by S G Read
RUN CALLY RUN
CHAPTER 1
Calliaster Doyle lay in bed, it was a holiday and that meant she did not have to go to school. She planned to stay in bed for some time but something had caused her to wake. At that moment she had no idea what it was, so she lay there, listening, waiting to find out what it was. She assumed it was going to be the normal morning routine. A sixth sense made her twist her head to look at the door to her room and she saw it slowly opening. She watched the door, her eyes still full of sleep not expecting any surprises as she lived with her father, who had yet to master tying his own tie. The door did not fly open but more inched open uncertainly as though someone was creeping in. Then she saw him! It was her father, still struggling with his tie. She slipped out of bed and tied it for him. Then she put his cufflinks in place as she had done many times before.
‘Thank you Cally I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ He said and kissed her on the forehead. 'I’m off to work now, don't stay in bed all day.’
'No pa.' Cally answered but did not really mean it.
He left the room but returned to the doorway.
‘Don’t forget, when I get back tonight we’re off on holiday but first we are going to drop in to see your Mother,' he warned, 'we'll get the train at Joliet to save coming back into Chicago.
Dermot added the visit to Cally’s mother at the start of their holiday to try to get her to come away with them when they left. The money he was using came from his boss, Luigi Clo, although Clo did not know about it. If his wife did not agree to come, he hoped to at least make her take some of the stolen money, towards the upkeep of the retirement home she ran.
'That reminds me,’ he took a key from his pocket, ‘look after this for me until I get back and don’t leave it lying round the house!’
‘Okay Pa.’ Cally answered, stifling a yawn.
She took the key then snuggled back down in bed. The visit to her mother held no worries for Cally, when her parents had split up it was her choice to stay with her father. She stayed with Dermot even though she loved her mother, mainly because she hated her name, Calliaster. That was the name her mother had given to her and Barbara always insisted that when they were at the house everyone there called her Calliaster, not Cally! Now she was living with Dermot and Barbara was not there she told everyone she met that her name was Cally, to her Calliaster was history.
The three of them had lived together and made a nice family until cally’s mother found out just who it was that Dermot worked for. When she found out that it was none other than Luigi Clo, the same Luigi Clo who just happened to be the head of the local mob. Running prostitutes, numbers, bootleg whiskey in fact anything that would earn the mob money. She decided that either he stopped working for them or she had to leave. There was no middle group for Barbara, he had to leave Clo‘s employment or she was leaving him. But Dermot knew you did not stop working for the mob, the only way that happened was either in a coffin or a concrete overcoat and he did not fancy ending up in either one, not yet awhile.
Dermot was Clo's bookkeeper and as Barbara’s father was a prominent local police officer, she considered that she had no choice but to leave him and went back home to dad. She expected Cally to go with her without any argument but she decided to stay with her father. Both Barbara and Dermot kept the information about his job from Cally. They worked hard to make sure she did not find out but it meant that Cally assumed that her mother had left her father for some other reason. That was another reason why she stayed with her father, had either of them bothered to explain things to her it might have ended up different but Cally decided what she was going to do on the information she had.
Since Barbara moved back in with her father, he had to retire from the force through ill health. His legs would no longer hold him up and he needed to use a frame to be able to walk. By scrimping and saving, Barbara had managed to buy a rambling mansion on the outskirts of Chicago, somewhat in need of repair, for them to live in with the idea of turning it into a retirement home.
With her father’s contacts in the police force, it was soon full of retired police officers, in various states of decay. Unfortunately, the cost of repairs to the house and the income from the inmates never balanced. That meant the mansion was slowly getting worse and worse.
Dermot loved his wife and sent her money when he could but she always sent it back. Her reasoning was that it was dirty money. Barbara’s pride stopped her taking it, to everyone in the homes' annoyance, even her father, who could see just how bad things were getting! To him, money was money and they needed a lot of it to keep the retirement home running.
Cally heard her father walk down the stairs, she knew he would pick up his bag and then walk to the front door. She heard him open the front door and waited for it to close again.
‘Don’t forget to put the safety lock on!’ He called up before he closed the door on his way out.
He waited for her to answer just to make sure she had not gone back to sleep already and Cally recognized the lack of the door slamming to mean that an answer was required.
‘No Pa.’ she called down.
Only then did Cally hear the door shut and the key turn in the lock. She climbed out of bed to go down and slip the safety lock into place. As a safety lock, it was something else, a pole that sat in a metal retainer in the floor, leaning at an angle and slotted into the middle of the door. It was not an easy thing to force open and there was no way of forcing it open quietly. Dermot had to have it installed, as sometimes the runner delivered the takings from one of Clo's operations to him. Usually a lot of money. It could be because of a police raid at Clo's headquarters and Clo diverted the money to Dermot's house, to make sure the police did not seize it. Alternatively, it might be because it was a holiday weekend and then the money spent the rest of the weekend in the safe.
When the pole was in place and the door secured against burglars she turned but did not go straight back to bed. She wandered from room to room in her long nightdress, looking for something to use to hang the key on. That way she could hang the key round her neck. That way there was no way she could lose it.
She eventually found a piece of string and threaded the key onto the string. She tied the two ends of the string together and slipped it over her head to let the key hang down her chest. Satisfied that it would still be there when she woke, she walked back upstairs, climbed into bed and snuggled up to her pillow. She was soon asleep again.
At twelve, approaching thirteen, she had yet to start to blossom into the woman she would be one day. She still played with the local boys but as one of them. She climbed trees better than a lot of them could and did not let them forget it. The boys did not consider her as a girl, just as one of the gang, although one of their favourite pastimes was to get Cally to do cartwheels or hand stands. She was good at them but all they wanted her to do it for was to see her drab dress to fall down over her body exposing her knickers. Some had sniggered at first but when she gave them a bloody nose they knew better. They still got her to do it so that she could show off but now they just looked without sniggering.
Dermot often admonished her for her behaviour and the state she often came home in but he loved her and she knew she could twist him round his little finger, whenever it was necessary.
It was Dermot's love for Cally and Barbara, which had made up his mind to leave Clo’s employ. As a bookkeeper, he was privy to all the secrets in the organisation, retiring meant only one thing, a bullet in the brain. If he was lucky. When Barbara left, he was very unhappy and started to think of a way to get her back but you do not walk out on the mob. He planned his departure and wrote letters to find a place to go where they would be out of Clo’s reach. The only way to be sure was to make sure that Clo or his boss E
mil Shultz did not know where they had gone. If he managed that, there was no reason why he could not come back one day to visit Barbara. When Archie died, he hoped to persuade her to go back with them but until then it was just a pipe dream, he needed money.
He started skimming off money from the thousands of dollars, which passed through his hands each day, only taking a little at a time and the theft was almost untraceable. As he took such small amounts each time, he was able to walk out with it each day and store in a safe place for a rainy day.
When today was over, they were off to Europe well out of reach of Clo and his men. Dermot was hoping Barbara would go with them but in his heart he knew that it was a forlorn hope as long as her father was still alive and in need of her help. If she answered as he expected her to then his plan was to give the money he wanted Barbara to have, to her father. Archie, Barbara’s father, had sent word via the grapevine that he wanted to see Dermot after Barbara returned the last lot of money Dermot had sent.
Dermot went but they made sure his visit coincided with Barbara’s trip to the shops. Archie had explained just how bad things were getting at the home. Dermot left what money he could spare and moved his escape plan into a higher gear but he had to make sure his stealing was not noticed, at least until he and Cally were far away and out of reach or they might well both end up at the bottom of the lake Chicago looked out on. Dermot wanted to tell Cally about the possible danger but every time he worked up the courage to tell her something intervened. He still planned to tell her but only when he thought the time was right.
He walked out to his car and drove away after a quick look back just in case Cally was waving. As usual, she was at the front window doing just that and he waved back. It took him twenty minutes to reach the hotel Clo used as his headquarters and he started on the pile of papers in front of him. He had done all the skimming he needed and now that he was no longer fiddling the books, he considered that his worries were over. He counted money and made entries in the ledger as usual, noting down what had come in. He had taken a little over a long time and even the best accountant would find it hard spot. Only a slightly lower yield, which, now that he was no longer taking any, had crept back up to the level it had been before he started. While he was working Harry Drew, another of Clo's men walked in.
What have you been up to, Dermot?’ Harry asked.
He was one of Clo’s top men.
‘Nothing that I know of Harry, why do you ask?’ Dermot replied affable.
‘Spotty’s only sent his accountant here to look at the books.’ Harry answered.
Spotty was the nickname they gave to Emil Shultz the man Luigi Clo answered too when there was a foul up somewhere and his accountant arriving to look at the books, was not a good thing.
‘Good luck to him.’ Dermot replied trying not to show any annoyance on his face but failing badly.
‘Don’t worry about it; I’d be mad as well.’ Harry slapped him on the back and walked on. ‘All that paperwork I’d be lost as well.’
Dermot worked on until he finished what he was doing.
‘I’m off to the bank!’ He announced to the people in the office, just as he usually did and as usual, no one answered.
He drove down town but parked some way from the bank. From there he walked up to the bank and took his place in the queue. The queue moved slowly, too slowly for him but there was nothing he could do about it, he just had to wait his turn.
When he finished at the bank, he walked as far as the railway ticket office and bought three tickets. If Barbara decided not to go with them, he could cash it in when they were at the station waiting to leave Chicago.
Clo sat at his desk trying to look important and in charge. He was a small man of obvious Chinese Italian descent. He liked to dress in the best clothes and eat at the finest restaurants. The police knew him and what he did but whenever they were near to getting the goods on him the witness who was going to testify against him soon found themselves swimming in the lake wearing very heavy concrete wellingtons.
The intrusion of the man Shultz had sent to check his books worried him, if money was missing, it would be him who would get the blame. His only way out of it, if any money was missing, was to find the thief and return the money but it had to be done very quickly. The door opened and the accountant walked in.
‘It looks like someone’s developed sticky fingers,’ he announced, ‘it was hard to find so I reckon we ought to go talk to your bookkeeper. He’s the likeliest culprit.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ Clo asked.
‘I've seen it before, we just need to find the money to keep everyone happy.’ the accountant declared. ‘Except the bookkeeper that is, he’ll be going for a swim!’
Clo walked to the door and shouted.
'Lefty get in here!’
Lefty was his odd job man, as good at mixing cement as he was with his tommy gun and he had had to do a lot of both; still he enjoyed his work. Lefty, a tall well-built man was American through and through. His only beef was working for foreigners, he had his sights on Clo’s chair, with Clo having to retire in some way to make room for him. Eventually Lefty wanted Spotty’s chair, he wanted to run it all.
‘Yes boss.’ Lefty answered as he walked in.
‘Find Dermot for me.’
‘Yes boss.’ Lefty answered.
He turned and walked out of the office. He knew when to do things quickly and when to hang it out. With Spotty’s accountant here, it obvious that it needed handling quickly and it was likely that they would soon need a new bookkeeper. He looked in the rest room found Harry Drew playing solitaire in there.
‘Any idea where Dermot is?’ He asked.
He asked despite being in the room when Dermot announced that he was going to the bank.
‘Yeah, he went to the bank.’ Harry answered.
Lefty walked out without explaining why he wanted him but Harry could guess, he expected to be mixing up some concrete fairly soon. Although Lefty had done it previously, nowadays it usually fell to him to dispatch anyone Clo wanted gone. He was getting quite adept at it.
Clo sat down.
‘How much are we talking about?’ He asked.
‘Hard to say exactly; might be three hundred thousand, might be as much as half a million.’ The accountant answered.
Clo whistled softly.
‘I’ll have to invite my next bookkeeper to Dermot’s send off, that way he’ll know to keep his hands outta the till!’ Clo hissed.
Dermot slid the tickets into his pocket and walked back to his car. If he had chosen to walk away and leave the car where it was, he might have eluded his pursuers but as he walked up to the car, they walked round the corner. He had no chance to get to his car and drive away.
‘Luigi wants to have a word with you.’ Lefty announced.
The look on Dermot's face said it all. Lefty saw the look and reasoned that Dermot was guilty of some wrongdoing, Dermot found it hard to conceal his feelings. The man with Lefty, Larry Jessop saw the look as well and drew his pistol from its shoulder holster to encourage him to behave.
Larry, a huge man of well over six foot, took up position behind Dermot in case he had any thoughts of running but that was exactly what Dermot did. His mind ran through the possibilities as to what would happen if he did run and he came to the conclusion, that that was the best thing to do. He assumed Lefty would not shoot him for fear of ending up in the lake himself and pushed him out of the way; then ran as fast as he could. Larry drew his own pistol but Lefty regained his feet in time to stop him.
‘Clo wants to talk to him not to a corpse!’ He warned. ‘Let’s get him before he gets too far.’
They ran after Dermot. At the first corner Dermot glanced back, no shots fired at him proved him right, Clo wanted the money back. He speeded up, he needed to find a way to get back and collect Cally before they searched the house.
After running for a block, he crossed the road, dodging the cars that were travelling on it.
He ran a few yards, then turned left and darted into the alley on his right, he knew the place well. At the far end of the alley he ducked into an open doorway, closed it then calmly walked through the restaurant. He knew the way through the restaurant and walked through trying to hide the fact that he was in a hurry. He walked to the front door and out onto the main street.
The alley did not go anywhere, even though it was quite long, it was there merely for deliveries to the shops and restaurants on the main street and for access. Anyone not familiar with the alley and that the back door to one of Dermot's favourite restaurants was open would not know where he had gone. It would be as if he disappeared into fresh air. As there were a lot of doors backing on to the alley, it would be necessary for anyone following to try each door until he found the right one.
Larry followed Dermot into the alley but by then Dermot was nowhere to be seen. He searched frantically as he walked down, without finding him. Lefty stopped at the mouth of the alley.
'I'll run round to the other end and cut him off.' He called after Larry.
Larry nodded his head to let Lefty know that he had heard him and then walked into the alley.
Lefty ran round to the main street, trying to reach the other end of the alley before Dermot. He passed the restaurant just before Dermot walked out into the sunshine. Dermot saw him and started walking quickly the other way in case Lefty looked back, as he passed the end of the block Larry came back out of the alley, to warn Lefty that he had gone into one of the buildings and saw Dermot. His shout alerted Lefty and the chase was on again with Dermot beginning to run out of steam and ideas.
He crossed the road again heading back to his car, if he could gain enough distance he might be able to reach his car and drive himself out of trouble. Lefty crossed the road but with Larry some way ahead, he decided to cut through the shop in front of him in case Dermot was trying to reach his car.