“So he could have buried the money.”
Shoulders shrugged his. “He had time. Later we found those garbage cans at a country club that went out of business. Dumped ’em in their clubhouse. But no spray can. No plastic bags.”
I frowned. “Why would he bury half the money?”
He exhaled smoke. “You spent time with him, Heller. You think that punk had his head sewed on straight? Look, I’m sick and tired of talking about the Greenlease case. Just fed up with it. I would never be so foolish as to steal that money — it had a damn red lantern tied on it!”
I was shaking my head slowly. “I don’t think he buried that money, Lou. He just drove around looking for a hiding place and never found anywhere that satisfied him.”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Okay, then. I heard it was Jack Carr and gangster pals of his that got that money.” Leaned back. “Also, some say it all got burned up, ’cause it was so hot.”
“Just burst into flames, maybe? No, Lou. Not that, and not gangsters at the Coral Court, or Carl and his shovel. You and your buddy Joe Costello got the loot. But where did it go after that? Neither one of you is living like a king.”
He shook his head emphatically and the skinny man’s fat lips were quivering. “You have got it all wrong, Heller. I go way back with Joe, that’s true, we started out driving cab together. That’s why when Joe got a line on that little psycho of a kidnapper, I’m who he called. It was just a tip I got. Nothing more. No good deed goes unpunished, they say, and ain’t that the truth. I get the kidnapper. I get the gun he used to kill that poor kid. Isn’t that enough? So I didn’t recover the whole damn ransom money. Isn’t it enough that...”
He covered his face with his hands. He was crying now. Literally crying into his beer.
“I don’t mean... I don’t mean to accuse Joe or nothing... He’s a good man. Before June... my wife... would make the drive to the U.S. Medical Center in Springfield, to see me? He would make sure our car got topped off with gas. He and his wife had June over for supper all the time, while I was away. People say terrible things about him, like he took that money. Let ye who is without sin cast the first stone, I always say.”
He dried his eyes with a paper napkin. Found a hanky in a pocket to blow his nose, which he did louder than Satchmo hitting a high note.
When he’d composed himself, I said, “When all is said and done, Lou, there are still two things missing.”
That seemed to confuse him, the eyes under the heavy black eyebrows squinting at me.
“Half the ransom money,” I said, “and an hour. The hour after you booked Carl Hall and before you turned over the other half.”
“I accounted for that time,” he said indignantly.
“Oh, that’s right. You had to drop your car off to your ‘landlady,’ who had an appointment. The rest was kind of vague. ‘Personal errands.’ And all the while three hundred grand is in the trunk.”
He lifted a palm. “Well, we had to load up Dolan’s car. Elmer followed me to June’s to drive me back.” Then, as if it were a point in his favor, he added, “And that footlocker and that metal suitcase, they weren’t in the trunk. They were in the back seat.”
“Ah, well, then that’s different. So while you and Officer Dolan dragged Hall into Newstead station, you left three hundred grand in the back seat of your car? I hope you locked it up, Lou.”
He shrugged. Waved that off. “People don’t steal stuff from in front of a police station.”
“You are a very stupid man, Lou.”
The little black eyes popped big. “Fuck you, Heller! I was a good cop. They gave me medals and promotions. I did a great thing and I’m proud of it. I got that child killer put in the gas chamber, him and his scummy little honey. I got six kids! You think I would touch money with that... that little boy’s blood on it?”
He started weeping again.
Oh, brother.
He dried his eyes with his arm and he found some room to blow his nose on the hanky. He finished his beer. He plucked his smoke from the ashtray and had a few final puffs.
Then, softly earnest, he said, “You will not believe this, but I am not the man I was. I don’t just mean physically speaking. I mean where morals go. I was a good cop, but it’s true I sometimes... stumbled. In prison, in the prison hospital, I read the Bible. I read it before, of course, but this time... I really read it.”
“Did you.”
“I did. I regret certain things in my life. But I would swear on any Bible that I had nothing to do with what happened to the Greenlease money. I pray... I pray for that poor child often. Just think, as a parent, what they been through! Breaks my heart. But I read that Mrs. Greenlease, she’s very religious, too. And she understands God works in mysterious ways.”
“You mean like shooting a little boy in the head?”
He got choked up. “Please... please. I know you don’t think I’m sincere, but I swear I am. That’s why I’ve become a deacon of the church.”
Fuck you, Heller, I’m a deacon of the church.
“I’ve even begun my studies.”
“What studies are those, Lou?”
“To become a minister.”
I laughed. I went over to the bar and paid for our beers, then went back to the booth and said, “Let me preach to you, Lou, from the gospel of Who the Hell Do You Think You’re Kidding. You’re not crying for that dead kid. You’re not even crying for your lost career. You’re crying because you threw it away for a fortune that slipped through your goddamn fingers.”
And I left him there in his pew.
The storefront in the shopping district at Chippewa Street and Hampton Avenue wore white neon letters on a pale green background—
— and various hand-lettered signs all but blotted out the windowed front: “ONE HOUR” SERVICE, QUALITY “QUICK” DRY CLEANING, PRESS WHILE “U” WAIT and the like. All those quotation marks were troubling — desperation merged with hedging a bet.
As I went in, the kerosene-like odor of dry cleaning welcomed me. The slender man behind the counter didn’t; his face was a blank space waiting for an expression to happen, his smock as white as a doctor’s, with D & S stitched in red on the breast pocket.
I’d only seen him that one time five years ago at the Coral Court, but I knew the ex-uniformed cop at once. At the time, Elmer Dolan had reminded me of a younger version of Shoulders, as if he were the man’s son — similar dark hair, high forehead on an oblong head, bushy grown-together eyebrows and small, full-lipped mouth. His eyes were dark too, but lacked the shifty quality of the older man’s.
While even now he was boyish-looking, Dolan was no kid anymore, though Shoulders had still referred to him as such. Yesterday’s twenty-five-year-old rookie patrolman was today’s thirty-year-old businessman now, draped in melancholy much as the clothing in hangers on their rack, awaiting pick-up, wore plastic bags.