by David Grand
All Faith knew about Murray Crown was what everyone knew about Murray Crown. She knew that he owned Crown Crackers. She, like everyone else, knew his face from his picture on the boxes of his saltines. Like everyone else, she knew he was married to a bottle-blond bombshell named Genie, who went by Bubbles, and who stood a whole foot taller than Crown when dressed in heels. She knew that Crown had long been thought to be orchestrating his fleet of cracker trucks to ship illegal contraband—alcohol to underground nightclubs during Prohibition days, narcotics to crooked pharmacies. Until now, only Crown’s drivers had been indicted. They would routinely serve a light sentence, then get out and go back to work. She knew that Crown made it no secret that he was pals with Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth. They all had grown up on the Southside together in the same tenement buildings. She knew that although they were never seen in public together, it was only too obvious that Crown was connected to Elias Eliopoulos, whose American Allied plant shared the same slips. She knew that Crown had agreed to turn evidence on Mann, Roth, and American Allied for a reduced sentence. She was to cover the hearing that very morning, but now, she knew, the story was about to take a turn.
Faith parked her car underneath the mural of Murray Crown’s exploding head and, with a flashlight in hand, walked out onto the gravel road that ran alongside the thruway. As the nearby piers creaked against the river’s current, she traced the beam of light over the lines of mortar on the side of the building until she found a metal door painted over to make it look like part of the brick facade. The door was slightly ajar, as the man on the phone said it would be. Faith swung the door out onto the road and found a metal cord dangling overhead. She pulled on it, and a garage lamp lit up, shining a parabola of light onto the roof of a black sedan. Faith walked inside and closed the door behind her and started toward the door leading into the building. The garage was just large enough for the car, small enough that Faith had to sidestep her way in around the fenders. When she reached the door at the car’s front end, she pushed it in and found, leading up a steep staircase, small splatters of drying blood, little droplets, every few feet or so. She stepped into the empty spaces between each splatter and, using her flashlight to light the way, walked up three flights, passing a number of unmarked doors, all padlocked. When she reached the top landing, she came to another door, this one made of steel, a thick bolt wedged into its jamb. She placed her ear against the cold steel of the door, and when she couldn’t hear anything on the other side, she unlatched the lock. A loud thwack echoed through the darkness of the stairwell and she found herself inside a storage room filled with filing cabinets and stacked on top of them Crown Crackers boxes adorned with the same image as the one on the outside of the building. Everywhere her flashlight roamed was the explosion of cracker crumbs, Crown’s gaping eyes, his shock of hair standing on end, the white of his teeth crackling with excitement. It was almost as if Faith could hear the handfuls of crackers being simultaneously crunched.
The trail of blood continued on to another latched door. She grabbed hold of the bolt and pushed, again the heavy thwack sounding through the stairwell. As the door swung open with its own momentum, Faith found sprawled out in front of her, partially lit up by a desk lamp, a man, a gun in his hand, his face, his gun, his hand, all submerged inside a puddle of blood that seemed to Faith to still be flowing out of the man’s mouth and out of a crater in the back of his head. The image of her father immediately entered her thoughts and she could see Sam clearly, flung back onto the floor from the impact of the blast, his eyes stark and wide, staring up to the white plaster ceiling sprayed with his blood.
Faith tremulously stepped into the room, an office with glass windows, an observation platform, that looked down onto the plant floor, an open room that immediately made her feel vulnerable. She could hear in her thoughts again the funny, sickly-sounding voice of the man who called her that morning. The voice was so tangible, she could feel the man’s presence, almost as if he were beside her, somewhere in the shadows. Faith walked around the growing pool of blood and saw on a rolltop desk in the corner of the room a note that read,
Dear Genie,
Please don’t think any less of me for opting out of this thing, but I couldn’t take the pressure. I couldn’t take living in fear like that anymore. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. I thought it would be best for all involved, except me, of course. But why kid anyone? I had it coming.
See you on the other side, baby.
Eternal love,
Murray
Beside the note was a key. Faith pressed down on the key’s head with the finger of her glove and dragged it off the desk until it fell into her hand. ITB684, it read on the head. She put the key in her pocket, and with the key in her pocket the smell of fresh blood started to register in her stomach and she recalled the moment again when she first saw her father, how she gagged and vomited into the pool of his blood at her feet. Suddenly feeling herself wanting to retch, she covered her nose and mouth, stepped back around Murray Crown’s mutilated body, and made her way back downstairs, latching the doors shut as she departed. She thought about the key she had taken from the desk. She thought about the bloody crater in the back of Murray Crown’s head. She continued to recall the image of her father’s dead body. See you on the other side, baby, is all she could think to herself. See you on the other side.
Faith turned off the light to the garage. She pushed the garage door out toward the road. When she stepped out onto the gravel, she could see the sun rising on the other side of the thruway, and she could see out the corner of her eye a car down the road that hadn’t been there before. She pretended not to see it. She tried to act as if she belonged there. She walked to her car and got in. She turned over the engine, her hands visibly shaking for the first time that morning. As she drove away, she looked into her rearview mirror and could see a man, a large man with slick black hair, too far away to make out completely, sitting in his car, watching her.
Chapter 20
Harry Shortz was awake at a quarter to five in the morning when his phone started ringing. He was sitting in the dark at the time, in an armchair beside his bed, watching Beverly sleep, looking at her arm outstretched over a pillow, her hand resting on the depression of space in the mattress that Harry’s body normally occupied at this time of night. Her hand remained so still, it was as if she were dreaming that the pillow Harry had put in his place when he got out of bed was still him, and that she was holding on to his large sturdy frame. When the phone loudly rang out in the darkness, she didn’t stir, her breathing remained easy; all that moved was one of her fingers. One finger curled into her fist, and Harry, looking at how her finger slowly dragged on the sheet, suddenly remembered the way Sylvia Lowenstein used to lie naked in hotel beds pretending that she was asleep when Harry left, so she wouldn’t have to say goodbye to him.
“Yes,” Harry whispered into the phone.
“After today, you’ll be nothing more than a ghost of the man you once were.”
“Who is this?”
The man didn’t answer.
“Rudolph?” Harry continued cautiously, whispering. “If it is, I want to talk.”
There was a long silence again.
The man on the other end of the phone loudly cleared his throat and then coughed a bad cough.
Harry looked over at Beverly. “What is it that you want from me?”
“Ask Dubrov what happened to his hand.”
“What?”
“Ask your sergeant what happened to his hand.”
Harry now was silent.
“And ask yourself why it is you’ve never been able to corner the syndicate after all these years.”
Harry continued listening.
“Ask yourself these things, and then maybe we’ll talk.”
“What did you do with the girl?”
The phone went dead. Harry hung it up and continued staring at Beverly’s darkened figure. Just as Harry was about to get up to walk down the
hall and look in on his sons, the phone started ringing again.
“Yeah?” he said when he picked up the receiver, still whispering.
“I’m sorry to bother you at this time of night, sir. . . .” It was one of the men standing watch over Crown. His voice was tentative.
“What is it?” Harry asked, his voice sounding equally as tentative.
“As I said, I’m sorry to bother you this time of night, but Crown’s disappeared.”
“What do you mean, Crown’s disappeared?”
“We just checked in on him, about twenty minutes ago. The window of his room was open and he wasn’t there.”
“But you’re on the fourteenth floor,” Harry said angrily, his full voice now filling the bedroom.
“I know, sir.”
“Where could he have gone?”
“We don’t know.”
Harry faltered for a second. “Start checking the rooms on that floor.”
“We’ve already checked all the rooms on this floor, but nothing, sir.”
“Then get started on the rest of the hotel.”
“We’ve already started on that.”
“All right . . .” Harry said, trying to think clearly. “Well, get on the phone and get more people over there,” he ordered. “Get someone to Crown’s house, get someone to check the docks. . . . And while you’re at it, send someone up to visit Mann and Roth. See what they have to say.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harry hung up. He was livid.
“Harry?” Beverly said, still half asleep. “Is everything all right?”
Harry looked into Beverly’s half-open eyes and felt a profound sadness come over him. “Everything’s just fine, sweetheart. Go back to sleep.” Harry got up from his chair and started getting dressed.
“Would you like me to make you some coffee?”
“No, dear. Please, just go back to sleep. I’ll give you a call later.”
He gave Beverly a long kiss on her forehead.
“Mmmm,” Beverly said.
“I love you.”
“Mmmm,” Beverly said again and fell off back to sleep.
When Harry arrived at the Hanover, an officer in a rumpled tweed coat, wearing a thick mustache, looking exhausted, stood in the doorway waiting for him.
“You find him?” Harry asked as he charged toward him.
The man shook his head. “Sorry, sir.”
“You make those calls?”
“Everyone’s out looking.”
“Were you both awake?”
“Awake, sitting by the door. Swear to God.”
“And you didn’t hear a goddamn thing?”
“Nothing. He was as quiet as could be.”
“You checked the room before he bedded down?”
“We checked it and double-checked it. I’m telling you, sir, we did it by the book. Everything. He must have just crawled out on the ledge and found an open window somewhere.”
“All right,” Harry said as he entered Crown’s room with the officer following him. The bed looked like it had been slept in. There was a half-finished game of solitaire on the table, along with a half-finished bottle of bourbon, a half-full ashtray, and a pair of slippers, one on top of the other, sitting under the table. The closet was full of his clothes, the bathroom full of his toiletries, and on the couch was his coat. The window was still slightly ajar and the freezing wind was blowing in hard against the curtains.
“If he went out on his own, why wouldn’t he have taken the coat?”
The officer tried to explain it: “Maybe he was afraid it would blow him around in the wind?”
Harry looked at the ledge outside the window. It was large enough for someone to walk down without too much trouble. As Harry turned from the window, he noticed the light from the ceiling fixture reflect off something. He looked around until he noticed something metal lying on the floor just peeking out from under the dust ruffle on the bed. Harry bent down and grabbed it, lifting it gingerly—a straight razor slightly streaked with blood. “He shave tonight?” Harry asked, holding the razor up in front of the officer’s face.
“That I don’t know.”
The floors were carpeted, a forest green. Harry looked closely and noticed a few dark spots leading to the window. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket, stuck a bit of it in his mouth, then rubbed the wet cloth into the carpeting where it was discolored. As he lifted the handkerchief the phone started ringing. The officer went to the phone to answer it. Harry sat there, crouching, looking at a rosy blemish on his handkerchief. He folded the straight razor closed, wrapped the handkerchief around it, and put it in his coat pocket.
The officer walked back over from the phone. “Crown’s car is missing from the garage he’d parked in when he came over here.”
Harry nodded, trying to calm himself. “What time were Ira and Pally supposed to relieve you?” he asked, his voice restrained.
“At five-thirty.”
“Have they been here?”
“Pally was here just a few minutes before you got here . . . ten minutes ago, about.”
“What about Ira?”
“Pally said something about him having a fight with his wife. Something about punching his fist through a window. Said he sent him over to the hospital to get stitched up.”
Harry could feel his stomach tightening as he thought about what the man on the phone had said to him. “Where’s Pally now?”
“He offered to go down to Crown’s plant.”
Harry nodded and walked over to the window again and looked at the latch. The lever that hooked into the latch was cut clean through.
Harry started to feel suffocated and blind. After today, you’ll be nothing more than a ghost of the man you once were was all he could hear in his thoughts. He sat down at Murray Crown’s unfinished game of solitaire and started playing out the remainder of his hand.
“What next?” the officer asked.
Harry’s head remained still as his eyes slowly looked over to his man.
“I’ll go and see what kind of progress we’re making with the search,” the officer said. He turned away from Harry and left him to Crown’s cards.
The phone rang just as Harry lost Crown’s hand at solitaire. “Yeah,” Harry said as he lifted the receiver.
“Harry, is that you?” It was Pally.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Bad news. . . . He shot himself in the mouth inside his office.”
“Seems he was playing a losing hand, after all,” Harry muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. . . . Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Pally said as if Crown’s being dead wasn’t the real bad news.
“What?”
“Just so it don’t take you unexpected, you should know Tines showed up just as I did. He’s got all his goons down here looking around.”
Harry stayed quiet, took in the news, thinking of his conversation with Claude Fielding last night.
“Said he got a call,” Pally said. “Said he was tipped off by someone.”
“And?”
“He says he’s taking over the case.”
Harry started gathering the rows of cards on the table and piling them together.
“Did you hear me, Harry?”
“Yeah, I heard you. Let him go ahead with it.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But Harry . . .”
“And you don’t say a word to him, you hear me?”
Pally was quiet now.
“You just keep to yourself until I get down there. Understood?”
Harry could hear Pally’s feet pacing. “Yeah, sure,” Pally said.
Harry looked out the window onto the brick walls of the nearby buildings brightening with light. “Where’s Ira?” he asked as he started flipping cards over.
“What’s that?”
“I said
, Where’s Ira? I was told he wasn’t with you. Where is he?”
“He and Claudia, they had a bad fight last night.”
Harry was quiet again, listening intently to Pally’s voice.
“You know Ira, how he gets,” Pally said as though he were listening intently to his own voice. “He punched his hand clean through a window. I drove him over to the hospital to get it stitched up. It’s a real mess.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Anyway, Harry,” Pally persevered, “you should get down here right away.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
Harry hung up the phone and set the cards down.
Harry left the Hanover after giving his officers the news. He told them that they should report to the Department of Investigations when they were through calling off the search. He got into his car and made his way down Central Boulevard as a pale golden light cut eastbound across the streets and flickered into the dark shell of his sedan. When he reached the Southside Docks, he cut through the frozen gravel road running alongside the warehouses, his tires and the roadway making like thousands of teeth grinding their way down to raw nerves. Harry passed the painted ad of Murray Crown crunching into the handful of exploding Saltcrisp Crackers, passed the fleet of Crown Crackers trucks parked in the loading zones, and drove up to the plant’s entrance. A couple of department men were standing guard. Beside them stood Pally Collins.
“Let’s take a walk,” Pally said when he greeted Harry.
“Where?”
“Over there,” he said, pointing down the service road to the American Allied plant.
“What is it?”
Pally didn’t say anything.
“I don’t like the sound of that look you’re giving me, Pally.”
“I’m afraid you won’t like the looks of it either.”
As far as Harry could tell, Pally was his usual self, but there was suddenly something not quite right about him, something Harry couldn’t put his finger on. He wasn’t nervous or jumpy, he was just the opposite. He was too collected for all of what was happening.
