EQMM, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I knew in that moment whose blood was on my hands.

  * * * *

  It had started at 8:20 that morning at the Milwaukee Road Depot with the ticket clerk, a young man with the bony limbs and antic restlessness of an organ grinder's monkey. His brown hair, lingering freckles, and black conductor's hat made me want to drop a nickel in his tin cup.

  "Where are you headed?” he said, emphasizing the “you” as if he'd grown jealous of the travelers endlessly shuffling up to his window. The black steel bars that penned him inside the ticket booth may have added to his sense of imprisonment.

  "That depends."

  "On what?"

  "On how much it costs.” I'd overspent in my efforts to trace a missing person and was short of cash, down to twenty bucks. The case hadn't been a paying job. A freebie for a friend, something I'm usually dead set against.

  On top of that, I'd left my checkbook in my dark blue suit jacket, the one hanging on the back of a chair in my apartment on Hollywood Boulevard fifteen hundred miles to the west. But even if I'd had it, a slow couple of months had turned what checks were left in it to rubber.

  "Okay, mister,” he said with a smirk, “if you were a rich man, where would you go?"

  Like any man in my condition—rich or poor—I wanted to go home. I was exhausted. I'd been up all night after I'd found my missing person. Found him just in time to watch him die. I'd been in Minneapolis barely a day and I was ready go home. “L.A. Union Station. Sleeping car. Double bedroom."

  He dug through a timetable. “The next one out is at noon. 12:01. The Rock Island Twin Star Rocket to Kansas City, with a connection on the westbound Imperial to Los Angeles. One double bedroom, with federal tax, comes to ... one hundred thirty-seven twenty-three."

  "That much?"

  "It's nineteen fifty, buddy. Everything costs more."

  "I fold,” I said, “but hold it for me.” I gave him my name and a two-dollar tip so he'd remember it. Then I picked up my tweed pullman suitcase and stepped out of line.

  Now what? I scanned the waiting room of the depot. It groaned with the din of people dressed up for travel, heading in every direction, the scuffling shoes, the echoes of mumbling voices off the high ceiling, the bottomless thrum of engines idling beyond the double doors to the platforms. Vagrants from nearby skid row wandered among the crowds, searching for a place to rest or a dime to pick off the floor. Like the ticket clerk and me, the vags weren't going anywhere either.

  I sat down between a bum and a nun on a scarred wooden bench. I knew my only option was my least favorite: call Marlowe and have him wire me what I needed. He was a fellow private dick who, like me, had an office on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building in Los Angeles. He'd mocked me when I'd taken the M.P. case for free, because I'd always mocked him whenever he'd done the same. But now he'd have all the ammunition he'd need to torment me, and my only defense would be to endure the roasting with whatever smile I could dredge up.

  But more than that was bothering me. I was broke again.

  Broke.

  Again.

  Who could make a decent living being a private investigator? I'd been trying for three years and still lived month to month. Marlowe was one of the best, but he wasn't getting rich at it either. We risked life and limb—often for strangers—for little or no money. Why? I'd risked my life in the war for little or no money, but that was different. That was a necessity. This was a choice. One that left me stuck in Minneapolis with no way home. $117.23 short. My grumpy mood turned sullen.

  I hoisted myself to my feet, picked up my suitcase, and zigzagged around the waiting room benches to the Western Union window. There, I met a sign that said “Closed for remodeling.” It listed an address down Washington Avenue, “just a short six blocks away.” I thanked the sign with a curt gesture.

  After I stowed the suitcase in a locker, I walked outside to a sun that felt like it was filtered through a magnifying glass. The hot spot was aimed at me. I was already sweating.

  I sauntered along Washington Avenue, past a one-story government building, trying not to overheat. I reached the next block ready for a shower and stopped to cool off in the warm shade under the rectangular awning of the Minnesotan Hotel. Cars lined the curb in front of the hotel, including a black Packard that held two sweaty mugs who looked to be waiting for the concierge. They'd be waiting a long time. The Minnesotan wasn't that kind of hotel.

  After only a day, the Minnesotan held a special—and not so special—place in my heart. Not only was it the place where I'd spent some time—too little time—with a blond bombshell who had a lounge act mimicking Lana Turner, but it was also where I'd found my missing person dying from a knife wound in the chest. It's hard to sleep after seeing something like that and I should have gone back up to Lana's room and gotten lost in the illusions of her bed. Instead I'd walked the streets trying to shake the image of a dying face, one of many dark images I'd collected since going to war. The walk hadn't worked. It never did.

  But Lana was an image of a different kind. As I stood under the hotel's awning, I lingered, hoping Lana would magically come walking out. She was an image worth seeing again.

  At the curb next to me, both passenger doors to the black Packard popped open. A pair of goons, one in a dark gray pinstripe suit and the other with brown prickles for hair, hopped out and came at me. I caught a glint from Pinstripe's gun just inside his coat. “Darrow Nash?"

  I didn't deny it, and that was as good as a yes.

  They each clamped a meaty hand on my arms. I struggled, but their vise grips and the hard nose of Pinstripe's gun against my spine made me stop. He pulled my gun from my coat pocket and stuffed it in his own. Then he leaned in close. “Get in the car."

  "How about a ‘please'?"

  He opened the rear door, shoved me inside, and climbed in after me. The other mug, whose brown bristles matched his brown suit, slid behind the wheel.

  As the car sped away, I finally got a good look at Pinstripe. There was nothing good about it. His dim, dark eyes sat much too close to a pockmarked nose that drooped from his long face like a blob of hardened candle wax. His thick lips sat in a permanent pucker on top of a round, doughy chin. He wore his dark gray fedora pulled down to the tops of his eyebrows and held his gun aimed at my guts.

  The other goon didn't say a word. He drove with one hand and used the other to wave his hat at his face, trying to cool a heat that looked less like it came from outside the car than from inside his thick, buzz-cut head. The collar of his suit was stained with sweat.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Shut up,” Buzz-cut said, staring straight ahead. His bristles glistened. Drops shinnied down his neck.

  A minute later we pulled to the curb in front of a six-story wheat-colored brick building. Above the door, letters were chiseled into its facade that said “Greystone Mill,” and beneath it, “1889.” But apparently the mill had died, because painted on the door itself in formal black letters was the current occupant's name, “Industrial Supplies, Inc."

  Pinstripe grabbed me by the collar again and dragged me out his side of the car. From the sidewalk I glanced around at other dead or dying mills. A handful remained in operation, but others were little more than rubble.

  Buzz-cut held open the door to Industrial Supplies and Pinstripe pushed me in. A long L-shaped oak counter kept us penned into a small waiting area. Pictures of industrial machines—a cement mixer was the only one I recognized—decorated the beige walls. Out of the back room scurried a man wearing a welcoming smile and the cheap, light blue rayon sport coat of a clerk. When he saw Pinstripe, the smile fell away and he lifted a hinged section of the counter so we could pass through.

  The back room—a space the size of a living room, furnished with the standard industrial office props of battered wood furniture, piles of paper, a girlie calendar, and an ashtray stuffed with butts—led to a short hallway and a narrow set of stairs leading up. Pinstripe led us behind those to a stairwell that angled
beneath them into the cellar.

  As we started down, a dank, musty smell told me that standing water wasn't far away. Once inside the cellar, Buzz-cut headed for a corner and kicked aside a rug. Beneath it was a wooden trapdoor that fit snugly into the concrete floor. He pulled on its recessed handle and lifted the door open. A cold burst of fetid air drifted over us.

  We followed a ladder down into a narrow passage where Buzz-cut picked up a flashlight from the floor and flicked it on. The tunnel ahead was barely the height and width of a grown man, and looked like it had been cut by hand into the oozing limestone. Dripping water echoed from a thousand subterranean leaks.

  Buzz-cut led us through that passage into a larger, wider, more professionally constructed tunnel that gradually sloped downward as we walked.

  "I forgot my pickaxe,” I said. “Where the hell are we?"

  "Tailraces,” said Pinstripe. As we walked he began to halfheartedly tutor me on the history of Minneapolis. “In the 1880s, the mills wanted to use the drop of St. Anthony Falls for power, so they dug tunnels above the falls called headraces and tunnels below the falls called tailraces. The water ran through here and spun their turbines. There are dozens of these tunnels leading every which way. But once steam power came, the mills didn't need the river so they sealed up the headraces."

  "And left the mills and tailraces,” I said, cutting into his lecture, “as hideouts for thugs like you."

  "Never mind,” he said as if I'd hurt his feelings. I didn't care. Something about being taken hostage had worsened my already sour mood.

  As we trudged through the dark, musty tunnels—in silence now—we took more rights and lefts than a punch-drunk boxer. Buzz-cut led us with his flashlight down tailraces where the masonry floor was slanted and dry, and through others still containing river water, where the only passage was over old wooden catwalks that creaked and shifted with our steps. Pinstripe followed a few steps back, more a shadow than a presence.

  We finally stepped off the catwalk into a narrower passage with limestone and mortar walls. Buzz-cut's flashlight settled on a four-foot-wide rusted iron tube that ran down from the chiseled ceiling and stopped a yard short of the stone floor. An iron ladder stuck out from the bottom of it.

  Buzz-cut handed his flashlight to Pinstripe, then crawled under the pipe and started climbing, his feet pinging on the steel rungs. The pinging was eventually followed by a wooden creak. Dim light made a circle on the floor beneath the iron tube. Pinstripe aimed his beam at the foot of the ladder and prodded me in the back with his gun.

  "Now you."

  I glanced at him but couldn't see much. For a moment I considered running, but beyond us was a darkness so thick it seemed to vibrate. A shimmering maze. Even with a light I knew I'd never find the cheese.

  Another prod from Pinstripe, harder this time. “Move."

  I stooped under the bottom of the pipe and looked up toward the light. It was farther than I'd expected, at least forty feet. The shadow of a head leaned into the round hole above me. I grabbed the cold rungs and started climbing.

  And climbing.

  And climbing.

  As I neared the top, the silhouetted head became Buzz-cut's.

  "C'mon, Nash. We're on a schedule."

  "I'm guessing it's not mine,” I said as my head finally cleared the opening of a trapdoor.

  Buzz-cut grabbed my arm and hauled me out. “He doesn't like to be kept waiting."

  The room was small, maybe ten by twenty, filled mostly with cobwebs and dust-covered rows of empty wooden shelves. Two of the walls were made of rough limestone, but the other two were cinder block and looked new enough that I doubted they had come with the building. The door that was framed into one of the newer walls was a slab of shiny black steel that stood open to a hallway. Buzz-cut and Pinstripe grabbed me by the arms and led me from the room. I noticed on the way out that the steel door locked from the inside.

  We stopped two steps later at a closed oak door with a brass knob. Not the kind of door typically found in the basement of a derelict mill.

  Buzz-cut knocked twice.

  "Enter,” said a muffled voice, more invitation than order.

  Buzz-cut gently opened the door on a man in his sixties wearing a charcoal gray suit and the peaceful countenance of a preacher. His disguise was almost convincing, save for a tidy little white moustache and slicked-back white hair.

  "Welcome, Mr. Nash.” He smiled brightly, trying hard to keep me focused on the preacher. “I'm John Callahan.” He stuck out a pampered hand.

  I wiped dust and dirt from the sleeves of my suit coat and we shook. His grip was younger than he looked. “Honest businessman, I presume."

  His blue eyes twinkled as he smiled. “That's right. The concrete business."

  "Specializing in shoes, I take it."

  His smile dimmed and he released my hand. Then he gestured me to a leather wing chair opposite his cherrywood desk. The rest of the room matched the furniture, plush and polished and the color of red wine. The carpet was the color of new money.

  I took my assigned seat while Buzz-cut and Pinstripe took up their positions near the door.

  I thought this party was just for the four of us until I heard the breathy swish of nylons come from the far back corner. I turned just in time to catch a pair of long legs in black stockings and high heels finish crossing themselves. They were perched on a stool in front of a wet bar, complete with mirror and brass rail, and led to a tight black cocktail dress and breasts that strained the seams.

  In her hand, accented by blood-red nails, she held a crystal tumbler and a swirling fingerful of amber dreams. Her platinum blond hair and pouty mouth reminded me of a famous actress. When her blue eyes locked on mine, the foot that had just crossed, the one on top, began to move up and down. Slowly. Rhythmically. A sly smile swam just beneath the surface of her lips. Lips I'd been kissing the night before.

  When I turned back to Callahan, he had settled into the slick leather chair behind his desk. He'd seen the look Lana had given me and he drew in a long, deep breath. “Mr. Nash, I trust you remember Diana Webber. I believe you attended her performance last night at the Persian Palms. She recommended you for this job."

  Actually, I hadn't seen Lana's act, but I'd had some questions for her about my missing-person case, and that had led to a more intense interview in her room in the Minnesotan Hotel later in the night. A short but intense give and take. I got the sense she hadn't told Callahan about that part of our interview, knowing full well that mob bosses tend not to like their molls roaming, despite the fact that he was old enough to be her grandfather.

  She nodded at me and I nodded at her.

  Callahan cleared his throat. “As I was saying, Mr. Nash, I'm an honest businessman."

  I gestured over my shoulder. “An escape hatch to the tunnels with a steel door that locks from the inside to give you more time to get away. Honest to a fault."

  He smiled and shook his head, then stood up and came back around his desk. “That's what I like in a private detective, that kind of ... fearlessness.” He made it sound like equal parts blessing and curse.

  Callahan looked over at his two sentinels by the door. “Please excuse us, gentlemen."

  Pinstripe nodded, Buzz-cut adjusted his suit coat as if the muscles inside needed rearranging, and they left.

  I glanced back at Lana. She had graduated to studying her nails as if they held the answer to something important.

  "Diana, dear, would you please wait outside?"

  She looked up at Callahan and pouted. “Me, too?"

  "You too, dear."

  "But I recommended him."

  "I know that, dear, but this is business."

  She rose slowly off the barstool, adding such a smooth sexiness to such a simple move that it looked designed to attract attention. It worked. Her blue eyes locked on mine as she swished past. “Pleasure."

  "It was all mine.” I kept my smile to myself. She saw it anyway.

&nb
sp; When the door closed, Callahan sat back against the front edge of his desk and folded his arms. “I take elaborate precautions, Mr. Nash, because I am a man with a certain reputation, deserved or not. Some people take action based upon that reputation. I need to be careful about who gets close to me and how much they know."

  I tossed a gesture at the door. “You should keep her as close to you as possible."

  "And you shouldn't."

  His eyes said he wasn't kidding. I offered no response. Staying away from her was not a promise I was willing to make.

  Finally he moved on. “I need you to find something of sentimental value to me. A brass compass."

  "Why me?"

  "Miss Webber seems to think you will be effective but discreet."

  I glanced back at Lana's lonely barstool. “She may be right, but I doubt she knows how much those two things cost, particularly together."

  "No, but I do.” He pulled a stack of rubber-bound bills from his inside coat pocket. “You'll receive half now and half when I get the compass. I trust five hundred dollars will buy the best of both."

  And then some, but I didn't tell him that. I'd never thought of myself as someone who would work for a mob boss, but how else was I going to get home? “What's so special about this compass?"

  He took a deep breath and paced around to the chair behind his desk. “It was my son's. He was an Air Force pilot. They shot him down over Germany. Dog tags and the compass were all that came back."

  He recited this with remarkable calm. In the infantry, I'd come across what had been left of airmen like his son. Often dog tags and a compass had been about it. “When did you lose it?"

  "I didn't lose it. It was stolen from me on Friday by a former employee by the name of Terry Bormann."

  "Your goons too dumb to look him up in the phone book?"

  "We've already checked the obvious places, including staking out his apartment. He hasn't been there since I fired him on Friday. I have no doubt he's avoiding my men."

  "And that's where I come in."