The Vaults

by Toby Ball

  Leto was murdered by Otto Samuelson, a thug in the White Gang. Samuelson was, according to the detective quoted in that same second article, a “homicidal maniac” responsible for a number of murders of Bristol Gang members. He had been shot several times in the years leading up to the Leto murder, but escaped serious injury each time. “A veritable Rasputin,” the cop said.

  Leto’s murder was the penultimate in a series of increasingly audacious killings that ended with the Birthday Party Massacre. Both the Whites and the Bristols had, by early 1929, lost any fear they might have had of the powers of the police and government. Red Henry had just been elected but had not yet taken office, and the outgoing mayor was fully consumed with consolidating and hiding his takings from the graft and corruption of the previous twelve years. Leto’s murder was shockingly bold, but not unprecedented.

  The newspaper described the murder as occurring around noon on a clear, warm day in Capitol Heights amid a teeming crowd on the sidewalks and in the streets. According to several eyewitness accounts, as Leto drove his Buick toward the intersection of Van Buren and Virginia, a man (Samuelson) stepped into the street, holding up his hand to stop traffic for another man who was carrying a large bucket. Leto’s car stopped, halting traffic, and another car did the same in the opposite lane. When the man with the bucket was in front of Leto’s car, he put his right hand under the bucket and tossed its contents—a viscous tar—onto Leto’s windshield, completely obliterating his view out the front. Samuelson quickly but calmly walked over to the driver’s-side window—which was rolled down because of the pleasant weather—and fired six shots into Leto, who was struggling to pull his own gun from under his seat. While nearby police raced to the scene, Samuelson and the man with the bucket disappeared into the panicking crowd.

  Samuelson and the other man, named Kiehl, were identified that afternoon by witnesses eyeballing mug books. The Gazette ran their names and mug shots the next morning. The police apprehended Samuelson thirty-six hours later at a whorehouse down in the Hollows. The cops raided Kiehl’s apartment and found him facedown on the living room rug, a garrote still around his neck.

  Samuelson’s trial was set for November, but his lawyer filed a guilty plea, and there the coverage ended. Frings went over the last week of newspapers a second time in case he had missed any mention of Samuelson’s sentencing and/or place of detention. He found nothing.

  Frings carried the stack of newspapers back up the stairs and found Lonergan in deep concentration, writing with a pen in a thick, leather-bound journal. Frings dropped the newspapers on the desk from a height that made enough noise to get Lonergan’s attention. Lonergan was not startled, looking up slowly and without irritation.

  “Found what you were looking for?”

  “Almost. I noticed that we followed the events pretty closely until his sentencing, and then there’s nothing. That strikes me as pretty queer, right?”

  Lonergan thought about this. “Yes,” he replied slowly, “in a case that received as much attention as the Samuelson case—yes, that seems a mite unusual.”

  “Could you check and see if there’s any word of Samuelson after the batch of papers you gave me?”

  “Already did. Samuelson isn’t mentioned again, except peripherally in articles about other murders and the White Gang. That’s it as far as the Gazette is concerned.”

  Frings felt his temper rise. It was irrational, he knew—Lonergan was not responsible for what news the paper did or didn’t cover. “Look, I mostly want to know where I can find Samuelson now. I need to talk to him.”

  Lonergan leaned back in his chair and cast his eyes to the ceiling. He mumbled to himself, “Where to find him, where to find him?” He straightened up and looked at Frings. “You know, the best person to talk to is probably Arthur Puskis.”

  The name was vaguely familiar. Frings looked at Lonergan with eyebrows raised, waiting for further explanation.

  “Arthur Puskis is the Archivist at the Vaults down at City Hall. He maintains all the records. If anyone can find where your buddy Samuelson is, it’s him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Poole was aware of voices before he fully regained consciousness. One was familiar, and though his mind was unable to process a name or a relationship, he knew that this particular voice—Carla’s—should be a comfort to him. The other voice, though unfamiliar, was calm, and he was aware on some level that the conversation was friendly, and Poole’s last moments of semiconsciousness were content, almost blissful.

  Full consciousness brought pain that seemed to envelop his body. He saw Carla in blurry outline and tried to speak to her, but only managed a faint croak. That alerted Carla and her friend, and in seconds they were leaning over him.

  Carla smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “How are you doing?” His eyes better focused, Poole could see the patches of dark beneath her azure eyes and the slump that came to her shoulders when she was exhausted. He began to speak, but then, with an effort, just pointed toward his mouth.

  “Water?”

  Poole nodded.

  “Enrique, could you get a glass of water?”

  The dark, powerful man made an affirmative grunt and disappeared toward the kitchen. Carla took Poole’s face between her hands and stared into his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked, not actually expecting a verbal response but probing his eyes for signs of psychic damage.

  Enrique returned with a glass of water, and Carla gently placed it to Poole’s lips. The water brought some life back to Poole, and after finishing the glass, he pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, eyeing Enrique.

  “He’s okay,” Carla said. “Enrique’s an organizer at Bernal’s plant. We’re just meeting about our next step.”

  Poole’s head throbbed. Carla had spoken of Enrique in the past, but Poole had never actually met him. A stalwart, Carla said. Poole’s mind was starting to clear.

  Carla anticipated his first question. “They dropped you at our doorstep. Just pulled a car to the curb, opened the door, and pushed you out.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “ASU?”

  “That’s our guess,” she said, indicating Enrique. “We don’t know for sure.”

  “Do I look . . . ?” Poole began, then felt the room move beneath him, his eyes rolling in his head. His thoughts fractured into irrationality and he again lost consciousness.

  Enrique was gone. He and Carla had finished their meeting as Poole slept. Now Poole and Carla sat at the kitchen table, the photographs of Bernal and his lover strewn messily about. Poole fought to focus through the pounding in his head. There were many things to figure out and not much time.

  “Enrique and I talked,” Carla said. “We need to get the photos to a newspaper.”

  Poole tensed the way he always did when he disagreed with Carla. He had blackmailed close to a dozen people over the years, but they had always come through with the money, and he’d never had to follow through on his threats. The photos were his only leverage. Once they were public, he could do nothing to threaten Bernal—or protect himself.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “We have to. Don’t you see? Either way, we lose our leverage. If we don’t get the pictures into a paper, then he thinks we’re bluffing and ignores us. If we do get them printed, well, that puts more pressure on him, doesn’t it?”

  Poole conceded the point. She was right, and anyway, arguing would get him nowhere. It bothered him, though, that Enrique was suddenly taking part in the decision making. Not the least because Carla was Enrique’s ally in this, not his.

  “We need to get back at him,” Carla said, leaning across the table. “We can’t let him and those goddamn ASU cops walk all over us. We need to respond. This is all we’ve got.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you worried because you got picked up? Was Bernal behind it? Pulling in a favor from the mayor?”

  “No, actually.” Poole was still bewildere
d by this. “I thought they pinched me because of Bernal, but that wasn’t what they were asking me about. They asked me about Casper Prosnicki.”

  “Well, what the hell could you tell them about him?”

  “Nothing.” He hesitated.

  “What?”

  Poole sighed with exasperation. “There was one thing I did know. They asked who hired me.”

  “You didn’t tell them.”

  “I did.” Poole anticipated the coming judgment. “I wasn’t able . . . They worked me over pretty good. I wasn’t thinking . . .”

  Carla shushed him and stared at the table.

  Poole tried again. “I—”

  Carla held up a hand and Poole knew to let her think.

  “You have to find her,” she said finally. “She needs to know.”

  Poole knew this was coming. “Call your people. See if you can get an address for her. I’ll go talk to her.”

  Carla closed her eyes and Poole saw the terrible strain in her sunken cheeks and downturned mouth. He made a motion to reach across the table and touch her hair, but the movement made his head swim, and by the time he recovered, she was gone. He heard her voice from the other room, inquiring over the phone as to the current address of Lena Prosnicki.

  Carla made several phone calls in the next two hours before returning to the kitchen. Poole slept in his chair, using his forearms crossed on the table for a pillow. He awoke to her gently massaging his shoulders. At another time he would have found this arousing. He wondered if he had been kicked in the genitals, but they didn’t hurt, so he decided that maybe his lack of response was from the stress and pain.

  “Baby,” she said, “I’ve got bad news.”

  His pulse quickened. “What?”

  “No address for Lena Prosnicki in the City or any towns around here.”

  Poole nodded. “So she’s either in from out of town—which I don’t buy—she’s homeless, or she lives somewhere without an address.”

  Carla saw where he was going. “Like a hospital.”

  “But people in hospitals usually have a home to go back to. An address. I’m thinking more of an institution, probably an asylum. I remember she was queer, like maybe she was doped. Maybe she’s at an asylum and they’ve got her on something.”

  Carla nodded. It was a place to start.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Dawlish, the elevator operator, greeted Puskis with a serious look. Puskis, still shaken from the Retrievorator demonstration at Headquarters, assumed that Dawlish was reacting to some physical manifestation of that shock. He stepped into the awaiting elevator and was surprised to see Dawlish do a quick, surreptitious glance around the lobby before closing first the gate and then the elevator door. He hesitated before beginning the descent into the Vaults.

  “Mr. Puskis, sir, I wanted you to know that I am through with your pen but not yet able to return it.” He then pulled the lever, and with the distant whirr of metal gears, they descended.

  Puskis squinted at Dawlish, realizing this cryptic statement was significant. Through great concentration he suppressed his worries about the future of the Vaults and thought about Dawlish’s words. The signal had been to return the pen when someone went into the Vaults. What did it mean that he was finished with the pen but not ready to return it?

  The elevator came to a stop, and Dawlish opened the door, then the gate. As Puskis exited, Dawlish touched his arm—perhaps the first time they had ever made physical contact—and stared at him with panicked eyes. Puskis stood staring at the elevator as Dawlish closed the door, then listened as it made its short ascent.

  I’m through with your pen but not ready to return it. The implication was that the conditions for return had been met but the time was not proper. Conditions and time. The required condition was that someone go into the Vaults; and this, if he understood Dawlish correctly, had happened. The timing then—Puskis took a step back so that he was pressed against the wall—the timing had to mean that the person had not yet left. Someone else was in the Vaults right now.

  The logic behind this deduction was not foolproof, yet Puskis knew he was right. He stood motionless, listening—hearing the ambient noise as if for the first time. The humming of lights. The hiss and clink of the heating system. Distantly, the noise of the street through the thick walls. He felt fatigued from the fear and from the unaccustomed physical activity. He eased over to his desk on stiff legs and sat, straining to hear a noise beyond the usual.

  Seventeen years since another person had been back in those stacks. More accurately, it had been seventeen years since someone had been back in the stacks while he had been in the Vaults and known it. He had already established that someone—or some people—had been there while he was absent. And the cleaners came when Puskis was away. He had never actually seen them, but their work was apparent.

  It came almost as a relief when the sound that he strained so hard to hear was finally audible. A step, like the click of a pen on a wooden desk; followed by another. Someone was walking back in the Vaults. Puskis struggled with a range of reactions: fear, anger, curiosity, dismay. He felt a quick surge of energy as adrenaline coursed through his system. Fight or flight. He had never before faced that choice. Even at Reif DeGraffenreid’s there had been no one to fight. Fleeing from the old blind man was a result of his general panic, not because he felt physically endangered. He straightened up, knowing that this was the first step in any possible reaction. Without making a conscious decision to do so, he began to walk into the stacks.

  He had forgotten, over time, just how hard it was to determine the direction of noise in the Vaults. Sound bounced around the shelves and ceiling, sometimes seeming to come from four or five distinct points at once, and other times sounding as though it came from a vast general source. It was the aural equivalent of a house of mirrors.

  Puskis tried to search efficiently, walking down the wide center aisle, attempting to determine which side the footsteps were coming from. He would take four or five steps, then stop, listening. Hearing nothing, he would move on another four or five steps. Occasionally he heard a footstep while he walked and would instantly stop, but no more footsteps would come. As he progressed, the shadows cast by the intermittent lights seemed to move, an effect of his changing perspective.

  Nearly halfway down the center aisle, he heard another sound, like a rug being pulled across the floor. As a result of some fortuitous arrangement of aisles and shelves, the direction of this sound was more easily determined. It came from his left and in front—farther into the depths of the Vaults.

  He shuffled forward to where another wide aisle bisected the Vaults at a perpendicular angle. He repeated his earlier method, taking a few steps and then listening. He heard a footstep that sounded as if it came from behind him, and he questioned his initial impression of the source of the sound. But soon he heard a burst of four footsteps confirming that he was cornering the intruder in the far-left reaches of the Vaults, a backwater of fraud and number-running files.

  To this point the challenge of trying to home in on the source of the footsteps had distracted Puskis from the danger that he might be facing. But now he detected an unfamiliar odor, a cologne of some sort, though not one that Puskis associated with anyone in particular. He took it as a sign he was closing in on the intruder and was confronted with the question of what, exactly, he would do if he was successful in his search. He stopped and pondered the wisdom of confrontation until the footsteps started again. This time they were rapid and no attempt was made to move quietly. Puskis could not determine their exact direction, but the increasing volume signaled that the intruder was headed toward him.

  He froze momentarily, then, with short, hasty steps, fled into the stacks in a direction that would not intercept the intruder if he was trying to get to the elevators. When Puskis felt he was far enough to the left that the intruder would not happen upon him by accident, he stopped, gasping for breath. He stood behind the end of a row of shelves and looked ba
ck toward the main aisle. The intruder was taking the wider aisles back to the elevators. Puskis could follow the steps now and caught a quick glimpse of a man in a dark suit, his fedora pulled low as he flashed across Puskis’s aisle. The moment passed too quickly for an identification, even if Puskis knew who the man was.

  He waited where he stood until he heard, in the distance, the elevator door open and then close again. He thought he heard muffled voices, but in the end he was not sure. He stayed for several more minutes in the unlikely event that the intruder had used the elevator as a deception and was, in fact, waiting for him by the desk. Finally collecting his nerve, he made a cautious journey back to the front of the Vaults. He crept to a position in the stacks where he could get a good view of his desk. Seeing no one, he returned to his station and collapsed into his chair. On the top of the desk, next to a short stack of file requests, was the pen he had lent Dawlish.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The nun working reception at St. Agnes’ Asylum on a forgotten street in Capitol Heights was as gray, peeling, and cracked as the building itself. She peered at Poole through dirty bifocals, a grimace of distaste on her face. Poole could imagine the picture he presented with his swollen face and limp.

  “I’m here to see my aunt.” He struggled with his swollen tongue, slurring his words. “Her name is Lena Prosnicki.”

  She continued to stare at him.

  “Ma’am, I’m here to see Lena Prosnicki.” He carefully enunciated the words this time in case his slurring had confused her.

  She turned from him and walked through a wooden door behind her desk, leaving Poole to wonder whether she was reacting to his query and, indeed, if she had even heard him. He leaned over the counter that partitioned the room into the public and the official halves and scanned the reception desk for anything of interest. A filthy registry book was open among scattered sections of newspaper. A coffee mug contained only mold, and two plates had the crumbs of earlier meals.