The Bootlegger’s Legacy

by Ted Clifton

  Joe stepped into the safe and began working on the closest crate. It had been put together very well. He had some trouble, but eventually got the knife under what he thought was the right board and hit it with the mallet and it came off. Inside the crate was money, lots and lots of money. “What the fuck?” The old Mike seemed to come back for a moment.

  “Jeez, look at this. These are twenties and hundreds. This crate is full of money.” They stared at the mountain of crates. Mike sat down on the floor.

  “What the hell have we found?”

  “I think we’ve found my dad’s millions.”

  “I can’t believe it. He was telling the truth about everything—I thought he was out of his fucking mind, and he was telling the truth.”

  Mike didn’t look well. Something was going on in his head. “My God, Joe, this is money from bootlegging—this is money from selling booze illegally. How—How did he accumulate this much money?”

  “Don’t know Mike. But this is a bunch of money. There are hundreds of crates in here. If they’re all like this one it’s millions for sure.”

  “What the hell are we going to do now?”

  Good question. Joe hadn’t expected this to actually happen. Mike’s father had buried millions in an old safe in the basement of an old building in Deep Deuce—fucking amazing!

  The first thing they did was seal the crate back up and lock the safe. Joe even pushed some of the junk back up against the door. They went upstairs and re-locked the building, making damn sure it was secure. Suddenly the neighborhood didn’t feel very safe. Back in the car they just sat there for a minute.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Mike seemed dazed.

  “Well, Mike, I think we should revert to our old selves and go to Triples and have a drink.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  They went to Triples and found that the new bartender didn’t know them. The world had moved on while they weren’t looking. Joe got a gin and tonic, but Mike pulled himself together and had a diet Coke.

  On the drive over, Joe had started giving this thought. While on the surface it was obviously a good thing, there was also a lot of risk. This much money could cause serious problems. First do you keep it? Obvious answer, yes! Now what do you do with it? Where do you keep it? How can you spend it? Lots of issues. But the biggest problem was Mike.

  “First, Mike, you can’t tell anyone about this. I know the new you doesn’t lie, but you mustn’t tell anyone—and yes, that means Sam. We’ve got something going on here that, if we handle right it will be great, and if not could be really bad. So number one, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “I don’t know, Joe. This is so confusing to me.” Mike was looking like his thinking had stalled. Joe was very concerned that events were overloading some critical function in Mike’s brain. He knew that Mike was changing and that he was trying to get everything sorted out about his dad, plus Sam seemed to be exerting more and more control over him. He was being pulled in too many directions.

  “Mike, just promise me you won’t tell anyone until we can put together the right plan to deal with this. And no, I don’t know what that is. So we’re going to have to think and then decide what to do, but you cannot tell anyone.”

  “Okay, already. I won’t tell Sam or anyone. But we have to decide what to do quickly or I’ll go nuts. How much money do you think it is?”

  “I’m not sure. That one crate had to have $50,000 or more in it. I’d guess there are sixty or maybe eighty crates. So, that would be $3 million, maybe $4 million. Millions anyway. And the next crate could be different, with even more money. We just won’t know until we look at each one, but you can be damn sure it’s millions—millions!”

  Joe thought: man, that is a lot of booze. Was that all Patrick Allen was selling? Because it sure seemed like a lot of money. But maybe over a number of years it was possible. And Mike said they’d always lived a simple life. He needed to think and come up with a plan about how to handle the money and keep Mike from confessing to his father’s sins.

  “Mike, meet me in the morning for breakfast. I’m beginning to think of a way to handle this, but I need to think it through and make sure it’ll work.”

  Mike agreed. He wasn’t looking very happy for someone who had just found millions. Some guys are never satisfied.

  Joe knew there were big potential problems with this much money. It could cause Mike some real grief if he didn’t keep quiet and figure out a way to use the money without anyone suspecting he’d suddenly struck it rich. Joe also knew it was up to him to prevent Mike from doing something real stupid—he needed to come up with the plan, and quick.

  Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

  Joe and Mike met the next morning at a Village Inn, just off of Broadway. They settled into a back booth that offered some privacy. Joe ordered coffee and his usual breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and wheat toast with sausage patties. Mike had coffee and toast.

  “I gave this a lot of thought last night. This money is a gift from your father—he wanted you to have it, wanted you to be happier. He went to a lot of trouble to make sure you were the only one who could put all of this together and discover his secret. Think about everything he did, from arranging for the money to be in that old safe in the first place, to making sure that the lock box payments were made, and the tax payments on the cabin. Having the letter and key delivered to you, having the stock certificates in the lock box. I mean, my god, he went to a lot of trouble. All of it to benefit you. Well, right there is a lot of responsibility—you can’t let your father down.”

  “Well, that’s true, but it’s ill-gotten gains. How can I keep it? I know you think this stuff about my new beginning is just crap, but it’s not. I want to be someone else, a better person, and that someone doesn’t have a bootlegger for a father and sure does not have millions of dollars hidden in a basement under an old hotel. It almost drove me insane not to tell Sam. I can’t live a life based on a lie—I am not my dad!”

  Joe could see this was going to be a challenge. While he didn’t like it, maybe he should just let Mike give the money to charity or to the IRS and forget about it. Joe thought Mike was wrong about his dad. He didn’t understand why Mike had become so angry with his dad for not being perfect—as if any dad was perfect. But Joe wasn’t going to let Mike make such a stupid mistake if he could help it.

  “First off, your father made this money selling something people wanted—which by the way is perfectly legal today. He sold a lot because he was good at selling. I think you know that your father never hurt anybody. This wasn’t a gangster selling booze and killing people. This was your father providing a service to his neighbors.” Okay, maybe laying it on just a little thick there. “I knew your father and he was a kind, gentle man who lived a simple life—but he wanted you to have this money so you could do something good with it, make your life better.” Talk about salesmanship.

  “Okay, I see your point.”

  “You could just take the cash and go deposit it in the bank and every alarm in the whole country would go off. There would be more feds and cops and bank people than you could count. They would want to know where it came from, where it had been, how you found it, and on and on. They might decide that it wasn’t just from bootlegging, that your father must have been a member of organized crime. They would confiscate the money, might even try to put you in prison because you had hidden it for all of these years, or maybe say you must have been selling drugs to have made this much money and that this stuff about your dad was a smokescreen.”

  “Could that really happen?”

  “This much money involved, people go nuts. What started off as a good thing could become a nightmare.”

  Joe paused to let Mike absorb the risks he would be running by being Mr. Goody Two-Shoes. He could see some of it was sinking in—good.

  Their breakfasts arrived and the waitress refilled their coffees and left their check. This was why Joe had breakfast at a Village Inn—all
of the waitresses were the same person, doing the same thing, over and over. It was comforting to know there was one place in the world that was always the same. He picked things up with Mike.

  “I have some ideas on how to handle the actual cash. Some of this will feel like cheating to you but trust me, you’ll be paying taxes on this money over time, just not exposing it to the world in one big chunk. First, we need a cash business that can be used to channel some of the cash on a regular basis into the system.”

  “Money laundering—I’m not stupid Joe.”

  “Yes, it’s money laundering, and the government says we shouldn’t do it, but under these circumstances it’s the least of several evils.”

  “Okay, I’ll shut up and let you finish. Sorry if I’m being difficult—I know you’re just trying to help.”

  “Mike, there’s no way around this. If you tell the authorities about this money there’s a chance they take it all and you come under suspicion for committing a crime. I know you can say well, that’s just wrong, but trust me, wrong or not that could happen. If you want to use this money to do some good and honor your father, you have to work with me here on skirting a few things.”

  They each took some bites of their breakfasts. Joe was having trouble reading Mike, something that seemed to happen a lot lately. There was a distance between them that had never been there before. But Mike seemed calm and ready to hear more, so Joe continued.

  “I happen to know that Triples is for sale. You already own the building, so it might make sense to buy Triples and start to funnel some of the money into that business and then to you. Restaurants and bars are good for this because they operate with so much cash. That’s the first thing I recommend. Also, I think there’s an area in the basement at Triples that could secure the crates after a little work. Obviously that’s a big issue, getting those crates to a more secure location.”

  “I know I said I’d shut up, but let me butt in. I like the plan so far. I don’t want to hand the money over to some arm of the government and have it wasted on what they consider important. But before we go any further there’s something we have to get resolved—half of this money is yours. Don’t give me any bullshit about my father’s legacy or whatever. That was our deal and you said our deal was only valid if there was a big pile of cash—well, there’s a big pile of cash. If you don’t agree to that then I’ll just give it to the government and let them do whatever they want with it.” Some of this sounded like the old Mike.

  “Well I guess I can’t talk you out of this foolish idea of giving me a bunch of money, so you’ve got a deal, Mike.” Joe was smiling.

  Dallas, Texas—October 1987

  Michelle Lewis was thirty-four today and it was her tenth anniversary at Duncan’s Department Stores. This afternoon there was going to be a little celebration in the basement cafeteria for everyone who had an anniversary this month. No one knew it was her birthday—she didn’t want them to know. Michelle had been Michelle Thompson until she was married. She divorced some years ago after a difficult two years of marriage. She still used her married name mostly because of the hassle of getting everything changed over again, but she also had limited attachment to the name Thompson.

  The previous month Michelle had been promoted to assistant buyer in women’s fashions. It had been an important step for her. Most of the assistant buyers and buyers all had bachelors or masters degrees, generally from well-known colleges. Michelle had an associate’s degree from a little known graphics school. Nonetheless, she was proud of her degree because of the effort it had taken to get it without any help from anyone. Well, actually she had some help.

  Life hadn’t been easy for Michelle. She’d been raised by her mother’s brother and his wife, although Michelle did not know that until she was sixteen. The man she thought was her father had been dying and had told her that everything she thought was true was really a lie. A short time after he died, his wife asked Michelle to leave. She now knew she had a mother, Sally, who had died because of complications when giving birth to her. The dying man whom she’d thought for so long was her father had told her that she was a sinner just like her mother. These memories haunted Michelle for years. She believed she was a sinner, even though as far as she knew she had never sinned.

  Michelle was attractive, so she had many opportunities. But she was shy and withdrawn. Most men just went away. During the time after she left her so-called home, she stayed with one of her high school friends. The friend’s parents were wonderful to her and she slowly developed some self-esteem. She worked at several restaurants waiting tables, and soon became a little bit more outgoing. It was the encouragement of that family that had prompted her to go to graphics school. She had always been able to draw and seemed to have a keen eye when it came to color and form. She fell in love with the school, and it provided her with loans for tuition. She still had to work, though, so she could only go to school part-time. It was the best time she’d ever had.

  Michelle imagined there was a family curse of sin that would follow her all of her life. She was frightened of any relationship with boys, and mostly tried to stay by herself at school, seldom making eye contact in public. But her work was outstanding and several teachers had said that she had talent. Every day she became more secure in who she was and what she was doing.

  As she had approached completion of the requirements for her associate’s degree, she’d gone into one of the teacher’s offices, a particularly nice woman who had often complimented her, and asked if she knew of any place Michelle might get a job. The teacher said her brother was in the personnel department at Duncans and she was sure he could find her something.

  He did. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. She’d begun in the mail room, delivering mail to the various departments in the headquarters building. That had been years ago today. To Michelle it had felt like an accomplishment. She fought her shyness every day just to do her job and then, knowing that the only way someone would hire her in one of the creative departments was if she asked, she asked. She asked, and kept asking, until finally she was moved into the display department as a junior clerk.

  Nobody there had worked as hard as Michelle. She’d had no social life and only felt alive when she was at work. She had volunteered for every bad job, every late night, every weekend assignment. She had not only been eager, she’d been good, and people had started to notice.

  One of the people who’d noticed was Michael Lewis. He’d been an assistant buyer in men’s shoes and he’d become very attentive to Michelle. She’d shunned him, but he hadn’t given up, keeping it up for months until she’d finally agreed to go out with him. He’d been handsome and he was a buyer—well assistant buyer—and Michelle had been intimidated. As a result of the family curse of sin, she had still been a virgin, though it hadn’t made her feel special, just odd.

  Michael had been relentless. He’d seemed to relish the challenge Michelle presented. She’d been about to tell him that she did not want to see him anymore when he’d asked her to marry him. Michelle had thought that it was absurd—they had been on maybe six dates, they had only kissed once. What the hell was he thinking?

  Once again he hadn’t taken no for an answer, and before Michelle really knew what was going on she was married. It was like she’d woken up one day and thought, what the hell just happened? Married and having sex. Michelle had discovered that she liked sex, and that she was a warm and loving person. The joy of sex had made the first six months of marriage a wonderful, fulfilling experience. If he hadn’t already been dead she would have found a two-by-four and attacked her self-righteous ex-father. The baggage she’d carried for so many years seemed to lift. She was smiling and laughing a lot.

  But their first anniversary had been a sign of things to come—Michael was nowhere to be found. It had only gotten worse from there. Some of her co-workers told her Michael had been seen with other women at clubs around town. She’s tried to ignore it but it got worse. The topper had come when two female
employees at Duncans filed sexual harassment charges. Michelle had told him she wanted a divorce and he hadn’t even seemed to care.

  It had taken a while, but eventually Michelle divorced Michael and shortly thereafter he was fired from Duncans. She’d been upset, but maybe she had needed a hustler like Michael to break through the barrier she had set up—maybe he’d done her a favor without meaning to.

  Michelle had rededicated herself to work. She’d had a couple of flings, but they hadn’t meant anything to her. With her life focused again on work, she experienced more and more success.

  Michelle had never shared her dream with anyone: to one day run a business like Duncans. She knew it wasn’t going to happen, but it was still her dream. She wasn’t real sure where it came from—it seemed she’d dreamed it for so long that it had no beginning she could identify.

  One day one of her co-workers, who regularly read the personal classifieds, asked Michelle if she was related to Sally Thompson. The woman worked in the human resources department, so she knew Michelle’s maiden name. Michelle was so stunned she almost couldn’t answer. She eventually told the woman that she didn’t know of any relative named Sally. The woman said she was just curious because over the years there had been several ads for information about a Sally Thompson—she just thought it was weird.

  Weird it was. Michelle had no idea who would be looking for her long-dead mother and it unnerved her. So much about her mother was a mystery to Michelle, and there was no one to ask. She often felt completely alone.

  Michelle went to the basement for the group anniversary party. She liked many of her co-workers and enjoyed their company. Many of them had known her through her shy days and her horrible marriage, and were the closest thing she had to a family.

  “Hey, Michelle congratulations on your new promotion.” This came from Betty, one of her best friends at work.

  “Thanks Betty.”

  “Pretty soon you’ll be the big boss and everybody will work for you. I hear all kinds of people say there is nobody who works any harder than Michelle.”