Dead Birmingham

by Timothy C. Phillips

  “Scott said not to go out of the hotel. He said not to boost until he got back.” Angel was crying as she talked. They all seemed to cry a lot these days.

  Bone had heard about the electronics sale a few days before.

  “Listen, Angel, Scott’s away but we need some green to get us through. I’ve cased this sale, and it’s dead simple. We can pick some stuff, maybe do a few receipt scams. It’ll be cake.”

  It would be easy, he told them. And they needed the money for food and necessities, after all. Just this one score and they would be set to chill in the dark suites of the Cabana for a while. One hit, and of course, one visit to their very special friend who fenced everything they brought in. Angel had still refused to go.

  “Scott knows something. He mentioned trouble that none of us knew about. I’m scared, I don’t think that any of us should go out right now, and especially not to boost stuff. Please, just stay here.”

  “Well, you’re Scott’s girl, and that’s your call. But me and my girl will be back with some bread tonight, sweet thing.”

  So he and Yim had went out, heedless of Scott’s warning.

  * * *

  Later in the day, almost insane from boredom, Angel had at last sought out Dextra, who was at her usual station in the penthouse suite, lounging on a couch in front of the blank television screen.

  “First my boyfriend goes missing, now yours. What’s up? They got other girls across town?”

  Angel had said nothing in response, because she knew Dextra; the other girl wasn’t really looking for an answer. She had something on her mind, and she would soon out with it.

  “Listen, Angel, sitting around here waiting is driving me nuts. I know that Scott told you,” Angel felt her face turn hot, because she had told the others a white lie rather than show them Scott’s damning letter, “that we shouldn’t leave the hotel until he gets back. But I have to know about Mule, you know? So, I’m sorry, but I’m out of here. I have to go see some people and figure some things out.”

  And then Dextra had gone, and Angel had found herself alone in the decrepit hotel.

  She went to an open window and gazed down at the top of the old theater, four stories below.

  “Old Cabana, I wonder how we both got to be so alone,” she mused aloud to the old walls that had once been the house of opulence in the city. Of course she was too young to remember it in its heyday.

  The Cabana Hotel was once the jewel in the crown of old downtown Birmingham. She was originally constructed in 1922, and christened the Hotel Thomas Jefferson. And so she remained until the Jefferson closed its doors in 1955. Other younger and more energetic interests eyed the lovely building and decided to open her anew, this time with a different feel. An adjoining theater was constructed next door.

  For a season of thirty years the Cabana was the place to be; the young danced in her shadow, drank her wine, and frolicked in the rooms that she hid beneath her elegant shoulders. She was the seat of a rollicking and cool scene. People made love there; young (and not so young) hearts came together, and were broken. The famous stayed there when they passed through. Big deals were discussed in her halls, alliances forged in her steam rooms and penthouse bar. Times were indeed grand . . . but times change.

  And so it was a sad day, for those who remembered her former glories, when on a rainy Wednesday afternoon of no particular merit, in the late 1970s, lean men in gray suits and horn-rimmed glasses came to deliver the papers on her foreclosure. She wasn’t making money any more. Financiers wanted out; guests would have to be cleared at once; and later on, the property would have to be sold to reimburse the investors. And so, after many scenes of drama and bravado, the men in the gray suits prevailed, and the tearful concierge locked her doors one last time, on that final day.

  Property taxes were also owed, but just who would pay them was a matter of dispute. The investors felt that the owners should pay the quarter of a million dollars, but the owners were bankrupt. All parties vowed to fight it out in court. The matter lost urgency after a few years, as the New Downtown arose farther to the north. And so the issue was left unresolved. After a certain number of years, more official paperwork was drawn up, this time by the City of Birmingham, notifying the remaining interested parties that the old hotel was being seized by the city for the back taxes that were owed on her.

  So this is how the Cabana Hotel came to be vacant on that day, years later, when the children found her. And so it was that she provided them the perfect base for their operations, the ideal covert staging facility for their crusade of theft. They found the vast suites still usable—beds and fittings all in place, even silverware and yellowing stationary still sitting as if awaiting the next guest. In no time they had made themselves at home in the upstairs sites, collecting all the most usable items for themselves.

  They began to feel so at home that they made plans and set traps against anyone who might ever follow them or find them out by accident. We must protect our castle, they had jokingly told one another. Warning systems were devised, as were escape routes. But, perhaps most important, they devoted much attention to staying invisible in their castle. They must never lead anyone to their hiding place.

  Chapter 21

  This was a new chapter in the game. The Foreigner had recognized the Asian girl. Since he had interrogated the black youth, he had worried, because he had lost track of the group. He had headed to the mall on a hunch that this was where they would have planned to meet up. It was near the targeted electronics store, and the two could wander in the large public area of the mall until they caught sight of each other. And there he had found her.

  He watched her now, loitering around the arcade, scanning the ground with careful and slow attention, slipping her fingers into the return slots of games and drink machines, when no one was looking. Anything that she came up with went into the bag. He noted that the bag was much lighter than it had been when she had left the electronics store. So, she had either fenced or stashed the booty. A fence . . . naturally, they would have a fence, perhaps more than one, who they used regularly. He would have to visit them, too, of course; no one who knew of the item must remain to tell of it. His instructions were very implicit.

  He had visited the old shopkeeper earlier today, and then he had sent another package to his employer, proof of his handiwork. The job was getting done. It was his signature, and it was well respected by those who knew of such things.

  He glanced at the girl again. He observed her slip two more quarters in her purse. She was getting change together. For what? A cab or a bus? A telephone call? It was a desperate act, though she went about it coolly enough. He saw that she was wearing the same clothes that she had been wearing the day before. This spoke volumes to him. Being a thief was so much like being in the Intelligence field, he mused. The same tactics, the same routines, were employed by both occupations.

  He wagered with himself that she and the black youth must have planned their rendezvous carefully beforehand. She had not returned to their base of operations, just yet. If she had been to their hiding place, she would have changed her clothes, and washed up. But she was worried about her boyfriend.

  The Foreigner made a decision; it was time to alter the approach. Besides, he found that he had grown rather attracted to her. She would lead him to the place where the rest of them hid themselves. There he would hide and observe until he was sure of his objective. He could not risk killing more of them until he knew for certain which of them took the object that he sought. His employer would extract a terrible retribution if he did something so foolish as to kill them all without first finding which of them had taken it, and where it was hidden. The item had to be recovered; that was the most important goal of all.

  Conversely, he knew that if he presented the item to the employer himself, the reward would be considerably more extravagant than the price previously agreed upon. Happy men are generous men.

  The two he had interrogated already had known absolutely nothing.
Had they known, they would have told him readily. His methods would bring it out of them, plain and simple. No human could resist torture. After a time, everyone broke. It was just a matter of finding the individual’s threshold. But he had made a mistake with the first of the children that he had captured. At the first incision, he had convulsed and slipped into shock, and died. A heart attack in one so young was quite unexpected.

  The second had proven no better. He had known nothing. So neither had given him anything, or, he believed, obviously had nothing to give him. So he was looking for an individual, one who didn’t share information of this particular theft with the others. A leader of some sort, perhaps. The leader would be at the home base. The Asian girl would lead him to the hole where she and her brood gathered. It would be she who dictated the next phase of the task. And so he sat in a chair, not appearing to observe anyone. But he noted that after a couple of hours the girl looked into her bag intently, apparently liked what she saw there, and started walking toward the mall exit. He rose, stretched, threw the week-old paper that he had pretended to read into the trash, and calmly followed her at a safe distance.

  The Asian girl had given him a surprise or two. She had done things that he had seen before, only in the Intelligence field. She had impressed him. She was taking defensive measures. Changing buses. Starting in one direction and ending up going in another. Surveillance detection tactics. He had thought at first, incredibly, that she was onto him. But slowly it dawned on him that she was following a predetermined course; a clever path that was previously devised to throw off pursuers. A clever dilettante had designed this route, but a dilettante, nonetheless.

  No intelligence professional would design a surveillance detection routine that never varied. The main technique one used to detect a pursuer was to double back on one’s self, to take a route so convoluted that one made the pursuer expose himself by following along. There was none of that here.This was the plan of one who sought merely to get lost in the throng, not to lose or even detect the serious pursuer. It might be enough to throw off a store detective or an aging mall policeman, but not one such as he.

  The girl’s haste and obvious fatigue allowed him to follow fairly closely without being observed; her own eyes were turned inward, he could see. Clearly the hand of tutelage was involved. Again, the thought of a leader presented itself, a more experienced young person that guided the fortunes of this strange group of children. It would be that person who designed the route they were following. He wondered about that person as he followed his lovely waif, himself alternately hopping a bus, flagging a taxi, walking a block or two distant, but parallel to her. She had no idea he was there, he was sure. He had shadowed hardened veterans of the great spy agencies through places like London, Washington, Krakow, and a divided Berlin. No one had ever seen him, until it was too late.

  He had followed her beneath a railroad trestle when he realized they were getting close to her destination. Something in her manner changed. Her step picked up, and she began looking about very deliberately. He froze behind a low wall and watched her closely. She stood, motionless for a minute or more, and then slipped slowly into a narrow alley between two tall buildings. She was taking to the back ways.

  An attractive young woman at night would not take such a way alone, he reasoned, unless she were close to safety—or sure of escape. He waited until the sharp sound of her heels on the pavement grew faint, and then he moved himself into the darkness where she had disappeared.

  Lead on, my love, he thought, smiling. The time was drawing near.

  Chapter 22

  “So we’ve got Scott LaRue, the eldest, who’s the leader of the crew, the writer and idea man.” Broom counted on his thick fingers. “Angel, the pale blond, 21, is his girl. That leaves, let’s see, Yim, the Korean girl; and Dextra, Mueller’s girl. Two other girls. So far the young ladies have been lucky. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “If only we had some idea where they’re hiding out,” Mack muttered.

  “Wherever it is, there’s nothing to trace any of them with. None of them has a phone, power, or any other utility in their name. None of them rent any property or make a car payment, that we’ve been able to find.”

  “What are they, drug dealers?” Mack ventured.

  “Nah, I don’t see it that way, Mack. I think these kids are dropouts. Underground, as they used to say back in the Sixties and Seventies.”

  I nodded. “And not just from college. They’re living totally underground. Maybe it’s part of some kind of weird code they have. They are totally divorcing themselves from what they think of as the mundane world. Maybe they live completely off of theft.”

  “Sure seems like it from this crazy book the kid’s written. Kid’s a freaking’ anarchist.”

  “Hey Broom!” There came a sudden shout from outside the interrogation room where they were all talking. It was Cassandra, the redheaded desk sergeant. “It looks like the old mob rivalry is heating up again.”

  “Mob? What about the mob?” Broom was suddenly all ears.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I got an I and O report on the desk, says that Francis Lorenzo, Don Ganato’s right-hand man, and some others, were involved in some kind of shooting incident at Finnegan’s’ bar, over on the North Side. Finnegan got shot in the leg. He’s fine, though. No other casualties.”

  “They pick Francis up yet?”

  “Not yet.” Cassandra shook her copper-colored tresses. “Knowing Ganato, he’ll turn up with a lawyer some time tomorrow.”

  Mack shook his head sadly. “Mr. Finnegan is a very brave man.”

  “You know the place?” I asked Mack.

  “You kidding? He was baptized there,” grinned Broom. “Thanks, Cass. That is very, very interesting news.”

  “Looks like they were after this guy.” Cassandra showed them a rap sheet with a photo clipped on. “One Johnny ‘Shakes’ Sheehan. Kind of handsome.” She winked at Broom. “Some kind of O’Hearn goon.”

  “Broom, you have a strange expression on your face.”

  “I think we might have flushed out someone who has a big piece of this puzzle.”

  Make looked nonplussed. “I know you probably have a good reason, but what makes you think so?”

  “I went to talk to Don Ganato, and dropped him a fact or two. He didn’t know anything, and I could tell. I sort of insinuated he might be losing his grasp on matters in the Zone. I sort of let him think I knew things he didn’t. I figured he might beat the bushes and give us a name.”

  I smiled. “You devil, Broom, making the bad guys suspect each other of wrong doing.”

  “Hey, I didn’t think they’d go taking shots at barmen.”

  “But the thing is,” I put in, “are we saying this Jake the Shake—”

  “—Johnny Shakes,” Mack corrected.

  “Right. Johnny Shakes. Ganato’s crew seems to think this character’s the one who brought this killer down on us?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe he just knows the guy, but for some reason or another, Ganato wanted to talk to this guy awfully bad, after what I told him.”

  “Which means . . . ”

  “Right. We talk to him first. Let’s go get him.” Broom turned to Mack. “Okay, Irish guy, come on. I’ll need you in the interrogation room. You know the lingo.”

  Mack smiled broadly. “Real police work, again? I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 23

  Yim’s heart thudded dully but quickly in her chest. Where had Bone gone? After they had boosted the electronics store, he had acted nervous, and said something about a pale store detective in a dark suit. Yim hadn’t seen the man, but she trusted Bone absolutely. She had gone straight to the meeting point, a crowded video arcade, and waited in a dead corner, pretending to observe a few kids in an impromptu tournament. The little dead zone was a place that she and Bone would always hook up after a boost. She waited patiently for him to embrace her suddenly from behind, and mutter some cool reassurance in his
best fake Barry White baritone. But not today. One hour became two, then three, and then the afternoon had slipped by completely, and still no sign of Bone.

  Convinced now that he had either been arrested by the detective he had spoken of, or perhaps the police, Yim began to follow the Standard Operating Procedure laid out by Scott LaRue, that all of their group had long before agreed to follow. She began making her way back to the Cabana, their base, taking Scott’s special route.

  She did exactly as they had rehearsed, in words and even in a couple of dry runs. A crazy, zigzag course, something out of a spy movie, or so it had seemed to her when Scott had dreamed it up. Now Yim found the Surveillance Detection and Prevention Route oddly comforting. Scott really had thought of everything, Yim thought. She was very cautious, and methodical, but she never spotted the stealthy man who shadowed her so patiently, so carefully, from sometimes blocks away.

  * * *

  Johnny “Shakes” Sheehan wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t know why the Ganato guys were after him, but it had to be pretty important. He had recognized Francis Lorenzo, Don G’s right-hand man, in the crew they’d sent to collect him. Johnny knew that meant something pretty bad for him. Johnny Shakes mulled these things over while squatting behind a dumpster in an alley in the labyrinthine University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital complex. What he needed was a plan.

  Here, at least, he was safe, he figured. He could hang around the mid-town area for a while, and make a few calls. Try to get some kind of a bead on why the Dago Don was out to get him. Get in touch with Longshot Lonny, and try to broker some kind of a deal. He hadn’t done anything too bad recently, that he recalled. At the most he was guilty of running a floating poker game or two on Ganato turf, but who gave a damn about stuff like that any more?

  Johnny had recovered sufficient bravado to cross the street and enter a small diner called The Motion Rests. There were a bunch of lawyer types sitting in dark little booths have a dinner or a belt or two. Johnny slid up to the bar and smiled at the young lady bartender. She gave him an appraising look and smiled back.