The Recycled Citizen (18 page)

“Harry told you this himself?”

“Sure, Harry’s a friendly guy, only he’s always sneaking in little bits of sermons at you. That’s why he keeps tending bar; he says it’s not much different from being a minister in a way. Everybody’s crying on his shoulder and wanting free advice about their problems that you know they’re not going to take. But anyway, like I said, I told Dan about Harry and then I went back to the center and told Harry about Dan and that’s how it happened. Harry doesn’t like the Zipper much, but they only ask him when they’re shorthanded and nobody else ever asks him at all, so he goes. The money’s not so bad.”

“Does Harry know Bulgy too?”

“I guess. Bulgy’s sort of what you might call the handyman. Like when they take in a shipment of liquor, Bulgy has to help the men move it down cellar and put it away. Then when the bartender needs anything from the cellar, he yells down the tube for Bulgy to bring it up and take away the empties and like that. I don’t know if Harry ever gets to talk to Bulgy because it’s always busy at night, and anyway I never go down there after dark any more.”

“When did you tell Bulgy about Chet Arthur’s will?”

“Right after we signed it. See, Joanie was on hostess duty that afternoon and I figured what the hey, so I took myself a walk down to the Zipper. Dan wasn’t around and the new guys don’t like me much, so I went down cellar and hung out with Bulgy for a while. I told him about the will because I thought it was funny.”

“Did Bulgy think it was funny too?” Max asked her.

“Who knows? Bulgy’s none too bright. Anyway, he laughed.”

“Would he have repeated the story, do you think?”

“I guess so,” Annie admitted, “if he could find anybody to listen. Bulgy’ll talk your arm off if you give him half a chance.”

“Does he talk with the customers?”

“Not unless there’s a fight and somebody yells for Bulgy to come and break it up. Bulgy’s pretty strong, see, from lugging all them crates of liquor around. Or like if a customer has a little accident, you know what I mean, and they get Bulgy to mop the floor.” Annie gave Theonia an embarrassed glance. “Anyway, that’s what he does. He doesn’t get to mix much.”

“Does he have friends away from his job?” Brooks asked her. “Anybody he chums around with on his time off?”

Annie looked as if she didn’t understand the question, then she shook her head. “Bulgy doesn’t get time off. He’s always there. He sleeps in the cellar and eats in the kitchen and takes a bath in the scrub bucket maybe once in a while when the girls get on his case. He doesn’t mind, it’s what he knows. Like I said, Bulgy’s not too bright.”

“I’m sure there are many people worse off than he,” said Brooks, sounding far from convinced. “Then you—er—still have the run of the place, Mrs. Bickens?”

“I don’t go into the men’s room.” Annie giggled, then gave Theonia another nervous glance.

“I expect what we’re interested in would be down in the basement. Take a look at this photograph, please, Mrs. Bickens.”

“Hey, that’s, the woman who was in the center yesterday.”

“Er—no doubt. What I’d like you to focus on is not the woman but the can she’s reaching for. Here, this magnifying glass will help you.”

“I seen that kid around before,” Annie conceded. “He always wears purple is how I noticed. Purple’s my favorite color.”

“I must show you a picture of the purple gallinule, then,” said Brooks. “And the purple grackle, I always feel, is a bird that receives less than his just meed of admiration because of the low company he often keeps.”

“In the spring a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove,” Theonia offered.

“The can, Annie,” said Max rather grimly.

“So okay, the can. What about it?”

“You see plenty of cans when you’re collecting, right? Have you ever seen another one exactly like that can in the picture? Are you able to read the letters on it?”

“Don’t have to, I know what they say. Graperoola. Yeah, I seen some like it.”

“Where?” Max demanded.

“Would you believe in Bulgy’s cellar? That’s an antique, that can is. See, back during Prohibition they used to make their own booze at the Zipper. It wasn’t the Zipper then, it was something else. But anyway, they’d make the bootleg booze and pour it into these cans so when the Elliot Ness guys came snooping around, all they’d find was cans of tonic. But then it got to be Repeal and they had all those empty cans left over. Bulgy likes having them around. He thinks they’re pretty.”

“Did Bulgy tell you all that about the bootlegging?”

“Sure, who else? He don’t remember it himself. Bulgy never remembers much unless you keep reminding him. He remembers about the cans because Dan comes down cellar every so often and takes a bunch of them away to sell for antiques. That upsets Bulgy, he hates to see them go.”

“Very interesting,” said Brooks. “Mrs. Bickens, to the best of my recollection, during Prohibition and for some time afterward, soft drinks were invariably sold in bottles. Steel cans were introduced sometime during the forties. These had the crimped metal bottle caps you still had to lift off with an opener. Next came aluminum cans with those lift-off rings which proved to be such an ecological nuisance that the present pop-top cans were developed. If Dan’s been around as long as you say, he must know those Graperoola cans are no antiques. And so should you.”

“Well, I’m kind of forgetful myself sometimes,” Annie mumbled. “You mean the Graperoola cans aren’t worth anything?”

“That’s not precisely what I said. Why? Do you have some of them yourself?”

“Just one. I took it for a souvenir, like. What the hey, they still got two big cartons left.”

“One full and one open with some of the cans missing, right?” said Max. “You wouldn’t have risked dipping into a fresh carton because somebody would have noticed.”

“That’s right. I didn’t want Dan on my back. He knows I go down there.”

“Did Bulgy see you take the can?”

“No. Like I said, it upsets him. I had my bag with me, so I just lifted one out and stuck it down in the bottom with a newspaper over it while Bulgy had his back turned, getting me some empty bottles. They always let me take a few empties. Dan doesn’t care.”

“Big of him. Do you still have that Graperoola can?”

“Sure, I got it right with me. I always carry it. I thought it was an antique, see?”

“Let’s see it,” said Max. “Is it in your collecting bag?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. The way our bags have been getting snatched lately?”

“You mean Phyllis and Chet weren’t the only SCRC members to have been victimized?”

Annie snorted. “Name me somebody who hasn’t been. It figures out to two or three a week. Funny thing, for a long time nobody bothered anybody, then all of a sudden the past couple of months, it’s like somebody’s playing a game with us. Joan says it’s on account of the bottle bill being passed, but that don’t make much sense to me.”

“Did the snatchings start before or after you took that Graperoola can?”

Annie became wary. “What do you keep harping on those cans for?”

“Let me tell her,” said Theonia. “Take another look at that old woman in the photograph, Annie.”

“Okay, so?”

“I’m that woman.”

Annie stared at her. “You trying to be funny?”

“Not at all. I was heavily disguised, of course.” Theonia touched her diamond brooch ever so fleetingly. “Anyway, I was about to pick up that can, as you see, when the fellow in the purple suit kicked it away from my hand. Notice how blurred his right foot is in the picture? That shows it was moving.”

“Yeah, I see. So that’s you? Jeez, I’d never have believed it.”

“Cousin Max took the photograph. He’ll explain what happened next.”

“Theonia got up and beat it out of there,” Max went on, “which was smart of her. The kid then very carefully kicked the can back to this same spot where you see it in the photograph. Less than a minute later your friend Phyllis came along, wearing that purple sweater you must have seen her. with. She picked up the can and put it in her SCRC bag. As you know, about ten minutes later, Phyllis had her bag snatched.”

“Are you saying somebody’s after the Graperoola cans? So they’re valuable, after all?”

“The cans themselves aren’t valuable, no. But I’ll give you a hundred dollars cash right this minute for the one you have with you.”

“Wait a minute. First you say the can’s not worth nothing then you offer me a hundred bucks. What’s the deal?”

“The deal is, Annie, that we believe somebody’s smuggling something in those Graperoola cans and using the SCRC members as carriers. How it appears to work is that one of the gang, like this guy in the purple suit, drops the can in a place where he knows an SCRC member will soon come along, see it and pick it up. Then whoever’s supposed to get the stuff is alerted to track down the carrier and snatch the bag.”

“So how do they know who’s got the can? There are a lot of us out there.”

“The tip-off seems to be that the carrier will show a purple signal of one sort or another. For instance, Phyllis was wearing a purple sweater. Chet’s bag had a splash of purple paint on it. If Theonia had been wearing a purple scarf, say, she might have been allowed to pick up the can. We didn’t know all that yesterday or we wouldn’t have to bother you for yours.”

“But mine doesn’t have anything in it.”

“That doesn’t matter. We’re going to put something in it and use it to bait a trap. Our aim is to catch the smugglers and keep any more SCRC members from being mugged or killed. Now do you see why your can’s worth that hundred to us?”

“Wow, just like Elliot Ness! Okay, sure, I’m game. Excuse me.”

Annie went through the motion of turning her back, hiked up the baggy old skirt she was wearing and fished in a pocket she had sewn to the petticoat under it. An old shoplifter’s trick. Max wondered what Joan thought of her friend Annie’s underwear.

“Here it is.”

And there it was, shiny and purple and ready to roll. The pop top was sticking up, but a neat little transparent cap plugged the opening. Brooks nodded his approval.

“Highly efficient. We’re most grateful to you, Mrs. Bickens. And now, Theonia, I believe you’ll have to excuse Max and me. Enjoy your lunch, ladies.”

“Here’s your hundred, Annie.” Max paid it over, in crisp new tens and twenties. “Now there’s one more thing we want you to do, not for us but for yourself. We’re going to set a trap, as I explained. We don’t know how soon it will work, but when it does, the smugglers are going to know there’s an extra Graperoola can gone from Bulgy’s cellar, and the likeliest person to have taken it is you. For your own safety we’d like to keep you right here in this room until we can positively guarantee there’s nobody running loose who wants to kill you the way they did Chet Arthur.”

“Hey, are you guys T-men? Was Chet one too? Is that how come he made the will?”

“We’re not at liberty to say,” Max replied inscrutably. “While you’re in our care, every effort will be made to keep you happy and comfortable. You have your own bathroom, Theonia will show you. She’ll provide you with food, magazines, TV, anything you want within reasonable limits. Stay away from the windows,” which in any case were small and had iron grilles over them. “Keep the curtains drawn as they are now, just in case some passerby might look in and spot you. You won’t have a phone, but we’ll get a message to your friend Joan that you’re all right and not to worry. Take it easy and enjoy yourself. We’ll see you later.”

T
HERE, BY GUM, I’D
say that’s a pretty neat job.” Brooks had been busy in the kitchen. He’d reasoned that the heroin had been put into the cans already measured out into eighteen-gram lots and wrapped in the usual folded papers. Those grains of heroin Max had found in Chet Arthur’s torn collecting bag could have spilled out when Chet got curious and unfolded such a paper, thus making it necessary for the drug dealers to kill him.

A mixture of granulated sugar and cornstarch approximated the texture of cut heroin closely enough. Brooks didn’t expect to fool the receiver for long, and surely not long enough for some deluded purchaser to try shooting it into a vein. Folding the papers around the quarter teaspoonfuls was finicky work, but now that he’d got them all tucked in, the can looked and felt just about the way he and Max thought it ought to look. In Annie’s well-used SCRC bag, with a few of Brooks’s root beer cans, some empty wine bottles and a bundle of newspapers on top, it should make a convincing enough decoy.

Half an hour later the elderly man who’d suffered such a rapid financial downfall the day before was back on the streets of Boston. His business must have gone completely to pot by now, for he was no longer shabby but downright ragged. His face was none too clean. His hands might be even dirtier but one couldn’t be sure of that. Some clinging shred of respectability had prompted him to hide them inside a pair of grimy old work gloves such as a man in less dire circumstances might wear to do chores around the house when his maid had a toothache and his butler an audition.

This unlucky man might be down, but he wasn’t licked. He was lugging an already well-filled -SCRC collecting bag, and the diligence with which he looked about him for further salvageables showed that he was throwing himself heart and soul into his latest career.

By one of those coincidences fate loves to contrive, the elderly man was again capturing the interest of a photographer. This was not yesterday’s tweedy tourist but a more with-it or possibly somewhat past-it type in blue jeans and a bright red windbreaker. The jeans were tight ones, such as might belong to a nephew who sometimes slept over at his uncle’s apartment and was careless about leaving stray garments around. The windbreaker had Boston University silk-screened across the back and conceivably could also have been part of the hypothetical nephew’s neglected wardrobe.

In deference, no doubt, to the current fad for wearing older people’s castoffs, the photographer had on a greenish-gray felt hat, circa 1947, with a feather of the ruddy turnstone stuck in the band. He appeared to be quite unjustifiably proud of this adornment, wearing it far back on his head to set off his mirrored sun goggles and his abundant red hair. Like many redheads, he was well endowed with freckles. An artist might have been struck by the tasteful way these were dotted over and around the immense auburn mustache that entirely hid his mouth.