The Blackmail Club

by David Bishop

  “Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. I’ve had those nights. What old movie did you watch?”

  “The only one I remember was The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe. It’s a classic.”

  “Sort of ironic, watching that movie when you couldn’t sleep?”

  “You got that right. Anything happening there?”

  “The typewriter expert should be here any minute. These days he rarely gets calls on typewriters, but the police have used him several times. You know, even if Donny’s confession for beating you up and the note Phoebe Ziegler gave us were typed on the same machine, it won’t tell us why Donny paid her to get it on with Randolph Harkin.”

  “After you get the expert’s confirmation, I plan to ask Donny that very question.”

  “I should know in an hour or so.”

  Jack looked up to see the host coming toward him, menus in hand, with Alan and Gladys Clark trailing close behind.

  “They’re here, Nora. I’ll get back to you.”

  Gladys, a very large woman, wore an orange sack dress, and moved as if well-chewed caramel had replaced the fluid in her joints. Alan had thin shoulders and a fringe of hair circling his head. He wore black tennis shoes like Bennie Haviland had worn to climb into the dumpster.

  Mr. Clark slid in first and moved to the closed end of the booth. His wife sat on the open end and removed a dark leather portfolio that had been substantially hidden under her gigantic arm.

  They ordered and, as soon as the waiter had left the table, Jack stepped off the edge of his deception. “You two don’t look at all like your pictures.”

  Mrs. Clark turned toward her husband, her tight brown curls swinging freely around her dumpling shaped face. Alan put his hand on top of his wife’s hand and they exchanged glances before he said, “What pictures, Mr. Bartholomew?”

  Jack opened a folder and pushed copies of the photos of fugitives Anson and Jensen across the table.

  Alan held up the pictures, angled for Gladys to see, and then shoved them back in Jack’s direction. “Just who are you, Mr. Bartholomew? And what do you want?”

  Jack put his hands flat on the table. “For starters, my name isn’t Bartholomew. It’s Jack McCall of McCall Investigations. Thank you for not wasting time with a fruitless attempt at denial.” He put the photos back inside the folder.

  The fat fingers of Ms. Jensen’s hand gathered part of the tablecloth as she crabbed her flat hand back into a fist. She spoke through thin lips, “My husband asked what you wanted, Mr. McCall.”

  “I’ll answer that in a moment. Let’s start with what we know. You both are long-sought federal fugitives. The murdered body of your partner in the National Armory job, Benjamin Haviland, got left in a dumpster not far from my office.”

  She eased out her thick tongue, circled her lips and drew it back.

  “I’m not with the police or the FBI,” Jack said. “Your cooperation will decide whether I’ll benefit most from your help or from the headline: Local PI nabs Federal Fugitives.”

  Lunch came, Jack had ordered for them, but the Clarks were in no mood to eat. Jack squeezed a lemon wedge into his iced tea and sipped. Then spoke. “Mrs. Clark, I see you brought your portfolio. Open it and prepare a list of every building to which you’ve had keys within the past three years. Just the names of the buildings will be fine.”

  She rose from the booth, her doughy feet oozing around the velcro-straps of her sandals. “What if we just tell you to go to hell and walk right out?”

  “Your choice, Mrs. Clark, I’ve got a winner no matter what you decide. Do you prefer I call you Joan or Gladys?”

  “Gladys has been my name for a very long time now.” She sat back down, the fat rings of her neck and arms clustering like groups of soap bubbles.

  Jack gestured toward Carl Anson, “how ‘bout you?”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Alan is now my name. Listen, Mr. McCall, what we did, well, we were ignorant. The Vietnamese War was wrong and racial discrimination was running amuck in America. In the foolish impatience of youth, we felt patriotic. What we did was criminal. We know that now.”

  “Who killed Benjamin Haviland?”

  The married fugitives shared a stolen glance. Alan spoke. “Ben had been a nervous wreck for months before his death.”

  “We don’t know who killed him,” Gladys blurted, “or why. It’s been driving us crazy. We’ve hardly slept since Benny was murdered.” She put her head on Alan’s shoulder. “I think I’m going to be sick, honey.” Her face went pale. She closed her eyes.

  These two were leftovers from an earlier age, matured hippies who had outgrown their civil disobedience.

  “Benny was an equal partner in your crime,” Jack said. “Why wasn’t he an equal owner in your business?”

  Alan Clark laid his glasses on the table. “Benny was a follower. Truth is he would never have gotten involved with the Armory job in ‘72 if we hadn’t pushed him. When Bennie’s money ran out he came back to us for a job. Gladys and I had gotten married. We had each other. Ben had no one. He worked hard but had no life. Every Saturday night he would sit, drink, and watch the girls at Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club. Once a month he would stay after they closed to shampoo their carpets. He did it off the books. We knew he used our equipment. We looked the other way. He traded the shampoo job for free drinks and, every so often, Donny would comp Bennie a lap dance.”

  Gladys came out of her stupor. “Benny had a pathetic life, and we are partly responsible.”

  The waiter came over to ask if the food was okay. Neither of them had taken a bite. Jack told him they had experienced a mutual loss and really didn’t have an appetite. The lemon slices were still wedged onto the rims of Alan’s and Gladys’s untouched glasses when the waiter cleared the table.

  Gladys looked at Jack. “Benny was so unhappy. I wonder if he felt any relief when he died?”

  “When I saw Haviland,” Jack said, “he was slouching into the corner of a dumpster with insects eating part of his face. I saw fear, not relief.”

  “That’s morbid.” She opened her napkin, put it over her face and began to sob.

  Alan spoke while his wife fought to regain her composure. “Bennie lived in constant fear. He feared being arrested by every policeman he saw, even the meter maids. That’s partly why he liked working at night. Felt he would be harder to recognize in the dark wearing his stocking cap.”

  Gladys swiped away a tear moving nearly sideways across her puffy cheek.

  “Alan and I decided we would enjoy whatever normal life we could get before someone like you came along and it ended. If what you want from us is a crime, you can just turn us in. Our life of crime is over. What is it you really want from us?”

  Jack sipped his tea. “That list. I want that list complete. And the keys to get in each of your buildings, including any pass keys needed for the interior offices, also the procedures for turning off any alarms.”

  “No,” Gladys said. “We told you no criminal activities.” Then her husband added, “Turn us in, Mr. McCall and take whatever benefit comes to you from that.”

  Jack smiled. “I’ve been testing you. I will likely need some access to your buildings, but not right now. If I do, I assure you it will be to help solve a crime. I’m working a case that involves a tenant in a couple of your buildings. I may need access to their offices.”

  Thirty minutes later Jack had convinced them that if he needed that access, Alan Clark would search him before he went into the elevator and again when he came back down to the lobby. That way, without knowing which office Jack had visited, Clark would know that nothing had been taken in or out.

  Gladys stared into Jack’s eyes for a long minute, and then asked, “Is your case about blackmail?” Alan jerked his head toward his wife, his brow furrowed. She reached over and patted the top of his hand.

  “It could be,” Jack answered. “Why do you ask?”

  “About a year and a half
ago, in late summer,” Alan said, “by courier, we received smaller copies of those pictures you just showed us. The next day a man called demanding two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars. We were told to leave the money under a bush in the Sculpture Garden in the National Mall. The blackmailer must have been watching us for months, because the bush he described grows near a bench we often sit on during the summer. We—”

  “We almost went to the police right then,” Gladys said, finishing her husband’s point. “But we paid. We had a little more than that left from selling the weapons we took from the National Armory.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Alan did a whole-body shrug, “several weeks later he called to assure us we would never hear from him again, and we haven’t.”

  “Describe his voice.”

  Gladys shuddered as if a cool breeze had found her spine. “He sounded like something from a science fiction movie. Later, in a movie, we saw a guy hold some vibrating gizmo against his neck. The blackmailer sounded like that.” Her head flopped sideways against her husband’s shoulder.

  Jack tilted his head to draw her eyes back to him. “You need to keep working on that list.”

  “I’m done,” she said. “We only do about a dozen.” She pushed the pad back toward Jack. “They’re all large, and we’ve had most of them for years. Now you don’t get in them, not one, except for the way we agreed. Right?”

  “As we agreed.” He glanced down at the list and recognized two buildings. The one where Chris had his practice and where he and Nora had gone to met with Chris’s pal, Dr. Radnor. Then he returned his attention to the Clarks. “For now, just go back to living your normal lives. Don’t change anything. I doubt you’ll hear again from the blackmailer. If you do, contact me immediately. You’re not prepared to deal with him without help.”

  The two fugitives left without offering to shake hands.

  As Jack walked out, Nora called. The typewriter expert had come and gone. Both notes had been typed on the same machine, an old IBM Selectric. Before hanging up, Jack asked Nora to call Eric Dunn. “He may be able to give us another piece of this puzzle.”

  Chapter 27

  Eric Dunn walked into MI with his coat dangling from one finger, draped back over his shoulder. Jack estimated Eric’s height at five-nine, but he looked shorter with the coat ending behind his knees.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” He dropped into an oxblood leather chair in Jack’s office and shook his head. “It’s been a crazy one.”

  “Two of the usual?” Mary Lou asked after sticking her head through the doorway.

  The two men exchanged glances and nodded. Jack said, “Yes. Thank you, Mary Lou.”

  He turned to Eric. “I want to poke around in Donny Andujar’s background.”

  They paused when Mary Lou came in carrying a tray holding two Coronas with lime slices protruding from their necks. She’d also brought a few napkins, a small knife, the rest of the lime, and an ice bucket chilling a second round. “In case your meeting runs overtime.” She grinned.

  When the door closed, Jack continued. “We know Donny opened his club about three-and-a-half years ago, no small accomplishment for a man who was then in his early thirties. I know his folks would not have financed it. What can you tell me about where he got the money? How he learned the business? Stuff like that.”

  “Some facts,” Eric said, “some rumors. Before Donny started his club, he worked for Luke Tittle, a shady character who owned one of the town’s swankier lounges, Luke’s Place. Tittle opened in the late seventies and operated for decades, until the police shut him down the year before Donny opened his place.”

  After a deep pull on his beer, the columnist added, “When I worked the crime beat I used to hang out at Luke’s.”

  “Tell me about the joint.”

  “Luke’s was many things, but not a joint. Luke’s was one of the swell spots. Only top call brands, no house pours. I expensed mine to the paper.” He winked. “A lot of non-arms-length contracts got negotiated in Luke’s. My articles referred to Luke’s as ‘a local hot spot’ or some such euphemism. In those days, the customers were waited on by pretty cocktail waitresses wearing pushups under skimpy outfits. Nothing like the nearly nude getups wore these days by the girls at Donny’s.”

  Sam Spade’s kinda joint. “What did Donny do for Tittle?”

  “He started as a bartender and worked up to assistant manager. He also dealt some cards in Luke’s private backroom casino—a playroom for the power brokers who liked to roll the dice and turn a card. Except for coming in as customers, the cops let Luke’s backroom operate. That’s about it for the facts.”

  Jack forced the lime down through the neck of his bottle until it dove into the beer, swirled it around a bit and took his first drink.

  “What about the rumors?”

  Dunn loosened the knot in his tie. “After Donny became an assistant manager, a few high-class hookers started decorating Luke’s stools. He limited the girls to one in the daytime and two during evening hours. The girls were not allowed to solicit. They had to be approached.”

  Eric put his empty on the table and motioned. Jack lifted another out of the ice bucket, wiped the moisture off the outside of the bottle, sliced a fresh lime wedge, jammed it into the neck, and handed it to Eric, who was already busy telling his story the way Jack assumed Eric would dictate a draft for one of his columns.

  “Rumors were that Donny ran the girls and split his end with Tittle. Donny was quickly becoming a real up and comer in the local rackets. The story went around that Tittle’s silent backers planned to bankroll Donny in his own place. Tittle’s specialty would remain serving liquor and gambling, while Donny’s new place would serve liquor and girls.

  “Then the big twist. New Metro Chief of Police Harry Mandrake ordered a raid that surprised everyone, and arrested Luke Tittle. Two days later, Tittle was out on bail and within hours he was gunned down. End of story.”

  “Tittle’s high-end gambling clientele would’ve had open accounts,” Jack said. “What happened to their markers? And who were Tittle’s silent partners?”

  “Not even any hints about his partners or, for that matter, whether it was even true that he had partners. After the raid and Tittle’s release, our readers had little interest in accounting records. The sexy story became, who gunned the saloon king?”

  Jack held up his beer bottle. “Let me change the subject. Tell me about the killing of Tino Sanchez. Could his death be connected with Tittle and his missing records?”

  “Don’t you recall any of this, Jack? It wasn’t all that many years ago.”

  “Those years I was pretty busy in the Middle East.”

  Eric nodded before jutting his chin up and stroking his neck. “Sanchez was a big story, but a short one. Chief Mandrake had promoted Sanchez, his longtime partner, to chief of detectives. Luke’s Place had been raided and Luke Tittle murdered. Sanchez’s life ended like punctuation on the back end of the Tittle story.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I was the crime beat reporter at the scene. Mandrake and Sanchez had gone out for dinner. Walking into the restaurant, Mandrake spotted some fella wanted for questioning. I don’t recall his name. One of Tittle’s gunsels, the name won’t come to me right now.

  “The thug ran with the chief in pursuit. Sanchez, the considerably heavier man, followed with the gap between them widening with each block. The suspect took them on a merry chase before cutting into an alley. When the police backup arrived, Sanchez had been shot dead by the suspect and Mandrake had shot and killed the suspect. Mandrake told what happened and the physical evidence supported his telling. The gun that shot Sanchez was traced back to the suspect. The forensics team found gunpowder residues from the firing on the suspect’s hand and his prints on the gun. The review board ruled the shooting righteous.”

  After Eric Dunn left, Jack called Nora’s extension and asked her to join him. He filled her in on what Dunn had told him.
Then asked what she remembered from the cop’s angle about the raid on Luke’s Place and the killings of Luke Tittle and Tino Sanchez.

  She took a seat at the end of the couch near the window. “As for Tittle’s betting records, the cops who searched Luke’s Place and his two homes didn’t find them. Chief Mandrake then worked out a deal. Tittle was to give the records to Sanchez the day after he made bail, but Tittle got dead before that meeting.”

  “What about the killing of Tino Sanchez?”

  “An arrest turned bad. Shit happens.” Nora kicked off her shoes, snuggled into the corner of the couch, and turned toward Jack. “The shooter was called ‘The Counter.’ His real name was Terrence Leoni. He was Tittle’s accountant, with oversight of the backroom casino. The shooting board ruled Mandrake’s killing of Leoni justified.” Nora tucked her legs under her. “It was a really juicy story. What makes you curious?”

  “It all seems too pat. Luke’s place is raided. Tittle is arrested. Tittle is out on bail. Tittle is killed. Tittle’s accountant is killed. Tittle’s records are never found.”

  Nora nodded. “It’s been years and nothing more has come of it. Whoever ended up with the records may have burned ‘em so as not to be tied into Tittle’s murder.”

  “Was Donny at Luke’s Place the night it was raided?”

  “Don’t remember, if I ever knew, but I can find out. Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’m outta here.” She smiled at Jack. “What’re your plans for tonight?”

  “Sleep.”

  “No old movies?”

  “I need to crash.”

  “Me too. A man I find very interesting called late last night, but I’m hoping he doesn’t tonight.”

  “I bet he won’t.”

  Nora grabbed her purse and when she got to the doorway, she turned back, that half-turn profile that seems to come natural to women.