Sudden Life Part 6

 Sudden Life Part 6

I caught the guy’s eyes. They weren’t happy.

“What’s your name?”

“John Brown.”

“Very original. Ah, Mr Romero? I have a John Brown here. He tried to kill me a few minutes ago.... Yes, a silencer. I was able to put him out of action. He has a broken arm, a bruised kidney, and a damaged knee.... Very well.”

I handed the phone to Brown. “He wants to talk to you.”

Brown listened. “Yes, sir. Philadelphia.... Yes, sir.” He listened some more, said “Yes, sir” one more time and handed the phone back to me.

“Mr McCann, kindly call the police and tell them you caught a burglar attempting a robbery. Ask the police to call an ambulance for him. Tomorrow, an attorney will appear and arrange bail and the payment of medical expenses. He will also take custody of Mr Brown’s gun. Mr Brown will be brought to Las Vegas. I will arrange to have him transferred to his employers in exchange for a suitable payment which will be used to assist the families of the deceased. I wish to thank you for your able work in detaining Mr Brown.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But the case isn’t finished.”

“I agree, and I rely on you to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Once again, thank you, and good night.” 

Alexander McGrath had the same colouring as his sister, and the same tall, lanky build. His office was one of four located on the mezzanine above the sales floor, two on either side of a conference room. It looked and felt like a Victorian living room, with dark furniture and dark red wallpaper. There were several glass cases of curios and stuffed birds, polished to a sparkle, and pictures of horses in heavy gilt frames. The stuffed chairs looked comfortable. McGrath’s desk stood in the corner to the right of the window.  He could see both the door and the view of the town across the rear parking lot. It looked very much like the one from Ruth Doherty’s house. He was perhaps a couple of years older than me.

We shook hands, and he invited me to sit in one of the chairs. It wasn’t comfortable.

“Ruth called to tell me what you wanted,” he said. He gazed at me with controlled eyes. “This firm was founded by my four times great-grandfather Alexander Sanderson. He was a master wagon maker. His brother Jonathan ran a livery stable here, and asked him to come out to Elysium City and set up shop. He thought the two businesses would go well together, and he was right.”

McGrath paused, and turned to look out the window.

“Jonathan never married, and Alexander’s son Edwin inherited both businesses, which were passed down to his only surviving son Julius. Julius had three daughters. Anne, the eldest, married a James McGrath who bought a part interest in the business before he married my grandmother. McGrath tried his hand at building horseless carriages, but soon realised that selling such vehicles built by others was a more reliable way of continuing in business. He changed the business and its name. His son Jonathan was my father.”

He turned back to me.

“McGrath and Company and its predecessors have been respected community-minded businesses in Elysium City for six generations. Then my brother Edwin decided that a Romero franchise would make money. I didn’t agree, but he persuaded Ruth and Bernard Smithers it was legitimate and respectable, so they voted with him.”

He reached for a silver cigarette box, opened it and held it out to me’

“Please,” he said. I took one. He offered me a light and lit his own.

“I’m telling you this so you’ll know where I stand. I knew that Vern was Romero’s man, but didn’t share that knowledge with anybody else. I liked him, and respected his honesty and integrity. When Ruth fell for him, I thought she could perhaps have made a better choice socially, but not otherwise.”

He turned back to examine the view again. It hadn’t changed.

“I understand that you want to talk to the mechanic who serviced the car in which Romero’s men were killed.”

“Yes.”

“I know what that implies.”

A long pause.

“I know what the outcome of your investigation will mean for the reputation of my family and our business. But I agree with Ruth that the truth must come out.”

He reached for the phone. “Maggie, give me Stan.... Stan? I have a Mr McCann here.... He’ll be down to talk to the man who worked on the car in which those four visitors were killed.... Szegedy?” He pronounced it Seegaydie.

 “Yes, I recall he was the man. McCann can ask any questions he wants, and I want you and everybody else to give him complete and accurate answers.... Yes, I know it won’t look good, but we’ll have to ride it out. OK, thanks.”

He turned to me. I didn’t like the shame in his eyes.

“The service manager is Stan Brown. He’ll get Mike Szegedy to speak to you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been most helpful. You realise that any new facts I discover will be communicated to Sheriff Booley?”

He nodded, and waved me out of the room.

The service department was around the back underneath the mezzanine. Three wide-open service bay doors showed three busy scenes. The customer’s entrance was to their left. Two mid-size office windows stared blankly at a patch of lawn, two picnic tables, the parking lot,  and the town beyond.

Stan Brown was fiftyish, wore dark-framed glasses and a worried look that fought with a normally friendly smile. The smile was winning, but nervous.

“Mr McCann? This is Mike Szegedy.”

A short wiry man with eyes that missed nothing and a face that gave nothing away stood next to Brown. He carried a large crescent wrench.

“Let’s go sit at one of those tables,” I said. Szegedy almost shrugged and followed me. He sat down opposite me and laid the wrench carefully between us.

“Szegedy?” I said. “That’s Hungarian, no? Did you come over in ‘54?”

“Yes,” he said. “You say my name correctly. How come?”

“Stefan Kaldy, neighbour in my apartment block, had a cousin by that name. He came over in ‘54. Kaldy, I mean, not his cousin.”

I paused and saw a flicker of immediately concealed emotion on Szegedy’s face.

“His cousin was killed. They were throwing rocks at tanks. The tanks opened fire. Szegedy was hit, but Kaldy got away.”

Szegedy let out a long sigh and his face opened up. “That was my cousin, too,” he said. “Janosz. He had a fiancee, Ilona Halasz. She came to the USA with Kaldy and me and others, and we married.”

His face was wide open now. For a long minute he was alone with grief and love and memories. Then his face closed again, and he focused his wary eyes on me. He took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, and offered me one. I shook my head. He lit one for himself. His hands were shaking.

“I know why you are here. You want to know about that car that killed four people.”

“Yes.”

“I think about that car every night. I think how many more it would have killed if it had hit another car. I don’t sleep well. Ilona does not know what troubles me. But she knows it is mixed up with fear, so she is afraid, too.”

He dragged on his cigarette.

“I know I will go to prison. What will become of Ilona and our children?”

“I don’t know, but I think Mr McGrath will do something for them.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

I thought about Alexander’s McGrath’s shame, and Ruth Doherty’s pain.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” I said. “But Mr McGrath and Mrs Doherty are honourable people.”

“Not like Mr Edwin,” Szegedy said with a grimace. I couldn’t tell whether the contempt was for Edwin or himself or for both.

“OK, I will tell you. I put a nick in the brake line, and two nicks in the power steering lines. Mr Eddie paid me $3,000. We have two boys, one is two, the other is just born three months ago. We want to add an extension to our house to make another bedroom and a back porch. $3,000 will pay the cost.”

He dragged on his cigarette again.

“You see how easy it is to tempt a man to do evil who wants to do good for his family.”

His face was open again, bruised with the wisdom of painful self-knowledge.

“If you wish, you can take me to Mr Booley’s office right now. Or else he will find me at home. I go to tell Mr Brown I will be off for the rest of the day. Maybe longer.”

“Go home,” I said. “I think your wife needs to know what will happen. Then go to Sheriff Booley.”

Booley listened carefully while I reported my conversation with Szegedy, then he studied the invisible spot over my left shoulder again. Maybe he was waiting for it change shape. When he focused on me again, his eyes were still grey but now they showed hurt.

“OK, McCann, you go and tell Mrs Doherty and Mr Alexander what you’ve told me. Then meet me in Eddie’s office. I’ll be a while getting hold of Deputy Green and setting up some paperwork around bail for Szegedy, so you’ll have some time for the family to talk to Eddie.”

We stood up and looked at each other.

“It’s a mess, McCann. A first class mess.”

Eddie’s office was at one end of the mezzanine, and Ruth Doherty’s at the other. The plate on the door announced that she was in charge of staff and public relations. I knocked on her door, and watched while she finished making a few notes.  She looked up and tried to smile.

“Mr McCann. You look like you have some news.”

“I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

“I don’t expect good news. Alexander told me of your interviewing Mike Szegedy. So I think I know what you will tell me.”

I gave her my conversation with Szegedy verbatim.

“Poor Ilona,” she said. “Poor Mike. I suppose you want to report to Alexander as well.” 

I followed her to Alexander’s office next door, and gave him a summary version of what Szegedy had said. When I finished he swivelled to look out the window. He looked a long time.

“All right,” he said. “Ruth, I think we agree that we will take care of Ilona and the children, and that Mike will have a good lawyer. Now we’d better talk to Edwin.”

We followed him to the other end of the mezzanine. The door to Edwin’s office was open. We heard a woman’s voice.

“You promised,” she said. “You promised to take me with you.”

“Oh, shut up, Millie,” Eddie said. “I can’t take you now, I have to move fast. “I’ll send for you when I’ve got settled.”

“But Eddie you promised.”

“Well, things have changed. Change of plan. I’ll go first, then I’ll send for you. I promise.”

We walked in, and saw Edwin McGrath standing behind his desk. There was  an old-fashioned brown leather carry-all with its mouth wide open in front of him. He was feeding it bundles of cash from an open drawer. He closed the drawer, and opened the one below it. On the couch to the right of the door sat the complaining woman. She looked at us, her eyes suddenly wide and frightened.

“Eddie,” she said.

Eddie looked up.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Why did you have come in just now?”

“I don’t think that’s your money,” Alexander said, taking a step towards him.

Eddie reached down. His hand came up holding a nickel-plated automatic.

“Stay away from me,” he said, waving the gun in our general direction.

“Eddie, don’t!” Millie cried.

“That’s right, Eddie, it would be a bad idea to fire that gun.”

Booley and Deputy Green eased into the room.

“Give me the gun, Eddie,” Booley said. His voice was soft and soothing, but his face wasn’t.

“Stay away!” Eddie shouted. “Stay back. Let me out of here!”

He snapped the carry-all shut with one hand, the gun waving like a snake sniffing the air in the other. Then the gun went off.

“Damn!” said Chet, and grabbed his left arm.

Booley moved towards Eddie, who was staring at the weapon in his hand, his expression mixing horror, fear, and surprise. He dropped the gun on the desk, and it went off again. The window above Millie shattered.

Sudden Life Part 5

Sudden Life Part 5

Bill and I spent the next hour and a half reading through the contents of the brown envelope. The first item was a copy of a franchising agreement between the McGrath brothers and Romero’s organisation. It confirmed what Rachel had told me. The franchise included the Piccadilly Restaurant, the casino on its upper floor, a property insurance plan for local businesses, and an escort agency supervised by Mrs Ruby Smithers. It specified that the franchise fee as 50% of gross plus 50% of any profits above $10,000 per month net. In return, Romero would lend half the capital costs at a favourable interest rate, and train staff and security gratis as needed.

“Piccadilly Restaurant? Where did they get that name?”

Bill shrugged.

Vern Doherty would be the on-site liaison. His primary duties would be to collect the insurance premiums and the escort service’s net after expenses. There were also financial statements, receipts for monies received, cancelled cheques, and bundle of Doherty’s reports.

Doherty reported that the local businesses were happy with how promptly claims were paid, and even happier that several local amateur B & E artists had been persuaded to take up another line of work. But the financial reports showed an increasing gap between the franchise fees Doherty calculated and the fees paid to Romero.

The last item was a note to Doherty informing him that Romero was sending a team of four to discuss the McGrath’s handling of the finances.

Bill took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Looks like Romero’s team was in the car that burned,” he said.

“Yes, and Doherty for some reason was not. He was driving his Chevy instead. Which means he must have gone to Las Vegas and reported to Romero.”

“So what happened next?”

I held up an envelope addressed to me. “Maybe this has the answer”.

I read the brief note out loud. “For further details of Mr Doherty’s time in Las Vegas, please contact Mrs Bessie Collina at 214 Wellesley Boulevard in Fenton. There’s also a phone number.”

“You’ll have time to do that on your way back to Elysium City tomorrow,” said Bill. He yawned. “I’m ready for bed. Breakfast at 7:30. Elaine wants to go to Headingley’s Nursery for their sale of fall bulbs.”

Bessie Collina was a blonde with a kind face marred by anxiety. “Mr McCann? Mr Romero’s office called to say you might come by.”

She led me into her kitchen, and offered me a coffee.

“This is about Vern and Frank, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes. I don’t know what I should ask you.”

She poured a coffee for herself and lit a cigarette.

“I’ll tell you our story. We met fifteen years go, towards the end of the war. I was a nurse, they’d been sent to the clinic for battle fatigue. Frank and Vern were so much alike people thought they were twins. They told me they were doppelgangers, and said everybody has at least one. They just happened to end up in the same unit.” She paused, and looked out the window. A tear welled up and began a slow slide down her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping the tear. “We had such a good time, the three of us. Frank and Vern both wanted to marry me. But Frank asked me first, so I married him. It didn’t upset their friendship, though. Neither of them had any skills that would suit a civilian job, so when Vern got a job in casino security, he told Frank about it, and they both ended up working for Romero. That was before Romero junior took over, and it was sometimes rough. But they impressed the boss. They were honest. They didn’t ask for something extra when they enforced some rule a guest had broken.” 

 She lit another cigarette.

“They both took courses courtesy of the GI Bill, and qualified as accountants. When young Romero took over, he promoted them. He was expanding into franchising, and he wanted someone around each franchise to keep an eye on things. That’s how Vern got the assignment in Elysium City. Frank was assigned to a trouble-shooter team that would visit franchises if there seemed to be some problem.” She stubbed out her cigarette half smoked.

“Ah”, I said. “I see. Frank and his team were sent to check out the McGraths. And he was in the car that was sabotaged. They both had that mermaid tattoo, right?”

“Yes, they did. I didn’t especially like it, but when they got together they were more like teenagers than grown men. Always up for some silly stunt. They would always get drunk. Once in a while I heard them talking about the war. I think getting drunk and doing crazy stuff was their way of coping with the memories.”

She lit another cigarette.

“So about three weeks ago, Vern showed up here saying there’d been an accident. Frank was dead, and so was the rest of the team. While he was here, Romero called and asked me to take in Vern and act as if he was Frankie. They looked enough alike to fool the neighbours. Vern was to lie low until Romero had dealt with whoever had killed Frankie’s team. That’s what Romero said.”

She paused again, looking out the window at the back yard and the trees screening it from the neighbours.

“So I said yes, I would. I was pretty shook up when Vern told me what had happened. He had seen it. There was another car just behind him, so he told the driver to wait while he went to call the police. Then he came to Vegas and told Romero what had happened, and Romero told him to come to me.”

She turned back to me.

“It was just brother and sister at first, but we were both lonely. I missed Frankie, and Vern was stuck in the house, and we began sleeping together.” She gave me a wan smile. “I’d have married Vern if he’d asked me before Frankie did, so it kind of felt like we were just making up for lost time. When we talked it over, we felt that Frankie wouldn’t mind, that Frankie would want us to comfort each other.”

She sighed. “And then Vern said he had to talk to his wife. He went out to make a phone call from a call box so that the call couldn’t be traced back to here. But he never came back. Last night, Romero called to tell me that Vern had been shot, and told me to tell you whatever you wanted to know.”

And then she began to weep, silent sobs wracking her frame and tears pouring down her face. She put her hands up. “I’m sorry, don’t look at me”, she said. I got up and took a handful of tissues from the box on the counter. She took them and wiped her face, and turned to me. “I miss them”, she said. “I miss them more than I know how to say. You’ll find them, won’t you? The ones who killed them?”

I said I would.

Ruth Doherty sat perfectly still and silent until I’d finished my report.

“I’ve reported all the relevant facts to Sheriff Booley,” I said. “This is the written report and my statement. My fees and expenses come to $358.20, including the fee for my associate’s work in Las Vegas.”

“I want you to find them,” she said. “Find the killers.”

“Very well,” I said. “Mr Romero wanted to engage my services as well. He wonders if you will accept him as a partner in this assignment.”

She turned to me, puzzled. “What’s that? Oh, Romero.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she a said. “It’s worse now that it’s the second time I’m told Vern was murdered. Yes, tell Mr Romero I’m grateful for his concern and his help.”

She turned away from me and walked over to the window. “Vern loved the view from this room,” she said. “You can see the whole town beyond the garden, stretching down to the river and the reservoir. At night, it looks otherworldly, like a scene from a fantasy. Vern liked fantasy fiction. He would pretend we were hero and heroine battling ogres and dragons, or commanding our troops to protect our lands. He had planned new plantings in our garden, with flower beds and an apple orchard. He always wanted an orchard, he said. He thought it would be the grandest thing to pick apples from one’s own trees.”

She stumbled to the sofa and sat down.

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’ll get over it. I’ll plant that orchard. And when I eat apples from it, I’ll remember Vern.”

Suddenly fierce, she said, “Find them, Mr McCann. Find the murderers.”

“I will,” I said. I was pretty sure I knew one person who was part of the crime.

Richard had some information for me when I checked in. 

“Feller arrived yesterday after you left,” he said. “Wanted to know where he could find you. Said he was a friend and wanted to surprise you. He said he was from Sacramento, but he was driving a rental car with an Illinois licence. Blue Plymouth coupe.”

Richard leaned over the counter and lowered his voice.

“He insisted on taking the room next to yours. Number 11.”

I glanced over the parking lot. The slot in front of number 11 was empty.

“I think he’s gone for dinner,” Richard said.

“What does he look like?”

“Ordinary. About five-eight, five-nine,160 pounds. Light grey suit, kinda baggy. Brown shoes. Heavy eyebrows, but otherwise nothing special. Doesn’t wear a hat. Brownish hair going grey.”

“Thanks, Richard. You notice things. You’d make a good PI.”

I parked the car, and took the gun from the glove compartment. After I got into the room, I placed the chair on the hinge side of the door. The sun was turning the sky pink. I opened the window a few inches, and drew the curtains. I put the gun in my jacket pocket. I turned on the radio, and listened to the evening news. I took a quick shower, and turned out the lights. The sun was down, a faint orange glow in the west fading into evening purple and night blue. 

I bunched up the bedclothes to look like someone sleeping, and made a darkish spot on the pillow with the sweater I carry in case of cool weather. In dim light it might pass for a head. I sat on the chair and waited. The light from parking lot turned the window into a dimly orange square.

About an hour later I heard footsteps disturbing the gravel. I stood up. The door opened slowly, and in the dim light from outside I saw a hand holding a gun aiming at the bed. I waited for the gunman to fire, then took a small step and chopped down hard. I heard a bone break. There was a yell of pain, and the gun dropped to the floor. I pushed hard on the door and heard whoever was behind it careen into the table underneath the window. Another step, and I was in position to aim a hard kick at the kidneys of the man struggling to get up. Another yell, and another kick, this time at his right knee. I knew from the crunch that he would limp for the rest of his life.

I kicked the gun under the bed, and reached for the light switch. The man groaning in pain next to the desk matched Richard’s description. I grabbed him under the shoulders and hauled him onto the armchair and walked around to face him. We looked at each other. I picked up the phone.

“Richard? I want to call Las Vegas. Can you give me an outside line? Thanks.”

I dialled the number and waited for the other end to pick up. 

“Mr Romero will not be pleased,” I said.

The man’s eyes widened. “Romero?”

“Uh-uh, Romero. He’s hired me to find out who killed his man in Vegas three days ago. That would be you, right? Oh, hello? This is McCann. Would you let Mr Romero know I have some important information about Mr Doherty’s death. Yes, I’ll hold.”