Born to Lose

by James G. Hollock

  Hoss hightailed it out of the post office without a stamp. He’d have quitted Sioux Falls altogether, but he’d already plunked down money to stay the night. Gone was Hoss’s breezy mood: They’ll never stop looking for me, he thought. Just like Butch and Sundance. After nightfall, Hoss hit another gas station. The sole attendant not only got robbed, but Hoss punched him in the face for good measure.

  In the command centers in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and in FBI offices across the U.S., there was nary a word. Then Hoss slipped up.

  13

  “Pookie?”

  Yes,” Penn responded.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Could you get in touch with Jo for me?”

  “I probably could call her up.”

  “Do you see much of her?”

  “Yeah,” Penn said, “she comes over.”

  “Okay, give her this number and tell her to call me. Tell her to call right away or I’m going to bug out.”

  Penn wrote 847-9948, and read it back. “That right?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Tell her to call me right away. I’m in a hotel under the name William Young.”

  Walter Penn—family man, steelworker, and brother-in-law to Hoss’s mistress—had a choice to make. He and his wife, Connie, had not called the authorities after Hoss’s earlier call to them. Jodine was, after all, Connie’s sister. Still, things had gone too far. Something had to be done. Penn called Pittsburgh’s FBI office. When Agent John Porter answered, Penn said who he was then … “Stanley Hoss just got off the phone with me.” Porter knocked over his coffee reaching for a pen.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes, I’m acquainted with Stan and I know his voice.”

  “Did he tell you where he is,” Porter asked.

  “No, I don’t know if he’s around here or not. The connection was clear, but I had a sense it came from a phone booth. There was a funny noise in the background, like traffic, no, not like traffic—there wasn’t any break in the sound. Maybe like a factory hum, something like that.”

  Penn also told Porter that “Pookie” is his nickname and Hoss refers to him by that name. Porter advised Penn to relay Hoss’s message to Jodine but to call him back when he’d done so.

  Minutes after he hung up with Penn and before Penn had the opportunity to follow his instructions, Hoss fed his coin phone dime after dime.

  Jodine’s mother, Violet Fawkes, answered her phone. The caller was calm and unhurried. He did not offer a greeting but said only, “I’d like to talk to Jo.” Violet hurried to the front porch where her daughter was sitting. “Jodine, Jodine! Hurry up, Stan is on the phone.”

  Jo rushed into the living room, heart beating wildly.

  “Hello.”

  “Ah, Cookie,” said Hoss.

  “Huh?”

  “Your phone’s tapped, huh? Well, gotta go.”

  On his end, Hoss returned the receiver to its cradle.

  The FBI swarmed in on this clue, the only definite one they’d had since Hoss was seen with Lori Mae at the Will-O-Motel in Tiffin, Ohio. “But that,” groaned Agent Porter, “was over a week ago. Now here we are, October 3. Something’s got to break!” Porter turned to two special agents. “Get to the phone company. I want this number located, now!”

  Agent Porter sat with Jodine at her kitchen table. She explained the phone number given her by Pookie Penn—847-9948—was not familiar to her. She dialed that number but it didn’t go through. However, she revealed to Porter secret arrangements between her and Hoss.

  “During the time I’ve dated Stan,” explained Jodine, “he’d lots of times call my sister Connie, or Pookie, and ask them to deliver a message to me. Sometimes people would be looking for Stan, ya know, so we got some private ways for me to call him if he needed to hide where he was.”

  “Okay, so how did it work?”

  “Well, the first thing was I’d call the number given to me, but if Stan wasn’t at that number I’d use the code we devised. The first step was to take the first number of the prefix on my telephone, look on the Brackenridge telephone directory cover and find the correct prefix. So when I got this number from Pookie, the only prefix number starting with the number eight is the prefix 828, which is the Oakmont area, where you guys said Stan shot the cop. The last four numbers Pookie gave me were 9948, but by our code I would reverse them, so the right number Stan wanted me to call is 828-8499.”

  “And you called?” said an amazed Porter.

  “Yes, but when I did a man answered. I asked if Stan was there. The man said I had the wrong number, so I asked whose residence I was calling, and I was told Mr. Verasik lived there. I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “All right. Pookie and you are sure no area code was given with the number?

  “Nope, I told you the exact number I got.”

  Porter gave instructions to another agent to talk to this Mr. Verasik anyway, just to be sure the man knew absolutely nothing. When Porter again addressed Jodine, she told him there was something else that might help.

  “Me and Stan had another code in case I couldn’t reach him with the phone code.”

  Christ, Porter thought, maybe the CIA ought to hire this pair. “Another code? Tell me about it.”

  “Okay, but first, I’ve been thinking again why he might call me ‘Cookie’ when I answered the phone. Stan used to sing a song that had the words cookie and California in it. The words for the song were either “Cookie California” or “California Cookie,” but I don’t remember the title or any other words. He never called me Cookie, ya know, like, as a name, so that’s the best I can say about that.”

  “I know you’re trying. Now, what about this other code?”

  “Well, see, I actually worked this out myself and gave it to Stan. He used it with me on several occasions. Trouble is, I don’t have a copy of the code but I’ll try to remember it for you.”

  “Good, Jodine. Do your best.”

  “Uh, let’s see … we had the numbers one through ten and each number meant a word …” Jodine asked for Porter’s paper and pen then wrote the following:

  1—place 2—okay 3—please 4—know 5—I love you very much 6—trouble 7—you 8—home 9—going 99—coming 0—meet

  Jodine slid the paper half way to Porter, at an angle, so they could both read it.

  “To figure this one out,” Jodine explained, “I would look at the number Stan gave to Pookie to give to me, 847-9948. I’d take the first three prefix numbers and reverse them, then I’d decode the numbers for the message.”

  Porter and Jodine reviewed the numbers and corresponding words. Decoded, it read: “YOU KNOW HOME COMING KNOW HOME.” Jodine said that sometimes she would have to improvise and fill in any missing words in relation to places or previous conversations. Mixing in that Hoss had called her Cookie, she told Porter she felt the message Hoss tried to get to her was: YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU. AM COMING HOME FROM CALIFORNIA.

  “Jodine?”

  Jodine raised her eyes to meet Porter’s.

  “You know what Stan has hanging over him. It’s very bad. If he was out in California, do you think he’d come back here to see you?”

  “Yes, he would, maybe … he might. He does crazy things.”

  “Does he love you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Jodine’s eyes went to the ceiling then to her mother sitting across the room and finally to her hands clasped in her lap.

  “My two boys are by him. I love him … but I’m so confused now, with all that’s happening.”

  Jodine suddenly got confrontational. “And what if none of this is so? I didn’t hear of no eyewitness said Stan shot the cop … I don’t know where the woman and baby are. Maybe Stan don’t neither!”

  “You’re right, Jodine,” Porter said softly, “but that’s why we have to talk with him, get his side of it.”

  Jodine’s mother sat mute, eyes down in her small
, darkened living room. The phone rang beside her. She made no motion to answer it so after the third ring one of the agents picked it up, listened briefly then put the receiver down. He walked halfway to Porter before getting his attention, motioning with his eyes he’d like to talk with Porter on the porch.

  “What ya got?” said Porter.

  The agent wore a broad grin. “We got it!”

  “What, got what, dammit?”

  “The number, the phone number … the location. Stanley Hoss is in Jackson, Minnesota.”

  The number had been traced to a phone booth on the property of the Skyline Motel. The Jackson police had the best shot of getting there the quickest. They were warned that Hoss might well be in one of the motel rooms and that he was very dangerous. An undercover officer went first to the motel office and gave a detailed description.

  “Yes,” the clerk said, “that man’s in room 22, toward the end. Got here about three hours ago, he did.”

  The place was surrounded. Plans were whispered. At a set signal, police busted open the door with a battering ram, yelling, “Don’t move! Down! Down! Police!”—but the room was empty. Not a GTO in sight either.

  The lawmen knew for a dead certainty that Hoss was no longer in Jackson, but they were only momentarily disheartened. The errant fugitive couldn’t be too far down the road.

  Which road, though? Lawmen and G-men pulled out maps and the guesswork began, but this time the hunt would be aided by a critical piece of intelligence: Hoss was bound for Pennsylvania. If not a sure bet, it was thought likely true. Jodine and her secret codes were taken as credible.

  The command centers were again abuzz. The FBI chief in Pittsburgh, Ian MacLennan, conferred with Agent Porter and area police chiefs, and was in constant communication with his Midwest counterparts. MacLennan also called Washington, D.C., as J. Edgar Hoover had demanded any news and updates.

  The responsibility to guess correctly and cover all the bases fell primarily to MacLennan. According to kidnap victim Karen Maxwell, Hoss had mentioned Canada as an escape route. As far back as a week ago, all border-crossing points had been provided with wanted posters. Since Jackson, Minnesota, was so far north, close to the border, the Canadian posts and the famed Mounties were alerted once again. Yet, if Hoss was indeed set on returning to western Pennsylvania from Jackson, he couldn’t very well shoot straight east, as he’d run smack into Lake Michigan. No, to clear its southern shore, Hoss would have to drop a couple of hundred miles south, then proceed east.

  MacLennan thought hard. His critical judgment was that Hoss would turn south from Minnesota, enter Iowa, and pick up Interstate 80 east at Des Moines. This would take him by Chicago, where his brother, Harry, was reported to live, and then on to Cleveland, from which it was an easy drive into Pittsburgh.

  While this entire route had to be covered—a gargantuan task—MacLennan’s top priority was to ensure that Hoss was caught sooner rather than later; the longer he remained at large, the greater the likelihood that he would again kidnap, rape, or murder someone, not to mention any robberies he must commit to finance his flight.

  “If Hoss is coming back to Pennsylvania, he is at this moment in Iowa,” said Ian macLennan from his tenth-floor office in downtown Pittsburgh. “I want all our people and every P.D. in the state over notified by phone, teletype, and posters. Make sure the description of the GTO goes out again.” Pittsburgh’s FBI chief glanced at his watch, then at the half-dozen colleagues gathered round. “It’s 1:00 A.M. Saturday already. Let’s go.”

  After Hoss’s truncated call to Jodine, his sixth sense told him not to stay the night in Jackson; he was long gone by the time the cops charged into his motel room. He recognized that returning to Pennsylvania would be far more dangerous for him than any other plan he’d contrived, but his mind was made up. He would get close to home, contact Jodine. She and their two kids would meet him at some clandestine spot and from there they’d speed off to a fresh start, a new life. He was also intent on a little payback. There were people he felt had done him wrong.

  Hoss took the first road south he could find. In no time he was in Iowa. Two hours later, he pulled up at Fort Dodge and checked into the Starlite Motel. At 1:00 A.M., as Ian MacLennan ordered Iowa be scoured, Hoss was fast asleep.

  . . .

  Hoss’s arrival in Iowa was not the first occasion such a blackguard had darkened the door of America’s heartland. One of these was federal suspect Tommy Carroll, who’d come to Waterloo, Iowa, on June 7, 1934. Unaware the police were on to him after receiving a tip his car was filled with guns and stolen license plates, Carroll had parked along Lafayette Street directly across from old city hall, which, as everyone but Carroll knew, doubled as the police station. After Detectives Emil Steffen and P. E. Walker spotted the gangster’s car, a surprised Carroll heard, “You are under arrest!”

  The robber, trim and fit, cockily said, “Like hell I am,” jumped from his roadster and—in thirties parlance—reached for his “heater” inside his lapel, but Detective Walker, aged fifty-seven but sturdy, sent Carroll sprawling with a blow to the jaw. Carroll regained his feet, and both detectives opened fire. Four bullets assured Carroll had breathed his last. For ending the gangster’s career, Detectives Steffen and Walker were commended on the floor of Congress. (Sharp, these Waterloo cops.) Sage commentators, lumping Carroll in with others of like character, offered, “Died as they lived … by the gun,” and the inevitable, “Tommy Carroll met his Waterloo at Waterloo.” Now, thirty-five years after Carroll’s demise, Waterloo would play center stage for another federal suspect.

  . . .

  By 8:00 A.M. on a sunny Saturday, October 4, Stanley Hoss had made a last check of his motel room in Fort Dodge before driving south. At the village of Kalo, he swung east onto Route 20 and kept this course through Cedar Falls, after which he soon glimpsed signs for the next place down the road—Waterloo.

  Even though he hadn’t gone very far for the day, Hoss decided to stop at Waterloo. He’d check in somewhere, then spend the remainder of the day and evening enjoying hot meals and relaxing; maybe he’d knock off a store as well. Hoss could not know that his and Jo’s secret codes were no longer secret, or that throughout the night and all morning long a blizzard of posters and information about him had descended on every community, large and small, throughout the Hawkeye state. In ignorant bliss, Hoss followed Route 20 to the west side of town.

  Along Washington Street, Hoss spied the Travelers Motel, which featured colored TV and air conditioning. The motel units were situated above the street, obscured from passing autos.

  At 1:20 P.M., motel clerk Pat Heidler greeted her latest customer.

  “Hi, pretty day, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yeah,” said Stanley Hoss. “This is nice, the motel an’ all. Seems quiet.”

  The fresh-faced young woman appraised the man: a few years older than herself, not perfectly handsome but by no means hard to look at, hair combed, soft-spoken, and wearing a clean white tee shirt. He was alone, likely just passing through, Pat guessed. Weren’t they all?

  “Yes, it is quiet. Have you been to Waterloo before?”

  “Been in Iowa, but not here.”

  “Your accent’s a little different. You’re from … ?”

  “Back east, Pennsylvania.”

  Hoss rested his hands on the counter. Pat noticed his fingernails were trimmed and clean. His upper body was nicely proportioned, his arms muscular and well defined, like those of a gymnast. Absent was a wedding band. She brushed a strand of hair from her forehead—a subtle feminine gesture.

  “I’m guessing you’d like a room then?”

  “I would. How much is that?”

  “Just one night, or will you stay longer in our fair city?”

  “I’ll see, but just the night for now.”

  “Then that will be eight dollars,” Pat said pleasantly, “plus twenty-four cents for the governor.” Pat pointed out the front window. “By the way, see that big house there? That,
we like to inform our customers, is the old governor’s residence from thirty or forty years ago. Mr. DeLapp, who owns this whole place now, lives there and added the motel rooms to the property. In fact, Mr. DeLapp right now is out test-driving a car I’m thinking to buy.”

  “That so?” Hoss said. “I know a little about cars myself.” He then gave Pat the low-down on different makes and advised her on what to look for in a new car. Pat wouldn’t have minded prolonging the conversation, but she couldn’t think of anything more to say without appearing forward. She reluctantly opened the registration book and watched as the Pennsylvanian signed William Young.

  “Uh, one more thing,” Hoss said.

  “Yes?” Pat wondered if he would ask her out.

  “Do you know if there’s a sporting goods store nearby?”

  Pat, disappointed, gave him directions to Colburn Sports Shop, a few blocks away.

  Hoss parked the GTO in front of room number 7. He put his belongings inside, changed into a white dress shirt, then left the motel for Colburn’s, presumably to purchase ammunition. He had trouble finding a parking spot near the store so, deciding to come back later, Hoss continued toward downtown Waterloo. Along East Fifth he came to a café, the Maywood Lunch, parked the GTO—the most sought-after car in America—in the Maywood lot, and in the process made the very same mistake gangster Tommy Carroll had thirty-five years earlier: Hoss parked directly across the street from Waterloo’s city hall—and police department—which, since Carroll’s day, had been moved from Lafayette Street to Fifth. Like Carroll, Hoss was unaware that he had parked so near the police department; its sign was around the corner, out of his sight.

  Hoss kept his gun with him at all times. When he was driving, the gun was beside him or just under the seat. When he was walking around, the gun was tucked in his belt, covered by shirt or jacket. In a room at night, he slept with the gun beside him on the mattress, on the bed stand, or under his pillow. When he showered, it was on a ledge of the tub. He would not be taken by surprise, and mercy on any copper’s soul who did not kill him first.