The Hearse You Came in On (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries)

by Tim Cockey

  Aunt Billie’s testy clan gathering proved fairly manageable. No full-fledged fights broke out. We did have to put out a couple of brushfires, but all in all it was a low-key affair. We were even honored with a surprise visit from Edie Velvet. Edie did this occasionally, festoon her ninety-pound frame with ten pounds of costume jewelry and come onto the scene like Norma Desmond seeking her close-up. Sometimes this can be a little off-putting to the bereaved; Edie comes on a bit too gothic for some people’s tastes. But on occasions like this one, where the level of melancholy was pretty damned low to start with, a visit from the bejeweled Miss Velvet wasn’t going to bother anyone. Edie made her way up to the coffin and admired the corpse, shook a few hands, gathered a few confounded stares, then made her way back out of the room. She signed the guest book as she always does—E. Velvet/E. Baltimore—gathered her bags and returned to the streets.

  “It was nice to see Edie again, wasn’t it,” Aunt Billie remarked during our postmortem up in her apartment. “She was looking well.”

  Billie and I were parked in front of the television set. My aunt was indulging in one of her dirty little secrets: soap operas. She’s hooked. Murder. Rape. Incest. Abortion out the wazoo. Stampeding infidelities. Billie can’t get enough of it. In an effort to disguise what she readily admits to as a tawdry indulgence, Billie will sometimes prepare a tea service on a silver tray for her afternoon’s viewing, complete with little cakes or fussy overpriced pastries. She’s like a duchess at a whorehouse, sitting there with her bone china, tittering away at the serial depravity unfolding in front of her.

  Billie had just been bringing me up-to-date on one of the storylines (“Dimitri’s temporary insanity is a ploy to win back his stepsister from his amnesiac half brother”) when the program was interrupted by a news bulletin. Mimi Wigg’s big head suddenly filled the screen. Her expression was deadly serious as she reported in a tortured monotone that Jeff Simons had just been taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital after having suffered a heart attack. The beloved newsman’s condition, Mimi told us sonorously, was not known at this time, though there was a report—unconfirmed—that he had stopped breathing.

  “We call that dead,” Billie observed. “Poor Helen.” Meaning Jeff Simons’s mother. I noticed that the card table was set up, cribbage board ready and waiting.

  On the screen, Mimi Wigg was gently and thoroughly chewing up the scenery—in this case, the set—as she asked the citizens of Baltimore to pray for Jeff Simons. Her own little hands were already clasped together, in case we had forgotten how it’s done.

  “We will… of course … keep you posted.”

  Mimi Wigg’s image vanished and in its place Dimitri appeared again, still temporarily insane. He was on one knee, his arms raised beseechingly to a potted plant high up on a bookshelf. A rail-thin blonde was spying on him from the doorway.

  “That’s Gloria,” Billie whispered conspiratorially, pouring herself a fresh cup of tea. “I believe she killed the mayor last year. Or had his child. I can never remember.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Kate was standing at my front door wearing a thin blue dress and holding a large wooden bowl.

  “Couscous,” she said.

  “Couscous to you, too,” I responded. “In my country we say Aloha. Come in.”

  Kate pulled a manila folder from her bag and dropped it onto my coffee table before she set about dishing out the couscous. It sat there conspicuously as we ate. I complimented her on the food.

  “Pretty fancy.”

  “It’s grain,” she said. After my second heaping helping, I finally asked Kate about the folder.

  “Charley’s?”

  She nodded.

  We set the dishes to the side.

  “Do all investigations get one of those?” I asked her. “Is that how it works?”

  She told me that they did. “They’re all kept on file. You have to sign them out.”

  “How long was your husband working on this case?”

  “Months. Four? Five? I think I told you, Charley didn’t go undercover on it right away. He started off doing basic legwork. But too much overt snooping and asking questions can end up tipping off the very people you need to open up. You can kill an investigation if you show the wrong people that you’re interested.”

  She was eyeing the folder. She was torn between knowing and not knowing … and not knowing which of the two was the better.

  “I’m being silly, right?”

  “No. You’re being scared. And I don’t blame you.”

  Kate tossed her head. “Okay. Let’s get this done.”

  We moved to the couch. Kate took a deep breath and leaned forward to flip open the folder.

  Apparently it all started when the wheels came off the cart. Though in this case the cart was a train, which in fact came off the track. But you see what I’m saying.

  It happened in Indiana. The train was bound for Iowa, originating in Baltimore. According to the first report in the file there was nothing particularly notable about a train derailing. It happens with much more frequency than John Q. is aware of. Because most derailments are trains carrying stuff and not people, they don’t usually make the news. This derailment was one of those. The train that was bound for Iowa hit some sort of a snag as it started over the Wabash River just outside Terre Haute and four of its boxcars left the track and tipped over. Three of the four cars were carrying inexpensive stereo equipment. Boom boxes that retail for around a hundred bucks. These were of little interest. The purchaser of the boom boxes would reject the shipment and they would be sold to a discount chain.

  It was the fourth boxcar that drew more attention. This boxcar contained several hundred steel drums. The label on the drums read “silica gel.” Silica gel is not a gel at all, but more like a powder. Or better yet, like sand. The most distinguishing feature of the stuff is that it draws moisture out of anything with which it comes in contact—providing that there is any moisture there in the first place. The most common brush that people have with silica gel is in the buying of electronic equipment. It’s what is in those little packets that look like sugar packets. The packets are there to keep ambient moisture out of the box. Apparently the stuff is also good for drying flowers.

  As many as three dozen of the drums on the fourth derailed boxcar broke open when they tumbled onto the tracks. What spilled out of the drums and began marching toward the river, however, was not sandlike silica gel. What spilled out was dirt. Or more precisely, mud. Dark and slimy, very moist and apparently quite terribly aromatic.

  The logical first step was to contact either the sender or the receiver to inform them of the derailment and to determine what to do with the hundred steel drums marked silica gel, at least three dozen of which contained this slime-choked dirt. It was at this point that the discovery was made that the drums did not contain any information concerning the source of the so-called silica gel and only listed its intended recipient as a warehouse in the railyard outside Des Moines. No individual or company was listed on the labels. That’s a problem. And the problem was seeping into the Wabash River. After some testing was performed it was determined that the dirt seeping out of these barrels was, in fact, toxic.

  And that’s a crime.

  Kate looked up from the file. “Here comes Charley.”

  The point of origin being Baltimore, the Baltimore Police Department was notified. Detective Charles Russell took the call. It became his case. Russell filed his reports. Along with whatever hard facts that the detective was gathering, the reports also included his own thoughts and speculations, such as they were. Acting on one such speculation, Russell took a trip out to Des Moines where he was escorted to the railyard warehouse that had been the ill-fated barrels’ intended destination. What he found were not one hundred, not two hundred, but over four hundred steel drums bearing the exact same label as the bogus silica gel that was currently poisoning the bottom feeders of the Wabash River. Charley didn’t even have to pop the lid on the barrels to d
etermine that they likewise contained slimy dirt. Some hundred or so of the barrels were stacked in the fenced-in area outside the warehouse, where the forces of nature had done a number on a lot of them, swelling, rusting and rupturing them. The stuff was oozing out. In Detective Russell’s own simple words: “You could smell it in the air.”

  Charley Russell inspected the books, the manifests, the schedules, etc. There was practically no paperwork on the mysterious shipments of drums from Baltimore. The origin of the barrels went unnamed. Likewise, the order to off-load the barrels into the Des Moines rail-yard bore no indication of ownership. If the barrels had any subsequent destination other than the railroad’s own warehouse and fenced-in yard, Charley Russell could find no hint of it. This, then, was when Detective Russell began to formulate the plan to conduct an undercover investigation.

  Kate got up and stretched her legs and paced back and forth as she read over her husband’s rationale for going undercover. I suppose in a way she was hoping to determine that his decision had been the only conceivable one to have made. For it was this decision, after all, that would result in his being in the warehouse that evening, stepping out from behind a stack of steel drums.

  Kate read:

  “Have determined ownership of receiving warehouse to be B&O. Railroad officials in Des Moines know little about warehouse. According to records, unused for over a year. Truth? Origin of shipment unknown. Baltimore. Point: boxcars don’t load themselves. Don’t hook up to trains by themselves. Postponing interviews with B&O in Baltimore pending internal investigation. Contacting teamsters for immediate ‘employment,’ B&O railyard, Sparrows Point.”

  She lowered the report.

  “He didn’t want to confront anyone at the railroad. All they would have to do is lie and begin covering their asses. The trail would have grown cold before he ever got on it.”

  “Assuming that it was railroad people doing it,” I pointed out.

  “Oh it was definitely railroad people. Charley was right on the money there. Somebody had to load those drums. And somebody had to look the other way.”

  We went back to the reports. Charley Russell had continued to file his reports religiously, once a week. Through whatever connection it is that the police have with the teamsters, Russell found immediate employment in the railyard, helping to load train cars. He kept his eyes and ears open and after a while began letting it be known to the right people that he was interested in any “moonlight shifts” they might know about. At first this merely landed him offers to work double shifts. He did so—complaining to Kate that all of his overtime salary was being funneled into a city escrow account to eventually be returned to his employer. But he hung in there, advertising his desire to earn extra cash and his willingness to bend a few rules—if necessary—to do it. Eventually he was approached by a fellow named Earl DeLorenzo. I recognized the name from Kate’s newspaper clippings.

  “The man on the walkway.”

  Kate confirmed. “DeLorenzo. That’s the man I supposedly shot and killed. He’s the one Alan identified as Charley’s killer.”

  DeLorenzo offered Charley another moonlighting job. This one, however, was off the books. It was pretty simple, really. DeLorenzo led Charley to a warehouse in Sparrows Point. It was empty. Charley was told to return two nights later, at midnight. When Charley did as he was instructed, a flatbed truck was parked in the loading dock. The truck held close to a hundred steel drums. Charley and Earl DeLorenzo and the driver of the truck unloaded the barrels into the warehouse. They used hand trucks. No forklifts. No cranes. According to his report, Charley attempted to ask a few casual-sounding questions about the drums and what was in them and where they had come from, but DeLorenzo made it clear that he was being paid to work, not to ask questions. Two nights later Charley was summoned to the warehouse again, where he and DeLorenzo and the driver slapped labels on the drums. Silica gel. The three men then loaded the barrels—again by hand—onto a boxcar that was parked on the loading dock track. When all of the barrels were securely loaded onto the boxcar, Earl DeLorenzo handed each of the men ten one-hundred-dollar bills, reminded them that none of this had ever happened and wished them a good morning.

  Kate sat back on the couch. For nearly a minute she said nothing. She was staring at the floor. Though in fact, she was staring into the past. She was looking at a thousand dollars in cash being handed over to her husband. No doubt she was looking very intently into his eyes, trying to read what might have been in them.

  Finally she spoke. “Is that enough?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean is that enough? Is a thousand dollars enough money for work like that? For two nights of moonlighting. Something clearly illegal? Is a thousand dollars enough money?”

  I was confused. “What are you asking?”

  “I’m asking if Charley is lying in the report. I’m asking if Earl DeLorenzo didn’t hand him twice that much. Or maybe three times that much. Charley did make that comment to me more than once, the one about all of his salary and his overtime going into the escrow account. If Alan was telling me the truth, that Charley went bad on this assignment, it’s right here, Hitch. This is where it would have happened. Earl DeLorenzo hands Charley, I don’t know, maybe three thousand dollars? Five thousand dollars? Charley writes it up as a thousand, hands that much in and pockets the rest. Who loses, right? He’s busting his tail and he’s pulling down his detective’s salary, which is not exactly a cash crop, believe me. Some dirty money comes into your hands. What do you do? That’s what I’m asking. Is a thousand dollars enough? Does this sound legit to you?”

  “Kate, don’t do this to—”

  “Don’t try to soothe me!” she snapped, cutting me off. “This is why we’re doing this, damn it. This is why we’re here.” She took a deep breath. “I got this damn file out so I could decide one way or the other if my husband was a criminal. That’s it. If it turns out to be true, so be it. I can’t be hurt any more than I already am. I just have to learn this. So please. Don’t patronize me, Hitch. Help me, okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “So what’s your guess? Is a thousand dollars enough? Does it sound like enough or does it sound low?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s a guess. And my guess is, it sounds okay. It’s a good round figure. A thousand clean. Tax free. It sounds legit.”

  “You’re sure you’re not Mr. Nice Guying me here?”

  “You’re asking me to tell you something that I can’t possibly know.”

  “It could have been two thousand. That’s a round number too. A thousand a night, Hitch. Isn’t that a round number too?”

  “Kate …” I didn’t know what to say. With the man who gave the money dead and the man who took the money dead, how could she ever know the truth on this one? And she knew this was the case as well; I could see it in her eyes. She picked up the report and then let it drop again onto the table.

  “This doesn’t tell me shit. Goddamn it, Hitch. This stuff isn’t telling me shit. How am I supposed to know if my husband pocketed a couple thousand dollars or not? He’s sure as hell not going to include that in his report. ‘Oh, and by the way, I skimmed a few grand off the top. Hope you don’t mind.’ How the hell am I supposed to figure this out?”

  It was not really a question that she expected me to answer, so I didn’t even try. Instead I said, “Let’s go over the rest of it. Maybe something will pop up.”

  “I pop up,” she said grimly. “With a gun.”

  Kate flicked her hair off her shoulder and leaned forward one last time to finish going over her husband’s final days. “I hate this.” She shot me a warning look. “I’m having a drink after this. I’m just telling you now.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “No,” she corrected me. “More than fair enough.”

  She turned to the last report.

  After the loading of the boxcar, Charley had informed the authorities in Des Moines to be on the loo
kout for its arrival. As with the previous shipment, the minimal paperwork had been mysteriously slotted into place, an untraceable invoice marking the shipment of barrels to be unloaded at the warehouse outside Des Moines.

  Charley had ventured to ask Earl DeLorenzo two important questions that he prayed the man would answer. DeLorenzo answered them both. The first question was: Will there be a chance of running this same job again? The answer that he received was yes. When, Charley wanted to know. DeLorenzo could not be specific, but he estimated sometime in about a month.

  Russell laid out his deductions and his hypotheses thus far. Somewhere out there, in or near Baltimore, a considerable amount of earth was being excavated. That earth was saturated with chemical waste, toxic sludge. It was garbage dirt, and for one reason or another, somebody was terribly interested in removing this tainted dirt and shipping it the hell out of Baltimore. And they were terribly interested in doing it quietly. Charley Russell’s next course of action was to locate the origin of the toxic dirt. Whoever owned the property from which it was being dug up and loaded into steel drums… that was the person—or people—to whom Detective Charley Russell would next be paying a visit. That was the key. Who owned this shit?

  That was the end of the file. If the word “abrupt” springs immediately to mind, feel free to indulge it. It was abrupt. One minute Kate and I were sifting through the story of Charley’s investigation of the toxic dirt, seemingly one step away from discovering along with him the source of the stuff… and then suddenly, no more reports. Of course we both knew why.