by Dave Norem
“Hope there ain’t nothin important in there,” Elmer said.
“Not to you, and you’ve had plenty of time to check,” John cracked.
“Don’t get uppity. As a matter of fact, oncet you’re done checking things out at the courthouse, it’d be best for you to just keep right on moving. You’ve been in trouble kid, and we don’t tolerate troublemakers around here.”
With the fishing gear and the two boxes secured in his trunk, John dusted off his hands. “I’ve got the message, Sheriff.”
He made a vow to himself. Some time, somehow, he would catch Elmer alone, or find another way to get even with him.
The new sheriff stood mute as John got into his car and left. He stopped by the County Clerk and Assessor’s offices and verified the statements made by Elmer, guessing beforehand that they would be true. Elmer would have had a different story otherwise.
After leaving there, he called the Mullins’ home on the off chance that Burl might be there. Burl’s mother answered and told him that Burl was in Knoxville, enrolling in law school. She willingly gave him Burl’s post office box address. John thanked her and left Suffolk. While driving away from the area, he speculated that some day he might need a good lawyer.
Later, he went through the boxes and discarded more than half of the items, condensing things to the smaller box. He thought to himself, A hell of a lot to show for my whole life; a duffel bag full of mixed Army and civilian clothes, some old fishing tackle, and a cardboard box full of old pictures and letters.
He went back through the papers again a month later and, to his surprise, found some old stock certificates from two of the major timber companies in the Tidewater-Southeastern-Virginia area. They were made out in his name and stuffed into a letter that he’d written to Til, back when he was still going to the one-room schools. Later he found them to be worth over forty-thousand dollars.
After he left Suffolk, and before he discovered the stock certificates, he drove back up to Dennison to get a better feel for the town and the surrounding area. He rented a room for a week in a rooming house that had two other boarders. They were itinerant construction workers, there for temporary rail-and-bridge work, and had no local knowledge.
He stayed close by for most of the week, picking up gossip at two local eateries and learning the surrounding back roads. He fished in nearby streams and ponds part of the time and found it to be an enjoyable diversion. He decided to use fishing as an excuse for his travels.
The widowed landlady, an Aunt Bea type, knew everyone living within twenty miles and liked to show off her knowledge. Without him even asking, she told him the story of Alice and her plight and all of the gory details. She didn’t mention the part about Piggott remaining in business after the bankruptcy, though, or even the name of the business.
John left Dennison and traveled north to Rockville, Maryland, where there was a potential contact. He again stayed for several days and was able to reach Lewis in Philadelphia by phone. They had a lengthy conversation, strengthening their relationship. John remembered that Lewis had a cousin in Rockville who was a successful businessman but still not above working in the shadows.
Lewis agreed to put John in contact with the cousin and provide a reference, sort of a social commitment.
The cousin’s name was Robert Harner, and he had interests in a number of businesses. John met him for lunch in the lounge of an older, but still upscale, hotel. After they had talked for a few minutes, John felt comfortable enough with him to make his request. He wanted a job for Alice Weber - one with a decent wage and enough flexibility and security so that she would be able to have her children with her.
Harner looked him over speculatively for more than a full minute. “You’ve got gall asking for a third-party commitment with no collateral, and you say the woman is seven years older than you and not related? That’s a big favor.”
“Oh, I’ll put up enough money to cover setting her up; I just don’t want her know I’m doing it. If she’s not pulling her own weight in sixty days, you can cut her loose. I’m betting you’ll be glad to have her on your payroll by then.”
“And I’ll be a special banker too?” Harner asked.
“Yes, I can cover your minimum deposit requirements,” John replied. He was referring to a loose agreement for Harner to hold money and launder it into legitimate investments for a fee.
“How about this hotel,” Harner asked.
“What about it?”
“For both her lodging and her employment; I own it and I can use a mature woman as night supervisor, starting Monday. She can go up or down from there, depending on her. She could wind up changing shitty sheets and mopping bathroom floors, or she could be a manager. There are three levels of that.”
“You’ve got a deal; I’ll have her up here Monday before noon.” They shook on it and agreed on a satisfactory starting wage for her.
John went back to Richmond but checked into a different hotel. He caught Alice walking home from work and steered her into the restaurant they’d first visited. She was wary at first, reminding him that he was to stay away from her for over a year.
She relaxed somewhat when he assured her that he wasn’t staying at her hotel. It still took quite a bit of persuasion for her to agree to take the job in Rockville, a city foreign to her. She didn’t want to risk losing the job she already had either.
He finally convinced her that there actually was a lucrative position open and told her that Robert Harner was a friend-of-a-friend. To ease her fears, he suggested that she call her present employer and request a family-emergency leave for a few days. It would allow her time to return if the new job didn’t work out.
She made the call and afterwards agreed to travel to Rockville. He wanted to drive her, but she insisted upon taking the bus and making her own way. When he agreed, she blushed, and then asked if she could borrow enough money to get started.
He laughed and gave her a hundred dollars, not telling her that he’d already given Robert Harner six hundred. She tried to give fifty of it back, but he declined, telling her that she’d need clothes and money to live on until her first paycheck.
“This is just a loan,” she stated.
He gave her a big smile. “Yes, it’s just a loan. You can pay me back when my year is up.”
Three weeks later he called Harner and asked how she was doing.
“She’s great, better than I expected. If she’ll stay, she will move up and soon. She insisted on half-pay for the first month to cover her food and lodging. Right now, she’s gone down to Dennison on the Greyhound to get her kids. We have some older permanent residents in the back suites that will care for them while she’s working. Where do you want me to send your six hundred?”
“Make that my first deposit in your special bank,” John laughed. He was pleased that Harner had made the gesture. It meant that Alice really was doing well.
CHAPTER 10
After stashing his personal items with Martin Levine in Fort Wayne, John moved around the eastern half of the United States for the next nine months exploring towns, cities, and countryside. He spent part of the time establishing contacts and scouting opportunities for robberies of small businesses, occasionally assisting others in similar endeavors. He was cautious with his involvements and was good at assessing risks.
Dennison, Virginia news accounts stated that robbers hit two businesses successively on a single Saturday night: the Piggott Construction Company in Dennison and a nearby tobacco auction house. The perpetrators had apparently disabled all of the city and county police cars that were not on active patrol before the robbery.
The criminals lured the actively patrolling city police car, and the lone state police cruiser, into pursuits of bait vehicles. The bait cars led police to remote areas where others threw hundreds of roofing nails into their paths, flattening their tires.
Follow up n
ewspaper accounts said that police were unsuspecting of the robberies during the vandalizing of their patrol cars. The burglaries weren’t discovered until the following Monday, and the amounts taken were not disclosed. Police suspected a criminal gang from Philadelphia or Pittsburg committed the crimes.
John and his four cohorts took over one-hundred-thousand dollars from the construction company office and forty-thousand from the tobacco office.
With the magnitude of the operation, and for the qualifications he needed, John had recruited two ex-convicts who were more-hardened criminals. They were located and contracted through a network reached only by carefully screened referrals.
Jesse Manning, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was in his twenties. He had black hair and eyes that accented his American-Indian features. Alarms, and the locating of home and business hiding places, were his specialties.
The other ex-con was Kendall Wrobleski from Newark, New Jersey. He was in his forties, six-foot-tall, and bulky. His appearance was menacing even though he was bald on top with graying blond hair on the sides. He was a safe-man and a skilled getaway driver.
During the first group meeting before the job, trouble came from Wrobleski, who was to scout the locations of all city police cars with Martin Levine. If possible, they were to steal two of the cars for use as getaway vehicles. Wrobleski had been part of a racial divide in prison and did not want to work with Martin. He was also verbally skeptical of working under anyone as young as John and threatened to “kick his young ass” if he didn’t get his way.
John needed his skills but was ready to have it out with him behind some dumpsters at the back of the motel property.
Vince Lewis interceded, addressing Wrobleski. “Hey! I’ve known him for three years. He’s worked plenty of jobs without getting caught. What’s your track record?”
“I’ve got twenty years’ experience on him, and I’ve got the know-how.”
“Yeah, you’ve spent fifteen years of it in the joint too: and you’re about to get your ass kicked. I’ve seen John in action. He’s damned good and he likes to hurt people.”
Levine glowered at Wrobleski. “I’ve seen him fight too. He’s a knockout artist.”
Later on, he told John that he wished they’d kept their mouths shut and let John work him over.
Wrobleski conceded, “All right, all right; I need the money. Just put me with somebody besides him.” He looked at John but pointed at Martin.
John agreed to him working with someone else, but he wasn’t about to put the two ex-cons together. Manning had been watching the exchange with interest but didn’t say anything, and John wasn’t sure where he stood.
Lewis and Wrobleski were to locate and disable the police cars not in use, while Manning and Levine worked on the alarms and cut the phone lines.
Once they had stolen the two bait cars they would use them to spot the primary vehicles away from the action, and to ferry the crew back to the offices. John and Wrobleski would then load the nails into them, afterwards locating and leading the active patrol cars to where they would spike their tires. They would then circle back and enter through the already-disabled alarms.
The night of the job, everything went pretty much according to plan. Manning and Wrobleski caused minor delays when they went out of their way to inflict much greater damage to the police cars than was necessary, including cutting brake lines and urinating on the seats. Another difficulty arose when John caught Manning working without the gloves that he had insisted everyone wear.
“I just can’t work this fine-detail stuff with them gloves on,” Manning complained.
They all looked at him.
“I’ve got a wipe-rag right here, and I’m wiping down everything I touch,” he continued.
”You’re done with the technical stuff now anyway, so put the gloves on.” John commanded.
Manning sulked but complied.
Later, after they finished the job and were clear of the area, John found out that Manning and Lewis had sugared the gas tank on the new Cadillac parked in the annex next to the construction office. He hadn’t wanted anything to indicate a personal attack on the owners. Belatedly, he wished that he hadn’t told them anything about the construction company cutting off a widow’s only income.
Despite hating each other, and not speaking except in grunts and gestures, Wrobleski and Levine had shorted every electrical outlet in both offices, plugged the sinks, and left the water running in the bathrooms. John was afraid that this would cast more suspicion of a personal vendetta, causing investigators to look at former employees.
Forty-eight hours after they left the offices, the one in the tobacco warehouse caught fire from an opened gas valve, adding arson to their list of crimes. Since Alice had never worked there, he hoped that it would draw attention away from her.
After splitting the take, he berated them en-masse. “All of you are supposed to be professionals, but the extra acts of vandalism were amateur and too damned risky.”
None of them responded, and he resolved to stay clear of all of them for a long time and to be a lot more circumspect in picking future partners in crime. Three months later, as if to substantiate his claim, FBI agents arrested Jesse Manning. He had left his fingerprints on a telephone terminal box at the tobacco warehouse.
Word filtered through the grapevine, and none of them corresponded directly with the others for a long time. It was another seven months before a jury convicted Manning. The court sentenced him to five years in a federal prison. John was on edge until after Manning was sent off, fearing that he might roll over on them.
Later, John used most of his share of the Dennison money to purchase a house for Alice Weber and her children. Robert Harner arranged it so that she thought she was “renting with option to buy”. Her payments were actually going into a trust fund for her and the girls.
John did not contact Alice for more than a year after he convinced her to travel to Rockville. When he did see her, it was while he was en-route to a rendezvous with Ross McGough in New York, and they met for dinner in Fredrick, Maryland. Their personal bond was still strong, but with short notice, she could not find a caretaker for the girls until several hours later. He and McGough were on a schedule and there wasn’t sufficient time for a liaison.
She paid him the one-hundred dollars she had borrowed and told him that she was happy in her new life and was eternally grateful for his involvement. She did not suspect how much more he had actually contributed to her well-being.
Almost a year after their dinner meeting, he caught up with a three-week-old letter from her, in which she told him of meeting a widowed man that she really cared for. She planned to marry within a few weeks and was certain that he would approve of Roger, if he were to meet him.
The letter stated that John would always be within her heart and soul, and she knew he would understand her need for the stability of a family life, especially for her girls. She closed with a reminder of their bond and her personal vow to him when they had parted at the hotel in Richmond.
John was left with mixed emotions from the letter and felt as if an unrealized goal, of ultimately being with her himself, had been torn from him. In contrast, he felt a lessening of responsibility from the drastic changes he had made in her life. He sent a letter of congratulations to her at the hotel, where she was now the manager, and wished them all the best. He promised to contact her when he might be passing through the area. That night he dreamed again of the woman with the indistinct features.
Why must I leave her again, her and the children? Children who are mine but know me not. She is the womanly fulfillment of all my dreams, yet she is as real as the air that I breathe. She is a rock, while I am but a clod of dirt that will wash away with the next passing storm. She asks naught for herself, but only for others, with the children being first and me second. She would forsake even them, were I the man that I should
be—the man that she deserves.
For now, I am to be gone again, committing myself to a duty that in my heart I know is not as significant as what I am leaving behind. The brief flash of anger in her eyes is instantly gone, replaced with fear and grief. Fear for my safety as well as the fear of eternity without a soul mate at her side.
Now I am gone, and my longing for her is overwhelming, while her image is indistinct, blurred from the watering of my own eyes. For I know now that I shall never cast these eyes upon her face again!
CHAPTER 11
John felt a need to leave this part of the country and travel to somewhere new. He packed up his belongings for travel and pointed his car toward the Carolinas and Florida. He stopped in Columbia, South Carolina and met William Decker for dinner at a Holiday Inn, firming up their friendship and thanking him again for the contact in Richmond.
Decker had moved to Columbia from Sumter after his military discharge, citing the airport there as a business necessity. John knew that if he ever wanted to move something in or out of the country, this would be his corridor.
While in Columbia, John changed his mind about Florida and decided to visit Atlanta and then New Orleans. He thought that hooking up with Polk would be a good idea too.
He didn’t stay long in Atlanta. He didn’t have any bad feelings about the bustling city with its underground retail and nightlife center, but he didn’t feel completely comfortable there either. He left after a few days, uncertain if he didn’t fit in or if he was missing something unknown.
He continued on to Mobile and liked the city, deciding to return after visiting Polk. Continuing his journey, he found lodging-by-the-week in a cottage in an older motor court. For several days he tried to locate Polk but was unsuccessful. He tired of the continuous nights of after-hours revelry and of being ever wary of hustlers, pickpockets and thieves.
He understood that this was not the normal life of a typical resident. Being a lone young male, he was a target the same as he would be in any large city. Here, in the thick crowds, victims were surrounded and mugged in moments: then fell unnoticed by passersby. Violent street crime seemed more open in New Orleans.