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

by H. J. Gaudreau

  Behind the building a small pigpen housed three large sows and their piglets. A large boar was kept in a separate pen to the side. The pen provided about half of the ham and bacon for the café and a good deal of ambiance.

  Dolly worked four days a week. Five if she could talk Mel, the cheap bastard owner, into giving her the extra day. She made a buck fifty a day plus tips, which she split with the other waitresses and the cook. Sometimes she talked Mel into paying her to slop out the pigpen and that gave her an extra seventy-five cents. She’d been raised on a farm and didn’t mind the work, but she hated pigs.

  The sows could be mean when they had piglets and the boars could be mean just because. And she thought about what Sol had told her. She thought about having a nice place to live and her hair done by a real woman’s hairdresser. And the clothes. She dreamed about the clothes. She thought about warm soft coats, pretty dresses, the fanciest hats and real silk stockings. Mostly, Dolly thought about how close she’d come to being rich.

  They had taken the bags into the boathouse and put them on the boat. Sol had said that they were all packed and would leave as soon as he finished fueling the boat.

  But she hadn’t seen the money, and of course they were packed, she had her two bags and Sol wasn’t taking anything.

  He’d asked her to get him some razor blades while he worked. She thought about that. He didn’t need razor blades. Had he been trying to get her away from the boat?

  Maybe he had intended to leave Dolly? But why had he driven all over Detroit to find her? Had he changed his mind? Sol had sent her away for some reason she was sure of it. What was it?

  The money. Where was the money? Did he leave while she was gone, get the money and come back? But they were going to leave as soon as she returned from the market.

  Dolly mulled the thing over and over. It had only taken her about eight minutes to walk to Jefferson Avenue, turn right and go another block. A store stood on the corner there. Then eight minutes back. If she added five minutes at the store…there was no way Sol could drive someplace and be back with the money. And…he said they were all packed.

  She thought about that. She thought about it every day, every time she filled a coffee cup, every time someone only left a nickel for a tip or grabbed her bottom or when her boss told her to take the diner’s scrapes out to the pigs in back. They were all packed.

  That November, as Sol was being loaded on a boat for Europe, Dolly got her first break in months. She was pouring coffee for a sailor on the railroad ferry.

  Suddenly a man burst into the diner and yelled, “Lowel, you lazy sonofabitch, if you don’t get your shit loaded now you ain’t going to have time when we leave.” The sailor didn’t move, he just smiled and said, “Hoss, I loaded my gear last night.”

  Dolly didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. The sailor’s words hit her like a ton of bricks. It came to her. Just like that. It was so simple; she should have seen it months ago. The money was already in the boat.

  Sol had picked her up about one o’clock. He said he’d been looking for her for two hours. They’d gone to Gosse Pointe, then Hamtramck for dinner. They’d stopped at her apartment to pack, drove to his apartment and gone to the boathouse. She’d gone to the market, but Sol hadn’t gone anywhere. He didn’t have time.

  Sol was doing what he said he was doing, putting gas in the boat. He really did just want some razor blades. He must have loaded the money before he picked her up. She’d known it all along, only now she understood it. Sol had loaded it before he came to see her that day.

  The boat. She needed to find the boat.

  The world was beginning to change. The artisan was being replaced by the big company. The small car companies in and around Detroit were being consolidated. Willie Durant and Charles Stewart Mott were building the biggest company the world had ever seen. Reliant Motor Truck, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac all had been taken over, it was just business.

  It was just the same in the world of crime. The Purples were just as mean and vicious, but there were fewer of them. No new leaders had been groomed to replace Ray Bernstein or Harry Keywell. Gradually leadership fell to Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher. Abe and Eddie were loyal soldiers, but they weren’t very smart. They began to make mistakes. The loss of leadership, manpower and influence at City Hall was like blood in the water to a Great White shark. The competition began to move in and the Purples were helpless to stop it.

  The biggest threat came from the Italians. The Eastside gang was tied into the New York Mafia and Capone’s Chicago gang. Slowly they were becoming the dominant gang in Detroit. “Black” Bill Tocco had a special hate for the Purples and pressured them across the city. Muscling in on their gambling operations, prostitution and most of all the alcohol smuggling routes. Imports were down, hijackings were up and ‘runners’, the boys who delivered the booze to the speakeasies and beer gardens across the city were being killed, disappearing or quitting.

  Dolly didn’t know of the turmoil in the Detroit underworld that winter. She spent her time thinking about the boat. She’d have to find it. She was convinced Sol had hidden the money on the big Chris-Craft, she just needed time alone with the boat and she’d find it. But that was the issue wasn’t it? How to find the boat. Dolly didn’t know Detroit. She’d only been to the river once before that night and in their panic and the darkness she certainly hadn’t kept track of street names. All Dolly knew was that the boat was in a small boathouse on the Detroit river.

  She got another break in mid-December. A truck driver stopped at the diner for breakfast before loading onto one of the ferries crossing the lake. He ate his breakfast, drank his coffee and paid his bill and drove down to the docks. Dolly cleaned up his table and found a packet of maps laying on the seat where the man had been sitting.

  She picked the packet up and stuffed it down deep in her apron pocket. Then Dolly poured coffee and waited tables for the rest of the day, the packet totally forgotten.

  That evening Dolly took off her shoes and her apron, counted her tips and began to think about making dinner. Suddenly she remembered the packet. Untying the string and unfolding the leather case she found road maps of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.

  There was also a detailed street map of Detroit. Dolly stared at this map for several minutes. This was important, this could help her. Dolly wasn’t exactly sure why this was important, but the feeling was more than a suspicion, it was a certainty. She had never seen a map and didn’t know how to use one, but she wasn’t stupid and she could read. She would figure this out.

  She cleared the small table which served as kitchen counter, dining room table, ironing board, and occasionally living room coffee table, and spread the map out flat. Carefully she examined the thing. Slowly she began to understand what she was looking at. After a while it began to make sense. It was just a big picture of the city.

  Eventually she found the address of the old boardinghouse she had lived in. She placed her finger on the map. She closed her eyes and imagined walking down the steps, turning left and walking to the corner grocery. She traced her finger along the map. He finger came to a street intersection. If she was doing this right it would be Bagley Street. She searched for the street name. Bagley Street, she’d done it.

  Excited, she began finding other places she knew from her year in the city. She found the library, the museum, the streets where she knew the clubs. Then the importance of the map came to her. She could find the boathouse.

  Dolly quickly found the Detroit River and began to trace the streets that ran parallel to the river. She remembered a park and the city water works. She’d run past both. Her finger ran along the river. Jefferson. She had run along Jefferson Avenue. Past the water works and, there it was, Memorial Park. That meant the dirt road was somewhere…here. She stabbed the map with her finger.

  That night Dolly lay in her bed deep in thought. She could find the boathouse. She was sure the money was in the boat, Sol must have put it on board before he came to
get her. She had been in the boat and hadn’t seen any bundles just sitting out; he must have hidden it. It wouldn’t make any sense to just leave it laying out. Lots of boats were stopped by the Customs police; Solly must have anticipated that. He hid it. The only real question was how well had he hidden it?

  It had been months; the Purples must have used the boat since. Surely they’d found the money by now. But, maybe not. Could she really afford to not look? She could spend the rest of her life feeding slop to pigs and waiting tables, the same things when she thought about it. Or, she could take a chance on being rich.

  Chapter 14

  The first morning of any visit to Sherrie and Gerry’s farm was, by tradition and function, an exercise in choreographed confusion. The first person awake made coffee then, inevitably took a seat on the covered porch.

  As each member of the foursome made their way to the porch the topic of breakfast gradually took over. It always ended with Jim and Gerry frying eggs, pancakes and bacon, while Sherry retrieved a selection of homemade cherry, apple and berry jams from her pantry. Eve produced a maple syrup from a friend’s farm, and then she and Sherrie selected a tablecloth for the antique round eagle claw table, which sat in an equally rounded portion of the covered porch.

  When all was ready the four descended on the food. The next hour was spent in a near continuous dull roar as each talked over the other and all laughed at the same stories which had been told countless times before. Jim enjoyed this noise more than anything he could think of. This was his definition of wealth. Finally, he asked Gerry why they had to cut a hole in a barn door. It seemed rather odd.

  “Odd? That doesn’t begin to describe this place,” replied Gerry. “The building is made of brick, not terribly unusual, but still a little different. The windows are all eyebrow windows. They’re all at the top of the walls.”

  “Are you sure this thing is a barn?” Jim interrupted.

  “I mean, that sounds like a mechanics shop or something like that.”

  “You’re probably right.” Gerry took a sip of his coffee and continued, “There’s a pair of steel garage type doors on the south end and both sides have normal entry doors. Which is also a little odd, normally the long doors go on the long side of a building. The thing is that all those doors are made of heavy gauge steel. No door windows and the hinges are all on the inside. I’m assuming the doors open to the inside, but I can’t be certain of anything with this place. I’m telling ya Jim, it’s a weird deal.”

  “Are the windows big enough to get through if we can get that high?” Jim asked.

  “Sure, but I think they’re lined with a steel mesh on the back side. And, they’re all twelve feet off the ground. We can’t get a torch up that high and cut the mesh.”

  “We thought about our picking equipment. That could get us high enough, but we don’t think they will hold the weight of your torch,” Sherry added.

  “You’ve got a front loader on your tractor don’t you?” Eve asked.

  “Sure, but that’s not…” Gerry stopped for a moment.

  “We use the bucket to put up Christmas lights,” Jim said with a smile.

  “That’s a great idea! Let’s get going,” Gerry stood.

  “No, lets not,” Sherrie cried.

  “You guys get the towels, we’ll clear the table,” Eve confirmed.

  In moments the dishwasher was humming, the fry pans were being scrubbed and put away and the counters cleaned.

  Gerry’s tractor was equipped with a hydraulically operated front loader; an arm on each side of the tractor held a V shaped bucket approximately six feet long and three feet wide. Two levers mounted next to the driver operated the loader. One moved the two arms up and down; the second tilted the V shaped bucket forward and backward.

  Sherrie found some moving blankets and packing material in the processing shed while Gerry grabbed two coils of rope. They quickly made a cushioned bed for the tanks of oxygen and acydlene and then secured them in the bucket with chains. Satisfied the tanks would not roll or fall out of the bucket Jim, Eve and Sherrie piled into the pickup truck. Gerry climbed to the tractor seat and soon they were on the way through the orchard to the mysterious block building on the new property. Arriving at the building they surveyed the exterior for several minutes.

  “This thing is a regular Fort Knox!” Eve exclaimed. All nodded in general agreement.

  “I’ve always wondered about this place,” Jim said. “Did the title search tell you anything?”

  “Its been owned by the state for the past thirty years. Apparently, the state got it because the property tax wasn’t being paid. When the title was transferred it seems that whatever office is responsible for government property was never notified. The lawyer told us the State of Michigan didn’t know it owned this land. No one knew about the property until an alert auditor found it during an inspection of the Secretary of State’s records. This popped up,” Gerry explained.

  “How did the county not collect property taxes?” asked Eve.

  “That’s a mystery to me too,” Gerry answered. “When someone figures out how to pull that trick off let me know.”

  “From what we could tell this building isn’t on any tax role. And, the property owner in the sixties was a guy named William Tocco. Apparently he died and this piece wasn’t processed with the estate,” Sherrie offered.

  “Well, it’s a nice piece of property,” Jim said glancing around.

  They all admired the view for a moment, then Jim said, “You ready to do this? Pick the window you want to replace.”

  They settled on a spot where the ground looked firm, Gerry squared the tractor to the building and tilted the loader so that the point of the V sat on the ground. Jim climbed in and knelt on one knee. When he was ready he signaled Gerry to lift the bucket. Slowly the bucket reached its highest point, Jim was just below the window. Gerry then tilted the bucket forward a few inches leaning the bucket against the barn’s wall.

  Taking a pipe wrench in his right hand, and covering his face with his left, Jim reached out and smashed the wrench into the window. Glass cascaded into the bucket. Behind the painted glass was a heavy wire mesh. Jim set to work on the remaining glass, removing it from the steel frame. After several minutes the frame was clean. He then lit the torch and began to cut the heavy-duty wire mesh, a few minutes later it fell away to the floor of the building.

  Gerry lowered the bucket and Eve and Sherrie took a ladder from the back of the pickup and placed it in the bucket. Eve then climbed in next to Jim and the bucket was raised once more. Jim secured a rope to the top of the ladder while Eve tied the other end to the bucket. Satisfied with their knots, Jim and Eve pushed the ladder through the window then gradually lowered it to the ground.

  “Ready?” Eve asked.

  “Almost,” Jim replied.

  He finished tying a bowline knot, slipped the end of the rope around his chest and passed it through the knot.

  “Loop it there,” he pointed.

  Eve quickly looped the line around the hydraulic arm, then snubbed the line as Jim squeezed through the window, hung from the windowsill, and found the top of the ladder with his toes. “Okay, give me some slack,” he called.

  Chapter 15

  Dolly was determined to find the boat. Unfortunately, she was two hundred miles from where ever that boat was hidden. She needed to eat and the only way she could do that was to work at the diner. But, she needed time off too. Her boss was the problem. Mel rarely scheduled any of the diner’s crew for more than five days in a week, but he never gave them two days off in a row.

  That would not work for Dolly; she set about convincing him she needed her days off together to visit a sick aunt. Mel didn’t believe it. He was convinced she had a boyfriend somewhere. He was certain she would be married or pregnant soon. At first, he didn’t want her to leave and considered never scheduling her days together.

  But Mel had a surprising soft spot for young girls in love. He pretended to buy the stor
y about a sick aunt and soon Dolly had two days off a week, back to back.

  It was perfect. As soon as her shift finished Dolly would hurry back to her room and pack a small handbag. It was a long ride from Muskegon and there was always the fear that someone from the Purples would recognize her, but Dolly was determined.

  She stayed away from anyone or anyplace she had

  ever known or visited. She dyed her hair and tried to blend in with the other people walking the streets. She did her best to keep out of sight. She was certain that no one recognized her.

  It took two trips and a lot of walking to find the boathouse. Finally, on a Tuesday morning, just before lunch, she found the corner store. From there it was easy.

  She retraced her steps from all those months ago to the tool shed. And there it was, the boathouse where they captured her Solly.

  That first morning she had nearly been caught. She hadn’t expected the Purples to post a guard on the boathouse. She had nearly blundered into him. Only the sound of a passing barge had distracted the lookout. But, she hadn’t been caught and now she would bide her time and find that money.

  And so it went. Dolly would travel to the boathouse almost every week. Carefully she would slip into the same shed and sit on the same stool from which she had watched Sol arrested. She would spend every minute she could in that damned shed. On the second day, about five o’clock she would slip out of the tool shed, creep low behind the wooden crates and race away through the alley between the warehouses. An all night train ride later and she was back home in Muskegon.

  As summer began to turn to fall, Dolly began to plan for the coming winter. In late August she began knitting a heavy sweater, a new hat and heavy mittens. She visited the church and found a good winter coat in the charity box. She knit two pairs of wool socks and then, when no one was looking, stole a pair of men’s winter boots. She was ready.