“He doesn’t want anything to do with his family or the business or anything they stand for. Jack wants to live a fair and just life where he helps people instead of exploiting them like his father and grandfather did. He loves people, not profits, and he wants to be free from all the rottenness that capitalism causes.”
Images of the books I’d seen in Jack’s apartment flashed back to me. Marx. Lenin. Just the right kind of nonsense a spoiled, lazy brat like Jack Van Dorn could buy into. Hook, line and sinker. After the war, I’d lived through the trouble that kind of thinking could stir up. People were out of work back then, too. Looking for answers and looking for people to blame their troubles on. The Reds banged the war drum loud and people listened. Workers and women of the world, unite! Fight the capitalist oppressors! Rebel!
Most of it was just empty rhetoric. Commie catcalls. Socialist slogans and Bolshevik bullshit. Pissed off kids who woke up one day and realized that life wasn’t fair. But some people did more than just attend rallies and chant slogans. They called for violence and revolution. They called for an overthrow of the government.
The Feds responded with the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. They rounded up Reds wholesale and threw away the key. That just made things worse. The riots and the protests and the bombings started soon after.
I just hoped to Christ that Jack’s kidnapping wasn’t tied to politics. Because if it was, this tunnel I was in was about to get a whole lot longer. I put all my past history and current worries aside for a second. “So Jack fell for the Commie line.”
“It wasn’t about party lines,” she said. “We wanted to live our lives our way. We didn’t care how. Anything would be better than having the Van Dorn’s blood money in our pockets. We wanted to take his family’s money and go some place where we could do some good with it.”
The last part caught my attention. “What do Communists need money for?”
“Unfortunately, you can’t do much in this society without money,” she said. “We knew his father would cut him off before he’d let him marry me, maybe even send him off to Europe so we couldn’t be together. That’s when we knew we’d have to run away. His father had always kept him on a strict allowance — credit, mostly, at his family’s clubs and their favorite restaurants. We knew we needed cash to make a break for it.” Rachel’s hands trembled again as she picked at a hangnail. “S…so, that’s when Jack came up with the plan.”
ANYTHING GOES
BACK IN the squad room, Hauser and the others listened while I told them everything Rachel had told me about the plan.
O’Hara stroked his moustache, deep in thought. Loomis was still sulking over me kicking him out of the room. I told them about Rachel, how she was Jack’s lover and was pregnant with his kid. None of that fazed them. They’d all heard sad stories before. It was the plan to elope that got them, just like I knew it would.
Loomis forgot all about sulking when I dropped that tidbit. “They were going to do what?”
“You heard me,” I said. “They planned to fake his kidnapping, just like it said in his notebook. It was slated to happen a month from now. A really cozy set-up, too. Just the two of them jungled up together at his Perry Street dive for a couple of days until Mr. Van Dorn kicked loose with the
supposed ransom.”
Hauser asked: “How much were they going to tap the old man for?”
“Just enough money for them to live on for a while, with maybe some extra to donate to the Cause when it was all over. They decided fifty grand would be just about right.”
“The same amount the kidnappers demanded,” Loomis said.
“It gets better.” I tapped out a Lucky from the pack in my shirt pocket. “Rachel said they planned to have Jessica Van Dorn deliver the ransom money to the apartment. When she showed, Rachel said they’d give her a note explaining the whole thing to the family so they wouldn’t worry. Or come looking for them.”
“That’s almost exactly the way the kidnappers handled things,” Loomis reminded us. “Right down to having Jessica deliver the ransom money.”
O’Hara surprised me by asking a pretty good question. “She say where they were supposed to go? Since the kidnappers have followed their plan so far, maybe they took Jack to wherever it is they were planning on going once they got the ransom?”
“She said they talked about heading down to Philly for starters,” I said, “then they’d head out West. San Francisco, maybe. They hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Hauser didn’t look happy. There was no reason why he should. “All these similarities are a little too convenient for me. Think she’s in on it?”
I let smoke drift from my nostrils while I thought it over. “I don’t think so. She would’ve taken her cut and been long gone by now, especially now that it’s a murder case. Instead, I found her lying on her boyfriend’s floor, crying because she’s alone and pregnant and scared that her family will throw her out of the house.”
I rolled my neck and heard the bones pop. My back was still sore from being slammed into the door by Rachel’s brother, and my jaw hurt from Carmichael’s sucker punch. The pop dulled some of the pain, but not all of it. “And based on what I’ve seen of the brother, I don’t blame Rachel for being scared of him.”
“We’ll have a talk with him before we kick him loose,” Hauser said. “When are you going to take another run at the girl?”
“I’m not. The doctor’s taking a look at her now, then he’s going to take her to the hospital to check her out properly.”
Loomis quit sulking in exchange for getting angry at me. “You mean you’re just going to let her walk? Christ, Charlie, she might…”
I was already one step ahead of him. “I’m letting her go to the hospital, not releasing her from custody. The matron’s going with her, and the doctor will keep her in the hospital until I tell him otherwise.” I turned to O’Hara. “We should send a couple of boys with them. For her own protection, of course.”
O’Hara reached for a phone. “Consider it done, Charlie darlin’. We won’t let the poor girl out of our sight.”
Loomis still didn’t look happy. “Why bother getting her checked out at all? Who cares if she’s pregnant or not? I just want to know where Jack is.”
I had an answer for that as well. “Because I’m not going to believe she’s pregnant just because some yenta from the old country says so. And if Rachel’s lying about being pregnant, then she’s lying about a lot of things.”
Loomis smiled. “Not to mention how you’d like to be the one to tell your new patron that he’s going to be a grandfather.”
I smiled back. “Our patron, partner. You’re in this every bit as much as I am now.” I looked at Hauser and O’Hara, too. “We’re all in this together now, whether we like it or not.”
Hauser clearly didn’t like it, either. “I agree with Floyd. There’s too many similarities between her plan and how the kidnapping happened. You should take another run at her before turning her over to the doctors.”
I was glad I’d saved the best for last. “I got everything I needed.” I reached back into my coat pocket and pulled out a long piece of paper, folded in half, lengthwise. “That’s why I made her write down the names of anyone she could think of that might be behind this. Told her to focus on the people that she and Jack ran with on a regular basis.”
The look on Loomis’ face made my day.
“Jesus,” Hauser said. “Reds don’t like making lists about their friends.”
“She wasn’t crazy about it, but she said she’d do anything to find Jack. Makes me pretty confident she didn’t have anything to do with this, but we need to be sure.” I handed the list of names to Hauser. “You know this part of town better than anyone here. Take a look, and let me know who you think we should start.”
O’Hara and Loomis got up to look at the list over Hauser’s shoulder. Rachel had rotten handwriting, but it was mostly legible.
Hauser whistled through his teeth as he re
ad over the names. “Your girl runs with a hell of a crowd. Rabble-rousers. Pamphleteers. Unionists. Hop heads. Swill pushers. Couple of low-level pimps, too.”
But then O’Hara pointed at one of the names on the list and stood up slowly. “Well, well, well. Now there’s a possibility.”
Loomis looked harder at the list. “Which one? Kunkel?”
“Nah, he’s harmless,” O’Hara said. “But the name below his is another matter entirely.”
Hauser flicked the page. “Max Lennon. A nasty bastard I’ve busted more than a few times. The name’s a take off of Vladimir Lenin, on the off chance you’re interested.”
I ground my cigarette into an ashtray. “I’m not. But I’m interested in whatever makes him so special.”
“Because he’s capable of anything and everything,” O’Hara said. “We’ve busted him for extortion, book making, rum running; you name it. If it’s against the law and there’s money to be made doing it, then Lennon’s done it at one time or another.”
“His real name is actually Peter Chamberlain,” Hauser added. “Comes from a main line family down in Philadelphia, but his old man worked out of the family company’s New York office. Our boy here grew up on Fifth Avenue.”
Loomis and I looked at each other. Just like the Van Dorns. Interesting.
It was a lead. Not even necessarily a good lead. But something. Maybe.
“Sounds like someone we should start with,” I said.
“As good a place as any,” Hauser said. “If he didn’t kidnap Van Dorn, some of the skels he runs with just might have.”
Loomis asked my next question for me. “Any idea where we can we find him?”
“He blew town a couple of years ago,” Hauser said. “Some kind of heist that went sideways, from what I heard.”
I didn’t let that stop me. “But if Rachel put him on this list, he must be back. Where did he hang his hat before?”
“Given the crowd he runs with,” O’Hara said, “The Chantilly Club’s probably as good a place to start as any.”
Hauser explained: “It’s a shithouse Lennon used to manage a few years ago. Since rats always scurry back to the same holes, we should have some of the boys shake the place hard. See if anything drops out.”
“You do that,” I said while reaching for the phone. “I’ll call the Chief to have him put out an A.P.B. on Lennon or Chamberlain or whatever the hell his name is.”
Loomis kept me company while Hauser and O’Hara went off to set up the raid. Someone picked up the phone at the Van Dorn mansion. I told them who I was and asked to be put through to Carmichael.
While I waited, I said to Loomis: “Looks like we finally might be on to something here.”
“Maybe,” Loomis said. “Maybe not.”
That’s what I loved about Floyd. Ever the optimist.
STOMPIN’ AT THE CHANTILLY CLUB
BY THE time Hauser, Loomis and I pulled up in front of The Chantilly Club an hour or so later, O’Hara and his boys had already done a number on the place. Carmichael’s All- Points on Lennon/Chamberlain had gone out over the air twenty minutes before. Dive joints all over the Village were getting visits from the boys in blue, looking for Max Lennon.
About a dozen or so men in various stages of sobriety were lined up out front, hands against the wall while cops patted them down. Some of the men had their hands against the wall because the cops had told them to do it. The drunks were doing it to keep from falling down. The men who’d already been frisked were being loaded into a Paddy wagon out front. None of them looked too happy about it. Jail only made hangovers worse.
As I got out of the car, I heard smashing bottles and breaking wood coming from inside The Chantilly Club. O’Hara and his men were hitting the dive hard and I couldn’t blame them. The Chantilly Club had it coming. The place opened just as I was getting bounced off Vice two years before. Even back then, it had been known as a bucket of blood.
The booze was cheapest in town because it was tainted and watered down. It was pure panther piss. Word had it that a few people had even gone blind on the poison they sold there. The gambling tables in the back were supposedly rigged, and the house didn’t always pay out to winners. Anyone who complained got their heads caved in for their trouble.
But for the poor, desperate bastards who went there, rotten odds were better than no odds at all. Hauser and Loomis followed me inside, past the cops dragging guys out the front door. I’d been in the place before, back when it was called The Pepper Pot — a nice, bright little dining hall with the constant smell of good food wafting out from the kitchen.
Now, it was a dark little hovel with low ceilings and sawdust on the floor. An old drunk on the nod was curled up in a booth by the door, twitching and muttering as he came down from whatever high he’d been on.
The bar was littered with shards of broken glass and bottles of booze, courtesy of O’Hara’s men. Beer taps had been opened full blast and beer drizzled onto the floor. The combination of cheap booze with cheap beer almost made me gag. The fact that the air in there was already thick and humid didn’t help.
“Well here comes the great man now,” O’Hara boomed from the back. “Come on back here, Charlie. Join the party.”
Loomis, Hauser and I stepped over the shattered bar stools to the back. O’Hara had some poor bastard cuffed to a chair. Two cops standing on either side of him, nightsticks in their hands. Judging by the apron tied around his waist, I took him for a bartender. The bloody apron and busted nose told me the interrogation had already begun.
O’Hara was sitting on a stool across from him, as genial as if he and the bartender had just been talking about the Giants’ chances of winning the pennant. “Charlie, darlin’, I’d like to introduce you to Joe Johnson, the bartender here at The Chantilly Club. Detective Hauser, I believe you already know Joe.”
“Sure I do,” Hauser said. “We’re old pals, aren’t we, Joe?” He motioned for O’Hara to get up. Hauser turned the chair so the back was facing the bartender and straddled his seat. “How’s every little thing, Joe?”
Joe hacked and spat out a bloody tooth. “Fuck you.”
O’Hara looked at the cop on his left, who slammed his stick into the bartender’s kidney. Joe stiffened from the pain, but O’Hara nudged him back over with the butt of his nightstick at the back of his head.
“Joe here’s a bit upset with us,” O’Hara said to me. “He was doin’ a boomin’ business when me and the boys came callin’. Of course, I asked him about Max Lennon, but he wasn’t inclined to cooperate. Even made some comments about me dear departed mother’s character — God rest her — and I lost me temper.”
“Up yours, donkey,” Joe croaked. “I ain’t no snitch.”
O’Hara brought his nightstick down across the bartender’s shoulders. Even I had to wince.
“You always were a tough guy, Joe,” Hauser told him. “That’s admirable. Expensive, but admirable.”
One of O’Hara’s men snapped the legs off a blackjack table. Another put his foot through it. Joe moaned as if it was happening to him.
“The quicker you play ball with us,” Hauser explained, “the quicker you can start cleaning up. If you work hard, you might even be open before Christmas. Where’s Max Lennon?”
“No way,” Joe shook his head. “Word gets out I ratted, he’ll put a bullet in my brain.”
Hauser grabbed Joe by the hair and jerked him forward. The steel cuffs dug into Joe’s hands until he screamed. Loomis cringed and walked away. You didn’t have to do this kind of thing on the night shift. “And we’ll make you a cripple if you don’t,” Hauser yelled. “Start spilling.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have cared if Hauser wanted to smack the guy around for a bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t think Jack Van Dorn had that kind of time. I motioned for Hauser to back off and he did. I said, “We need to know where Lennon is, and who he’s running with. And we need to know right now.”
Joe squinted up at me through the blood and the
pain. “Hey, I know you. You’re Charlie Doherty, ain’t you? Yeah… you used to be somebody.”
“Still am. And right now, I’m the only way you’re getting out of this. Max Lennon, Joe. Tell me about him.” Joe jerked his head in Hauser’s direction. “Why don’t you ask your buddy Hauser here. He’s busted him enough times. He can tell you all about him.”
Joe flinched as Hauser went for him again, but I held him off. “I’m asking you. And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll let Officer O’Hara and his friends resume their line of questioning.” I made a show of looking down at his bloody apron and his tooth on the floor. “We both know you’ll talk sooner or later. If I was you, I’d make it sooner.”
Then one of O’Hara’s men dragged somebody out of the bathroom and dumped him on the floor between us.
The cop tossed two small bundles to O’Hara. “Look at what we found on him, Liam.” O’Hara opened one of the small bundles and smiled. He handed the bundle to Hauser, who sniffed it too. “You know what this is, Joe?”
Joe’s moan told the whole story.
“Heroin,” Hauser told him. “And we found it in your joint, Joe. This is a lot worse than selling beer and bootleg booze. Things keep getting worse for you all the time, don’t it?”
For the first time since I’d gotten there, Joe’s head dropped. The heroin knocked all the fight right out of him “What do I care anyway? It ain’t my joint anymore. I just work here now.”
O’Hara perked up. “Now there’s a tidbit of news. Who owns this place now?”
“Danny Stiles took it over a while ago,” Joe told us. “Mean anything to you?”
There’s that name again, I thought. Danny’s been coming up in an awful lot of conversations lately. With Alice Mulgrew, with Wendell Bixby and now here. I kept that part to myself, in case it meant something later on.
“Too bad for you that Stiles is on the lam,” I said. “That means you’ll have to swing for that bundle all by yourself.”
The bartender hung his head again. More blood dribbled onto his apron from his busted nose.
Slow Burn Page 11
