by Julie Hyzy
“What?”
“He had your business card. Gave it to Eva and got her all flustered. You have any idea who he is?”
“He came to see me yesterday, too. But—” I’d been about to say that he’d been killed, but George might not approve of my leaking information on an open investigation. Greco interrupted me anyway.
“You know, with a first name like Alex, he had a shot at it. Eva didn’t understand him too well, so she called me. I took one look at the guy and knew he was trouble.” He shook his head, as though reliving the scene in his mind. “I kicked him out.”
“I’m sorry he bothered you, Mr. Greco.”
“What do you think he wanted?” Greco had been the poster boy for keeping the hazing story out of the news. He’d threatened more than once to sue the station for libel if we gave his town a bad name.
I shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
“He came to see you, managed to finagle some of your business cards, and he didn’t tell you what he wanted?” He shook his head. “Alex, you and I might not see eye to eye on many things, but I don’t see you as a person who suffers fools gladly.”
“Which is the reason for my trip up here today,” I said, lifting my gaze to stare out over the top of his car. I straightened up and gazed across the expansive cul-de-sac. “You and the Prendergasts are the last ones on my list. I wanted to ask them if they’d seen him.”
“They didn’t.”
I felt myself grimace. “How do you know?”
“They’ve been out of town. But I’ll check with their house-sitter and let you know if he stopped by there. You’re sure you don’t know what he wanted?”
“All I know is he asked for information on the hazing story. But he wouldn’t tell me why.”
Greco fixed me with a stare. “That story should never have aired in the first place.”
I didn’t want to go down that path with him again.
Grabbing the door of the Jaguar with both hands, I leaned in to talk. “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” I said, hoping I left smudges, “I kicked him out, too.”
Detective Lulinski had a tidbit for me when I visited him later to check in on the investigation. We traded. I let him know about Birdlo’s visit to the north shore, and he gave me the fellow’s real name—Heath Steinberg. Just as I was about to say that it sounded familiar, Lulinski told me why it did.
“Remember that California bank robbery gone bad, back in the mid-seventies?”
“Not really.” I smiled. “I was probably in diapers.”
He frowned. “The Gang of Five, as they were called, tried to rob the First Bank of Los Angeles, hoping to fund their anti-government power organization.”
“Didn’t they make a TV movie about that or something?” I asked, as the story came back to me.
He nodded. “Yeah. Ended with a big shootout with the LA SWAT team. All of the gang dead at the scene except one.” He stared at me for emphasis. “Your buddy, Heath Steinberg.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. Went away for twenty years, give or take.”
“And showed up here. Why?”
Detective Lulinski snorted. “Maybe we’ll never know.”
I scoured the internet, looking for mentions of the bank, the name Steinberg, anything that might give me a hint about Heath’s motive for seeking me out. Huge news at the time, the robbery had since been foreshadowed by bigger and more terrifying stories, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine murders, and the attack on America on September eleventh. No one had seen fit to transcribe old articles into the internet’s stores of information.
I headed to the library.
Heavyset and tall, with strawberry blond hair and sunny, clear skin, Gwen conducted her reference librarian responsibilities with fierce tenacity. Working with her on a project was always a dream. I’d learned my lesson early in my career at Midwest; if Gwen wasn’t available, I’d wait or come back. Lucky for me, today she stood behind the u-shaped reference desk, paging through a catalog of books coming available for purchase. When she saw me coming, she grinned.
“What do you have for me today, Alex?”
I explained. Nodding, she made a few comments about being in college at that time; she clearly remembered the event. When I finished, she tapped her lower lip, then guided me back to the microfilm tables. I sat at the machine and timed her. She was back in less than a minute and a half.
“There you are,” she said, pulling up archived articles on microfilm. She shook her head. “One of these days, I’d like to get all of this online. But for now…” She let the sentence hang, with a shrug of her shoulders. “Okay, see if any of this helps. I’ll look for more.”
It helped, all right. A clean-shaven Heath Steinberg stared back at me, his face backlit by the microfilm machine’s inner glow. Even as a young man, he hadn’t been handsome. At first I thought I wouldn’t have recognized him if it hadn’t been for his name in caption beneath his face, but once I saw him, there was no doubt. Something about the eyes was familiar. But in this black-and-white newspaper picture he had dark hair and a weak chin. No wonder he’d grown the beard.
Altogether, Gwen had accessed five articles for me. Two sensationalistic stories had been written the day after the bank heist took place. The three remaining covered the immediate days that followed, then, months later, the trial.
The Gang of Five. Four dead. Heath the sole survivor of the attack on the First Bank of Los Angeles. The other young men, two black, two white, had been shot while trying to flee. The trigger man, a young black who’d shot and killed the bank guard, had made it almost to the door before he’d been killed himself, the bullet streaking through his body to shatter the wall-length window behind him.
Heath had been the cash man. The smallest of the group and the youngest, he’d taken advantage of the pandemonium inside the bank lobby and had nearly escaped with the bag in hand. He’d made it out of the building and had even gotten halfway down the adjacent alleyway before he’d been apprehended.
The money, more than seventy-thousand dollars, had never been recovered. Heath claimed he’d thrown it into a garbage container, but despite a thorough search, it had never been found. News of the robbery had spread so quickly that looters descended on the alley and it was anyone’s guess where the money had finally ended up.
The authorities were baffled. The marked cash had simply disappeared. After collecting statements from people on the street who’d watched Heath run, including an elderly woman with bad eyesight and a young woman on her way home after work, they’d come to the conclusion that the money was gone for good.
Heath was found guilty and sent to a maximum security prison for forty years. He’d been paroled after twenty.
I shook my head.
The last article, a small two-paragraph mention in the California-area newspaper where the bank job had taken place, mentioned Steinberg’s parole and that the ex-con had had no comment for the paper, other than he was going to get out of the state of California as soon as humanly possible.
And now, seven years later, he was dead on a Chicago street.
Gwen brought me another reference. Again, very small. This one from the 1980s.
The marked money stolen in the 1974 bank heist which gave Heath Steinberg his shot at infamy, had begun to circulate. With Heath incarcerated, it couldn’t be him. Authorities were quoted as being “puzzled.”
I wrinkled my brow at the words. So, somebody had the money. And by the date—nearly ten years after the job had been pulled—that somebody knew to hold onto the money for a long time before starting to spend it. And back then, seventy grand was a fortune.
I called Detective Lulinski’s office when I got home. “Any chance of me getting to see those crime scene pictures again?”
“Sure, Alex. What’s up?”
“Not positive, but I looked at them kind of quickly the other night. Just want to cover all my bases.”
“When are you goin
g to do that story you always promise me?”
“You mean the one about the Chicago Police Department, featuring the brave and handsome Detective Lulinski?”
“That’s the one.” I could hear him laugh. “I’ve been practicing my ‘sincere look’ for the camera, you know.”
“Well,” I said, dragging the word out. “If I put you up there you’ll be fighting the women off. Don’t know if I like that idea too much.”
He laughed. “Yeah right.” I heard someone in the background call his name. “Gotta run. Tell you what. I’ll leave copies of the pictures up front. Along with information on the type of gun used to kill him. I’ll put your name on them. Just clear it with me before you use anything.”
“Hey, Bass,” I said, barging into my boss’s office first thing the next morning. “What are the chances of you springing for a little excursion?”
Philip J. Sebastian raised his head from the report he’d been studying. He could have been cute, in an older man sort of way, with his little-boy haircut and his bright hazel eyes, but the perpetual scowl on his face took away from the effect. He waited.
“I need to go to Georgia.”
“What’s in Georgia?”
I tucked my hair behind my right ear. I’d been tempted to prevaricate. What I had in terms of story, was nebulous at best, useless at worst. This might not go anywhere. But I’d learned to depend on my gut and right now it was telling me that Heath Birdlo’s boast about a big story might not be all bluster.
I decided to tell Bass the truth and hope for a leap of faith on his part. I hadn’t let him down in the past. Not very often, at least. “Heath Steinberg’s mother.”
“The dead guy?”
I nodded, taking a seat at his desk, even though he hadn’t offered. “She’s still alive in a nursing home. I guess when Steinberg got out of prison, he decided to get out of California, and set up a biker shop near a town called Milledgeville, Georgia. Brought his mother out when he could.”
“How sweet,” Bass said, rolling his eyes. “How’s this help us?”
“There’s a piece missing from the puzzle.”
“Alex.” Bass’s voice was weary and impatient. “There’s no puzzle. Weirdo comes to see you. Fish out of water in a big city. Gets killed when he wanders into a rough area. End of story.”
“Not the end of the story,” I said, holding up a finger to quiet him. Every once in a while Bass backs down when I need him to. He did now, and I took the opportunity to bring him up-to-date.
I mentioned that also wanted to poke around a little in the small town, to find out who Heath’s friends were. Maybe they’d be able to give me an idea of what was on the guy’s agenda. And I finished my argument with Birdlo’s prediction about this being the biggest story of my career.
My words came out faster and I could feel my momentum grow as I spoke. Putting it all together like this sounded right. Even though I’d come in here doubting that Bass would approve my trip, the puzzle seemed clearer now that I’d put it out there for him.
I waited.
“That’s it?” he said.
I held his gaze, silently willing that the instant deflation I felt wouldn’t be communicated through my expression. I clenched my teeth. If he was in the mood for a fight, he’d get one. “That’s plenty,” I said. “I have a feeling about this one, Bass.” My voice held a warning.
The stare-down contest continued. Finally, he broke, glancing down at the papers on his desk. “Give accounting the details and write it up.” His eyes shot back up to meet mine. “But you better come up with something we can use.”
I arranged my face into careful nonchalance. “You got it.”
Mrs. Steinberg turned out to be a tiny woman, round-headed with white hair so sparse, she was almost bald.
“My legs ain’t worked since nineteen-ninety-seven,” she said. Her voice had that elderly lady cackle, and she lifted her claw-like pale hand to wipe spit from the corner of her mouth. I could tell that her eyesight was poor as she seemed to focus first on my shoulder, then past me, then at the top of my head as she spoke. One blue eye had an enormous black pupil, the other just a pinpoint. It made talking to her feel lopsided.
“You knew my Heath, did you?” She asked me for the second time.
“I met him,” I said, cautiously.
“You saw him, huh? The day before he died?”
I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see the movement. “Yes.” I cleared my throat. “The day before.”
Her skinny freckled hand reached out to grab me. I moved closer to help her aim. With surprising strength, she gripped my forearm. “You saw him last,” she said. “You saw him and I didn’t.”
Tears leaked out her eyes.
I cleared my throat again. “Do you have any idea what Heath was doing in Chicago?”
Her tears stopped and she scooched her shoulders, as though gearing up for a talk. “Well, I tell you,” she said conspiratorially, “he came to visit me right before he left. Said he was going to make things right. I asked him what he was talking about.” She wiped her nose and tried to focus on me again. “But he only said that it was a long time coming, and that when he was done I wouldn’t have to worry about nothing again.”
I was silent, trying to process her words, as she continued.
“I asked him what all I had to be worried about, and he just said to never mind and remember that real soon it was all going to be worth it.”
“Did Heath have any good friends?”
“Nope. The whole Gang of Seven—gone. ‘Cept for Heath, that is. He told me.”
“Seven? Don’t you mean the Gang of Five?”
She waved an age-spotted hand, dismissing my correction. “Five, six, seven. Whatever.”
I pressed my point. “Isn’t there anyone Heath might have talked to about his trip to Chicago?”
She fixed me with a strange look. “Didn’t Joyce go with him?”
“Joyce who?”
“Don’t know her last name. His girlfriend. They lived together. You know. In sin.” She wiggled her eyebrows. A couple of elderly women shuffled by. Mrs. Steinberg took notice of them, then asked me if there was anything else I needed. She smiled like a two-year-old and grabbed my arm again. “Because jelly bean bingo’s about to start and on account of it’s my birthday next week, I get to be the caller.”
She’d gone from curious to grieving to eager in the span of ten minutes. But at least I’d gotten a name to follow up with.
Out in the vestibule, I could hear Mrs. Steinberg call out “I—24” in her crackly voice and I heard three other voices shout, “Louder.”
On a hunch, I pulled my phone up and searched for a local address for Steinberg. Nothing. I tried Birdlo. Two listings. One Thomas, one Joyce.
“Bingo!” someone shouted.
Exactly, I thought.
The solid front door was open, and hot air from inside the small boxy house poured out through the dusty screen door in front of me. I’d left the city heat of Chicago in July for Georgia’s southern exposure and I felt every degree of the change. I wiped my forehead and the back of my hand came up wet.
Pressing the doorbell, I’d heard the buzzing chime over the TV noises, but there was no movement inside. “Hello?” I called. Not that I was overeager to get into this hot house.
Wearing a black T-shirt and black biker shorts, a woman shuffled into the living room, clearly sizing me up as she came forward. She was shaped like a potato with appendages. Her arms were skinny, and it seemed unlikely that her puny legs could support her tight round body. But they did. She dragged on a cigarette. “Yeah?”
“Are you Joyce Birdlo?”
“Who wants to know?”
Her raspy voice held more than a little sass. She took another drag and held it between two fingers up at her side, cocking her hip and resting her elbow on it.
“My name is Alex St. James.”
Her tiny eyes widened enough for me to know she recognized my name. �
��That so?” She hesitated for a moment, then shoved open the door.
The house inside was about what I’d expected. Two mismatched sofas, one ripped, the other stained and sagging, no carpet over the plywood floor, and a stale smell, that I assumed came from the overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans.
The television blared rock music—a car commercial—and Joyce turned the sound down but didn’t shut it off. I sat next to the television on the cleaner couch, and she sat opposite.
“So,” she said, “You come to tell me who killed Heath?”
The directness of her question took me aback. “The police believe it was a random act of violence,” I said carefully.
Her short raspy laugh caught in her throat. Picking up one of the beer cans, she stubbed her cigarette out in the lid, then dropped the butt inside. Not looking at me. “That what you think?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
Her little eyes met mine. “Probably not.” She watched me for a long moment; I got the sense she was making a decision. “Want coffee? I just made a pot.”
I plastered a smile on my face, ignoring the filth around me and trying not to imagine what the kitchen looked like. “I’d love some.”
I decided my plan of attack on the flight back to O’Hare. It kept my mind off the fact that I sat aboard a gleaming hunk of metal suspended in the sky, dependent on hydraulics, pilot competence, and a whole lot of good luck to stay aloft.
My conversation with Joyce had given me enough to realize that Heath’s prediction was right on the money. If I played my cards right, this could, indeed, be a big story. She’d been at work when he’d seen the Midwest Focus clip about the hazing incident. But he’d called her, and when she came home, he’d been agitated, pacing.
For as long as she’d known him, he’d sworn that there was a treasure out there with his name on it. That day, he’d said, he’d finally found the map. The hazing story had spotlighted several families, and at least a dozen more witnesses whose faces were on camera at some point. And one of them, he’d told her, was Kenny Peterson.
