She rolled off, panting. She got a smoke from a pack of Chesterfields and stuck it between those full lips, the red stuff gone now, and lighted up. Then she grinned at me, mouth seeping smoke, and said, “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ll hate myself in the morning.”
Chapter Fourteen
The St. Louis Hills neighborhood had its share of single-family dwellings, but more than a few two-stories had become rooming houses, with substantial apartment buildings invading as well. This was one of those areas developed in the 1920s to provide families with tree-lined streets, churches and schools, with bordering businesses and the green open spaces of parks. Then the Depression came along and turned the Hills into a nest of apartments.
The neighborhood did seem to be working its way back. The brick structures dominating streets were lined with tall trees, a peaceful Ozzie and Harriet world of kids, bikes, couples walking dogs, moms pushing strollers. Ex-police lieutenant Louis Shoulders lived here, on Tamm Avenue, in one of four buildings he owned. According to Wes Grapp, Shoulders had several rooming houses during his time on the police department, as well; but those were in neighborhoods not so well-shaded — just shady, serving as they did to shelter whorehouses.
The address on Tamm was a block off the Clayton Avenue business district, a big square two-story white-trimmed brown-brick building with four windows across on either floor. More an apartment complex, then, than a rooming house. I found him in the alley at the rear, wrestling a garbage can to the paving’s edge across a slightly sloping back yard, to join its tin-can twins. It was hot today and I didn’t envy him. Or feel any sympathy.
The tall, broad-shouldered man in t-shirt, overalls and work boots was huffing and puffing, a guy who’d been almost fat and was now nearly skinny, in a sick-looking way, skin hanging off him like a suit the wrong size. His black hair was threaded silver but his heavy eyebrows were charcoal smears against ghostly-white flesh, the face on the bucket head having the look of a man perpetually wondering who might be sneaking up behind him.
As he set the can down next to the others, heaving a sigh, he provided an easy irony: they had nicknamed him the Shadow, both the cops and the crooks, after the old radio show, because as a young officer he was known to prowl the back yards and alleys, looking for thieves, numbers runners and other evils found in the hearts of men.
Another irony about it came easy, too: Lou Shoulders had really been looking for crooks to shake down, thriving on bribes from pimps, prostitutes and gamblers in the midtown Eleventh Precinct police district on Newstead Avenue, where he eventually was nightwatch commander. Not that he hadn’t collared his share of bad guys — he’d killed three, including two prison escapees and a “burglar” who invaded the happy Shoulders home. Whispers had it the “burglary” was a bungled hit on a cop despised by one and all.
“Should you be doing that kind of heavy lifting?” I asked. “Didn’t you have a heart attack in stir?”
He looked at me suspiciously. Of course he probably looked at everybody suspiciously.
“Do I know you?” His voice was deep and hoarse.
“Well, we had a memorable fifteen minutes at the Coral Court once. But who in St. Louis hasn’t?”
“Nate Heller,” he said, pursing his lips like he didn’t like the taste. He grunted an excuse for a laugh. “I heard you was around.”
“I try not to hide my light under a bushel.”
The upper thick lip made a sneer. “You could get in trouble, the things I know about you that night.”
“Not as much trouble as you, Lou. Another perjury rap, for openers. Did you really have a heart attack? Or was that just a way to serve out your stretch in a medical facility?”
“I did have a heart attack,” he said defensively. “I’m a sick man. I don’t wanna talk to you. It’s not good for me.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Look,” I said, friendly, leaning a hand on a tin lid, “just think of it as another visit to the doctor. Something you might as well get out of the way.”
His eyes, as black as the eyebrows, narrowed in their pouches. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“My client would like you to.”
“That right?” The hoarse voice was a growl now. “And who would that be? And why should I give a damn?”
I raised my palms chest-high in mild surrender. “Up to you, Lou. You still involved in union work?”
He shook his head, folded his arms. “Not as much. My son, Lou, is. He’s security chief with the Pipefitters. What’s that got to do with the price of beans?”
“My client is somebody worried about the Greenlease money getting tied to the Teamsters. The Rackets Committee is sniffing around, which you may have heard. Be a hell of a black eye. He’d appreciate your cooperation.”
The heavy brows knit. “You’re talkin’ about... Mr. Hoffa?”
I raised the palms again, higher. “Hey. I didn’t mention any names.” I nodded toward the street. “I saw a saloon on the corner, just up the block. Why don’t we find someplace quiet to talk?”
We did, in a booth in back of the Tamm Avenue Tap.
We both had beers. He was smoking a Camel. Not really what a guy with a heart condition should be doing, but I wasn’t his doctor, despite what I’d said.
“I have no idea what became of that money,” he said. “I swear on the life of my wife and my children.”
He didn’t say which wife — he’d been married four times. The fourth had been the “landlady” of one of his two bawdy houses. Of course, Lou was still married to his third wife then, and the landlady had also been his mistress. Who, after the Hall arrest, Shoulders had taken to Hawaii on a vacation.
I didn’t rub any of that in his face. But Grapp had filled me in on this colorful ex-cop, with whom I had briefly but memorably intersected five years ago, and the only question I really had for him was, Why should I believe anything you say, you lying son of a bitch?
“If you ask me,” he said, after a gulp of beer, “the only person who knows where that money is, is Carl Hall. And haven’t you heard? Dead men don’t talk.”
“He didn’t say anything worth listening to,” I said, “when he was breathing. Anyway, what makes you think Carl would know where that dough went? What, a little mud on his trousers?”
He leaned in, his big head hovering over the booth’s scarred tabletop like a window-peeker getting a gander. “I’m gonna tell you something I never told nobody before, Heller, nobody.”
“Please.”
One black eyebrow went up. “You remember I said I’d have somebody shadow that creep, once we had eyes on him? That afternoon of the day we got him that night?”
I followed that. Barely, but I followed it.
“Well,” he said, still hovering, “I shadowed him myself.”
Who knows what evil lurks...?
“He went to a hardware store on Chippewa,” Shoulders said, as if reading it off a report, “and bought two iron garbage cans.”
And the man knew his garbage cans.
“The, what-you-call-it, galvanized type,” he said. Settling back in the booth now, he rested his smoke in a Tamm Tap ashtray. “Also two big plastic zipper bags, a can of waterproofing spray, and, yup, a shovel. I watched him watch the sales gal make two trips loading up his car. Then he drove off. He went through a couple suburbs and out into the country and was slowing down here and there, like he was looking for a place to hide something. And I wonder whatever that could be?”
“Where exactly?’
“There’s a bridge over the Meramec on Route 66, not that far from the Coral Court. Few miles west is all. The banks was a mucky mess. East of that bridge he took a winding road around a bluff — I had to keep way back, because he would slow down then pick up speed and a couple times he almost got stuck. Finally I had to reverse it real quick not to be made. Anyway, he went back over the bridge, and once he slowed down at a farm and was giving it a good long look when some dogs started in barking and spooked him. He turned and headed back and I lost him. I tried driving around the area, but came up empty.”