by David Grand
As when he’d heard the news about his father, it took a moment for this to sink in. Then the words came out like a stone skipping across water. “You mean, you don’t think I killed him?”
“I know for a fact that you didn’t.”
“For a fact?” As Victor said this, a sadness came over his voice, a sadness that amounted to fifteen years of sadness. “And my father?”
“He knew it too.”
“How?” Victor said, the sadness in his voice lingering.
“I’ve got evidence.”
“Then what do you need me for? What did you need my father for?”
“To help me deliver the evidence.”
“How do I know you’re being straight with me?”
“You couldn’t possibly know.”
Victor was quiet. He listened to the man’s labored breathing. He could see in his mind his father lying in his casket above the frozen earth, his hands folded over his chest in a way he would have never folded them over his chest in his lifetime. “Was it my father who caused the explosion at the plant?”
The man didn’t say anything.
“Why won’t you answer me?”
The man still didn’t say anything.
Victor’s head started to sweat from the warmth of his bad breath under the sack. “Where would I go from the funeral?” he said.
“The boys’ll drive you to Fuller House, downtown. They’ve got it all set up for you. You stay there until you’re needed.”
Victor listened to the wind for a while longer. He listened to the wind and all he could see in his mind was himself sitting in his small damp cell, listening to the wind blowing and not being able to see the rustling trees beyond the prison walls. He could see in his mind the picture of himself and the woman in front of the backdrop of the carousel. He could see her as a young girl staring at him through her bedroom window as he stood on the street under a downpour of cold rain. He turned his head in the direction of the man behind him. “I’ll need some money.”
“Five hundred dollars has already been deposited under your name at First City Bank.”
“Five hundred?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s five hundred buy you these days?” Victor wondered out loud.
“In this case, peace of mind.”
“Yeah,” Victor said, not knowing what else to say. “All right,” he said after another thoughtful pause, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“We’ll be in touch, Mr. Ribe,” the man said abruptly. And with that said, the car door opened, the car wobbled, and Victor could hear the footsteps on the road’s shoulder. After a few moments of sitting still, he heard the car engine turn over and the car pull away. He could then feel the two grizzled men retake their places.
“You can take that stuff off your head,” the sourpuss in the backseat said.
Sunshine up front started the car, drove behind some nearby brush, and parked. “Get out. We’ll be watching you from the woods. When you’re through, walk back out to the road.”
Victor dropped the blindfold and the sack onto the seat, opened the door, and stepped out. He looked back for a moment. “Go on,” Sunshine said. He pointed up ahead to a clearing past a stand of trees. Victor walked into the woods and from the woods into the field. He could see the priest and the gravediggers standing in a small cemetery whose far border ran along the edge of the bird sanctuary. Victor walked to the gravesite and looked onto his father’s casket, and looked over the frozen earth that extended as far as the precipice on the Palisades, and looked onto the icy current of the Westbend River at the bottom of the enormous bluffs, and he could see the immense grid of the City on the other side of the current, the island city that expanded into the distance like a continuation of the headstones in the graveyard, the island itself like an enormous tablet drifting into a gray industrial mist, eastward, as far as Victor could see.
GLOBE METRO REPORT, APRIL 23, 192–
RIBE GUILTY!
SENTENCE IGNITES COURTROOM!
SAM RAPAPORT
Federal Court Building—After a 20-minute deliberation this morning, finishing what must have amounted to the shortest open-and-shut murder trial in City history, a jury pronounced Victor Ribe guilty for the brutal homicides of Alcohol and Narcotics Bureau Investigator Maurice Klempt and crooked pharmacist Boris Lardner.
The disoriented Ribe, suffering excruciating pains from heroin withdrawal, leaned against Public Defender Lenny Shapiro like a shaken rag doll as the verdict was read.
A palpable wave of relief broke through the gallery. The vindication released from the lungs of the victims’ friends and families was enough to send a hot-air balloon to China.
The liberal Judge John Selby looked down onto Ribe from the bench and proceeded to pass sentence: 25 years to life on each count of murder, to be served concurrently at Farnsworth State Penitentiary in Farnsworth.
It came as no surprise to this reporter that the courtroom, denied a capital sentence, erupted into pandemonium.
Sid Lardner, brother of the murdered Boris Lardner, rushed Ribe and nearly got a piece of him with a bailiff’s blackjack.
Loud protests were heard all around from ANB officials, including ANB Commissioner Harry Shortz, who, on record an opponent of capital sentences, broke face and shamed Judge Selby with some colorful language not fit to print.
The only ones not chanting for Ribe’s life, it seemed, were his attorney, the judge, and Ribe’s father, who upon hearing his son’s sentence quietly stood up and walked out of the courtroom.
Farnsworth Penitentiary authorities, fearing for their own safety, quickly shackled Ribe and led him out to a waiting paddy wagon.
Over heckles and taunts, Judge Selby ordered bailiffs to clear the courtroom and then retreated into chambers.
On the courthouse steps, Sid Lardner swore vengeance, while arresting officers Sergeants Ira Dubrov and Pally Collins of the ANB expressed dismay. Commissioner Shortz made no comment.
Ribe’s conviction for the murder of Lardner—Ribe’s old war pal and personal heroin peddler—appeared to have largely rested on the testimony of Abraham (Shuffles) Levy, a convicted South End numbers runner.
Levy claimed to have witnessed a desperate Ribe quarreling with Lardner outside Schweitzer’s Piano Shop on Proctor Street. The two men were apparently engaged in a heated fight over money.
The questionable Levy swore under oath that Ribe beat Lardner senseless, then mercilessly heaved him through the piano shop’s window.
Making up for Levy’s lack of credibility was testimony from several members of the Glory Be Temperance Alliance, who, while passing out pamphlets down the 700 block of Proctor Street, in front of Lovey’s Juice Joint, heard the sound of shattering glass.
Although none of the Glory Be members heard or saw Ribe’s argument with Lardner, they claimed that when they reached Schweitzer’s Piano Shop, they found Ribe standing over the deceased’s body, looting his pockets. They then watched him flee toward the Shrine Street el platform.
According to two witnesses waiting for the train, when Vice Unit Investigator Klempt attempted to arrest Ribe, Ribe resisted, and a struggle ensued.
They testified that while lying prone on his back, Ribe kicked Klempt in the chest and knocked him into the path of the oncoming train.
PD Shapiro, who insists Ribe was unfit for trial, plans to appeal.
Chapter 2
As a town on the cusp of a metropolis, Long Meadow had always been known for being tenaciously small-minded and big-willed. For more than sixty years the residents of the town consistently refused offers of incorporation by the City. At the height of the Industrial Revolution they saw from their shore of the Westbend River the city plume with dust and smoke; they witnessed the lush green fields and farms, the gentle slopes and textures of the island’s upper peninsula, uprooted and paved over with cobblestone and brick; limestone and brownstone, granite and marble, were mined from nearby quarries and up rose modest
and then not-so-modest buildings that reached skyward. The empty spaces that remained were soon fitted with steel girders and concrete blocks, and higher and higher the conic water towers stood fixed atop their structures. As space closed in, as the value of the City’s property increased, as the shipping lanes of the river became more dense with traffic, the property along the Westbend’s edge was increasingly in demand. For many years, without success, businessmen and bankers from the City tried to buy their way onto the docks and into the real estate offices of Long Meadow. However, the docks, all the land along the Palisades, and a good deal of the real estate downtown was owned by the Barkley family, and the Barkley men and women, devoted to the ideals of such thinkers as Fourier and Thoreau, were both zealous and stubborn when their land was in question. They were avid bird lovers and watchers, and from time immemorial in the family’s memory, they were the protectors of the meadows, the virgin forest, and all the wildlife that ran along their shore. As the City continued its century-long expansion, Long Meadow became a haven for a variety of birds traveling the route of their spring and autumn migrations. City dwellers would escape the crush of overcrowded streets and ride the Barkley ferries from the City’s North End to witness the spectacle; they would come in droves to watch from Promontory Peak the skies darken and teem with meadowlarks and thrushes, grackles and cardinals, warblers and blue jays, herons and egrets, ducks and geese.
At the turn of the century, Theodore Barkley and his sons, encouraged by a prestigious group of ornithologists, converted a failed ironworks on Main Street and began manufacturing small metal bird figurines and bird feeders. They sold their trinkets and feeders and Audubon prints from a shop at the edge of the docks. They soon fitted the ironworks to manufacture field glasses and telescopes. They opened a carriage stable and employed the townspeople of Long Meadow to guide tours along Palisades Parkway. Excited by the success of their ventures, Theodore Barkley and his sons borrowed money against the worth of their land and began financing restaurants and inns, craft shops and greenhouses and family farms, and refurbished several schoolhouses whose emphasis was to educate its students as naturalists.
For more than twenty-five years, the modest trade generated by the Barkleys’ ventures brought in most of the town’s revenue. But then something unforeseen happened. Perhaps the winds changed course, perhaps the multitude of visitors lying about in the tall grasses of the meadows made the landscape appear threatening; maybe, as the open spaces in the city had once dwindled to people, the open space among the birds fighting for a small piece of land in Long Meadow became too spare; whatever the reason might have been, almost all the species of birds that visited the fields, over just a few years, mysteriously stopped darkening the skies over the scenic parkway in the spring and autumn, and instead, to the utter devastation of Theodore Barkley’s sensibility, started to nest in the City, atop the roofs and terraces of the office and apartment buildings, where the birds swept down from the skies to open piles of rubbish, to discarded human refuse.
When the birds dwindled from the skies over Long Meadow, the tourists stopped visiting as they once had. They stopped strolling through the business district, stopped buying the small figurines and feeders manufactured at the plant, the field binoculars, the Audubon prints. Eventually, lines of empty carriages lined the street and the guides were left to watch their horses’ tails sway and swat away at flies circling their hindquarters. The Barkleys, to their dismay, had overextended themselves, and for the first time in over eight generations, their land was in peril of being taken from them by the bank, and the town of Long Meadow was made nearly destitute.
When the Barkleys and the town were near ruin, they were approached by Julius Fief, owner of Fief Munitions, whose struggling munitions plant had recently been awarded a grant from the Public Works Project Board to stockpile munitions for military training exercises. Fief, who had profited nicely during the Great War, maintained his offices in the midtown section of the City and was now barely making ends meet manufacturing light arms and ammunition fifty miles up the river in the small town of Broadbent. With the promise of government money in his pocket and potential future subsidies, his intention was to move his manufacturing base to the City, closer to his headquarters—and he was seeking out a location to accommodate his needs. In the City itself he was unable to find a suitable lot of manufacturing space and docking slips; in Long Meadow, however, he found everything he could possibly hope for—two miles of vacant shore, a workable plant, and a failing town in need of work.
Unlike others who had come before him, Fief, knowing Theodore Barkley’s reputation, proposed to the Barkley family and the Long Meadow town council that if he was able to manufacture his munitions in their town, with the exception of a half mile of shoreline, he would set aside a small percentage of the company’s profits to maintain the meadows and fields of the Palisades, and he would put in writing that Long Meadow residents for the duration of a thirty-year lease would be offered jobs before workers outside the municipality. In return, Long Meadow would agree to fund whatever Fief’s government grant didn’t pay for to retrofit the Barkley & Sons plant, build the docks, and finance whatever other construction was needed to deliver their munitions.
Although Theodore Barkley had profound reservations about doing business with a munitions company, he could see that the town council was in favor of it and that his voice in this matter held precious little weight. With so few jobs available, with men and women so desperate to work, Theodore Barkley reasoned that as long as the people had the Palisades preserved for their recreation and spiritual revitalization, perhaps their occupation didn’t matter so much. With his reservations noted in the council’s chambers, Theodore Barkley agreed to Fief’s terms. After securing a loan for the construction, over a period of a year, the town expanded; it refitted and retooled the plant; docks were built for heavy freighters; private service roads to the docks and to the train station were laid for trucks delivering heavy weapons and artillery; tall limestone walls topped with wrought-iron spears were built around the plant; and soon enough armed guards, stationed in turrets, thuggishly looked over what used to be the quaint business district of Long Meadow.
GLOBE METRO REPORT, NOVEMBER 25, 191–
HARRY SHORTZ
APPOINTED STATE
ALCOHOL AND NARCOTICS BUREAU COMMISSIONER
SAM RAPAPORT
Civic Center—Senator Thomas O’Connell announced today that the State Narcotics Bureau will be widening its authority to include Prohibition laws passed last month, which threaten to lock down our saloons and dry out our liquor cabinets. Heading the State Alcohol and Narcotics Bureau—the new name officially given to the bureau this afternoon—will be former counterintelligence field operative Harry Shortz.
Shortz, a big lumbering man with a large basso profundo voice and a chest the size of a cement mixer, was enthusiastically introduced by Senator O’Connell “as the only man fit for the job. Come January when Prohibition officially goes into effect, I can think of no one better suited to command the transition.”
Before today’s appointment, the 29-year-old Shortz, who hails from the working-class smelt-stacked mining town of Portsmith, was unknown in state political circles. Unless, of course, you take into account that he is the son-in-law of State Treasurer Edward Kelly.
Mr. Kelly, a wealthy financier, who has boasted that he is largely responsible for Senator O’Connell’s election success, said today from his office at the Treasury that Mr. Shortz won the new position of Alcohol and Narcotics Bureau Commissioner on his own merits.
Mr. Kelly, who also happened to serve as Mr. Shortz’s commanding officer during the war, claimed, as Senator O’Connell did, that Shortz, hands down, was “the only man fit for the job.”
Mr. Kelly added that “there is no one out there tougher than Harry, no one more persistent and fair-minded, no one more cunning and intelligent, no one with greater moral conviction. The fact of the matter is that the man didn’t wan
t the job. It was only his stubborn obeisance to the call of public service that made him agree to take it. And I’ll tell you something else,” the plain-talking Mr. Kelly sparked, “the people will be better off with a man who hasn’t had his hands in the pockets of every hoodlum and mobster and machine politician out there. Mark my word.”
Mr. Kelly was no doubt referring to former Narcotics Bureau Commissioner Chester Debs, who ascended through the ranks of the City’s South End machine. Mr. Debs was ousted from this position in disgrace last month after State Department of Investigations Officer Lawrence Tines arrested Mr. Debs on charges of extorting owners of opium dens throughout the City for a cut of their profits. Mr. Debs is currently serving a six-month sentence upstate at Farnsworth.
Mr. Shortz announced today that his first order of business was to conduct a thorough investigation into Mr. Debs’ underhanded activities and give the bureau an overhaul. “No heads will be spared,” Mr. Shortz promised.
The newly appointed commissioner has his work cut out for him. However, the confident and sober Shortz appeared to be unimpressed by the skeptics today. In response to rumors that South End mobsters were already stockpiling liquor by the barrel to be sold in underground clubs, Mr. Shortz alluded to his most famous exploit during the war, when he gained entrance to Kaiser Wilhelm’s inner circle while posing as an Austrian official. “If I was able to infiltrate the Kaiser’s castle,” he said, “I think I can knock down a few doors just below street level.”
Chapter 3
Shortly before daybreak, while Victor Ribe was en route from Farnsworth to Long Meadow in the back of the paddy wagon, six officers from the State Department of Investigations boarded a Barkley ferry on the City’s North End Docks and started out across the icy waters of the Westbend. After halting midstream for tugs and freighters to pass, the ferry continued on to the Long Meadow Docks, where the officers, driving three to a car, sped off the gangplank in their black Ford sedans.
They roared up the winding road to Palisades Parkway and traveled north atop the bluffs for a few miles until they hit a grass path that descended back toward the river. The cars barreled down the path toward a fishing shack a hundred yards from the shoreline. Armed with shotguns and flashlights, the six men climbed out of their cars, walked in file to the shack’s brittle wooden door, and kicked it in.
