The Yellow Packard (31 page)

Jeff stopped, a flash of recognition crossing his face then moved toward a cabinet. The woman watched him for a moment before crossing to where he was leafing through files.

“Did you know a prisoner who had a bad scar on his index finger?” she quietly asked.

“No, ma’am,” he politely answered, “never known a con like that. I’m sorry.”

For five hours the men dug through files and pulled a half-dozen photographs that bore at least a small resemblance to the sketch. As Reese got on the phone to check on the ex-convicts’ whereabouts now, it quickly became apparent none could be connected to the kidnapping or to the delivery made to Jack McGrew. Three were still in prison, one was dead, one was crippled, and the final one had moved to Australia.

Helen looked back to the big man who was putting the files back in their proper places and shook her head. “Babe, it appears we have struck out.”

“That never happens to me,” he quipped.

The other trustee had already finished putting the files he had pulled back and had returned to his desk. As Meeker studied him, she noted a perplexed look on his face.

“Something troubling you?” she asked.

“I’m as right as rain, ma’am,” he assured her.

She moved toward him. “How long you been here?”

“Eight years,” Tisdale replied. “Still got two more to go.”

“What’d you do?” she gently prodded.

“They say I stole some money from a man I worked for,” he replied, looking her in the eye for the first time all day. “I didn’t, though. Just nobody too interested in taking the word of a colored man.”

“If you didn’t,” she said, “do you know who did?”

“Not sure,” he sighed, “but I think it was the boss’s son. Nobody wanted to hear that.”

“I’m sorry, Jeff.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” he softly assured Meeker. “Just born the wrong color, that’s all.”

“We need to get moving,” Reese prodded. “Still have a long drive ahead of us.”

Meeker stood and studied the two trustees a final time. “Thanks, gentlemen. I do appreciate it.”

Following her partner, she stepped out of the large records department room and into the hall. Reese was already three steps ahead when she called out, “Wait a minute!”

He turned. “What’s the problem?”

“I just realized something. I’m claustrophobic—” she began but before she could continue, he cut her off.

“We’ve talked about that. It’s hardly news.”

“But everybody has something that holds them back. There are things I don’t do because of my phobia. I can’t go down in a mine or a cave or get into a crowded elevator.”

“Makes sense,” he agreed, “but I don’t see what that has—”

This time she cut him off. “You are scared of clowns.”

He rushed up and put his finger to her lips. “You promised you’d never tell anyone that. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“But that’s the reason you don’t go to the circus. And you don’t go even though you are fascinated by large cats and really want to see a lion tamer in action.”

“So, what does that have to do with anything?” Reese whispered. “I cheat myself—big deal! I can live without the circus.”

“But what if you had a crime scene at a circus? What if the person killed was a clown? Could you go and investigate without going a bit crazy? Would you hesitate taking the assignment?”

He jabbed back. “Would you investigate a murder in a coal mine a mile underground?”

“I think so,” she admitted. “And that’s why I need to go back in there and ask Jefferson Tisdale one more question.”

“What’s his phobia?” Reese asked.

“White authority,” she explained. “He has been programmed his whole life to not speak up against white people. It has likely been beaten into him. So he’ll answer questions, but he won’t volunteer anything. He knows volunteering information might well get him into trouble. I just asked the wrong question.”

Turning, she retraced her steps and opened the door into the room. The two trustees were still there, Tisdale at his workstation behind the desk.

“Jeff,” she said as soon as their eyes met, “you told me there wasn’t a prisoner who looked like the sketch. Did you know someone else who looked like that drawing?”

“Sure did,” the prisoner replied, slowly, reluctantly.

“Who was it?” she asked.

His gaze flicked to the other prisoner before answering. “A guard who was here for a few years. His name was Mr. Burton.”

Reese, standing in the doorway, glanced to Meeker. After their eyes met, he looked from Tisdale over to Babe. The big man smiled. “I didn’t know him very well. He always worked in a different part of the prison than I stayed in.”

“You got a record of employees that shows their pictures?” the woman asked.

“Sure,” Babe volunteered, “right over here. Jeff, do you remember Burton’s first name?”

“No, sir, he was just Mr. Burton to me.”

“Okay,” the big man replied, “shouldn’t be that hard. Do you remember when he left?”

“Yeah,” Tisdale said. “Right after the big riot. He got taken captive, and a couple of the cons carved on him. He was too scared to come back behind the walls after that.”

“Here’s the file,” Babe announced, pulling it from the cabinet and bringing it back to the central table.

Meeker yanked the sketch from her briefcase and set it beside the small image in the employment record. “Close enough,” she noted. “What do you think, Henry?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “And note his first name is Mitchell. The initials match. Probably the same guy. But why would he change his name?”

Meeker looked back toward the trustees. Babe shrugged. Tisdale’s expression was a bit more hopeful.

“Jeff,” she asked, “do you have any ideas?”

The trustee looked to Babe. “Do you remember Merkens and Jensen?”

“Yeah, they were bad hombres,” the other trustee said. “Even I was scared of them.”

“Well Merkens was killed in the riot,” Tisdale explained. “Got taken down by a guard’s bullet. That was when Jensen grabbed Burton. He worked him over with his fists during the chaos. When he bloodied him up good, he got a hold of a shiv and started cutting on him. Burton fought back and that really set Jensen off.”

“I heard about it,” Babe said, “but I was in solitary then, so I never saw anything. Did you see what happened?”

“Yeah,” the black man replied. “I was behind a locked cell door, but Jensen went after Burton. After he knocked him out, he vowed he was going to cut off Burton’s trigger finger. I guess he thought Burton shot Merkens. He and Merkens had been friends from even before their days in prison. Jensen was just getting started when Pistolwhip rushed up behind him and grabbed him. An awful battle happened. I thought both of them would kill each other, but McGrew finally won out when he slammed Jensen into the bars and knocked him out. He pulled Burton over into a corner and kept the other cons away from him until order was restored.”

“So,” Reese asked, “Burton’s index finger on his right hand was pretty messed up?”

“I heard he never could use it right again,” Tisdale explained.

Meeker looked over to her partner and announced, “It’s time to go. And, gentlemen, I really want to thank you.” She pulled two tens from her purse and said, “Use these any way you want.”

“Miss,” Tisdale hesitantly added, “Jensen swore he’d kill Burton if he ever got out. I’m guessing that’s why he might have changed his last name.”

“Makes sense,” she replied. “I’ll get Burton’s file back to you when we finish with it.”

Thirty minutes later, the two were out the gates and headed back to Chicago. It had been a good day, but there was still much work to be done. They had to find Burton or Burgess or whatever name he was using now. That wasn’t going to be easy, but they were much closer to that than they had been yesterday. They had a real name and a tie to McGrew and the Packard.

“Henry, you know McGrew,” she said as she drove out of the city limits. “Do you think he was in on the kidnapping?”

“No,” Reese answered assertively. “If he’d have even known about it, he’d have gotten a lot more than ten grand. Burgess was just paying him back an old favor. When you understand what McGrew did for him, the price wasn’t too high either. In fact, it sounds like a bargain to me.”

“You’re the expert on McGrew,” she noted. “Why didn’t you know about this prison riot?”

“Not sure anyone knew about the incident with Burgess other than Tisdale and those that witnessed it. It wasn’t in his files. You know,” he added, a touch of admiration in his tone, “I never picked up on the race angle in dealing with Tisdale.”

“I understand being the underdog,” Meeker said and then shrugged. “Let’s just say convincing Hoover and his crew that a woman can add another sensibility in investigations, and that we might notice things his men miss, ain’t easy.”

Chapter 57

December 6, 1940

M
itchell Burgess might not have existed before his stop in Oakwood, but in just two weeks the agents traced the much more obvious trail of Mitchell Burton clear back to his birthplace in Columbus, Ohio. He was forty-four and had been married three times. In fact, he was still married to all three of his wives even though none of them had heard from him in years and had no idea where he was now. He had no one. His parents were dead, and his lone sibling, a sister in Dayton, Edith Burton Mass, had last seen him in 1928.

Burgess managed to make it through high school, but he never lasted long at any job he landed after that. He’d been a farmhand, was employed as a gas station attendant, then a baggageman for the railroad before landing the guard position at the prison. Those who knew him during his jobs found him rather cold and aloof. The word that kept coming up was
loner.

“Look at this,” Meeker noted. “Our man worked on the assembly line at Packard in 1936. Looking at the months he was employed by the company, he was there when I visited.”

“It is a small world,” Reese shot back.

Meeker turned her attention back to her research. The man had been arrested about a half-dozen times for everything from petty theft to driving without a license, but he’d never been convicted on any of those minor violations. Thus, because his official record was clean, he was able to get the prison guard job at Joliet.

He appeared in Oakwood just a few months after the prison riot with his new name. During that time he produced bogus documentation under the name
Burgess
, likely obtained through contacts he’d established while working at the prison. Yet when he left Oakwood, the trail ended.

The one hope that had been driving the agents was finding a connection between Burton and Hooks and using that to track down Hooks’ wife, Marge. There was nothing. Thus, five weeks later, after trips across country chasing down several leads, they were no closer to finding the man or the woman he’d lived with in St. Louis.

It was just a few minutes before noon when Meeker wearily glanced up from one of the files and sighed. “Ready for lunch?”

“Sure,” Reese said. “With the cold wind and all that white stuff coming down, may I suggest Mac’s Chili?”

She cocked her left eyebrow. “It wouldn’t matter if it was the hottest day of the summer, you’d still find an excuse to eat at that dive.”

“It’s the atmosphere,” he offered.

“It’s certainly not the food.” She laughed.

She was reaching for her purse when the door flew open. Walking through unannounced was Alvin Lepowitz. He had a smile on his face so large it gave him a third chin.

“What brings you in from DC?” Meeker asked.

“Important work,” he shot back. He studied the woman’s face before taking three steps forward and handing her a large folder.

She didn’t look at the contents, but by the man’s smug demeanor she knew what it had to be. “I’m guessing you didn’t fly in to give us a new FBI case?”

“Actually,” he grinned, “I rode the train. No, the folder doesn’t have anything to do with the FBI, but it is a new assignment. You’re heading back to the White House. ‘The Grand Experiment,’ as Eleanor called it, is over. As I predicted, it has been labeled a failure. Thus the FBI will remain a boys’ club, and no calls from you will change that. Hoover and I have made sure of that. You’re out of cards.”

“What about the Rose Hall kidnapping case?” she demanded. “I know more about it than anyone. And we now pretty much know who did it. All that’s left is finding him.”

“It’s not important.” The visitor was practically giggling. Helen balled her fists. The man went on, “With Europe falling apart and Germany and Japan placing agents in this country to stir up trouble, we have much bigger fish to fry. Now pack your bags, and turn over all your files to Reese. There’s probably some typing you need to be doing at the White House.”

Meeker was boiling. Her instincts demanded she fight to keep her association with the FBI. Yet if there was any way it could have been saved, Lepowitz wouldn’t have made the trip. This was his victory. Just like he’d vowed, he’d finally put her in her place.

“How long do I have to wrap things up?” she asked.

“As long as you need.” His tone changed, suddenly seeming to take on a hint of understanding. He smiled before adding, “As long as you’re out of the office by five today. You’re expected to report to your new job on Monday.”

The big man turned proudly to Reese. “Dixon will be your new partner. I know you’ve worked with him before. Finish up your duties here. Whatever you can’t get done by the end of this month, assign to other Chicago agents. You will be working out of Los Angeles.”

Lepowitz turned back to Meeker, “You have a good trip back East. Oh, and by the way, turn that yellow car over to impound. This case is dead. We no longer need it as possible evidence. We’re going to offer it back to the owners. If they don’t want it back, we’ll auction it off.”

“They won’t want it,” Meeker shot back. “And this is not over. There’ll be women on the front lines of FBI work soon.”

“Yeah, right,” he snarled, “just like they’ll let Negroes play in the major leagues. It’s a white male’s world, sweetheart. Get used to it. I suggest you settle down, find a husband, have a few babies, and learn to cook.”