H.J. Gaudreau - Jim Crenshaw 02 - The Collingwood Legacy

by H. J. Gaudreau

  A patty wagon arrived. The three were marched, pushed, and shoved to the back of the wagon. One tripped and fell to his knees. The big man kicked him then pushed him to the patty wagon doors and swung them open.

  Another cop tossed a crate on the ground. “Step up, get in and shut up,” a voice said. All three climbed inside.

  The police picked up the guns laying on the ground; one pointed at the car and another quickly ran over and got in. In a moment the car was driving away. She hadn’t seen her Sol; maybe they hadn’t found him. She began to hope.

  Then two men opened the door of the boathouse. Sol, his hands cuffed at his waist, stepped into the light of the spotlights. A policeman, his hand under Sol’s right arm walked with him to the back of the wagon. They made Sol climb in.

  She wanted to scream; she wanted to stop them. She wanted to be rich and it had been right there, just one more hour and they would have been in Canada.

  The truck backed up a few feet, stopped then lurched forward up the long two track driveway to the street. Sol was gone.

  Dolly couldn’t believe what had happened. What was she going to do? Would the rest of the Purples come after her? She didn’t know. They might think she helped Sol plan the job. They might think she knew where the money was. She peeked out of the tool shed window again. If the Purples found her she was dead, she knew that. The last of the cops were leaving.

  Dolly sat down, she needed to think. They would come after her, she was sure of that. She made up her mind. She needed to leave. Not just this boatyard, she needed to leave the city. When the last of the police cars had rounded the corner Dolly slipped out of the tool shed and began to run. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going, but she knew she couldn’t stay here.

  Chapter 10

  The Collingwood Manor murder trial was big news. All of the Detroit dailies, the Chicago Tribune and the Cleveland Plain Dealer sent reporters. Wayne County Prosecutor Harry Toy himself argued the case.

  Toy was anxious to perform well in front of the reporters and he needed a big win. It was only natural that he paid a visit to Sol Levine. They talked about prison. Sol didn’t want to go to prison. Sol wasn’t sure what he’d done that would send him to prison, but Toy explained what an “accessory” was.

  To Sol it seemed like a cop’s trick to convict him of something someone else did. Sol tried, but couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept. All he knew was that it meant prison. Prison meant the Purples would find him, someone, sometime would kill him.

  Toy offered to drop all charges if Sol talked. Sol wasn’t sure what he would say, a detail which didn’t seem to bother the prosecutor. Toy would tell him what he would say. It seemed like a good deal and less than two months after the arrests Sol was sitting on the witness stand delivering his lines perfectly.

  The trial held no mystery. He did exactly what Harry had warned he would. Each day his suit was brought to his cell, after dressing Sol was marched to a waiting police car and soon he was on the stand. Sol was at his very best. He spilled his guts; he talked, he sang, his description of a bullet passing “just under my nose” was a masterpiece. Sol did everything but a reenactment.

  Prosecutor Toy was very pleased.

  Through the entire ordeal one thing kept spinning around Sol’s simple mind. He would play the scene in the boat salon over and over. He could hear the bundles of twenties as they fell from the bag on to the table; he could taste the caramels, his fingers held the cigarettes.

  Sol knew. He knew where four hundred thousand dollars was hidden. All he needed was an eight hour head start. He could be down to the boatyard, on that boat and gone in no time. He could still take Dolly and to hell with her if she didn’t want to come. They could still make it to Toronto.

  He just had to get out of this damned jail!

  The Purples did their best too. Every bookmaking operation in the city was assessed a two dollar a day “betting service” fee, each bootlegger was similarly assessed. The best lawyers in town were approached. Cops and court clerks were “talked” to.

  The money didn’t help. The best lawyers couldn’t change the facts. No one could get to the jury and the Judge was incorruptible.

  Judge Van Zile was all too aware that witnesses might suddenly change their story, that evidence could suddenly disappear and prosecutors have mysterious car accidents.

  He pushed the trial hard. It only took a week before the case went to the jury. It didn’t stay there long. After an hour-and-a-half of deliberations, the verdict was in. All three were guilty. A week later Judge Van Zile handed down his sentence.

  Less than a month after the trial a specially assigned Pullman train arrived at the ornate Michigan Central Station. The three men, waddling in wrist and ankle chains were put aboard.

  Waiting to board they noticed the armed guards and armored plates on the engine and few cars. Moments later the train was headed for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The ride was an express. They only stopped for fuel. Nothing and no one was going to stop the train from moving. In less than a day the Purples began serving life without parole at the maximum security Marquette Branch Prison.

  The remaining Purples were livid. They hadn’t been able to spring their brothers in crime, but they could get to Sol. And ol’ Solly would pay.

  The departure of Bernstein, Milberg and Keywell for the long winters of northern Michigan provided little comfort for Sol Levine. He had run the streets long enough to know the score. There were contracts out on him. Small time hoods and professionals alike all were looking for Sol.

  He’d been warned by Detroit’s finest, there was nothing they could do. This wasn’t going to pass, Sol knew the remaining members of the Purple Gang would not rest while he was alive.

  Sol had to figure a way to stay alive long enough to get to that boat, preferably, but not necessarily with Dolly at his side.

  The danger was too much. In a surprise move Sol simply refused to leave police headquarters. He decided to live on the second floor. The cops weren’t happy, but sympathized with poor Sol. Prosecutor Toy knew Sol would be killed too. But Toy wasn’t going to turn the building into a boarding house.

  It took a bit of effort, but Toy soon finalized a plan to rid Detroit of one more hoodlum. He offered Sol a deal. Leave the country now, under police escort or some charge would appear which would send poor Sol to Marquette.

  It was a bitter pill. It meant he’d have to sneak back in a year or so to find the boat. But what choice did he have? Sol took the deal. He was sure Dolly would understand.

  In a few weeks Sol was put on a ship destined for France. Toy’s plan was a good one; it could have worked. But, the French weren’t stupid either. They refused to let Sol get off the boat. On his own, penniless and without prospects Sol tried to go to Ireland.

  The Irish and their British overseers weren’t any more stupid than the French. After two years Sol ended up headed back to the United States. He died a bum on the streets of New York never having made it back to Detroit.

  Chapter 11

  Traverse City Michigan is located at the base of the twin forks of Traverse Bay. Begun as a shipping and lumber town it soon became a favorite haunt of a young Earnest Hemingway. The town passed through the lumber industry period, floundered for some years then found its footing when the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane was established in 1885. By the time the old Victorian hospital closed in 1989 the city’s economy had moved on to tourism. The rest of the State, and the tawny folks of Detroit and Chicago, had discovered the jewel at base of the bay. Now, multimillion dollar homes lined the Peninsula between the forks of the Bay. A single vacant lot with a bit of water and sand and enough room to install a septic tank sold for more money than most people in “TC”, as the town is called by the locals, earn in a lifetime.

  Just northwest of TC is Leelanau County. Home to vineyards, orchards and the Sleeping Bear dunes. Here life is still a bit slower, though Hollywood types have begun paying outrageous sums
for the privilege of losing money in the wine business. Here a few locals hang on. Here too, was the old family cherry farm where Herman James Crenshaw and his sister Sherrie spent the occasional long weekend and traditional mid-August week when their parents packed them up and shipped them off to the grandparents.

  By the time Sherrie entered college, both of their grandparents had passed away. Mom and Dad quickly decided that if they were going to be empty nesters then the nest was going to move. Six months later they’d sold their suburban house, bought out the bank’s interest on the orchard and traded a hectic life in the city for the lakes and clean air of “up north” Michigan.

  Jim had been in the middle of an Air Force career when the bad news arrived; he’d lost both his parents to a drunk driver. The will split the property in two, which meant that neither could live at the orchard. Jim, in exchange for a lifetime supply of cherries, gave his half of the property to his sister and resumed his Air Force career.

  It was a bad move financially, but a good one morally, and Jim never regretted it. Sherrie and her husband Gerry immediately quit their successful but stressful careers in Chicago and moved north. Sherrie oversaw the restoration and expansion of the traditional field stone farmhouse and now proudly showed her home to various tourist magazine photographers as the essence of a northern Michigan home.

  Gerry hadn’t been idle during the home renovation. When not working on the house he renovated the cherry shed, added more processing space, and a small office. He reskinned and reroofed the barn then put new roofs on the smaller outbuildings. When the buildings were complete the two turned their attention to expanding and updating the orchards. Now, several years later they managed a very successful cherry farming business, supplying cherries to packinghouses and individual customers on-line.

  It was this expansion of the farm that now had Gerry’s attention. He and Sherrie had recently completed the purchase of an additional twenty acres of land, which bordered their orchard’s southern edge. The property had been sitting idle for many years and was a bit of a mystery.

  The property had been sold by the state, not by a bank or land company. While that did occasionally happen, what really seemed odd was the lack of property records associated with the purchase. Each county in the state maintained a map showing ownership of every square inch of the county, the map, called a ‘plot map’ was periodically updated. Somehow, the twenty acres in question were missing from the plot map. A title search showed a dead man as the owner as of 1961.

  Sherrie couldn’t remember having ever seen anyone on the property when she had vacationed at “the farm” as a child. Being landlocked the property hadn’t generated a great deal of interest when it went up for auction. It was a fairly simple thing for Sherrie and Gerry to make the purchase. Included on the property was a barn made of brick. The barn was of unknown age.

  The lawyer who had represented the state had been unable to supply any information on the building or its contents and had insisted the purchase be made “as-is.” Gerry half expected to find a barn full of cow manure.

  The purchase complete, Gerry was now assessing the property, intending to lay out a new orchard. He referred to several pages of a soils report he held in one hand. In his other hand he held a soil pH test probe. He took several pH samples and began to walk the length of the orchard. Gerry only went ten feet and stopped. The task was impossible. Before he could begin, Gerry had to satisfy both his own, and Sherrie’s, curiosity.

  Here Gerry ran into his first problem with the new property. Try as he might Gerry could not find a way into the barn. For the third time he walked around the building. It was long, and somewhat narrow. There were three doors, all firmly locked. A set of, what appeared to be, steel garage doors on the narrower south side and an individual door centered on both the west and east sides. Each door was constructed so that the hinge was on the inside of the building. Gerry found this a bit odd. Around the top of the walls, just below the tin roof and protected from the rain by the overhanging rafters were eyebrow windows. Spaced two feet apart each window appeared to be painted over with black paint. The paint was thin in some areas. Gerry wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw heavy gauge wire mesh against the inside of a few of the windows.

  Returning to the large garage doors Gerry examined the inset door lock. It was clearly a heavy gauge, solid deadbolt. Gerry thought that a bit odd for a barn. The lock stood out in a round circle of reddish orange. Even if he had the key he doubted the rusted lock mechanism would work.

  Disgusted, Gerry returned to his pick-up truck and bounced across the back of the field, opened a gate, passed into the edge of his orchard, found the lane between trees and eventually stopped at his cherry processing shed.

  Sherrie walked to the side of the truck and leaned in the open window. After a quick kiss she asked, “Well, did we make a good deal? Or, are we the proud owners of a toxic waste site?”

  Gerry grinned. “The land is beautiful. I’m not finished confirming all the soil tests, but the reports are perfect. We’re going to have a nice orchard in there honey. But, that damn building. I can’t find a way in!”

  Sherrie’s eyes lit up and she started to laugh. “This is cool! It’s like we’re on a game show.”

  “With Bob Barker asking what’s behind Door Number One?” Gerry laughed.

  He parked the truck and they walked to the house. “I think the only way in is to cut a big hole into those doors.”

  Sherrie looked puzzled. “Why can’t you just break a window and climb in?” she said as the screen door banged behind them.

  “Can’t. The windows are all at the top of the wall and, you won’t believe this, but I think there’s heavy wire mesh on the inside.” Gerry walked to the kitchen sink and began to wash his hands. Then, without turning around said, “Jim has an acetylene torch doesn’t he?”

  “I have no idea…and don’t even think about using my clean towels to dry your hands. Use a paper towel.”

  Gerry grinned, “Yes ma’am.”

  Sherrie picked up her cell phone. “We haven’t talked to Jim and Eve in a few weeks. Let’s give ‘em a call.”

  Chapter 12

  Jim stood at the kitchen counter and listened to the phone message. “Hi guys, it’s your loving sister Sherrieeee…” He grinned, this woman was always excited.

  “We need a favor pleeease. We just closed the deal on the twenty acres next to us with that big garage on it. If we were to cook steaks and make a nice cherry pie would you bring your acetylene torch up this weekend? We can’t seem to get into that stupid garage and Gerry figures the only way is to cut a hole in one of the doors. Let me know, love ya. Bye”

  Jim considered himself to be fairly practical, and cutting holes in doors didn’t sound quite right. Surely there had to be a way to get in that old building without destroying expensive doors. In any case a trip north was a good deal this time of year. Eve would be excited to visit family, and he and Gerry could get in a little trout fishing. Jim went to the barn to load his torch on the wagon.

  Eve’s arrival home from work was always an event. Carrying a minimum of two large cloth bags, she would burst into the kitchen, simultaneously calling “I’m hoommme.” Then, before Jim answered she would recite the details of her day, beginning with the funniest thing a child had said or done and ending with the stupidest thing said or done by a member of the school’s administration or a fellow teacher. The entire process interrupted by their beagle Molly’s excited barks and demands for attention.

  Jim looked forward to this ritual, he rarely listened in great detail; it was the enthusiasm with which it was told that he loved. Tonight’s ceremony was no different, and to Jim it proved once again that all was right with his world.

  Eve was surprised and pleased that Sherrie had phoned and immediately returned the call. No one outside the family could tell the two were not immediate sisters, they were “like two peas in a pod” Jim’s mother used to say. Twenty minutes of one trying to out tal
k the other and somehow arrangements were made.

  Friday was the beginning of the Easter break. Thursday night Eve left the school as quickly as she could. She hurried home and, upon entering the kitchen announced they would stop at “Cops and Donuts” in Clare for dinner. A quick change of her clothes and she was backing the Jeep up to the trailer almost before Jim had the barn doors open.

  Ten minutes later, the Jeep Grand Cherokee, hitched to a small trailer loaded with an industrial sized acetylene torch and attendant tanks, along with two bikes and two kayaks slowly moved down a hundred-yard long driveway.

  On the folded down back seat lay a large pillow where Molly sat calmly watching the scenery slide past. She would be curled up and snoring before they came to the end of the long drive. Molly would miss most of the three and a half hour trip north.

  Chapter 13

  Detroit and the Detroit River business soon returned to normal. The city forgot the Collingwood murders. Harry Keywell, Irving Milberg and Ray Bernstein were gone and quickly faded from memory. Sol Levin soon became the funny story of a scared rabbit who refused to leave the police station. Sol was quickly forgotten by everyone involved with or who had ever heard of the ‘Collingwood Manor Massacre.’ Everyone, that is, except Dolly Eleanor Grongoski.

  Dolly slipped out of the city and moved to Michigan’s west coast and the gritty little port town of Muskegon. The town’s small waterfront was jammed with ships, large and small, making the run up and down the lake to Chicago. Some of the bigger ones even crossed to Milwaukee or north to Green Bay.

  The sailors got hungry and Dolly landed a job at the Dockside Café. It wasn’t the kind of café she had seen in the movies. Muskegon was not Paris or New York. The Dockside’s walls were nearly as grimy as the coal fired ships whose crews it served.