The Case

by Leopold Borstinski

  Conclusion: not the Soviets and, therefore, not likely to be any other country either. Despite what McNamara said as the day wore on there was less evidence that anything else had been stolen: just a lot of mess. The precise nature of the steal meant we were dealing with an enemy of the Don’s and I had no desire to be messing with anyone like that. Uncle Sam paid McNamara a mighty fine wage to fight the good fight against the nation’s enemies. I was on a daily retainer and chump change.

  32

  AS THE HOURS progressed, the one thing we could be certain of became painfully apparent: whoever took the papers could decode the cipher and then they’d be able to get to the package before us. And that would be as far from good as we could go and still be breathing. Trouble was, once the Don heard what had happened, the chances were we wouldn’t be breathing much after that.

  Mumford pointed out that the burglary of an FBI office had an eerie echo of the Watergate break-in, but neither McNamara nor I took that idea seriously. Mumford looked unimpressed with our response but we ignored it, anyway.

  Now that the dust had settled, the truth was sat before us: an FBI report from Washington. In all the confusion over the robbery, we had ignored a simple but important truth: McNamara had faxed over the papers to Washington to get their cipher unit working on decoding the damn thing. And that is precisely what they had done.

  The game of cat-and-mouse was over for the minute. By taking pages and paragraphs from the code, you could figure out which words and letters were part of the deciphered message. The bottom line is that, if we’d had more time and better concentration, we might have figured it out. The others might have anyway, especially Mumford because he was a spy. That was his day job, I thought.

  Anyway, the Washington Bureau report boiled down to a lot of blah and one key phrase. We had an address in Houston, which McNamara checked out using one of the many FBI computer systems at his disposal. The place was a house owned by a Mrs. Constance Glenn. Before we headed to the airport, we grabbed our things from the Holiday Inn and Phil contacted the local Texan cops for background info and to alert them to keep an eye out for any suspicious movements. And, no, they shouldn’t move in and do anything. Just monitor and keep him informed.

  Back to the International Airport for us and a flight to Houston.

  “Bet we find another code to decipher,” said Mumford when we were standing in line waiting to buy a ticket from the United sales desk.

  “Doubt it,” I responded, “it’s more likely to be something different, surely. Otherwise what’s the point.”

  Mumford nodded and we both realized he was just trying to think of something to say.

  “But I’ll take fifty dollars from you if you like,” I added, because I liked him and didn’t want him to feel out of sorts. Mumford smiled and we shook on it.

  No surprises here, but the flight was uneventful. The most interesting item was that I didn’t spill my coffee and Mumford didn’t spill his English breakfast tea. Phil didn’t order a drink at all.

  WE TOOK A little over four hours to reach William P. Hobby Airport, south of the city itself. By the time we left the terminal, it was nearly five, so we hopped into a taxi and made our way to Mrs. Glenn’s house on South Wayside Drive between Allison Road and Stonhom Street.

  This was an unassuming place with a few steps up to its front door. The street itself was less than a mile from the airport so there was a patina of diesel fumes covering everything. The steps, the walls, the sidewalk. Everything. You could almost taste it in the air. As the taxi drove away, we were left standing in front of the building, curtains shut on the first floor and upstairs too. Bit strange.

  Phil tried to peer into the front window in between the cracks in the curtains, but all he could see was the inky darkness within.

  “I’ll try the back,” said Mumford and vanished round the side of the house. I was left standing by the front door doing nothing. No harm, no foul.

  I put my ear to the door to see if anyone was inside, but I could only hear bupkis. As I leaned further into the soot-drenched wooden door, I realized there was movement in it. I pulled it towards me and, hey presto, it was open. I called McNamara and he went to get Mumford. They both reported nothing untoward in the back yard.

  We opened the door and looked both ways down the street. There was no-one in sight. We pulled out our guns and went inside.

  The hallway was dark, but not so dark we couldn’t make out two rooms coming off it, along with a set of stairs heading upwards. I gestured I’d take the stairs, Phil went straight ahead into the kitchen which left Mumford to check out the living room.

  Sneaking up the stairs, my biggest concern was which steps would creak loud enough for Glenn to hear me coming. Or anyone else. But for some lucky reason, no step gave me away. There was a small landing to receive me when I reached the second floor and three doors, all open. Two led to bedrooms and the third led to the head.

  A cursory run through showed the lights weren’t on and there was, quite literally, nobody home. But every room had been turned upside down. Total chaos. Every drawer pulled out and upended. Every door had been opened and the contents of wardrobes strewn on the floor. Both mattresses were leaning against their respective walls. The level of thoroughness showed professionals had been at work here.

  I sauntered downstairs and went into the kitchen. Phil had already walked through it into the living room and I followed through myself to find the same chaos with Phil and Mumford standing, guns holstered, looking around and staring at the sea of paper, cutlery, crockery and anything else which had been thrown out of the way during the search.

  The one thing missing, even though there was a huge amount of tidying up to do, was Mrs. Constance Glenn. We would have noticed her even if she had been under a mattress.

  The light was failing and either our predecessors had got what they wanted or they had failed and had given up. Either way, we had no clue where to go next or where Connie Glenn could be found. So we went back to the airport to sample the delights of another Holiday Inn.

  This one was worn out and tired, real tired. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls, like the glue had decided it had had enough and just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. And who could blame it?

  THERE WERE BRIGHT orange and red lights festooned around the hotel bar and we propped up the counter to stop it running away. I bought the first round using the fifty I took off Mumford. A bet’s a bet.

  The only other person at the bar that night was a hooker with more wrinkles on her neck than on an elephant’s scrotum. She was fifty if she was a day and had a tattoo of a rose etched into her cleavage, but it wasn’t even and looked like it was heading away from her heart because of some long forgotten argument.

  We gave her a Jackson just to leave the bar which she took a little too quickly and with no attempt to haggle. Was probably her best night of the week. And she stank of sperm and body odor. The fishnet tights and shortened leather skirt finished her look. I was glad when the skank left us alone and walked out the bar.

  We sank two beers and downed some bar snacks but based on the front of the house, no-one was brave enough to try anything concocted behind the scenes in the kitchen. Pretzels, peanuts and olives were all we could bring ourselves to eat in this fine establishment.

  Talk crossed many directions and all the roads led back to Mrs. Constance Glenn and her ransacked home.

  “Sure was a professional job,” I pointed out and the other two nodded in agreement. “But who was it? Who would have the balls to rob the FBI?”

  “There are plenty of countries who’d be happy to rip the US of A a new asshole,” commented McNamara and, although this was true, there wasn’t a likely candidate.

  Mumford noted: “The Russians would have done more than take a few pieces of paper ... unless they photographed it all instead...” and as he trailed off stuck in his own thoughts, McNamara’s eyebrows rose as he said: “If they were only photographing records then why steal an
y at all? Why not just quietly take photos of everything they wanted? Whoever did it wanted us to know they’d done it.”

  “Because they don’t give a shit who knows it,” I added. “And who doesn’t care what the FBI thinks?”

  This question hovered in the air for a few seconds until Mumford gave the answer we were all thinking.

  “The CIA of course.”

  That uncomfortable idea lay sticking to the bar counter for the rest of the evening until we called it quits and went back to our rooms to get some shut eye before we regrouped to find Glenn and the missing package.

  33

  THE NEXT DAY, we went back to the airport itself for breakfast because we couldn’t face eating in that dive. Then we hightailed it back to Glenn’s house to see what, if anything, we had missed. We knew we had to tread carefully because we could have been under surveillance ourselves.

  The plan was to go through room by room, all three of us. Nothing was to be left untouched. Everything would be checked. Phil called his office and got them to deliver packing crates so we could tidy as we went to give us a chance of reviewing anything later on without having to hear the deafening sounds of planes flying over our heads every minute.

  We started in the kitchen. Every pot, every pan, every knife carefully examined and put away. Then we started on the furniture. We took the cupboard doors off their hinges and then took the cupboards off the walls, in case something was hidden behind them. Nada.

  The bedrooms would be the hardest to deal with because of the sheer volume of crap, so we went to the living room instead.

  Again, we filled boxes with the paper strewn on the floor and we packed away the plates and ornaments from the sideboard. Then it was time to gather up the shards of cushions which had been liberally slashed to investigate their innards. But still there was nothing.

  Then it was our turn to upend the sofa and rip it to pieces. We cut through the frame just so’s we could check there was nothing hidden between the stitched in cushions and the base. Although we had no idea what we were looking for, we also knew a professional team had been through the place. If they hadn’t found anything, we would have to work very hard to get it ourselves. We also knew they might already be heading into the wide blue sunset with whatever Glenn had been storing. But at that point, we had no idea which way the wind had blown.

  Phil, Mumford and I were left standing in an empty room, save for the sideboard and a drinks cabinet. The TV’s chassis lay on its side near the front window, but that was all that was left. Mumford shrugged at Phil and they both attacked the drinks cabinet structure. First the door, then the frame, until there was nothing left but a pile of wooden pieces in a box.

  Meanwhile, I stood there thinking and looking: something felt wrong. Not just that we were destroying someone’s possessions. I got over that after about five minutes. There was something wrong with the room.

  THE KITCHEN WAS a normal kitchen. I mean, there were kitchen things in it and you could imagine someone cooking and eating in it. But the living room was wrong.

  Standing there while the others hacked apart a perfectly ordinary piece of furniture gave me the time to reflect on how the room felt wrong. Then it hit me: the carpet. Each bedroom had one piece of carpet, along with the landing upstairs and the hallway next door. But there were two pieces in this room. Both sections were the same color but one was ever so slightly darker than the other. The smaller section near the sideboard was darker, like a newer piece would be.

  Just then I knew. We had been looking in the wrong place. We needed to go below our feet. I ran over to the darker carpet right by the wall and dug my fingers into the gap between the carpet and the wall. And pulled. The carpet came up in my hand to reveal the floorboards beneath.

  Phil and Mumford had come over and were looking over my shoulder. As I carried on pulling at the carpet, there was a rectangle cut out of the boards, which had been replaced by a metal lid. There was a cut-out rectangle of carpet pad on top of the lid.

  I picked up the carpet pad, threw it to the other side of the room and grabbed the tin out of its hiding hole. I flipped the lid open and inside was an attaché case. The case was locked tight. We agreed the best thing was to keep it locked because whatever was inside was so important that people had been killed for it. Glenn at least.

  The black case was heavy and we decided the best way to deal with the situation was for me to drive the damn thing all the way back to New York. The main reason was that whoever had bumped off Glenn and failed to find the case would check out all the airports in the city. This way we could limbo below the line and get the package over to Don Michael while making the least fuss.

  I hired a Chevy from a car rental at the airport and placed the case on the front passenger seat. We all shook hands, I hopped in the car and headed out of the airport complex to get on the I-45 as soon as possible and head north as fast as the speed limit would allow.

  I turned the corner and almost smashed straight into two parked cars across the street and a hail of bullets.

  PART FOURTEEN

  LOS ANGELES 1951

  34

  A WARM WELCOME and a hail of bullets. That was the furthest thing from my mind when I moved to LA several years before I turned my back on the west coast after my Army days.

  I headed for the sea and figured Santa Monica was as good a place to hang out as any, but the sharp reality of my decision sent me to New York in the end: about as far from LA as I could be but still work on American soil.

  As ever, I set myself up in a serviced office with a secretary to keep me in check and advertised in the local papers. Amid ambulance chasing and hanging out near the divorce courts, now and again, I would be thrown a more interesting crumb of work from my adverts in the free press.

  I received a cold call off my advert asking whether I’d be prepared to spend a weekend in a hotel room with a friend who needed looking after. The deal was simple: I stay with the guy all the time and, in return, I get double my normal rate. What’s not to like, right?

  As a professional private eye, I suggested that we meet up to discuss details - and I also wanted half the money up front in case the proposition turned out to be a scam.

  “You can come to our offices later today, if you like.”

  “Sure thing. When and where?” I was given the directions and, half an hour later, I headed off to their building on the corner of Alpine Street and North Hill Place, not quite in Chinatown. The voice hadn’t sounded Asian but sometimes you can’t be sure.

  “Our friend needs taking care of, you understand.”

  “Sure thing,” I said not really caring about the guy nor understanding.

  “And you must meet him on his boat, of course.”

  “Boat?” I asked as the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end. Suddenly this didn’t sound the meal ticket I was hoping for.

  “Yes, his boat. Mr. ... er ... Mr. Larsen needs taking care of.”

  “So you said. Is there anything in particular I need to know?”

  “You don’t need to know anything. You just need to make sure he stays out of harm’s way in the hotel we will choose for you. Keep him in the room, keep him happy and hand him over to us after you spend the weekend with him. That’s all.”

  I nodded and smiled, not entirely liking the idea but thinking of the smell of that money. I forgot to mention that the guy I had met had blond hair, blond eyebrows, piercing blue eyes and a pointed nose. The meeting room we were in could have been rented by the hour, but at least the guy had greenbacks.

  Upshot was that the day after I handed back Larsen, I’d come back here to get the other half of my payment. As I had enough cash on me to keep me going for a long couple of weeks, all this seemed perfectly fine. Apart from the boat that is.

  WHY WAS I so concerned about the aquatic nature of the start of this job? Simple: I hate boats. I don’t like the way they bob and weave in the water. I dislike their movement.

  There I was, stood
in a small boat moored next to Island White, a feeble lump of rock in San Pedro Bay, just east of Long Beach Bay. I clung to the side like there was no tomorrow as Larsen, wearing a life vest, was manhandled from another small boat. Although it was pitch black - there were clouds in the sky making it hard to see by starlight - I got the sense there were Latinos handing him over. I paid no real attention to it, as I was only trying to get a bearing on what I was letting myself in for.

  Larsen had a waterproof jacket covering his head to help keep him dry, so I got little chance to see what he looked like until our tiny dinghy got back to dry land.

  We were whisked into a chauffeured Ford and I got my first opportunity to get a look at him.

  Larsen was in his late forties, maybe early fifties and had blue eyes, as piercing as Kurtz in whose office I had spent a few minutes just the other day.

  I watched Larsen stare out of the window as we drove through town and out to the suburbs of San Pedro. There was a sadness in his eyes. I assumed he was happy to be in LA, but I had no reason to assume that.

  The hotel itself was a flea pit, but we were assured the concierge had been paid well by Kurtz, so if there was anything we needed - read that Larsen - then I placed a call and it would be found for us.

  Our room was on the third floor, out of the elevator, turn left and round the corner, keep walking to the far end and ours was on the right, number 313.

  When the bellboy opened the door, I knew we were in for a joyous time as there was only a double bed visible. He showed us round the suite until I gave him a five spot to leave the room. And when I call it a suite, I’m merely repeating the phrase the boy used. There was the bed and a large space with two easy chairs and a couple of wardrobes. That was it. I assumed we’d be in separate rooms, but I was so wrong.