The Phantom Automobiles: A Gordon Gardner Investigation
Page 13
“Sir?”
The captain finally smiled a smirk that wasn’t humorous. “While you were out getting your clock cleaned as a wannabe private dick, your partner was doing official police business. There was another robbery and the suspect had the same M.O. as the stiff in the morgue. Sam’s interrogating him now. Go join him, see if you can piece this mess together.”
Chet made sure to stifle his grin of pleasure but Wharton stopped him with another glance. “And, Chet? I don’t care if you’re one of the best dicks I got in this department. You step outta line again and I’ll bust you back to ticket patrol so fast it’ll make your head spin. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Chet said, suitably chastened. He extricated himself from his captain and found his way to the hall with the interrogation rooms. He looked in the first and second, but they were empty. He looked in the third and saw his partner leaning over the suspect.
Chet knew the man. He burst into the room. “Bartie, what the hell is this?”
Chapter VII
Detective Sam Malone and the man Chet called Bartie looked up. “Good,” Sam said, “the big man is here. Think you’ll change your story now.” Then he realized what Chet had said. “Wait, you know this guy?”
“Yeah,” Chet said, “I do. His name’s Bartholomew Cranston. He’s a shoe shine jockey down on Eighth. Been using him for a while now. Bartie gives me the secret news on all the guys he shines. You’d be amazed at how loose their lips are with him. What’s the scoop?”
“Bank robbery. Just like the one you saw this morning. Poked a gun in the teller’s face, made off with the cash, although no one can find it. Your friend here claims to have no memory of any of it.” He leaned in close to the thief and said, “And I don’t believe a damn word of it.”
Chet frowned. It was a rare day when he played the good cop. He sat across from Bart and folded his hands together.
Bartholomew Cranston was an old man in his fifties. The gray around his temples showed his age, the wrinkles showed his years working hard labor outside in the elements, but his hands shook nervously.
“I ain’t done this thing, Mister Martin,” Bart said. His voice, graveled by years of smoking, was laced with fear and disbelief. “I ain’t never even been to no bank since ’29. Don’t trust’em. You know that. You know where I keep my money.”
Chet did. When the Depression smacked America right in the kisser, many good folks lost all their savings. Bart was one. Ever since then, he stashed his earnings in various places around his house, never having more than two dollars on his person at all times.
“You got the gun?” Chet asked Sam.
“Yup.”
“What kind?” He knew what kind of gun Bart carried on him for protection.
“Snub nosed Smith and Wessen, .32 caliber.”
That was the gun. Chet sighed. “Bart, tell me the truth: did you do this?”
“He did it,” Sam blurted. “We’re just trying to find his accomplices.”
Chet pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He offered one to Bart. The old man gratefully accepted. Leaning back in his chair, Chet said, “Okay, who put you up to it?”
Bart opened his mouth but no words escaped.
“Nothing?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay, tell me this: what’s the last thing you do remember?”
Thinking a moment, Bart finally said, “I remember the getting to work, shining shoes, and then being tackled by the boys in blue.”
Chet blew smoke up to the ceiling. “Who were the last customers you remember?”
Bart actually stuck his tongue out of his mouth in thought. “Lessee, there was a fella by the name of Duval, he was a lawyer. A man, a doctor, by the name of Jones, there was that reporter you know about.”
“Gil?”
“Yes, sir.”
Chet turned to Sam. “Gil Gibney, reporter for the Gazette, you know the one. He gets a bunch of facts, usually wrong, from the man on the street.” To Bart he said, “Go on.”
Sighing, Bart said, “The last one I remember was Nick Tanner.”
The two cops exchanged glances. Nick Tanner, ostensibly a man who ran a lumber company, was also a front for a gang of vipers that smuggled drugs and guns into the city.
Chet rose and snapped his fingers. “Let’s go pay little Nicky a visit.”
Chapter VIII
The Tanner lumber yard was situated near the railroad station just east of downtown. The main structure was a corrugated steel warehouse that contained both piles of wood and the saws to cut them. Heat shimmered off the roof in the afternoon sun.
Chet and Sam sauntered up to the front door and marched in like they owned the joint. The detectives could never pin down any charges on Nick’s establishment so they had no way of knowing which employee was honest or which one was in on the crimes.
“We’d like to see Nick,” Chet said, casually sweeping his coat open to reveal the badge pinned to his belt. The man behind the counter started to protest, then rose from his stool. “I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll go with you,” Sam said, and eased around the counter. He held out his hand to the man, gesturing at the door. “After you.”
The man, sweaty in his coveralls, gulped. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The oscillating fan blew oven-hot air around the room.
He led them out into the main warehouse, across the floor, and to a small office. Saws shrieked through wood and sawdust mixed with the humidity to create a brown cloud.
When the worker opened the office door, a blast of cold air brushed their faces. The man behind the desk, dressed in dungarees and a clean work shirt, looked up angrily.
“Afternoon, Nick,” Chet said, entering the room and brushing aside the man from behind the counter. “Nice air conditioning you got in here. Feels like sitting on an ice cube.”
Sam entered the room and stood opposite Chet, both detectives making a wall between Nick and the door.
Nick, with a motion of his head, dismissed his worker. He then broke into a wide smile. “One of you boys doing some remodeling on your home? Need a pile of wood for the project?” His accent, thick East Texan, drawled each word longer than necessary.
“Only wood I use nowadays,” Chet said, “is the baseball bats for the police baseball games. I’m real good with a bat, able to hit homers from almost any pitch.”
“Maybe you ought to try out for the big leagues,” Nick said. “I hear they’re always looking for big strapping fellows.”
“Nah,” Chet said, shaking his head, “I’d have to leave Imperial City, go up north to New York or Cleveland.”
“That’s my point,” Nick said, his smile fading. “Because then you’d stop barging into my place of business and harassing me.”
Sam stepped forward and closed the door. “Oh, we’re not harassing you, at least, not yet. Bartholomew Cranston, know the name?”
Nick pursed his lips in thought, probably trying to decide the angle. “Sure, I know him. He’s that old geezer that shines shoes.”
“When’s the last time you had your shoes worked on?” Sam continued.
“As a matter of fact, just this morning, now that you mention it. I had to meet a few bankers, try to convince them to loan me money for my little outfit here. I know the Depression’s probably close to being over, but I ain’t feeling it here. I need a little help, from time to time.”
“Well,” Chet said, turning around one of the wooden chairs opposite the desk and places his big mitts on the back of it, “you know the shiner, Bart?”
“Sure, he’s a swell joe.”
“Ever get him to do anything extra for you,” Sam said, “like rob a bank?”
Nick sat there a moment, then a broad smile creased his face. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don’t know what you heard but I’m an honest businessman doing honest work.” He gestured outside. “I built this place from the ground up.”
“Using bootlegger money,” Chet growled.
“Never proven.”
Nick sucked air in between his teeth. “You boys ever run a business? If you had, you’d know that in order for a man to do a thing for another man, money has to be exchanged. I get a guy to do a thing for me, on the side, you know, like those men outside, coming to my house and fixing up the porch, I pay’em.”
He spread his hands out wide. “If I get a guy to rob a bank—and I’m never saying that I did—I’m gonna pay that man. So, coppers, you got to ask yourself a question: if the shiner robbed a bank, where’s the shiner’s money?”
Chapter IX
Chet and Sam stood in front of a small, wooden house that had been converted into a doctor’s office. The sign hanging from the porch read “Dr. Jones and Dr. Jones, Psychiatrists.”
“These ain’t even real doctors,” Chet declared.
They had followed up on the other people Bartie remembered from that morning. Duval, the lawyer, was in court. Gil Gibney, reporter for the Imperial City Gazette, was on assignment. That left the doctor, a man called Jones.
“Maybe they’re quacks but one of’em saw Bart this morning. C’mon.” He led the way up the small walkway and entered the office. Off to the side, where a formal dining room should have been, sat a desk. Behind the desk, a young woman, blonde as the sun with eyes radiantly blue, smiled up at them. “Can I help you?”
Her silken voice made Chet forget why he was there. Sam took the pause and led. “Detectives Malone and Martin, we’re here to see Dr. Jones.”
“Which one?”
“The one who got his shoes shined this morning.”
“That would be Dr. Sylvester Jones.”
“By the way, who’s the other Jones?” Sam asked.
“His sister, Calliope. I’ll be right back. Can I ask what this is regarding?”
“Police business,” Sam said.
She took the hint and sashayed out of the room.
“Who in their right mind would name a girl ‘Calliope’?” Chet murmured.
“Probably the same people who named a boy ‘Sylvester’.”
The office was tastefully decorated. Wood paneled wainscoting along the walls gave way to off-white walls on which hung paintings depicting various Americana scenes. A soft scent of pine indicated a recent cleaning.
“Can we help you?” two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, said nearly in unison.
The detectives turned and spied a man and a woman. They stood in the archway to the back of the house. He was coatless, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His blue tie matched his blue trousers. He had a together look that Chet recognized in high-society folks.
If Sylvester Jones displayed a suaveness that could open club doors, his sister, Calliope positively oozed with it. She wore a tasteful brown dress, tailored and cut to hug her sweeping curves. The hem and neckline were both low enough to be demure but just high enough to help men’s imaginations. Her auburn hair, swept back, framed her flawless face. Chet found himself mesmerized by her red lips as she spoke.
Sam glanced at his partner then said, “We’re here to ask him a question. About getting his shoes shined.”
The siblings exchanged a glance. He arched an eyebrow. She smiled and turned. “Why don’t you follow my brother to his office,” she said to Sam, “and I’ll speak with you in mine. Detective?”
Chet found his voice. “Martin. Chet Martin.” He followed Calliope to her office, leaving Sam behind.
The office definitely had a woman’s touch. Fresh flowers fragranted the room. The walls were painted a tasteful pastel green. The armchair next to the reclining couch was stitched with a floral pattern.
“Cigarette?” Calliope offered Chet an open box. She took one and so did he. She lit hers with a leaded glass lighter and held the flame for him. As he lit his, he inhaled not only his first lungful of smoke but also her alluring perfume. He felt a little dizzy. “Do you have any questions for me?”
“Not unless you get your shoes shined down on Eighth.” He chuckled dryly on his own joke. She didn’t. “Actually, we’re looking into a bank robbery.”
“A bank robbery? Why would you come here?”
“We got a suspect who did the deed but claims he doesn’t remember doing it.”
“How does that get you in my office?”
“He’s a shoe shine man and the only thing he remembers is the last few customers. Your brother was one of’em and we’re asking around.” A thought occurred to him. “This is the second time today a man has robbed a bank without remembering anything. The first man’s dead. Got hit when he tried to cross the street.”
“How dreadful. Fleeing?”
“Yup. But I have a question for you. You’re a head shrinker, how do you suppose a man gets to believing the cars he sees ain’t real?”
She let some smoke waft through her nostrils. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.”
Watching the smoke curl around her hair distracted Chet. So did her lips as she inhaled on the cigarette. “Um, yeah, right, so, what I mean to say, is there a drug of some sort that’d make a guy think something ain’t real?”
“Depends on the drug. Opium is a powerful hallucinogen. Users claim to see things that aren’t there all the time.”
Chet shook his head. “Nah, that won’t do. The guy don’t use any drug other’n hooch.”
“Maybe the suspect consumed drugs without him knowing it,” she offered.
“Maybe, but that still don’t explain how he’d go from shining shoes to robbing a bank.”
Calliope sat on the edge of her desk and crossed her legs. Chet was swept up with the swell of them as well as her ample cleavage.
“Detective, there might be another option.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Hypnotism.”
“Hypnotism?” Chet scoffed, stifling a laugh. “I think the subjects would know if you’re trying to hypnotize them.”
She nodded. “They do, when they come here. It’s one of the services we provide. You’d be amazed at how the brain works. Some things, usually painful things, are hidden so deep that the conscious mind buries them. Only through hypnosis is the conscious mind relaxed enough to explore the subconscious.”
Chet gave her a skeptical look although he still remained focused on her lips. “Doctor, that sounds like a bunch of hooey. I’ve seen fortune tellers at the traveling circuses do the same thing and charge the dopes a full quarter. I bet you charge a bit more than that, huh?”
Steel flecked her eyes at that moment, a fact Chet didn’t notice. He still fixated on her lips. It was almost as if he was in a long tunnel and the only light, at the end of the tunnel, were her lips. She continued talking but Chet didn’t hear. Rather, he heard but he didn’t hear. He found himself so engrossed, he didn’t realize he had been staring at Calliope’s mouth so intently until the cigarette burned down to a nub and scorched his fingers.
“Ouch,” Chet said, flinging the burning thing away. It landed on the wooden floor and Chet stamped it out with his shoe. “That’s odd. I don’t usually smoke’em all the way.”
Calliope smiled. “That’s okay, Detective. I take that as a compliment. You must have been so transfixed by my recounting of the positive benefits of hypnotism that you forgot you were smoking.”
Chet frowned, thinking, then said, “Yeah, I guess so.” There was that odor still. “That smell in here, what is it?”
“Lavender,” she replied, stubbing out her own cigarette. “Calms down my clients. Like it?”
“Yeah, it just smells,” he searched for the word, “interesting.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Nah, I think we’re good,” Chet said. He moved over to shake her hand and got another whiff of her perfume. It was intoxicating. He shook her hand and then walked out of the office.
Sam Malone and Sylvester Jones were standing in the lobby chatting. The two detectiv
es exchanged glances and nodded at each other.
“Well, thank y’all for y’all’s time,” Sam said. He opened the outer door and put on his hat. The detectives exited the office and got into their car.
The two Doctor Joneses stood in their office and watched as the car sped away.
“I convinced the small detective I had nothing to do with the robbery today,” Sylvester Jones said. “And you?”
Calliope Jones only smiled. “I guided him in that same direction. Just made mine more urgent.”
“Then we’ve had enough of Imperial City?”
“I think we have.”
Chapter X
“Where ya going?” Sam Malone asked Chet. The big man was behind the wheel and he steered the machine away from the direction of police headquarters.
“Wells Fargo Bank, down on Twelfth.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. I have a hunch about something. I wanna follow up on it.”
“Sure.”
They drove in silence for the five minutes it took to arrive at the branch bank. The building was a low, two-story structure with tan bricks and rust-colored accents. Keeping with the western theme of the name, the sign had a stagecoach on it with a team of horses.
The two detectives exited their car and walked up to the front door. “How do you want to handle this?” Sam asked.
“Same as I always do,” Chet replied. He reached into his coat and withdrew his pistol. “With force.”
He opened the door and charged inside. Sam Malone stood flummoxed on the sidewalk, flatfooted with disbelief. Did his partner just go into the bank with a drawn gun?
A police siren sounded from somewhere close.
Sam rushed inside the bank. Chet stood in the middle of the lobby, gun brandished high in the air. He was shouting orders to everyone around him.
Sam considered his options. One was to try and talk to Chet, figure out why he was doing this. A second option was to see if his excellent marksmanship was good enough to shoot the gun out of Chet’s hand. He discarded that idea almost as soon as he thought it. Too many people around. Someone might get hurt.