Using the backlight, I started through the current packet of stubs. It took only minutes for me to figure out what was happening, but it took me a lot longer to find out how it happened. Ticket after ticket had a lotto number ending with a ‘one’ and that was the final digit in the week’s treasury number. Francetti was holding out the big winner along with a lot of the smaller ones. Nobody had gotten a ticket with a lotto number ending in ‘one’. So Francetti was making more than those few hundred dollars a week, since he was controlling the payments.
A quick check of the other stacks indicated he was doing the same thing, at least once a month, maybe more often. No wonder he could afford a Packard and a fancy house in Belmont. I knew there was no point in pulling out any winners for myself, since Francetti would know the minute I turned them in that I’d gotten to his slush pile. I returned everything to its proper place, slipped out the back window and did a lot of thinking on my way home—and even more after I got there.
The big question was how did Francetti know what the final digit was going to be? The tickets were printed ahead of time. He used to send me or one of the other runners over to the print shop in Somerville to pick them up a week before he distributed them. Sure, the printer probably had some way of sorting them out on the basis of the last digit, but what good did that do Francetti? He could pick out all those ending with any number he wanted, but how could he know what the treasury number would be that week? I was baffled.
Well, I went off to help Tony with his egg route, but I didn’t tell anyone—not even him—about my amazing discovery. I just kept churning it over in my mind. Finally, I remembered something from when I was a newspaper boy. I’d been to the Record newspaper building several times—been even drafted as a messenger for the advertising department, delivering copy mats to customers when their regular messenger broke a leg—so I’d had the run of the departments. The linotype machines back then had fascinated me as the operators typed out the day’s copy and the lead slugs slipped out into the bins. I still wasn’t sure what was going on, but I decided to make a special trip to watch them in action again.
It didn’t take much detective work on my part to figure out Francetti’s secret. Pat Sullivan was the typesetter for the financial pages, and I knew immediately that he was part of Francetti’s operating expenses. Not that Francetti needed to pay Sullivan much. A bottle of prime Irish whiskey brought into the Boston docks by the bootleggers would have been all the incentive Sullivan needed.
To be absolutely sure, I took time out to go to the Boston Public Library to check for the treasury number in out-of-town papers. Only the Wall Street Journal published it, and—sure enough—the past week’s number in the Journal ended with a seven, the Record ended with a one. Whatever the treasury number meant to anyone around Boston besides those holding a lottery ticket, it obviously didn’t mean much to them if there was an occasional “error” in the final digit.
Knowing that Francetti was cheating his customers made me feel a lot better about making another trip to his office the following Friday, armed once more with the backlight. I was going to steer clear of the stack Francetti had pulled, and concentrate on the returns from the runners. Before I could even get a desk drawer open, however, I heard someone coming up the stairs.
It took me no time to slip into the back room. I was on my way out the window when I changed my mind. The sound of a couple of voices, neither of them Francetti’s, tempted me to listen through the flimsy door. It took only the sound of a slap and a shouted, “OK, old man, open the safe,” to convince me a robbery was in progress, something I wanted nothing to do with.
Danny’s Bar and Grill was across Massachusetts Avenue from Francetti’s office, and one of the few places open. I ran over, intending to call the police, but I didn’t need to. O’Beirn, in full uniform and with his holstered revolver and billy club, was sitting there drinking coffee. Breathless, I explained what was going on, saying I’d seen Francetti being forced up to his office and that I’d listened outside the office door to what was going on. From there on, I was telling the truth. O’Beirn roared like a bull, which didn’t surprise me considering how Francetti treated him, and went rushing off, saying, “We’ll see about that.”
The upshot of it was that two robbers got arrested, Francetti ended up in the hospital with a lot of bruises, including a broken nose, and I was treated like a hero. No one asked me what I was doing there that late on a Friday night, so I didn’t even have to think up a story. Better yet, my name showed up in the newspaper story about the attempted robbery, and word got back to me that Francetti wanted to see me.
He was all smiles when I entered the hospital room. Before I could say a word, he sat up and said, “Officer O’Beirn told me what you did. You’re a good boy, and I want to do something for you. I’ve got a little present for you.” With that, he reached under his pillow, pulled out an envelope and passed it along to me. Under the circumstances, I decided to keep quiet about what I’d found out about the lottery.
There wasn’t enough in the envelope to buy the beautiful jewel outright, but Walsh was eager to sell, and I talked him into a year’s small payments—a week at a time—which left me enough for gas at eleven cents a gallon. I knew I’d have to work my tail off. More lotto stubs to sell than ever. And I’d be taking over Tony’s job at the movie house as well as his egg route. But I’ve never had a feeling like that before—or since—that day when I drove the roadster off the lot with its top down. And not a block away I saw Gina Carli, the most attractive girl in our graduating class, who’d never so much as looked at me before.
I pulled over to the curb and asked her if she’d care for a ride. She did. This was heaven. She admired the car, but she was especially pleased to find out I was going to be ticket-taker at the Porter Square Theater. Free admission was something she said she was looking forward to.
THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TENT
If he hadn’t nicked the fender on our van when he pulled his pickup into the campground parking lot, I very likely wouldn’t have remembered him. He was an ugly looking character, not much taller than my five-eight, but a lot broader in the shoulder, standing there in the rain hunched up in his black raincoat with the water running off the hood. I went out to talk to him—not that I really intended to collect from him for the damage, since my old Isuzu already had more than its share of dings in it.
Well, he made me mad, and that’s when I decided I would collect. I wasn’t about to argue with him, since he was practically claiming I was parked illegally and deserved to be run into. I learned long ago that the big ones start from the little ones, and the battle can go on forever, like the Jews and Arabs. So I just memorized the plate number and figured on turning the matter over to my insurance company. Let them collect from his agency. They wouldn’t sock me by increasing my rates if they knew who’d done the damage. That’s what I pay them for. Besides, I wasn’t going to let something like that spoil our vacation.
Caroline and I had been planning all winter to spend a week at Bleeker State Park. The kids—Chuck is twelve and Ann is eight—always enjoy the place. Chuck and I do a lot of fishing. Caroline gabs with the other women down by the beach while watching the kids in the water. Even two-year old Marla is getting into the act. We’d already had several great days. Some rain, but mostly at night. It gives Caroline a change, too. I watch the younger kids for an hour or so about every day while we’re there. That way she can just sit back and relax.
It was that afternoon, when the rain had let up, and Chuck and I were breaking out the fishing gear, that I told Caroline about the fender bender. She pointed to the bright blue tent down at our end of the grounds and told me it was where Raincoat had set up camp. While I’m looking in that direction, a woman comes out of the tent and walks by on her way to the restroom. That’s when I kind of forgive old mean-tempered Raincoat. His wife is about his size and shape and even uglier than he is, with a real sour expression on her face. Living with someone like tha
t is bound to dull the polish on one’s personality. Which didn’t mean I wasn’t going to collect on that smashed fender.
That was also the day things begin to go wrong—mostly for our ugly neighbors, though it did involve us. Actually, their tent was pretty far away from ours, but not far enough. We could hear them arguing, going at it hot and heavy. With it being so peaceful out there at Bleeker, it sure was annoying to have something like that within earshot. Finally, sometime around eleven, the rain started coming down, and quiet seemed to come down too—finally. The two older kids had turned in, the few lights in the campground weren’t making much inroad on the darkness, Caroline had been reading by the Coleman, Marla was sound asleep in a corner of our tent, and I was ready to call it a day. That was when the two of us saw Raincoat come barging out of the blue tent with his coat hood pulled down against what had already become another downpour. The next thing we know the pickup is throwing gravel and is screeching out of the lot.
“Phew,” I said. “Maybe he’ll cool off and stay away for awhile. I wasn’t looking forward to listening to them starting all over again and then going at it all night.”
Caroline agreed. “It will be nice to have a quiet night.”
It was a quiet night, all right, followed by a quiet day. There wasn’t a peep from our distant neighbors, and since I didn’t see their pickup anywhere, I figured they’d taken their quarrel—if it was still going on—off to some local tavern. Chuck and I had a great day fishing, too. It was while Caroline was cleaning our catch that evening that she commented, “It’s sure strange. Why haven’t they come back?” She nodded her head in the direction of the blue tent.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” I said, as I volunteered to take the kids for a walk.
When we got back, Caroline and a couple of her camp friends were standing around the grill in the picnic stand speculating about our neighbors in the blue tent. “What’s the point in coming out here, setting up a tent, then spending the day somewhere else?” one of them asked. You’d never believe some of the wild answers that came up to that question. All I knew, or cared, was that it was nice and peaceful, and I was hoping it would stay that way. It did.
The pickup didn’t come back that night or the next day. By evening, I could see Caroline was stewing. “I’m going to go over there and look inside that tent. Something’s just plain wrong.” I put my foot down at that and, believe me it isn’t easy to put your foot down in a tent where you can’t stand up taller than a crouch. Of course, if you’re a man, and you’re married, you know what it’s like trying to change your wife’s mind if she’s made it up otherwise. She’ll probably act like she’s going along, but she has little ways of making you miserable, ways she’d never claim she’s using, but they’ll get to you eventually. I suppose it’s that way these days even for men with just live-in girlfriends. You might as well give in, because they’ll win sooner or later.
Well, I don’t give in right away. A man’s got to preserve some dignity. So it wasn’t until we’d gone to bed and she’d said goodnight and turned her back on me that I finally said, “OK. OK. First thing in the morning, when it’s good and daylight, we’ll go over and take a peek. I don’t like the idea of invading other people’s privacy, but if it’ll keep you happy, we’ll do it.” The long and short of it is that Caroline turned over, and even the rain that had started to pour down didn’t dampen our spirits any. What did, though, was the sound of a truck coming into the campground. Caroline was more willing to interrupt what we were doing than I was, and there was no stopping her from scootching up to the tent flap to watch the goings on.
“He’s back,” she said. “And… he’s with another woman.”
That caught my attention for a moment. Sure enough, Raincoat was joined by Little Raincoat. They’d left the truck lights on park, and we could barely make out what they were doing by the campground lamps and the one dim flashlight Little Raincoat was using. My night vision isn’t all that good anyway. “What’s going on?” I whispered, not really interested, but hoping we’d find out soon and get back to more important matters.
“She’s gone into the tent. He’s pulling up the stakes.” A long pause. “She’s coming out, and they’ve dropped the tent. Now they’re rolling it up like a carpet. See?”
I could see well enough to anticipate what they were going to do next. They each grabbed an end and threw the roll up into the bed of the pickup. Without even looking back, Raincoat piled into the driver’s seat and Little Raincoat got in on the other side. Quietly and carefully, leaving only the parking lights on, they drove slowly along the gravel driveway leading back out to the road.
“He killed her. I knew it. I knew it!” Caroline was breathless. “We have to call the police.”
“That’s silly. You’re letting your imagination run away with you. They just were moving out, and they had to take the tent down in a hurry in this rain.”
“If that was all there was to it, they would have just thrown it in without rolling it up. Why take the time to roll it up and get soaking wet while doing it? Besides, that was most certainly not his wife.”
I had to agree with that last point. Little Raincoat was about half the size of Mrs. Ugly. “Maybe it was just a friend who offered to help break camp.”
I didn’t think Caroline was able to snort the way she did when I made that comment. “That’s absolute nonsense. He killed his wife, and he couldn’t move the body out during the day. So he went and found his girlfriend and made her come out and help. She must live far away, somewhere out of state maybe. That’s what took him so long to get back. I knew he’d killed his wife. I just knew there was a body in that tent. Didn’t you notice how many more flies there were around yesterday than usual?”
Actually, I had noticed, but only because more flies meant more fish rising to the surface to feed. I kept shaking my head, knowing what was coming next.
“We have to call the police.”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “We’re not going to get the local sheriff out of bed to come here on a wild goose chase. Besides, if you’re right, then she’s dead. There’s nothing we can do about it tonight.”
Wowie! The argument went on and on. I finally compromised, but Caroline didn’t think it was much of a compromise. I promised to call first thing in the morning, come daylight. By that time, it was well after midnight. She turned her back on me, and somehow I managed to go to sleep.
Well, I kept my promise, more or less. I stalled until after breakfast, finally broke out my cellphone and told the story to a very skeptical deputy. With Caroline listening to my end of the conversation, I was forced to give him her complete theory, even down to the excess of flies. I did get a nod of approval from her when I supplied the officer with the pickup’s license number, which reminded me I needed to fill in the insurance claim as soon as we got home, and that I should get the name of the other driver.
The upshot of the conversation with the deputy was that they were undermanned, that there probably wasn’t much they could do at the campground since the evidence, such as it was, was now in the pickup, but they would be grateful if we would drop by the office and give them a written statement regarding what happened. Since we were leaving that afternoon by five, and since the station was on our way home, there was no reason why we couldn’t. Also, I could then file a formal report on the crumpled fender, so not all the effort would be wasted.
Chuck and Ann were both excited by our stop at the sheriff’s office, especially since we were led into a large room with several display cases testifying to the bowling prowess of the local deputies. Various officers—enormous, fat characters—equipped with holstered guns and cell phones and beepers coming in to get coffee from the urn made those eyes that much wider. Even Marla kept staring at the unique surroundings and managed to stay unusually quiet and contented in Caroline’s lap. The sheriff, who brought in a stenographer to take down our statements, was surprisingly friendly.
I let Caroli
ne expound at length on her theory, deciding finally that that was a sufficient burden for the local authorities without my filing an accident report with them. Besides, it would be bad enough just filling in the insurance form, which I was going to have to do anyway when we got home.
I’d resigned myself to a lengthy stay at the station, but the whole interview actually went quickly and smoothly. The stenographer, who’d been using a laptop, immediately produced a printed version of what Caroline had reported. Mine was similar, only far briefer, and I’d made it a point to say it was my wife’s idea to report the incident in the first place. She glared at me when I commented knowingly to the sheriff—man to man—that women get funny ideas sometimes. We signed and started out through the lobby, or whatever the front part of a sheriff’s office is called.
While we were saying our good-byes, there was a racket on the stairs leading into the station, and who should come in, held firmly by a deputy, and staggering all the way, but a very drunk and thoroughly disheveled Mrs. Ugly. Ah, what I would have given at that moment for a camera to take a picture of Caroline’s expression. I tried my best not to gloat, of course.
The deputy announced as he came in, “It’s taking three of our guys to get the other one in. Wow! What a fighter.”
The announcement was accurate. Three burly deputies had a small, struggling, muscular figure spread-eagled, twisting and turning. A bloody nose on one of the deputies testified to the extent of the resistance put up by the male, who wasn’t much taller then a jockey.
As the first deputy finally managed to maneuver Mrs. Ugly into a chair, he turned to the Sheriff, saying, “That was a good tip you got this morning from whoever. There’s torn cloth in the back of the pickup with something on it that sure looks like blood. And the mud on the wheels pretty much tells me they were out to Chill Flats to dump the body. She as much as admitted she killed her old man, and her boyfriend here helped to pack him out of the campgrounds.”
Mayhem, Mystery and Murder Page 37
