Dark Quarry: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery

by David H Fears

  “What about Frank?”

  “He may be useful one last time. I have a plan that will rid us of the tough guy and Frank, too. He’s a sow’s ear, gentlemen. He’ll never make a silk purse, which is what the 1960s will call for, silk purse operations. Only smooth, fast and careful outfits will survive. Frank’s a musclehead, an anachronism.”

  The two men look at each other and glance back at the man standing.

  “That means he’s a dinosaur. Now leave and let me work out these details. I’ll call you when I’m ready to put it in motion. With a judge and a patrolman in our pocket, there’s not much we can’t do.”

  The two men quietly leave. The portly man rubs his eyes and moves to a large polished desk in the corner. “I wonder what Ray would do,” he says to himself. “I’ll have to let Izzy know that his double crossing skimming bastard grandson is missing. He’ll never believe I didn’t deep six him. I never did trust that woman.”

  Chapter 8 – Dealing with Cops

  Between Haley and Rick I was bounced around pretty good. Haley clung to me like a life raft and Rick pumped me about Kimbra and my dealings with Ed. There were things I didn’t want to say in front of Haley so I dished him some pabulum about checking business refs on a guy for investment purposes. I knew it wouldn’t convince Rick. It was enough for an invitation to follow him downtown. I promised Haley I’d call her the next day after she got some sleep.

  I walked out to the car with Rick.

  “The real reason Bergman hired you, Mike? You know I can’t protect you once the hedgehogs at the eighteenth get a hold of this. The 23rd doesn’t have jurisdiction. I came early because I figured you might need help. So, don’t shuck me.”

  Telling a lie by telling the truth is an art form, and I was pretty practiced at that sort of thing with cops, especially with Rick. Sometimes he could read my eyes, so I looked away and rubbed a small dent in my fender. There was no reason I couldn’t give him the basic layout. He’d find out anyway and I’d need him somewhere down the road.

  “The real reason? Blackmail. Small time hood, Joe Ambler, did the squeezing. Ed wanted to me to tail Ambler and find out if he was working alone, what dirt he really had. Ed suspected a competitor was behind it. Ambler was hooked up with a dame named Kimbra Phillips—same skirt that Ed flew off to Bermuda with. Except you say he arrived there solo. She may have been the brains of the scheme. Ambler didn’t have a long suit in high-class departments.”

  “So where’s Ambler now?”

  Lying by telling the truth. It’s quite a talent once you get the hang of it.

  “I’d say he’s hiding out in a deep hole somewhere, now that Bergman’s been murdered. If Kimbra’s missing too, then maybe they’re on the lam together. Ambler and the dame were tag-teaming Ed, each with their own unique brand of charms, angling for a big payday. Everyone knows that Haley’s family’s Fort Knox. Ed took some securities with him. He wasn’t planning on coming back.”

  “I take it from the wife that you’ve known the Bergmans for years.”

  “Yeah. Since my ivy-covered rugby days at Princeton.”

  “What sort of leverage would warrant blackmailing Bergman?”

  “I never got that close. When I asked him point blank he mentioned incriminating pictures, but he had no memory of any being taken. He was a straight shooter back when. His marriage was anything but.”

  “Meaning? And what sort of pictures?”

  “Just that they didn’t always play mister and misses like main street Americans. I know Ed often slept out. Maybe her too, but that’s just a guess. It wouldn’t take much to embarrass Ed’s social circle—though you should know pictures of Ed and young boys were mentioned.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? How could he not remember those?”

  “Beats me. Maybe they were fakes, or he was doped up; he sure didn’t have any knowledge of such pictures, and I never took Ed for a pervert. Trust me, he wasn’t.”

  “Edward and Haley? Marriage of convenience?”

  “Oh, it was jake at first. Haley’s grief is real. Regrets are too, if I’m any judge.”

  “Nice kid, the Missus. Tough. But with a body like that and elusive spondulex in spades, I doubt she’ll last long on the market. You going to offer condolences?”

  “Yeah. She’s got a couple of nice points about her but nothing clicks with her—it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to notice why. Personally, I can’t get past the voice and the snooty routine. We were a minor item in college. Before Ed swept her off her tootsies after I flunked out. Now, my youthful gusto’s gone.”

  Rick turned and took a couple of step toward his car. My bright-eyed honest approach had satisfied him for now, except a bitter taste remained conning him about Ambler being on the lam with Kimbra.

  He stopped and turned like he had an afterthought. “I suppose college jealousy’s too old of a motive for you to kill Ed?”

  I laughed. “It must be tough to be an intellectual in the NYPD.”

  “You’re quite discerning, my boy. Affirmative, I’ve been accused of that. I’ll give the eighteenth what you’ve told me. First I want to check out this couple that Ed was tangled up with. You’ll need to make a written statement. Don’t go far, and let me know if you hear from Ambler or this Kimbra female.”

  “Will do. I’ll be in my penthouse office. Come up anytime.”

  ***

  I was up late that night pouring over the scrapbook I’d hauled out of Joe’s closet. There were several Detroit Times articles on his famous grandfather and uncles, brothers who had formed Detroit’s Purple Gang back in the twenties. Abe, Ray, Joe and Izzy Bernstein were brothers who had grown up in Little Jerusalem, as Motown was called then. Those boys went on to transform the Purples from a small time kid gang whose primary activities included petty extortion and shoplifting into an efficient organization controlling a good portion of the liquor in and out of Detroit. Even Capone went to the Purples for his distribution of booze.

  The Bernstein boys were parented by Russian immigrants who settled in a poor section of Detroit. They were among some fifty kids who grew up together as hard-core criminals—“killers of the worst sort,” they were called. Ray Bernstein was the last brother to lead the gang and he got sent up for life in Marquette back in 1931. If he was still there I could check it easily enough. Except for Izzy, the other Bernsteins were dead. One story from 1933 named the few gang members that were left, including Izzy, the baby brother and also a kingpin named Bernard Doak who was doing life at Trenton. Izzy supposedly left Detroit and went straight. A fairly recent article on Ray Berstein described him as a “model prisoner who had found religion behind bars.” Assorted clippings from as far away as Oklahoma City and Hoboken highlighted police chases and arrests of Purple survivors. It seemed their reign of terror ended in 1935.

  There was a photo of Izzy and grandson Joe taken at Coney Island, and one about a murder at Monmouth Park, New Jersey in 1946, where I’d been a security guard one summer fresh out of high school. It was right before I quit there to go in the service that the murder occurred.

  That new kid with the strange name, who swiveled his hips like he had flames in his boxers, came on the Buick radio belting out “Jailhouse Rock.” When he ground out “the whole rhythm section was a Purple Gang,” I laughed out loud. I wondered if Izzy and Ray were still alive, and what they thought when the hit song came on.

  Back at the office, Haley called late and begged me to come stay with her, but I told her I was bushed and would drop by the next day. She wasn’t thinking straight or talking straight. She wanted me to find out who killed Ed, and if it was Kimbra, to return the favor for an obscene bundle of dough. I wanted to tell her I’d kill Kimbra for nothing, but that hiring a hit man could put her in prison drabs until she was on Social Security.

  Haley said she wasn’t serious, but wanted to go through Ed’s papers, get rid of anything incriminating. I wasn’t sure what else I could learn, but promised to help if she’d wait a few days
so I could track down some leads. I had in mind a few of the suppliers in Kimbra’s peewee phone book I’d pulled from the murder scene. Sometimes investigating pulls you in four different directions at once. It’s like keeping a bunch of plates spinning and knowing in your insides one is bound to fall soon.

  I kept wondering about Kimbra’s background, if that was even her real name, and how she’d hooked up with Joe. Besides what she’d made up the night of the murder, I knew almost nothing about her, nothing I could count on. What did the phone book listings mean? Was she running a prostitution ring or was that Joe’s other sideline?

  Ed’s papers would wait. Haley would be more coherent in a few days.

  Ambler might not have been the first hood to harass Bergman. And, if the Purples or locals were behind the blackmail, I doubted Ed knew. He was pretty careful—I doubted he’d write down anything important. But if Kimbra had been planning on killing both Ambler and Bergman, she might have made mistakes somewhere.

  ***

  The next morning I was shaving when a hard knock rattled my door. I hollered I’d be right there and held a tissue against the nick I’d made in my chin.

  Two detectives from the 18th. They looked like they’d slept on a park bench.

  “Get your coat, mister PI. You’re under arrest. Your buddy Anthony can’t pry you out of this one.”

  “What’s the beef?”

  “Murder. You can bleed downtown.”

  “Oh? Murder, is it? That’s pretty serious. And who’s stiff now?”

  “You should know, wise-ass. Your .38 was the murder weapon. Plus, one of our patrolmen had to separate you and the victim. The janitor got quite an earful, too. Private investigator or not, the permit doesn’t allow murder.”

  I was under arrest for the murder of Frank Hovard.

  Chapter 9 – In the Big House

  Three months later:

  Warden Carty leaned back in his swivel chair and cleared his throat. “This bit of news cuts two ways, Mike,” he said. “No new trial. Driscoll’s commuted your sentence—from the chair to life. Looks like we’ll have you around awhile. You have that female reporter to thank—what’s-her-name.”

  “I’m not sure which is worse, Warden,” I said. “Frankly, frying me might be worth a headline in the Star-Ledger for the dame—“Innocent But Naïve Investigator Trusts Dame and Fries For It”—byline: Heddy McBright.”

  Carty pushed his beer gut over the desk and sifted a cigarette from a pack in my direction. Chesterfield. I took the smoke like it didn’t matter and waited for a match like a patient nun. He finally snapped a lighter in my face, and I took a long drag and read a bronze plaque on the wall over his desk:

  A real law enforcement officer is born rather than made. They must have a gift for remembering facts, faces, and names; they must be observant, self-reliant, and possess good common sense.

  Evidently, I hadn’t been observant enough. And if I’d had good common sense I would have taken up another line of work. Cops turned private investigators aren’t born, they’re what’s left after crooked chiefs and incompetent superintendents chip a whole bunch of cop away. So you either stick and turn rotten or get a permit and set out as your own boss. I’d been at the PI game for six long years, but the Bergman case was only the second involving major felonies. It wasn’t like a slow crime market—Jersey hoods outnumbered the bellboys—it was just that the insurance stuff paid steadier. And, now and then I could combine both. I’d put a couple of those Jersey hoods away—at least I’d evened the odds a bit for Citizen Joe Jersey. Not that he cared. But my cozy little life had plunged off a cliff with that lucky shot of Kimbra’s. It was all a blur: Kimbra killing Ambler, dumping Joe, Bergman’s murder, the Hovard frame. Now I was in the snakepit, as deep as Joe’s, except I was feeling a lot more pain than he was. It might be awhile before I could move Joe’s body now. I could only hope he’d been paved over.

  I’d made permanent membership in one of the toughest slammers in the country—the New Jersey State Prison at Trenton, a dump for hanging and frying psychopaths since 1837. It’s a strange place, smack in the middle of a residential area. Not what you’d call modern urban planning.

  I was in for putting four .38 slugs in Frank “Big Nose” Hovard. The moniker came out at the trial and the judge seemed to resent me laughing out loud over it. It seems the nickname fit the deceased so well even little guys who couldn’t run called him Big Nose. Maybe because they’d look right up into those cathedrals on his face and find God. Because it came out that Hovard used to be a priest after he was a two-bit prizefighter—until he got caught with his snout in the collection box.

  Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed wasting Francis, but I was busy that night interrogating one of the dames listed in Kimbra’s call-girl phone book, a piece of stripper-fluff named “Bunny” LaVelle.

  I always thought I had a gift for recollection. Somewhere I’d missed a few facts, and my Bunny alibi had vanished like a streetwalker with a C-note. I was with Bunny when Hovard bought it with my .38 special, the same one I’d fought him off with in that little office scrape. I kept it in the desk as an extra and carried a Colt .45 the rest of the time. Sometime between the struggle with Hovard and three nights later, the special was taken from my office. No forced break-in, clean.

  This Bunny canary denied I even existed to the cops, and disappeared before the trial. I never got the pleasure of a private cross-examination. Whoever whisked Bunny out of town was taking no chances the frame up would leak. It was smooth, since the conveniently passing-by patrolman witnessed the falling paperweight from the scuffle, and the janitor testified I’d been seen leaning on Hovard, the motive angle was pat. The trial was double pat. My mouthpiece snored through most of it. Rick did his best to chase down LaVelle and a few other leads, but it was no go. It all stunk of the mob, Purple-connected or not.

  “There’s more,” the warden jawed, “—a job for a man of your skills. If you get it done I have it from the Governor he’ll cut your sentence to twenty-five. Trusteeship, too.”

  “That still makes me Gabby Hayes by the time I ride out of this sewer.”

  “Suit yourself. It can be hard time or—”

  “Don’t mind me, Bill, I’d just counted on a new trial, that’s all. You know it was flimflam. What’s on your mind?”

  “Flimflam? Yeah, we have a couple of wings full of framed inmates. You’ll have a lot in common with them.”

  I must have looked like I was sucking on a lemon because the douche bag softened and tried to sound jake. “Now, now, I’ve read your file. There’s doubt, but the jury put you here. I understand how a woman like that gets a man worked up. Hovard was here for a stretch too, don’t forget. As far as I’m concerned, whoever shot him did the State of New Jersey a favor.”

  I’d have to string along, but the grand design the warden was about to lay out might as well have strapped me right back in the chair, the same one they fried Bruno Hauptmann in back in ’32 for the Lindbergh nap job. They’d kept it buzzing happily since, a perfect record: 107 guys zapped and not one of them a private eye. I wanted to keep it that way.

  “We’re putting you down in Wing Five, Mike. I don’t have to tell you that’s where we stash the hardest cons. Like the jury, they think you bumped off Hovard, not mister popular during his stay here. That makes you somewhat of a celebrity. So, we want you to get next to Bernard Doak and George Ziagorski. Find out what their plans are—what and when. We know they’re planning a break, maybe another riot.”

  The second mug’s name didn’t ring a bell, but the mention of Doak gave my liver goosebumps. I rubbed my forehead over my eye and tried to act nonchalant. “Doak, Doak—old timer thug in Detroit’s Purples?”

  “His son. Bigger thug. Now, we know he was the ringleader in a little trouble we had last year. And Ziagorski plunged a knife into a guard’s neck—Jacobs, good man—Ziggy’s waiting for the chair so he’s got nothing to lose. He’s squeezed through on technicalities before, though.
We think they’re planning a different kind of party this time—a break.”

  “Yeah. Read about that last riot you hosted. Nice clientele you house here, Warden. I’d hate to see them unleashed on the neighborhood that surrounds the place.”

  Carty ran his hand through what was left of his hair and squinted hard. “We are going to turn them loose, Mike, at least Bernard. That’s where you come in. We want you to make the break with Doak and try to get inside the Purple Gang. We think there’s a Jersey branch.”

  “Jersey branch? Look—Warden Carty, I don’t want to tell you your business, but if the Purples had been around I would have picked up street noise. Anyway, they’re all on social security, the ones not pushing daisies.”

  “They brought in one man back in ’46. Operated him independently of the local mob, but with some connection. No one knows his name but he’s the Detroit connection—Mister Big—racket money flows through him. Word has it the three Jersey racetracks are involved. There was a killing just before Monmouth Park first opened and Governor Driscoll wants this cleaned up quietly.”

  “So, what’s my chisel? I tripped a few mugs in here don’t forget. What if Doak smells a rat?”

  “He won’t. He hated Hovard. Doak nearly pulled off a hit on him right before his parole. You get under Bernard’s wing and the other cons won’t mess with you.”

  “I get it—I did him a favor. What was their beef, Doak and Big Nose?”

  “Small time gambling, petty stuff. Hovard worked him over good. Since then Doak has Ziagorski as a body guard.”

  Carty walked over to a highboy writing desk, bordered with brass nails. He let down the top and scribbled on a notepad, then tore off and folded what he’d written. I put out my cigarette and listened to the clattering in the exercise yard beneath the window. It sounded distant and hollow, like my hopes of ever being free. Carty opened his office door and waved me out. He stuck me with the note as I moseyed to the door.