“It’s like that some days,” the beat cop laughed as he pulled an apple from his coat pocket, rubbed it against his sleeve, and tossed it to Lane. “Eat this, it might just give you a new perspective.”
Lane turned the apple over in his right hand and laughed. “Rankin, if that’s the secret to thinking clearly, you should have shared it with me much sooner.”
“Lane, it might not be the answer,” the beat cop admitted, “but we always think better when we get the clutter out of our brains. For me, that moment comes when I eat an apple. Just biting into it takes me to a different place. Suddenly it’s late summer, I’m sitting in the shade of a tree by a stream watching the sunset. I’ve got a fishing pole in my hand and a line in the water, but I don’t care if I catch anything. I’m just enjoying being there. When I’m in a place like that, it is easy to figure out what matters and what doesn’t matter. For me, all it takes is biting into an apple.”
Leaning back in his chair, propping his feet on the desk, Lane took a bite. As O’Toole watched, the homicide cop grinned. “You’re right, the taste does take me back a bit.” He took another bite before posing a question that had nothing to do with either man’s occupation or the apple. “Rankin, how long have you been married?”
O’Toole grinned, “Thirty-three years and they have been great ones, too. Sally is one heck of a gal.”
“Is she a good cook?” Lane asked as he continued to work on the piece of fruit.
“Not really,” came the quick reply. “And before you ask, she doesn’t look like a movie star either, but that really doesn’t matter. I just love her and having her in my life gives me something to look forward to and someone to laugh and cry with. It’s nice having a person to share your dreams, no matter how humble, and to be there when you get home.” The cop stopped, smiled, and then dropped a question of his own. “You’re not married, are you?”
Lane shook his head as he tossed the apple core in a trash can. “No, that’s one road I haven’t traveled.”
“I guess you haven’t found the right girl,” O’Toole observed.
“Not sure.”
“You don’t sound too convincing,” the beat cop observed. “In fact, you sound like a man trying to talk himself out of being in love rather than a man trying to decide if he is.” O’Toole looked down at his chest, rubbed his sleeve against his badge to shine it up a bit, before adding, “What are you not sure of? Are you questioning yourself or the woman?”
“The woman is amazing,” Lane said as he dropped his feet from the desk and stood. Walking over to a window and looking out at the holiday traffic on the street, he added, “It’s probably me. I just can’t seem to . . .” His voice trailed off.
O’Toole waited a few moments before joining Lane at the window. “What can’t you just seem to do?”
The homicide cop turned to face the man in uniform. “How would you describe me?”
“Smart and cool.”
Lane shook his head, “I’m cool on the outside, but on the inside I’m all jumbled up.”
“Why? Is it the job? If it is, get a new one.”
“No, Rankin, it’s not the job, it was the war. I just can’t leave it behind me. There was a kid always pushing to get out of me before the war started. I joked and laughed all the time. Each day was kind of like a gift. Then the war came and I killed for the first time. I didn’t realize it then, but killing another man took a bit of the kid in me away. Each time I killed, another part of that kid died. By the time the war ended, the kid that used to live in me had been buried on some island in the Pacific. He didn’t get to come home when I did.”
O’Toole rested his right hand on Lane’s shoulder. “The kid can still come home.”
“How?”
“Kids take leaps of faith,” he explained. “They reach for things they can’t see and accept things they can’t understand. It doesn’t matter if they fall down; they just get up and keep trying to reach up. When you bit into that apple, where did it take you?”
Lane grinned. “I used to climb an apple tree when I was a kid. I used to sit up in the branches, lean up against the trunk, pull an apple from a branch, and look out over my yard. Things looked different from up there. They were always bigger and more exciting. It was like I was on top of the world and nothing could knock me down. That’s where I went a few minutes ago. For just a little while, I was sitting on top of the world.”
O’Toole gently smiled. “Ah, it seems the kid did return from war with you. You just forgot to look for him. If you eat more apples, then you might just discover a few more things to like about yourself, and I’ll bet that kid who likes to laugh and have fun will demand a bigger piece of your life. Now, I’ve got to get back to my beat.”
“Stay warm,” Lane suggested.
“Even if I don’t,” O’Toole laughed, “I have Sally to go home to. I find the warmth that lasts the longest comes from the heart and pushes out.”
Lane watched the uniformed cop stroll from his office before returning to his desk. Sitting down in his chair, he picked up a pencil and jotted down a reminder to pick up some apples on his way home from work.
36
Monday, December 23, 1946
1:15 P.M.
Two hours of hard digging led to one two-line story on page thirty-four of a 1926 issue of The Star. When she finally stumbled onto it, Tiffany Clayton read the short notice a half dozen times.
Benjamin Franklin Jacobs married Velma Louise Lombardi. After a short honeymoon, the couple will live in Chicago while Jacobs goes to law school.
In all the stacks of newspapers there was nothing else about the marriage and not a single record of a divorce. Perhaps Capone spirited the woman to Mexico to end the union, because it certainly didn’t take place in Chicago. If it had, The Star would have run it somewhere.
Using old phone books, the reporter found a listing for Benjamin Jacobs in 1930. She followed that lead to discover the recent law grad had landed a position as an assistant with the District Attorney’s office. Having his protégé in the courthouse must have been a dream come true for Al Capone. Still, with Capone being shipped off to a federal pen the next year, Tiffany doubted that Jacobs had an opportunity to pass along much information to the crime boss. As she pushed on through the old issues, Tiffany found a story published in a 1931 issue of The Star noting Jacobs had been married to Elizabeth Deborah Starnes. The best man at the wedding was the groom’s supervisor, Ethan Elrod. Further research indicated the union between Jacobs and Starnes lasted until 1944, when the woman was killed in a car wreck. The couple had no children.
As she leaned back in the hard wooden chair and stretched, the newspaper’s records clerk strolled into the room with a Coke. “You look thirsty,” Oscar Taylor noted.
“Thanks,” Tiffany answered with a smile. After taking the hobble-skirt bottle from the small man’s hand, she took a quick sip and noted, “That’s a really red bow tie you’re sporting today.”
“My wife hates it,” Oscar laughed. “So this is the only time of the year I get to wear it or my green sweater. You should see the sweater, it’s so bright you need sunglasses when you greet me.” Smiling more with his eyes than his mouth, he observed, “You’ve been here a long time and pulled out a lot of back issues. Your fingers are black with newsprint. So, what are you looking for?”
After taking another swig of the soft drink, Tiffany pushed her hair off her forehead and asked, “What can you tell me that I don’t know about Ben Jacobs?”
After releasing the button on his herringbone sport jacket, leaning up against a bookcase, and folding his arms, Oscar shrugged. A second later, the man who knew more about Chicago than anyone else painted a brief verbal sketch of the judge. “His life is pretty much public record. Worked in the DA’s office, met the right people, the party gave him the job he has now, and they are grooming him to be our next governor.”
“You used to cover the Windy City on a daily basis,” Tiffany noted, “you know anyth
ing about his younger days?”
“Not much,” Oscar admitted. “I do remember he was from a poor family, father died early in some kind of accident, some unnamed benefactor saw Jacobs’s potential and paid for at least some of his education. Still, it took him a while. He was over thirty when he finally got his law degree. My guess is that during those years he was working odd jobs and going to school part time.”
“No hint of any scandal?” the woman probed.
“Nothing,” came the quick reply.
“Oscar, ever hear of a woman named Velma Lombardi?”
“Hear of her?” he laughed. “I had a crush on her. Back in the flapper era, she sang in a few local clubs . . . a couple of them were speakeasies. She was a blue-eyed blonde with the finest set of pipes in town. She could sing ballads and blues equally well. She worked a lot for a few years, and from what I heard back then, Capone got a piece of the action wherever she performed. As a side note, her father was murdered around Christmas of 1926 in that case you and I were talking about the other day. The one where Jan Lewandowski was executed for the crime.”
“Where was Velma at that time?” Tiffany asked.
“Not at the store or the upstairs apartment,” Oscar explained, “and she never came to the trial. In fact, she’d dropped out of site about that time.”
“So Velma wasn’t performing when her father was murdered?” the reporter asked.
“I’m not even sure she was still breathing,” the old man answered. “Her last performance that I remember was early in the summer before her father’s death.”
“I need to find that woman,” Tiffany explained.
“I doubt that will happen,” Oscar announced as he pushed off the wall and rebuttoned his jacket. “If she really did work for Capone and she somehow crossed him, she will never be found.”
“That’s not the news I need to hear.”
He chuckled, “Reporters rarely get the news we need. We therefore have to find a new way to frame a story. In other words, we think beyond the subject. That’s what separates the good scribes from those who are hacks.”
She considered the man’s words. Hammer swore that Velma wasn’t murdered but just relocated. So, in the past twenty years what had happened to her? What would she being doing with her life at this moment?
“Oscar, what kind of contacts did Capone have in the music business?”
“He might have had some ins at record companies, but I never heard of it. I know he was connected with nightclubs.”
“Where did he hang out when he wasn’t in Chicago?” she asked. “Was it New York or Los Angeles?”
Taylor laughed, “Big Al loved Hot Springs, Arkansas. He had a suite at the Arlington Hotel. Back then, that city was wide open. It was no problem getting booze, there was gambling and all kinds of nightclubs. I went down there with a couple of friends who were getting divorced and saw Clark Gable, Wallace Beery, and a bunch of other stars just walking down the streets. It was an amazing place in the twenties and thirties.”
Tiffany smiled, “You said your buddies went down there to get a divorce?”
“Until Reno changed its laws,” Oscar pointed out, “Hot Springs was the easiest place in the nation to end a marriage.” He checked his watch. “My break’s over, so unless you need something else, I should get back to my desk.”
“Do we have a Hot Springs, Arkansas, phonebook?” she asked.
“There should be one on the back wall,” he assured her.
“Thanks.”
As Oscar shuffled off, Tiffany refocused her energy. If her hunch was right, Velma might still be in Hot Springs. She might have changed her name, but the reporter was betting that the woman was still singing. Tiffany was going to spend the afternoon trying to find a forty-something blonde blessed with, as Oscar had described them, a fine set of pipes.
37
Monday, December 23, 1946
4:42 P.M.
Undeterred by what he’d been told the night before, Bret Garner spent his day carefully looking for that perfect gift to present to Tiffany. As he shopped, he realized he was walking a fine line. While the gift couldn’t shout his feelings—that might scare her off—it still had to paint him as being serious. That way it might help remove the damage his use of the word think had caused while not shutting the door for a time when he could say love without adding the think.
The sun had set by the time he walked into Marshall Field’s and found a gold chain necklace. Was it a bit over the top to give to someone he’d only known for a week? There was no doubt about it, yes it was! But as he’d already talked himself out of perfume, a bracelet, a sweater, and a dozen other things as being too much or too little. It was time to act. After having his choice wrapped, he slipped out of the store via a side door and began the walk back to his hotel.
The night was crisp, the wind strong, and shoppers crowded the streets. He could hear carolers in the distance, mixed with piped holiday music over store loudspeakers, blasting car horns, and the ringing of Santa bells. This mishmash of disharmonious sounds should have caused him to grit his teeth and cover his ears, but instead he found it heartwarming. It was Christmas and for the first time in years, there was peace on earth. On top of that he’d found an angel in high heels that charmed him in ways he’d never been charmed. Maybe he had been a good boy after all. How could life get any better? Noting a phone booth, he stepped in, closed the door, dropped a nickel into the machine, and made a call to The Chicago Star. It took a minute for the switchboard operator to track down his party. Just hearing her voice proved that it had been time well spent.
“Tiffany Clayton,” she announced, her tone so coldly professional it almost made her seem aloof. Still, it was music to Garner’s ears.
“It’s Bret.”
“How are you thinking today?” she jabbed.
“I’ve decided to never actually use that word again,” he explained.
“What word?”
“Think.”
“Well,” she chided, “it’s not even New Year’s Day and you’ve already messed up that resolution. While you think about that I will tell you I might be close to finding Velma. I’ll know something concrete one way or the other tomorrow.”
“Good detective work,” Garner announced. “Now, how about dinner?”
“Can’t tonight,” she quickly explained, “I’m waiting on calls. But why don’t you meet me at Randolph and State Street at eighty-thirty? Lane and I are going to follow the trail to the missing Santa money. I think you need to be with us as we wind this case up. After all, we don’t know what we’re running into, and Lane might need some backup.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” he replied, trying to hide his disappointment in having to share Tiffany with his old friend. “Should I wear a Santa suit and go undercover?”
“No,” the reporter chuckled, “the thought of a Santa hit man is kind of upsetting.”
“I was undercover then, too,” he argued.
“I’m still not convinced.”
“Tiff!”
“Don’t be late,” she advised. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
As he placed the receiver back into the pay phone’s cradle he frowned . . . so much for a romantic night alone with the city’s most attractive single woman. Now it looked like he’d be eating by himself in some cheap diner and then listening to the radio in his hotel room for a couple of hours. Opening the phone booth’s folding door, he stepped back into the cold wind. Remembering he’d skipped lunch and suddenly longing for a warm meal and a hot shower, he took a shortcut across the lot, waving at a man running a Christmas tree stand, and then made a left down an alley. Taking the short detour quickly proved to be a big mistake.
Chicago alleys were never pretty sights. Even on the best days, they were filled with trash cans, litter, and grime. At Christmas, it was even worse. The cans were spilling over onto the streets, the smell was anything but fragrant, the brick-covered surface was icy and slick, and there w
as so little light the investigator could only see a few feet in front of him. He was fifty feet in and was about to turn around when, with no warning, a shot rang out, the bullet coming so close to his head Garner heard it race by his left ear before the lead projectile buried itself in a trash can. A normal man would have seen this as a time to duck and run, but thanks to his years of fighting close battles in the Pacific, Garner was no longer a normal man. In less than a blink of an eye, he’d fully evaluated the situation. There was no place to hide and it was another two hundred feet to the corner. If he ran, within two steps whoever had fired the first round would squeeze off five more. Even if the guy were a horrible shot, at least one of those would surely find its mark. So, rather than race for his life, the investigator grabbed his head, screamed, and fell into the thick blanket of snow topping the pavement. As he played possum, his body unmoving, he snuck his right hand into his belt and grabbed his gun. Now it was just a matter of waiting the guy out.
The shooter didn’t immediately approach, but thankfully, he also didn’t fire off another round. Thus, for both men the waiting game continued. That wait was likely much better for the shooter than for Garner.
The investigator had not had the time to pick the spot where he staged his death tumble. If he had, he would have avoided landing on an empty wine bottle. While it thankfully hadn’t broken, it didn’t feel good pushing into his side. The fact his face was half-buried in dirty, wet snow was creating a bit more discomfort. Still, all things considered, this beat playing dead on Wake Island while a hungry Japanese soldier was searching through his pockets for something he might eat. Now, lying still, Garner ignored his discomfort and tuned out all the sounds of a noisy city as he listened for footsteps. Finally, after two long minutes, he heard crunching in the snow. The sound continued until the shooter stood just to the left side of the investigator’s body. What would he do now?
Garner grinned when he felt a gloved hand on his shoulder. The prey was falling into the trap. As the shooter tried to turn his target over, the investigator sprang into action. Grabbing the surprised man’s weapon with his left hand, he pushed it to the side while he shoved his own gun into the man’s gut.
The Fruitcake Murders Page 22