The Phantom Automobiles: A Gordon Gardner Investigation

by Scott Dennis Parker

  Burke opened his mitts and his rifle fell to the ground. He put his hands over his head. Gordon and Lucy did likewise.

  “Now, let’s go see the boss.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Hands up, Gordon, Lucy, and Burke trudged in front of the rifleman who had picked up Burke’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder. Lucy’s camera bag swung at her waist. They approached an old house and barn. No other person could be seen, but there was a faint humming sound coming from inside the barn. The tall pine trees and dense foliage killed all sight lines. If Gordon hadn’t already known the direction of the road, he could have easily gotten lost.

  “Didn’t see that coming, did you?” Burke muttered to Gordon.

  “No, but it makes sense. Tompkins’s car was shot at. My guess is it was our friend back there, standing guard. Didn’t think the lookout spot would have been on top of that contraption.”

  “Shut up.” The rifleman guided them around the house to the area between the rear of the house and the barn. “Okay, stop right there.”

  They stopped.

  A moment later, a man dressed in overalls and boots exited the house. He stopped in his tracks. “What the hell is this, Meyer?”

  “Found’em snooping at the front door. They was taking pictures. Better get Mr. Dickson.”

  The other man in overalls nodded and walked into the barn. He returned with two more men. One was dressed similarly to him; the other was decked out in a brown suit and tie. His hat was cantered at a rakish angle.

  The suited man approached the trio. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” He peered up at Burke, let his eyes rove invitingly over Lucy then fixed on Gordon. The man put a finger to his lips and thought a moment. “You look familiar.”

  “So do you,” Gordon said. “Family resemblance being what it is, I’m guessing you’re Joseph Dickson. I believe your brother, Stephen, works at the hospital up here in this county. We talked with him yesterday.”

  Dickson snapped his fingers. “Right. You’re that reporter who landed in the Tribune yesterday. Gardner, right?”

  Despite his situation, Gordon liked being recognized. He bowed with his head as if he were an actor taking a curtain call. “Gordon Gardner, Houston Post-Dispatch.”

  “I’ve read your stuff. You’re good. Too bad you won’t get a chance to write this one.”

  Gordon chuckled. “Actually, you’re wrong. I’ve already written it. Back in Houston.”

  Dickson smiled. “Unlikely. Why would y’all be sneaking around up here if you knew everything?”

  “Evidence. We know what’s going on and we know y’all’ve killed at least two people to keep the secret.”

  The smile faded from Dickson’s face. “Then you know we won’t have a qualm about killing three more.” Something in his cheek twitched. “Out of curiosity, what do you think we’re doing?”

  Gordon shifted his feet. “Can we put our hands down?”

  Dickson gave an indifferent shrug.

  Gordon inhaled deeply to clear away his fear. “You’re Joseph Dickson, owner of Gonzales Securities. You transport cash and other valuables to and from banks. Naturally, you have business rivals including Lone Star Armored Truck Service. Wanting to get an edge, you would naturally want to infiltrate your rivals, peel off one of them, and start to undermine those other companies from within. Victor Tompkins happened to see something he wasn’t supposed to—the driving of your cars through that camouflaged entrance. You had to make sure he didn’t talk.

  “I’m guessing your brother’s in on it, too. He’s likely the one who gave Tompkins some sort of drug that made him not believe his own eyes. Made him a victim of suggestion. Made him think he was crazy. Then, of course, you killed off your killer, Kingsbury, so he wouldn’t talk either. How I’m doing so far?”

  Dickson shook his head. “How do you make a living as a reporter? You’re only half right. But, it doesn’t matter any way. You won’t live to correct your errors.”

  “Errors?” Gordon said. “I found one of the money wrappers in Kingsbury’s house. It was from your firm. What the hell errors did I make?”

  Dickson nodded to the barn. “It’s in there. You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that. Might as well let you know where you were wrong before I shoot you and your friends in the head.”

  Gordon gulped. Some of his bravado evaporated. He suddenly wished he had asked Wade to come along. The private eye carried a collapsible baton for use in close combat. Gordon, being a press member, carried nothing of the kind.

  He eyed Burke. The big man’s expression was unreadable.

  With Meyer still training his rifle on their backs, Gordon, Lucy, and Burke followed Dickson into the barn. Immediately Gordon and Lucy looked at each other; they knew the odor. It wasn’t hay or feed or anything related to a barn. It was mechanical and something else.

  “Ink?” they asked in unison.

  “Yes, Mr. Gardner, ink.”

  “What are you doing, making a newspaper?”

  “Not a newspaper.” Dickson moved out of the way to let Gordon see.

  Three tables were centered in the room. On each table, small presses were running, creating the sound Gordon had heard from outside. The pieces of paper coming off the presses were instantly recognizable.

  “Counterfeit,” Gordon breathed. The last piece of the puzzle chinked into place. “Of course! That’s why the banks never reported anything missing. For all they knew, nothing was missing.” He turned to Dickson. “That means the money Kingsbury had in his house wasn’t sourdough. He was escaping with real money.”

  “My money,” Dickson growled. “He was stealing my money.”

  “That must mean you have at least one employee for every armored car firm here in town on your payroll. Or blackmail.”

  “Blackmail’s cheaper.” Some of Dickson’s more pleasant demeanor was returning. “Take them out back and finish them. If he knows about us, that means he’s been talking. Time to pack up and move.”

  Meyer marched the three of them back outside and around behind the barn. There was a pile of chopped wood along the rear wall. A small trail led down a ditch.

  “Down there,” Meyer said.

  To his two companions, Gordon said, “Sorry I dragged y’all into this.”

  “Don’t be,” Burke said. “It was still fun.”

  “Yeah, Ace.” Lucy’s voice quavered a bit. “Thanks for showing a girl the time of her life.”

  “Stop yer yammering and git down there,” Meyer said.

  Gordon paused, looked at Burke, then Lucy. He opened his mouth to say something.

  Meyer raised his rifle to shoot.

  From the front of the barn, they heard Dickson shout a warning. All four of them came up short. A second cry punctuated the first. That was all Gordon and Burke needed.

  Gordon pushed Lucy, throwing her to the ground.

  Burke dropped to his haunches and swung his leg behind him. His booted foot connected with Meyer’s shin. The gunman grunted in surprise and pain. He brought the rifle to bear on Burke, ready to fire point blank into the big man. Gordon, however, doing his best impression of a linebacker, plowed into Meyer.

  The rifle cracked. Burke grunted.

  Gordon found himself on top of the rifleman. In a flash, the thug backhanded Gordon across the mouth.

  Stunned with the sharp pain, Gordon offered little resistance as Meyer scrambled to extricate himself. He pushed Gordon toward the barn, landing him hard on the wood pile.

  Getting his feet under him, Meyer lashed out with a vicious kick directly into Burke’s injured shoulder. The hunter let out another yelp of pain and grasped his shoulder with his free hand.

  Meyer spent a second locating the rifle. He found it in Lucy’s hands. She had gotten back up on her knees and grabbed it. She was turning it around to fire at Meyer when he reached out and took the butt in a beefy mitt. He yanked it and the weapon slipped from Lucy’s hands. With practiced ease, he put the weapon into pos
ition.

  Gordon recovered faster than he ever had in any previous fight. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and took stock of the situation in a flash. Burke was down; Lucy had the rifle aimed at her middle. That only left him.

  Clutching one of the pieces of wood from the pile, Gordon swung for the fences like Babe Ruth. He connected wood with Meyer’s head. A sickening thunk brought the gunman down in a heap.

  Gordon breathed heavily. His shirt was untucked and his suit coat ripped at the seam. “You okay?” he asked Lucy.

  She nodded. Her hands shook.

  “Colby?” Gordon asked peering down at his friend.

  Burke eased up to a sitting position. “I’ll live. Flesh wound. Hurts like the devil, though.”

  Lucy had the wherewithal to open her camera bag. She took out her camera and attached the flash, then inspected the device to verify it was still working properly. Doing something repetitive and productive leeched the fear out of her.

  She held out her hand to Gordon. He took it and helped her to her feet. “C’mon, Ace, let’s go get the rest of the story.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Gordon and Lucy peered around the barn. What they saw they never expected to see.

  Police lights snaked through the forest and foliage. Officers in both HPD and Montgomery County sheriff’s uniforms moved around, securing both the house and the barn. The counterfeiters, who as recently as ten minutes ago had controlled everything, now stood in a group, hands above their heads. Some officers trained guns on them while others patted them down.

  “That’s a front-page shot.” Lucy stepped out from behind the barn and snapped a photo.

  Gordon, his hands bracketing an imaginary headline, said, “Cops Capture Counterfeiters by Gordon Gardner and Lucy Barnes.”

  She winked at Gordon. “Glad to get the byline with you, Ace.”

  One of the sheriff’s deputies noticed the pair and turned his gun to them. “Freeze!”

  Heads turned to see them.

  “They’re with me.” Detective Burt Wheeler trundled from the pack of felons and officers. “You look terrible, Gardner.”

  “Burt!” Gordon rushed over and clasped hands with the detective. “Wait, what’s going on here? How’d you get out here?”

  Wheeler gave the reporter a playful, pitying look. “Gordon, I’m a detective. I followed you.”

  Gordon frowned. “From where?”

  “From Lucy’s place. I took a guess as to where you might go. Called up the paper and got her address. I guessed right. I sat on her street for hours. You took your damn sweet time getting there, too. Then you were in there for a while.” He grinned conspiratorially. “What’d y’all do in there?”

  “Nothing,” Gordon said.

  “We talked,” Lucy said at the same time.

  The two of them chuckled.

  The detective eyed the pair. “Whatever. I followed you to that other guy’s house. By the way, where is he?”

  “Here,” Burke said. He walked up to the group, bloody hand trying to staunch the flow from his wound. “Got a medic?”

  “We’ll call one,” said a deputy.

  Gordon said. “Oh there’s another counterfeiter back there, too. Not sure how bad off he is.”

  “Pretty bad,” Burke said. “Thanks, Gordo. I owe you one.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Gordon eyed Wheeler. “I thought you didn’t believe me.”

  “No, I told you we didn’t have any leads. I had only heard about your style. I never got to see it up close. You were very passionate, bull-dogged, even. It got me to thinking.” Burt tapped his forehead. “I can think, you know?”

  “Never doubted it.”

  “Sure. I got to thinking about the case and what you said about coincidences. And I thought some more about Joseph Dickson and his commissioning that painting and Silber getting himself killed. Then I did something I’ll swear I never did if my captain asks.”

  “What?”

  “Used my imagination. I just asked myself what if you were right? What if Tompkins’s death was a murder? That meant Kingsbury was the killer. I still didn’t see it. Then this call comes in that there’s been a shooting at Kingsbury’s house. He’s dead and multiple reports indicate two cars left the scene in a hurry. Being assigned to the Silber case and having heard what you said, I looked around Kingsbury’s house. You wanna know what I found?”

  Gordon pulled the money wrapper from his pocket. “More of these?”

  Burt took the wrapper. “Yeah, actually. They were half-burned in his fireplace.”

  Gordon snapped his fingers. “Right. I smelled that.”

  “So that was you who drove away from the scene of a murder?” Wheeler’s voice contained no humor.

  “Um, yeah.” Gordon sheepishly scratched the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to get blamed.”

  Wheeler furtively looked around and lowered his voice. “Good call. But that’s what got me thinking some more. I kinda figured it was you and wanted to get the straight talk from you, out in the wild and not in the police station. I went by your house but you never showed. That’s when I got the idea you might be headed over to her place.”

  Both men glanced at Lucy. She was moving in and around all the activity, busily snapping pictures and framing the story. She noticed them looking at her and waved.

  They waved back. “She’s a real looker,” Burt said.

  “That she is. I might need to treat her to a proper date since our first one ended so unexpectedly.”

  “Try to stay out of the papers this time.”

  “Say,” Gordon said, “did you happen to call my paper with any of this?”

  Burt playfully slapped Gordon’s shoulder. “Are you kidding? I barely had time to make the calls I made and sweet-talk my captain into this raid. Do you know how hard it is to do anything on a car radio while on a stakeout? But I think I’ve earned some points with him. Maybe I’ll get a promotion.”

  “After being mentioned prominently in my story, most certainly. You’re the one who solved these cases.”

  “Actually, it was you.”

  “Burt, I’m a reporter. It’s my job to report the news and, if necessary, dig a little to get to the truth. I’m certainly not going to take the credit on a major news story like this.” He put his arm around the detective. “No, Burt, this one will be all you. But it’s going to be one hell of a pulp story when I’m done with it. Maybe I’ll finally get a sale in a top magazine.”

  “You write pulp yarns?” Wheeler asked. “I’ve never read any of them.”

  “Well, that’s because I’ve not gotten them published under my own name. I’m a reporter. As soon as folks see my name in a pulp magazine, they’ll start questioning my truthfulness in the press. I can’t have that. Neither can my editor. Which magazines do you read?”

  “Argosy, Adventure, All Western, Dime Detective mostly. Shadow’s good, too. And Doc Savage. He’s always good.”

  “Well, then, you haven’t read any of mine.”

  “Why? Where’ve you been published?”

  Gordon screwed up his face. “So far, only Spicy Detective.”

  Burt let out a burst of laughter. “You write them sex ones?”

  Gordon shrugged. “It pays well. But not as well as the biggies.” He sighed. “Someday I might just earn a living making things up.”

  “Naw, real life’s too much fun. Besides, when you write for the paper, you can put away twits like Dickson and his brother.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Gordon Gardner knew his editor pretty well. Sure, Gordon had hustled and broken open a legitimate front-page story. But he had done so behind Levitz’s back and against editorial authority. There was going to be hell to pay.

  Which was why Gordon didn’t immediately go to the newsroom. Instead, he went to his house and pounded out the copy of the story.

  Lucy went on to the newsroom to develop her
pictures and, truth be told, soften the editor’s expected fiery anger with her photos.

  Gordon typed fluidly and with such rapidity that he was able to produce two versions of the story, one, a longer front-page piece, and a second, shorter one in case Levitz needed to teach his ace reporter a lesson and bump the piece to page two or beyond.

  With both drafts in his leather satchel, Gordon quickly bathed, changed clothes, and hurried to the newsroom. Despite not sleeping the night before, he was feeling pretty good, the kind of good that only came when he’d exposed something that had heretofore been hidden.

  Word of the raid had gotten out over the radio. Gordon made sure he had the story ready for the evening edition. He knew Levitz would want to beat the Chronicle and the other papers to the punch, especially with the inside dish only Gordon could provide. Taking a deep breath, he entered the newsroom with a huge grin on his face.

  His fellow reporters, one by one, turned and looked at him. They all wanted to applaud but they didn’t want to get on Levitz’s bad side. A couple of the men patted Gordon on the shoulder and muttered praise only he could hear. He shook their hands and waved to a few, all the while walking a beeline to his editor’s office.

  Off in the middle, head bent in concentration, Johnny Flynn studiously avoided eye contact. There was a large part of Gordon that just wanted to waltz over to Johnny and yell “I was right!” but he refrained. There would be time for that later, especially from his window desk.

  Levitz’s office door was cracked open but the blinds were drawn. Gordon straightened his shoulders and walked to his fate. He stopped in the doorway and rapped on the frame.

  Levitz looked up from his desk and locked eyes with Gordon. “I see the prodigal son has returned. Sit.”

  Gordon pushed the door all the way open and stopped suddenly. In one of Levitz’s chairs sat Lucy Barnes. A mischievous grin etched her face but she kept it under wraps when she turned back to Levitz.