Chapter 29 – Late Night Warning from Dad
I retrieved my old partner, Mr. Daniels, from a cranny in the back top drawer of the file cabinet. We said a quick hello. I told him I needed to think, and as long as he was quiet and not too demanding, we’d have two rounds. I lit a Lucky and took a long pull, letting the smoke float into a lazy ceiling fan that shredded it along with my self-understanding. Monogamy’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. Mike Angel was too easily reeled in by any babe with a figure and a voice. Did that depress me? Some. It did some. When I don’t like myself I talk about myself in the third person.
Maybe I wasn’t the type to settle down. Maybe Molly was right—a dame in trouble was my hard on. Maybe there’d always be a Nika or a Kimbra to pull me away from a decent girl like Molly. I was a heel. Dad used to tell me that I couldn’t screw them all. I’d laugh and say why not die trying? But things were changing, and I wasn’t laughing now.
I’d hit 30, and it began to eat at me. It wasn’t like I was forced to choose. Life was pitching me high inside fastballs.
I conversed with Jack for the limit round, then told him he’d have to leave before the help got back from lunch. I knew I’d need to forego his companionship if I was going to take a fresh look at the Forrester case. I’d need Molly’s bright-eyed faith too. I thought about telling her about Nika’s visit. Should I be open or should I keep things from her that might only worry or sadden her? Hiring a secretary sometimes lover sometimes seemed like a very bad idea.
I’d never been paid to read a diary before. I felt like one of the literary fairies up at the Times. Questions about Nika bounced around my head in no particular order—a lot of them, like I was coming out from sleeping gas.
I was about to hurl the diary aside when Molly rushed in and showed off the cute outfit she’d bought on sale. While she gabbed I rubbed my mouth and still tasted Nika. I wondered whether there’d be any more tastes. But then, I never mess with clients. Almost never. I’d have to remind myself of that. Mugs like me don’t get too many fresh starts. From Newark to Chicago to Nowhere.
“You have a funny look on your face, Mike. Something off?”
“No, no. Just a case thrown in my lap when you were out. Kid from an old murder file of Dad’s—ten years back. Daughter wants to resolve things her murdered father was tangled up in. Self-discovery’s my guess. We’ve got the old notes.”
“A case? Great! You’re in business.” Molly threw her arms around me and gave me a hug. She was clean and fresh and wonderful, and it was all I could do to keep it professional. We laughed together.
“Hey, kid—watch it—a man can only take so much in one day.”
Molly broke from laughter and stepped back. “Oh hell, Mike, I’m just so damned happy for you. I knew you could make a go of it here. We can do it together!” She looked at the check on my desk and then back up at me. She was reading me like I knew she could. There was nothing much Molly ever missed. “Say, what else did she give you besides that check on your desk? Hmm?”
“Just living out a childhood fantasy. Annika was fourteen when Dad solved the case. Nothing to worry about—she’s only super stunning. Anyway, let’s find out if the check’s for real.”
Molly hoofed it to the bank and I dug into Dad’s old file on the Forrester murder. If Molly had pressed me for more about Nika, I might have confessed all, but since she didn’t I felt relieved. What a sap.
After Dad’s funeral I’d boxed up all his files and records and kept them to study. I suppose I was trying to live up to his level and thought some of his brilliance would rub off that way. Dad was a great detective and would have made a top investigator.
Even after ten years and a few other homicide cases, the brutality of the Forrester murder was disturbing. Jason had been decapitated, among other favors. His head was never found. The murder weapon was a rare scimitar. Lo and behold, some Russians were involved.
Now Russia is a big place and I didn’t expect any connection between Dad’s 1950 case and the Carty mess in Jersey. It had been ten years. And, one Russki is as good or bad as another in my book, and in a small way I admired the pluck and ambition of those immigrant boy gangs. Reading all those articles about the Purples gave me some understanding of where they’d come from and the struggle they overcame. But things went out of control and the kids became hoodlums, over fifty of them branching out into all sorts of crime. They graduated to murder and felonies of the worst sort. A plague like that has only one ending: the electric chair, life behind bars, or as worm-bait six feet under.
The Purple Gang of Detroit had fingers in every dirty thing that made a buck, but since ’35 the gang had fizzled out, with shadowy remnants underground, spread out, decentralized. Some were thought to join other mob families. No one knew how many Purples or offspring were left. The cops never bought the connection of the Cubans and Carty to the shadowy underground of the old Purples. It was like asking them to believe Dillenger and Capone had grandkids who were modern day crooked accountants for General Motors. Who’d believe it?
I’d read the file years before but after the Doak and Carty exercise I half expected to find familiar names from the Purple Gang in Dad’s files. I was disappointed, there weren’t any.
Jason’s competitor in the import business, a weasel named Victor Putinski, had hired the killer. A dispute developed over the sale of artifacts, old paintings and rugs from Czarist Russia that Forrester cut him out of. Dad thought Putinski was dirty in the smuggling racket, but the cops never made the case against him or Forrester. Murder usually talks louder. Putinski was found in the East River a year later.
After five, a growl in my lower stomach said, “fill me,” so I left Molly a note and headed over to a grill by Wrigley for a T-bone, onions, mushrooms, and a tall cold one. It was one of those nights when the earth held on to the day’s heat way past sundown. After dinner, a cool breeze floated in from the Lake. It made walking around on a full stomach pleasant. I like to explore what the City of Big Shoulders calls Wrigleyville.
You can learn a lot about a city on foot. In your car you’re separated from the beat and language of the street, from the people who know the place, who live the place. The neighborhood around the office made for interesting hoofing, not a part of town where people put on airs. I liked that. Molly had chosen well. She was someone I could depend on and she wasn’t clingy. I made a mental list of things I liked about her, even as the image of Nika sang siren in my thoughts. All I knew about Nika had to do with flesh. I knew little else. It’s the mystery, I said to myself out loud, standing on a corner waiting for the light to turn. An old geezer leaned on a lamppost trying to suck one last drag off of a soggy butt.
“Myshtery. You got that right, son,” he croaked.
I took a Lucky out and slid it between my lips. I tried to imagine the vagrant as a young boy.
“Got a match old timer?”
“Why sure. Sure I do. Got a smoke?”
“Here, take the deck. They’re bad for your health I hear, but you’ve earned the right to enjoy what you want to enjoy.”
It was a small thing, giving that old guy a pack. Small, but it was like I’d seen Dad do many times. Take the time to touch others, he’d say. Don’t be in such a hurry to load your own plate. Give the other guy, the guy who’s on his uppers, a small piece. It will come back to you with interest; change the way you look at people.
The wind picked up and it grew cold. I’d walked quite a ways and my feet were getting sore. I turned my coat collar up and pulled myself into the wind and the darkness. By the time I got back to the office my feet were raging and I was ready for another short chat with Jack D. It was barely ten o’clock and I wasn’t sleepy.
The Forrester file was still open on my desk with the diary beside it. I took up reading the file where I’d left off. The hit man, a Russian stump named Vladimir Stahloff, never spoke after his arrest, even when offered a lesser sentence to reveal where Jason’s skull was. A small thing—giving u
p a head. Dad suspected he had no idea where it was, although he never said one way or the other.
There didn’t seem to be any loose ends, and the killer sat down in Joliet serving thirty to life. I was betting Stahloff was still mum.
There were a few news photos in the file, including a courtroom shot of Mrs. Forrester, with cold hatred written across her face. The papers tagged her “The Ice Widow.” Nika had been adopted. That much I remembered. It explained why she’d turned out so different.
It was just after eleven. My office sat at the end of the hall on the third floor. I opened the diary and read the first entry when I heard the familiar squeak of the elevator doors opening down the hall. Molly often said it sounded like Mickey Mouse laughing.
Then Dad’s voice, as clear as if he were sitting next to me, came into my head. It always unnerved me.
Danger’s near, son. Reach for your weapon and stand ready.
“Dad? Why do you only talk to me when some hood’s around the corner? There’s lots of things I want to ask you.”
It’s all that I’m allowed for now. I have a quota. Can’t interfere with other areas. I’ll ask again for you. Until I get clearance, think of me as your guardian angel with little to say. Get ready! I can’t say more…
I thought I heard a click down the hall. None of the other tenants shared my night owl habits, so the place was a tomb after eight. I liked it that way. Except for Fridays, when the janitor shuffled through, Jack D. and me had the place to ourselves. It wasn’t Friday.
What’s more, the marble hallways echoed anyone’s approach before they took two steps down the corridor. Even a ghost would cast a shadow on the frosted glass doors. Unless Nika was back for another taste, I wasn’t expecting company. I strained to listen for any small alarm. Okay, Dad. I’ll do it just to be safe.
I snapped off the desk lamp and slid my .45 out of its holster, holding it below the desk and pointed at the door. Thick, heavy feet approached, like Clydesdales being led to the barn.
Shadows spread over the bubble glass.
The reflection from the street lamp through the blinds flickered off the doorknob, which turned slowly. Good guys didn’t enter that way. I increased pressure on the trigger, ready to make them welcome. A motorcycle popped up the street and the door swung open.
Then all hell hit the Mixmaster.
Chapter 30 – Angry Russians & Hot Lead
I’d never been on the receiving end of a Tommy gun before and I never want to be again. The first slugs whistled by my ear and smashed through the windows. It was like I’d double-crossed the Marines.
I dropped from my chair to the far corner of the desk; the heavy oak monster ate some of the incoming lead. Splinters splattered the blinds. I was thankful Molly had bought the monster desk. It was the best sawbuck I ever spent; the ugly thing saved my skin. I ducked to one corner of the desk and pulled off two shots up blind aiming just below the transom.
One of my slugs must have found the mark, because the huge blob lurched to his knees, spraying bullets in the ceiling. I looked around the desk and put a third shot into him. At the same instant another gun spoke and a hot stab ripped through my shoulder. It stung like hell. The second gunman was right behind the blob, firing a handgun.
Before I could draw a bead the second thug took off down the hall. The blob on the floor didn’t flinch when I kicked away the Tommy gun and stepped over him. He looked like a goner but I didn’t have the time to check.
I cat-walked down the corridor in pursuit of the second shooter. The guy’s heels skittered down the stairwell faster than Bo Jangles; he was a lightweight.
I leaned over the rail just as he stopped and scowled up. A dirty streetlight raked across his features. He was cadaverously thin with a sharp long beak and he wore one of those nasty goatees like you see in the old films—a real goat face.
I jerked off another two rounds but he ducked out the front. Screeching tires cut the quiet street before I could make it to the second floor, so I headed back up to check on Goliath. He was still dead.
I was going to have to remember to over-tip the janitor, what with the place being such a mess. My first shot had severed the guy’s neck artery. I was grateful I didn’t have Oriental carpets. I mashed the stiff’s face over with my heel. He was ugly, even without the mess I’d made. Familiar ugly.
I phoned the cops, lit one of Molly’s Pall Malls and took a few pulls, studying the ugly puss that floated in a pool of blood on my floor. On a Saturday night, the donuts would be fresh, so I figured it’d take the cops awhile. I stared at the corpse, who was fisheyeing a look that bad guys wear when they buy it. I always wonder if hate’s their last emotion. A good man usually has a smile in his eyes when he meets his Maker. Bad guys are pissed about everything. Maybe about where they’re headed.
Mister Tommy Gun hadn’t missed too many meals. He looked Eastern European. Polish maybe. I hoped he was a relative of the crooked judge in Newark who’d flushed my license. There was a two-inch purple scar on his left cheek. Whoever gave it to him hadn’t bothered to sharpen whatever was used.
I put the Forrester folder away so it wouldn’t be out when the police arrived. That’s when I noticed the diary laying split open at the far wall. A slug had torn the cover, revealing a brass object. I worked the leather with my nail file and dug out a flat key. It looked like a safe deposit key, with “MSB282” stamped into the face. I pocketed the key and leaned against the desk just before Detective Gerard burst in with a couple of Chicago’s finest flatties wearing those funny checkerboard caps that make them look like Jersey hacks.
They tiptoed around Goliath and looked over the place like I wasn’t there. Gerard was a cocky bastard, all of five-foot-six. Little cop syndrome. But he wasn’t any dummy.
My shoulder wound wasn’t deep. Slug missed the bone and there wasn’t much blood. I don’t like losing much. I looked around for my friend Jack. There was enough left for one word of condolence and I figured I’d earned it.
Gerard stood in a wide stance, his thumbs hooking his belt at the hips, holding back his raincoat. He looked down at the dead, ugly shooter.
“A real mess this time, eh, D’Angelo?”
“Angel,” I said dryly, “You got something against Italians?”
Gerard poked around the body and the hallway. He looked at the holes in the ceiling and at my desk, half in splinters. You could see he was playing the shooting scene in his head. I’d heard a lot of talk about Gerard in neighborhood bars. He didn’t like private cops, and expected them and all the little people to bow in his presence. Maybe he didn’t like competition—some sort of professional envy. I studied him closely. From the look on his face when he examined the dead lump, Gerard knew the stiff. He would have. He was that kind of dick.
Gerard sketched out pretty much what happened; said my shot was lucky considering the firepower that had been laid against me. Then he asked about the creep who got away. He’d noticed the bullet holes in the corridor, and down the stairwell. I lit up another one of Molly’s smokes, reminding myself to buy her a pack, and sized up how I’d play it.
“First tell me who the Jolly Green Giant is,” I drawled. “I’m a hick from the Big Apple who likes to know who’s using Tommy guns against him.”
We looped around questions like that while the place filled up with minions of the medical examiner. Gerard had a definite peptic ulcer, or he’d eaten some bad Chinese. His eyes narrowed when he worried. I spilled what I knew, but his eyes stayed slits.
“You working on a big case?” He bit out the words.
“Just one I got today—boring sort—check on a man who maybe had an affair ten years ago.”
Gerard leaned in and stuck his finger near my wound. It hurt. There was a flicker in his eye like he enjoyed my pain. I doubled my fist but held back. “What man?”
“You’re starting to crowd me, flattie,” I growled, and then eased up when he stepped back. “A closed case. Boyce. Wants to know if her dead father was
chipping. Can’t say why. Maybe her mother needs to bury ghosts.”
I’d given him all I was going to give him, even if he stuck his midget digit through the hole in my shoulder. The Boyce name didn’t make him react and the lies about old adultery put him off. Dicks like Gerard are after the hot stuff, the flashy front-page crimes they can build a career on. Maybe move up to the D.A.’s office. A Tommy gun shooting isn’t everyday news.
I leaned back and took a long pull off my cigarette. “I can see you know the stiff. Why not let me in on his name? He’s not a relative, is he?”
“Victor Stahloff,” he said, offhandedly. “Russian mob.”
Even though my shoulder was beginning to burn like someone had slammed a hot poker on it, I acted nonchalant. I was getting pretty sick of running into Russians. With so many of them crossing my path the last few months, who was left to watch the Kremlin? A couple of commies come looking for me with automatic weapons, it was no accident—it all tied into the Jersey mess I thought I’d left behind. Maybe I wasn’t done with that case, after all.
“Stahloff? Any relation to Vladimir? In Joliet? My Dad helped put him there on a homicide case years back.”
“Ten years back,” he said, like he’d been over my file himself. “Yeah—his brother. This Stahloff’s only been in the country a few months. Vladimir’s parole is coming up and we deduced his brother would show up in case he got free—probably to let him in on a heist. These boys play big time jewel theft. But murder doesn’t stop them.”
“Deduced” was one of Gerard’s favorite words. “Any chance of that?—Vladdy getting sprung, I mean.”
“Who knows,” Gerard said tersely; He knew alright, but didn’t want to say.
“Pretty gruesome murder for a dime sentence. Lopped the guy’s head off, didn’t he?”
Gerard walked to the window and spread the blinds where Nika had stood. The meat wagon boys were zipping Stahloff up in a shiny new black bag, size triple X, made in Japan.
Dark Quarry: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery Page 16
