by Bruce Most
Jackson grew less relaxed. “Briefly.”
I leaned in closer to him. “He wouldn’t tell me the details. Made it sound kinda hush-hush. But he said if I played it right with Zingano I could get in on some off-off duty work. Late hours but pays well—tax-free. You know what I mean. At the time, I didn’t need the money, but I’m needing it now.”
The officer shifted uneasily on his feet. Good thing he didn’t do undercover work. He’d be made in a heartbeat. “Ain’t got no idea what Benedict was talking about, Joe.”
“You said you arranged assignments.”
“Not for any off-off duty work. Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about there.”
“Yeah, well, it’s by-the-by now, isn’t it?” I said morosely.
“Yeah. A real tough break, him gettin’ killed like that. You never know when the devil’s gonna come for you.”
“Yeah. He and I were just starting to do a little off-off work ourselves, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then Hector Diaz comes along and fucks it all up.” I took a stiff drink.
So did Jackson. “You said you and Benedict were doing a little off-off work. The night he was killed?”
“I’d rather not get into it. I’ve given my statement to homicide. Don’t want to put myself in a bind. At least someone took out Diaz.” I raised my Mason jar in a salute. Jackson raised his in response. “Guys are speculating a cop did it. Revenge for killing Benedict. What do you think?”
I searched his face for flinches and panicked eyes. It had crossed my mind that Diaz might have squealed to Zingano about my confronting him at the poontang house and accused him of fencing for dirty cops. If he had, that would have made one more reason to kill him, along with his being homicide’s prime suspect for Benedict.
A deep unease entered Jackson’s eyes but just then a loud argument broke out between two drunks at a stand-up table and he shot right over to them. He settled them down, at least until they reached the bottom of their next beers.
He returned to the bar and downed more of his beer.
“You didn’t crack skulls,” I said. Jackson wore a reputation as a hothead.
“Wish I could. But the bar don’t like me getting’ rough or kicking people out unless absolutely necessary. Bad for business.”
I leaned over to Jackson. “Would you put in a good word for me with Dominic? We talked the other night after the union meeting and kinda got off on the wrong foot. I was pretty shaken by Benedict’s death. You can understand that. Anyway, I need the work. I’m reliable. You know my reputation. I keep my mouth shut, too. If Benedict were standing here, he’d tell you that.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said with little enthusiasm. “But can’t promise nothin’.”
“Hey, I’d appreciate whatever you can do, Wes.”
We shot the bull a few more minutes, mostly concerning mutual friends on the force. I paid for my beer and prepared to leave when the precinct detail came in, making their rounds, two uniforms I recognized vaguely by face. They said hello to Jackson and he introduced me to them. They nodded their sympathies regarding my dead partner. After an uncomfortable silence, they asked Jackson if there’d been any trouble in the lounge. No, quiet tonight, he replied. The two officers glanced around, but didn’t walk the place.
“Hey, didya guys hear the big news?” said one of the uniforms, a tall, lank-haired man named Maddow.
We shook our heads.
“We got one less commie in the world,” he said with a smile.
“What do you mean?” asked Jackson.
“That professor who’s been in the news, the asshole thrown out of the university ’cause he’s a commie?”
I fought to control my reaction. “Yeah . . . uh, what’s his name?” I said.
“Raschke,” answsered Maddow’s partner.
We all nodded.
“A coupla hours ago a neighbor reported an explosion at his house,” said Maddow. “Cops found him lying in his front yard. A fuckin’ bomb blew him right out a window.”
My body jerked back. “He’s dead?”
Maddow chortled. “Well, unless the ME can play Doctor Frankenstein and sew all the parts back together, yeah, he’s dead.”
Chapter 17
“It’s all lies, Joe,” ranted Paula from the kitchen. “Professor Raschke would never have harmed children. Or anyone else. It’s that damn Kane and McCarthy. They’re the menace.”
I sat in the living room reading the first few paragraphs of the Rocky’s front-page Sunday story on the latest in the investigation into Marcus Raschke’s death. Olivia played with my shoestrings.
It had been only a day and a half since the bomb splattered the professor over his front yard. Investigators were still sifting through evidence. But that didn’t stop State Senator Crawford Kane from spouting that he’d warned the public for weeks that the professor was one of dozens of commie agents in the state preparing to blow up utilities and schools.
“If the bomb had exploded in a school instead of this evil man’s home, we’d have grieving parents of dead school children going to funerals,” Kane said in a radio interview. “Fortunately, the only person to die was one filthy commie agent.”
A few courageous friends and supporters of Raschke publicly came to his defense, most anonymously, calling Kane’s accusations “unsubstantiated, slanderous villainy.” One claimed “right-wing fascists” planted the bomb to silence a man who’d spoken out “eloquently and forcefully against the excesses of McCarthyism.”
Regardless, it didn’t look good for the professor. Investigators had discovered twenty pounds of dynamite along with blasting caps and ammonium nitrate pellets hidden in Raschke’s basement, along with a Colt .45. The hidden explosives reinforced the story line that Raschke himself manufactured the bomb. Investigators also discovered the remains of a leather briefcase at the scene with the scrolled initials MTR, which matched Raschke’s initials. They believed the bomb was inside the briefcase and prematurely detonated as he handled it. None of this was official yet, but it hadn’t stopped Lou Sheppard from reporting from his anonymous sources inside the department.
Mrs. Raschke was lucky she wasn’t killed, too. She was attending a League of Women Voters’ meeting at the time of the explosion. She insisted she’d never seen the hidden dynamite or the gun. In fact, she insisted her husband’s death was murder, not an accident. He’d received numerous death threats in recent months—phone calls, unsigned letters, even a threat painted on their front door. She blamed Senator McCarthy for irresponsibly labeling her husband a communist agent, and State Senator Kane for spreading malicious lies. But she offered no evidence as to who might have murdered her husband.
Still, I couldn’t shake the timing of Raschke’s death and that of Benedict’s, or that some sort of connection existed between the men before their deaths. If Raschke was a bomb-toting commie agent, did that make Benedict a fellow traveler? I couldn’t fathom that. Wild alternative explanations played in my mind, such as Benedict working undercover for the police department or Senator Kane. Raschke discovered his spying and killed him, then accidentally blew up himself.
But if that were the case, where the hell did dark riders fit in? First Benedict, then Hector Diaz, now Raschke. Their deaths felt linked, yet it wasn’t likely the professor was connected to the Mex. Competing theories swirled in my head.
None of this could I reveal to Paula as a way to reassure her there was far more to her former professor’s death than a commie accidentally blowing up himself. Nor could I reveal it investigators.
Paula was still ranting at Senator Kane when I bolted upright in my chair, startling Olivia at my feet. The last paragraphs of Lou’s Rocky story quoted Kim Raschke saying a police detective had visited her husband two days before his death, though she didn’t know his name.
Fortunately, Mrs. Raschke, like many witnesses, paid little attention to the people and the world around her. Her description vaguely res
embled me, along with a thousand other men. She’d also offered no public details of my conversation with her husband, anything about the Camp Amache clippings or a blackmail note. She might have told homicide, but I doubted it. Her husband had been hiding something, and I suspected he’d not divulged what it was to his wife.
Thank heavens for my good sense not to dash to the crime scene the evening I learned the news from the two cops at the Mountain Man Lounge. It would have been difficult explaining my presence, and Mrs. Raschke would quickly have fingered me as the unnamed visitor.
Nonetheless, I was not in the clear. The Rocky reported that homicide was attempting to identify the mystery detective, admitting they had no record of any of their investigators paying a call on Raschke just before he died.
Just what I needed with Bock already on my case for burglary and killing Diaz and maybe my partner—another murder rap.
Despite the risks, I needed to question Kim Raschke about any possible links between her husband and Benedict.
I showed up at her home late morning. What was left of it. Plywood boarded up shattered windows. The powerful bomb had ripped away chunks of exterior wall and destroyed the professor’s study.
The doorbell didn’t work. No surprise. I knocked.
No answer. The house looked uninhabitable. No signs of workmen starting repairs. Maybe it was so badly damaged Mrs. Raschke planned to bulldoze it and start over.
I walked to the house south of Raschke’s but no one answered there, either. Reluctantly, I went to the house on the north side, a brick affair with a neatly painted front porch lined with a dozen bird feeders packed with a noisy breakfast crowd. The same house where an old woman had observed me my first visit to Raschke’s home. A pair of binoculars sat on a table by the picture window.
I knocked. The same woman answered, with hair as white as spilled cornstarch, a gnarled hand leaning on a polished hickory cane.
“Excuse me, ma’am, where might I find Mrs. Raschke?”
She switched the cane to her other hand and leaned in the other direction. “Haven’t I seen you around here before?”
Normally busybodies were a cop’s dream. They observe everything that goes on in a neighborhood. Like having an extra set of eyes on the beat. Especially a busybody sitting around watching “birds” with binoculars. But I didn’t want an extra pair of eyes this time, a pair of eyes that had seen me at the Raschke home before it exploded. A pair of eyes that had probably read that the police were looking for a mysterious detective.
I faced her, trying not to look as anxious as I felt. “I was here after the bombing, ma’am. Part of the investigative team.”
She stared with dark eyes. “Maybe that’s where I saw you,” she said, her voice not convinced.
“You’re Mrs . . . ?”
“Blake. Pearl Blake. I’m the one who reported the explosion.”
“We appreciate good citizens like you, Pearl.” I scanned the front of her house. “Was your home damaged? It was quite a blast.”
“Broke some windows and a brick smashed one of my bird feeders. Killed two birds. They didn’t report that in the papers.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I paused to allow my expression of sympathy to take effect. “Any idea where I might locate Mrs. Raschke?”
“No. She hasn’t been back since the night of the explosion.” Watching like a hawk, no doubt, I mused. “You sure you’re not one of those lawyer types? Or a banker?”
First time I’d been mistaken for either. The people I deal with can finger me for a cop even if I were dressed in a Halloween costume. I’d brought my badge just in case, so I flashed it to reassure her I was official. I asked again where I might find Kim Raschke.
“I wouldn’t know. She’s got no relatives close as far as I’m aware. They’re down south somewhere. Georgia or Alabama or some such place.”
“Staying with friends, perhaps?”
“Got no friends. Didn’t have many before and got even fewer since all that ruckus about her husband being a commie.”
I scanned the neighborhood, feeling defeated.
“I think your best bet, officer, is the local bars. You could find her there even when she was living at home.”
“Any particular bar?”
She shook her head. “As long as they serve alcohol.”
“She likes to booze?”
“She likes to get away.”
“Away from what?”
“That husband of hers.” She shook her head. “Still can’t believe I was living next to a Stalin agent.”
“Why did she want to get away from him?”
“He beat her.”
I flashed on Kim Raschke answering the door, her face thick with makeup, her eyes dark and haggard. Maybe it wasn’t weariness from her husband’s troubles. Maybe it was her husband.
“How do you know he beat her?”
Window peeping?
“I live next door, sonny. I would hear them fight. Terrible rows. Communists are jealous people, you know. Sometimes I saw her after they fought. She always claimed she’d fallen. Clumsiest woman I ever met.”
Paula was wrong about the professor. He might not harm children, but apparently a wife was fair game.
“You said he was jealous,” I said. “Was his wife seeing men at these bars?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“Did men come here during the day when he was away teaching?”
No, not Benedict! Though that too could explain the unlisted phone number.
“I never saw strange men come by, no. Except for you.”
I pulled out the picture of Benedict that Ellen loaned me. “Ever see this man here?”
The old woman squinted at the photograph. “No. Is he a communist agent, too?”
“No. Did you tell anyone you believed Professor Raschke beat his wife?”
“Oh, yes. I told the detectives. But they didn’t seem to much care.”
Before my shift started, Sergeant Hawkins passed on a message from Dominic Zingano. Stop by his office at union hall after my shift.
It was twenty after eleven that night before I got to Big Z’s office. No signs of cops unloading suspicious boxes out of trunks of patrol cars. I settled into a chair.
“You work late,” I said.
“A lot demands my time.” He lit a cigarette. “Wes Jackson told me you’re looking to work for us.”
My Jackson ploy had worked. “Yeah. I need the dough.”
“From what he related, I think you have the wrong impression of the work we do.”
“I was only going by what Benedict told me.”
“What exactly did he tell you?”
“That he did off-off duty work for you. Late hours, tax-free pay.”
The union boss blew out smoke. “He did on-the-books standard security work for us. Clubs, special events, that sort of thing. All above board.”
I recalled Ellen saying that Benedict worked as a bodyguard once for Peggy Lee, that he’d thought she was really nice. In light of my partner’s many other lies, I wondered if that was a lie, too.
Big Z rubbed his pine-tree-thick neck. “You also told Wes that you and Benedict were doing a little extracurricular work on your own. What the hell does that mean?”
I crossed my arms. “Let’s just say we were taking work into our own hands.”
“That’s interesting. At the pawnshop that night you vehemently denied you and Benedict were involved in such work. Such as the pawnshop.”
“Times change. I need the money.”
“You have a reputation as something of a rogue,” he said. “I distrust rogues.”
“If I were a rogue, I wouldn’t bother coming to you.”
“Yeah, well this isn’t a good time for extra work. Too much shit in the air.”
“Shit?”
“That reporter pal of yours, Sheppard—”
“He’s not my pal.”
Zingano picked a shred of tobacco from his lower lip. “He�
�s nosing around making trouble. He’s under the mistaken impression that there’s a bunch of dirty cops pulling burglaries. What do you know about that?”
“Nothing more than what I read.”
Zingano didn’t appear convinced. “Whatever he thinks is there is not there. Nonetheless, he can create trouble for everyone. He can give us and the entire department a black eye we don’t deserve.”
“I’m with you on that, Dominic. I don’t want rumors going around anymore than you do.”
“That’s good to hear, Stryker. Perhaps there is a job you can do for us. Earn some of our trust.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Talk to Sheppard. Get him off our backs.”
I pursed my lips. “I can’t guarantee he’ll listen. He’s as stubborn as a mule.”
“Make him listen. You’re The Denver Kid. If you’re successful, we’ll discuss future employment opportunities.”
“I’d like that.”
“Let’s see first how you do with that fucking reporter.”
I called Lou Sheppard at the Rocky the next day to sound him out on what he’d uncovered so far and try to persuade him to back off on the story.
“Why are you pushing against this, Joe? You’re not dirty. Don’t you want to expose these guys?”
“Because this kind of cheap story will smear all of us good cops.”
And because I need to prove myself to Dominic Zingano so I can get inside the very kind of ring of dirty cops you’re investigating.
“It’s not a cheap story, Joe. You got dirty cops in your department.”
“You got proof?”
“I won’t go into details.”
“You can’t go into details ’cuz you got nothing but gossip, Lou. You and Hedda Hopper. When’s this alleged exposé coming out?”
“Soon. I gotta go.”
Shit!
I got through to Zingano at the Morals division and told him Sheppard planned to go to press soon with whatever the hell he had. The union boss wasn’t happy at my failure to persuade Sheppard to drop the story. My slim chance at worming my way into Zingano’s operation just got slimmer.