A Pure Double Cross (2 page)

“Who are you and what do you want?” His voice was soft, fatherly.

I told him my name and said I wanted to talk to The Schooler. “Is that you?”

“Please continue,” said the man.

“All right, I'll do that. Just as soon as you untape my wrists. I use a lot of gestures when I speak.”

I braced for another haymaker but the man with the flashlight chuckled and gave the order. This was good, this was encouraging. If this guy was indeed The Schooler I might still be drawing breath after I finished saying what I had to say.

I massaged my wrists and took my time doing it.

“I robbed the Society for Savings this afternoon. $18,758. Not bad for a day's work but not good enough. I've got completely worked out heist plans in the six figures, all right here in Cleveland. But they're too big for one man, I'll need a crew.”

The echoey room got quiet. I couldn't see diddly with that electric torch scorching my eyeballs so I shut my lids and enjoyed the silence. They were on my turf now.

“How did you pull off that job this afternoon?” said the soft-voiced man.

“I won't answer that question till I can see who I'm talking to.”

The flashlight clicked off. A portly middle-aged gent took shape once the starbursts faded. I'd seen his picture. The Schooler.

“I didn't do the job by myself,” I said. “I had an accomplice.”

“Who?”

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

It was a clambake that decided me. A Saturday afternoon clambake in Frankie Lemowski's backyard in Youngstown. All my neighborhood pals were there, back from Corregidor and Anzio and the Aleutian Islands, working at the mill or the hardware store, living in trailers and crackerbox apartments, the ink barely dry on the articles of surrender and most of them already hitched and half their wives in maternity smocks. Frankie and his wife lived in the basement of his parents' bungalow and counted themselves lucky.

My neighborhood pals are good guys, salt of the earth, shirt off their back. But they'd been reading too many of their own press clippings. They think they're heroes, still wearing their dress blues and oak leaf clusters to church on Sunday. They swapped their war stories and I listened. They gave me a hard time. ‘Hal was busy sipping champagne with some Mata Hari in a French café.' Ha ha.

I was an undercover wireless agent parachuted behind enemy lines to provide intelligence on troop movements and potential bomb targets. I was recruited because I was the grandson of German immigrants and spoke
Deutsch.
That much they knew. I didn't fill my pals in on the gory details because I am prohibited by the Office of Strategic Services from doing so.

Cheesed me off. What I did was dangerous. So far as I know I'm the only behind-German-lines OSS agent who lived to tell about it. Only I couldn't.

My Case Officer would say I was alive because I shirked my duties but screw him. Had I followed his orders to the letter – fraternized with the
Wehrmacht
brass at the local
Biergarten,
infiltrated the nearby
Panzer
camp – my ability to dit dah valuable intel would have been severely compromised from being tied to a fencepost and used for bayonet practice.

So I'm no hero. Truth to tell neither were my pals. The real heroes, the ones who did what they didn't have to do, are all dead. Like Alfred and Frieda. They weren't awarded any medals and citations and nobody knows what they did except me. And I ain't talking.

The clambake got louder as night fell. Frankie sounded just like his old man when someone stole a sniff of the five-gallon pot of steaming clams, chicken, potatoes and corn on the cob. “Close the lid! Close the lid, you'll lose the flavor!”

Somewhere along in there I decided. I told Frankie I had taken a job in Cleveland, a job in a bank.

“Cleveland? Didn't Jeannie move up there?”

Jeannie was my high school sweetheart. We were plain crazy about one another. We would have been just two more dopey newlyweds at the clambake if Jeannie hadn't eloped while I was overseas.

“I don't know and I don't care,” is what I said to Frankie.

The FBI sent a registered letter to my address in Youngs-town. It contained a roundtrip train ticket to Cleveland and a one-paragraph letter that invited me to a meeting, 2 November, 14:00 hours sharp, to discuss ‘a matter of mutual interest.' It was signed by Chester Halladay, Special Agent in Charge.

It was not the sort of letter I got every day. Especially not from the FBI. The FBI and the OSS hated each other.

J. Edgar Hoover lobbied FDR to put the Bureau in charge of overseas espionage during the war. FDR tapped William Donovan to head the Office of Strategic Services instead. And Wild Bill did a passable job, if victory counts for anything. In 1944 Donovan secretly proposed making the OSS permanent. Someone leaked the proposal to a Washington newspaper columnist who dubbed it the “Super Gestapo Agency.”

FDR shelved the proposal. Everyone from Wild Bill Donovan on down figured J. Edgar Hoover for the leaker.

Mind you I don't give a rat's patoot about the OSS. I signed on for a nine-month stint and was still humping my wireless set, dodging Yank P-51's and Russian shock troops, two years later. Then I came home in street clothes, shambling down the gangplank at Newport News after the uniformed GI's were greeted with popping flashbulbs and brass bands.

I didn't do as any self-respecting veteran of the Oh-So-Secret should have done. I didn't tear those train tickets in two. I had risked my neck for two years, I had been honorably discharged. I was going to play that for whatever it was worth. So I boarded the 11:47 to Cleveland the next day.

The Cleveland District Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is located on the 9
^th
floor of the Standard
Building, corner of Ontario and St. Clair. The elevator operator was an old man with a big Adam's apple. I asked him what the ‘Standard' stood for.

“Standard Trust, first labor bank in the country.”

“I didn't see a bank downstairs.”

“Went bust. President did eight years for crooked loans.”

“Was it the FBI who busted him?”

The elevator operator spat tobacco juice into a brass spittoon and feathered the car to a stop on the ninth floor.

I announced my name at the front desk and was swept through a zigzag of corridors on a tide of smiles and bent back doors until I came to rest in a dimpled leather club chair across from the Special Agent in Charge. Chester Halladay stood up, I shook his soft plump hand.

I thought all G-men were jut-jawed tough guys who ate nails and pissed rust but Chester Halladay, with his fleshy jowls and wavy hair, looked more like a floor walker at Higbee's. All he needed was a pink carnation.

“How was your journey?” said Halladay when we had settled back in our chairs. “The trains run on time?”

I smiled and nodded. Nothing like a little Nazi humor to break the ice. A file folder sat open on Halladay's desk. I recognized the upside down picture. Yours truly. Halladay leaned back in his spring-loaded chair and launched himself to his feet. He walked over to the credenza on the far wall, turned around and walked back.

“Organized crime in the greater Cleveland area prospered while you were busy making the world safe for democracy, Mr. Schroeder. War rationing opened up a lucrative black market and they took full advantage, full advantage. But now, they're hurting.”

Halladay walked over to the window above St. Clair Avenue, turned around and walked back. A pink carnation was all he needed.

“The mob doesn't do well in times of freedom and prosperity. Prohibition gave them bootlegging, the depression gave them loan sharking, war rations gave them the black market. But now, they're hurting.”

Halladay leaned over and flattened his lunch hooks on the desk blotter which skidded forward, dumping an empty ashtray on the carpet. I bent down and picked it up. It bore the official seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“The mob can't make ends meet as racketeers these days,” said the Special Agent. “So they've reverted to form, to what they truly are - gangsters. They've robbed four banks in as many weeks.” Halladay fixed me with a meaningful look. “That's where you come in Mr. Schroeder. We want you to help them along.”

This got my attention. I sat up straight in my dimpled chair.

The phone rang. Halladay answered, cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Assistant Special Agent Schram will give you the particulars.”

I was whisked away to an adjoining office. Agent Richard Schram was more like it. Ropey and crew cut as a drill instructor. A crooked smile but straight teeth. The handshake we exchanged was just this side of Indian wrestling. He x-rayed me with a look. I got the feeling whatever cockamamie scheme I'd been summoned here for wasn't Richard Schram's idea.

“War hero are you?” said Schram through clenched teeth. Teeth, hell, the guy had clenched hair.

“No sir, I'm not a war hero.”

“No?”

“No sir.”

“What then?”

“I was an agent for the OSS sir. A spy.”

“A spy!”

“Yes sir.”

“Of course. That makes you a perfect fit.”

“A perfect fit for what? Sir.”

Agent Schram's eyes got sly. “You know.”

“Just what the Special Agent told me sir.”

“Which was?”

“That the mob was doing bank heists and he wanted me to help them along.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“Nothing sir.”

“Nothing?”

“No sir. Agent Halladay took a phone call before I could reply.”

Agent Scram cranked up another crooked smile and held it for several seconds. I must have passed some kind of test. In any event the swollen vein in the middle of his forehead stopped pounding four beats to the bar and we got down to cases.

“We know who pulled those bank jobs,” said Schram. “The Fulton Road Mob. They've been acting up lately.”

“If you know they did it why don't you arrest them? Sir.”

Agent Schram ground his teeth. “You are asking the wrong man that question.”

“Yes sir.”

“The plan, the
concept
is to insert pre-arranged heist plans, use them to ladder up the chain of command and bring down the mysterious Mr. Big.”

“Mr. Big?”

“Theodore Briggslavski, a.k.a. Teddy Biggs. Now that he's the head magoo he's known as Mr. Big,” said Schram. “The man's a phantom. All we have in his jacket is one grainy old photo.”

Agent Schram handed me a file folder containing a picture of a tall pot-bellied man with a big mop of hair. I closed the folder and handed it back.

Schram's watery blue gaze turned inward. I kept my hands in my lap and my thoughts to myself. Someone in the Cleveland
District office of the FBI would eventually get around to telling me what they wanted me to do. Wouldn't they?

A fire engine honked and wailed its way down Ontario. The sweep second hand on the electric wall clock rounded third and headed for home. The potted philodendron on the windowsill sprouted several flowering tendrils.

“Sir…”

“So what have you decided?” said Schram, snapping to.

“About what?”

“About signing on to become an undercover mob informant! I thought you were briefed?”

“No sir.”

“
No
you're not interested?”

“
No
I wasn't briefed. Sir. But I am interested.”

I don't know why I said that so quickly. I hated being a spy. But it opened my eyes. Good guys? Bad guys? Once the shit-storm starts there's not much difference. When I was behind German lines everyone was trying to kill me. What I wanted now was to get away, far away from the chest-beaters and the speechifiers before they found a way to start it all up again. Preferably to someplace warm. Preferably with Jeannie.

Hey, you never know.

So I was interested. Still, I couldn't resist twitting the Fan Belt Inspectors. “Why not get one of your own boys to do this job? Too dangerous?”

“Don't be ridiculous. We can't use our agents because they're known to the enemy.”

“But why a broken down spy from the OSS?”

Agent Schram breathed deeply though his nostrils. He started to speak, cleared his throat and started again. “Because your training and experience,” he said in a low voice, biting off the words, “make you uniquely qualified for this mission.”

I smiled and thanked him and said I was in.

People are so depressingly predictable. The guy from the gambling club, the scowling guy with the downsloped mug, yanked his nickel-plated .45 from his armpit holster when I mentioned that I was working for the FBI.

The barrel felt warm against my temple. I sniffed and made a face. “Your gun smells like BO.”

He cocked the hammer.

“Jimmy,” said The Schooler. The gun got holstered.

Jimmy?
The name didn't fit somehow. I had Slopehead figured for a Rocco, or a Big Louie.

“Why should we trust you?” said The Schooler in his soft voice. A voice that didn't need to push or shout, a voice that was accustomed to being heeded.

“You shouldn't. You should trust the results. The feds are gee'd up to nab the head of your operation - Mr. Big they call him - and they've ponied up a fat wad of bait money to do it.”

“And how does that work?”

“On the installment plan. Down payment, the C notes I gave to…Jimmy. Second payment, an armored car job courtesy of the FBI. Final payment, a six figure factory payroll heist where they plan to drop the hammer and spring the trap.”

“And your proposal?”

“A pure double cross.”

The Schooler looked amused. He chuckled in a mirthless way.
Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.
He shined his flashlight at the ceiling. A rusted eyehook hung from a rolling track. I got the message and realized my mistake. I hadn't properly introduced myself. People care more about who you are than what you say.