SERIOUSLY...?: A Lou Fleener Thriller

by Duane Lindsay

  “Yes,” says Monk again, still smug, but deserving it.

  “And that’s what your business is?” Lou says. “You tell other people how to do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re rich,” she says, in a voice reserved for church. “Rich.”

  “We are.” Monk agrees. He takes a long pull on his beer.

  “Now. About Bonnie...”

  “People,” says Lou, doubting even for a second that a scam like this is possible, “Come to your office…”

  “Yes.”

  “And they give you their money…”

  “They do.”

  “So you can make them more money…”

  “Which I generally do. I’m pretty good at this.”

  “Rich people?” says Lou.

  “Exceedingly so,” Monk agrees.

  “This is the screwiest business I ever heard of.”

  Ignoring all of this, Cassidy has leaned back in the booth, cigarette in one hand, stunned look on her face.

  12 - His Name is Lou Fleener

  “His name,” says Erich Klaussner to the six men sitting at the linoleum table of the cramped farmhouse kitchen, “is Lou Fleener.”

  The six men are his four personal favorites, plus Carlton Becker, a bookkeeper for the group, and a bookkeeper’s assistant at a construction company in Schaumburg, and Aldo Zeist, a foreman at that company. Carlton is a small man with wire rim glasses that make him look a lot more intellectual than he is. Like the others in this room, they’re wearing civilian clothes, not the uniforms, agreeing with Erich that it’s best to look like normal Americans.

  Erich had the brilliant idea of making the farmhouse their new base of operations. And why not? The owners are dead and buried in the field behind the house and by the looks of the place they seldom had visitors. The farm is a mile from the nearest neighbor now that the bar is closed and the barn is perfect for their meetings.

  Aldo Zeist is a big man, almost as tall as Erich, gone to fat. His belly hangs over his belt and his arms are thick with flab. He’s bald and his hair is thin and usually has a crease from the hardhat he wears on the jobs. He’s known on those sites for a volcanic temper and once threw a man off a third story scaffold for making comments about the Jews being human.

  There’s been an arrest and a trial but the witness didn’t press charges and the job was behind schedule without a tough foreman so Aldo was taken back with a warning.

  Aldo Zeist, as foreman, has access to the dynamite stored on the site. It’s a quarry out near Dyer, just across the Indiana border that goes through about a hundred sticks a day. One of Aldo’s assignments is to count and color code those sticks and it’s been this task that allowed him to smuggle out nine of them. They’re hidden in a watertight case under the farm house.

  Carlton Becker keeps the books for the Nazi group. He was trained well in the German machine and kept meticulous records of the people he saw killed every day. His logbooks held information about dates of entry and dates of death, disposition of the bodies, if they had jewelry or gold fillings and how much of either and who it went to. A thousand entries in his books, all written by the Jewish prisoner he kept as a slave.

  He’s sitting at the table of the cramped farmhouse kitchen lecturing an extremely bored group with the break financial health of their organization.

  “The money,” he says, tracing a finger down neatly entered columns of a ten lined ledger book. “It goes out. It goes out and it goes out and none comes back in to replace it. Now, as I have tried to explain, we are running out. We are at the bottom of the barrel and scraping. We are…”

  “Yes, yes, Carlton; we need funds before the event.” Erich understands, though he’s certain these others don’t. What would they do if they knew his real plan? Kill him? Kill him slowly?

  Carlton looks up at Erich. “What are we to do? We can’t proceed with the plan without resources. He touches the book again. “We have no resources.”

  “I’ll fix it,” says Erich, exasperated. He’s annoyed at the bookkeepers’ persistence, like a leaky faucet, drip-drip-drip. He’s tired of the detail work, tired of making petty decisions to people he won’t be needing much longer.

  His people—he does like the sound of that; his people, his soldiers—are ready to follow him. They believe they’ll be making a historic statement, bringing back the Nazi party, and getting paid handsomely for it. But the truth is, there is no more money, there are no superiors and these feeble minded ‘soldiers’ have almost served their purpose.

  Soon the bomb will go off, history will be made, and these pitiful fools will pay for it all with their lives or their freedom.

  All except Aldo, standing over there by the sink looking like he could wait unmoving through an ice-age. Erich knows that if he gave the order, Aldo would snap the neck of the accountant without remorse or a second thought. For a moment he toys with the idea of doing just that, giving the order, but there are too many others present and he still needs them.

  But soon.

  He says, dismissing the accountant bleating about the books, “There is less than a week to go. His plane lands at LaGuardia tomorrow, and he comes here to Chicago on Friday. By Saturday he will be dead and we will all be heroes. But until then I have unfinished business to deal with.”

  “Aldo, arrange for you three to get to Chicago. I want to have a meeting with our Mr. Fleener this afternoon.”

  “Fine. Will we be needing guns?”

  Erich looks at the men. The bookkeeper will stay behind but the others are all men of substance, large, thick of body, slow of wit, chosen for brawn and their willingness to cause pain when ordered. Still, he remembers how Lou fought at the bar and shakes his head at the memory. How the hell had the fat little man done it?

  So, “Yes, Aldo. We’ll need guns.”

  The men shuffle out of the room and Erich goes to the living room. He takes out Lou’s card from his coat pocket, peers at the number and begins dialing.

  Monk, eager and anticipating seeing Bonnie at the office, is about to leave early when he hears the phone in Lou’s office. He’s down here looking for the keys to the Bel-Air, the ones he had in his pocket last night when he drove them home from the restaurant. He wants to leave early, get in to see Bonnie and he’s as eager as a young racehorse as he checks his pants, his coat, the bowl on the kitchen counter. Lou and Cassidy have already left and he’s got a sinking feeling as he glares at Lou’s desk that they took the car with them.

  He’s at the door when Lou’s phone rings. He looks back, thinking about Bonnie, considering maybe this is a client for Lou and he should answer it. It rings again as Bonnie comes back into his imagination.

  “Hold your horses,” he yells to the phone as it rings again. “I’m coming.” The idea that he’s talking to the empty office doesn’t bother him. Everybody talks to their pets, their cars, sometimes their children. We’d all go crazy if we didn’t.

  “Fleener Investigations,” he says into the heavy black handset.

  “Is this Mr. Fleener? Mr. Lou Fleener?”

  The voice is slightly accented and Monk’s trying to place it. European? German maybe? Not American. He decides that, at this moment, yes; he is Lou Fleener. “That’s me,” he says in an imitation of his friend.

  “My name is…Bill…Sutter.” Monk hears the pauses and wonders at them.

  “I need to meet with you, Mr. Fleener. It’s urgent.”

  Monk thinks about Bonnie, thinks about meeting a new client here, in Lou’s office. He told Lou the place was a dump; no place for a perspective client and now here was one, wanting to meet.

  “I’m tied up right now,” Monk says. “Can we meet sometime later this week?”

  “No, it has to be now. It’s urgent, I tell you.”

  The guy certainly sounds urgent, Monk thinks. He’s trying to find a way out of this but nothing’s coming to mind. Maybe…

  “I can meet you this morning,” he says. “Downtown.” He doesn’t kno
w why he suddenly feels a sense of worry when he adds, “At my office.”

  “That will be perfect, Mr., Fleener, I can be there at, say, eleven o’clock?”

  “Sure,” says Monk, eager to get in the car and get moving. He gives the address of his office and directions. “I’ll see you there, Mr...?”

  But the phone’s already dead.

  “Son of a bitch,” he mutters as he opens the door of the garage and sees no car. “They took it.” He looks down at his Timex watch (“It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!”) and mumbles another curse. “I’m going to be late, dammit!”

  He’s out the door and bounding to the Fullerton El station, not quite running, but moving faster than a man heading for the office normally does. Since last night when Cassidy told him she was setting him up, he’s had Bonnie Lieberman in his head. They had a hundred imagined conversations before he fell asleep and he thinks about her the whole ride downtown.

  The Chicago transit system is world class and he gets there almost as quickly as he could have driven, but he’s still agitated as he presses the elevator button many many times, bouncing on his toes as he waits. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

  He pauses at the door to straighten his suit and enters the office as if nothing at all matters. Just another day at work. No big deal.

  “Good morning, Bonnie,” he says as he strides in. He’s already got his hat halfway to the hook on the coat tree when he realizes she isn’t there.

  But she does arrive, halfway between his fidgeting with the stapler in his office and walking back to the front to get coffee. He’s standing at the percolator in the tiny kitchenette when he hears her.

  By eleven o’clock, while he and Bonnie are deeply into the newest periodicals about market mergers and stock divestments, Monk’s already forgotten that he has an eleven o’clock.

  He hears the door and looks up to see three large men walk in. They all wear brown suits that look like they came off the Giant and Huge rack at Sears or that new K-Mart store. All are wearing hats. All are clean shaven and too tough looking to be confused with businessmen.

  Lou’s new clients? Two of them take positions by the door, hands folded above their crotches, the other walks directly to Monk who gets up to meet them.

  “Good morning,” he says, stretching out a hand.

  “You Fleener?” asks the guy and Monk thinks, new clients for Lou, hell; why deny it? May as well fill in for him.

  So he says, “Sure.”

  “Lou Fleener?” asks the guy, as if there could be other Fleeners around this place.

  “Yes.”

  The guy takes one quick step forward and slams a heavy fist into Monk’s stomach. Bonnie screams and Monk goes to his knees, retching coffee and the two day old Danish he had this morning. The guy grabs him by the collar and hauls him up, punching him twice more in the gut.

  “Stop it!” Bonnie yells. “I’m calling the cops!”

  “You’re not calling nobody, sister,” says a second guy. He yanks the receiver from her hand and swings it like he’s going to hit her. She shrinks back.

  Another man enters the office. He’s tall and well-dressed in a blue suit. He’s got short hair in a military flat-top and a short scar across his left cheek. He looks at the man holding a sagging Monk and says, “Stop. This is not the one.”

  “He said he was,” says the guy. “Said his name’s Fleener, like you figured.”

  “But it’s not him.” The man’s voice is hard and angry like he’s used to giving orders, expecting obedience. Monk raises his head as the room spins. He chokes down on throwing up again.

  Bonnie’s rushed over to Monk and is trying to wrestle him away from the man holding him. The new guy grabs her by the hair and stiff-arms her away. Bonnie’s squirming to go in the direction her hair’s being pulled as the guy drags her across the room and shoves her into a chair.

  “Sit,” he announces, like a command to a dog. When he lets go of her hair she immediately starts to get up. The man casually slaps her across the face twice and she falls back, sobbing.

  “Bonnie,” Monk says. He’s trying to shrug off the man holding him as the new guy approaches and at least manages to be standing up straight.

  The guy says, “I am Erich Klaussner. Perhaps you know of me, Mr. Fleener?” He sees the answer in Monk’s eyes and continues. “I thought so. I have had several…meetings…with your associate. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” says Monk. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I told you. I want your rotund assistant.”

  “You’ve made a mistake. I’m not…”

  Erich slaps him across the face, twice, the blows sounding like the crack of a small gauge rifle. Monk’s head rolls back and forth with them.

  “Stop that!” he demands. Erich raises his hand again and Monk, thinking of Lou’s advice, does the unexpected. He’s being held with his arms behind him so he kicks. One shoe, angled to the side for maximum area, hits Erich just below the knee and he drags his foot down, scraping the entire shin until he reaches the arch, which he slams down on with all his weight.

  Erich, as Monk expected, screams. The guy behind him, momentarily startled, eases his grip and Monk spins away from him, moving fast. He’s seen Lou do this a hundred times; just keep moving. Use anything he finds as a weapon and keep moving.

  A fist to the face stops him and two more in the stomach send him to the floor, half conscious. Erich kneels down and cups his chin.

  “Mr. Fleener. We can do this all day. My men are quite able to damage you and equally willing to do so if you do not tell me what I want to know. Who is your assistant and where can I find him?”

  Bonnie says from the chair, “He’s not…”

  “Shut up!” Monk yells. He knows who Erich is, of course; Lou’s described him. He figures it was these guys who called and since he gave them this office as an address, they must think he’s Lou, the detective. He looks up at Erich. “Go to Hell.”

  Erich rocks back on his heels and studies Monk. Monk notices that he’s limping from the kick and though he’s pleased that he resisted that much, he has a moment of wondering just how Lou manages to do this all the damn time.

  Lou would go through these guys like paper; Monk has seen him do it again and again. But how? I try it once and only lasted two seconds. Lou would already he smoking a cigarette and asking for the sports section..

  Sometimes, Monk thinks, I don’t like my friend very much.

  Erich snaps his fingers. “Bring him over here,” and Monk is hustled over to the visitors chair near the front of the lobby. Erich comes over and sits in the other, pauses to inspect a tear in his pant leg where Monk kicked him. He lights a cigarette.

  “I understand your position, Mr. Fleener.” He gestures to the obviously expensive office. “You’re the owner of this so successful detective business and you can’t give in to idle threats. Not good for business, am I right?”

  Monk doesn’t answer, deciding to bide his time listening. Maybe this idiot will say something that will help.

  “Come now, let’s be reasonable. You’re obviously the brains behind this. Look at you; tall, good looking—Aryan. You hired the other man as the muscle behind your brains. I respect that. I respect him. I don’t know where you found him but he’s a genius at fighting. And you, my friend, are a genius for hiring him.

  Erich sighs. “And I understand your reluctance to tell me where he is. But…” He pauses for a drag of his cigarette and for dramatic effect. Monk thinks the guy’s watched way too many gangster movies. “But…I need to find this man, and soon. I have a score to settle with him.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” says Monk. “He beat you real bad last two times, didn’t he? Are these the other goons he took down? How’s that feel Erich, to be beaten up by a short fat balding detective?” Monk starts to laugh. “Aryan race,” he says. “No wonder we beat the crap out of you guys in the war.”

  Erich’s
getting red-faced and Monk decides on a strategy. “I’m not telling you shit, you Nazi ass.”

  “You will,” says Erich, getting up. “My men will see to that.”

  “No doubt they will,” agrees Monk. “But how long’s that going to take? Miss Johnson,” he calls to Bonnie, hoping she’ll get it and play along.

  “Yes sir?”

  “What time is our next appointment?”

  “We have the Williams account people for a lunch meeting, Mr.….Fleener.”

  She caught on, Monk thinks. Keep up the charade. He doesn’t know what he expects them to do but he’s hoping he can get them to take him someplace else and leave Bonnie alone.

  Erich stares down at him, obviously thinking, obviously furious.

  Monk says, “Clock’s ticking, Adolph. What are you and the goons gonna do?”

  Erich makes a decision. “Take him,” he says to the nearest guy and Monk’s starts to relax, until he hears, “And the girl, too. She’ll help loosen his tongue.”

  Erich’s breathing hard, towering over Monk who decides to really push the envelope. He kicks Erich in the shin again, same place, but harder since he’s got better leverage. Erich screeches in pain and shock and Monk dives under him, rolls to his feet and leaps behind the receptionist counter. He picks up the big electric IBM typewriter and throws it at the first guy coming at him. That guy jerks to the right and Monk grabs everything he can off Bonnie’s desk.

  He leaps out from behind it, arms filled with papers and file folders and he’s throwing them at everybody. “Run,” he yells and sees her leap from her chair like a gazelle and race for the door.

  He throws her heavy red stapler at the face of the guy closest to her and she’s got the door handle in her fist when Erich catches her hair again and jerks hard. Bonnie goes down and Monk goes berserk.

  Not Lou Fleener berserk, all easy-looking moves and ballet like speed. Monk’s berserk is more like a marionette with the strings knotted. He hurls his body at them, punching and stabbing with the ink pen he pulled from his shirt pocket. It’s one of the old style with the sharp stylus that makes for very professional signatures and it does extra duty plunging into flesh.