Mystery Men (& women) Volume 1

by B C Bell

  As the machine gunner made for his seat, the frail man pushed his hostage into the rear and climbed into the car next to her. Settled comfortably in the back seat, he told the unconscious driver to “get the lead out.” The only response was a siren in the distance. He screamed at the driver. The sirens just got louder. Everybody in the car began yelling at each other until; finally, the frail man got out and dumped the driver in the street.

  The frail man’s mouth flew open with a string of curses as the driver’s head bounced off the pavement. And when he looked back up his hostage had already jumped out of the back of the car and sprinted across the street. Sirens echoed from everywhere.

  The frail man formed some not so fragile words, jumped behind the wheel and cranked the starter. Gears grinded and the car spun out into the avenue headed south, not quite rolling on its rims. At the same time two radio squad cars peeled toward the corner a block behind them, closing in fast.

  The Buick hopped across the Marshfield intersection without even braking. A Model-A bounced across Lincoln Avenue and into a driveway ahead of them, every other car remained stopped. The frail man punched the gas. What was left of the tires squealed, and the sedan picked up speed, pulling around the Model-A, almost forcing it off the road. If the Buick could make the next intersection and turn left before the police saw them, they might just get away clean.

  The entire getaway car leaned to the right as the frail man yanked the wheel left. The two squad cars rounded the curve just in time to see…nothing. There was a Model-A double parked, but the driver was already moving out of the way. The police car slowed in front of the bank to investigate. The old man behind the wheel of the Ford started waving his arm out of the side of the car, pointing and hollering. The police, unable to turn left on Marshfield, sped on to one-way School Street and hung a hard left.

  The police car’s driver was forced to hit the brakes and went into a skid.

  A fire truck was blocking the right lane and most of the street. The bank robbers were still waving their guns around and yelling orders at traffic when the police car hit them from behind. The officers in the first car stepped out. One had a Submachine gun, the other a shotgun. So did the cops in the car behind them.

  A big man in shirtsleeves stepped out from behind a newsstand, his copper hair blowing in the summer breeze, and applauded. Then he headed back to the cigar store.

  Chapter 2

  The Hellfighter

  At the corner of Lincoln and Addison, hidden in the shadows behind a hot dog stand under the Ravenswood El, sat the best auto repair garage in Chicago. Of course, nobody would have noticed the place if it wasn’t for a sign that read “Crankshaft’s Car Repair & Sales” in immaculate antique lettering. And, nobody would have noticed that sign, if it hadn’t been for another two-foot sign above it portraying the silhouette of a doughboy from The Great War, charging over a ribbon that read “369th Infantry Division.”

  The 369th, better known as The Harlem Hellfighters, was the hardest fighting division on the Western Front. The German’s had originally thought the black soldiers would be pushovers. They weren’t, and the Krauts wound up naming them the Hellfighters. Antoine “Crankshaft” Jones had been a hero overseas, and awarded the French equivalent of the Medal of Honor, the Croix De Guerre. He was also Mac’s oldest friend, and a begrudging partner of The Bagman.

  The front gate was already barred by a brand new padlock, but Mac could tell from the light inside Crankshaft’s office that the ace mechanic was still there. He picked the lock and let himself in, steering around the piles of used parts, scraps, and junked cars that had been scavenged to rebuild the others.

  As soon as he reached the tin shack that operated as both office and garage, Mac let himself in. Crankshaft sat behind his desk with a .45 Automatic aimed at Mac’s face. He put the gun down when he saw who it was, and without saying a word, pulled a bottle out of the desk drawer, filling two small cups with bootleg moonshine.

  “No alcohol yet, Crank. Got some business to take care of tonight and I was wondering if you might want to tag along, take the Blue Streak out for a run.”

  The Graham-Paige “Blue Streak,” a sports car Mac had stolen from the mob, had been state of the art before Crankshaft had gotten his hands on it. Since then, its state had been pushed even farther, and the brand new eight-cylinder had become The Bagman’s choice for burning the midnight oil. With a new suspension system, and wider tires Crank’s souped-up Blue Streak could outmaneuver anything on the road.

  “It should be a milk run, but who knows,” Mac finished.

  Crankshaft poured the whiskey back into its battle-scarred bottle, and put it back in the desk. He muttered, “Waste not, want not,” under his breath, but Mac knew Crank was the kind of guy that never wanted prohibition to end, because he actually liked the bootleg sour mash.

  Discretion being the better part of valor, Mac neglected to mention that little observation, and sat backwards in the chair across from Crankshaft’s desk. The ace mechanic stood over the slop sink, scrubbing the oil from his hands as Mac went over the details of his day.

  “So you’re not worried about somebody identifying the store clerk who came out and applauded the arrest?” Crankshaft said.

  “Nah, nobody even noticed me. And besides, it was kind of neat the way the cops boxed ‘em in. Gangsters couldn’t even turn around without dropping their guns first.”

  “So now you’re going to give your old buddy in the protection racket a visit as The Bagman? Let him know who supposedly runs the neighborhood?”

  “Supposedly, yes—only without the ‘supposedly,’” Mac said. “Problem with this whole crime-fighting thing is that when you stop one crook, there’s always somebody there to fill in for him. I stopped one racket, and now every lowlife in town is fighting over the scraps.”

  “Way things are going you’re going to need a mob of your own.”

  “What I could really use is a decent clerk for the store,” Mac said. “I haven’t had any free time in a week, and as much as I enjoy cigars and magazines, I’d forgotten something…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I enjoy them alone. I got nothing against people—you know that, Crank—it’s just that…well, some of ‘em are just boring. I never noticed before how everybody tells the guy behind the counter their entire philosophy, but it never seems to have anything to do with listening. Do you know how many times this week I’ve had to say ‘This is a cigar store not a library!’? to scare loafers away from the magazine racks? I lost count.”

  “So now what? You want to sell the store you just opened?”

  “Nah, not really. Just have to re-map the course of my empire.” Mac winked when he said it. “I was thinking more along the lines of using it as a front. That way I’d still get the fringe benefits, and occasionally even enjoy going inside.”

  “So why don’t you just hire some of your friends to run it?”

  “Because most of my friends are crooks, and I don’t think I could trust the ones that aren’t.”

  “Too honest, huh?”

  “No, not too honest. I just don’t want ‘em getting hurt by what they don’t know.”

  “Or what they might find out?”

  “That too. Nah, my best bet is to either find somebody I know that’s looking for honest work, and threaten their life if anything ever comes up missing—or find someone that’s just a little between.”

  “Between?”

  “Good and evil.”

  “Forget it. Threaten your friends.”

  With that, Crankshaft snapped a pair of reflective goggles on over his drivers cap, and locked the office door, which seemed more like ceremony than security to Mac since the place was about to fall down. Then the two men walked behind a scrap pile and disappeared in the darkness. Less than a minute later, two h
eadlights rose out of hell, swerved around the scattered wreckage, and cut through the night headed west.

  ***

  The suburb of Niles Center had a lot in common with Stinky Everett. Not only were they both outside The Loop, so to speak, but the two of them had both been campaigning to switch back to their original names for years. The citizens of Niles Center wanted to go back to their Indian name, Skokie, so they wouldn’t be confused with the nearby town of Niles. Stinky just didn’t want to be called Stinky anymore.

  After a decade of grief because the name “Stinky” had stuck, Everett moved out of the city in an effort to escape his moniker. He’d been lucky enough to move into one of the neighborhood’s abandoned bungalows when the Crash of ’29 had stopped all construction in town. Since then, he had been dabbling in mail fraud out of a house on Dempster Street.

  Not only was his hygiene bad, but so was his choice of crimes, Mac thought. Smart guys didn’t commit federal crimes; they paid other people to commit them. Pretty soon the FBI was going to be carrying guns, and the idea of getting shot for a dollar an envelope seemed about as reasonable as bobbing for piranha. Maybe that’s why the Stinkster was thinking about the protection rackets.

  Luckily, Mac had heard about Stinky’s operation a while back and knew where Everett’s house was. He was counting on him not being smart enough to have relocated.

  When the Blue Streak drifted up behind the house on Dempster, the only light on inside shone from a ground level window. Mac told Crankshaft to stay in the car. Crankshaft ignored him, stepped to the back of the roadster and pulled a Thompson Submachine gun from under the rumble seat.

  “C’mon, Crank, just stay in the car. We may have to make a getaway,” Mac whispered, as he slid toward the back door.

  “Getaways are for crooks and mobsters. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m neither.”

  “Yeah, well in case you haven’t noticed, I’m supposed to be some kind of outlaw, and the mob wants me dead.”

  “Who doesn’t. Now open the damn door, you know this is a two man job.”

  Mac pulled the lockpick set out of his pocket and gently inserted two of its stems into a top of the line Schlade bolt lock embedded in the door. It took ten seconds to put one of the picks on top and the tension wrench along the bottom of the keyhole. Mac’s shoulder twitched once, the lock made a ratcheting sound, and the bolt clicked open. The masked man held the doorknob with one hand pulling, as the other pressed against the door. A thin shaft of light pierced through the fraction of an opening. A radio played swing jazz in the background. Count Basie?

  Mac took his hat off, put it on the tip of his fingers and stuck it into the sliver of light, waiting for somebody to shoot him in the hand. Nobody did. He waved Crankshaft over to the right side of the door, gently nudged it open, and put his back to the wall on the left. Nothing but “Stormy Weather” playing in the background.

  And the smell of death.

  The Bagman slid through the back door, signaling Crankshaft to be quiet. He was reaching for a handkerchief to cover his nose when he saw the body. Lloyd “Stinky” Everett was face down, sitting at a workbench, surrounded by stacks of envelopes and mail order pamphlets. Mac picked up one entitled “How to Escape a Bank Vault,” and pushed Everett’s hair around. There was a hole in the back of his head, probably never knew what hit him.

  “Notice anything funny?” he whispered.

  “Not enough blood. Probably dead when they shot him,” Crankshaft whispered. “Check out upstairs?”

  Mac nodded.

  Or rather, The Bagman nodded, Crank thought. The normally impish eyes behind the mask had gone cold. Crankshaft had seen men in the trenches with that look during the war.

  The Man With No Face pushed things around on the table with the mail order pamphlet, stopped, and held up Stinky’s open palm. It was burned, blistered. Not blistered by fire; there was some sort of brown residue in a straight line. The masked man looked up, turned his head searching the room, then walked over to a tin bucket in the corner. Tapping it with his toe, water sloshed over its edge.

  Crankshaft didn’t bother to ask why the Bagman pushed one of the man’s pant legs up to his knee. But the man’s leg had more blood on it than his head.

  Entering the kitchen door, The Bagman simply kicked it in and dived. Spinning in the air, he landed on his back while sliding under the kitchen table, his Colt Snubnose aimed at the rest of the room.

  “Yoo-hoo! Fuller Brush Man!” he yelled. “We really do have a brush for every cleaning need!” Count Basie turned into a commercial for Blue Coal; so it was the radio and not a record player. “Check the closets, I’ll look under the bed,” Mac said, getting up.

  Crankshaft went to the entry hall. He opened the closet door, moving as if he were a part of it—so his back was to the wall when the gun in the closet went off.

  Shreds of cloth popped into the entry hall like feathers out of a pillow. Plaster jumped from the bullet hole in the wall and met them in midair.

  The ace mechanic kicked the door closed, and strafed the floor in front of it with machinegun fire. He pulled his reflective goggles back down to hide his face, and yelled:

  “Drop the gun and step out with your hands in the air…” The WLS Barn Dance emanated from the radio in the background. Crank hated Hillbilly music. “Stupid’s only going to get you shot nine ways to Sunday,” he finished.

  A silver-plated .45 automatic clattered on the floor, and two hands extended from inside the closet. A young man’s profile stepped into the scattered light from the window.

  “Aw Jeez—” Mac moaned, over Crankshafts shoulder.

  Crankshaft jumped, surprised. He hadn’t known Mac was behind him. He did manage to pull the instinctive blow of the Tommygun butt to Mac’s stomach—but he still hit him hard enough to teach him a lesson.

  “—It’s the budding young racketeer,” Mac wheezed, pointing, and clutching his belly.

  “The kid from the—?”

  “Future Felons of America,” Mac interrupted. He didn’t want to mention the cigar store. “What’s the story, morning glory?”

  “B-Buh-Buh…” the young man stammered.

  “It’s the Barn Dance, kid—” Mac thumbed over his shoulder at the radio “—not Bing Crosby.”

  “Bagman!” he bleated.

  “Yes. And what should I call you, Killer?”

  The kid opened his mouth and Crankshaft hit him in the side of the head with the Tommygun butt. Mac looked on open mouthed as the body fell to the floor.

  “Damn, Crank! You nuts? I’m trying to question the little gink.”

  “Question him somewhere else. Case you hadn’t noticed, I just fired a Tommy gun in the city limits.”

  “Well, that would explain the sirens in the fiddle music—but I wouldn’t exactly call this a city—”

  “You enjoy getting on my nerves, don’t you?” Crankshaft grabbed the kid under one arm and started to drag him.

  Mac grabbed him under the other, smiling beneath the mask.

  They had to pull a cache of guns and ammo out of the rumble seat and put it up front before they could lay the kid down, his feet hanging over the right side of the car. The Blue Streak’s engine purred and its colors merged with the night.

  “Where do you want to take him?” Crankshaft asked, turning the car back toward the city, sticking to the back streets.

  “No shortage of abandoned construction sites around here. Walls to absorb the sound, and relatively private,” Mac said, pushing all the ordnance on the floorboard around, so that none of the guns were pointing at him.

  “But if we can get in, so can all the neighbors.”

  “Oh, Crank,” The Bagman waved a finger. “‘Stone walls do not a prison make.’”

  “No. No, that’s completely wrong
. Stone walls make a great prison, ask the guys in stir.”

  “Then let’s just take him out in the woods somewhere.”

  “And get shot by bootleggers?”

  They were on their way to the woods to scare the truth out of him, when the little gangster sat up and started talking on his own.

  “It wasn’t me! I swear!” Before anybody could ask who did it, the kid said four words.

  “It was the cops.”

  Chapter III

  Doctor Death

  Seven A.M. the next morning, Mac had skipped breakfast to stop by Crankshafts Car Repair on his way to work. He missed being able to drop by the graying mechanic’s lot whenever he wanted to. He’d gotten little sleep the night before, and wanted to talk about the case.

  Crankshaft, on the other hand, was already yelling.

  “And you believe that? You think a bunch of Chicago cops drove out of town and murdered a waste of time like this Stinky guy?”

  “You ever hear of a thing called the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Crank? Besides, he didn’t say cops. He said a cop—and all the guy did was flash a badge. Hell, you’ve seen me do that! He was hiding in the closet—terrified, for cryin’ out loud.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I still don’t think you should have let him go, though.”

  “Ah, you didn’t see him yesterday morning. That kid thought Stinky was some kind of wizard or something. And did you see where he had us drop him off? Probably his parent’s house.”

  “So it’s like that Great Gatsby novel, he’s one of those entitled rich kids that don’t even see the harm his actions cause.”

  “He lives on the north side, Crank. Not Highland Park.”

  “OK. So then it could be anybody.” Crankshaft shrugged.

  “Yeah, the badge thing is child’s play.”