The Bootlegger’s Legacy (5 page)

Ray always figured Max was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, although he’d done okay for himself. He had a lot more money than Ray, that was for sure. He gave some thought to what Max had said. Living at the lake in an old run-down cabin actually sounded just fine to Ray. His needs were mostly on the Spartan side of things. Moving an hour away from Las Cruces and out of Dona Ana County might also simplify his remaining years.

Later that same day Ray dropped by Owen’s Realty to see his old buddy Chuck, who’d been selling real estate in New Mexico for as long as Ray could remember. He’d made a fortune doing very little except acting as Jim Emerson’s realtor. Ray always thought the real talent Chuck had was sucking up to Jim to maintain those commissions over the years. All in all, Ray thought Chuck was an alright guy.

“Afternoon Chuck, what the hell’s going on.”

“How the hell would I know Ray? All I do is sit at this desk and talk on the phone. There are days when the whole town could sink into a black pit and if it didn’t affect my office or the phone lines, I wouldn’t even know. If it wasn’t such easy money, I’d give it up.”

“Well, you could always become Mayor and go around kissing ass for nothing. At least you’re paid well.”

“Not sure I like that kissing ass remark—but shit, you’re right. If you’re going to have to be nice to all of these assholes, might as well make some bucks, right? What brings you to my playpen? Somebody accuse me of a crime?”

“Not yet. I’m sure you know this is my last year as Sheriff, and I don’t really have a good idea of what I’m going to do next. A couple of things have come up and I wanted to run some stuff by you.”

“I say use your authority and steal as much money as you can in the next few months, then head off to a Mexican beach with the prettiest, youngest senorita you can find—how’s that for advice?”

“Sounds like that might fit someone else’s fantasy. My situation is a little less exciting. You know I have that big old house out by Hatch, and I was wondering what you thought I could get for it? Also I had a chat with Max at the Kiwanis meeting this morning and he suggested I should look at maybe buying something on the lake up in T or C—what do you think? ”

“Okay, I’ll keep the senorita fantasy to myself. As far as your house in Hatch, I’d have to do some research. That area has some appeal with the newcomers moving into Dona Ana. Let me run some numbers and then I can give you a good idea what you could get and how long it’d take. There are lots of cabins in T or C for sale, some dirt cheap and some very expensive. Did you have a price range?”

“Once I see what I can get for the old homestead I can make a better estimate of what I’d want to spend. Max mentioned something about an old cabin his dad used to own. Said he’d sold it to some guy in Oklahoma years ago—maybe fifteen or more years back. Said they were allowed to use it to compensate his dad for some upkeep he did, but then once his dad died they lost contact with the Oklahoma guy. Maybe you could do some research and see if that might be something I’d be interested in?”

“Sounds like it could be a dump by now. Let me check the records, see what Max’s dad used to own up there, and then track down the current owner. Give me a couple days, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay. Thanks, Chuck.”

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Waking up on the small sofa in his home office was less than comfortable. Joe’s head hurt and he was cold. On the other hand, there was one real benefit—he hadn’t had to deal with Liz. He’d heard her and the kids in the kitchen while he remained in the office, hoping she wouldn’t come in and start one of her lectures about his shortcomings. After a while he’d heard the garage door open and close. Feeling a little guilty about hiding out until they left, he also felt a sense of relief that he didn’t have to start his day off with more confrontation. He headed toward the kitchen, looking for coffee and aspirin.

Joe called in to the office and told Lucille, his office manager, that he was meeting with Mike again this morning and would be in the office about noon. Lucille didn’t say anything. “Hello, did you hear what I said, Lucille?”

“I heard you, Mr. Meadows. You’ll be in about noon.”

“Thanks, Lucille.”

What a pain in the butt she was. Joe had thought about firing her hundreds of times, but she was just too good at what she did to let her go. She was the best bookkeeper and organizer Joe had ever seen. But in her world there were the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys went to church, didn’t drink, didn’t dance, didn’t cuss, didn’t... well, just about everything they didn’t do, including and especially anything to do with sex. How children came about in Lucille’s world, he wasn’t sure. Joe and most of his clients were the bad guys in her Bible Belt concept of reality. So Joe just put up with her thinly veiled disapproval—one more person damning him to hell probably didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

After a little coffee and some toast, with the aspirin starting to kick in, Joe was beginning to feel more human. His depression wouldn’t leave him alone, though. Some days were worse than others. Just for a while this morning he’d felt like he couldn’t go on any more. But the feeling passed. He knew he wasn’t suicidal, although if he’d told someone about his feelings they might have thought that was exactly what he was. He didn’t want to be dead, what he really wanted was to be someone else. With a coffee go-cup in hand, he headed out to see Mike and maybe find out about the mystery key.

“This is for a bank lock box.” Mike’s key guy, Fred, looked even worse than Joe felt.
My gracious, this guy looks like he slept in a dumpster.
But Mike seemed to think he knew what he was talking about and they sure didn’t know anyone else who might be a key expert.

“These guys have a unique design. They have special security measures to make it difficult to duplicate the keys, and if they’re not inserted along with the bank’s key, they can break off in the lock. I used to work on these for some banks in town—well, before my little slip.”

Joe’d heard that Fred’s “little slip” involved theft, followed by four years in prison. Good thing he hadn’t had a big slip.

“Can you tell what bank this key came from?” Mike looked like he was starting to believe the key was some kind of magic wand. Joe thought it was just a little key to a bank lock box issued by one of, say, five thousand banks.
I suppose narrowing it down to banks is progress, but how can we figure out which bank?

“Not really. On the front you can see the lock box number: 487. And on the back there are letters stamped right into the metal, CB. Maybe that’s the initials of the bank—like Commerce Bank, City Bank, Citizens Bank, Colorado Bank, Connecticut Bank. Or maybe Central Bank—no way of knowing. Could be those are the initials of the manufacturer of the lock boxes—Columbus Boxes, California Beaches—anything. Sorry, Mike. I’d like to help you more, but I have no idea how you’d narrow it down.”

Joe spoke up, “Well, since this was your dad’s key, I think we can assume it was an Oklahoma bank, and maybe even an Oklahoma City bank. We have a Commerce Bank in the city, a Cattleman’s Bank, a Central Bank, and a Citizens Bank. That’s four banks—not hard to go by each one and see if this is their key.”

“Well hell, Joe—you make it sound easy. At least it’s something to do. If it works, great—if not, we just give up since we could have hundreds, if not thousands, of banks after the short list is exhausted. It makes sense that dad would use a local bank, so let’s get going.”

Mike was looking more like a believer today. Maybe he’d dreamed about the millions and how they could make all, or almost all, of his problems go away.

“Mike, you know I want to help, but I’ve got a ton of things that I need to do today. How about you visit the banks and see if you can learn anything. If I can help after that, you give me a call.” Mike didn’t look happy that his playmate couldn’t play anymore, but he cheered up quickly and agreed that he’d go see the banks that day and the next, then give Joe a call to let him know what had happened.

“Hey Joe, not much luck in my bank visits.”

“What did you find out?”

“It’s a pain in the butt to drive all over town in this heat and humidity and with the crazy Oklahoma drivers.”

“Anything about the banks?” There were times Mike made conversation difficult.

“Yeah. Well I visited all four banks. Basically got the same answer everywhere. Not their key. They said as far as they knew no one in this area ever had CB on their keys. Their keys always had the bank’s full name stamped on the back because there were other banks in their market with the initials CB. One guy suggested that I look at banks in smaller markets where the CB would be unique to one bank in that town. Basically this has been a waste of my valuable time. Oh wait, my time is not worth crap, so no harm.”

“Shit, what now?” Joe wasn’t sure they would ever find out about the key.

“Well, that isn’t all I learned. They told me even if it had been their key I’d have to have a bunch of legal shit before they’d allow me to access the box. One guy said that alone could take months. Plus, if the box rental hasn’t been paid after a certain period of time then the bank can open the box and, if there’s anything of value, they turn it over to the state.”

Mike went on, “So, if they’d opened the box and found a bunch of cash, they would have given it to the state. Who, I imagine, would contact the police or the IRS or somebody who would have come snooping around to try and find my dad and arrest him, or tax him, or something. That never happened. I think this whole thing is a waste of time—nothing more than Dad losing his mind and giving me an old key he probably found somewhere.”

“Yeah, well it does kind of sound like a pipe dream. You need money and suddenly the strange things your dad did at the end of his life start to sound less strange, maybe a solution to your money problems. I think we’re just fooling ourselves into believing something magical is going to happen that will fix the world—but we both know it’s not.”

“How about I meet you at Triples?”

When in doubt, drink.

They met at Triples, but rather than talk about the world’s problems—including Mike’s impending financial woes—they discussed football at great length, with special emphasis on the OU Sooners and how they were expected to fare the following year. Kind of hard to live in Oklahoma and not be an OU fan. Discussing sports at length can be a balm to a wounded male ego.
Might be a complete failure in life, but I sure the hell know a lot of useless information about sports teams and their players.
It’s amazing the depth of knowledge a beer-guzzling lowlife might have about some long ago college football game or long dead baseball hero.

Months passed, not much happened. Joe was preoccupied with tax season and more or less kept his head down and concentrated on work. Liz and the kids went about their business without much interest in what he was doing or not doing—as long as the bills were paid and the credit cards worked. Joe gave some thought to seeing a doctor about his depression, but the idea of being put on some kind of happy pill for the rest of his life was—well, depressing. Instead, he decided to continue occasionally self-medicating with a little gin and hope for the best.

Joe talked to Mike almost every week, helping him gather information about his finances. The bank had been more understanding than Joe had predicted and hadn’t foreclosed or forced much of any action on Mike’s part. The store was generating enough cash to spread around among the parties and keep anyone from taking any immediate action. Mike knew this couldn’t go on forever, but he had little motivation to force anyone to do anything. He would follow the Joe mental health plan—he would occasionally self-medicate with a little scotch and hope for the best.

Neither of them forgot about the letter, or the key, or what Mike’s dad had said—they just had no idea how to proceed. They discussed the possibility of finding someone else to look at the key, but it seemed like a waste of time. Mike’s father’s ramblings seemed increasingly likely to be meaningless the more they thought about them. Without some further hint, their search for the buried millions would stop before it really began.

Maybe it was for the best. They both needed to face the reality of their day-to-day circumstances and deal with them. Dreaming about millions would only delay the inevitable pain of facing life and its various problems. So long to get-rich-quick fantasies.