by Ace Collins
She set the bills aside, picked up the pencil again, and began to record the information. Then lightning struck. Picking up the final bill, she studied it more closely.
“My Lord,” she whispered.
Pushing her chair back from the table, she rushed from the room and down the hall to where two agents were standing in front of a door. Instinct told her who was on the other side.
“I need to see Lepowitz,” she announced in a demanding tone.
“He’s with the prisoner, Miss Meeker,” the taller of the two explained.
“I know that,” she quickly replied, “but this is about the case. I have to see Lepowitz now. I have an angle that he needs to ask McGrew about. Let him know I’m here.”
“I can’t do that, ma’am,” the square-jawed man calmly but firmly replied. “Agent Lepowitz left instructions that no one was to go in until he was finished.”
“He did?” She turned on her heel, walked two steps back in the direction she came from then whirled and raced toward the door. Before the agents could react, she’d twisted the knob and charged into the room.
McGrew’s eyes found Meeker even before Reese or Lepowitz had a chance to turn around. The hood ornament barked, “Get her out of here! That woman’s crazy.”
“Meeker!” Lepowitz screamed as he rose from his chair. “You can’t be in here.”
Her eyes aflame, she shouted back, “I already am!” Shifting her gaze to the other side of the small wooden table, she waved the one-hundred-dollar bill and said, “Where did you get the money that was in your bag, McGrew?”
Lepowitz glanced toward the door and to the two men who had been guarding it. They stood open-mouthed, motionless. “Get her out of here.”
Meeker paid no attention. “Where did you get this cash, McGrew?”
As one of the agents laid a hand on her shoulder, she turned to Lepowitz and warned, “Get this guy’s hands off me. If you don’t let me get the answers I need, the next call you get will be from my friend and boss FDR. Do you understand?”
“You can’t do this to me,” Lepowitz warned.
“Try me,” she dared him. “I had the power to be assigned to the FBI when no other woman in the world could. Every time you’ve tried to turn me into a secretary, you’ve had your own personal fireside chat with the President. I want to know just one thing from this goon. That’s all! Then you can have him all to yourself, and I’ll be on my way back to Chicago. You can even take personal credit for arresting him. You can change the story so you tossed him over the hood of your car and brought him in. But you let me ask him where he got the C-notes!”
Lepowitz set his jaw as he reconsidered his options. Looking back toward the door, he waved the men out. He then glanced back at the prisoner. “Where’d you get the cash?”
“It’s not mine,” he spat.
Meeker looked over to Reese and nodded. Reese turned back to McGrew. “Was this what you were waiting for, and why you didn’t leave sooner?”
The prisoner sighed. “I had to have the ten grand to get to Mexico. There were going to be a lot of people I had to pay off along the way.”
Meeker moved quickly around the table, tossed the torn hundred down, and demanded, “Who brought it to you? Who was driving the maroon Sharknose Graham?”
McGrew shook his head. “I won’t tell you.”
Sensing a moment in which he could regain his authority, Lepowitz pointed his finger and hissed, “Tell us what we want to know or things are going to get even worse for you!”
“Worse for me?” McGrew laughed. “Excuse me, I’m headed to the death house. The only question unanswered is which state gets to do the honor and whether I’ll die using gas or electricity. Your threats mean nothing to me.”
Meeker cut in. “What if we could make it easier on you? Maybe we could exert a bit of influence and get you a life sentence. It’s been known to happen.”
The con shook his head.
“Can I talk to Reese outside?” Meeker asked.
“As long as you don’t come back in,” Lepowitz growled.
Picking up the bill from the table, Meeker opened the door and strolled back into the hall. Her partner followed along behind her. She led him around the corner where they could not be overheard and, leaning close, whispered, “You can work McGrew over all you want, he’s not going to give up the name.”
“You mean loyalty of thieves?” Reese asked.
“No,” she replied, “he has no loyalty to anyone. I found that out by the way he talked about the others at the farmhouse. He’d have rolled over in a second on them. However, that guy driving the Graham means something to him personally.”
“But why’s it so important?” Reese asked. “What difference does it make? We have McGrew.”
“I’m taking this bill back to Chicago with me,” Meeker explained, “to make sure my theory is correct. But I think the money that man gave to McGrew was a part of what Abbi Watling hid in the Packard.”
A look of disbelief washed over Reese’s handsome features. “What? How can you be sure?”
“A corner was torn off. I think the missing part was what Bobbs found in the seat cushion. So work your magic on McGrew, do whatever you have to to make him spill, see if he knows anything about the kidnapping, but my guess is he won’t open up no matter what tactics you employ. If we can somehow find out who he thinks enough of not to rat them out, we are likely a lot closer to the answers in the Rose Hall case.”
Reese stood silently, his hands in his pockets as he contemplated what he’d been told. Meeker gave him a few seconds before announcing, “I’ll give everything in the bag and all my notes to one of Lepowitz’s flunkies. I’m taking the hundred for our case. If he protests, tell him to call the President. I’ll see you back in Chicago.”
Chapter 55
Meeker arrived at her Chicago hotel room at four in the morning. She showered, changed, and headed directly to the office. Checking out the evidence file, she pulled the small piece of a bill out and set it next to the one she’d discovered in McGrew’s getaway bag. It was a perfect match.
Pulling the sketch made from Landers’s description, she studied it again. She was pretty sure this was Mitchell Burgess. But who was Burgess? Except for those who knew him vaguely in Oakwood, there was no Mitchell Burgess. They’d run down every person named Mitchell Burgess in the country, and none was a match. It had to be an alias. So where was he, and who was he before he arrived in Oakwood?
Looking at the drawing, she thought back fourteen hours. The man driving the Graham had worn a hat, and she never really got a good look at his face. Could he have been Burgess? If only she could relive those moments again and spend more time studying the man.
So what was next? Maybe it was her female mind working, but one move seemed obvious. If the FBI couldn’t find Burgess in any of the usual ways, then it was time to try something unusual. Picking up the phone, she waited for the bureau’s switchboard operator to connect her with headquarters.
“Helen Meeker here. I need all the information we have in our files on Jack McGrew.”
“Not going to be easy. You know he just got captured.”
“I’m aware of that,” she assured the file clerk. “So where do I have to go to get my hands on it?”
“We won’t have it until after the agent in charge is finished processing McGrew.”
“I see,” she replied and hung up.
A haggard Henry Reese staggered into the office just as she was putting the phone down. His tired eyes reflected the long night he’d been through.
“Lepowitz is not happy,” Reese said. “He’s vowed to end your association with the FBI. I heard him talking to Hoover on the phone. They’re going to try to get FDR to pull you for safety reasons. They’re going to spell out that you almost got killed yesterday, and that would have been terrible for the organization’s image.”
“It wouldn’t have done me much good either.” Meeker grinned. “Besides, I caught McGrew.”
“That’s not the way the report will read,” the man replied. “I think they’ve got the power to move you on this time. With what’s going on in Europe right now, the President could probably be convinced he needs you in another position.”
“I can buy some time,” Meeker assured him. “I’ll tell the President about the new lead we have on the kidnapping case. He’ll at least force them to give me the chance to follow it up. And I need your help.”
Reese forced a smile as he eased back into his desk chair. “What do you need?”
“Everything,” she said. “I need the story of McGrew’s life. That might help me come to know the answer to who this man is that he wouldn’t give up. Let’s start with his family.”
“They’re all dead,” Reese explained as he leaned back and propped his feet on the desk. “His mother died when he was about three. His father worked on ranches and moved around a lot. He was killed while breaking a horse when McGrew was about sixteen. Jack was on his own after that.”
“No aunts, uncles, cousins?”
“No,” Reese said, “when his father died, that was it. No friends either. Barely went to school, never belonged to any kind of organization or church. Fell in with livestock thieves not long after his dad was killed. Spent a little time in jail, but that didn’t change him. Eventually came to Chicago with dreams of working for Johnny Torrio’s mob, but he just didn’t get along or mix well with the immigrants from Europe that ran the gangs. Thus it was not a marriage made in hoodlum heaven.”
“What about prison time?” she asked.
“He served two stretches. The first was in the late twenties for bootlegging. That was in Joliet. He made a return appearance at that prison in 1932. That stay lasted eighteen months. He gained an early release for doing some kind of good deed. That fits, too. From what I have found out, he was always a model prisoner.”
“Ironic,” Meeker noted, pulling herself out of her chair and moving to the window. “He stayed out of trouble on the inside but got into it on the outside. What about since his last release? Did anyone get close to him?”
Reese got up and joined her at the window. “No, he was a lone wolf. He usually put together a gang, used them for a job or two, paid them off, and never saw them again. He had no long-term relationships with women either.”
“Then I guess I need to go to Joliet,” she said.
“The prison?”
“Yeah, the answer has to be there. As you noted, on the outside he owed no one and no one owed him, so that’s the only answer. Someone he knew in one of his stays became the brother he never had. We have to find that man, and we have to do it very quickly.”
Chapter 56
Getting into a prison was not difficult; it was the getting out that was the pain. There were tens of thousands across the country that could verify that fact, too. The heavy gate closed behind her.
Meeker had always been a bit claustrophobic. There was nothing in her past that seemed to have triggered this fear, yet it was something that marked her since childhood. Thus, whenever she walked into a prison, her blood pressure rose and her heart rate accelerated. And that feeling of being closed in had been haunting her even as she and Reese drove the Packard from Chicago to the west side of the state.
Meeker had been to Joliet many times, but she had never really stopped to enjoy the community. This trip would be no different. She and her partner would walk into the prison, be admitted into the records section, and with the help of a couple of trustees start digging through files. It would be time-consuming, detailed work, and it would all have to be done behind those high, imposing, and confining walls.
The warden was too busy meeting with a local congressman to greet them at the gate; so one of his assistants drew the task. Greg Bost was friendly enough, in a grim sort of way, but far from interested in the reason for their visit. In very businesslike fashion, he escorted them to the records department, where they were met by two men in prison garb.
“Mr. Reese, Miss Meeker, these are two of our trustees. The man sitting behind the desk is Jefferson Tisdale. The one at the far group of file cabinets is Lee Miles. We call Lee “Babe” because of the way he can smack a baseball around the yard. These men will assist you in any way they can. You can come by my office before you leave if you have any other questions or requests. I will escort you out.”
Meeker set her purse and briefcase on the table and smiled at Miles. Babe, as they called him, was built like a moose and had a head full of thick, straight dark hair. His expression matched his nickname, and when he smiled, his eyes lit up. He looked a lot more like a teddy bear than he did a convict.
“How do you do?” Babe announced, proving that his voice matched his size.
“Fine,” Meeker replied. “How are you?”
“As good as a long-termer can be,” he assured her.
She then looked to the other trustee. While Babe was fair skinned and light-eyed, Jefferson Tisdale was dark with deep-set brown eyes. His smile was slight, and as soon as her eyes met his, he glanced down toward the floor.
“Hello, Jeff,” she said. “It is okay if I call you Jeff? Or would you prefer Jefferson?”
“Jeff’s fine,” he quietly replied. “That’s what my mama called me.”
“Well, you two can call me Helen, and my partner is Henry. Now if you’ll come over to the table, we’ll spell out what we’re looking for.”
The four found places at a large oak table in the center of the room, where Meeker laid out their goal. “We think that in one of his two stretches in this place Jack McGrew developed a very special friendship with someone or did something for someone that left that person beholding to him.”
“You talking Pistolwhip McGrew?” Babe asked.
“Sure am,” the woman said. “Did you know him?”
The big man grinned. “I was here for both of his stretches. Nobody got close to him, though. He stayed by himself. Don’t recall him causing any trouble, and he really didn’t even talk to his cell mates. I know because I lived across from his cell for about a year.”
“Did he ever have any visitors?” Reese asked.
“None I saw,” Babe continued.
“Well then, I guess we go to records,” Meeker said. She pulled the sketch of Mitchell Burgess from her briefcase and dropped it on the table. “We are looking for a prisoner who looks like this man. Did this guy serve time with either of you?”
“I don’t remember any con that looked like that,” Babe said.
The woman looked to the other trustee. He glanced from the sketch to the agent and back before mumbling, “I never saw a prisoner who looked like that.”
“Well,” Reese suggested, “let’s get all the files of all the men who were here when Pistolwhip was here. Let’s compare their mug shots with this sketch. If you discover any that come close, toss them my way.”
The trustees nodded. They actually seemed eager to help.
“And one more thing,” Meeker interjected, just as the men were about to head toward the file cabinets. “The man we are looking for has a deep scar on his right index finger.”
Jeff stopped, a flash of recognition crossing his face then moved toward a cabinet. The woman watched him for a moment before crossing to where he was leafing through files.
“Did you know a prisoner who had a bad scar on his index finger?” she quietly asked.
“No, ma’am,” he politely answered, “never known a con like that. I’m sorry.”
For five hours the men dug through files and pulled a half-dozen photographs that bore at least a small resemblance to the sketch. As Reese got on the phone to check on the ex-convicts’ whereabouts now, it quickly became apparent none could be connected to the kidnapping or to the delivery made to Jack McGrew. Three were still in prison, one was dead, one was crippled, and the final one had moved to Australia.
Helen looked back to the big man who was putting the files back in their proper places and shook her head. “Babe, it app
ears we have struck out.”
“That never happens to me,” he quipped.
The other trustee had already finished putting the files he had pulled back and had returned to his desk. As Meeker studied him, she noted a perplexed look on his face.
“Something troubling you?” she asked.
“I’m as right as rain, ma’am,” he assured her.
She moved toward him. “How long you been here?”
“Eight years,” Tisdale replied. “Still got two more to go.”
“What’d you do?” she gently prodded.
“They say I stole some money from a man I worked for,” he replied, looking her in the eye for the first time all day. “I didn’t, though. Just nobody too interested in taking the word of a colored man.”
“If you didn’t,” she said, “do you know who did?”
“Not sure,” he sighed, “but I think it was the boss’s son. Nobody wanted to hear that.”
“I’m sorry, Jeff.”
“Wasn’t your fault,” he softly assured Meeker. “Just born the wrong color, that’s all.”
“We need to get moving,” Reese prodded. “Still have a long drive ahead of us.”
Meeker stood and studied the two trustees a final time. “Thanks, gentlemen. I do appreciate it.”
Following her partner, she stepped out of the large records department room and into the hall. Reese was already three steps ahead when she called out, “Wait a minute!”
He turned. “What’s the problem?”
“I just realized something. I’m claustrophobic—” she began but before she could continue, he cut her off.
“We’ve talked about that. It’s hardly news.”
“But everybody has something that holds them back. There are things I don’t do because of my phobia. I can’t go down in a mine or a cave or get into a crowded elevator.”
“Makes sense,” he agreed, “but I don’t see what that has—”
This time she cut him off. “You are scared of clowns.”
He rushed up and put his finger to her lips. “You promised you’d never tell anyone that. I shouldn’t have told you.”
