Dead Guy's Stuff (20 page)

* * *

Nellie watched Jane pull into the parking lot. Someone with her, too. Probably Tim with more junk to hang on the walls or stack on the shelves she kept hanging up in the dining room. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the effort— god knows Nellie liked the place to look nice, too— but jeez, the trash that girl could find. Souvenir plates from 1908 with pictures of the Kankakee River on them. Who the hell cared about that old junk? They were penny souvenirs then and were worth less than that now, if you asked her. Of course, Jane wasn't asking her. When was the last time that her smarty-pants daughter asked her opinion on anything? And the old photographs she brought home where she didn't even know the people. What the hell was that about?

Of course, the photograph sitting at the kitchen table was different. Jane recognized people in that one, all right. Nellie and Don, just children, smiling away like it was Christmas morning and Gus Duncan was Santa Claus.
Well, he was Santa Claus to us,
Nellie thought. Giving us a start in the business, making it easy for us to make money and make our way. When he offered extras to make a little more money on the side, how were we going to say no? Little gambling games here and there, numbers and punchboards. The slot machine they kept in the backroom for a while. She had known that slots were trouble, too big, too noisy, and too many people had to be paid off to make any profit anyway. What Nellie didn't know back then, at the beginning of it all, was how deep Gus had sucked Don and the rest of them in.

First, he'd get them to run a little game, harmless enough. Then he was moving them into something else, hinting that if they said no, the wrong people might find out about that little harmless game from a few months back. Nellie never knew who they were supposed to be afraid of— the police or the boys Gus talked about that he was working for.

She remembered the first time she heard Gus say to Don when he collected the rent, "Be a shame to lose your liquor license over that little numbers game." Hell, by then, they had a house and a car they were paying on. They wanted to have kids and raise them with more hopes and dreams than the two of them had ever…
Oh shit,
thought Nellie,
what was the point of all this thinking?
Jane was coming through the door with some strange guy in a goofy tie. Probably one of Tim's antique dealer buddies who wanted to offer them twenty bucks for the old Slim Jim rack. Tim or one of his pals was always wanting to buy some old piece of scrap right out from under them.

Nellie waited in the kitchen until she heard Jane introduce her friend to Don and then watched the two of them sit down next to Crandall. Duncan's nephew was the one who'd thrown the brick, probably. Had to be. Probably inherited the blackmailing business along with the shanties. Well, it didn't matter anymore. She'd told Don that morning that it was over. What the hell were they afraid of anyway? The gambling all stopped when the government took over. Lottery, Lotto, that had set them free. Nobody could make any money once it was all legal, so Gus had just stopped the games, just kept charging them a little extra to keep quiet about it all. They wouldn't want their kids to know, right? Wasn't their son, Michael, a lawyer out in California? Didn't Don say Michael might be a judge someday? Shame if he heard all kinds of bad stuff about where his fancy college tuition money had come from.

Don knew it was all a bluff. Gus was as guilty as everybody else, wasn't he? But still, Don didn't want to take a chance, didn't want his name in the paper, didn't want Jane and Michael to know how he had gotten drawn in. Well, it had been forty damn years, and she'd had enough. She had seen it on an old
Law and Order
rerun last night, what she needed. And she had told Don in the car that morning.

"There's a statue of limitations," said Nellie, "and we're going to get one."

"Statute, Nellie," said Don, smiling.

"Whatever the hell it is. We're getting one and finishing this business."

Don had asked what about Jane and Michael, and Nellie had told him that they were grown-ups now, making their own damn mistakes. They weren't going to give a damn about what Don and Nellie had done forty or fifty years ago.

"Besides," Nellie had added, "that little private-eye daughter of ours is going to take a good look at that photograph and keep asking questions anyway. She won't care about running numbers, but she'll be all weepy that we haven't told her the truth."

Kids,
Nellie thought,
you feed them, you clothe them, you educate them, and still, they want you to tell them the goddamn truth, too.

"We owe them the truth, Nellie, you're right," Don had said.

Nellie heard the rain before she looked out and saw it, big drops that were going to start coming down hard and fast in a minute. She saw Jane's windows rolled down and grabbed the big navy blue raincoat they always had hanging on a nail by the back door. Whoever had to haul out the garbage or run out and down the cellar steps used the coat whenever it rained. She wrapped it around her tiny frame, put the hood up, and ran out to Jane's car. In the driver's seat she cranked up the window, wondering how much Jane and Charley had saved by not getting power windows.

"Probably thinks these are more goddamn vintage," she mumbled, as she leaned over to rollup the passenger side. The driver's side door opened, and Nellie didn't even lookup.

"I already got the windows; just get a rag to wipe the seat before you go," Nellie said.

"Shove over, Mrs. Wheel. I'll drive."

A clean-shaven man, forty something, with a short ponytail— god, how Nellie hated to see a man with a ponytail— had gotten into the car and shoved her over into the passenger seat. He took a ring with at least forty keys on it out of the pocket of his tan cotton jacket, chose the right one without a problem, and started the engine. The back door opened and someone else got in, grumbling about all the bags on the backseat. The driver backed the car out of the space and sped out of the parking lot, sending up a spray of gravel.

From behind, the man in the backseat tied a scarf around Nellie's eyes without removing the hood of the raincoat.

"I'm not tying your hands, Mrs. Wheel, not yet; but I've got a gun and if you go for the steering wheel or a cell phone or try to roll down the window and yell, I'll use it, you understand?"

Nellie nodded. She didn't know how to drive, didn't own a cell phone, and she had just rolled up the damn window because it was raining cats and dogs. She had lived through the Depression and the war years and cared for both her parents as they'd wasted away from age and cancer. She had had two miscarriages and broken her toe a year ago when she dropped a fifty-pound sack of onions on her foot. She had been in the tavern business for fifty years and cleaned up the men's bathroom every morning for all fifty of them. What was so damn scary about a gun?

20

Bruce Oh was still more public servant than private eye, Jane decided. He was too open, too forthcoming. He needed to incorporate more suspicion and paranoia into his conversation. He needed to be less
blanc,
more
noir.
He needed, Jane decided, her as his associate.

"Mr. Crandall," Jane asked, "I'm not clear on what you're looking for. What was so important about these papers? How would we know if we found them?"

"Good questions," he said. "My uncle was kind of mysterious about them. He said he was leaving me everything; and when he died, I should go through his stuff carefully because if I was smart enough, I'd find my fortune and have a steady income for life."

"Why papers, though?" asked Jane. "What made you think business records?"

Crandall scratched his ear and pointed to his glass. Jane noticed Don was ignoring him, giving him the same treatment he always gave Gus Duncan when he came in for the monthly rent.

"Don't know. I just figured it had to do with his property, his leases and stuff. Then when I saw all the junk in the shanties, I hired Lowry and you to inventory and price the stuff. Thought maybe my fortune was in those boxes."

Oh had been listening and tapping his finger softly on the bar. "Have all the property transfers gone through? All the sales Mr. Duncan arranged before his death?"

Crandall nodded and handed Oh a sheet of paper.

"This is the list you asked for," he said. "The only thing Gus kept was the shanties. How about it, Mrs. Wheel? Anything worth a fortune down there?"

"The stuff I've seen will make a great sale. I mean, you'll make money, and people who come to buy will find great stuff; but I haven't found anything yet that suggests you should quit your day job."

Crandall nodded and craned his neck to get Don's attention.

"Which is?" Jane asked.

"What?"

"Your job? What do you do?"

"Little of this, little of that. I own some apartment buildings downstate, Urbana-Champaign. Rent to university students. They don't ask for much."

An academic slumlord,
Jane thought.
Despicable as his uncle.

"Seen your mother?" Don asked.

"Can I have…?" Crandall asked, but Don glided away to the other side of the bar as soon as he saw Jane shake her head.

"If I can get back in the house today, I can go through the boxes fairly quickly. Tim and I have an overview, and we can list contents pretty fast; but… you said you already have the business ledgers and formal books. Are you sure you haven't missed anything there?" Jane asked.

"I couldn't find anything other than the rents collected, improvement costs, tax information. No figures that weren't connected to what they referred to, no initials or names that seemed like codes or anything. EZ Way was written as EZ Way, Duffs as Duffs, Pinks as Pinks, and all the others the same. He collected his rents on the first or second of every month, listed them, and wrote down any notes from the tenants," said Crandall.

"One of the notes I remember reading when you showed me the book was to fix the pipes in the cellar of the EZ Way. That was just two months ago, before the sale," said Oh. He had seen Don leaning on the bar to his left, close enough to listen, and he turned to him. "Did Mr. Duncan fix the pipes?"

Don shook his head. "He always wrote down what I told him; then I didn't see him again until the next month."

"So you told him about the pipes; they were really leaking?" Jane asked.

"Sure," said Don.

"Just checking," Jane said. "I thought that could be some kind of code for something."

Don reached under the bar and pulled out the brick that had been thrown through their now-repaired front window.
That Jimmy from the glass company is a quick fixer,
thought Jane, not registering at first how strange that Don palmed the brick and hefted it, as if testing its weight. That's why she was just as startled as Francis and the other morning regulars when Don slammed the brick down in front of Crandall, making his empty glass jump.

"Here's your code; your gift from Uncle Gus." Don spoke very quietly, but Jane heard the steel in his voice. "Duncan was a liar, a crook, a blackmailer." With each title he gave Gus, Don poked his finger at the brick. "He left you a pile of bricks, and you knew whose windows to throw them through. You were with him often enough in the car when he came and collected. You know what he left you all right, a list of willing suckers who would pay you every month to keep your mouth shut."

Crandall smiled. Jane was surprised to see how unpleasant a smile could be. He pulled his head back, then brought it forward again, reminding her of a snake about to strike. Don's hand was still on the brick. Bruce Oh gave Jane the quickest look, his eyes directing her to her father's hands on the brick, then back to studying the two men. Jane laid her hand over her father's. She felt Don relax his hold on the brick. She kept her hand on his just the same, a gentle pressure.

"There's more to this, Don. I need that information. There are other people who…" Crandall let his voice trail off, and Jane realized his head resembled not so much a snake as a turtle. He was thrusting his head forward in a kind of feigned boldness, but he was ready to withdraw it and hide at any moment.

"Where'd Nellie go for that pie?" asked Francis. "Chicago Heights?"

All eyes turned to Francis, who was stirring his coffee, nursing it along until Nellie found him something sweet to go with it.

"What the hell are you talking about, Francis?" Don asked.

"I asked her if there was any pie in the kitchen and she said no, but she thought she might have some coffee cake that you guys brought in yesterday while you was working. Then I saw her leave and I thought maybe she went to pick up a pie down at Connie's; but she's been gone longer than that'd take, so I just said where'd Nellie go for that pie…"

Francis might have gone on to explain the story in a kind of circular manner that could have taken up the rest of the day. Most of his conversation worked in a kind of tape loop that would just go around and around until someone stopped him.

"What do you mean leave? What did you see?" Jane asked.

Francis gestured out the window next to him. "Saw her get in your car, Janie; then I saw her back out and leave."

Don straightened and Jane hopped down off the bar stool. She ran to the window and looked out where Francis had pointed.

"My car's gone."

"Jeez, Francis, why didn't you say something? You know Nellie can't drive!" Don shouted.

Francis shrugged. "You don't need to drive very far to get to Connie's and I thought maybe she'd just gone there because when I asked if she had any pie…"

"Call the police, Dad," Jane said.

Don walked over to the pay phone and dropped in coins. He called Jane over to give the information on her car, license plate number, and detailed description.

"Your wife, Nellie, would not under any circumstances drive your daughter's car?"

"She doesn't even know how to start the engine," Don said.

"I've got the keys, anyway," Jane said. "Who could have driven it away?"

Crandall sat quietly, his hands spread in front of him at the bar. Jane noticed the pinky ring again and leaned toward him. "Who took my mother?"

"Some guys have been following me. Maybe…"

Don slammed the brick down on the bar again.

"They're guys from Chicago who Gus worked with sometimes. I don't know them, but they've been following me. They been following you, too, Mrs. Wheel. I heard them say you must have the books because you got the dead guy's stuff," Crandall said.

"I don't have Gus Duncan's stuff," Jane said. "Some of his trash, but there's no accounting or…"

"Not Gus— not
just
Gus anyway— the other dead guy," said Crandall, his lip starting to twitch as he watched Don pick up the brick.

Jane reviewed her latest sales and pictured the stacks of boxes in her garage.
Which dead guy?
She had so much waiting to send to Miriam…

"My house was ransacked. Charley thought they were looking for something in my new stuff in the garage. It's about Bateman, and Bateman's stuff, too." Jane looked at Crandall. "What about Oscar Bateman?"

"I don't know any Bateman. The guy with the ponytail told me they wanted to keep doing business. I said sure, you know, like I knew what they were talking about, but I don't. Now they think I'm holding out on them. Told me I could keep collecting, but they needed some stuff from me," Crandall said. "I told them okay, but I was faking it. I don't have the books; I don't have anything. I thought it might be in the basement. I thought you and Lowry could find it for me."

"'Collecting'?" said Jane.

Don looked at his daughter. "Collection business, Jane. Blackmail. Gus had us all by the… years ago. Gus had us all running gambling for him. Numbers and punchboards at the bars. Backroom games at Pinks and some of the other places. Slot machines here and there. Lottery came along and dried up a lot of the numbers games, and Gus lost all his people in high places. Don't know if everyone got honest, or if Gus finally wore out his welcome. After that, he just settled for a small monthly fee to keep quiet, not release all his records," Don said.

"Wouldn't his records make him just as guilty?" Oh asked.

"Yeah, but he didn't have a family or anything. He said he had ways of keeping himself out of it since he was just the middle guy and nobody cared about the middle guy. I asked him why anyone cared about the bottom guy, which is what all of us were— just rinky-dink nickel dimers…"

"What'd he say, Dad?" Jane asked.

"Said our problem was that we all cared, cared about our reputations and our families and what everyone would think of us," Don said. "He was right. None of us wanted our names in the paper."

A police officer Jane recognized from last night at the shanty came in the front door and Oh conferred with him, filling him in on what was going on, or what everybody thought was going on. Jane heard Francis begin to talk about pie again.

"What about Bill Duff? What happened to him and his wife? I mean what could Lilly have found that would make her…" Jane let her question hang, thinking that if she could keep asking questions she could stop her father and herself from growing frantic about Nellie.

"Dad?" Jane asked. "What did you say Lilly's mother's name was?"

"Louella," said Don. "Why?"

Jane shook her head. She took out the thirty-year-old letters and started scanning them as her father talked.

"Duff was going to quit, stand up to Duncan," Don said. "Told everybody. Duncan warned him that he had bosses who would do terrible things. There was bad blood between Duncan and everybody, but it was worse with him and Duff. See, I think whoever ran things out of Chicago just gave us to Duncan. Gus wasn't that greedy, didn't want much except some of us guys in his pocket. Didn't make a fortune off of us, but it was enough. He had all the records on us, everything we ever signed for, agreed to. Every payoff we made that we thought went to him, he had made it so it looked like it went to cops. We'd not only be the ones who'd take the fall legally, we'd take the lumps from all the illegals. Dirty cops would want to keep us quiet. The Chicago gamblers who Gus answered to would want us quiet. So when Duff started saying he was going to sing out the story…"

"They threatened Louella?" Jane asked, her finger holding her place in one of the letters.

"Cops said it was suicide. I think it was. I think the big boys just told her they were going to let Duff take the fall. She wouldn't have been able to handle it if it had been in the paper and all. Her parents were rich; dad was a doctor. Never wanted her to marry Duff. And there was Lilly and Bobby. I don't know if Louella could take it, that's all. Maybe Gus had all that stuff written down and Lilly found it. Since she and Bobby were running the bar, she had been paying him off, so she knew part of it. Maybe knowing that her father was responsible for her mother…"

Jane held up her hand. "Is that the phone in the backroom?"

After thirty years of one phone line, the pay phone, Don and Nellie had finally installed a private line in the backroom of the EZ Way Inn. They didn't tell anyone about it because they knew everyone would want to use it instead of the pay phone. Since they didn't want anyone to know about it, they didn't use it to call out and they didn't want it to ring. Consequently, the only people who knew the number besides Don and Nellie were Jane and her brother.

"Make sure Crandall doesn't slip out the door," Jane said to Oh, as she ran to the backroom.

* * *

How long were they going to take before they answered the damn phone? Nellie shook her head in disgust and wonderment, mixed in equal parts. Something big finally happens to her and she can't even get anybody to pick up the phone so she can tell them about it.

"The hell with them," she said out loud and hung up. "I'll just stay kidnapped awhile longer."

Mel looked at Frank, who looked at Stuart. Stuart would never let them kill an old lady, would he? It wasn't as if he didn't believe in killing people on the other side. That's how he always explained it. "There are two sides to everything, boys, and if someone is on the other side, they have to go." It made it all simple, organized. They had rules, and they followed them. But no rule covered this old lady who was not really on any side that they could tell. They had grabbed the wrong lady. She had been wearing a rain poncho for god's sake, and who could tell who anybody was in a rain poncho? She was at the right place at the right time to be Jane Wheel, but she wasn't Jane Wheel. They'd only seen Wheel up close a couple of times. They'd followed her home from the Bateman housesale and turned around in her driveway, but that didn't mean they could tell her from some old woman wearing a rain poncho. Wasn't their fault. Unless Stuart said it was, and Stuart hadn't said anything much yet.