Slow Burn (17 page)

“You heard me,” I said. “They planned to fake his kidnapping, just like it said in his notebook. It was slated to happen a month from now. A really cozy set-up, too. Just the two of them jungled up together at his Perry Street dive for a couple of days until Mr. Van Dorn kicked loose with the

supposed ransom.”

Hauser asked: “How much were they going to tap the old man for?”

“Just enough money for them to live on for a while, with maybe some extra to donate to the Cause when it was all over. They decided fifty grand would be just about right.”

“The same amount the kidnappers demanded,” Loomis said.

“It gets better.” I tapped out a Lucky from the pack in my shirt pocket. “Rachel said they planned to have Jessica Van Dorn deliver the ransom money to the apartment. When she showed, Rachel said they’d give her a note explaining the whole thing to the family so they wouldn’t worry. Or come looking for them.”

“That’s almost exactly the way the kidnappers handled things,” Loomis reminded us. “Right down to having Jessica deliver the ransom money.”

O’Hara surprised me by asking a pretty good question. “She say where they were supposed to go? Since the kidnappers have followed their plan so far, maybe they took Jack to wherever it is they were planning on going once they got the ransom?”

“She said they talked about heading down to Philly for starters,” I said, “then they’d head out West. San Francisco, maybe. They hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

Hauser didn’t look happy. There was no reason why he should. “All these similarities are a little too convenient for me. Think she’s in on it?”

I let smoke drift from my nostrils while I thought it over. “I don’t think so. She would’ve taken her cut and been long gone by now, especially now that it’s a murder case. Instead, I found her lying on her boyfriend’s floor, crying because she’s alone and pregnant and scared that her family will throw her out of the house.”

I rolled my neck and heard the bones pop. My back was still sore from being slammed into the door by Rachel’s brother, and my jaw hurt from Carmichael’s sucker punch. The pop dulled some of the pain, but not all of it. “And based on what I’ve seen of the brother, I don’t blame Rachel for being scared of him.”

“We’ll have a talk with him before we kick him loose,” Hauser said. “When are you going to take another run at the girl?”

“I’m not. The doctor’s taking a look at her now, then he’s going to take her to the hospital to check her out properly.”

Loomis quit sulking in exchange for getting angry at me. “You mean you’re just going to let her walk? Christ, Charlie, she might…”

I was already one step ahead of him. “I’m letting her go to the hospital, not releasing her from custody. The matron’s going with her, and the doctor will keep her in the hospital until I tell him otherwise.” I turned to O’Hara. “We should send a couple of boys with them. For her own protection, of course.”

O’Hara reached for a phone. “Consider it done, Charlie darlin’. We won’t let the poor girl out of our sight.”

Loomis still didn’t look happy. “Why bother getting her checked out at all? Who cares if she’s pregnant or not? I just want to know where Jack is.”

I had an answer for that as well. “Because I’m not going to believe she’s pregnant just because some yenta from the old country says so. And if Rachel’s lying about being pregnant, then she’s lying about a lot of things.”

Loomis smiled. “Not to mention how you’d like to be the one to tell your new patron that he’s going to be a grandfather.”

I smiled back. “Our patron, partner. You’re in this every bit as much as I am now.” I looked at Hauser and O’Hara, too. “We’re all in this together now, whether we like it or not.”

Hauser clearly didn’t like it, either. “I agree with Floyd. There’s too many similarities between her plan and how the kidnapping happened. You should take another run at her before turning her over to the doctors.”

I was glad I’d saved the best for last. “I got everything I needed.” I reached back into my coat pocket and pulled out a long piece of paper, folded in half, lengthwise. “That’s why I made her write down the names of anyone she could think of that might be behind this. Told her to focus on the people that she and Jack ran with on a regular basis.”

The look on Loomis’ face made my day.

“Jesus,” Hauser said. “Reds don’t like making lists about their friends.”

“She wasn’t crazy about it, but she said she’d do anything to find Jack. Makes me pretty confident she didn’t have anything to do with this, but we need to be sure.” I handed the list of names to Hauser. “You know this part of town better than anyone here. Take a look, and let me know who you think we should start.”

O’Hara and Loomis got up to look at the list over Hauser’s shoulder. Rachel had rotten handwriting, but it was mostly legible.

Hauser whistled through his teeth as he read over the names. “Your girl runs with a hell of a crowd. Rabble-rousers. Pamphleteers. Unionists. Hop heads. Swill pushers. Couple of low-level pimps, too.”

But then O’Hara pointed at one of the names on the list and stood up slowly. “Well, well, well. Now there’s a possibility.”

Loomis looked harder at the list. “Which one? Kunkel?”

“Nah, he’s harmless,” O’Hara said. “But the name below his is another matter entirely.”

Hauser flicked the page. “Max Lennon. A nasty bastard I’ve busted more than a few times. The name’s a take off of Vladimir Lenin, on the off chance you’re interested.”

I ground my cigarette into an ashtray. “I’m not. But I’m interested in whatever makes him so special.”

“Because he’s capable of anything and everything,” O’Hara said. “We’ve busted him for extortion, book making, rum running; you name it. If it’s against the law and there’s money to be made doing it, then Lennon’s done it at one time or another.”

“His real name is actually Peter Chamberlain,” Hauser added. “Comes from a main line family down in Philadelphia, but his old man worked out of the family company’s New York office. Our boy here grew up on Fifth Avenue.”

Loomis and I looked at each other. Just like the Van Dorns. Interesting.

It was a lead. Not even necessarily a good lead. But something. Maybe.

“Sounds like someone we should start with,” I said.

“As good a place as any,” Hauser said. “If he didn’t kidnap Van Dorn, some of the skels he runs with just might have.”

Loomis asked my next question for me. “Any idea where we can we find him?”

“He blew town a couple of years ago,” Hauser said. “Some kind of heist that went sideways, from what I heard.”

I didn’t let that stop me. “But if Rachel put him on this list, he must be back. Where did he hang his hat before?”

“Given the crowd he runs with,” O’Hara said, “The Chantilly Club’s probably as good a place to start as any.”

Hauser explained: “It’s a shithouse Lennon used to manage a few years ago. Since rats always scurry back to the same holes, we should have some of the boys shake the place hard. See if anything drops out.”

“You do that,” I said while reaching for the phone. “I’ll call the Chief to have him put out an A.P.B. on Lennon or Chamberlain or whatever the hell his name is.”

Loomis kept me company while Hauser and O’Hara went off to set up the raid. Someone picked up the phone at the Van Dorn mansion. I told them who I was and asked to be put through to Carmichael.

While I waited, I said to Loomis: “Looks like we finally might be on to something here.”

“Maybe,” Loomis said. “Maybe not.”

That’s what I loved about Floyd. Ever the optimist.

B
Y THE
time Hauser, Loomis and I pulled up in front of The Chantilly Club an hour or so later, O’Hara and his boys had already done a number on the place. Carmichael’s All- Points on Lennon/Chamberlain had gone out over the air twenty minutes before. Dive joints all over the Village were getting visits from the boys in blue, looking for Max Lennon.

About a dozen or so men in various stages of sobriety were lined up out front, hands against the wall while cops patted them down. Some of the men had their hands against the wall because the cops had told them to do it. The drunks were doing it to keep from falling down. The men who’d already been frisked were being loaded into a Paddy wagon out front. None of them looked too happy about it. Jail only made hangovers worse.

As I got out of the car, I heard smashing bottles and breaking wood coming from inside The Chantilly Club. O’Hara and his men were hitting the dive hard and I couldn’t blame them. The Chantilly Club had it coming. The place opened just as I was getting bounced off Vice two years before. Even back then, it had been known as a bucket of blood.

The booze was cheapest in town because it was tainted and watered down. It was pure panther piss. Word had it that a few people had even gone blind on the poison they sold there. The gambling tables in the back were supposedly rigged, and the house didn’t always pay out to winners. Anyone who complained got their heads caved in for their trouble.

But for the poor, desperate bastards who went there, rotten odds were better than no odds at all. Hauser and Loomis followed me inside, past the cops dragging guys out the front door. I’d been in the place before, back when it was called The Pepper Pot — a nice, bright little dining hall with the constant smell of good food wafting out from the kitchen.

Now, it was a dark little hovel with low ceilings and sawdust on the floor. An old drunk on the nod was curled up in a booth by the door, twitching and muttering as he came down from whatever high he’d been on.

The bar was littered with shards of broken glass and bottles of booze, courtesy of O’Hara’s men. Beer taps had been opened full blast and beer drizzled onto the floor. The combination of cheap booze with cheap beer almost made me gag. The fact that the air in there was already thick and humid didn’t help.

“Well here comes the great man now,” O’Hara boomed from the back. “Come on back here, Charlie. Join the party.”

Loomis, Hauser and I stepped over the shattered bar stools to the back. O’Hara had some poor bastard cuffed to a chair. Two cops standing on either side of him, nightsticks in their hands. Judging by the apron tied around his waist, I took him for a bartender. The bloody apron and busted nose told me the interrogation had already begun.

O’Hara was sitting on a stool across from him, as genial as if he and the bartender had just been talking about the Giants’ chances of winning the pennant. “Charlie, darlin’, I’d like to introduce you to Joe Johnson, the bartender here at The Chantilly Club. Detective Hauser, I believe you already know Joe.”

“Sure I do,” Hauser said. “We’re old pals, aren’t we, Joe?” He motioned for O’Hara to get up. Hauser turned the chair so the back was facing the bartender and straddled his seat. “How’s every little thing, Joe?”

Joe hacked and spat out a bloody tooth. “Fuck you.”

O’Hara looked at the cop on his left, who slammed his stick into the bartender’s kidney. Joe stiffened from the pain, but O’Hara nudged him back over with the butt of his nightstick at the back of his head.

“Joe here’s a bit upset with us,” O’Hara said to me. “He was doin’ a boomin’ business when me and the boys came callin’. Of course, I asked him about Max Lennon, but he wasn’t inclined to cooperate. Even made some comments about me dear departed mother’s character — God rest her — and I lost me temper.”