A Grave Undertaking, page 4
A third clipping was so badly worn that Jake was unable to make anything of it and the fourth was almost as bad. By piecing together a word here and there, he was able to see that it had something to do with the appointment of a new professor at some unreadable university.
Carefully he replaced the clips in the envelope and then put the envelope in his pocket. He spent the next fifteen minutes diligently searching the room and found absolutely nothing else that would indicate any human being had ever lived and breathed and slept in it.
On his way out he stopped again at Mrs. Markowitz’s door and knocked.
When she answered she looked at him as though she’d never seen him before. He started to thank her for all she had done, but she quickly mumbled something about not knowing what he was talking about. She closed the door as he was trying to find something to say.
Mrs. Markowitz’s action didn’t actually surprise Jake, any more than had the peculiar reticence of those whom he had previously questioned. If there was one thing Jake understood, it was the uncommunicativeness of the poor. Poor people minded their own business. They didn’t want trouble. If they knew nothing, saw nothing, it was easier to stay out of trouble. Especially when it might have to do with the police.
Leaving the neighborhood, Jake felt a definite sense of elation. He still didn’t know the real name of Z-12-77, but at least he had found out a lot more than the police had been able to discover.
For a moment he wondered if the proper thing to do was not to contact the authorities immediately and tell them what he had learned. But then he hesitated.
After all, this was not a case involving crime. There was no murder or other bit of wrongdoing at stake. Merely a nameless dead man who was going to be buried in Potter’s Field unless someone showed up to claim the body. And that hardly seemed likely from the evidence he had at hand.
His next instinct was to call his paper and tell them what he had learned. And again he hesitated.
What, in fact, had he really learned? Nothing actually. It was merely that he was on the trail of a slender clue that might just possibly turn into something. He had a couple of clips and a girl’s picture. And a name. That was all.
He had a week’s grace. A week in which to turn up that story which, if it were good enough, would ensure him his place in the sun.
He made his decision at once.
He would go to an inexpensive restaurant and get something to eat. And then he would go to the public library.
He wanted to find out the location of something called the Erie Bank and Loan Company. He wanted to look up old newspaper stories on the activities of the Senate Committee for the Investigation of Un-American Activities. He wanted to discover the location of an institution which called itself the Bigger’s Business School.
Jake Epstein was twenty-one years old and for the first time he was beginning to feel like a real honest-to-God newspaperman.
CHAPTER THREE
1.
Earl Cradle was standing in front of the hotel when Joey Gallucci wheeled the long black limousine to the curb on Thursday morning just before ten o’clock.
Joey, wearing a black whipcord uniform, touched the peak of his chauffeur’s cap and smiled sardonically as he reached over to open the front door.
Earl climbed in, sitting next to him, and he spoke as soon as Joey put the car into motion.
“Well, what’s the trouble?”
“My cousin’s a dope,” he said. “He’s beginning to panic.”
“Great,” Earl said. “What’s his problem?”
“That body. Mario don’t know how to get a body. He had one call, but the family insisted the burial be Saturday at the latest. Anyway, it would be one of those big family things and a couple of hundred relatives would be there. No good.”
“Right,” Earl said. “Is there anything else bothering Mario?”
“No. But he just don’t know���”
“It figures,” Earl said. “A guy who can go broke as an undertaker can’t have much imagination. Anyway, don’t let it worry you. I have the angles figured.”
Joey took his eyes off the street ahead and looked quickly at his companion, a trace of alarm on his face.
“Now, Earl,” he said quickly, “we don’t wanta start this thing with a���”
Cradle shook his head and interrupted.
“Don’t be a jerk,” he said. “There are plenty of dead people around without helping to decrease the population.”
He pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and opened it. A small, single paragraph story was encircled with pencil and I he read it aloud.
“The body of an unknown man was found slumped on the front steps of a tenement house on Stanton Street early this morning and removed to the morgue at Bellevue Hospital, to await possible identification. The man was in his late sixties and poorly dressed. It is believed he died of alcoholism. Police are investigating.”
Joey shrugged.
“So what? You suppose they’ll just turn him over to us because we need him?”
“I said, don’t be a jerk, Joey,” Cradle said. “I had a feeling Mario would goof off and so I kept my eyes open and I saw this. Last night I went down to the morgue and I told them that my older brother had disappeared and I showed them the clipping and said I thought this might have been him. They took me in and let me have a look at the stiff. He was still there and so far no one else had even bothered to check on him. Anyway, I got a good look at him.”
“And where does that get us?”
“It gets us the stiff,” Earl said. “Bright and early tomorrow I am having Billy go down and identify him as her father. I have told her exactly what he looks like so she can make a convincing story. After she identifies him, she’ll arrange to have the body released. There will be a little red tape, but not much. The authorities are always happy to be saved the trouble of planting the drifters they pick up. And by Friday night I want the hearse from Mario’s to pick him up. Billy will call and give the time and other details. Then, once he’s safely tucked away uptown, we just hold him until Monday morning.”
Joey shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound of admiration.
“You’re great, Earl,” he said. “Great.”
“Sure-sure,” Cradle said. “I’m great. But just you be sure to see that Mario takes care of the coffin. You think he can handle that without any trouble? Without panicking?”
“Oh, he can handle it all right. He’s a good carpenter.”
“Well, just tell him this stiff is about five feet seven or eight and as thin as a rail.”
“Thin is good,” Joey said. “The height don’t count.”
“And don’t let him forget,” Earl continued. “It must be one of those jobs where you just lift the upper half of the lid-you know, to see the kisser, not the whole body.”
“He knows,” Joey said. “Anyway, that’s that. Now, how about Herman? Is he expecting us?”
“He’s expecting me. When we get out to Queens, you just stay in the car and wait. I’ll go in alone. You know the place, don’t you?”
“I know the place, Earl.”
2.
Bertha Wonder held out the pills in one fat hand and the glass of water in the other. Standing in front of her husband, she looked down at him and shook her large head to get a wisp of straggling gray hair out of her eye. There was a note of concern in her voice when she spoke.
“Take the pills, Herman,” she said. “They’ll settle the nerves. You should take it easy, get your rest. You know you shouldn’t be getting all stirred up before work. Here you are, not sleeping good and already worrying and the job less than a week off.”
Herman Wonder raised bloodshot eyes and stared at her. He reached for the pills and the water and swallowed first one and then the other. He was a frail man, in his late sixties and his bony head was completely bald. His hands were thin and deeply veined and shook a little as he returned the glass.
“He’ll be here any minute, Mama,” he said. “You go on in and put the tea on.”
“Maybe a little schnapps, Herman���”
“Tea, Mama. This is business,” Herman said. He leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside and looked out of the window which faced the street.
“Just drove up,” he said. “You better go to the door.”
Earl Cradle hesitated a moment in the hallway before entering the living room. Looking down at Mrs. Wonder, he asked, “How is he, Mama? Is he feeling O.K.?” He spoke in an undertone.
Bertha Wonder looked up at him and her large, matronly face smiled in friendliness.
“It’s good to see you, Earl,” she said. She nodded toward the living room. “He’s fine. Like a race horse. Always gets all tensed up before a job. But you don’t have to worry about him, Earl. The kidneys are giving him a little trouble, but he’s all right. Worried and jittery, but that’s the way he always is. Like a race horse. That’s Herman.”
Earl patted her on the shoulder and crowded past her short, rotund body.
“I’ll see him.”
The old man looked up without expression as Earl entered the room.
“Well, Herman���”
“My kidneys,” Herman said. “Bad���”
“Mama told me.”
“Sit down, Earl,” the old man said. “Sit down, boy. I have been thinking. You know-well, you know I’m beginning not to like it.”
“What’s the trouble, Herman?” Earl asked, his voice conciliatory. “Now, you know���”
“I’m not used to working with a lot of people around. Not my kind of thing at all, Earl. I like quiet. I get nervous when I don’t have quiet. I don’t see why we can’t do it Sunday night. Just go in after dark and do it at night.”
Earl Cradle sighed.
“Now, Herman,” he said, “I’ve explained all that to you. It is just too risky. We have to wait until eight-thirty on Monday morning. Don’t you understand? This isn’t like some small-town bank out in Iowa or Oklahoma. They have Holmes’s protection. The place is bugged and wired and God knows what. We wouldn’t get as far as the main office before someone would trip over an alarm.”
“So why should eight-thirty be any safer?”
“Because when eight-thirty comes around the staff show up. The branch manager comes in first and cuts off the main night alarm system. And then at exactly eight-forty the time lock on the safe cuts out. We have to wait for that, Herman.”
The old man nodded, his lips pouting.
“Well, I guess you’re right, Earl,” he said. “I don’t like time locks. Did you bring the dope on the vault?”
Earl reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper.
“As much as Gallucci was able to get. It’s a new job with the latest combination electronic alarm device, installed last year. Diebold. Circular door. There’s a stainless steel gate barring off the room itself, but that presents no problem. Night alarm ties in with the gate, but it will be off when we crack through.”
He extended the paper.
“Gallucci has written down everything he knows, but it won’t be much help. You still think you can handle it all right, Herman?”
“I can handle anything-just so I got peace and quiet, Earl,” the old man said. “All I want is you have someone to carry my tools for me. I’m getting too old to lift much anymore.”
“We’ll take care of that, Herman. And you won’t have to worry about peace and quiet. There won’t be any trouble. You’ll have enough time-and plenty of protection.”
“Just be sure I do,” Wonder said. “Just be sure I do. And I don’t want any trouble when we blow. I’m getting old and I got this game leg. I want to do my work in peace and leave in peace.”
“There’ll be no trouble, Herman. You’ll have forty minutes-fifty if you need it. And you leave like a gentleman. In the back seat of a chauffeur-driven limousine.”
The old man looked across at Earl Cradle and for the first time a thin smile split his seamed face.
“Not like the old days, eh, boy?” he said. “Not like the old days. No back roads and no screaming tires and nobody leaning out of a car door and blasting away with a Tommy gun trying to get the radiator of a squad car.”
“No, Herman, not like the old days.”
Herman Wonder shook his head and his rheumy eyes took on a sad, nostalgic expression.
“Tell Mama to hurry up with the tea, Earl,” he said. “Tea is good for the kidneys.”
3.
Crossing the Whitestone Bridge into the Bronx, Joey said, “You know, Earl, you’re asking me to have a lot of faith in you. Here you expect me to be a part of a million-dollar heist and I don’t even get to meet the guys who are in on the caper.”
“That’s right, Joey,” Cradle said. “You don’t meet them and they don’t meet you. That is, until the right time comes. The less you know about them, the better it will be-should anything happen.”
“Why, Earl? Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you or I wouldn’t be in this thing. I’m just trying to protect everybody. Don’t forget, if you don’t know anything about them, they don’t know you. Anyway, this thing is no damned kaffee klatch. There’s no need for sociality. You have to remember one thing. These are my people. I know them. I’ve worked with them for years.”
“This guy you are going to see now,” Joey said. “This guy what works for the gas company. You told me you didn’t know him.”
“That’s right. I don’t know him personally. But his brother was my cellmate for three years up in Sins; Sing. And you don’t live in a place like that with a guy for three years without knowing a hell of a lot about him. I know him and he knows his own twin brother and it’s the twin brother I’m seeing.”
“But if this twin brother you’re seeing in such a square he’s working for a utility company, what the hell makes you think he’ll go along���”
“I don’t think, I know. He’s already been talked to and he knows the score. He needs dough and he needs it bad. He needs money for a mouthpiece so that his brother can make an appeal and maybe get sprung. Understand, if the brother doesn’t get sprung, he does the whole bit. Life. So this twin brother I’m going to see is ready to do anything and everything to get the right kind of dough. He knows he’ll never get it as a foreman of a construction gang for the gas company. Not with a wife and three kids to support.”
“But for a guy like that to agree���”
“You have to understand how twins feel about each other, Joey,” Earl said. “Anyway, stop worrying about it. Leave the masterminding to me. It’s safe because I say it’s safe. You have to remember one thing. This guy is not in on the overall plan. He knows something is going to happen, but he doesn’t know the details. All he has to do is be there early Monday morning with the truck and the air hammers and the saw horses to shut off the street. The signs and the rest of the stuff. He knows how to handle it once he’s on the job.”
“But if he uses a company truck���”
“My God, Joey, I said leave it to me,” Cradle said. “He isn’t taking a company truck. He merely tipped me off as to where one can be stolen for the time we need it. I’m arranging to handle that part of it. The truck and the tools and stuff. He just shows up and grabs an air hammer and starts making the hole in the sidewalk in front of the door. That is exactly the kind of work he’s been doing for the last eight years and he knows how to go about it to make it look professional.”
Joey shrugged his shoulders.
“O.K., Earl, if you say so,” he said. “I guess you know what you’re doing all right. Anyway, should a cop stop by and question him, he’d probably sound convincing.”
“The cop won’t question him,” Cradle said. “The cop will be out in the intersection, diverting traffic. I’ve already seen to that.”
Joey looked over at his companion and then whistled softly in quiet admiration.
“You see to everything, don’t you, Earl?” he said.
“To everything,” Earl Cradle answered.
4.
Mary Lou Shannahan waited until the man left and then went into the kitchen where Mike sat over a cup of coffee, staring at the floor.
“Mike,” she said, “you should get to bed. You have to go to work at five o’clock and already it is past noon. You need your sleep.”
Mike Shannahan looked up at the slender, girlish figure of his wife and the same thought struck him which had so often struck him before. She didn’t look like the mother of three husky young kids. She looked like a high school girl. A pretty, black-eyed high school girl-in spite of the droop to her thin shoulders and in spite of the paleness of her pretty heart-shaped face. She looked young and sweet and innocent-and very tired.
“I’m fine, baby,” he said. “It’s you should be getting some rest.”
“Who was that man, Mike?”
His eyes crinkled and he ran a hard, muscular hand through his short red hair.
“Sit down, baby,” he said. “We got to talk.” He reached out and pulled her to him, sitting her on his lap.
“Baby,” he said. “You aren’t going to believe this. That man was a bookie. He was Santa Claus. He was an angel in disguise. Look at this.”
He reached into his pocket and a moment later laid the sheaf of bills on the table.
“Four thousand bucks,” he said.
It took him several minutes to calm her down. To get her over the shock. To wait until she stopped crying.
“For you,” he said, kissing her wet cheeks. “So you can do what Doc said and go on out to Arizona and spend a year. Take the kids and get that sunshine you need. Get those lungs of yours back in shape.”
She shook her head, staring into his blue eyes.
“But, Mike,” she said, “I just can’t believe it. You say you won a bet? I can’t believe���”
“That’s right, a bet, baby.”
She moved suddenly, pushing his arms away and quickly stood up. Putting her hands on her hips, she spread her legs and looked him in the eyes.
“Mike,” she said, “you’re a good man and I love you. But, Mike, don’t try and lie to me. I guess the reason I know you are lying is because you have never done so before. Except the time you tried to keep what the doctor said from me. But you don’t make horse bets. I want to know about this money. How did you get it? Why did the man give it to you?”
