The Devereaux File

by Ross H. Spencer

  45

  Leaving the first rest stop east of the Toledo exits, a sub-average hamburger under his belt, his tank full of gasoline, Lockington checked his rearview mirror for fast-closing headlights, seeing none. He drove toward Youngstown under a glittering canopy of stars. Stars had become a rarity in the Chicago area—there was a grayish moon on occasion, but honest-to-Christ stars, the kind that actually twinkle, were hard to come by. The situation was due to too many people, too many factories, millions of automobiles, thousands of trucks, hundreds of diesel locomotives, and more jet airplanes than a man could shake his fist at—during its busiest hours, O’Hare Field handled a flight every twenty seconds. The racket was awesome, you could have carved the pollution with a butcher knife, and Lockington was glad to get away from it, however temporarily.

  He wondered what’d clued Billy Mac Davis to his route. Moose Katzenbach had been told what direction he’d be taking, but Moose didn’t slip on matters of that nature. Natasha Gorky had known his destination, but if she’d wanted him eliminated, she’d have had him shot in Chicago where his death wouldn’t have caused a ripple. Billy Mac Davis had been playing for keeps—there were half a dozen wind-whistling holes in his windows to prove it, three coming in, three going out. Davis had figured Lockington for Ohio following his departure from Mike’s Tavern, and it hadn’t been a random shot like a raffle ticket pulled from a hat. Davis’s guess had been educated, it’d been based on knowledge. Somewhere in the Youngstown area there was someone or something that Lockington wasn’t supposed to come into contact with. There are no Chicago-to-Youngstown shortcuts—Interstate 80 is the most direct route and Davis had been flying low on that course, overtaking everything ahead of him, knowing that he’d catch a tired blue Pontiac within three or four hours.

  The Pontiac clattered past the Cleveland and Akron exits and Lockington was less than an hour’s drive from Youngstown when he turned onto the ramp of the next rest stop, rattling by the truck park where dozens of over-the-road cowboys slept in their cabs, awaiting daybreak and the haul to the east coast. Lockington wasn’t a chronic hunch-player, but he was a firm believer in taking precautions and this stop amounted to a precaution.

  The passenger-car parking area was empty. It was 2:03 A.M., and at 2:03 A.M. most decent people were in bed—doing any number of indecent things, perhaps, but in bed nevertheless. He parked well clear of the building, leaving the Catalina where it’d be clearly visible from the glassed-in foyer. He climbed out, stretching, moving at an unhurried pace, ostensibly the bored traveler, which was hardly the case—Lockington was covering his ass, as they say in the infantry. Once inside, he took stock of the place. The lobby was deserted, so was the dining hall. He heard the clanking of pans in the kitchen. These places didn’t come to life much before daybreak, when they became beehives of activity. He leaned against a wall, lighting a cigarette, staring into the morning darkness, waiting. It was a short wait. A white Cadillac was slipping into the parking lot, lights out, stopping alongside Lockington’s car. Billy Mac Davis had ducked into a rest stop, letting Lockington pass, or he’d left the turnpike and looped back onto it—however it’d gone, he’d been tracking his quarry for a hundred miles and Lockington gave him an A for determination.

  So, what to do? There was a crackpot out there with a gun. Lockington considered barging through the kitchen to leave the building through a service door and turn his opponent’s flank, thus leveling the odds, boiling it down to a one-on-one shootout. Or he could call the Ohio state police and wait for their arrival—a thankless proposition at best. By the time Lockington could get the situation explained, Billy Mac Davis would be in the next county, establishing another ambush, and Lockington would be in the nearest mental facility, sharing a room with a guy who’d just returned to planet Earth after having been kidnapped by extraterrestrials. Or…or nothing!—a green Pontiac Trans Am had wheeled into the rest stop parking lot. The passenger’s door opened, a man got out, walking to Billy Mac Davis’s white Cadillac, revolver in hand, pumping half a dozen rounds into the Cadillac’s interior. Talk about coldblooded efficiency—within twenty seconds of its arrival, the Trans Am was gone. Lockington had recognized the executioner—Vince Calabrese.

  He left the building at a long-legged stride. There were no signs of life in any direction save for a Peterbilt snorting from the west end of the truck park, trailing a long filthy plume of diesel smoke. Early start. Lockington got into his Pontiac, kicking it to life, pulling away to roll down the outbound ramp, blending with I-80’s sparse dead-of-the-night traffic. Billy Mac Davis would be back there in his white Cadillac, deader than a fucking mackerel, looking a great deal like a volleyball net. Lockington shrugged. What the hell—Jesus saves.

  46

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0800 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: STILL NOTHING BIRD DOG/END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0901 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: POSSIBILITY BIRD DOG EDNA GARSON APT?/ END TEXT/ MASEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0802 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: CHECKED/ NEGATIVE/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0902 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: PIGEON APT?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0803 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: CHECKED/ NEGATIVE/ HOLD/ HOLD/ HOLD/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0807 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: PRIORITY CLEVELAND DISPATCH/ OHIO STATE POLICE REPORT BILLY MAC DAVIS DEAD/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0909 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: HOW?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0809 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: QUITE/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0909 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: WILL REPHRASE/ HOW BILLY MAC DAVIS DIE?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0810 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: INSTANTLY/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0910 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: WILL REPHRASE/ WHY DAVIS DIE?/ BUBONIC PLAGUE?/ STRUCK BY METEORITE?/ INGROWN TOENAIL?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0811 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: NONE OF ABOVE/ SHOT 6 TIMES 38 FIREARM I–80 REST STOP EAST OF AKRON OHIO END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0912 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: WHEN?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0812 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: APPROX 0215 EDT/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0913 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: REASON DAVIS DEATH?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0813 CDT 5/287/88

  BEGIN TEXT: BULLET WOUNDS HEAD NECK CHEST/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0914 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: WILL REPHRASE/ WAS REASON POLITICAL?/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0815 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: UNKNOWN THIS TIME/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LANGLEY-CHICAGO / ATTN CARRUTHERS/ 0915 EDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: ADVISE PROMPTLY FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS/ END TEXT/ MASSEY

  CHICAGO-LANGLEY/ ATTN MASSEY/ 0816 CDT/ 5/28/88

  BEGIN TEXT: WILCO/ END TEXT/ CARRUTHERS

  LINE CLEARED LANGLEY 0916 EDT 5/28/88

  47

  He verified his directions when he paid his Ohio Turnpike fare at Exit 15. He picked up Route 11 South, departing it at the Mahoning Avenue turnoff, finding that he was in Austintown, three miles west of the Youngstown city limits. It was five minutes after three o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t a lighted beer sign in sight, so he checked into a dilapidated motel operated by a sly-eyed, silent Indian who’d probably bought the place with profits from practicing thuggee, Lockington figured. The man appeared clad in a nightgown, he took Lockingt
on’s money, handed him a key, and vanished like a wraith. Lockington entered his damp, dingy room, opened his suitcase, found a bottle of Martell’s cognac wrapped in socks and shorts, toasted Edna Garson’s thoughtfulness with a hefty belt of the stuff, and rolled into bed.

  He’d slept dreamlessly until 11:30, awakening to cloudless blue skies and silence. Excluding his military time, Lockington had spent every day of his life in the Chicago area. Silence was strange to him, and he sat on the edge of his bed, listening, fearful that he’d gone deaf during the night. He showered, shaved, and left his room to behold the green splendor of the Mahoning Valley. The New Delhi Motel was a twelve-room, L-shaped affair, eight units running parallel to Mahoning Avenue, four branching to the north, all lopsided and badly in need of paint, but the place was half-ringed by dense forest to its south—a compensating factor, in Lockington’s opinion. In Chicago trees were scarce, most likely to be found in Grant Park where a man could get mugged at high noon during a police convention, probably by a policeman.

  He paid another day’s room rent, tangled with an order of sausage, eggs and hash browns at a next-door restaurant, and drove east into Youngstown, Ohio. It was time to get the lay of the land, a relatively simple task, he knew—it’d amount to no more than locating the right bartender. He wouldn’t be found in a first-class drinking establishment—the right bartender would be working the bar of a crummy blue-collar joint, the kind with a sagging beer sign, a cracked plate-glass window, a filthy men’s room with an empty towel dispenser. There’d be a busted electronic dart game in a corner, an out-of-order jukebox, a 1977 naked-cutie calendar on a wall, an ancient cash register that sounded like a head-on steam locomotive collision, a drunk sleeping in a booth, and a red-nosed, half-crocked woman at the bar.

  Lockington tooled the Pontiac slowly along Mahoning Avenue, passing taverns, sorting them out. When he came to the Flamingo Lounge, he hit the brakes. Both plate-glass windows were cracked and that was good enough for Lockington. He drove to the rear of the ramshackle building, parking in a graveled lot strewn with bricks and shards of glass. He went in through the rear door to find himself in a bistro that met all of his requirements save one—there was no drunk sleeping in a booth. There were, however, two red-nosed women at the bar, sloshing down spigot beer. Lockington pulled up short, seating himself as far as possible from the pair, but one of them, a toothless redhead, said, “Hi, dearie!”

  Lockington nodded to her, an ill-advised move, because her sidekick, a menacing-looking creature whose upper lip sported more hair than Lockington’s chest, took matters a step further. She said, “Say, honey—you buying or being?”

  Lockington said, “I’ll need time to consider the question.”

  The redhead turned to the hairy one. “He ain’t gonna buy, he’s gonna be!”

  The bartender walked in Lockington’s direction, winking, grinning. Under his breath he said, “The Sugar sisters—just ignore ’em.”

  Lockington mumbled, “Is that possible?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Probably not.” He put out his hand and they shook. He said, “I’m John Sebulsky.” Lockington looked him over. This was the right bartender, no doubt about it—mid-thirties, alert dark eyes, obviously intelligent. He’d know exactly where the possum pooped in the petunia patch. Lockington said, “Howdy, John, I’m Lacey Lockington—can you scare me up a double Martell’s?”

  Sebulsky grabbed a bottle and poured. He said, “That’ll be two dollars, Lacey.”

  Lockington paid him. He said, “Bargain day—it’d be four in Chicago.”

  Sebulsky said, “Hey, for four you can take an eight-year lease on the joint.”

  Lockington said, “Uhh-h-h—do the Sugar sisters go with it?”

  Sebulsky said, “Sure thing—we aim to please!”

  The redheaded Sugar sister had lost her balance on her barstool, listing precariously to starboard, then to port, then teetering backwards, clutching desperately at the hairy one for support. They went over together in a wildly flailing flurry of arms and legs. The crash was awesome. John Sebulsky was yawning. He said, “You from Chicago, Lacey?”

  Lockington nodded. “Yeah. Would you believe I used to brag about that?”

  Sebulsky said, “No good anymore?”

  Lockington said, “Shot in the ass, but it used to be the greatest.”

  Sebulsky said, “The whole damned country’s going to hell.”

  The Sugar sisters were thrashing about, trying to get up. The redhead was saying, “For Christ’s sake get offa me, I gotta pee!”

  The hairy one said, “How can I get offa you? You’re on top!”

  Sebulsky sighed a weary sigh. He said, “Y’know, I blew a golden opportunity to take this job. I coulda been number-one towel boy in a Pittsburgh whorehouse. He spread his hands resignedly. “Too late now.”

  Lockington said, “Sure is—one of the Sugar sisters just pissed on the floor.”

  Sebulsky didn’t turn his head. He stared fixedly at nothing. He said, “Which one?”

  Lockington said, “Hard to tell. Does it make a difference?”

  Sebulsky was squinting, thinking about it. After quite a long time he didn’t say anything at all.

  There was a touch of the philosopher about John Sebulsky, Lockington thought.

  48

  The sugar sisters had stormed from the premises in a righteous huff, vowing to return with a battery of attorneys, and but for John Sebulsky and Lacey Lockington, the Flamingo Lounge was devoid of human presence. They talked. Sebulsky had been Youngstown-born-and-raised, he knew the territory and its history. What he didn’t know, he could damn sure find out, he said. It hadn’t been a smart-aleck statement—he had a brother in the real estate business, a cousin who was with the Mahoning County police, an uncle who was a surgeon, serving on the staff of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, and, as a bartender, Sebulsky had become acquainted with hoodlums, bookies, drug pushers, prostitutes and pimps—what did Lockington want to know about the Youngstown area? Well, nothing that came readily to mind, Lockington told him, but he might have a couple of questions later—he figured to be in town for a few days. Sebulsky nodded, giving him a long penetrating look. Lockington knew that look—it said that John Sebulsky was trying to figure him. What was a man from Chicago doing in Youngstown, Ohio? The reaction was natural—a stranger rides into Gopher Gulch, mentions Dodge City, and the natives get inquisitive.

  Youngstown was hurting, Sebulsky said. It was called the Rust Belt now—wags had gone so far as to put up white crosses here and there—Rust in Peace. He told Lockington of the steel industry collapse some ten years earlier when fifteen thousand good-paying Youngstown jobs had gone down the drain virtually overnight. He tried to put that into perspective for Lockington—what if the Chicago area lost a million jobs in the same span of time? There’d be hell to pay, wouldn’t there? Lockington said, well, there’d be concern, of course, but the effects probably wouldn’t be quite so pronounced because there was always hell to pay in Chicago over one damned thing or another, and if there wasn’t hell to pay over something, people became alarmed.

  The conversation drifted to the young baseball season, leading to agreement that the Cleveland Indians were going nowhere, and so were the Chicago Cubs. Then Lockington inquired about the Club Crossroads. He’d heard mention of it, he said—what sort of place was it?

  Sebulsky said, “I know the bookkeeper at the Crossroads. It’s a country music dive—big frame building, south side of Mahoning Avenue, something like four miles west in Austintown. Used to be a cattle barn—some out-of-town guy bought it a little over a year ago. He put it back on the tracks. It’s a good place to get your teeth kicked out.”

  Lockington said, “Rough?”

  Sebulsky nodded. “The thing is, they get the country music types out there—none of ’em ever been south of Columbus, but they wear the Stetson hats and the neckerchiefs and the fancy western shirts and the tight jeans and the cowboy boots, and when they get a few beers
in ’em, they think they’re in fucking El Paso and they kick the shit out of each other.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell, they don’t need a reason at the Crossroads—it’s just the thing to do.”

  “Who owns the joint?”

  “Guy named Jack Taylor—nobody knows much about him, Ace says.”

  “Ace?”

  “Ace Loftus—the bookkeeper at the Crossroads. He comes in now and then. You figure on going out there?”

  Lockington shrugged. “Depends on the entertainment. How is it?”

  “Pretty good, if you’re into country. They don’t do that new crossover crap that’s floating around—the music is kosher.” Sebulsky rolled his dark eyes. “They got a canary that’ll blow your drawers off!”

  “Worth a listen?”

  “Yeah—Pecos Peggy. She got her own band, the Barnburners—piano, dobro, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, drums.”

  “Where they from?”

  “I dunno—deep South somewhere, I’d say, after hearing ’em talk. Peggy’s straight—sings country like it should be sung. She’s been at the Crossroads ever since Jack Taylor took over—she draws a crowd.”

  “Good-looker?”

  “Hey, you know it! Every stud who comes in wants to get her on her back, but she dazzles ’em with footwork—far as I know, she ain’t been scored on.”

  “Ought to be a good night tonight.”

  “Sure—Saturday night of a holiday weekend, I figure twenty, maybe thirty fights!”

  Lockington frowned. “Jesus, I wonder if it’s worth the risk.”

  “Take a table—most of the trouble’s at the bar.”