The Vaults

by Toby Ball

  “Coffee?”

  Frings nodded. Samuelson stuck an iron pot into the fire and sat down opposite Frings.

  “So you know about the Navajo Project.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who peached?”

  “Bernal.” There was no harm in saying it. Bernal was dead.

  Samuelson’s face was blank, but he was rubbing his calloused hands up and down the tops of his thighs. “That’s right, you said that.” He pondered this for a moment. “What do you want to know?”

  “The details. How does it work?”

  “Jesus, I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to find one of us. Yeah, I can tell you that. Where do I start?”

  “After the trial. You were convicted.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I was guilty. So what they do, they lead me out of the courtroom, but they don’t take me down to the holding cells. They take me to this meeting room. There’s a bunch of suits there, mayor’s guys. Not Henry, this is just before his time. Shit, hold on.”

  The coffeepot was blowing steam and Samuelson fished it out with fireplace tongs. Frings stared at the fire while Samuelson retreated to the kitchen to make the coffee in silence. He returned with two large mugs, the strong, acidic aroma spreading through the room.

  “There were guys from the mayor’s office,” Frings prompted.

  “That’s right. They tell me I’m not going to the big house, and I’m half-happy and half-trying to make what the fuck’s going on. They say that there’s been so much killing with the gangs and all that, and there’s all these widows and kids without fathers, and that between paying for the killers to be in jail and keeping these widows and kids from starving to death that it’s eating away at the City’s money. So they say I’m not going to prison, they’re going to send me out to the fucking sticks, and I am going to have a farm and the cash I make is going to go back to the family of that gink I killed.”

  “Cy Leto.”

  “That’s him. So they sent me out here, which is where I’ve been ever since. Farming, bo, I’m a goddamn farmer.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For a couple of years. You know how when Henry became mayor he worked the White Gang over pretty good, and as far as I know, they stopped sending people out to be farmers. Whatever. One day, this guy comes out to talk to me. Cake eater, but tough. You could tell. Name of Smith. So he comes out and tells me that the money we’re sending back isn’t enough, that we have to be making more. I say how the fuck am I supposed to make more money. But he’s got a plan for me to make a lot more.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think you’re going to need to see it for yourself.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Excerpt from Van Vossen, A History of Recent Crime in the City (draft):

  A word or two is appropriate on the Anti-Subversion Unit, or the A-S-U as it is more commonly known. After the election of Mayor Henry and the subsequent massacre at Lentini’s restaurant that we have earlier visited, the ASU became, with the regular police force, the most consequential force for order in the City. But the story of the ASU begins not with Mayor Henry, but more than a decade earlier, during the Great War.

  The United States of America’s entry into the War led to an accompanying concern for the security of certain valuable resources. Many port cities and industrial plants were given protection by the Army or Federal Government. The City received no such allocation, but was nonetheless an important supplier of steel, tungsten, and other strategic materials. The threat posed to the strategic materials by Anarchists, Communists, and Criminal Gangs was met with the creation, by one-term mayor Clement Lassiter, of the ASU. The ASU was drawn from the ranks of the police force and served mainly as guards at the plants, railroad, and river ports in the City. Other ASU “squadrons” were more aggressive in their pursuit of Subversive Elements, using both undercover schemes and surprise raids to aid in suppression of Subversive Elements.

  The terminus of the War ended the need for the ASU and it was dissolved, though the law authorizing the unit was left on the City’s books. It was this law to which Mayor Henry turned after the so-called Birthday Party Massacre.

  The ASU was reestablished and was made answerable directly to the mayor. It comprised, as had the original incarnation of the ASU, the most aggressive and successful officers from the regular force, but now also untrained street thugs whom Mayor Henry had counted on as allies during his days running the neighborhood known as Blue Hill.

  The ASU, distinguished by their light gray uniforms, began a particularly brutal assault upon the White Gang at all levels from the block bosses to Tommy McFadden himself.

  Though purportedly charged with the eradication of the gangs, rumor, whether founded or not, struck fear in the common citizenry. Even the reckless kept out of the way when the Grey Uniforms arrived.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  Poole ran.

  The officers gave chase but were losing ground. Poole thought frantically as he ran. Could he get to his car? Was his car even a safe destination if the ASU were searching for him? Were other cops in the area? Headlights cut through the rain, a couple of hundred yards down the street. Desperately, Poole veered left, heading for the warehouse that he had just visited.

  He made the door twenty yards ahead of his pursuers, closing it hard behind him. His eyes needed time to adjust to the light. All he could make out were the glows of isolated fires. Unable to wait, he sprinted toward the back of the building, where he had seen a staircase during his earlier visit.

  As he ran, he yelled, “Cops coming. Cops coming.”

  The murmuring that he’d noticed on his first visit had stopped. A figure appeared in front of him, too close to avoid, and Poole ran him down, the man hitting the floor hard. Poole kept going. He reached the staircase and turned back to face the front of the building, holding on to the banister and struggling for breath. The front door was still closed. Poole guessed that the officers were waiting for reinforcements before entering the warehouse. He would have.

  Seconds passed and the muted conversations began again. Poole climbed three stairs, continuing to watch the door. It opened, nearly a dozen ASU officers spilling in, staying in tight formation.

  “Police! Police!” Poole yelled, then took the stairs three at a time.

  At the top of the stairs he paused. The second floor was much like the first—groups huddled around scattered fires in oil drums. Gray light filtered through tall, narrow windows. There was silence downstairs, Poole picturing the officers moving slowly forward, scanning the indigent crowd for him. He had hoped that the antipathy toward the police voiced by the men he had talked to would translate into action once the police entered. This didn’t seem to be happening, and Poole wondered if it hadn’t been bluster after all.

  Then a clanging noise came from below and a yell and all hell broke loose. Up from the ground floor came the sound of yelling and large things crashing against the floor and walls. The building shook.

  Poole hurried to a group gathered around an oil-drum fire near one of the windows. He pushed two men out of the way, grabbed the lip of the drum in his left hand, and felt the hot metal sear his flesh. He flung the drum one-handed through a window. Shattering glass and the subsequent impact of the drum on the ground added to the cacophony from downstairs and, Poole hoped, would draw the attention of the officers that were surely posted outside.

  Two indigent men angrily grabbed at Poole’s soaking jacket, shouting at him incoherently. Poole threw them both to the ground with little effort and raced across to the far wall. The commotion from below was working the second floor into a frenzy, and the volume rose as people began to bang on the walls with sticks or cans or their fists. People yelled unintelligibly, and projectiles of all sizes flew through the air.

  Poole’s hand throbbed with pain. He moved with his head down in an effort to avoid flying objects. The sheer volume of the noise made it difficult to think. He found a scrap of
two-by-four and used it to break a window and clear the glass shards from the sill. He looked down, the rain slapping him in the face, to find that no one was below. Hopefully, they had run to the other side.

  He could hear people ascending the stairs now, so he sat down on the windowsill and swung his legs outside. The drop was twenty-five feet, and Poole took two deep breaths before pushing off. The ground came up fast, and he rolled with the impact, careful to keep his hand from hitting the ground. He stood and sprinted past the rear of the warehouse, then left down an intersecting street. Halfway down that block, he heard the pop of a pistol. He turned and saw a half dozen officers running at him, a hundred yards behind.

  He covered the rest of the block at full speed, then turned onto a block of abandoned row houses, each fronted by a cracked concrete stoop under which was an entrance to a basement apartment. Poole ran to the fifth stoop and ducked behind it, chest heaving. A group of rats, picking at some spoiled meat, scattered at his arrival.

  The police knew he was somewhere on this block, but it was to his advantage for them not to know exactly where. It was also to his advantage that they did not know that he was unarmed. They would be hesitant to enter the street if they thought he would be able pick them off one by one.

  He heard the officers assemble at the corner, but couldn’t make out their conversation over the sound of the rain. Time was crucial. Once adequate reinforcements arrived, they could seal the entire area and take their time ferreting out Poole. Poole had to be quick, but not rash. It was better to take a brief pause to think than to make an irrevocably wrong decision and get caught. Poole leaned back on the concrete and considered his options.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  Frings followed Samuelson into the forest, the rain coming down in heavy sheets through the trees. Frings wore a borrowed poncho, and the water ran in streams off both men. Frings would not have been able to find the path himself, but following Samuelson, it seemed quite clear. They walked a half mile in silence until Frings caught sight of a clearing up ahead and picked up a familiar scent, even through the rain. Not the smell of the pines or the wet leaves, but a sweet, moist odor.

  The trail came to an end between two ancient hemlocks, their foliage so thick that the ground beneath them was nearly dry in the downpour. Samuelson stopped and gestured for Frings to step into the clearing. When he did, the amount of money accounted for in the ledger suddenly made sense.

  “Jesus,” Frings whispered. Before him, like a meadow, were acres of marijuana plants. Acres. And around the field, deep forest.

  “Welcome,” Samuelson said, holding his arms out to the field, his mouth contorted into a rueful smirk, “to my humble farm.”

  “This was Red Henry’s idea?”

  “I didn’t say that. Got the word from the cake eater. But, yeah, if it was that guy who came out, then the mayor’s behind it.”

  “You’re farming reefer.”

  “That’s right. It’s not really farming, though. More like just harvesting. It’s a fucking weed. Throw the seeds into the ground and let them do their own growing. Certain dates, you know they’re coming to make a pickup and you harvest so it’s ready to go.”

  “Who comes?” Frings was still stunned by the sheer volume of plants. He imagined being alone here, if only for a moment, and stuffing his pockets full.

  “Started off, it was different guys, some white, some colored. Come out on the scheduled day, bring a girl with them, too. You could spend some of your cut on the girl, if that’s your way. Things changed when Vampire took a runner. Waited for a day when they made a pickup, took the cash, and left in his truck. Next day Smith shows up and can’t fucking find him. Comes around to all the rest of us, says where the fuck’s Vampire? Nobody knows, we just guess he screwed, and everyone in their own mind starts thinking that’s maybe not such a bad idea, you know?

  “Well, they shipped out some private guards to keep the rest of us in line for a couple of weeks until they found him. You see, what they decided to do was promote a few of the guys, make them responsible for the rest of us. This was when Henry was all close with the Bristols and he made of few of those ginks his men.

  “So, of course, Whiskers ended up as leader. Don’t know if they planned it or he just took it over or what. They sent him out after ol’ Vampire, and he got him all right. Cut him up, from what we heard. Used to come around with Vampire’s balls in a mason jar right on the passenger seat of that truck they gave him. Showed them to all of us. No one thought too much about running away after that.

  “Some ginks keep making the dope runs and bringing the girls, but Whiskers runs the show the rest of the time. No one crosses him much. Things kind of settled down once he sorted out who was in charge.”

  They were walking back. “Why did they decide you had to start making more money?”

  “You know, they said it was getting more expensive to take care of Leto’s wife and kid. And Vampire got bumped, and Whiskers and his boys started running herd on us instead of tending their land, so we had to pitch in for their share.”

  “That’s queer.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m pretty sure the wives are shut up in some run-down asylum and the kids are in an orphanage, though a bunch of them are running around the streets tossing bombs all over the place.” Frings saw the big man’s eyes narrow. He’d said too much.

  “The Letos don’t have a house like regular fucking people?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re more or less locked up.”

  Samuelson stopped walking. “That’s not the way it started. That’s not what they tell us. What the fuck happens to all that money?”

  Frings shrugged.

  Samuelson’s eyes went blank. “You know, there are some hombres out here. Some of these ginks, they should have put them in prison. That’s where these fucking lunatics belong. Like when I found out Whiskers was part of the project. I couldn’t fucking believe it. He’s a goddamn psychopath. That guy should have been given the fucking chair or sent up for good. But he’s out here, like Johnny fucking Appleseed, and now he’s running the fucking place. But I tell you what, he’s not getting rich.

  “He’s not going to be too happy to hear about this. Not at all.”

  They weren’t far from the house when Samuelson came to an abrupt stop in the trail. Frings, lost in thought, continued on a couple of steps before realizing that Samuelson was no longer with him, bringing him back to the here and now. He turned first to Samuelson, then followed Samuelson’s gaze up ahead where the trail jogged to the left between two venerable oaks and then over a brook, across which Samuelson had laid two weathered railroad planks as a bridge. Three men were crossing that bridge. They were soaked in their wool coats and dungarees and carried shotguns that they held easily, with familiarity. Frings didn’t recognize the other two, but the one in the lead was Whiskers McAdam.

  There was no point in running. He took a quick look over at Samuelson, who was showing Whiskers his palms. No weapons. Ignoring Samuelson, Whiskers, with his head cocked to the right and an expression of mild regret on his face, took in Frings.

  “Who’s the gink?” Whiskers asked Samuelson without taking his eyes off Frings.

  “Francis Frings.”

  Whiskers’ eyebrows climbed. “No shit?” Whiskers took a step closer to Frings, making a show of looking him over, Frings smelling the foul alcohol coming off Whiskers like heat from embers. This close, Frings could see the strength in the man’s shoulders, the size of his hands, the instinctive fighter’s stance. His face, squeezed between the famous sideburns, was near handsome—a long, flattish nose, wide mouth, and neat teeth. But the hollow, greedy eyes rendered all the rest of it moot. He could inspire nothing but disgust and fear.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Whiskers said, his face now inches from Frings’s. Frings leaned away reflexively and Whiskers smirked. “I’ve been waiting years for you to come.”

  Frings began, “I’m not sure—�
��

  “Of course you’re not fucking sure,” Whiskers yelled. Samuelson moved over to stand with the other two men. Whiskers took a couple of steps away from Frings, maybe getting his thoughts together, then turned. “We’ve been out here years, Brother Frings. Years. Not once did one of you come poking round. Where d’you think we were? You think they killed us, dumped us in the river?”

  Frings wasn’t sure if Whiskers wanted an answer to this, but there was a pause and Frings felt compelled to say something. “Everyone thought you were in prison. All of you.” He nodded toward Samuelson and the other two.

  Whiskers spit off to the side. “The fuck you doing here now?” He had his chin raised slightly, accentuating the height difference between the two men.

  Frings’s mind raced, trying to suss out the right answer. Whiskers glared at him, then grew impatient. “Well?” he roared, back in Frings’s face.

  “Bernal sent me.”

  Whiskers stared at him. Frings found the courage to meet his eyes.

  “Bernal? Bernal sent you to do what?”

  “Talk to Otto.”

  Whiskers paused, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip. He turned and walked toward Otto, who had gone white, getting right up to his chest. He was inches shorter and maybe fifty pounds lighter than Otto, but there was no mistaking that he terrified the bigger man.

  “Why the fuck’d Bernal send this fucking gink to see you?”

  Otto stared back at Whiskers. “I don’t fucking know. I don’t.”

  Whiskers made a feint with his shoulders and Otto flinched.

  “ ‘I don’t fucking know,’ ” Whiskers mocked. “But you took him to the field.”

  Otto nodded. Whiskers nodded his head thoughtfully and stepped away from Otto. Frings saw Otto begin to tremble with panic.

  “Jesus, Whiskers,” Otto said, then looked to Frings. “Tell him what you told me.”