The Vaults (17 page)

The fat one shuffled past Puskis, leaned out into the hall, checked both ways, then closed the door. The other three had gathered around Puskis, a little too close for a man unused to physical contact. He gazed at them uneasily and for a few long moments there was silence.

The older, stooped man spoke. “What brings you here after all this time?”

Puskis had rehearsed his response, and for once the words flowed smoothly. “I am interested in speaking to the man who used green ink seven years ago.”

The transcribers looked at each other significantly. The fat one spoke. “That was Van Vossen. He left, let’s see, he left five years ago. He was my predecessor.”

Puskis had known that he would not find the man here. The handwriting
in green ink had changed since the false DeGraffenreid file was created. Now he had a name. “Do you know where Mr. Van Vossen is now?”

This request led to another round of exchanged glances before the oldest again spoke. “Why do you want to speak to him?” His voice seemed somehow to come from a distance.

“There was a . . . discrepancy in the files. To be clear, it was just one file, but one with a discrepancy that may, well, hold some significance. The pages are marked in green ink. I am hopeful that the person who marked the pages can, um, lend some insight into the discrepancy.”

“What file?” The men leaned in, eager for the answer.

“The file for the murder of Ellis Prosnicki. The trial of Reif DeGraffenreid.”

The old man nodded and the others began to fidget, rubbing hands together or scratching ears. The old man turned to the fat one. “Write down the address for Mr. Puskis.”

The fat man returned to his desk and wrote on a piece of white paper. The large man seemed to lose interest and drifted back to his desk and began rummaging through his drawer, half-looking for something. The man with the sausage body moved closer to Puskis. He smelled of gin. “Do you know what they plan to do with the files?” he whispered.

Puskis recoiled slightly from the smell of the man and the hiss of his voice. “Well, I suppose that I, I . . .”

“Don’t worry,” the sausage man continued, “we know. We know exactly what they are doing.”

The fat man returned and offered the sheet of paper with Van Vossen’s address. Puskis accepted it without turning his attention from the sausage man.

“What exactly are they doing?” Puskis asked.

“You know,” he said, his voice intense now. “You know and we know, and nobody else except for them. They are destroying the past. They are erasing their deeds from history.”

“What are they erasing? Why do they want to destroy the files?” Puskis asked with a pang of desperation. The sausage man stared at him, breathing hard, his eyes wide.

“Maybe,” the old man said, “Mr. Van Vossen has the answer.”

Footsteps were audible in the hall and the three other men scurried to their desks. The old man took Puskis’s head between his spidery hands.
“Be careful, Mr. Puskis. They are going to great lengths to destroy this information. I don’t think they will allow anyone to get in their way.”

Puskis stared back into the man’s gray eyes. His head was hammering. “Who are they? Who are they?”

The man released Puskis’s head and turned to the table. The door swung open to reveal the Chief and a uniformed officer.

“Mr. Puskis,” the Chief said brightly, “we’d wondered where you’d gone. Why doesn’t Riordon here give you a ride back to the Vaults. I understand the boys have sent quite a bit of work over for you.” The Chief put a massive arm gently around Puskis’s shoulders and guided him out of the Transcribers’ Room and into the hall. The uniform pulled the door shut as they left.

Excerpt from Van Vossen,
A History of Recent Crime in the City
(draft):

While the details of the Birthday Party Massacre are no doubt familiar to anyone interested in crime in the City, it is important to elucidate the pivotal role that this episode played in the cessation of the mob war between the White Gang and the Bristol Gang. In fact, it can and has been said that without the Birthday Party Massacre, the conflict had no prospects for a terminus.

It was an accepted truth among the officers of the Force and the City’s criminal underworld that the pursuit of justice for violence and homicide committed against criminals by criminals would not be pursued with the vigor that equivalent crimes against law-abiding citizens would. In this way, until the early to mid-1920s, there was a consistent and accepted attrition rate among members of the White and Bristol gangs and their associates. Around 1923, however, a marked increase in homicidal attacks between the gangs was observed. The period between 1923 and the Birthday Party Massacre in 1929 witnessed an increase in both the number of homicides and the lack of regard for public order on the part of the gangs. Thus, Eddie Peguese was murdered in front of a crowd of hundreds at the Independence Day parade in 1926, Piers DaCourt was ambushed by gunmen in front of the Opera House in 1926, and Justice Davies was pulled from his car during midday traffic in 1928, never to be seen again. These are but examples from the litany of outrages perpetrated by the White and Bristol gangs and their criminal cohorts.

But even against this ghoulish standard, the Birthday Party Massacre proved an act of such moral turpitude that the public, the Police, and Mayor Henry agreed that a new policy had to be pursued. The White Gang, as the perpetrators of the Birthday Party Massacre, were savagely eviscerated through the
combined might of the Bristol Gang and the police force, especially the newly reconstituted Anti-Subversion Unit. The degree to which the ASU and the Bristols coordinated their assaults upon the Whites was a matter of some dispute in the newspapers and pubs of the City. While no conclusive evidence has ever been provided, there was, at minimum, a tacit understanding that the Bristols would not be prosecuted for crimes against the Whites. . . .

The
Gazette
’s library maintained a copy of each issue going back the thirty-odd years of its existence. Lonergan, the librarian, was small and slight, wore his hair unfashionably long, and sported a neat goatee. As far as Frings could tell, Lonergan’s sole responsibility was to retrieve newspapers when so requested by
Gazette
reporters. It was hard to imagine an easier job. Panos had told Frings, with a laugh of disbelief, that he understood that Lonergan spent his free time in the library writing a philosophical treatise. Frings wanted to talk to Lonergan about this—his curiosity was part genuine interest and part amusement—but Lonergan was not approachable and Frings decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Lonergan’s invaluable talent was his ability to recall with startling accuracy the date of even minor events. So when Frings asked him for the
Gazette
’s coverage of the murder committed by Otto Samuelson, Lonergan was instantly able to narrow the date down to within a week’s span. He retrieved all the newspapers for that week and the following four weeks and turned them over to Frings, who carried them down a flight of stairs, stacked them on his desk, and began to learn about Otto Samuelson and the murder of a small-time hood named Leto.

Cy Leto had been a runner for the White Gang. He collected on gambling debts, picked up protection money, and, on occasion, braced someone who had transgressed in some way against the Whites or, occasionally, against Leto himself. He had been a small man, according to the newspaper reports, but quick to anger and apparently with few qualms about perpetrating violence upon his fellow man. The second article about his murder mentioned a prior conviction for pushing a woman down a flight of stairs in front of her young children. This, because her husband, who had run out on her, owed the Whites gambling money.

Leto was murdered by Otto Samuelson, a thug in the White Gang. Samuelson was, according to the detective quoted in that same second article, a “homicidal maniac” responsible for a number of murders of Bristol
Gang members. He had been shot several times in the years leading up to the Leto murder, but escaped serious injury each time. “A veritable Rasputin,” the cop said.

Leto’s murder was the penultimate in a series of increasingly audacious killings that ended with the Birthday Party Massacre. Both the Whites and the Bristols had, by early 1929, lost any fear they might have had of the powers of the police and government. Red Henry had just been elected but had not yet taken office, and the outgoing mayor was fully consumed with consolidating and hiding his takings from the graft and corruption of the previous twelve years. Leto’s murder was shockingly bold, but not unprecedented.

The newspaper described the murder as occurring around noon on a clear, warm day in Capitol Heights amid a teeming crowd on the sidewalks and in the streets. According to several eyewitness accounts, as Leto drove his Buick toward the intersection of Van Buren and Virginia, a man (Samuelson) stepped into the street, holding up his hand to stop traffic for another man who was carrying a large bucket. Leto’s car stopped, halting traffic, and another car did the same in the opposite lane. When the man with the bucket was in front of Leto’s car, he put his right hand under the bucket and tossed its contents—a viscous tar—onto Leto’s windshield, completely obliterating his view out the front. Samuelson quickly but calmly walked over to the driver’s-side window—which was rolled down because of the pleasant weather—and fired six shots into Leto, who was struggling to pull his own gun from under his seat. While nearby police raced to the scene, Samuelson and the man with the bucket disappeared into the panicking crowd.

Samuelson and the other man, named Kiehl, were identified that afternoon by witnesses eyeballing mug books. The
Gazette
ran their names and mug shots the next morning. The police apprehended Samuelson thirty-six hours later at a whorehouse down in the Hollows. The cops raided Kiehl’s apartment and found him facedown on the living room rug, a garrote still around his neck.

Samuelson’s trial was set for November, but his lawyer filed a guilty plea, and there the coverage ended. Frings went over the last week of newspapers a second time in case he had missed any mention of Samuelson’s sentencing and/or place of detention. He found nothing.

Frings carried the stack of newspapers back up the stairs and found Lonergan in deep concentration, writing with a pen in a thick, leather-bound
journal. Frings dropped the newspapers on the desk from a height that made enough noise to get Lonergan’s attention. Lonergan was not startled, looking up slowly and without irritation.

“Found what you were looking for?”

“Almost. I noticed that we followed the events pretty closely until his sentencing, and then there’s nothing. That strikes me as pretty queer, right?”

Lonergan thought about this. “Yes,” he replied slowly, “in a case that received as much attention as the Samuelson case—yes, that seems a mite unusual.”

“Could you check and see if there’s any word of Samuelson after the batch of papers you gave me?”

“Already did. Samuelson isn’t mentioned again, except peripherally in articles about other murders and the White Gang. That’s it as far as the
Gazette
is concerned.”

Frings felt his temper rise. It was irrational, he knew—Lonergan was not responsible for what news the paper did or didn’t cover. “Look, I mostly want to know where I can find Samuelson now. I need to talk to him.”

Lonergan leaned back in his chair and cast his eyes to the ceiling. He mumbled to himself, “Where to find him, where to find him?” He straightened up and looked at Frings. “You know, the best person to talk to is probably Arthur Puskis.”

The name was vaguely familiar. Frings looked at Lonergan with eyebrows raised, waiting for further explanation.

“Arthur Puskis is the Archivist at the Vaults down at City Hall. He maintains all the records. If anyone can find where your buddy Samuelson is, it’s him.”

Poole was aware of voices before he fully regained consciousness. One was familiar, and though his mind was unable to process a name or a relationship, he knew that this particular voice—Carla’s—should be a comfort to him. The other voice, though unfamiliar, was calm, and he was aware on some level that the conversation was friendly, and Poole’s last moments of semiconsciousness were content, almost blissful.

Full consciousness brought pain that seemed to envelop his body. He saw Carla in blurry outline and tried to speak to her, but only managed a faint croak. That alerted Carla and her friend, and in seconds they were leaning over him.

Carla smoothed the hair back from his forehead. “How are you doing?” His eyes better focused, Poole could see the patches of dark beneath her azure eyes and the slump that came to her shoulders when she was exhausted. He began to speak, but then, with an effort, just pointed toward his mouth.

“Water?”

Poole nodded.

“Enrique, could you get a glass of water?”

The dark, powerful man made an affirmative grunt and disappeared toward the kitchen. Carla took Poole’s face between her hands and stared into his eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked, not actually expecting a verbal response but probing his eyes for signs of psychic damage.

Enrique returned with a glass of water, and Carla gently placed it to Poole’s lips. The water brought some life back to Poole, and after finishing the glass, he pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, eyeing Enrique.