He says he wants to go nightclubbing and needs some fresh clothes and I should use part of the twenty-five hundred to buy him a nice white silk shirt, some underwear, some socks. Sandy says she is not dressed for an evening out and asks me to go to her place and get her some things.
Which is how I got away from there for a while.
But before I go Steve grabs my arm and says, ‘Johnny, you seem like you know people. You cabbies always do.’ And I say I suppose I do. And he asks if I know anybody who would buy marked money off him. Money where the serial numbers have been recorded.
And I say I might.
So I come here, fill in Mr. Costello, who already seems to know about this Steve spreading money around town while he drinks like a fish. For now Sandy’s keeping him busy.
That’s about it.
Costello said, “Thanks, Johnny. Wait outside a minute. Nate will be joining you, I think.”
Hagan got up, gave me a little grin and a nod and went out, cap still in hand.
I said, “The woman with this Strand character could be the one who picked Bobby Greenlease up at that Catholic school. And Strand himself could be ‘M,’ the guy making phone calls and writing letters who got the ransom payoff last night.”
“Could be,” Costello said. “But if he’s the insurance man he claims, and it’s money he embezzled, or otherwise stolen... and needs laundering... that’s my business and not the FBI or cops or nobody’s.”
Leo Brothers was looking at me over his partner’s shoulder. That was why I was here: my host didn’t know my relationship with the Outfit had been largely reluctant and had mostly faded away when my patron, Frank Nitti, died ten years ago. But to Joe Costello I was still just another crooked cop. Ex-cop, at that.
“But I want nothing to do with kidnapping,” Costello said. “Particularly not a child. I’m a fucking father, five times over! If it’s just garden-variety dirty money, we’ll wash it. But if this Strand pulled the Greenlease snatch, then we turn him in and get credit from the cops and all of St. Louis for doing a public service.”
And maybe, I thought, if this is M, I could find out if that kid was alive and, if so, where he’s being held.
Or was I kidding myself now?
“Either way,” Costello said, “there’s another four grand in it for you, Nate.”
Looked like I was getting my five thousand after all. “How do you propose we go about this, Joe?”
He flipped a hand. “We’ll have Johnny Hagan introduce you as a mobbed-up PI from Chicago who has to approve laundering the insurance cash.”
A knock came at the door. “Joe — it’s me!”
Costello gave me a conspiratorial smile, whispering, “That’s Lt. Lou Shoulders. Rugged copper, handy with a pistol — three kills on duty... Come in, Lou!”
A big bucket-headed guy in a baggy black suit burst in like an undertaker late for the embalming. Maybe fifty-five, he had features as baggy as the suit, his Vitalis-heavy hair black, white at the temples, eyebrows bushy.
“Nate Heller, this is Lt. Louis Shoulders.”
Shoulders, who lived up to his name, was a little taller than me and I had no urge to look up at him, so I stood and we shook hands in a half-hearted, perfunctory way.
“My contact at the PD, and now yours,” Costello said. “Lou and me been pals for years. We both started out driving cabs. You run into trouble, he’s your man.”
“Mr. Heller,” Shoulders said amiably, dark eyes cold, “here’s my card. Home number on the back. Joe here’s explained the situation. I’ll be right behind you.”
If he racked up his fourth on-duty kill, I’d prefer it was the other way around.
Chapter Five
My headlights careened off the golden glazed ceramic-brick walls and glass-block windows of the array of Streamline Moderne bungalows that lurked on a slight slope among towering pin oaks like invaders from another planet getting ready to make their move.
I pulled the Caddy into the motor court drive at 7755 Watson Road in the St. Louis suburb of Marlborough, following Johnny Hagan in his ’49 Chevy taxicab. Each of over thirty two-unit, brown-trimmed, round-cornered structures on the winding drive through the well-manicured several acres had a room on either side of paired white-door garages providing unusual privacy for motel guests.
The pink-and-black neon sign told much of the story—
— and the marquee below gave some particulars:
The rest had been filled in on a St. Louis job of mine just after the war when I stopped by the Coral Court office looking for a client’s wandering wife. I found her in what I was told then was one of the new “Mae West” bungalows, so-called because of their rounded bays. I’d got a real eyeful, not just of my rich old client’s pretty young wife, but the double life of the Coral Court.
That it was the ultimate No-Tell Motel with hourly as well as nightly rates — the hourly (minimum four hours) were ostensibly to allow truckers to come in off Route 66 for a few hours of Z’s — did not stop families from making annual trips or honeymooners making legal whoopee. Some World War II newlywed brides, who never saw their husbands again, would remember their night at Coral Court forever.
Despite my previous visit, I had never stayed here. I pulled up at the office near the highway, joining Hagan, who was already out of his cab.
Hagan sent me in and I paid a reasonable $5.50, single occupancy, for the room reserved next to the one Steve Strand had booked earlier today as Mr. and Mrs. Robert White. The desk clerk was an almost good-looking red-lipstick brunette about forty in pink angora, her sultry friendliness suggesting a secondary business transaction was a possibility.
“Beds are comfy,” she said with a Groucho lift of the eyebrows. “We’re strictly Beautyrest mattresses at the Coral Court.”
“Good to know,” I said, and took my fifty cents in change.
That seemed to disappoint her a little. Still, there was promise or maybe hope in her voice as she said, “50-A’s next to 49-A — upper floor in the middle one of the new buildings.”
These proved to be a trio at the rear of the property, more conventional two-stories that hadn’t been here on my previous stop, but the same brick-and-brown-trim minus the bungalows’ rounded curves — two rooms above, two below. Paired garages were on the first floor in front with two more in back, where Hagan stowed his cab in Strand’s. I slid the Caddy into 50-A’s adjacent garage. You accessed the upper floor by an outer staircase snugged along the building’s side and leading to a little hallway off of which were, as promised, 50-A and 49-A.
I stowed my overnight bag in my room, which had none of the moderne motel’s exterior style but did maintain yellow walls and brown trim with serviceable modern furniture and a double bed, presumably with the promised Beautyrest. And that bed looked good to me. It had been a long day with a long drive, and of course yesterday with that ransom drop had taken its toll.