Jelly's Gold

by David Housewright

  “You want to show the gun, fine,” I said. “You look to pull it, that’s a different matter.”

  I snapped the cylinder back in place and dropped the gun on the table next to the bullets.

  “Now, where were we?”

  I was going for high drama, but Ted didn’t seem impressed by my act. His posture changed while he studied his friend—head back, shoulders back, back ramrod straight. He was thinking, and from the way his lips pushed forward to bare his teeth and his breathing became fast and shallow, I guessed he wasn’t thinking about baby unicorns.

  “I’d like to see you try to take my gun,” he said. His voice sounded a helluva lot scarier than mine did. I had overplayed my hand, and I had to do something to regain control of the situation.

  Ted moved his right hand slowly along the edge of the table until it was parallel to his right hip.

  “How old are you, Ted?” I said. “Twenty-two?”

  He stopped.

  “Are you still in school?”

  “Wha—?”

  “Your Trailblazer, is it paid for yet?”

  Suddenly he seemed confused.

  “Listen, Ted, before things get out of hand, why don’t you talk to your boss. You do have a boss, right? Someone who’s paying you to keep an eye on my friends. I mean, you wouldn’t be doing it for fun, am I right? There must be money on the table, right?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  You should be on Jeopardy! my inner voice said. Better yet, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

  “Tell your boss that things have changed,” I said aloud. “You’re not trying to frighten college kids anymore. At the very least, you should get a raise. Right?”

  “Right,” he said. He drew out the word slowly, as if he weren’t sure.

  “What about my nose?” Wally wanted to know. He was speaking in a high, nasal twang behind his hands.

  “It makes you look rugged,” I said. “The chicks dig that.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  “Oh, you are not.”

  “I am.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Na’uh.”

  I turned my head and found Jenness. She was leaning against the stick and talking to a customer. I caught the customer’s eye and pointed at Jen. The customer said something, and Jenness turned toward me. I motioned for her. She approached slowly until she noticed the blood seeping between Wally’s fingers and then came at a gallop.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, “but doesn’t Rickie’s ban guns from its premises?” I knew that it did; there was a sign posted just outside the door, and then there were Nina’s admonishments whenever I carried my own piece. It’s an interesting quirk of the Minnesota gun law that public and private establishments do not have to accept concealed weapons on their premises and can forbid them simply by posting a notice.

  Jenness looked at the gun and the loose rounds on the tabletop, then up at Ted. She was trying mightily to pretend that Wally wasn’t there.

  “Sir, I must ask you to leave immediately,” she said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ted said.

  “Sir, if you do not leave, I will call the police and have you forcibly removed.” To punctuate the threat, Jenness pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her apron. Ted hesitated for a moment; Jenness started punching numbers.

  “All right, all right,” he said. He rose from his chair. His partner did the same. “I won’t forget this,” Ted told me.

  If I’d had a cigarette, I would have blown smoke into his face, but tobacco products were forbidden in Rickie’s as well.

  Wally jammed his .38 back into its holster with one hand while cradling his bloody nose with the other. He began to sweep the bullets into an easy-to-grab pile.

  “Leave ’em,” I said.

  He wanted to say something pithy in reply, but Ted motioned with his head, and the two of them left the club.

  Jenness pulled my arm until I was facing her. “Did you just punch a customer?” she asked.

  “Oh, like you never wanted to do that.”

  Jenness grabbed the top of her head with both hands as if she were afraid she was going to lose it. But then, she tended to be emotional.

  “McKenzie, he could press charges,” she said. “He could sue.”

  “Nah. He might try to kill me later, but he won’t sue. It’s against the rules.”

  “Thugs have rules?”

  “Sure. Rule number one—no police intervention.”

  Jenness moved her mouth as if she wanted to say something. When words failed her, she spun toward the far end of the bar and started marching purposefully toward Nina’s office. The snitch.

  A moment later, I joined Ivy and Berglund at their table. She was smiling brightly. He had a dour look on his mug.

  “Was that necessary?” Berglund asked.

  “Just trying to earn my keep,” I said.

  “That was, that was …” said Ivy. “The way you hit him like that. That was so cool.”

  “No, it wasn’t, Ivy,” I said. “That was a smart-ass trying to prove how tough he was. The kid called my bluff and I hit him for it. Nothing cool about it.”

  She looked at me as if I had disappointed her. I was sorry for that. Yet the expression on Berglund’s face made me think that somehow, some way, I had just earned his respect.

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  “Right now Ted and Wally are most likely reporting to their boss,” I said. “They’re not working on their own. They were sent to spy on you, told to learn where you go and whom you speak with, by someone who either wants to find Jelly’s gold first or take it away when you find it.”

  “Who are they working for?”

  “You tell me.”

  Berglund shook his head. I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t push it.

  “Anyway, I doubt these guys will go away,” I said. “They’ll keep following you, only now they’ll do it at a more discreet distance; they’ll try harder to keep out of sight. Either that or their boss, whoever that is, will try to make a deal.”

  “You won’t, will you, McKenzie?” Ivy asked. “Make a deal.”

  “I already have a deal, Ivy—with you.” I gave Berglund a hard look. “I’m going to hold you to your contract. If Jelly’s gold does exist, we’re going to find it, and I’m going to take my third. I’ve already made a substantial investment in it. Not because of what happened with those kids, but because I angered my girlfriend, and I want the money so I can buy her something special that will make up for it.”

  I turned in my seat to look up at Nina Truhler. She was standing several feet from the table, her arms folded across her chest, her silver-blue eyes flaring at me as if she were Supergirl burning holes into my heart with her X-ray vision.

  “Won’t that be nice, honey?” I said.

  She didn’t say.

  “Would you care to join us?”

  She didn’t move.

  I held up a single index finger for her to see. “One minute.” I turned back to the kids.

  “What should we do?” Ivy said. She was talking to me but looking up at Nina.

  “If you see our friends again, call me. In the meantime, we’ll do what I suggested earlier. We’ll find out who Frank’s friends were, who he was spending time with during the days immediately before and after the heist, who his partners were—he didn’t remove thirty-two bars of gold from a bank all alone, not in nine minutes—and so on and so on.”

  “Do you know where to look for that information?” Berglund asked.

  “We’ll start with the police files.”

  “I tried that. The police department wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “I know people.”

  “McKenzie knows everyone,” Ivy said.

  “Phtttt,” Nina said.

  “We should be leaving,” Berglund said.

  “Yes,” Ivy agreed.

&
nbsp; The three of us stood. Ivy moved as if she were going to give me a hug but thought better of it. Instead, she shook my hand and said, “We’ll talk soon,” all the while watching Nina.

  Once we were alone, I smiled at her. Nina didn’t smile back.

  “Gosh, honey, but you look lovely today,” I said.

  “I hear you’re beating up my customers,” she said.

  “Only those that are armed.”

  “We had an understanding. You were not going to bring your little adventures into my place.”

  “Honey, I can explain.”

  “You broke a man’s nose.”

  “No, not broke—bent, maybe, a little bit, but break—”

  “Dammit, McKenzie. You’re putting me at risk.”

  “Nina, I’m sorry. I—”

  “What are you up to now?”

  “You have a suspicious nature, you know that?”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Nina, if you just sit for a second, I’ll explain everything.”

  Nina sat, but she didn’t unfold her arms. “You’re into another one of your crusades, aren’t you?”

  “Hardly a crusade.”

  “You’re helping those kids. The redhead, she’s very pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Give her another decade and she might be almost half as pretty as you.”

  “Good answer,” Nina said. For a moment it looked like she might actually smile, but only for a moment.

  “I’m sorry for the broken nose, I really am,” I said. “I didn’t know that was going to happen. I didn’t want that to happen. Things just got out of hand a little bit. It won’t happen again.”

  Nina sighed heavily and unfolded her arms. “I should be used to it by now,” she said. “These favors you do for people at risk of life and limb. I just wish you had a more conventional hobby.”

  “It’s not a hobby.”

  “Calling, then. Avocation. Mission. Quest. Crusade. Whatever.”

  “It’s not like that this time. I’m not trying to right the wrongs of the world.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I leaned in and whispered, “Searching for buried treasure.”

  “Buried treasure?” Nina said.

  “It could be buried.”

  I explained everything. As I spoke I realized that—as unlikely an enterprise as it might be—I had become just as excited by the prospect of finding Jelly’s gold as the kids were.

  “Wow,” Nina said when I finished. Then, “Wow,” again.

  “It probably doesn’t exist,” I said.

  “Yes, but if it does …” Nina smiled her brightest smile at me. Black hair that she had grown out to her shoulders, high cheekbones, narrow nose, generous mouth, curves she refused to diet away, and those incredible, luminous eyes—she was so much lovelier than any college girl I had ever known. And smart. And disciplined. She had built Rickie’s from scratch while raising a daughter after her husband abandoned them both. I was never sure what she saw in me, except maybe that I made few demands on her. We spoke about marriage, but when she told me that her first attempt at it had been so disastrous that she never intended to tie the knot again, I let the subject drop, although I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.

  “It’s not about the money,” I said. “I already have five million dollars, and I’m never going to spend it. What am I going to buy that I don’t already own? It’s about—”

  “It’s about searching for it, about finding it when no one else can.”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  “You’re just raring to go, aren’t you?” Nina said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, you’re far too distracted to be of any use to me tonight. Get out of here. Go have fun.”

  I kissed her before I left. It only lasted a couple of seconds. Anything longer and I might not have left at all.

  3

  I spent the evening on the Internet searching for information on Frank Nash, using every search engine I could find. They directed me to the archives of the FBI, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, the Green County Gazette in Green County, Arkansas, and dozens of other Web sites. Combined, they gave me enough information that I thought I could imagine what Frank was like and how his final days unfolded.

  June 16, 1933

  Hot Springs, Arkansas

  Frank Nash was getting fat. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror in his Hot Springs hotel suite, frowning as he squeezed the loose flesh around his stomach. In his youth he had earned the nickname “Jelly” because of his proficiency at blowing bank safes using nitroglycerin. Now he was sure that people secretly called him that because of the way his belly wiggled.

  “Honey, do you think I should go on a diet?” There was no answer. “Honey?”

  Frances was in the other room. She had been giving him the silent treatment ever since they left St. Paul. He couldn’t remember when she had been this angry—at least not since she learned that his name wasn’t George Miller and that he wasn’t a successful big-city restaurateur. They were living luxuriously in a Chicago hotel when she discovered his true identity, and he figured the money had gone a long way toward placating her outrage. Frances was dirt poor when they met, scratching out a living as a cook in a cheap resort, a former Minnesota schoolteacher working hard to support herself and a daughter following an abusive marriage. Now she was with a man who loved her, who doted on her, who sent her child to the finest schools. The anxiety of life on the dodge during the past three years was beginning to work on her, though. She tried to maintain a semblance of normal life, especially when young Danella was with them, yet she would jump every time she heard a loud noise; would rush to the window whenever a car door slammed.

  Spending time with Alvin Karpis and Doc and Freddie Barker just before they left St. Paul hadn’t helped matters, either. They showed up at the Green Lantern, where Frank and Frances had gone for dinner. They were psychopaths, homicidal punks who would chop a bloke in two with a tommy gun just for the fun of it. Yet while he didn’t think much of them or their methods, they clearly admired and respected Frank, whose reputation as a criminal strategist was well known. They invited Frank and Frances to spend the night at their comfortable hideout, and Frank agreed. They asked him questions, listened intently to his answers.

  “Is it true that you broke out of prison?”

  “Which time?”

  Frank had been arrested for burglary in the months of May, June, July, August, September, October, and November of the same year when he was first learning his trade, yet beat the rap each time. In 1913, he was sentenced to life in the state penitentiary at McAlester, Oklahoma, for killing his partner but talked himself into a pardon. In 1920, he was sentenced to twenty-five years for burglary with explosives and managed yet another pardon. In 1924, he was sentenced to another twenty-five years in Leavenworth for a mail train robbery, yet still managed to help engineer the daring escape of seven inmates, including bank robbers Jimmy Keating and Tommy Holden, before escaping himself by literally walking away from a work detail a few months later.

  “Is it true that you read Shakespeare and Dickens?”

  He quoted the authors.

  Because they wanted to impress the master, Karpis and the Barkers then told Frank of their plans to kidnap William Hamm, the owner of the brewery that bore his name, one of the city’s wealthiest men, and hold him for a one-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom—a stunning violation of the O’Connor System that had protected criminals in St. Paul for so many years. Frank was impressed, all right. So impressed that he made plans to get out of town while the getting was good.

  Yet, while Frank enjoyed the attention lavished on him, Frances did not. She would ask him during the long drive to Arkansas why he associated with such hoodlums. The entire Barker clan was nuts, just plain nuts, she would say, and Karpis was creepy.

  “That’s how he got his nickname, Creepy Karpis,” Frank said.

  Frances didn’t think that
was funny and said so. She pointed out that they all treated their women like whores; they beat them and gave them venereal disease and forced them to get abortions whenever they became pregnant. Frank asked her to name just one time when he didn’t treat her with the utmost respect and affection, when he was rude to her or even impolite. Frances stared at him for a good quarter mile. Did he really want her to answer that? No, he didn’t. So it went.

  Frank carefully fixed the red toupee to his bald scalp and stared at himself in the hotel’s mirror while fingering the scars along his nose. He looked like hell. He was forty-six years old, and the stress of a lifetime of thieving had clearly taken its toll. What’s more, he had started to drink heavily. Maybe Frances was right, he thought. Maybe it was time to get out.

  He finished dressing and stepped back into the suite. Frances was poring over a movie magazine, her wire-rim glasses perched on her nose. She was fast approaching thirty and was unhappy about it, yet still a very handsome woman, he thought.

  “I’m going out for smokes. Is there anything I can get you?”

  She glanced up from the magazine and shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  “I won’t be long,” Frank said.

  Frances didn’t reply.

  Frank opened the door and stepped into the hotel corridor. He took the elevator to the lobby and quickly made his way to the entrance of the hotel. He didn’t notice the three men sitting in the lobby who set their newspapers aside, rose, and followed him out.

  Frank waited for a car to pass before casually crossing the street and walking into the White Front cigar store. He asked for a pack of Luckies and began browsing the store shelves. Maybe if he bought Frances a gift… He was unworried about being recognized. Hot Springs maintained a safe haven agreement with America’s gangsters just like St. Paul, Toledo, Kansas City, and Cicero, Illinois, where Capone had reigned supreme. All a bloke had to do was announce his presence when he arrived, pay a tribute to the powers that be, and keep his nose clean, and he would be left alone. That’s why he was so surprised when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and heard a low, curt voice say, “Hello, Frank.”

  Frank turned to find three men wearing dark suits and fedoras staring at him.