Ash dark as night, p.11
Ash Dark as Night, page 11
Out from behind the driver’s wheel of the Buick, the third member of the gang appeared above the top of the car, a revolver in her gloved hand. She deliberately shot over the heads of the two would-be bounty hunting painters.
“Drop the crowbar,” the masked Anita Claire said.
His better sense overcoming visions of a sweet payday, the painter did as ordered.
“Now, both of you get down on the goddamn sidewalk or my next bullets are through your skulls.”
Again there was quick compliance.
“Jesus,” she muttered. She got behind the wheel of the idling car and drove away from the bank. Like her mother and father, Claire was dressed in dark attire, capri pants, black tennis shoes as well as a bulky dark windbreaker. Her mask, also like that of her folks, was a variation on a Kabuki demon mask, half white and half red, split horizontally down the middle. She removed the mask and turned off the main throughfares to head down residential streets. Not too fast so as not to attract undue attention. A siren sounded in the air.
“I think this is a sign, Solly,” Dorothy Nielson told her ex-husband and partner in crime. “I hope that poor man you shot is going to be all right.”
“Yeah on both counts,” he said.
This wasn’t the first time gunplay had factored in one of their robberies. Due to the increased notoriety about the Morning Bandit gang and other matters in each of their lives, five months had lapsed since their last caper.
“I won’t argue the point,” Solomon Claire said, also removing his mask from his sweating face. “Anyway, it doesn’t seem that I hit a major artery, given how feisty he was.”
“By pure luck,” his daughter said.
Her folks remained quiet. She pulled to a stop where another car, a plain-looking Chevy Nova, was parked. An old oak offered a leafy canopy of green and shadow. They had crossed into the industrial city of Vernon, where there were many types of warehouses. The steady hum and diesel aroma of big freight trucks was ever present.
The three got out of the car and quickly transferred their loot and guns to the trunk of the Nova. They’d taken off their windbreakers to reveal colorful tops. The idea was to blend in not only driving a different car than the one the tellers at the bank would have described to the police, but being seen in the car not wearing dark clothes. A key reason the thieves chose the smaller municipalities of the Southland was such entities had smaller police forces, though some were patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department.
“I saw a curtain move,” Neilson said, nodding toward a modest house.
“We stick to our protocol, Dorothy,” Solly Claire said.
Their mixed race daughter cracked, “It’s not like we don’t already stand out.”
As they’d done before, they left their jackets in the getaway car, which had stolen license plates on it. The car of course could be traced via its vehicle identification. But the cars had been purchased at distant used car lots where a cash sale over the asking price coupled with presenting a false driver’s license resulted in less scrutiny.
“You okay to drive?” Nielson asked her ex.
“Yes’um,” he said, affecting a Stepin Fetchit accent.
“Keep being funny.”
“Oh, I will.”
They continued on, with the two women in the rear seat. Leaving Vernon by way of Vernon Avenue, they were soon back in South Central. The remnants of the recent rioting were evident the more they headed west. Now it wasn’t vigilantes they were worried about. During the riots there’d been a picture in the Times showing several big rigs blockading the avenue at the Vernon city limits, the white truckers armed with rifles and pistols.
“There’s a motorcycle cop behind us,” Solly Claire said calmly, eyes on the rearview mirror. “He rolled out from behind another car. Good thing the plates on this heap go with it.”
After another block, the motorcycle officer put on his siren and lights. Nielson put on over-sized sunglasses, patting her daughter’s hand.
“Here we go,” the father said. He pulled to the curb and shut off the engine. His driver’s side window was already partly open but he made no move to roll it down further.
The officer came up, looking inside the car. His gaze rested on the two women, a frown forming. “Where you folks heading today?”
“I’m taking Miz Dorothy to her business appointment,” Solly Claire said.
“That right, ma’am?”
“It is, officer.” She removed her sunglasses. “I own some rental property in this part of town and have to see to my investments. Not the least of which is what damages might have happened to them during the recent . . . well, you know.” She nodded toward the back of her ex-husband’s head. Continuing she added, “Smitty here is not just my driver but a handyman too.” She put the sunglasses back in place.
“And who are you?” the cop asked her daughter.
Making sure to look right at him, she answered, “I’m her assistant. I take care of Miss Dorothy’s bookkeeping, tallying and what have you. I also collect the rent in this part of town.”
The cop kept staring at her. Given the sunglasses and that the daughter to many was simply another colored gal, the three hedged the odds were in their favor a stranger might not notice the familial resemblance. This was not the first time they had been stopped. They’d rehearsed their roles for a situation like this.
“Let me see your license and registration.”
“Of course.” Solly Claire got his license out of his wallet and removed the registration from where it was wrapped around the steering column. He handed them across and the officer read them carefully.
Without a word the cop walked back to his motorcycle to radio in for any wants or warrants on the car or for the man. A few minutes later he returned and handed the paperwork back. Leaning down some and looking into the back he said flatly, “How come you two look alike?”
Without hesitation, Nielson responded. “People have told us that.” She took the sunglasses off again. “Me, I don’t see it.”
Whatever notions the policeman might be harboring about miscegenation, he kept them to himself. “You can be on your way.”
Breath still in their throats, they waited until the officer roared away before they too continued toward their destination, Solly Claire’s granny flat over a friend’s garage.
“Too bad it’s too early to have a drink,” Nielson said, plopping down in a chair. The humble apartment was appointed with a shower and bath in its own room and an all-electric kitchenette.
Solly Claire limped some as he walked over and dumped the contents of the duffle bag onto his only table. Claire closed the blinds. This was the first time they’d taken items from safety deposit boxes in addition to cash. The trio had used a hammer and screwdriver to force the locked panels on several open, the tools taken from a toolbox inside the bank’s janitor’s closet. It was Nielson who’d suggested they look for them. As if it were an everyday family gathering, the three sat around the table. After taking off the paper bands around the money, mother and father began counting. Anita Claire examined the goods taken from the vault, including a clutch of pearls and a set of silver dollars from the 1800s in a drawstring cloth bag.
“I’ve got a little over fifty thousand,” Solly Claire announced when he’d finished his count. Imitating a high rolling gambler going all in, he shoved his stack into the middle of the table.
“Seventy thousand, six hundred for me,” his ex-wife announced, smiling.
“For the love of the people,” he declared.
“You pulled off the big dream this time, Solly.”
“The three of us did.”
As with their other robberies, the bulk of the proceeds would be used to support civil rights activities in the States and funneled overseas to the likes of Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the African National Congress seeking to end apartheid in South Africa. Nielson leaned over and gave him a kiss. In the months the three had been pulling off heists, the two exes had renewed affection for one another. The shared cause of stealing money from the capitalists. The Bonnie and Clyde of the Atomic Age.
“Ain’t you two cute,” Claire said. She tossed a squarish memo book onto the table. It was black leather bound and the pages were lined. Inscribed throughout in pen were numbers and letters in an obvious pattern. “What do you make of that?”
Her mother picked it up and opened it to no particular page, then another. “Some sort of code, I’d venture.” She handed it to her ex.
The father also studied a few pages in the notebook. “I remember this, it was by itself in one of the boxes.” During the robbery he’d randomly busted open several of the safety deposit boxes and emptied them while Nielson kept watch on the tellers and manager they’d made sit on the floor. When they were heading out of the vault toward the exit, their backs momentarily turned on their temporary hostages, the guard chanced to use his backup gun.
Solly Claire held the notebook aloft, shaking it. “Could this belong to a bookie or somebody like that?”
Mother and daughter exchanged a doubtful look. Anita Claire said, “Maybe . . .”
“We should find out,” her mother declared. “Clearly the book has value.”
“Or leave it alone. I think you’re right, Dorothy. This is a sign we should retire our extracurricular method of fund-raising before one of us catches a bullet.”
“Who you trying to kid, Solly?” she said.
“Gangsters use this kind of rigmarole.”
“We’ve already stolen it,” the younger Claire observed. “We can’t give it back and all is forgiven.”
“What about Harry’s buddy Strummer Edwards?” her father said. “He worked for that guy Dragna who butted heads with Mickey Cohen’s crew.” Cohen, the once king of the rackets in L.A., was doing time for tax evasion at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
“If this is a gangster cipher he might have knowledge of it,” Nielson allowed.
“Why not?” her ex-husband said.
“Well, for certain Anita can’t go asking Strummer behind Harry’s back. Now, maybe after you and Harry make love the next time and he’s in a mellow frame of mind, you can mention why you want to talk to his friend.”
“Mom, please.”
“It’s those Redd Foxx records she’s been listening to,” her father cracked.
“And Moms Mabley,” Nielson added.
Her daughter continued, “This is a problem involving a logical answer.”
“Yes,” the other two said simultaneously as they all stared at the coded journal.
“What about Del?” the father said eventually.
“Who?” his daughter asked.
“Del Standers,” Nielson answered. “He was a Ritchie Boy in the war. These were men who worked in intelligence, code breakers, a lot of them of German-Jewish extraction like Del. They were headquartered at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, thus the nickname.”
“But he was hounded during the bad times,” the elder Claire added. “He might well be gun shy.”
“Might be,” Nielson allowed. “Or maybe he’d be up to the challenge.”
CHAPTER NINE
It was late afternoon. Ingram sat at the bar top with Strummer Edwards in his off-the-books joint, the Stockyard. The name of the place was derived from a mural that was here before it was a bar and unlicensed casino. Along one of the walls, anthropomorphic pigs and cows cavorted about in a green field in suits, tuxes and formal dresses, several with open umbrellas to ward off the sun. There was a barn and silo in the background of the tableau where a bull in a bowler and rolled-up sleeves sat above a smoke-belching tractor. He chomped a cigar.
“You figure to start doing this hawkshawing full time?” Edwards glanced at him sideways. Today, they were the only two in the bar.
“Better see if I make headway finding this dude first.” He’d told his friend about the labels he’d found going through Tolbert’s car.
“Uh-huh,” Edwards drawled, having some of his beer. Both were drinking Hamm’s. Edwards held the can in one of his expansive hands, two of the knuckles misshapen from a past of punching chumps in the head. Edwards, Ingram had observed some years ago, was a man of interesting contradictions. He could be flashy, but also had the discipline to invest. The Stockyard one of the material results of his foresightedness.
Everything about the bar was illegal except for the hookups for water, power and gas, and even those accounts were under false names. The enterprise was located on the second floor of a two-story building located on Hoover near the Coliseum. The bottom floor was occupied by Wertzendahl plumbing supply and the family owned the building. Walter Wertzendahl was the one Edwards dealt with in terms of seeing to needed repairs and the like. Ingram had an inkling that the Wertzendahls were getting a percentage of Edwards’s action in lieu of rent as they certainly knew what was going on upstairs. But he hadn’t previously broached the subject with his friend, and wasn’t going to today.
“This might mean something,” Edwards eventually said.
“What you got?”
“Seems a grip of furs got lifted from that Sabine outfit about two months ago.” Edwards tapped his lit cigarette onto a glass ashtray on the bar. A thin pall of smoke hung over them, between the two and the recessed lights in the ceiling.
“I didn’t remember anything about that in the news,” Ingram said.
“Plenty of shit goes down ain’t in them rags you run around for, Harry.”
“You get a gander at these animal skins?” An image popped up in his head of Wilma Flintstone from the cartoon show wearing a saber-tooth tiger fur coat and a string of pearls the size of golf balls. The saber-tooth was somehow still alive and had a big grin on his face.
“I know they were for sale,” he answered. “I know too that if it’s the fella I’m assuming was behind the robbery, he talks smooth but carries a big knife if you dig what I’m saying. If the cat you’re looking for is involved with him then you can probably save yourself unnecessary steps. Unless you want to put on your scuba gear and go diving off the Lido Pier where his body might be weighted down.” He chuckled hollowly and took another drag on his cigarette.
“That kind of guy, huh?”
“M-hmmm.”
“Hey, Strummer,” a feminine voice called from behind the two.
They both swiveled around. A striking-looking woman stood in the bar’s arched entryway. She was wearing white jeans and an off-the-shoulder puffy sleeve blouse. Ingram frowned, then his face cleared. She pointed at him.
“I know you,” she said, shaking her finger.
“Sherry,” Ingram remembered. They had met when Harry was looking into his Army buddy’s death.
“Sherry Foster.” She held out her hand, three loops of gold links encircling it. Ingram shook her hand.
“Sherry’s working here these days,” Edwards offered, stubbing out his cigarette. When Ingram had met her, she’d had a job at Dolphin’s of Hollywood, a record shop in South Central where white and Black teens hung out. She was also engaged in certain other pastimes he’d needed to talk to her about. Edwards had connected the two.
“Good to see you again, Harry.” To Edwards she said, “I came in early to finish up the inventory.”
“Cool,” her boss said.
“See you, Harry.” She held up her hand, wiggling her fingers good-bye as she walked off.
“You too,” he said.
Foster headed further into the establishment. This included a hidden entrance to the gaming area. It wasn’t unusual to see a few white patrons in that part of the Stockyard, including once when Ingram and Claire were here, spotting Bette Davis with two bodyguards. She rolled craps that night with zeal.
“You mind laying the name of this high stepper on me?” Ingram asked when the two were alone again.
“No, I figure it don’t make me no songbird to tell you that. His name is Gavin Rickler.”
“His handle rings a bell.”
Edwards looked over at him again. “He’s been in the news a time or two.”
Ingram wasn’t going to press his friend. He finished his drink but didn’t get off the stool. It occurred to him he could have another one on the house. The afternoon was getting long and why not be in a mellow mood, ruminating on what Mose Tolbert and Rickler were up to. He’d considered driving out to the Emerald Room, Rickler’s establishment, but what would that accomplish? If he tried to brace the man, for sure his goons would happily give him a beat down. He wanted to be more clever than that. Too, he wanted to know more to go at Rickler any damn way on his home turf. He wasn’t going anywhere, he’d be around.
“Fair enough. I better leave you to it.” He started to rise.
“Meant to tell you, I ran into Shoals a couple of weeks ago. Was at the Olympic for the doggone wrasslin’ matches.” He winked at his friend. “Got this new chick who really digs them kind of physicalities. Gets her blood up, if you know what I mean.”
“How’s he doing?”
He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “We said hi and bye, that was about it.”
“Me and him having a falling out don’t mean you two can’t have a chat.”
“He knows me and Josh know about him.” He traced his finger through the condensation on the cold can and continued. “Lord knows as Granny used to say, I’m not one to cast stones, but there it is.” He picked up his beer and finished it as well.
“’Preciate this, Strummer.” He tapped the other man on the shoulder and got off the stool.
“Take it slow, pard’ner.”
“The only way.”
“Ain’t that right.”
Edwards grinned, firing up another cigarette and also rising. He shook his index finger signaling good-bye and made for his office.
Back on the street, Ingram checked his watch and walked to the pay phone on the next block. The Disciples’ stylized stalking cougar had been spray painted using a stencil on the phone booth glass. Lately he’d seen several of their declarations around town. Sometimes the words, WE’RE WATCHING, had been added. He got out his notebook and made a few notations, more material for his long-form idea.
