Dark Quarry: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery

by David H Fears

  “Let me warn you,” he said, stabbing air with the note, “Ziagorski’s bloodthirsty and Doak controls him completely. If Doak suspects—well, that’s why I’m not telling you more now—you’ll be safer if you don’t know everything. Just mix with the cons in the print shop where Doak works. Speak when spoken to. Let Doak come to you. He’s shopping for another protection boy right now since Ziagorski’s slated for death row when his last appeal flubs. Dusting Big Nose buys your way in. My contact’s Wilkerson—print shop super—slip him this. He’ll tell you what you need to know, where to be. If anything happens to him, the deal’s off and I’ll yank you out of there.”

  Carty had it figured. He was only going to reel me out enough line to be his puppet. I’d be in the dark until his plan was sprung. It wasn’t cozy. It was like a walk on the beach—with sharks waiting in tide pools.

  Offers weren’t exactly glamorous or high paying right then, so I shook the fat man’s sweaty fingers. Mike Angel was moving into the snake pit of sexual psychopaths and incorrigibles of all shapes and ages—the scum of society—Wing Five. I knew Mother D’Angelo, God rest her, would have worried like hell about her boy Mike being tossed into such a place.

  Chapter 10 – Conning a Con

  Back in the holding cell I thought about the frame up—it was all I had thought about since the trial. The events and faces were like waves washing up the beach, then receding back into a murky ocean of maybes and never-minds. Kimbra in her red bra and panties was an image I couldn’t erase, either. Long nights in a short cell force deep, if jumbled, thought, to remember details—that’s all I did. I sorted and resorted and squeezed every facet of events from my brain, from Ed’s first phone call, and even before, from the trial, where the patrol cop was too smug, the janitor wore a too expensive suit, and the judge did everything but bludgeon the jury.

  Who was pulling the strings? The same mob that decided Hovard was a liability? I was groping around the leg of an elephant, unable to see the rest of his shape.

  I stayed in touch with Rick throughout the trial. He spent all his time off chasing down leads on Kimbra and Bunny LaVelle, but came up empty. The judge made sure that reasonable doubt didn’t apply. Whoever controlled the judge had something against Hovard, and since it was clear Hovard was the messenger boy for the Detroit connections, it stood to reason that they had him killed, for reasons of their own. I was a threat to them simply by tailing Ambler. Bigshots got nervous, so they disposed of a problem and a potential problem at the same time. It smelled like sharks had eaten one of their own and were circling just out of reach.

  Warden Carty’s plan called for me to escape with Doak. That silly idea was a pinhole of light in that black rat house, a point that soon became a spotlight on a Gibraltar of hope in my brain. It was all I had in the way of hope.

  There was a slim chance once outside I could find Bunny and get her to confess, find out who had pressured her to lie, tear the mask off who was behind it all. Crazy—a stripper named Bunny was my only link to finding Hovard’s killer. Still, Rick couldn’t find her, it meant she was well-hidden. Or dead.

  When they marched me down into Wing Five, I got to see and feel and smell why the joint was a powder keg about to explode: four or five cons bunked in twelve by seven foot ancient cells; some had crumbling walls and floors, the only ventilation a razor-thin slit in the wall. Rats that roamed the corridors sounded like elephants stomping past at night.

  I caught a break when they put me in a cell with two vacancies—a pair of cons had just been transferred to death row. It hadn’t lifted spirits.

  I tucked the warden’s note into the waistband of my shorts and settled in on a top bunk over dark meat named Jimmy Klocker, who’d been convicted of killing three white college boys down in Wildwood. Of course they were wearing white pillowcases at the time and having a midnight barbeque on his front lawn, but that didn’t matter since they were sons of upstanding councilmen, and he was a black throwaway struggling with drug addiction.

  I didn’t sleep well. Jimmy hummed most of the night, plaintive tones like he was being slowly squeezed to death. Two other lifers were snoring like dirigibles in the fog.

  They fed us breakfast in shifts, sitting back to back in the mess hall, which smelled more like a sewage plant. I thought of the last good grub I’d had before dropping into Carty’s hotel. I wasn’t hungry.

  After chow we were separated into work crews. They led me into the print shop along with Jimmy who ran a small printing press for automobile registration certificates.

  A gaunt, sour-pussed palooka, gray at the temples, hobbled over and showed me how to file work orders. He placed himself between me and the other workers and opened the file cabinet.

  “I’m Wilkerson,” he mumbled. “Put Carty’s note in the ‘X-Y-Z’ file and don’t let anyone see you do it. Then file this entire stack here by vendor name. I’ll do the rest. Don’t yack, just nod.”

  I nodded and he clomped back over to a receiving area. Moving around to the side of the filing cabinets, I sorted invoices with one hand and slipped the warden’s note out of my waistband with the other. Then I started filing the orders, and when everyone seemed too busy to notice, I filed the warden’s note. I figured it was better not to eyeball the paper just in case Wilkerson or anyone was watching.

  I didn’t have to wait too long for Welcome Wagon. A sawed-off fish-face wearing what looked like a zoot suit sauntered over. He was only five foot three if he was an inch, and with those silly shoulder pads looked like Mickey Rooney in Babes on Broadway. A real ugly con with a pitted face hovered behind him, like he was waiting for directions. They both had black greasy hair slicked away from faces that were twenty miles of moonscape. I kept filing, steady and unruffled.

  The zoot strutted to within six inches of my elbow, throwing me a hard look. I kept filing. Then one side of his mouth turned up and a sparkle came into his dead eyes. He slammed the file drawer closed and stuck a stubby set of manicured fingers in my face.

  “So you’re the tough boy that took Hovard out—I wanna shake your hand,” he shouted. Every con in the place froze in place and took notice.

  The stiff standing on his shoulder had diamond blue eyes, bright but brittle and empty. I shook the zoot’s hand. He slid a pack of smokes in my pocket with his other mitt.

  “Thanks,” I said, making it sound happy.

  “I’m Doak, Angel—you can call me Bernie—and this is Big Hit Ziagorski—don’t call him George unless you’re tired of breathing.” Doak mashed a cigar butt on the cabinet and revolved a stubby thumb around the next two fingers like he was expecting cash. “Hovard welshed on a bet. Thought he could manhandle me. Paroled before I could put the clamps on him. Zig here doesn’t cotton to welshing on obligations, does you Zig?” Doak looked me up and down like he was my tailor while George did his best imitation of Peter Lorre breathing. Doak said: “Can I interest you in the numbers game? You look like a man who goes for a hunch.”

  “The only number I bet on is number one,” I said easily.

  Doak laughed. Then Ziggy laughed. Doak stopped; Ziggy stopped faster. “Okay, kid, number one—that’s the ticket in here, number one. Smart boy. That’s who I am. Numero Uno. You work on this lithograph. I run the print room—Wilkerson is one of those, whatcha call it? Figureheads. That’s why Warden gave me this swell suit—you like it, don’t you kid?” He asked the question like a threat.

  “Beats prison issue.”

  More laughter.

  ***

  Doak kept me close daily in the print shop, and I was beginning to think the warden had scrapped the gig when a guard slipped me a note as I was leaving the mess hall one morning. If the writing had been any smaller I would have needed a microscope. The note said “the party” was set for Thursday, after a diversion of some kind in the print shop. Before then I was to breathe to Doak that I planned to bust out Wednesday night through a sewer line under the west wall; claim I’d been working on the plan with an old set of blu
eprints since my trial. My caper had to look screwball enough so that Doak would talk me out of it and persuade me to join his party the next night. One other detail—I had to keep the Zig man from following when we made the break.

  I was in a rat maze with one small hole, ordered to orchestrate which rats left and which didn’t. Suddenly Carty didn’t look very brilliant. You have to wonder about the mind of a guy who takes a warden’s job, or maybe Carty had lived around cons so long that stupid rubbed off.

  The next day I was about to bait Doak when a guard smirked and announced I had a female visitor in the screening room. A reporter. Doak grabbed the crook of my arm. His eyes glittered and flooded with something resembling desperation.

  “Perfume. Get me anything with her perfume—hankie, stocking—anything, ” he said, nervously. I looked in his face and saw myself in stir a few years down the road. I was already getting female withdrawal.

  Heddy McBright perched easily on a visitor’s stool. Her gloved hands laced together, as if touching anything would give her the clap. Maybe it would have.

  She wore a suit with the jacket unbuttoned and something flimsy covering her lungs. The dump was humid, and she was aerating her small but shapely chest. Heddy put forth all business, but lava flowed under that crust; my radar picked it up the moment I sat down.

  Heddy had curb appeal. One long feather swooped out of her hat and curved around her pretty cheek under a shock of silky auburn hair. Her lipstick shade was a bit too red, but I didn’t mind. She opened a gold cigarette case and stuck one through the screen. I looked at the guard across the room and he nodded. I took the smoke and she lit it, then one for herself.

  “How do you like the Big House?” she asked in a too-cute tone that just begged for a slap.

  “I don’t want to hang around, sugar, if that’s what you mean. This dump will fall in on itself in a good breeze. Strange they put it right smack in a working class neighborhood, isn’t it?” My eyes focused in that soft valley between her breasts. She noticed my gaze but didn’t let on and I wouldn’t have cared if she did.

  “Mike, listen—I haven’t much time. It’s about Bunny LaVelle. A guy from my paper thinks he knows where she is, except they don’t call her Bunny in Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut? What’s she doing up there? Cooling it, no doubt. Perjury’s a serious rap.”

  “Nobody’ll listen but I know you didn’t do it. I’m putting in overtime on this. Rick Anthony called and filled me in.”

  “Thanks, cupcake. Rick’s a good man, my dad’s old partner. Maybe if I ever get out of here I can buy you two a drink. Then Rick can leave and I can buy you another.” I winked. She didn’t smile. “Seriously, why would you go to all that dutch for a private flattie like me? Just a headline?”

  “Sure, just the story. I’m a hardcore newspaper reporter without a heart—okay, okay, no, not just the story. You helped a sister of mine out of a jam when her no-account husband embezzled from her boss. He was threatening her life.”

  “Lacey Stuart?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Don’t tell me Agnes Stuart’s your mother?”

  “Hell, no. Stepmother. Not all of Dad’s decisions were great ones.”

  “I know what you mean, look—I need a favor—a big one—it will help me get next to a mug in here who can sort of move my case. I need something with your perfume on it.”

  “Sure, I can mail you—”

  “Sorry, doll, I need it now. Hankie?”

  “I don’t carry one.”

  “Then it’ll have to be panties. Slip them off when the guard’s not looking.”

  A pink flush rose to Heddy’s ears. She stared; read the purpose in my eyes. Then a light came in her eyes. Lifting her hips, she hiked her skirt enough to slip her thumbs inside her panties and slide them down her thighs. She still didn’t mind me gawking. Black lace. As they slid down her legs, she let the panties linger at her knees, smirked, then parted her lips slightly and braced her tongue on her lower lip. I would have given everything I owned at that moment to be on the other side of the cage. It was getting much warmer on my side. Heddy was a world-class prick tease.

  Our eyes shared heat. Heddy enjoyed my need more than a mild-mannered reporter should. Once the guard looked away she slipped the prize to her ankles, then lifted them on one foot to her hand. If the screen hadn’t been between us I had a feeling we would have gotten much better acquainted. Then the door guard came to say my time was up, and as he turned, Heddy slipped the valuables through the screen and I caught a whiff of heaven:

  Violets.

  The panties gave me a bold idea. Instead of throwing a flimsy escape plan in front of Doak he’d be suspicious of, like Carty had planned, I would try a long shot. When I got back to the print shop, Ziggy was down the hall being fitted for his probable date with the chair, some sort of exam they give guys to see if they’re well enough to kill. Only the the legal system could come up with something that wacky.

  So I got zoot into a corner and crowded him.

  “Well?” he pleaded, “you get a hankie for me?”

  “First things first. What I have’s worth you letting me throw in with you for Thursday’s break. I got wind of it in the print shop.”

  “Wha—? What do you mean?” he growled. I was out on the high diving board now; there was nothing to do but jump.

  “You won’t be sorry.”

  “I don’t know what you know, or how you know it, but that party is closed.”

  “Hear me out—Warden thinks he’s got me figured. Takes me for an innocent sap. I aced Hovard all right, but I’m not going to do life for it. I know you’re planning a bust out Thursday; Warden filled me in—tried to rope me in to stopping you. I went along, but now I’m double-crossing Carty, get it?”

  At this last word I slipped the panties out of my pocket, sniffed and dangled them in front of his puss. I thought the guy was gonna cream himself right there. Some dopes are that way about undies. “I can get more—a date with the owner of those when you break out,” I lied. Guys like Doak were bred on lies—they’re like chicken soup to them.

  Doak buried his face in the black treasure. He sobbed: “Okay, anything, anything. Violets. My God, violets!—and woman!”

  Ziggy approached with a quizzical look on his puss that turned to jealous hatred when he saw my gift for his boss. Zig was as frigid as Doak was overheated.

  “Mike’s in,” Doak mumbled into the fragrant silk, his eyes shifting from me to Zig. “Except we’re going Wednesday.”

  Ziggy just stood there with his big yap open. What could he say? I smirked and slapped Zig on the back and said: “We’re a helluva team, ain’t we George?”

  Chapter 11 – The Breakout

  As much as I was in the dark about Carty’s scheme, I was also down a shaft as deep as Joe Ambler’s grave about what the cons would do. The inmates in Wing Five were told to wait for the signal; that Doak was running the show. Even in isolation Doak had managed to coordinate a plan of attack the year before. Now he was using his power over incorrigibles to trade with Carty for his own favors. I would just have to wait, not comfortable, but I had no option.

  On Wednesday just before the end of our print shop shift, two cons got into a heated argument that quickly turned violent. I could tell it was staged. Wilkerson waded in with a club. As if prearranged, the print shop goons grabbed Wilkerson and two guards. One con lifted a set of keys and pushed the controls to a row of cell doors.

  Stay on your toes, son. Watch out for Ziagorski and follow Doak’s lead. He has a way out.

  It was Dad’s voice, as clear as a bell, inside my head so loud I was afraid others heard it. I looked around but no one was looking at me, just the tussle on the other side of the shop. Maybe I was going nuts from being locked up. It was the first time Dad had “talked” to me since I was convicted.

  Cons in adjoining cells began to tear apart their metal cots, using legs for weapons. Soon fifty of the hardest cons had barricad
ed themselves inside the print shop and a three-tiered cellblock. The bad complexion boys made themselves comfortable at Wilkerson’s desk where they were out of the line of fire. From there they ran the show. Cons still in their cells smashed cell toilets, shredded beds, broke windows and set fires; Doak was in control of the east side of the prison. Still, I couldn’t see how a riot was going to get us out. Dad seemed to know about Doak’s plan. I wondered how he could have possibly known, much less told me about it from—well, from wherever he was.

  Doak yanked me when the trouble started and told me to shadow him and wait for his orders. George eyed me like a Doberman with a bone lying between us. Nasty motives crackled in his eyes that usually looked like dead clams. He grinned crookedly anticipating the impending play.

  Two cons hogtied Wilkerson to a printing press.

  Leaning back in Wilkerson’s swivel chair, Doak unpeeled his zoot jacket and folded it carefully like he was changing for the opera. He stretched out a pair of wide red suspenders, lit a black stogie, and beamed like his nag had just led wire to wire at forty-to-one.

  “We’ve got two guards and Duke, the printing teach, as hostages, Angel. Carty won’t rush us for hours. Make yourself comfy. I want youse to bring up the rear when we break.”

  “Don’t let me tell you your biz,” I said easily, still not seeing his plan, “but the longer we hunker here the more heat we’ll face. Carty’ll call out the National Guard. Hostages won’t be our ticket out of here.”

  Doak made an impatient swipe with his hand. “We’ll lam out when I sez, next week maybe.”

  I acted submissive. He wasn’t going to fill me in. “Sure. When you sez.” I wanted to strangle the little freak.