A Pure Double Cross (28 page)

Jeannie didn't show.

I shook myself like a wet dog, picked up my cash-crammed tackle box and trudged back across the backyard, not sure what I was up to but certain I would think of something.

I reached the back corner of the old Victorian and took a look. The airplane, lights blazing, was slowly taxiing up to the pier. Where was The Schooler? This was his moment of glory, the dramatic conclusion to his masterpiece. By rights Mr. Big should have been standing on the end of that pier with a big pile of dough and a triumphant grin.

I didn't see him. Which meant The Schooler was still trying to round up Jimmy. Or Jimmy had found him and The Schooler was now deceased. Jimmy wouldn't like it that Henry had let me skate.

I watched and waited. The white plane approached the dock and shut its engines. It was a big sleek pricey-looking job, with bright nav lights mounted above the hatch. The hatch remained closed.

A minute passed. Nothing happened. Then the side hatch of the snow white plane popped open and a man leaned out and lashed the plane to the dock pilings. He had a big gun slung over his shoulder.

The man stepped out onto the pier, cleared away snow with his foot and extended his hand behind him. A woman inside the cabin took his hand and stepped out. A tall woman wearing a white fur jacket and matching hat. She stood on the end of the pier with her hands on her hips. I couldn't see her face with the bright light behind her but I knew who it was. Lizabeth.

“She's a sight to behold, isn't she?”

My heart leapt to my throat and attempted to squeeze itself out through my ears. I whipped around. “Where did you come from?”

“The basement,” said The Schooler. “I'm surprised you're still here.”

“Me too. Where's Jimmy?”

“He's hiding. He does that sometimes.”

“How come?”

“Well, he was already teed up about the money broker. And if he saw you sneak out the basement window he may have reached a wrong conclusion. Jimmy tends to have a gloomy outlook on life.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“That's why I need you to walk down that pier with me, arm in arm.”

I checked the road by the caved-in garage one last time. “Let's went.”

The Schooler grabbed up his lumpy gunnysack. “Where's yours?”

I hoisted my tackle box. The Schooler laughed his flat clipped laugh and led the way down the side of the house under the shelter of snowy cedar branches.

“You leave Jimmy his dib, inside?” I asked.

“Of course not.”

“Then could be Mr. Jimmy's standing on the front porch right about now, looking to blow our heads off.”

The Schooler didn't comment. But he did stop just before we reached the front corner of the house. “Jimmy? Jimmy,
we've got the money. We've got the money and we're going to walk down the pier and we want you with us! Jimmer?”

Little Jimmer didn't answer.

“He's not there,” shrugged Mr. Big and walked out into shotgun range.

I waited five seconds and followed. The porch was empty.

We hurried toward the pier, The Schooler striding forward with spring in his step, me walking backward, tackle box in one hand, gat in the other. No Jimmy, no-where. Henry stopped by a little fishing shack at the head of the pier. Jimmy's duck blind? No, the door was padlocked.

It was then that The Schooler had his moment of triumph. At the head of the long pier, on Saturday, December 15
^th
, 1945, 6:18 p.m. He held up his gunnysack in the bright wash of the nav lights, the gunnysack formerly filled with stale bologna and hardtack wafers, the gunnysack currently containing $600,000 of freshly minted currency.

Lizabeth waved and clapped her gloves together. They made a hollow sound.
Pock pock pock pock.

We waded down the snowy pier to the waiting plane. No goons jumped out to mow us down. No Grumman Goose full of G-men swooped down from the sky. No Jimmy, no-where.

The Schooler and Lizabeth embraced. She lamped me over his shoulder. I looked elsewhere.

A small man wearing a bowler hat and a pince-nez appeared in the hatch door. The money broker. The Schooler greeted him and opened his gunnysack. The small man grabbed a block of cash and ducked back inside.

The man with the big gun took his place. He held it at quarter arms, a Bren machine gun with a short stock. Nasty weapon. The man was forty or so, ex-jarhead by the look of him. A soldier of fortune.

We waited for a time, The Schooler, Lizabeth and me. I kept an ear out for airplanes and an eye peeled for Jimmy. The snow slackened, the wind picked up. The money broker returned and
gave The Schooler a deferential bow. The cash had passed inspection.

Henry Voss turned to me and said, “We're headed north. Care to join us?”

Lizabeth stood next to him and hiked her eyebrows above those beautiful sea green orbs. A thunderous shotgun blast rent the air and echoed out over the lake.

The soldier of fortune pushed The Schooler and me aside as we turned to look for the source of the gun blast. Another hired gun, a younger version, jumped out of the airplane and joined him at the end of the pier.

The Schooler told them to lower their weapons. They ignored him.

The blast didn't hit anyone. It was more along the lines of an announcement. It came from the direction of the fishing shack at the head of the pier. Jimmy yelled something that the wind carried away.

I didn't get the timing. Jimmy should have made his move long before Henry and I were about to step aboard a seaplane under cover of ex-Gyrenes with Bren guns. It made no sense of any kind, which flanged up my neck hairs. That he had waited till now meant something.

The wind settled for a moment. Jimmy piped up again. “I'm not going down that pier! Bring it here!”

Bring it here. Bring it here. Bring it here.

That's what Jimmy said when I dealt his last hole card. What he said when…oh Christ.

Two jacks! That's what had set my alarm bell dinging. There were
two jacks
in Jimmy's discard pile on that final hand. I had glimmed them for an instant when I gathered up the cards, too distracted by Jimmy's tantrum to pay attention. He had thrown that final hand as an excuse to storm off! Only one reason to do that. Jimmy knew I had help coming, and he wanted to greet them before I did.

How could he know that?

Shut up, Schroeder. How was a question for later on. What mattered now was that Jimmy Streets, unless I was very much mistaken, was standing behind the fishing shack at the head of the pier with his pig snout sawed-off pressed to Jeannie's head.

Holy Mother of God.

The Schooler picked up his gunnysack, pushed past the Gyrenes and proceeded down the pier. I picked up my tackle box and followed. Father Sullivan said salvation is many choices well made. Damnation, on the other hand, can come in an instant.

I didn't care. I didn't care who got hurt, maimed, killed or mutilated, myself included, so long as Jeannie stayed safe. We closed to within shotgun range of the shack.

The Schooler was blathering on. Jimmy, this is foolish, Jimmy, you have nothing to fear, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy.

THINK, Schroeder. DO something!

I opened the tackle box, grabbed a block of fifties and tossed it next to the shack where he could see it. “You win Jimmy, my dib's all yours.” I tossed another. “Just let her go.”

Jimmy didn't answer. The Schooler eyed me like I was nuts.

“Show yourself and I'll toss the rest. Two hundred and fifty gees!”

That Jimmy had Jeannie meant he also had the car she came in. He had a means of escape. He was sitting pretty!

“Jimmy listen to me, you're the champ, I'm the chump! You've got me outgunned and outmaneuvered. Collect your winnings!” I said. “I won't stop you, how can I?”

Jimmy Streets stepped out from behind the shack, holding a bound and gagged Jeannie as a human shield. She looked frightened, and very angry.

Jimmy pointed his shotgun at The Schooler and me and said, “I want it all.”

This was it then. Jimmy's answer to The Schooler's well-considered master plan. We were not all going to come to a
meeting of the minds here and walk away in one piece. This was war.

I tried. I got behind Henry and put my gun to his back. “Sure, I'll toss it all over. Just let Jeannie go. You've got a sawed-off, I've got a .32. You don't need her.”

But The Schooler had heard enough. The fucking ingrate he had raised from a pup wasn't going to piss all over his masterpiece.

Jeannie gave me a heads up with a flick of those bright brown eyes.

Down, to my right.

The kindly headmaster who preached reasoned dialogue and thoughtful deliberation was fumbling in his pocket for his Beretta. He was slow, out of practice.

It cost him.

The Schooler took a full load of twelve-gauge buckshot in the chest and throat. I know about the throat because I heard him gurgling. I took a few myself, standing behind him.

They were caroms mostly, left cheek and shoulder. They stung like hell. That was good, I wasn't in shock.

Henry clutched at his throat as his knees buckled.

I held him up, braced my left arm across his chest to protect myself from the second shotgun blast. But The Schooler's soul left his body right about then. He grew heavy, my left arm too slippery with blood to hold him up.

Jimmy didn't look so good when he saw it. His long time mentor-protector-father figure face down on the pier, his body haloed in bloody snow.

Jimmy pressed his sawed-off to Jeannie's temple and yelled something I couldn't hear. The blast had deafened me. Jimmy's jaws jacked up and down furiously.

I tried to make sense of it. He had one shell left in his shotgun. Why mess with Jeannie? Why not just finish me off?

I glanced back at the seaplane. The hired guns were down on one knee, locked and loaded and ready to do business. That was why Jimmy hadn't finished me off. He didn't want the soldiers of fortune to have a clear shot.

Me neither. Not with Jeannie in his grasp.

“Hold your fire!” I yelled, screamed,
shrieked
at the hired guns. I couldn't see their faces with the light behind them, just the shiny barrels of their Bren's. They held their fire.

All was not lost. Jimmy had a hostage but I did too. My tackle box and The Schooler's gunnysack, $700,000 all told.

I didn't care about the money, I cared about that last remaining twelve-gauge shell. Jimmy was sure to use it one way or another. My job was to make sure that shell had my name on it, not Jeannie's.

I dug into the gunnysack and came up with a block of hundreds. I tore off the tape and held it up and said, “Come get it dumbshit!”

I let the wind carry many thousands of dollars out over the frozen lake.

Jimmy, crazy-eyed, jammed the snout of his sawed-off to Jeannie's temple. Her eyes got big. This wasn't working.

The ringing in my ears subsided. I heard rushing wind, and the distant thrum of a twin-engine search plane. The dreaded Grumman Goose.

The snow white seaplane fired up its engines at the end of the pier. Jeannie and I locked eyeballs. She saw what Jimmy saw. She knew what I knew. With the hired guns piling back on board the plane I was target practice for Jimmy Streets.

I gave Jeannie a winsome goodbye smile. She sneered at me.

Jeannie was a tomboy, had always challenged me at everything from beer chugging to a foot race down the block. The only constant was her little girl countdown before the contest.

Ready, set, go!

Jeannie gave me a big wink with her left eye.

“You win Jimmy.”

Then her right eye.

“I'll have to trust you.” I threw the gunnysack at Jimmy's feet.

Then her left eye.

“There's the rest of …”

Jeannie dropped to her knees on cue. Jimmy clutched at nothing for a half a second. Half a second too long as it turned out.

I would have to write a nice thank you note to Commander Seifert. His .32 caliber revolver was well maintained. I put four of six in the kill zone, the target area of vital organs above the waist.

Not that Jimmy noticed.

My first round banged off his orbital bone and tore into his brain, blowing his recently cleaned and polished glass eye to smithereens.

And that's how I came to have all these overturned shot glasses lined up on the bar. Drink one, another one takes its place. It feels good to be a hero I must admit. I was plain jealous of those uniformed GIs parading around with all that fruit salad on their chests. Stupid, but I was.

How's come I'm not in jail? I told the FBI I had been playing along, biding my time till I could finally get the drop on both Jimmy and Mr. Big. They didn't believe a word of it but my version made them look a lot less stupid than the truth. Louis Seltzer and
The Cleveland Press
took the story and ran with it. I got my beat-up mug on the front page.
FBI Spy Shoots Fed Bank Crooks!

It's New Years Eve. I'm at Otto Moser's on E. 4
^th
, a smoky old joint with lots of playbills and autographed portraits on the walls. John Barrymore. Helen Hayes. No spit-roasted squab on the menu but the corned beef is first rate. Ol' pegleg Wally is drinking with me, basking in my reflected glory.

It's getting close to midnight now. I can't see the wall clock and I no longer wear a wristwatch but the crowd is buzzing and the waiters are raking in the silver. They stack it up behind the bar here at Otto Moser's, no cash register. Wally tells me it's a tradition started by the man himself. He died in '42, of pneumonia. We down a shot in his honor.

I no longer wear a wristwatch because, best I can tell, my watch is the reason Jimmy and The Schooler are dead. Jimmy caught me checking it once too often toward the end of our poker game. Why do that unless I was meeting someone?