That method of getting ransom dough into circulation would take time, but then the Outfit had plenty.
“Only about half of the recovered bills come from the Chicago area,” Grapp was saying, “the rest showing up every which where — but your hometown shows a pattern. One bank in particular pops up frequently — Southmoor Bank and Trust Company.”
Grapp didn’t have to explain the significance of that. South-moor was an Outfit bank on the South Side, founded by a bookmaker for bookmakers, going back to Capone days. The bank’s co-founder had been taken for a ride just last year — the .45-slug-in-the-head kind.
Southmoor would make the perfect laundry for the ransom money. They’d have paid probably twenty cents on the dollar for a tidy $240,000 profit when they replaced regular funds with hot money for channeling through ordinary bank transactions. They would then pocket those regular funds, minus the $60,000 they’d paid someone for the hot money.
But who was that someone?
“Both Costello and Shoulders are on the streets again,” Grapp said, “Costello back at his cab company, Shoulders managing four rooming houses he owns. He’s also gone into the dry-cleaning business with the Dolan pup. I think Dolan is just an innocent who got caught up in this, but I’ve had no luck turning him — he’s a clam. Shoulders got religion in stir and weeps at the drop of a hat over the death of Bobby Greenlease, and especially his own travails — the hero cop who got shafted and sent away for no good reason.”
“Such a sad story.”
“These are men who might open up to you,” Grapp said, “where they won’t to us. Won’t to me. You do have a reputation, Nate. Mr. Greenlease asked me to cooperate. You’re going to sniff around, I understand. I’d start with Barney Baker’s ex-wife, Mollie, and that prostitute, Sandy O’Day. She’s a madam now, running hookers out of the Coral Court for the last couple of years.”
Coming up in the world, our Sandy.
“You can try Jack Carr too,” he was saying, “but he’s one hard apple. You’ll need to watch your ass. I doubt you can get to Buster Wortman, who probably knows more than anybody about the Greenlease money, but isn’t likely to give you a damn thing. He runs East Saint Louis, which is purgatory by day and Hell at night. You know how they say a man’s home is his castle? Well, Buster has a moat around his. You already know Barney Baker, I understand, but he’s in Washington, D.C., right now.”
“So I hear.”
“He may be back before you’ve wound up your investigation. I have contact info on everybody, and a few notes on some of them.” He had a last gulp of highball. Stood. “Well. I better get home to the wife and kids. To my castle.”
“You’re awfully cooperative.”
The long face softened. “I think I’d do about anything for Bob Greenlease, after what he suffered. Including turning you loose. If Bob wants to see what somebody less official can turn up in this thing, I’m all for it.”
“That’s a little surprising.”
“Not really.” He threw some money on the table. “I don’t have a hundred men anymore.”
Chapter Twelve
I set up the meet with Barney Baker’s ex-wife Mollie by phone before I left Kansas City.
After I gave her my name, and identified myself as a private investigator, I said, “I’d like to chat with you off the record.”
Her voice was husky, sleepy. I was pretty sure I’d woken her, though it was close to ten-thirty A.M.
“What about?” she asked.
“If there’s a hundred bucks in it, does it matter?”
“...The D.C. boys weren’t paying anything. They appealed to my patriotism. I think they had me confused with Betty Ross.”
She meant “Betsy,” but that was close enough.
“I’m not from D.C.,” I assured her.
“Where are you from?”
“Chicago.”
The pause was like that proverbial long drop off a short pier. Then she said, “We’d have to meet in a public place.”
“Okay. Where?”
“I work at the Club Cosmopolitan in East St. Louis. I waitress there. I have a fifteen-minute break every two hours. One of those comes at 8:45. Can you find your way?”
“I’ll buy a compass. Should I ask for you at the bar?”
“That’ll work. Or maybe you’ll just spot me. I wear a name tag.”
“What do you look like, Mollie?”
“Claudette Colbert, in some movie where she’s sunk to working as a waitress.”
She hung up.
I timed my drive in the used ’56 Series 62 Sedan so I’d hit St. Louis just after dark, having specifically asked Bob Greenlease for an older, pre-tailfin Caddy to avoid undue attention. The still familiar trip with its farm country and little towns hadn’t changed any, but some of the radio stations were playing rock ’n’ roll now. Which I didn’t mind — it wasn’t Sinatra or Brubeck, but it was better than country and western. In downtown St. Louis at Washington Avenue, I took the Eads Bridge to the Illinois side of the Mississippi past railroad yards and onto Broadway, cutting through industrial sprawl.
East St. Louis had been named an All-American City, fourth largest in the state, with a prosperous array of stockyards and factories. But the factories were starting to close and meat-packing was moving away, and the only industry still flourishing seemed to be vice. Like Chicago’s wide-open suburb, Calumet City, this was where St. Louis cab drivers on commission would steer passengers to gambling houses, brothels, burlesque bars and after-hours saloons.
Inside the story-and-a-half white-awninged brick building on Bond Avenue, I found a nearly packed house of maybe three hundred. A bar stretched along the wall at right and a pool table was in its own little world at left, glass-block windows letting in the vague bright colors of a dying city desperate for nightlife. Red and blue neon beer signs glowed in the smoke like the lights of incoming planes on a foggy night while raucous rock ’n’ roll emanated from a small stage at the far end of the big square high-ceilinged room. The back two-thirds was jammed with red-vinyl-and-chrome chairs at black-topped tables where the mostly young crowd drank from bottles of beer — the criteria for alcoholic beverage service here seemed to be a capacity for human speech. Space had been allowed near the stage for a dance floor consumed by wildly gyrating patrons, and I suppose there was nothing special about any of it except the nearly equal mix of colored and white. The Supreme Court had approved desegregation a while back and it had hit this club in East St. Louis in spades. And ofays.
In a black suit and tie and blue suede shoes, a clowning Chuck Berry was on stage doing “Maybelline,” a radio hit I’d heard on the trip from K.C.; he and a bass player, drummer and piano man were squeezed onto the small platform with a backdrop that said COSMO in pink sparkle lettering. I’d seen this outstanding showman on the South Side at the 708 Club, where one of my black A-1 operatives had succeeded in making me appreciate Chicago blues. This variant had humor and crisp diction and told kids Negro and white the kind of stories of high school, cars and young love they could all relate to.
Berry, after getting a big round of applause, whistles and whoops, announced a break, and a female voice next to me, a bored alto, said, “He used to get twenty-one bucks a weekend in the house band. Now he gets eight hundred a week.”
I glanced at the short, curvy dish beside me, who did nice things to a red-aproned white waitress uniform. As some of the crowd threaded out to smoke in less smoky environs, Mollie Baker directed me to a vacated table in a back corner. Pool balls clacked not far from where we settled.
“How did you know me?” I asked. “I forgot to say I’d wear a white carnation.”