A Pure Double Cross

by John Knoerle

  The Schooler was blathering on. Jimmy, this is foolish, Jimmy, you have nothing to fear, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.

  THINK, Schroeder. DO something!

  I opened the tackle box, grabbed a block of fifties and tossed it next to the shack where he could see it. “You win Jimmy, my dib’s all yours.” I tossed another. “Just let her go.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. The Schooler eyed me like I was nuts.

  “Show yourself and I’ll toss the rest. Two hundred and fifty gees!”

  That Jimmy had Jeannie meant he also had the car she came in. He had a means of escape. He was sitting pretty!

  “Jimmy listen to me, you’re the champ, I’m the chump! You’ve got me outgunned and outmaneuvered. Collect your winnings!” I said. “I won’t stop you, how can I?”

  Jimmy Streets stepped out from behind the shack, holding a bound and gagged Jeannie as a human shield. She looked frightened, and very angry.

  Jimmy pointed his shotgun at The Schooler and me and said, “I want it all.”

  This was it then. Jimmy’s answer to The Schooler’s well-considered master plan. We were not all going to come to a meeting of the minds here and walk away in one piece. This was war.

  I tried. I got behind Henry and put my gun to his back. “Sure, I’ll toss it all over. Just let Jeannie go. You’ve got a sawed-off, I’ve got a .32. You don’t need her.”

  But The Schooler had heard enough. The fucking ingrate he had raised from a pup wasn’t going to piss all over his masterpiece.

  Jeannie gave me a heads up with a flick of those bright brown eyes.

  Down, to my right.

  The kindly headmaster who preached reasoned dialogue and thoughtful deliberation was fumbling in his pocket for his Beretta. He was slow, out of practice.

  It cost him.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  The Schooler took a full load of twelve-gauge buckshot in the chest and throat. I know about the throat because I heard him gurgling. I took a few myself, standing behind him.

  They were caroms mostly, left cheek and shoulder. They stung like hell. That was good, I wasn’t in shock.

  Henry clutched at his throat as his knees buckled.

  I held him up, braced my left arm across his chest to protect myself from the second shotgun blast. But The Schooler’s soul left his body right about then. He grew heavy, my left arm too slippery with blood to hold him up.

  Jimmy didn’t look so good when he saw it. His long time mentor-protector-father figure face down on the pier, his body haloed in bloody snow.

  Jimmy pressed his sawed-off to Jeannie’s temple and yelled something I couldn’t hear. The blast had deafened me. Jimmy’s jaws jacked up and down furiously.

  I tried to make sense of it. He had one shell left in his shotgun. Why mess with Jeannie? Why not just finish me off?

  I glanced back at the seaplane. The hired guns were down on one knee, locked and loaded and ready to do business. That was why Jimmy hadn’t finished me off. He didn’t want the soldiers of fortune to have a clear shot.

  Me neither. Not with Jeannie in his grasp.

  “Hold your fire!” I yelled, screamed, shrieked at the hired guns. I couldn’t see their faces with the light behind them, just the shiny barrels of their Bren’s. They held their fire.

  All was not lost. Jimmy had a hostage but I did too. My tackle box and The Schooler’s gunnysack, $700,000 all told.

  I didn’t care about the money, I cared about that last remaining twelve-gauge shell. Jimmy was sure to use it one way or another. My job was to make sure that shell had my name on it, not Jeannie’s.

  I dug into the gunnysack and came up with a block of hundreds. I tore off the tape and held it up and said, “Come get it dumbshit!”

  I let the wind carry many thousands of dollars out over the frozen lake.

  Jimmy, crazy-eyed, jammed the snout of his sawed-off to Jeannie’s temple. Her eyes got big. This wasn’t working.

  The ringing in my ears subsided. I heard rushing wind, and the distant thrum of a twin-engine search plane. The dreaded Grumman Goose.

  The snow white seaplane fired up its engines at the end of the pier. Jeannie and I locked eyeballs. She saw what Jimmy saw. She knew what I knew. With the hired guns piling back on board the plane I was target practice for Jimmy Streets.

  I gave Jeannie a winsome goodbye smile. She sneered at me.

  Jeannie was a tomboy, had always challenged me at everything from beer chugging to a foot race down the block. The only constant was her little girl countdown before the contest.

  Ready, set, go!

  Jeannie gave me a big wink with her left eye.

  “You win Jimmy.”

  Then her right eye.

  “I’ll have to trust you.” I threw the gunnysack at Jimmy’s feet.

  Then her left eye.

  “There’s the rest of …”

  Jeannie dropped to her knees on cue. Jimmy clutched at nothing for a half a second. Half a second too long as it turned out.

  I would have to write a nice thank you note to Commander Seifert. His .32 caliber revolver was well maintained. I put four of six in the kill zone, the target area of vital organs above the waist.

  Not that Jimmy noticed.

  My first round banged off his orbital bone and tore into his brain, blowing his recently cleaned and polished glass eye to smithereens.

  Epilogue

  And that’s how I came to have all these overturned shot glasses lined up on the bar. Drink one, another one takes its place. It feels good to be a hero I must admit. I was plain jealous of those uniformed GIs parading around with all that fruit salad on their chests. Stupid, but I was.

  How’s come I’m not in jail? I told the FBI I had been playing along, biding my time till I could finally get the drop on both Jimmy and Mr. Big. They didn’t believe a word of it but my version made them look a lot less stupid than the truth. Louis Seltzer and The Cleveland Press took the story and ran with it. I got my beat-up mug on the front page. FBI Spy Shoots Fed Bank Crooks!

  It’s New Years Eve. I’m at Otto Moser’s on E. 4th, a smoky old joint with lots of playbills and autographed portraits on the walls. John Barrymore. Helen Hayes. No spit-roasted squab on the menu but the corned beef is first rate. Ol’ pegleg Wally is drinking with me, basking in my reflected glory.

  It’s getting close to midnight now. I can’t see the wall clock and I no longer wear a wristwatch but the crowd is buzzing and the waiters are raking in the silver. They stack it up behind the bar here at Otto Moser’s, no cash register. Wally tells me it’s a tradition started by the man himself. He died in ’42, of pneumonia. We down a shot in his honor.

  I no longer wear a wristwatch because, best I can tell, my watch is the reason Jimmy and The Schooler are dead. Jimmy caught me checking it once too often toward the end of our poker game. Why do that unless I was meeting someone?

  I’m not crying in my beer about Jimmy. We fought World War II to defeat guys like him, half smart thugs who got too big for their britches. But I feel bad about The Schooler. Worse than bad, he was an honest crook.

  Here is what I’ve concluded. Loyalty isn’t for saps, trust is. Loyalty is based on something - your track record. Trust is pie in the sky.

  The Schooler walked down that pier trusting that I wouldn’t plug him in the back and Jimmy wouldn’t plug him in the front. A sharp guy like The Schooler should’ve known better. Neither one of us had earned his loyalty. The Schooler’s death was his own damn fault.

  Which brings me to Alfred and Frieda. I was loyal to them because they rescued me and held me from harm. I told them what was coming. They remained inside their farmhouse and entertained the assembled Panzertruppen on piano and violin in order to drown out the drone of the B-24s. I didn’t kill them. They chose to be heroes.

  I’m not a real hero of course, not even close. But if people want to slap you on the back and buy you a round then I guess you’ve gotta let ‘em.

  Lizabeth?


  She got away. The white seaplane made it back across that dotted line in the middle of Lake Erie before the Grumman Goose could hunt it down. I don’t imagine she’s in any dire straits. Lizabeth makes friends easily.

  The Mooney Brothers?

  I called their phone number. The girl who answered said the family had moved away, wouldn’t say where. Back to County Cork if they knew what was good for them. And yes, she said, all three boys were alive and kicking.

  And Jeannie? Does the hero get the girl?

  What can I say? Our timing is plain lousy, Jeannie’s and mine. Our first reunion took place while I was helping Jimmy beat the crap out of her husband. And our last reunion was a long embrace at the head of a pier littered with shit-smelling corpses. I told Jeannie how I felt about her and she returned the favor. But we took the hint. Jeannie and I weren’t meant to be.

  They pass out horns and party hats, must be about time. Wally dons two hats, on either side of his head, like horns. He’s having a great time. We down a shot to 1946.

  I try to get into the New Year’s spirit but old questions tug me back. Why did the FBI pick me of all people? And fail to back me up once they did? The counterfeit cash I could chalk up to Chester Halladay trying to be clever, or cheap. But sending Wally in a ’39 Hudson when I had a good chance to shag the mob’s weekly take to Mr. Big, well, it stunk to high heaven. Smelled like the whole operation had been a sham from the start.

  The why of that is beyond me at the moment.

  The crowd whoops, hollers and sings “Auld Lang Syne.” I think about that hoary old elevator operator in the Standard Building, the one with the oversized Adam’s apple, the one who pointed his bony finger at me and said, You’d best go home.

  And here I am, in Cleveland, Ohio. The best location in the nation.

  About the Author

  John Knoerle began his creative endeavors in the early 70s as a member of the DeLuxe Radio Theatre, a comedy troupe in Santa Barbara. He then moved to LA and did stand-up comedy, opening for the likes of Jay Leno and Robin Williams.

  Knoerle wrote the screenplay Quiet Fire, which starred Karen Black, and the stage play The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, an LA Time’s Critic’s Choice. He also worked as staff writer for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.

  Knoerle moved to Chicago in 1996 with his wife Judie. His first novel, “Crystal Meth Cowboys,” was optioned by Fox TV. His second novel, “The Violin Player,” won the Mayhaven Award for Fiction.

  John Knoerle’s novel, “A Pure Double Cross,” was the first volume of a 1940s spy trilogy featuring former OSS agent Hal Schroeder. The second volume, “A Despicable Profession,” was published in 2010. John has now completed the American Spy Trilogy with “The Proxy Assassin.”

  You can learn more about John Knoerle’s novels at http://JohnKnoerle.com