Eventually, I went back to the kitchen and lingered long enough to determine that Don and Judy were killed early that morning—the kitchen table set for breakfast and frozen waffles ready for the toaster gave it away. Next, I checked the doors. No forced entry. That could mean the Stricklands knew their killer. It could also mean that they opened the door to a stranger and the stranger forced them inside with the shotgun.
I found an office on the second floor. There was a file on top of the desk but its contents didn’t interest me—only receipts from builders, carpet layers and furniture stores dated two weeks earlier. I began rifling drawers. That didn’t help me, either. Impatiently, I looked up and around the room. Maybe the walls could give me a clue. To my astonishment, they did.
Framed in gold above the desk was a two-day-old article from the business section of Minneapolis-based StarTribune with the headline: “Local firm’s browser wins big in world wide net war.”
The article was accompanied by a photograph of a man sitting next to an elaborate computer system. Standing behind the man was a thirty-ish couple that looked exactly like the Stricklands except they weren’t splattered with blood. The cutline read: “Facing bankruptcy just nine months ago, the firm owned by Donald and Judy Strickland and their benefactor, Minneapolis financier Steven Palke (sitting), was sold for seventy million yesterday.” Six paragraphs in, the story included the date Palke made his five hundred thousand dollar investment—November 30, two working days after the kidnappers released Rachel. “Steven made it a wonderful Thanksgiving,” said Judy Strickland.
I was in and out in fifteen minutes—fifteen long minutes—leaving nothing behind to place me at the scene; carrying away only another nightmare. I stopped at a convenience store on Highway 65 and called the Itasca County Sheriff’s Department. I called direct instead of using 9-1-1 because I didn’t want the conversation taped and reported that there was something terribly wrong at the Strickland home. They wanted more information, such as my name but I refused to give it. I didn’t want to get involved. An hour later I arrived at the home Rachel Hartman shared with her stepfather.
It was an old house but not stately, big but not a mansion. Fifty-six million could buy about two hundred houses just like it in a community where you need an invitation to get past the gate.
Rachel answered the doorbell. She had changed from her black suit to a pair of white pleated shorts under a blue and white V-neck tee that somehow made her look older than she seemed in my office.
“What are you doing here?” she wanted to know. I pushed past her without answering.
“Is your stepfather home?” I asked.
“In the back...”
“Where?”
“Is there something wrong?”
I told her. She didn’t take the news well. Her legs folded under her like an accordion and she collapsed at my feet.
“My father did it, my father did it,” she repeated when I bent to pick her up.
That’s what I was thinking, that Palke did the Stricklands to keep them quiet, although... Who were they going to talk to? And why? They made fourteen million off the deal. That’s when Rachel told me about her father. Her REAL father. Abe ‘The Cleaver’ Hartman.
“Didn’t you ask about him earlier when Rachel was in your office?” the homicide cop asked.
“No”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t seem pertinent at the time.”
The cop began to chuckle, leaving me with the distinct impression that he didn’t think much of my investigative skills.
“Talk to my father,” she begged.
“Me?” I asked her. “You talk to your father. He likes you. Me he might shoot. Or worse.”
“That’s nonsense,” Rachel insisted.
“Know how he got the nickname ‘The Cleaver?’” I asked her. “When Abe was still a young man, the mobs in Milwaukee and Kansas City tried to take over his business. Hartman chopped up the shooters they sent and used their body parts to mark his territory, scattering arms and legs and torsos around the perimeter of the Twin Cities.”
Rachel closed her eyes and covered her mouth with her hand; her body shuddered like it was the first time she was told about her father and maybe it was. I instantly regretted telling the story. But then I got to thinking. She already suspected that her father murdered two people with a shotgun. What did I have to feel guilty about? I told her to call him herself.
“I will,” Rachel promised. “I’ll call him later. But first you must talk to him.”
“And tell him what?”
“Tell him that Steven had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Tell him that it was the Stricklands, all of it.”
“Think he’ll believe me?”
Rachel thought for a moment.
“No,” she said finally. “But he’ll believe me when I tell him I don’t want Steven harmed.”
“Then tell him,” I suggested.
She shook her head.
“My father believes in the code.”
“What code?” I asked.
“The code, you know, about avenging wrongs done to your family and friends; about making sure people respect your family name...”
“You’ve been watching way too many movies, young lady,” I told her. “There is no such code; there never has been.”
“My father believes in it,” Rachel insisted.
I told her I had my doubts.
“Mr. Taylor, if I ask my father not to harm Steven he’ll have no choice,” she said. “He’ll have to say no because of the code. But if you tell him that Steven had nothing to do with the kidnapping and then I ask him, he’ll say yes because then he’ll have a choice. He can let Steven live and still save face. He won’t believe me. But he loves me so he’ll do it.”
“You’re deluding yourself,” I told her.
“Please, Mr. Taylor,” she begged. “It’s the only way I can save my stepfather. Please. I’ll pay you more money.”
“I haven’t spent the money you paid me this morning,” I told her. And that, ultimately, was the reason why I agreed to her plan. Until the thousand ran out, Rachel was still the boss. Of course, I could have given back the money but that was unthinkable. You never give back the money. I know PIs who would stop drinking in the same saloons as I do if they heard I did such a thing.
The cop shook his head at me like he was disappointed.
Abe Hartman began his criminal career while still a child in the late 1920’s. He was a newsie working the lobby of the old Senator Hotel in Minneapolis when the FBI offered him fifty cents a week to note the comings and goings of the gangsters who stayed there under assumed names. Hartman promptly reported the arrangement to Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld, the gangster who controlled the “Minneapolis Combination.” A grateful Blumenfeld told Hartman to take the deal and then paid him five bucks a week—a Depression-era fortune—to confuse the feds with false information that he supplied. It was the beginning of a near father-son relationship that lasted over three decades—Kid Cann even paid Hartman’s way to Princeton University.
After Blumenfeld was sent to federal prison for white slavery in ’61, Hartman took control of the Combination, running it with Ivy League adroitness and conservatism; always keeping a low profile, staying away from the clubs and social functions that Blumenfeld loved so much. The only time the StarTribune printed his name was when he married the daughter of a prominent Minneapolis banker thirty-six years his junior. So successful was he in fact, that when the feds used the RICO statutes to bust him over a stock scam in ’84, the local population was astonished. Except for a few Asian gangs, it was convinced organized crime didn’t exist in the Twin Cities.
All of this I knew. Rachel filled in the rest.
While Abe was doing his dime in federal prison, his wife divorced him and was granted sole custody of their daughter. Abe did not contest this. He was sixty-four with an uncertain future. The wife was twenty-eight, beautiful and rich—she married Palke not
too long after. When Abe was released after serving two-thirds of his sentence, he tried to re-establish himself in Rachel’s life, claiming that he was retired from crime. His ex-wife forbade visitation just the same and he was forced to watch his daughter grow up from afar. That frustration lasted until a rebellious Rachel turned thirteen years old and sought him out against her mother’s wishes. They started visiting on the sly. Rachel’s mother pretended to not know this, fearful that her protestations would only strengthen the bond between father and daughter. Instead she confined herself to the occasional personal attack, often referring to Abe as “that jailbird” in her daughter’s presence. Yet it was Abe Hartman to whom she and her new husband turned to for help when Rachel was kidnapped, which made me think Mom might have been in on the scam, too.
I found Hartman’s residence just off Glenwood Avenue near Theodore Wirth Park and at first I figured I had the wrong address. It was a modest house in a middle-class neighborhood that was largely built in the fifties and had been declining ever since. I had expected something considerably more opulent.
I knocked. The front door opened the length of a chain. Half a face peeked through the crack. “Yeah?” the face said.
I flashed my ID, announced, “I’m Holland Taylor. I’d like to speak to Mr. Hartman.”
“Mr. Hartman speaks to nobody,” the half face said and shut the door.
I knocked again. The door opened. “Get lost,” half face told me this time. The door closed before I could speak.
I took a deep breath and knocked again. This time the door flew open. Half face became a handsome young man in his early twenties with brown hair, hazel eyes and a snarl. He grabbed the lapel of my jacket with his right hand and poked the index finger of his left hand into my face.
“Listen, jerk...”
Before he could say more, I grasped his right hand with my left and yanked down. At the same time I cupped his elbow with my right hand and pushed up. The pressure of the hold took him off his feet. I brought him down across the bottom of the door jam and applied even more pressure, touching the tip of his elbow against his jaw. The pain in his shoulder joint had to be excruciating but he refused to cry out.
“What’s this?”
I turned toward the question without releasing my hold. Abe Hartman stood in the hallway clutching a copy of People magazine. He was wearing a dark blue suit that looked two sizes too big on him.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hartman,” the young man replied between clenched teeth. “He took me by surprise.”
Hartman grimaced in a way that made me think it was the worst possible answer the young man could have given.
“I apologize for disturbing you, Mr. Hartman,” I said politely—yeah, like I was going to be rude to The Cleaver. “My name is Holland Taylor. I’m a private investigator working for your daughter. She asked me to speak with you.”
Hartman gestured toward the young man.
I released the hold. The young man sprang to his feet and closed the door. He did not rub his shoulder, although I knew he wanted to. Nor did he mad-dog me, give me one of those “I’ll get you” looks much favored these days by young men who feel they’ve been dissed. Instead he looked directly at the old man and waited for instructions. He had discipline. I liked that.
Hartman moved into the living room without speaking. The young man gestured with his head to follow Hartman and I did. The young man followed me—not too close, but close enough. He’d definitely be someone to step aside from once he gained a little experience.
“This is Vern Miller,” Hartman said, gesturing toward the young man. “No relation to the Verne Miller whom I had the pleasure of meeting many years ago, the man who machine gunned all those cops during the Kansas City Massacre in ’33. This Vern is considerably more able.”
I nodded—what do you say to an introduction like that?
Hartman settled into an over-stuffed chair as if he had spent a lot of time there. He gestured toward another chair across from him. I sat. Miller stood one pace behind and one pace to the right of me. His hands hung loosely at his side.
“I met Verne—the first Verne, not this one—in what? Must of been ’28, ’29,” Hartman said. “I was just a boy then, running errands for Mr. Blumenfeld; met him at the Cotton Club in Minneapolis—that was one of Mr. Blumenfeld’s joints.”
Hartman sighed, pleased with the memory.
The Cleaver was not at all what I expected. I knew he was in his seventies, but he looked much older than that. His hair was wispy and white, his blue eyes watery. And he was underweight. His five-five frame carried maybe one hundred pounds; like his suit, his skin seemed too big for him. He spoke as if he had a cold. I had to remind myself that he was a stone killer.
“The Twin Cities, especially St. Paul, was wide open in those days,” Hartman continued. “As long as you paid the cops on time and didn’t commit any crimes within the city limits, a guy on the lam was welcome to stay: John Dillinger, Homer Van Meter, Ma Barker and her boys, Creepy Karpis, Machine Gun Kelly, Harvey Bailey, Leon Gleckman, Big Ed Morgan, Jelly Nash. I met them all working for Mr. Blumenfeld. I didn’t meet Al Capone when he was here, but I shook hands with Bugsy Siegel. Nice man. He was in town to spring a couple of his boys from Stillwater but he couldn’t manage it. You can bet those boys lived pretty good in prison, though.
“Verne Miller loved to play golf,” Hartman said, segueing into another anecdote. “Most of the bank robbers of that era loved to swing the sticks, except Nash—Jelly thought it was the dumbest game in the world. The feds knew this, of course and they paid caddies and equipment managers to inform whenever the guys showed up for a round. That’s how they got Bailey, Jimmy Keating and Tommy Holden. They caught them on the eighth hole at Mission Hills in Kansas City. They almost got Dillinger, too, right over here on the Keller Golf Course in Maplewood. On the third hole it was. But Johnny saw ’em coming and hopped a freight train that ran near the course, leaving his clubs behind...”
I glanced up at Miller. He was listening intently, his eyes glistening like a baseball fan listening to Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio reminiscing about the ’49 pennant race.
“Excuse me, Mr. Hartman,” I said, real polite. Behind me Miller made a sound like a growl. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m here on business.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Hartman. “My daughter.”
“She asked me to speak with you on behalf of her stepfather.”
Hartman snorted, spat the word “stepfather” like it was phlegm. The geniality he exhibited while discussing his mis-spent youth disappeared and suddenly there was no mistaking who Abe “The Cleaver” Hartman was.
“For fourteen years Rachel lived under his roof as a daughter and he does this!” Hartman said, his voice rising into a shout. “What kind of man kidnaps his own child?”
Hartman began to cough violently. He regained control long enough to say, “I’ll kill the sonuvabitch.” Then the coughing jag increased and he excused himself from the room. Miller made an effort to help but Hartman waved him away.
“How long?” I asked.
There was a deep sadness in Miller’s eyes when he said, “A month, maybe two. The cancer is everywhere and the doctors can’t help him.”
A few moments passed and Hartman returned. He saw in my face that something had changed and looked accusingly at Miller.
“Don’t blame him,” I said. “It was an easy guess.”
Hartman frowned slightly and settled into his chair.
“I was always afraid I’d get it like Dapper Dan Hogan in ’28, blown up in my own car,” he said. “Right now that doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.”
I looked away. The man had been a criminal for seven decades yet I was sad he was dying. Sympathy for the devil. Or maybe it was for his daughter. My emotions became all tangled and I had to force myself to focus on the job at hand.
“Mr. Hartman, your daughter says Steven Palke had nothing to do with the kidnapping. She says she do
esn’t want you to kill him.”
“Is that what she says?”
“Verbatim.”
Hartman snorted. “We don’t kill people,” he insisted. “Isn’t that right, Vern?”
“That’s right,” Miller said without conviction.
“As if you ever did,” I added.
Hartman smiled, coughed into his hand.
“My day is past,” he said after coming up for air. “By the time I was released from prison the combination was gone. Splintered apart; no way to piece it back together. Even if there was, I didn’t have the energy. Or the resources. The feds used RICO to take almost everything. I had enough to live on, no more.”
“You had enough to give Steven Palke five hundred thousand dollars in cash,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t...” Hartman stopped like he remembered something and chuckled; the chuckle brought on another coughing fit. “I didn’t say I was destitute,” he said when he recovered. “But that money was all I could raise; all I had left.”
I glanced around the living room. It reminded me of the declining neighborhood in which Hartman lived. I believed him when he said he was broke; I was surprised he had enough for his share of the ransom.
“Your daughter said she would call you,” I told him.
Hartman smiled.
“It’s always a pleasure to hear from Rachel,” he said. “We don’t see her nearly enough, do we, Vern?”
Miller shook his head.
And I went home.
“Just like that?” the homicide cop asked.
“Just like that.”
“It didn’t occur to you to warn Palke that his life was in danger?”
Full House Page 2
