ll be another sawbuck if you give the number on the card a ring when you see either the car or the kid.”
As we walked to the door, Rusty stopped and turned. “Anyone else come around asking about the kid?”
Garvey nodded. “’Bout four days ago. They acted like they owned this place. Scared me some.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“I know what I wanted to tell them. But my dad was here and he told them that the boy used to keep his car here but he didn’t now.”
Rusty asked him what they looked like and he could only remember hats and overcoats and troubling dispositions.
In the car as we headed back to check on Western Auto’s progress, Rusty and I discussed what Al gave us. We agreed that since the kid told the garage that he’d be gone for a while, that seemed to eliminate kidnapping. That was good news. Still unanswered was where he went, why he left, who he went with, and when he might return—if he was still alive, that is.
We couldn’t rule out that he went somewhere with Beverly Cresto, even though the fact the cops very physically protected her privacy made it seem she hadn’t gone anywhere. But maybe the two of them were seeing the sights in the Windy City or partying on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Rusty had discovered that the Irish hoods he spoke to neither knew, nor had even heard of Cresto. We didn’t yet know whether the mobsters that Tommy had been working for recently knew the dame. That would have to change. I moved having a little gab with Mr. Palmisano to the top of my list.
Somewhere out there, a man with an extremely flat face lurked, waiting to hook up with me again. Was he one of the pair of men that broke into my flat? Flat Face, or whoever he worked for, didn’t want me looking for Tommy. That was another puzzle piece that pointed away from Tommy off on a lark with some girl.
“Good chance your pal Palmisano will be at the fight tonight,” Rusty said.
“Yeah, and maybe our elusive gorgeous girlfriend.”
“As long as we’re maybe-ing, maybe she’ll be arm-in-arm with her beau, Tommy.” I looked over at Rusty as he turned onto Broadway. He maintained his poker face.
“Sure, maybe.”
“And then the case is solved, and you’ll be guilt-free to go sniffing after Colleen Holloway. If she’ll still be interested”
“Right, Russ; thanks for your heartfelt encouragement.”
It turned out my Plymouth was, again, standing on all fours and Rusty pulled in next to it. We agreed to meet in the bar of the President Hotel at 8:00. Rusty knew my Plymouth almost as well as I did, so he waited to make sure it would start. It did. I swung by to pay my tab on the tire repairs and then headed home.
Standing nude in front of the bathroom mirror, I could see why I was so sore. Colorful bruises peppered my chest, stomach and what I could see of my back. I suppose I was lucky there had been no internal damage or broken ribs. I’d broken two ribs in a scrap back in ’29. They hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and for a long time. If the opportunity arose, I wanted to show the detective from Detroit what broken ribs felt like.
The refrigerator yielded leftovers from my landlady and two lonely Schlitz beers that begged to be put out of their misery. I obliged.
I decided to wear my brown slacks and sport coat with a sweater—no tie. No sense putting on airs at a boxing match, although there were always plenty who did. A lot of folks go to a big fight more to be seen by others than to see the fight. There would be a crowd of those folks, and they would be up front, near the ring, close enough to see the sweat fly and blood spatter.
The Star had called for rain on Saturday but the weather was more like Indian summer on fight night. I arrived early and parked under a street light about a block from the President. The bar was crowded, some waiting to be seated for dinner across the lobby and some just having a few before walking over to the auditorium.
In honor of Mickey Doyle and Battler Bryant, I asked the barkeep for Irish whiskey on the rocks. He asked if the brand mattered. And I ramped up my Irish accent, “Now, sure and you know it does, Lad.”
“We got Bushmills and Jameson,” he said, unimpressed.
“Now I’ll be havi
n’ the Catholic whiskey.” He looked at me like I spoke Chinese. Bushmills came from Northern Ireland, and it was said the stuff was made from British piss by turn-coat Protestants.
“Just give me the Jameson,” I said, losing the accent. “Make it a double.” Shaking his head, he walked to the other side of the bar.
When the drink came, I tipped him a buck and we became best pals. He had just set down my third, that one only a single, when Rusty squeezed his way to my spot at the bar.
“What’ll you have, Russ?”
“Budweiser.”
I flagged down my new pal and ordered a Budweiser.
“Place is packed,” Rusty said.
“Yep.”
I was hunched forward, elbows on the bar, sliding my glass back and forth between my hands. Rusty leaned over next to me and gave me the evil eye. “Hey, pal, you look three sheets to the wind.”
“Nope, one sheet, two sheets max.”
“Better slow down”
“This is my last.”
My bartender brought the Budweiser and Rusty gulped down about half. He looked at me and belched.
“Trying to catch up?”
He grinned. “Nope, just thirsty.” He took another more dignified swallow. “I put a ten-spot down for each of us on Bryant with one of the gentlemen I spoke to this morning.” He emphasized the word “gentlemen.”
“Yeah, what kind of odds we get?”
“Just like Mickey said, six to one. I stopped there for lunch and asked some of the usual suspects about the Cresto girl. Told Mickey we planned to show and he said he’d leave a couple of tickets for us at will-call.” I nodded.
Rusty looked at his watch. “The undercard has already started. We might as well stroll on over.”
I nodded again and threw down my drink. Standing erect, I realized that, though I wasn’t exactly drunk, I was in the general vicinity.
Not only had Mickey Doyle left tickets at will-call, but they were good ones. We found our seats on the fourth row not far from Battler Bryant’s corner. There was a fight in progress. The fighters whaled away on each other in the middle of the ring, and it didn’t look like it would last much longer. Two more bouts were scheduled on the undercard. The place was two-thirds full. Typical of these kinds of big deal fights, most of the empty seats were up front. The high-rollers and society types would make their grand entrances sometime between 9:30 and 10:00. They always arrived late, overdressed and with aristocratic pomp.