Swamp Monster

by C. A. Newsome

  “Cleveland launched an intimidation campaign. Schmidt wouldn’t budge. They burned the club down in 1936. Schmidt remodeled and opened back up. Cleveland escalated to robbing the money trucks. This is where we come to your mystery bones.”

  “He robbed a money truck?”

  “In a way. Malachi worked for Schmidt, opening for the big name acts.”

  “Malachi have a last name?”

  “Not that anyone knows. Nobody knows who he was or where he came from. Everything I’ve said up to this point is fact. What comes next is legend, handed down from guys who stayed here instead of moving out to Vegas. I heard versions of this story from a number of those guys before they died.

  “Some said Malachi worked for the mob, some said he was working for himself. Everyone agrees he made money disappear. Malachi skimmed the receipts and smuggled out what he stole. I figure he decided Pete wouldn’t know the difference, since the trucks were getting robbed anyway.”

  “Where did the money go?”

  “That’s the mystery.”

  “Spawning rumors of lost treasure.”

  Overstreet spread his arms. “Like Al Capone’s vault.”

  “But Malachi fell out with the Syndicate.”

  “Rumor was they had Malachi in a basement on Monmouth Street, permanently manacled by the ankle.”

  “He chewed off his foot like a coyote in a trap?” More likely Malachi paid someone to help him escape and they dummied up the manacle to confuse things.

  “Nobody ever saw him again. I always figured they killed Malachi and put out the story of his survival to provoke Pete. You know, that Malachi betrayed him and was living large on his money. I thought they made up the story about his impossible escape so it wouldn’t look like some stooge got one over on the mob. Now we know the story was true.”

  “What makes you think they didn’t find Malachi’s haul?”

  “Are you familiar with the history of Fabergé eggs?”

  “Vaguely.”

  Overstreet stubbed his cigarette out and went to the shelves, removing an oversized book with a glossy dust jacket. He flipped through the pages, handing the open book to Peter as he pointed at an array of colorful eggs.

  “Fabergé was the royal goldsmith in Russia before the Bolshevik revolution. He created fifty jeweled Easter eggs for family gifts. Eight of the eggs have been missing for decades. Those eggs are the Holy Grail to collectors.”

  Peter had seen similar tchotchkes on eBay but knew better than to say so. He set the book aside.

  “What happened to them?”

  “The Bolsheviks happened. When they executed the Romanovs, they buried the Imperial treasures in a vault in the Kremlin. Fast forward to the Depression. Russia was broke and Stalin decides to sell off the Imperial treasures. No one has laid eyes on them in decades, and the accounting was loose.

  “Armand Hammer—he was like Warren Buffett back then—he brought thousands of Fabergé pieces to the US, acting as an agent for Stalin. Imperial Fabergé eggs were going dirt cheap because nobody had any money. Hammer obtained several of the eggs for his own collection, including Cherub with Chariot. I’m sure he saw it as an excellent investment.

  “About the time the Cleveland Four moved in on the Beverly Hills, Cherub with Chariot fell out of sight. It’s rumored Hammer sold it to Pete Schmidt for a paltry thousand or two.”

  “Interesting. Is there a photo in your book?”

  “There’s only one photo in existence, and it’s useless. The egg appears as a blurred reflection behind another egg. Today, Cherub with Chariot would get fifty million, easy. It’s been eighty years. If anyone had the egg, it would have shown up on the secondary market.”

  “A fifty-million-dollar trinket would burn a hell of a hole in your pocket.”

  “Exactly. The egg isn’t the only artwork that went missing from the club, but it’s the most famous.”

  Overstreet waved his cigarette as he talked. “Malachi steals the egg. Then he realizes selling it would get him killed. He hides the egg until it’s safe to sell. Only, instead of cooling off, the egg gets hotter. Then he dies. And if he hid the egg, who knows what else he hid?”

  “Why not pop the gems, melt the gold?”

  “He’d need a jeweler. Too risky to trust anyone when Malachi’s whereabouts were worth a hundred times more to the big guys than Malachi would pay to dismantle the egg. And Malachi wasn’t a cheap hood. I suspect he would have seen destroying the egg as sacrilegious.”

  “Why stay in the area if people wanted to kill him?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Overstreet put his palms on his thighs and pushed up off his chair, signaling the end of their interview. “That’s all I’ve got. You want my notes? I’m happy to scan them for you.”

  “That would be great.” Peter returned to the bookcases while Overstreet booted up his laptop and unclipped the stack of yellow pages. The scanner hummed. “You writing a book about this?”

  Overstreet shook his head. “It’s a sexy story, but there’s not enough meat on those bones, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  Viola lay in the hall outside Lia’s studio, muzzle on paws as she sent evil looks through the new baby gate. Lia sighed. Despite the barrier, Gypsy huddled behind the huge easel for protection.

  Lia set her palette on the drafting table and crouched, offering a treat. Gypsy bellied out, snagged the goodie. Lia caught her up, rubbing her cheek against the velvety fur, inhaling puppy scent.

  Dog business was dog business, and Viola was making it clear she was queen bitch. There wasn’t much Lia could do about the dynamics except keep them apart. She considered covering the gate with cardboard so Viola couldn’t see in, but the two dogs could still smell each other and it probably wouldn’t work. Moving the gate to the base of the stairs would keep Viola off the first floor, but Viola got along fine with Chewy and she hated to separate them.

  “She doesn’t like me, either, girlfriend. Just remember: You’re younger, you’re prettier, and in six months, you’ll have bigger teeth.”

  Viola’s ears perked. She bolted, scrambling for the front hall seconds before the doorknob rattled. Peter was home.

  Lia stood, cradling Gypsy as she surveyed her newest iris. “Look what your mom did. Isn’t it pretty? What’s that? It needs a highlight on the top petal?”

  From the hall, Peter said, “Everyone’s a critic. Don’t you hate that?”

  “She can say what she wants, as long as she’s constructive.” Peter’s face sagged, a sign of exhaustion. “You look bushed. Put some water on while I clean my brushes. I’ve got a stir-fry ready to go.”

  Water bubbled on the stove when Lia entered the kitchen. The wok was out, the table set. Peter sat, legs in a jock sprawl, sipping a beer while he fed biscuits to the dogs. He said, “I didn’t see any rice.”

  Lia took a packet of dried noodles from the cabinet and turned on the heat under the wok. “We’re having bean thread instead. How did it go with Jay Overstreet?”

  “He was congenial for a man with a hangover.”

  “I bet you enjoyed ruining his morning.” She dropped the tangle of noodles into the water, poking at it with a wooden spoon.

  “I won’t deny it.”

  “What did he say about the missing art?”

  Peter tipped his beer back, took a long pull. “You know anything about Imperial Fabergé eggs?”

  Lia poured a dollop of oil in the wok, added garlic and ginger, and retrieved shrimp and vegetables from the fridge. “He thinks Andrew Heenan had one of the missing eggs?”

  “That’s the theory.”

  She dropped shrimp onto the sizzling spices, chased them with the spoon. “I bet he made it up. Lost art treasures are more impressive than saying Andrew ran off with enough money to buy a three-bedroom house in today’s market.”

  “The book he showed me had some wear on it. He didn’t pick it up yesterday. True or not, he believes it.”

  Lia scooped the cooked shrimp
into a bowl and dumped noodles in a strainer. “Rinse that while I cook. What kept you so busy today? I thought you’d be back hours ago.”

  Peter ambled to the sink, dealt with the noodles. “I need to be on top of the Malachi thing before I talk to Parker tomorrow. After I rousted Overstreet, I spent the day doing research. Then I decided the only person who might know about Andrew’s past is Peggy Redfern, so I stopped by Twin Towers.”

  Lia splashed rice wine and soy sauce on top of her frying veggies, stirred in cornstarch, added the shrimp. “How did that go?”

  Peter handed her plated noodles. “No better than last time. She asked if I was a Redfern. I said no. She patted my hand and said I looked like a very nice man anyway. Then I asked if she remembered Andrew and she said, ‘Does he work here? This is a very nice place.’”

  Lia turned from the stove. “Will you try to talk to her again?”

  Peter sighed. “I don’t know if it’s worth the effort.”

  Pretending Lia didn’t see him, Peter snuck a last scrap of bean thread to Viola under the table and pushed away from his empty plate.

  “How was the gang this morning? Terry must have had something to say.”

  Lia sliced two bits off her last piece of shrimp, handing one to the puppy warming her lap and the other to Chewy where he lay at her feet. “I didn’t go. I took the kids for a hike instead.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Yeah? Tell me Jay Overstreet wasn’t a convenient excuse for you to avoid the park.”

  Peter shrugged. “Guilty.”

  “Did your research turn up anything?”

  “Mostly that Newport’s gambling days are a big tourist attraction. They even have gangster tours.”

  “Really? Sounds like fun.”

  “Maybe it was the way I was raised, but it rubs me the wrong way, glamorizing the murder and corruption that went along with gambling and prostitution as if it’s something to be proud of. Nudging and winking at it all without considering the cost in human lives. I don’t understand how anyone could consider something so shameful their glory days.”

  “Your moral compass is one of the things I adore about you.”

  Peter snorted.

  “Will you look for Pete Schmidt’s family?”

  “According to Overstreet’s notes, Schmidt outlived his only son. No evidence his son had children. There may be distant cousins, but they’re not likely to be involved.”

  “Will you try to track them down?”

  “Cincinnati Bell has over three hundred listings for Schmidt. That doesn’t account for folks who ditched their landlines for cell phones, or female members of the family who changed names.”

  Lia forked up a bit of broccoli, holding it away from Gypsy. “Alma’s a whiz on Ancestry.com and the Schmidt connection is public knowledge. I could ask her to look.”

  “Overstreet has been there and done that. I’d put money on it.”

  “Misdirection?”

  “More like a snipe hunt.”

  “Why are you convinced he’s misleading you?”

  “He’s a liar, for one.”

  “Oh?” With no more food forthcoming, Gypsy gave a disgruntled chuff and curled into Lia’s lap.

  “He made a production of copying his notes on a scanner and printing them out for me.”

  “And?”

  “He wrote them on a yellow legal pad with the pages paper-clipped together. Paper fades over time. This was too yellow to be as old as he claimed, and paper that’s been clipped for years will have a permanent dent. The penmanship is too uniform for notes he compiled over a period of years.

  “He rewrote his notes after he called Channel 7. He knew someone would ask and he wanted to have something ready when that happened. I have to wonder what he left out.”

  “Why would he leave anything out?”

  “The benign theory is he’s protecting his research for the book he says he isn’t writing. And the non-benign theory is he’s up to something.”

  “Such as?”

  “If Malachi’s egg exists, he’s in the best position of anyone to find it. He must have hundreds of hours of interviews and research. The answer might be in his files. He buys time by fobbing redacted notes off on me.”

  “If he wants the egg, he can have it.”

  “You don’t want a fifty-million-dollar egg?”

  “Have you seen one?”

  “He showed me photos.”

  “Overly embellished and boring, like wedding cake. A triumph of craft over art. Tiffany stained glass is much prettier.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for Christmas. It’ll be easier on my wallet.”

  “Could he be protecting someone?”

  Peter raised an eyebrow. “The real killer?”

  “What if it’s more than that? What if he did it? He’s old enough, isn’t he? That would explain his interest in old crimes.”

  “Overstreet kills a man when he’s barely out of school and makes his life’s work taunting the police with their failures, with this as his finest hour?”

  “I see what you mean. Too Hollywood.”

  “You saw him on television. He’s a skinny guy. You think he was ever capable of hauling a dead body over a hundred feet of rough terrain in the dark?”

  A Plan

  Sunday, August 21, 1938

  Ding-donging became a regular event at the BH. The Cleveland Syndicate must have had an endless supply of goons willing to wag their willies because it was always a new crew that came to do the dirty deed. That meant Pete’s security force never knew who it would be.

  Pete turned the tables on them by comping dinner for everyone splattered with urine. The potential for harassment added a frisson of danger to an evening at the BH. Add a free meal and the BH drew record crowds. Record crowds meant heavy competition to play on BH stages, and a willingness for entertainers to tolerate the interruptions.

  Mal was the first to instruct his lighting tech to spotlight any men getting on their chairs, at which point, Mal stopped his act and announced, “Who’s getting a free dinner tonight?” Staff had to identify those customers quickly, because some folks attempted to splash themselves with urine they’d carried in with them in order to claim a meal. It became fashionable to sit near dangerous-looking stag men.

  Pete was bearing up fine until the Syndicate decided to play hardball and hijacked one of the trucks his men shoveled money into after closing. Stu found the empty truck and the severely beaten driver and guards hours later.

  The following afternoon, Mal sat in Pete’s office. The big man puffed violently on his cigar while his gears turned. Finally he spoke.

  “Stu, how much did we lose last night?”

  Stu, leaning against the wall, lit a cigarette. “Over forty grand. It was a good night.”

  Pete pointed with his cigar. “They don’t need to buy me out. They can let me do the work and take everything. We’ll have to send more guards with the trucks.”

  “Someone will get killed that way,” Mal said.

  Stu snorted. “You got a better idea, kid?”

  “Maybe.”

  Pete sat up, giving Mal a hard look. “Lay it out.”

  “Dalitz doesn’t want the BH because it’s classy—or that’s not the main reason. He wants it because you rake in cash.”

  “Tell me something new.”

  “Until they robbed that truck, they had no way to know how much you were making. What if the trucks carry less money than they expect? What if we convince them the BH is a money pit, and the trucks are for show?”

  Pete lifted his head. “Send out empty trucks? And what am I gonna do with the money?”

  “I’m a magician. I make things disappear.”

  Day 17

  Monday, May 6, 2019

  David Bowie’s Fame sounded from Lia’s pocket as she opened the corral gate. Chewy shot off for his perimeter run while Gypsy squirmed in her Moby wrap. Lia juggled her travel mug and phone, tapping David’s photo on the screen
while continuing across the park.

  “You’re up early.”

  “You know me, I’m all about that worm.”

  She stroked Gypsy’s head. “Stop bragging about your sex life.”

  “Speaking of which, when are you and Peter coming over for dinner? Bob is dying to meet you and I want to try my mac and cheese on someone who grew up with the genuine article.”

  Lia worried her lip as she thought. “Peter’s tied up with his bones.”

  “Sounds kinky.”

  Not with Peter spending every evening tracking bogus tips. “It so isn’t. Seriously.”

  “Your man works too hard.”

  “They’re supposed to reassign that case today. Maybe we can come Saturday? I know you didn’t call me up at—” Gypsy sniffed Lia’s phone while she checked the time. “—Seven forty-three in the morning to invite us to dinner.”

  “Where is my head? Zoe called last night, but I didn’t want to interrupt your weekend.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  “Good news or dubious news first?”

  “Good news, please.”

  “You can cash that check.”

  “Yay. What made her highness decide?”

  “Renée’s admiration of Zoe’s excellent taste sealed it. Our goddess expects her usual fee.”

  A woman of considerable influence, Renée Solomon promoted Lia whenever she could. Her usual fee was gossip.

  “And the dubious news?”

  “You know Renée. She rhapsodized about that portrait you painted of Dakini. Now Zoe wants one.”

  Dakini was Renée’s champion collie. “Drop the other shoe, David.”

  “She has no pets, though Travis often behaves like an animal.”

  Travis was two.

  “No.”

  “You can charge what you like. Toss in a nuisance fee. It’s not like she’ll notice.”

  “No children. It’s in our contract.”

  “I’ll forgo my commission. It will make my life ever so much easier.”

  “And if I do, it will get around that I paint children. No, and no. Your desperation is your problem.”