by John Knoerle
But he stepped out of the garage, slid the door shut, yanked open the other garage door and backed his Buick onto the slushy blacktop. The razor-wired front gate rolled open by remote control. The Buick took a right on Cesco, headed east. Jimmy wasn’t the Fulton Road Mob’s delivery boy.
I raced toward the closing gate, didn’t get there in time. I craned my neck to see the ’39 Hudson pull away from the curb as Jimmy drove past. I flagged my arms and hollered but Wally didn’t hear me. The Buick and the Hudson turned north on Fulton Road.
I had another opportunity now. One better suited to my cowardly nature. Pop open the trunk of the delivery vehicle, grab the weekly take and go. I was good with locks, Hector was my puppy now, he wouldn’t object. It was a lead pipe cinch. And I couldn’t make myself do it.
I didn’t take any moral comfort in this you understand. I am definitely a rat, just not a very good one.
What now? I had to do something to redeem myself. I knew where the weekly take was stashed but had no way to follow it to Mr. Big. Unless I opened the trunk and climbed in, a foolproof plaster if ever there was. That I could do. Hiding took my kind of courage.
But that opportunity escaped me too. Hector, who had followed me to the gate, spun and bounded off, barking his fool head off. I darted back to the cover of the snowy evergreen as The Schooler stepped out a side door and stopped to ruffle Hector’s fur.
The Schooler was the Fulton Road Mob’s bagman. Of course he was. He was the mug in the middle, the buffer between Mr. Big and Jimmy and the itchy young men. So long as The Schooler was the one to lay treasure at the feet of the monarch his position was secure.
You should’ve doped this out earlier, Schroeder, should have thought it through. Maybe then you’d have a better vehicle for tailing the Packard to its destination than two bloody ankles on blistered feet.
The Schooler drove his Packard past the rolling gate and turned right. I managed to squeeze through the gate this time and watch the Packard turn south on Fulton Road. I slow-footed my way down to the streetcar stop, fumbling in my pockets for the fare home, hoping I still had some rye left in that pint.
I was waiting for the rattler when I saw the ’39 Hudson nosing back down Fulton Road like a shot-up B-17 limping home to base. Wally saw my wave and pulled to the curb. I ran across the street and jumped in.
“I lost him, I’m sorry.”
“Forget it, just get this heap in gear. Head south to…what’s the next major east-west?”
“Uh, Denison.”
“Take a left on Denison.”
It was a long shot. The Schooler had a five minute head start to an unknown destination. But he’d be taking it slow and careful with all that cush on board and his Packard would be easy to spot. He figured to be headed in the direction that money headed in this town. East.
Wally drove south on Fulton, past Johnny’s Bar and St. Rocco’s Church. He waited for a slow moving truck to clear the intersection before turning left on Denison. I resisted the urge to push him out onto the pavement and grab the wheel.
Wally found third gear eventually and gave the ’39 Hudson its head. Such as it was. We wove through traffic, we passed a cement truck, its rear end churning. We drove through a slump shouldered neighborhood of Cleveland doubles and three flats, crumbling mortar making their brown bricks look like rotting teeth. We approached fifty miles per hour.
“The guy in the Buick musta spotted me,” said Wally, woefully. “He hung a U on Fulton, then he took off down an alleyway. By the time I got turned around he was gone.”
“My fault, I had the wrong guy and the wrong car.”
Wally’s eyebrows crept up hopefully. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Our pigeon is up ahead somewhere. Keep an eye peeled for a dark red Packard.”
Wally stepped on the gas, whipped around a slow moving sedan, passed on the right, skidded on a patch of ice, got the chassis square and raced through the E. 71st intersection on the last wink of amber in the overhead traffic light.
“You said a red Packard, am I right?” said Wally.
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I’m colorblind, but I know a Packard when I see one.”
I followed his look. A wine red Packard was purring along in the #2 lane, fifty yards ahead.
“Get over,” I said. “Close in.” Wally did so. “Now back it down some. And don’t hunch over the wheel, he’ll see your face.”
“Right,” said Wally, settling back, on the job, in the hunt.
I eyeballed the Packard’s trunk and reconsidered my plan. It had sounded plausible at the time. Find Mr. Big and convince the crime boss to sideline Jimmy so that the FBI would approve the final heist.
Now that reality was approaching at 40 mph I began to see some flaws. As in how to gain entry to a highly guarded compound and then win the confidence of a recluse whose hideout you have located by means of tailing his trusted first lieutenant?
A tough sell. And if Mr. Big really was Louis Seltzer, well, by this time tomorrow I’d be at the bottom of Lake Erie.
I eyeballed the Packard’s trunk some more. I should have grabbed the geet when I had the chance.
A flat bed truck stacked with clattering wooden pallets pulled in between the Packard and us. I looked upstream. We were approaching another traffic light. I told Wally to swing into the #1 lane.
The traffic lamp turned amber. We were ten yards from the E. 93rd intersection, the Packard five yards ahead on our right, slowing down for the light. I slid down as we pulled alongside.
“Should I stop or go?”
“Stop,” I said, sure that our tail was unmade.
We braked just as the Packard’s V-12 roared to life. I sat up in the passenger’s seat to watch The Schooler tear across the intersection just ahead of the cross traffic and disappear down the road.
-----
Wally was looking woeful again as he pulled the Hudson up to Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house. “What do I tell ‘em? Downtown.”
“Not a thing, I’ll be in on Monday to file a report.” I opened my door, clapped Wally on the shoulder and said, “We’ll get ‘em next time.”
Wally nodded and drove off. I felt bad for him. It wasn’t his fault he was paired with a numbskull. I also felt hungry enough to eat a horse. Thank God for small favors, horsemeat wouldn’t be hard to find around here.
I let gravity take me down the hill. I kept my balance by flanging out my feet like a circus clown, crunching through the corn snow, skidding on ice. I managed to remain upright for two blocks. To Elm Street, to a blue and white sign with a mermaid on it. The Harbor Inn.
Valhalla.
Chapter Twenty
The Harbor Inn had a bar about a mile long. There were a million different beers lined up on a shelf above it, arranged alphabetically. By the time I reached the end of the bar I had devised a plan. I would start with a cold bottle of Anchor Steam and work my way down the line, concluding my evening with a frosty Zipfer Bier. An ambitious undertaking, no question, but I had a hog wallow of self pity to dive into.
The ruddy deckhands throwing darts and the sooty steelworkers wide-elbowed at the bar shot me sideways looks as I ambled by. The vicuna topcoat was inappropriate attire maybe. So I took a stool at the far end, dug out a Ulysses S. Grant and said those stirring words every barfly longs to say. “Drinks all around, on me.”
What the hell, I was flush.
The barmaid palmed the fifty like this happened every day and started taking orders. The tugmen and steel smelters to my left had surprisingly refined tastes. The barmaid had to climb a stepstool to retrieve dusty bottles of Johnny Walker Black and Remy Martin VSOP. I got some skol’s and prosit’s, and one freckled rascal raised his glass with “May the best of your past be the worst of your future.”
I smiled, nodded, and ordered an Anchor Steam. A waitress crossed behind me carrying something that smelled like heaven on a plate. I snagged her on the way back and ordered the same. She returned to the kitchen. I cleaned the
bar with a drink napkin, it came up red. Ore dust.
You ever have one of those days when you’re the butt of the joke and you don’t know why? You’ve got a big piece of spinach in your grille maybe, or someone’s pinned a ‘kick me’ sign to the back of your coat. That’s the way it had been since I arrived in Cleveland. Everyone in on the joke but me.
Did The Schooler make us in the ’39 Hudson or was he just performing standard evasive maneuvers? I didn’t know.
Did Jimmy somehow stage manage my rescue outside the Theatrical or just catch a mystery call for help at the last second? I didn’t know.
Did Special Agent in Charge Chester Halladay recruit me to infiltrate the Fulton Road Mob only to have his chain yanked by the Director because I was getting too close to Mr. Big, a.k.a. Louis Seltzer? I didn’t know, didn’t have a blessed clue.
I did know that the steaming platter of cabbage rolls and browned to perfection walleye perch that the waitress slung down on the bar in front of me was a thing of beauty. I admired it for half a second.
I was barely into the C’s - Carling Red Cap Ale - when the barmaid asked me if I was Hal Schroeder.
“Who wants to know?”
“Some guy,” she said, indicating the wall phone, its earpiece dangling.
I went over and picked it up. “Who’s this?”
“Jimmy.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Your landlady said you were out. I called the nearest bar.”
“Smart boy. What do you want?”
“Thought we could have a little chitchat,” said Jimmy and laughed, loudly.
I held the earpiece at arm’s length. Jimmy laughing? I didn’t figure he knew how. He was obviously deeper into the alphabet than I was. I heard him say something. I pressed the earpiece to my unbandaged ear. “Say again.”
“Fats Navarro. Heard of him?”
“Yes I have.” Every jazzhead in America had heard of Fats Navarro, hard bopping trumpeter extraordinaire.
“He’s in town tonight, down on Central. Wanna go?”
There was only one answer this question. I wanted to find out what Jimmy was up to, sure, why he was making nice after I had taunted, humiliated and outfoxed him at every turn. But I really wanted to hear Fats Navarro in the flesh. “What’s the name of the club, I’ll meet you there.”
Jimmy laughed again. Twice in one night!
“This isn’t a grease job, G-man, it’s a night on the town.” His voice grew husky. “With a coupla very friendly young ladies.”
“Jimmy I’m not…”
“Pick you up at nine,” he said and rang off. I held the ear-piece at arm’s length and examined it carefully.
I stood at the curb in front of Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house at 9 p.m. in subzero cold and wished for a hat. A scrim of ice was frosting my noggin like spun sugar. Jimmy’s black Buick nosed down Elm Street five minutes later. I squared my shoulders for a strange night.
I climbed in, and mopped my forehead as I defrosted. I didn’t look at the friendly young ladies in the back seat, I’d been with enough whores for one lifetime. Jimmy drove east across the Main Avenue Bridge. Nobody spoke. He turned south on E. 9th Street. Nobody spoke.
“The Pope die or something?” I said. Nobody laughed. 60th and Central was a smattering of storefront churches and chicken and catfish stands wedged between dimly lit row houses and tenements with tarpaper windows. Jimmy curbed the Buick in front of Jolly Jack’s Lounge and Dance Parlor. A burly Negro opened his door and greeted him by name. I got out and opened the back door and almost had a heart attack.
Jeannie. The woman who had been sitting directly behind me on the ride over, the friendly young lady Jimmy had promised, was Jeannie!
Her wiseacre grin faded as she regarded my beat up face. I had no earthly idea what to say. What in the name of Christ and the Twelve Apostles was she doing in the company of a guy who had just beat the crap out of her husband?
Jimmy herded us inside. His date was a stacked blond in a fox fur who wrinkled her pert nose at the all black crowd. The seas parted for Jimmy as a light-skinned hostess escorted us through the bar to a table above the dance floor. She removed the Reserved card. Jimmy slipped her a folded bill.
We sat down and shivered. Despite the crush of bodies Jolly Jack’s was icebox cold. Jimmy ordered a bottle of rum for the table. Also four cokes, a bucket of gizzards and “Plenty of gris-gris.”
The waitress laughed.
Was Jimmy an octoroon? He seemed at home here. I entertained this asinine question in order to avoid trying to make sense of Jeannie sitting to my right, hair done, lips red, holding her hands in her lap and staring straight ahead.
The waitress poured four rum and cokes, no ice. Jimmy hoisted one. “Always glad to get two old friends back together.”
What in the hell? He must have noticed our reaction to one another at Pappas Deli and asked her later. Jeannie’s a terrible liar. She’s also a smart cookie, she wouldn’t have given him much else.
“Jeannie and I dated a few times in high school. Back in Youngstown.”
“Umm hmm,” said Jimmy, not buying it for a second. “You don’t seem too thrilled to see her.”
“She threw me over for a football player.”
Jimmy’s girl clucked, Jimmy smirked. Jeannie remained silent. I drank my rum and coke and tried not to look. It wasn’t easy.
Jeannie had been girl-next-door pretty as a kid, all freckles and elbows. But she was a grown-up beauty now, composed, almost elegant. A grown-up beauty married to a bald Greek on a double date with a mobster, his moll and yours truly. What in the hell?
The waitress served a bucket of smoked gizzards, a wad of paper napkins and a bowl of shimmering hot sauce. “How did you peg me for a Fats Navarro fan?”
“Anyone who hates Glenn Miller can’t be all bad,” said Jimmy, hot sauce all down his chin.
I had never said I hated Glenn Miller. I didn’t hate Glenn Miller. Hating Major Glenn Miller, whose single-engine Norseman disappeared over the English Channel in 1944, was tantamount to treason. I had merely groaned and turned down the volume when a Miller tune came on the car radio while we were make our shakedown rounds. “American Patrol” was a catchy little number built around drums and bugles that made patrol duty sound like bubble blowing night at the Trocadero.
Jimmy was nowhere near as dumb as he looked. He paid attention. Which meant he knew I had tried to have him tailed, and probably knew I’d tried to get him axed. The cops didn’t much care what happened down here in Dingetown, especially after sunset. I rested the heel of my hand on the butt of my P38.
A man almost as wide as he was high stepped up on the bandstand and spread his arms. This would be Jolly Jack.
“Direct from Key West by way of New York City,” he said in a thunderous baritone, “Jolly Jack’s is mighty proud to present Mister Theodore ‘Fats’ Navarro and his Be-Bop Boys!”
The crowd erupted, the bassist, drummer and pianist dug into an up-tempo tune and Jolly Jack looked around for his star attraction. Jimmy and his girl did likewise.
I chanced a look at Jeannie. She met my eyes, cool as a cuke, and winked. I removed the heel of my hand from the butt of my gun. If Jeannie was jake with this sideways setup then I guess I was too.
The crowd stirred. The man of the hour made his way to the bandstand, slapping hands with the patrons, horn tucked under his arm. He was just a kid, a chubby-cheeked kid. He took center stage and waved away a curtain of green-gray smoke, some of it from cigarettes. The rhythm section backed into a standard 4/4.
“Let’s warm this joint up,” said Fats Navarro and swelled his cheeks like a fireplace bellows.
The resulting long-held low note rattled empties on the club tables. He picked up steam from there, always half a beat ahead, the crowd leaning forward, wondering if the piano, bass and drums could catch up.
Fats switched gears. His eyes got big and he began to talk through his trumpet. That’s what it sounded like, I swe
ar. The rhythm section kept up a backbeat as Fats Navarro gave out with his sermon, his soliloquy.
The audience pricked up their ears, this chubby-cheeked kid was saying things that needed to be said. I dug the jive-crazy intensity of it but, watching the dark rapt faces of the crowd, I also felt out of place, felt like a spy. Whatever message Fats Navarro was sending out through the bell of his trumpet wasn’t meant for me.
He went on for a long time, whispering seductively, snarling in anger, finally winding down to an extended breathless pleading that froze the crowd in their seats and shamed the big talkers at the bar into silence. Fats gathered himself and concluded with a high C that had dogs howling all the way to Akron.
The crowd went nuts. Jimmy pointed at me with his cig, I nodded my appreciation. The light-skinned hostess huddled with Fats on the bandstand. He nodded and slipped something in his pocket.
“Special request from the congregation,” said the young trumpet player with the almond eyes. Rumor had it his mother was Chinese. “A dance tune,” he said and leaned into the microphone. “For two very special young lovers.”
The crowd said unh huhh huhh.
My worst fears were realized after the first few bars. Even with Fats Navarro sliding up one note and down the next you couldn’t help but recognize “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.”
Jeannie and I sat bolted to our chairs.
“Well dance with the young lady,” said Jimmy. “Really,” said his lady friend. The next table over muttered encouragement. A consensus had been reached.
I stood up and offered Jeannie my hand. Mine was hot and sticky, hers cool and dry. We made our way out onto the dance floor.
I was a so-so dancer under the best of circumstances. With the eyes of the crowd upon us and Fats Navarro beaming down from the bandstand I danced as if I had two clubfeet and a spastic colon. Jeannie didn’t help. She smelled like a summer breeze that comes out of nowhere and cools you behind the ears. My head swam.
Jeannie drew me closer and squeezed my hand. “C’mon now,” she murmured, “we know how to do this. Remember?”
