Jelly's Gold

by David Housewright

  Nash tapped his forefinger on a crossroads. “We might have to make a decision when we get here,” he said. “What do you think? North or south?”

  What, is he asking me? Mike wondered.

  Nash turned. Mike was standing a few feet behind him, a slightly frazzled expression on his face. “Kid,” he said, “I’m not doing this for my health. You’ll be driving the car. Now tell me, which way do you want to go, north or south?”

  Mike stepped up to the map. “Umm, why not straight east?”

  “If you wanted to stop a band of outlaws from hightailing it to Minnesota with a car full of gold bullion, where would you put up a roadblock?”

  “Umm.” Mike traced the highway with his finger. “Here?”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  Mike tapped the same intersection Nash had earlier. “Just east of this intersection. They’re not going to have enough time to put up a roadblock, though.”

  “Who says?”

  “Didn’t you?” Mike said.

  Nash folded his arms and stared at the young man. Mike found himself taking a step backward, a student being admonished by the schoolmaster. He glanced over his shoulder at the Finnegan brothers, Jim and Joe, standing behind him. They were both grinning, holding gats in their hands like they never set them down. He knew they’d be of no help. They were big men and tough, but not particularly bright. Jelly had chosen them for muscle, not brains. It wasn’t that long ago that Nash had hired Mike for the same reason. “Do exactly what you’re told and keep your mouth shut,” he had been warned—but this time Nash demanded that Mike actually think. It was the moment he had been waiting for; a chance to prove that he belonged in the same fraternity as Harvey Bailey, John Dillinger, Verne Miller, Volney Davis, George Kelly, Jimmy Keating, Tommy Holden, and, yes, Frank Nash.

  Mike pulled out a second map, this one depicting downtown Huron. There were lines and stars drawn on the map, and Mike used them for effect. “We know exactly where the deputies are gonna be at nine in the morning,” Mike said. “At the café here, at Huron University here, and way down here at Prospect Park. Now, according to the plan, we hit the Farmers and Merchants Bank here, we’re in there for no more than nine minutes, whether we’re finished or not. We drive, turning here, turning here, following the railroad tracks along Market Street to Dakota Avenue, then straight east on Fourteen.” Mike tapped the crossroads. “We should be past here exactly seventeen minutes after we leave the bank. No way can they get a roadblock organized by then. We’ll be across the state line before the county cops even know what happened.”

  “What if we’re not?” Nash said. “Accidents happen, don’t they? Mistakes. Bad luck. What if it takes me longer to blow the safe than planned? What if we get a flat? What if one of the Finnegan brothers drops a gold bar on his foot? What if a civilian gets in the way?”

  “Anybody gets between us and the door he goes down,” Mike said. He glanced behind him. Both of the Finnegan brothers were nodding…

  Mike interrupted his story to find Genevieve’s eyes.

  “You gotta know, Sugar,” he said. “You see me as this nice, harmless old man, maybe colorful, I don’t know. Only I wasn’t so nice back then. I sure wasn’t harmless. I was like Jelly and Harv Bailey. I was against any unnecessary violence, didn’t want to shoot nobody I didn’t have to, but I had a rule like everybody else. If it was between you getting hurt and me going to prison, it wasn’t going to end good for you. I didn’t like guns. Didn’t like to hurt. But if it was a choice of you or me or if you messed with my family—I would do what needed to be done. That’s the way it was.”

  Genevieve smiled, only there was no commitment in it. She didn’t want to think of Mike as a killer. That would mean she was friends with a killer, that she cared for a killer. Nothing in her upbringing prepared her for that.

  “Not that I went around shooting people,” Mike said. “No, no, no, no, not like the Barkers or Pretty Boy. I was a bank robber, not a nut job.”

  Frank Nash shook his head as if the young man were too dim to understand what he was telling him. “That doesn’t answer the question,” he said. “If something goes wrong, what are you going to do?”

  Mike stared at him for a few beats, then turned his attention back to the map. “South,” he said. “Head for Sioux Falls.”

  “There are a lot of people in Sioux Falls,” Nash said. “A lot of police.”

  “That’s why we go there. We stop along the highway and switch plates, put on the South Dakota plates we got. We slide into the city—we’re just one of who knows how many other black roadsters. If we go north we stick out. Every hick peekin’ through his window blinds could make us. Down here we’ll be able to hide in plain sight. Also, if they got the roads to Minnesota blocked, we can sneak into Nebraska or Iowa. Get home the long way, maybe, but we get home.”

  Nash slapped Mike’s shoulder. “Now you’re using your head for something besides a hat rack,” he said.

  “It was one of the best compliments I ever got,” Mike said.

  “Tell me about the robbery,” I said.

  “Went smooth as silk. Frank and the Finnegan brothers went into the bank through the front door while I parked the car round back. I get out of the car, pop the trunk, and go to the back door. Joey Finn already has it open. I go upstairs, take the chopper from Jimmy Finn, and hold the front door and guard the hostages. We had the bank manager, two cashiers, and a customer, a woman about my age, beautiful; she was wearing a bright white dress, with a big brim white hat and white gloves. I don’t know why, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a couple of days without thinking about that woman. Anyway, Jelly blows the safe, and the Finnegans start loading the gold into the trunk of the car. They carry two bars at a time, eight trips each, takes three and a half minutes. Meanwhile, Jelly loads a bag with cash and bonds, all the time yelling out the minutes—five minutes, six minutes, like that. It was the only talkin’ anyone did in the bank while I was there. At nine minutes, I tip my hat to the woman in white and we’re out the door. We follow the route we laid out just like we rehearsed—never even saw a cop. Nine hours later we’re in St. Paul. Perfect job.

  “Yeah, copper, you could say I learned my trade by watching how Jelly went about his business. Plan, plan, plan, and then plan some more, think beyond your guns, take luck outta the equation—that’s what Jelly taught me.”

  “Except your luck ran out,” I said.

  “You could say that. Know how they got me?” He glanced up at Genevieve. “I ever tell you, Sugar? Talk about bad luck. I was in a joint in Minneapolis, mindin’ my own business. Half-dozen gees walk in. They’re celebratin’. One of ’em was a daisy named Willie Meyer, owed me a thousand large. He squares the debt with two five-hundred-dollar Liberty Bonds and offers to buy me drinks to take care of the interest. I should have dangled right then. Instead, I stick around, dipping my bill. All of a sudden, the joint is jumpin’ with John Laws. Turned out Willie and his pals took down a bank in Indiana the week before, got away with fifty-eight thousand in cash and another sixty in bonds. Only they were spendin’ stupid, if you know what I mean. Coppers followed their trail to the Cities. One of ’em slaps bracelets on me. I told him I wasn’t in on the heist, was nowhere near Indiana, but I had two of the bonds in my pocket and a judge with no sense of humor at all.” Mike shook his head at the wonder of it. “Thirty-three banks without a fall and I get sent over for a job I didn’t do. It’s what you call irony.”

  “What happened when you got back to St. Paul after the South Dakota heist?” I asked.

  “We split the cash in the car. Jelly took the gold and the bonds; we planned on gettin’ together in a couple of weeks to settle on the bonds, but we all knew the gold was going to take longer to fence. He dropped the Finnegan brothers at Diamond’s Bar up in the Badlands; me he dropped at the entrance to the alley that led to the back door of the Green Lantern with ten thousand in my pocket. It was the last time I saw the man. Damn, it was sad wh
at happened to him.”

  “Did Nash mention what he was going to do with the gold? Where he was going to hide it?”

  “Not Jelly.”

  “Ever mention anything about a fence? Did he ever mention a name?”

  “Nah. He was pretty closed-mouth about that sort of thing.”

  “Did Nash ever mention Brent Messer?”

  “The architect?”

  “You knew him?”

  “Yeah, I knew him. He was one of those rich dandies liked to hang out with the trouble boys. Made himself think he was trouble, too, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did Jelly ever talk about him?”

  “Couple times in passing. Nothing specific comes to mind, though. Why?”

  “Do you think he could have fenced the gold?”

  “Messer? I don’t know. I suppose he had connections enough, but—nah, I just can’t see it. Like I keep sayin’, Jelly was a careful guy. I don’t think he’d trust Messer with the gold—or anything else, for that matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “It never pays to drink out of the same bottle with someone you’re doing business with, that’s all. Word gets out, people get excited, bad feelings abound—pretty soon you know business is gonna suffer. I just don’t see Jelly taking that chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The architect had a wife, a real dish named Kathryn.”

  “What about her?”

  “Jelly was—what do the kids say today? Jelly was doin’ her.”

  Genevieve had been right about Mike. He was a force of nature, but only for a short time, and then he tired. She wheeled him back to his room and afterward walked me to the entrance. I offered her a ride back to Bethel University, but she declined. She said she thought she’d hang around the nursing home for a bit and try to make herself useful. She’d score a ride later.

  At the door I told her not to linger too much over Berglund. Without elaborating, I told her that he wasn’t worth her tears. I don’t think she believed me.

  “I guess I’ll feel better when the police find out who killed him,” she said. “Then at least I’ll know why.”

  You could have done it, my inner voice said. You could have killed him out of jealousy and rage after you discovered that he was using you just as he had used Heavenly and Ivy.

  I didn’t believe it for a second, of course. Genevieve was a sweet and lovely young woman—a true work of art—and it made me feel like a loathsome heel to put her in the jackpot. Heavenly was right to call me that name. I needed suspects, though, the more the merrier. So I shook her hand and gave her shoulder a gentlemanly hug, and as soon as her back was turned I activated my cell phone and called Bobby Dunston.

  11

  There were several messages on my voice mail when I returned home. Half were from Kelly Bressandes encouraging me to defy the police department and come clean with my story about Berglund’s murder and its connection to Jelly’s gold. The other half were from Heavenly Petryk. Apparently she’d found a safe place to hide, but she was still fearful and begged me to call her.

  “McKenzie, I am so glad to hear your voice,” Heavenly said. “I’ve been so frightened. How is the investigation going? Have the police arrested Josh’s killer yet?”

  “Not yet. Tell me something, Heavenly, does the name Brent Messer mean anything to you?”

  Heavenly was a good liar, smooth and uncomplicated. Yet instead of hemming and hawing and taking a moment to turn the name over in her head—as someone telling the truth might have done—she quickly answered, “Never heard of him. Why do you ask?”

  “It seems Berglund was interested in him for some reason. I don’t know why.”

  “Hmm,” said Heavenly.

  “Hmm,” I replied. “Why don’t you come over? We’ll talk.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “Sure.”

  After Heavenly hung up, I fished Boston Whitlow’s card from my pocket and called him.

  “Mr. McKenzie,” he said. “A pleasant surprise. I had hoped to hear from you, but not so quickly.”

  “It’s been one of those days,” I said. “Are you busy?”

  “Not so occupied that I can’t listen to what you have to say.”

  “Why don’t you come over to my place. We’ll talk.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  I gave him directions and hung up. Afterward, I crossed my living room carpet and peeked through the drapes that were hiding my large bay window. The beige Toyota Corolla was parked in pretty much the same spot as it had been the day before—four houses down from mine on the opposite side of the street. I noticed it when I turned onto Hoyt Avenue and headed for my driveway earlier, but pretended I hadn’t. I couldn’t see the driver’s face, but I assumed it was Allen Frans, the sandy-haired young man I scoped out at Rickie’s. I had no idea how long he had been sitting on my house or why he hadn’t been there that morning. Still, I smiled, actually smiled, at the sight of him. For some reason I was humming an old Beach Boys song, the lyric repeating itself in my head: And she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away …

  Heavenly was the first to arrive. She was wearing a silky, sleeveless, knee-length blue shirtdress cut to skim her curves with twelve silver buttons down the front. She must have left her hideout in a hurry, because only five of the buttons were closed. Clearly she was no evangelical Christian. I might have frisked her again, except honestly, where could she have possibly hidden a weapon?

  She hugged me the moment she came through the door as if I had just pulled her from a burning building.

  “I’ve been so frightened,” she said.

  “There, there,” I said while gently patting her back.

  “I need your help, McKenzie.”

  “Sure.”

  “I lied to you before. I know I shouldn’t have. This business with the gold—it had me all confused.” She broke the embrace and stepped back so I could get a good look at her taut and fearful face—and probably her exquisite body, too. “I don’t always behave like a good girl should. It isn’t easy being … heavenly. People, men, they try to take advantage. You’d be surprised.”

  No, I wouldn’t, my inner voice said.

  “To protect myself, I occasionally do things that I shouldn’t. I lie. Not like you. You’re strong and brave, and something else—you have integrity, you have character. I knew that when you took on Wally and Ted, when you rejected me at the History Center. I know I can trust you. Help me, McKenzie. Help me, please.”

  I took Heavenly by the elbow and gently guided her to a chair at my dining room table—I really needed to get some living room furniture.

  “You said you lied to me,” I told her. “What did you lie about?”

  Heavenly lowered her head; she knit her fingers together and dropped them into her lap. Looking down at her, I couldn’t help but notice that her dress was open to the fourth button from the top, exposing the swell of her breasts as well as a glimpse of black lace, and to the fifth button from the bottom, revealing more of her thighs than a modest girl should. I did a quick assessment of my personal integrity and character and decided that Heavenly had been exaggerating earlier. I stepped around the large table, putting it between us.

  “I said before that I didn’t know who killed Josh,” Heavenly told me. “Only I’m sure I do know.”

  “Who?”

  “Boston Whitlow.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Boston and I—we were in a relationship.”

  “Before or after Berglund?”

  “Before.”

  “Did he know about the gold, too?”

  “Yes. We were—for a time we were partners.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You broke up.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he greedy? Did he want a bigger cut, too?”

  “He wanted everything.”

  “That is
greedy. Why do you think he killed Berglund?”

  “For the gold, what else?”

  “Why Berglund? Why not you?”

  “I don’t understand,” Heavenly said.

  “You know as much about it as Berglund. Probably more. Why not shoot you?”

  “Maybe Josh discovered something important. He wasn’t completely useless. Maybe Boston found out about it somehow and killed Josh to get it.”

  “The same motive could apply to you.”

  “I would never kill anyone.”

  “Not even with kindness?”

  “McKenzie—”

  “You’re saying Whitlow would. Kill someone, I mean.”

  “Boston—he’s not a nice man. Not like you.”

  “I don’t know. He’s certainly polite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I met him yesterday morning.”

  Anxiety seeped through her frozen smile, and she held her breath even as the words spilled from her mouth. “You spoke to him?”

  “We had coffee together.”

  Heavenly got up from the chair and walked the length of the table. She dragged the fingertips of one hand over the top of the other chairs as if she were searching for dust. When she reached the final chair, she turned. She tried to make her face appear smooth and unconcerned; she was unable to hide the distress in her eyes.

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to partner up.”

  “I thought we were partners.”

  “Did you?”

  Heavenly circled the table and sidled up to me. She rested her hands on the points of my shoulders. “I meant what I said yesterday morning. You and I. A fifty-fifty split.”