A Pure Double Cross

by John Knoerle

  I remembered. We danced a passable four step to Jeannie’s signature song. Fats kept it slow and easy. Jeannie rested her cheek on my shoulder. The crowd went “Awwww.”

  Fats goosed the tempo a minute later. Other dancers took the floor. Young bucks in electric blue suits twirled giddy young girls in floral print dresses. The joint warmed up.

  Jeannie backed up a step. I was grateful. Holding her body close to mine was pure torture.

  We danced to the new beat, face to face. “What are you doing here?” I halfway shouted.

  “Jimmy called and apologized about Dimitri, said he was just doing his job.”

  The thought of Jimmy apologizing made my skin itch.

  “He said you wanted to see me but were afraid to ask.”

  “And that sounded like me to you?”

  “I wanted to see you again!”

  I lost a step in our swing and sway and just stood there and looked at her. Fats must have noticed because he changed the tempo from hard bop to slow waltz.

  Jeannie and I came together again on the dance floor, wove and entwined ourselves till we could barely breathe. That’s the way it had always been between us, rough and sweet in equal measure.

  “And what are you doing here?” said Jeannie after a time, caressing my bandaged ear. “In Cleveland, with a hoodlum like Jimmy Streets?”

  I gave her the best answer I could. “I can’t answer that question right now.”

  Jeannie stepped back from my embrace. She looked cross. “You never could make a decision,” she said and returned to the table.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “I’ll get out here,” I said to Jimmy at the corner of Superior and E. 9th. It was 1:51 a.m. An odd mix of young revelers and men in overalls were marching up the steps to St. John’s Cathedral.

  “The church?” said Jimmy.

  “Hey, it’s Sunday morning.”

  I had been stupid to let Jimmy drag Jeannie into our blood feud. He wanted at me in any way he could. By showing him I still cared for Jeannie I’d made her a potential target. Fortunately Jeannie and I had reverted to form and had a spat. We hadn’t spoken since we left the dance floor. Best to keep it that way.

  “That’s the Printers’ Mass,” said Jimmy’s lady friend between hiccups. “Had an uncle worked at the Plain Dealer up the block. The pressmen they…they always…Gawd, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  That was an exit line if ever I heard one.

  I squeezed Jeannie’s hand and said “Night all” before I opened the back door and stepped out onto Superior. I wouldn’t be riding shotgun in Jimmy’s Buick anytime soon, that was sure. His lady friend was hugging her ankles, retching rum, coke and chicken gizzards.

  The Printers’ Mass bore an eerie resemblance to Jolly Jack’s Lounge. A loosey goosey atmosphere, dressed up couples strolling in, drunks in the choir loft noodling “Camptown Races” on the pipe organ. Something else too, whispered anticipation. I picked up bit and pieces on my way in.

  “Father Sullivan?”...“I thought the Diocese”...“You’re kidding”...

  I stopped at the holy water font and dipped my fingers and made the sign of the cross. I sat in the last pew. I had no idea why I was here.

  A priest with a meaty red face and a great deal of tightly curled gray hair lumbered out of the sacristy and surveyed the congregation from the front of the altar. He was wearing the purple vestments of Advent. Father Sullivan no doubt. Even from the last pew I could tell he was stewed to the gills.

  He growled a blessing. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  “Amen.”

  Father Sullivan faced the altar and recited the Introit. The altar boys stood rather than kneeled below him, presumably to catch the good father if he pitched over backward. I bowed my head and listened to the soothing rhythm of the familiar words. I hadn’t attended Mass in over two years.

  Father Sullivan burrowed through the Introit, the Kyrie and the Epistle in fits and starts. The congregation grew restive, waiting on the sermon. Those who were still awake. Two uniformed pressmen to my right were happily sawing logs.

  Father Sullivan clambered up to the pulpit at long last, the altar boys hovering nervously behind. He read from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 1. Recited actually, he never looked down. His rough-edged brogue woke the snoring press-men.

  “For the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written. ‘He who through faith is righteous, will live.’”

  I had heard the passage many times. What it came down to was ‘Take our word for it.’

  Father Sullivan began his sermon. “You have to make up your mind to seek salvation,” he growled. “Salvation will not seek you!”

  He was right about that. Jeannie’s last comment on the dance floor had been eating at me all night. You never could make a decision. It hadn’t made sense at the time, it did now. She’d asked what I was doing here.

  I’d said, I can’t answer that question right now. Hell, I couldn’t answer that question period.

  Jeannie and I pledged our troth on my 21st birthday. Then I signed on for spy duty and didn’t contact her for almost two years. I spent a little time in Switzerland between missions. I could’ve raised a stink, insisted that someone stuff my mash note in the diplomatic pouch. It was contrary to rules and regs but Jeannie was right, I could have tried.

  I signed on with the FBI when I returned, determined to call the shots this time and make off with a pile. Yet I told the feds I had tipped my hand to the mob, just in case. I had a chance to grab canvas sacks crammed with loot but opted to wait and see. I was playing both sides against the middle, like that sad sack cop we dumped in the alley. It’s tough to have superior knowledge when you don’t know your own plan.

  Father Sullivan said it better, spraying spittle four pews deep.

  “Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church. He was righteously angry at the Church for selling letters of indulgence. And he was correct. He said that faith was of primary importance. He was right there too. Where he erred, and where his bastard spawn - the Calvinists and the bloody Anglicans - went wrong was the conviction that once grace was bestowed, once faith was embraced, salvation was sealed.”

  Father Sullivan took a moment to survey the congregation. They were his.

  “Salvation is never sealed!” he thundered. “Salvation is work. Salvation is what you do when you leave these pews and get up tomorrow and tomorrow and, God willing, the day after that. Salvation,” concluded Father Sullivan hoarsely, “is many choices well made!”

  He was greeted with a chorus of raucous Amen’s.

  Ushers passed the collection basket a short time later. It contained donation envelopes, a Thistledown racetrack ticket, a pearl earring and a pack of Lucky Strikes. I added a fin and passed it along.

  It was time to make up my damn mind.

  -----

  Mrs. Brennan extended the lockup hour till 3 a.m. on Saturday nights. I cabbed it back to the Angle with minutes to spare and marched up the stairs. I fished out my room key when I reached the door.

  What was this? The keyhole had been gouged and scraped.

  A dim light shone through the transom window but I had left a lamp lit. Never come home to a dark room. I pressed my good ear to the door and kept it there. I made out a muffled sound. Snoring.

  Huh?

  Only thing I could figure was Ricky and Pencil Mustache were lying in wait after I’d been lured away for a night on the town. It would explain Jimmy’s sudden buddy-buddy. Come out and play, meet your long lost love, drink too much rum and stagger home drunk and preoccupied. Brilliant so far as it went. But my church detour messed with their timeline. They’d nodded off while waiting on me.

  I got my Walther in hand and keyed open the door quiet as could be. I stepped in.

  The three punks from the Theatrical were splayed about my room with their feet up. Two on the bed, one in the armchair to the righ
t.

  No iron came out but the one in the chair leapt to his feet. I took two quick steps and clocked him on the side of the head with my P38. He was out before he hit the floor.

  “Hold up, hold up,” yelled the oldest one from the bed, either to me or his playpal who was running headlong at me with malice aforethought. I liked it when they did that. I juked right and clotheslined him with my left arm.

  He fell backward and bounced his skull off the hardwood. Two down, one to go.

  I faced big brother. Not sure how I knew they were brothers exactly but they were. Big brother was perched on the edge of the bed, looking pained.

  “This isn’t what you think,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  That’s the last thing I remember. Apparently one of the young men I had dumped on the hardwood elected not to stay there.

  Next thing I knew I was propped up on pillows, my right temple throbbing from a sap blow. One of the younger brothers was swabbing my face with a wet towel. I let him.

  “I apologize,” said big brother. “We just wanted to meet in private.”

  I moved my mouth but no words came out. “Why?” said big brother. “Is that what you’re trying to say?” I nodded. “We want to join up.”

  It only hurt when I laughed.

  “We’re serious,” said big brother. “The heat’s on over at Bloody Corners. Not much shakin’ for ambitious young men like Sean, Patrick and meself - we’re the Mooney brothers by the way. We know you’re the new boss of Fulton Road and we want to sign on.”

  I tried my vocal chords. They squeaked like a rusty hinge. Sean or Patrick proffered a flask. I took a yank. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “From Jimmy Streets.”

  My unhinged jaw asked the question for me.

  “Guy calls up, won’t say his name. Says our cop killer just walked into the Theatrical. He describes a mug looks like you. So we go on over to see what’s what. We follow you out - we just wanted to ask a few questions, mind - and Jimmy comes outta nowhere with his sawed-off.”

  So Jimmy had stage managed the whole shebang. And big brother figured Jimmy wouldn’t have bothered unless Hal Schroeder was a big cheese.

  I guess. It was hard to think clearly with these apple-cheeked Irish loogans hovering over my bedded carcass, swabbing my head and administering anesthetic.

  A thought occurred. These boys had been lied to and shot at by Jimmy Streets, they might come in handy somewhere down the line. But I’d seen their like by the hundreds overseas, fly blown and staring up at nothing, and I didn’t feel like adding to the pile. Jimmy wouldn’t kill easy.

  “How about it?” said big brother. “You got a place for us?”

  “G’wan home,” I said. “Your mama’s worried sick.”

  Big brother looked crestfallen. And here I was doing him a favor. “All right, all right. Give me a phone number. I need something, I’ll call.”

  Big brother scrawled a number on a slip of paper. He would be named Seamus or Finn or…

  “Ask for Ambrose,” he said, handing me the note.

  Ambrose?

  The Mooney brothers tiptoed out, shutting the light and closing the door behind them, ever so gently.

  I kicked off my shoes and tapped my foot to the thudding drumbeat in my right temple, thinking about holding Jeannie in my arms on the dance floor of Jolly Jack’s Lounge and Dance Parlor. It had been some night on the town.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said Wally when I walked into FBI HQ on St. Clair the next afternoon sporting a lurid purple wraparound shiner that contrasted nicely with my yellow facial bruises and the grimy ocher bandage on my ear. “This Mona Lisa dame, I sure hope she’s worth it.”

  “Oh she is, Wally, she is” I said with a painful wink. How can a wink be painful? I followed him through the labyrinth of corridors to Chester Halladay’s office.

  Security. That was why the office of the Special Agent in Charge was buried at the end of this Babylonian maze. Any assailant would have to run a gauntlet of junior G-men to get to Halladay.

  Smart. If the assailant was dumb enough to mount a frontal attack. Not so smart if the assailant attacked from the rear. The Special Agent might find his escape route all bunged up. Safety bars aren’t much help if a fire breaks out inside your house.

  Wally and I arrived at our destination. I gathered myself before the great oaken door. Wally tugged at my sleeve and said, “Visiting hours are two to five.”

  Huh? I checked my watch, checked my memory. “But I have a one o’clock.”

  “And you’re right on time,” said Wally, tapping on the door.

  “But…”

  “Enter and be recognized,” said a smooth and hearty voice from the other side. I opened the door to see Chester Halladay and Agent Gilliam standing to greet me.

  “After your meeting,” said Wally, one hand ushering me inside, the other hand spinning at his temple.

  “Oh, gotcha,” I said and entered the Sanctum Sanctorum.

  “What the hell happened to you Schroeder?” said Chester Halladay merrily.

  “Just a little misunderstanding sir. Nothing serious.”

  Halladay resumed his seat. “What do you have to report?”

  I told Halladay and Gilliam the truth. That the Fulton Road Mob’s racketeering operations were thriving after the police raid on their rivals, that Wally and I had tailed The Schooler’s Packard east on Harvard Road, hauling the weekly take, presumably to the palatial digs of the boss man. I told them we had lost contact due to my tactical mistake. And then I flat out lied.

  “The Schooler is eager to get this final heist off the dime. He’s agreed to bench Jimmy Streets if that’s what it takes to get the green light.”

  Chester Halladay deputized his subordinate with a nod. Agent Gilliam said, “So we won’t have to worry about Jimmy running amok with his scattergun?”

  “Heard about that, did you?” I said. “Then you know he didn’t shoot to kill.”

  “Yeah,” said Gilliam. “Guy’s a regular Florence Nightingale. Just ask that dirty cop he killed.”

  “Not that we care,” said Chester Halladay. He said his words slowly, and looked at me as he said them. “He got what a traitor deserves.”

  I kept my face quiet despite the buffalo stampede thundering across my skull. Only Jimmy, The Schooler and I knew what really happened to that sad sack cop. The feds had made an educated guess based on how things played out. Bloody Corners Gang laying low, Fulton Road Mob raking it in. They were bluffing.

  “Jimmy wanted to go to war when that cop’s body was found. He didn’t kill him!”

  Halladay and Gilliam seemed to buy it. Leastwise they didn’t bust out laughing.

  “So Jimmy Street is out of the picture?” said Gilliam.

  “Provided we get the go-ahead on the payroll job.”

  Chester Halladay spliced his hands together and used them as a pillow on which to rest his fat greasy head. “Teddy Biggs was going to come to you, you recall that?”

  “Yes sir. I said Teddy Biggs would come to me because I would make myself indispensable. I’ve done my best, won acceptance without question. But I’m not indispensable without the go-ahead.”

  “I believe I can get you that go-ahead,” yawned Halladay. “If you can assure me that you will present the final phase of the operation to Mr. Big and none other.”

  Gilliam stated the obvious. “We don’t have a case unless you can testify that Mr. Big himself said go.”

  “Understood. I’ll present the plan to the boss man or die trying,” I said and, except for the dying part, meant it.

  “Come back in two hours,” said Chester Halladay with a plump wave.

  Wally was waiting in the corridor.

  -----

  The Army warehoused their shell shock casualties in a Quonset hut with chicken wire on the windows. Bunks in back, a day room with chairs, two couches, a radio and a card table in front. Crile Hospit
al, Parma, ten miles south of downtown.

  Special Agent Richard Schram was sitting on a folding chair, his jaw working, dried egg caked at the corners of his mouth, his watery blue eyes furrowed as if trying to make out a distant figure.

  “Agent Schram, it’s Wallace Hirdahl again. How’re you getting along?”

  Something flickered across Schram’s face. Momentary recognition? Distaste?

  “Hal Schroeder came along too,” said Wally, nudging me forward. “To pay his respects.”

  Cripes, the man wasn’t dead. I studied Schram to see if the insult had registered. It had not. The only sign that Richard Schram was still himself was his right hand. It was knotting itself into a fist, relaxing, knotting itself, relaxing.

  I squatted down in front of Schram’s folding chair and wedged my hand into his knotting fist. This got me a series of staccato blinks and a wicked left jab that landed just below my cheekbone.

  I coughed and blinked water from my eyes. I felt moisture on my cheek. I checked Schram’s left hand. It bore a service ring with pinprick diamonds, dripping blood.

  I pressed my face close. I took both of Schram’s hands in mine.

  “Screw ‘em all Richard. It’s not your fault. You did your job and you did it right. It’s not your fault. Don’t let the bastards win. It’s not your fault. You did your job and you did it right. Screw ‘em all Richard, screw ‘em all.”

  Schram reclaimed his right hand and angled his head as if considering what I’d said. I thought for a moment that I’d gotten through, thought that Richard Schram was about to stand up, shake himself and march out of this makeshift dungeon. But it wasn’t Harold Schroeder that Richard Schram was listening to on that folding chair.

  Wally took my place. He placed a box of cough drops in the breast pocket of Schram’s flannel bathrobe. “They’re Luden’s,” he said softly. “Honey licorice.”

  Schram continued knotting his right fist, flexing his ropy forearm. I checked my watch. It was time to go.

  -----

  “Good Lord, Schroeder,” said Chester Halladay when I returned from the hospital, “we’re going to have to get you a cut man.”