“Yeah, well, where’d you stash the loot this time?”
“I’ve bought into the moving picture business and sent it to someone named Lasky, and it should earn me a forty percent return.”
“Yeah, and where’s the loot, Birdsong?”
“Have you tried the express office? The post office? Maybe it got shipped to the Argentine.”
“Real funny, Birdsong. I know in my bones you done it, and I’ll keep after you until you cough it up or I got a witness.”
“Try them tellers. I was in and outa there a lot, getting ready for the big lawman heist.”
“They both got migraines. And Jones is talking about firing them.”
“If the bank survives. I don’t know nothing about banking, but when it’s cleaned out, it’s plumb dead.”
“And you were the laxative,” the sheriff said. He waved a bony finger. “You done it, and I’m going to get you, and I’ll keep on it for twenty years if I have to, and maybe I’ll nail you for something else, but you’re going to pay and pay.”
“Me and the Rawlins pen, we’re old friends, sheriff.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“I haven’t got any. But it looks planned. Someone planted them fake packets in there, and that wasn’t an accident. For all I know, you did it. You could walk in there and no one would slow you down.”
“Birdsong, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
“Deputize me. I’ll get all those yahoos into my classroom and have them solve it, and before it’s over, some of them’ll be singing.”
“You think they did it?”
“They heard all about the first heist. Word got around that my Academy of Crime was a hoot, and the bank lets us play the heist game. So a few of them thought that whatever’s in the vault, it’s better than a hundred a month sheriff salary. And they made it happen.”
“I doubt it, Birdsong, but I’ll listen to any crazy theory.”
“Hey, I divided the class into two groups. The bank robbers were Filibuster Smith, Cyrus Maguire, Amos Tork, Muttonchop Ames, Bailey Bain, Joe Studebaker, and Marley Drake. That’s the seven that started the ball rolling. That’s where I’d start, if you want me to. I’ll just ask the ones doing the heist what would be the best way, and I’ll listen.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” the sheriff asked.
That’s how it went the rest of the day, until Stoopnagle told him to get out of there, and not leave Rock Springs. Mugs was happy. He’d rarely been happier. He made his way back to the old orphanage and waited for all those teams of hotshot lawmen to come in and report. He poured himself a glass of good bourbon, and chipped out a little river ice still packed in sawdust, and settled in for an entertaining day or two.
Eventually, all his students dragged in, every one of them looking baffled, frustrated, annoyed, or just plain mad. They stared dourly at Mugs, who was sitting at the front of the classroom, soaking up some good booze.
“What did you all find out from a hard day’s digging?” Mugs asked.
“Not a damned thing,” Cyrus Maguire said.
Chapter Nine
Sheriff Stoopnagle stormed in, looking dour.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “Where are those sacks of fake money?”
They were both sitting in the classroom, where they had been brought by the bank-robber faction of the class. The contents of each teller wicket had been dumped into a bag. A handful of the stuff had been copped by the citizens of Rock Springs.
Stoopnagle spotted the bags, and emptied one on the table, and began sorting out the fake bills.
“Well, well, well,” he said, holding up a genuine one-dollar greenback.
He dug further, pulling several more out of the heap. The lawmen watched fascinated. No one volunteered to help the sheriff. In time, the sheriff had extracted seven dollars in singles from one bag, and thirty-four real dollars, mostly one- and two-dollar greenbacks, from the other
“Well, well, well,” he said, waving the bona fide money. “Someone got careless.”
“It’s a prank,” Maguire said.
Stoopnagle bristled. “Right now it’s bank robbery. Where’s the rest?”
“Sheriff, you’re jumping the gun. Those sacks of fake money have been lying around here for days, unguarded, and anyone could have done that,” Muttonchop Ames said.
“Right now, it’s bank robbery,” Stoopnagle said.
“It’s all part of this town’s big joke, sheriff,” Joe Studebaker said. “Go cool off. We’re lawmen. We’re not knocking over banks. We’re here to learn from this here master crook how crime works.”
“Well, he’s a suspect and so are you. The bank’s missing over eighty thousand dollars. You want to call that a joke? None of you leaves this town until this gets solved.”
Mugs intervened. “Hey, you on the bank heist team, tell him how you collected the cash.”
They did. They told Stoopnagle how they stormed the wickets from behind, yanked the tellers out and emptied the cash drawers into the bag.
“It was all fake bills. That was obvious. If anyone had spotted a single dollar, that whole joke would’ve stopped cold,” Maguire said. “Sheriff, cool down. We’ve got twenty lawmen here, and if the money’s still in Rock Springs, we’ll find it for you.”
But Stoopnagle wasn’t deterred. “Right now, you’re all accessories. You have stolen dollars in your possession. Maybe you didn’t put things in motion— I’ll find that one soon— but you participated.”
Mugs was enjoying the show.
“What if it’s not in town? A lot of time’s gone by.”
Stoopnagle glowered. “Then I’ll sit you down and pound it out of you.”
“No one’s come up with a clue,” Maguire said. “We’ve organized into teams. We’ve talked to the railroad, the baggage men, the express office, and Overland Stage company, and a few teamsters. We also talked to the two livery barn people about who came and went. The money’s still here. And if you’ll deputize us, and authorize us to start hunting for it, we’ll probably find it. One thing I know. You can’t do it alone.” Maguire said.
He was proving to be a good spokesman for the group.
Stoopnagle sagged. It was plain that he couldn’t do it alone. His bullheaded effort to solve the crime on his own was leaking gas.
“All right,” the sheriff said. “I’m not deputizing the suspects, but the rest of you stick a paw in the air and get sworn in. And that does not include you, Birdsong.”
Moments later, the sheriff had thirteen new deputies.
“All right, now you’ll get to work. You’ll examine every outhouse vault in the city. That’s a favorite way to stash loot, and we’re going to make sure there’s not eighty thousand dollars sitting in the bottom of a two-holer.”
The newly sworn deputies looked a little dour.
“You, Billy Bob Packer, you lead a north side team, and report to me. And you, Dangerous Dave Dellig, you tackle the south side.”
“I have an outhouse allergy. I need to excuse myself for health reasons,” Janos Mart said.
“You’ve just been undeputized,” Stoopnagle said.
He pointed at the seven who were implicated by the real bills in the stash. “You seven. Your task is to prove you didn’t do it. You’re on your own.”
“Gotcha,” Maguire said, looking happy.
“And you,” he said to Mugs. “You stick with me. Don’t you even visit a biffy without permission.”
That sounded fine to Mugs. It sure beat standing in front of some lawmen all day, trying to get them to tell stickup stories.
The lawmen abandoned the orphanage, and set about finding the boodle. Sheriff Stoopnagle motioned, and Mugs followed. The sheriff headed straight for the Tattler, and corralled Typhoid Mary.
“You printed the funny money, right? Whose idea was that?”
“You’re looking at him.”
“How much did you print?”
“He kept wanting more. Tons of it. I ran through all my bank paper.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s for documents, stock certificates, stuff. Hard surface. Erasers won’t touch it.”
“How’d he pay you?”
“He welshed. He’s not man enough to pay a chippie, much less a demanding woman of art and ability and grace. He couldn’t pay a knothole for services rendered.”
“What do you say to that, Mugs?”
“Up yours, Typhoid.”
“You mind if I look around here for the real McCoy?”
“You won’t find it in Mugs’s pants, sheriff.”
Sheriff Stoopnagle searched the entire shop diligently, from attic to floor, and found no loot stashed away.
“You want to interview me now for a big scoop?” he asked Typhoid.
“Big scoop of what, may I ask?”
“You are authorized to say that the sheriff, an experienced and dogged lawman and investigator, is hot on the trail of the stolen loot, and expects to recover it within the next twenty-four hours. He has more clues offered by eager citizens than any peace officer can handle, but he is reviewing each one, and already has a list of hot prospects. He expects to put the thieves behind bars shortly, and will file felony theft charges so detailed and damning that the criminals—I am revealing something here—there were three, maybe four—the criminals will cool their heels at the state pen the rest of their lives. The bank is in sound financial shape, and no citizen need fear its collapse. It will soon have its money back, except for pocket change spent by the hoods. I am also posting a fifty-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves. I should also add that I’ve eliminated about forty suspects, having determined that their alibis stood up, and they were not present at the heist or part of it. But I am working through a list of seventy-eight, some of them with records a yard long, and by the time your next issue appears, Rock Springs will be celebrating.”
“In other words, you haven’t a clue, you old goat.”
“He has a clue,” Mugs said. “He knows who the accessories are, caught them red-handed, and needs only to find the perp to solve the whole shebang.”
“Perp? Perp?”
“Perpetrator, the mastermind, the arch criminal, the evil genius, who conceived and executed the heist and who has the loot safely hidden in Texas.”
“You sure are vain,” she said.
“He’s got me fingered,” Mugs said, “and he’s dangling a carrot. If I show him the loot, I’m in the pen for ten, not twenty. And you can print that.”
“Mugs, you’re a genius,” she said. “You got born with all your assets above the belt.”
Typhoid Mary could be depressing so Mugs and the sheriff bailed out of the print shop.
“Do you think she’ll run the story?” Stoopnagle asked.
“Not the way you gave it to her. You gave it to her straight, and she’ll blow it up big. That’s how to sell newspapers. You watch: the headline will be that a hundred fifty thousand got took.”
“Well, well, well,” the sheriff said. “You know all about the press.”
The sheriff steered them to the bank, where they found the teller cages wreathed in black crepe in honor of the heist, and a sign saying that no withdrawals over ten dollars could be done.
The sheriff ignored the tellers, pushed through the little gate, and headed for J. J. Jones, who was sipping a restorative and staring out the window upon bustling Rock Springs.
“I think I know who did it,” J. J. Jones said, morosely.
“Why does that make you unhappy?” Stoopnagle asked.
“Because it’s a relative.”
“Well, spill the beans then. We hang relatives just as well as we hang strangers.”
Jones stared out the window, they eyed his visitors, and finally gathered up the courage to talk. “It was Jill Jane,” he said.
That sure got Mugs’s attention.
“I can’t bear it, but I know it’s true,” the banker said.
Stoopnagle waited patiently. He knew something about confessions. But Jones was wiping away some moisture at his eyes.
“She was two-timing me. I’ve known about it for a while. She came here the evening ahead of the heist, opened the safe, cleaned it out, and put in the fake money.”
“Ah . . . there must be a reason you say this,” Stoopnagle said.
Jones peered up at them, and smiled wanly. “Well, I need to backtrack. I keep some rare wines in the bank safe, vintage Bordeaux, things like that. We like to serve it to guests. It’s so valuable that I’ve kept it in the bank safe. And of course Jill Jane had the combination, so she could fetch a bottle when we were going to entertain. There’s only four people who know that combination. She’s one, I’m one, and the two tellers. When we discovered the packets of fake money, I also noted the wine was missing. Who’d nip that? Who even knew its value?”
He stared at his two visitors, and his voice hardened.
“It’s Alabaster Seneca. The undertaker. She and Seneca have had a little party going for some while. I thought immediately that the two had plotted this miserable theft, using the carnival of the fake heist to cover their tracks. And I was right.”
“How do you know? And where’s the money?” the sheriff asked.
“In North Platte, Nebraska,” Jones said. “I checked with the depot. A child’s coffin was shipped by baggage car to North Platte that very afternoon to a funeral parlor there.”
Mugs was enchanted.
“Alabaster and Jill Jane shipped the wine and the eighty thousand out, even before the shortage was discovered. And now I’ve discovered that Seneca is not at his place of business. And this very morning, Jill Jane vanished. I headed for the railroad station, talked to the ticket agent, and discovered that a woman of her description bought a ticket to Omaha, and boarded the morning eastbound.”
He sighed. “I’ve lost eighty thousand, my wine, and my wife.”
Mugs wondered if the man was listing his losses in order of importance, and decided he was. Jill Jane was at the bottom of Jones’s list.
“Well, we’ll stop it,” Stoopnagle said. “We’ll wire the sheriff in North Platte and have him seize and return the coffin; that’ll restore your cash. And I’ll get warrants out on Seneca and your woman, and you’ll get her back.”
Jones sighed. “She’s gone. She always felt I didn’t meet her requirements.”
“Well, this is licked. I’ll let the Tattler know I’ve found the loot, and I’ll be pinching the perpetrators.”
“You gonna let all them lawmen off the hook?” Mugs asked.
“Of course. Salting the fake money in the teller cages with a few real bills was simply a diversion. Very clever of Seneca. Throw suspicion on some veteran lawmen, like me, to conceal his heist. Well-planned, but I figured it all out, and now there’s going to be some justice.”
“You sure them lawmen weren’t in this? A criminal ring? You sure I ain’t involved? I’m a world champ crook.”
“Of course I’m sure. And now I’ll head for the Tattler to announce my success. Typhoid Mary’ll whump up a good yarn.”
Chapter Ten
In due course the disgruntled, odorous, and offended peace officers collected once again at the orphanage classroom, along with the rest, and they were all in a rebel mood.
“We looked for loot in every outhouse in the city and outside of it,” said Billy Bob Packer. “We poked more crap than fits on a stick. We waited around for old people to get off the pot. You have no idea how many old people spend their days sitting in two-holers and reading Monkey Ward catalogs. Especially old men.”
“It goes faster in winter, boys,” Mugs said.
“We checked every privy on the south side,” said Dangerous Dave Dellig. “And we came up with nothing. There’s not a greenback in all that brown crap.”
“Yeah, and we’re supposedly paying to be educated about crime?” Packer said. “We want our
money back, Birdsong. This school is a pile of manure.”
“Slow down, gents, there’s news. I’ll tell you in a moment. But you gotta realize that this is all about the hard work of tracking down hooligans like me. You want to deal with hoods? You get up to your armpits in the brown stuff.”
A distinct odor permeated the classroom. These peace officers had not escaped the inevitable consequences of their task.
“You done good,” Mugs said. “Ya proved where the moolah isn’t. So by the process of elimination, we all know the greenbacks are somewhere else.”
“Jaysas,” said Cyrus Maguire. “Give us a refund, Birdsong. We wanna go home. Tell Stoopnagle to cut us loose. This is crap.”
“Ah, my fine industrious students, here’s the big news. Sheriff Stoopnagle has announced that he knows who done it, and he’s putting warrants out, and these two will be arrested the moment they step off an eastbound train headed for Omaha. What’s more, he’s proclaimed he’s recovered the loot; it has been seized by the sheriff in North Platte, Nebraska, and will be returned by express. He has already proclaimed all this to our local rag, the Tattler, and if he’s correct, he’s bagged the whole heist and the bank will soon have its cash back. He expressly said none of you are suspected anymore.”
“Yeah? And who’s this he’s pinching?”
“He hasn’t yet made a public announcement. But I know it’s an inside job. Done by someone who knew the combination of the safe.”
That sure got their attention.
“So what’s next?” one asked.
“I believe the sheriff will soon invite you all to the unveiling, if that’s how to say it, when he opens the shocking container now on its way back here, and begins to count the greenbacks, which, he says, are stuffed in there.”
“So who in the bank has the combination?” Joe Studebaker asked.
Mugs Birdsong's Crime Academy Page 6
