Love's Lovely Counterfeit Part 4

Pioneer Park, the local baseball grounds, was in striking contrast with John Dewey High School, just a few nights before. There the crowd had been small, quiet, and dispirited. Here, as a result of the sensational revelations of the last day or two, thousands of people were gathered, in a tense, excited mood. They overflowed from the s.p.a.ce back of home plate, where seats had been placed, into the stand itself. On the speakers' stand that had been erected over the plate floodlights glared down, and as the loudspeakers carried every word that was said to the far corners of the grounds, loud cheers went up, with occasional calls for June, the mystery girl of the campaign.

Mr. Caspar arrived around eight, riding between Goose and Bugs on the back seat of the big armored sedan, with Ben at the wheel and Lefty beside Ben. Just what he was doing there, to judge from what was being said, was a puzzle to everybody in the car, and an unwelcome one, at that. His own explanation was: "It's time I had a look at that dame"; and this, coupled with his compulsion to show his power wherever he could, seemed to be about the only reason. His power was evident at once. The car no sooner arrived than a sergeant waved it past the turnstiles, where lesser folks entered to the vehicle gate, which he ordered open. There a motorcycle patrolman picked it up, and led it past the rear of the grandstand to a point where the bleachers ended, and from there to a dark spot just back of the coaching lines. Several other cars were parked on the infield. Bugs jumped out, to look them over, and keep an eye on things behind. But Sol paid no attention, and made remarks at the expense of the speakers. One of them, soliciting money, said that three $1,000 contributions had been received in the last twenty-four hours, and to this Sol said: "Three thousand bucks! Wha ya know about that! Gee, they don't look out they're gonna have enough to pay for a coupla funerals."

"Hey, Solly, cut it out."

"Three funerals, grand apiece."

"I said cut it out."

Lefty, as Sol made no effort to m.u.f.fle his jibes, was growing increasingly nervous. Presently, after the crowd had been lashed to a frenzy by several speakers, by excerpts from the day's newspapers, by a brief speech from Jansen, June was introduced, and stepped into view, under the lights. The ensuing demonstration lasted five minutes, and Sol paid his respects to her clothes, her figure, and her general appearance, laughing loudly at his not very delicate sallies. But when she began to speak he fell as silent as he might have if he had been hit with an axe. "Mr. Chairman, honorable candidates, fellow citizens, Mr. Caspar."

"There it goes."

Lefty, perhaps with reason, obviously blamed the jocosity of the last half hour for June's knowledge of their presence. Sol froze into a small, compact ball as she lifted the mike, turned it around, and faced him, her back to the major portion of the crowd. "I'm glad you've seen fit to honor us with your presence, Mr. Caspar, because I've information that will interest you as a hotel owner. You were correctly quoted, I a.s.sume, in Mr. Bresnahan's article in today's Pioneer, Pioneer, in which you said that n.o.body by the name of Rossi, so far as you know, is staying at the Columbus Hotel. I must regretfully report that you don't know everything that goes on at the Columbus. Mr. Arch Rossi is at the Columbus, this very minute. He must be there, because I myself talked with him, less than an hour ago. Of course I had some difficulty getting him on the line. I had to put the call through Castleton police headquarters, and make it appear as though Bob Herndon was trying to talk to his old pal, and tell him things that might be of interest-" in which you said that n.o.body by the name of Rossi, so far as you know, is staying at the Columbus Hotel. I must regretfully report that you don't know everything that goes on at the Columbus. Mr. Arch Rossi is at the Columbus, this very minute. He must be there, because I myself talked with him, less than an hour ago. Of course I had some difficulty getting him on the line. I had to put the call through Castleton police headquarters, and make it appear as though Bob Herndon was trying to talk to his old pal, and tell him things that might be of interest-"

There was a warning shout from Bugs, watching behind. Then lights flashed all around the car. The photographers, who were out in force, had probably started together, as soon as June started to speak. At any rate they had the car surrounded, and were snapping furiously to get pictures. Caspar began pounding Ben on the back, ordering him to get out of there. Ben spun his motor, fast. The outfield floodlights came on, as the crowd gave a roaring laugh. Ben, his head twisted backwards, caught the horn with his elbow, and it brayed grotesquely. The crowd gave a cheer. It seemed minutes before they cleared the bleachers, and were whirling away.

"Boy, you ought to hear them. I don't know where that dame came from, but she's going to cost Maddux the election if something's not done. Sol, he better look out."

Bugs, left in the ball park by the circ.u.mstance that cars have no running boards any more for lookout men to jump on, climbed in beside Ben, who was parked in the areaway back of the Columbus. "She's stirring 'em up, hey?"

"It's just murder. After you left she cut it loose and what she don't know about this outfit ain't hardly worth knowing. Where's Sol?"

"Inside."

"Goose and Lefty with him?"

"Yeah, but he said wait. We're going somewhere."

"Sure, with Arch Rossi."

"Oh, yeah?"

"He's got to get rid of the kid, hasn't he? Boy, after what that dame told them out there tonight he can't have him here any more. Not in the Columbus, he can't."

"What do you mean, get rid of him?"

"Ben, if I knew I wouldn't say."

When Sol came out of the hotel, however, he was alone. He climbed in the car and sat smoking, as though waiting for something. Presently, from the street, came the sound of police sirens. From where they were sitting they could see several cars pull up in front on the street, and spew officers all over the sidewalk. These disappeared, and Sol tiptoed to the rear of the hotel to listen. Bugs nodded at Ben, whispered that Solly was on the job, all right, and probably had the thing under control. This raid meant that Rossi was already out of the hotel, and the cops would find nothing. Even before the police cars had pulled away Sol was back in the car, and told Ben to drive to Memorial Boulevard. Bugs moved to the back seat with him, and they started out.

They drove out Memorial into a black, bleary waste of suburbs not yet become open country. Then Sol said to stop. When they were at a standstill, he told Ben to wink his lights. At once they got a wink in return from a side road, some distance ahead. Then Sol told Ben to keep the lights dark, and run to the other car. Cautiously Ben rolled ahead in the dark, but stopped at the sound of running footsteps. The footsteps drew nearer, while all three of them sat silent. Then Lefty was beside the car, his voice lifted in a quavering wail: "They've plugged him, Solly, they've plugged him-they've plugged him!"

Sol got out, followed by Bugs, and with apparent concern inquired: "Where they at?" But Lefty, as he turned to point, hit the ground in a sprawl, and the breath left his body in a grunting sob. Sol jumped on him, jammed his knee in his stomach, and slapped him eight, ten, or a dozen times. Then he told Bugs to give him a gun, and when Bugs drew one from an armpit holster, jammed it at Lefty's mouth. Lefty clenched his teeth, striking at Sol with his fists. Bugs seized his arms and held them against the ground. Sol pulled his cheek away from his teeth, and shoved the gun muzzle inside of it. Then he began to whisper, obscene, psychopathic threats as to what would happen if Lefty didn't "snap out of it." Presently he removed the gun and asked: "Wha ya say now, soldier?"

"O.K., Sol, O.K."

"Get up."

"O.K., now I'm O.K."

Sol, Bugs, and Lefty walked to the other car, leaving Ben alone. He sat there at the wheel of the car, his lights out, his motor always running, for perhaps ten minutes. Then Sol came back and told him to drive over to Rich Street. At Rich Street they headed out into another drab suburb, and at Reservoir Street Sol said stop. They sat in the dark car a long time now, Sol on the back seat smoking cigars, Ben up front, constantly checking that his motor was running. Some distance away, there was occasionally audible a low mutter, as well as a recurrent sc.r.a.ping noise. The only sign of the strain they were under came when Ben lit a cigarette. Sol savagely ordered him to put it out, not bothering to explain why he could smoke, Ben not. Presently Lefty appeared and got in, and Sol said drive to Ike's, and step on it.

At Ike's Lefty sat alone, in the shadows, drinking beer, and gave no sign that Ben should join him. Ben played pinball, having a small run of luck. Sol sat with Ike and two girls. He was very noisy, very gay.

The sun was coming up as Ben got to his hotel room and dialed the outside phone. "O.K., June, get up. Sorry to rout you out this time of morning, but we got work to do."

"What is it?"

"They've knocked off Arch Rossi and we got to find him."

Chapter 4.

It was after seven, though, before she climbed into his car at Wilkins and Hillcrest; the guard that Ben had insisted on was proving more of a nuisance than a boon, and she had to telephone Jansen before she could shake clear without being followed. They drove first out Memorial, to the spot where Sol had disciplined Lefty, but the only thing in sight was a small toolshed, and it told them nothing. Next they cut over to Rich Street, and drove out to Reservoir, but by daylight, this was just as unpromising. However, across a car track a road construction gang was preparing for work, and she insisted that this must have something to do with their quest. "What makes you think so, June?"

"Why would they come way out here, Caspar and those gunmen of his? There's nothing else to account for it. Whatever they did with him, it had something to do with that road work."

"Such as?"

"Dumping him in that fill, maybe."

"Dumping him-where?"

"In that low place there, where they've been filling up to make the road level. They could have driven over there, dropped him off, and then pulled loose dirt over him, anyway enough to cover him up."

"That's no good."

"Why not?"

"It's just not hot, that's all."

"If we could only go over there and look, look, before that gasoline shovel starts piling before that gasoline shovel starts piling more more dirt on top of him." dirt on top of him."

The shovel was already warming up, giving a quite pa.s.sable imitation of a battle tank. Ben pulled in his gear, but she touched his arm. "You stay here. I'm I'm going over there to see what I can see." going over there to see what I can see."

"Look-be careful."

"Don't be so jumpy. Can't I be a naughty little thing? That was parked here last night with my boy friend? And lost my nice wrist watch? Can't I ask them to let me look before they-"

"O.K., but be careful."

She did look a bit like a naughty little thing as she went skipping across the track, in a black dress with a floppy straw hat, and one would have thought the foreman would bow her in with his hat off, wanting to know what he could do for her. He didn't, though. He seemed to be out of humor, and let her stand around while he roared at various workmen. In a few minutes she was back. "What's the matter with him, June?"

"Oh, somebody stole a barrel during the night, and half a sack of cement, and used one of his wheelbarrows for mixing, and-"

At the way his eyes were opening she stopped, stared, and then started to laugh. "Ben! You don't really mean they'd-put him in in that barrel, and fill it up with concrete, and-" that barrel, and fill it up with concrete, and-"

"You think they got too much character?"

She got in, and they drove around, cudgeling their brains to think where the hypothetical barrel of concrete, with the just as hypothetical body in it, might have been hidden. She was inclined to minimize the necessity for finding it, but he quickly set her right. "Look, we got to find it, see?-that is, if we're going to lick Caspar. Because he's not licked yet, not the way things are now. You've done fine, you've stirred things up, but it's not enough. Specially since you've made such a play over this kid Rossi. And it won't do any good to say he's dead. They say they never heard of him, and how do you prove your end of it? That's how it is in a court of law, and that's how it is in a political campaign-no body, no murder. We got to find him, see? There's no other dirt that'll do it. Maybe there is, but I don't know any. This is it, or we lose."

They got nowhere that day, though. Around ten o'clock she dropped off, to report to campaign headquarters, and around two Ben reported at the Columbus, as usual. And as usual, these last few days anyway, he and Lefty sat around the big room, reading newspapers, while another procession of visitors went through to the office beyond.

At six Lefty had sandwiches sent up, and at eight Sol came out, while Lefty tuned in the big radio on the speech that Maddux was making in the Civic Auditorium. It was, said the Mayor, the only speech he was making during the campaign, and he would not even have thought it necessary to make that if charges had not been made recently, vicious charges, serious charges, leaving him with no choice but to defend himself. He then reviewed events since the first charges made by "a speaker campaigning for my opponent," with regard to the bandits in the Globe Hotel. But what, he wanted to know, could he have done about that? His opponent did not notify him. Instead, he had called the Castleton police, and these officers had staged one of the most high-handed acts that he, a man many years in public life, had ever heard of. They had come to Lake City, and without one word to Lake City police, or one jot of warrant from a Lake City court, had seized three of the bandits and carried them off.

The fourth, according to the latest charges, had been secreted in the Columbus Hotel. But here again, his opponent, instead of acting in a manner to get lawful results, had preferred making political capital to serving the ends of justice. Instead of offering this information to the Lake City police, he had, through his campaign speaker, screamed it from the rooftops, so that while Lake City police had acted the instant this information came through their radios, they were already too late, the quarry having fled. That is, if there was was any quarry. Where, the Mayor demanded to know, was this Arch Rossi? On whose word did they have it that an Arch Rossi was mixed up in the Castleton robbery? So far as he was concerned, he was beginning to doubt whether there was such a boy... any quarry. Where, the Mayor demanded to know, was this Arch Rossi? On whose word did they have it that an Arch Rossi was mixed up in the Castleton robbery? So far as he was concerned, he was beginning to doubt whether there was such a boy...

Nodding exultantly, Sol went back to his office. Lefty listened to the whole speech, then screwed up his face reflectively at the cheers which marked the end of it. "That does it, maybe."

"Does what, Lefty?"

"Settles Jansen's hash."

"Why?"

"When you come right down to it, Arch Rossi was all that really meant trouble. With him out of the way, they can't do much to Sol, or Maddux, or any of them. Well, he's out of the way, boy. A fat chance they'll find him now. And Maddux knows what that means, and so does Sol. He wrote that part of the speech, as a matter of fact. He copied it out this morning and phoned Maddux this afternoon. Oh, yeah-those three in Castleton can talk all they please, but the crime was committed in Castleton, you can't laugh that off. Rossi, of course, he would have been different."

"Looks like we're in."

"Looks like it. Four more years."

Again it was daybreak when Ben got home to his hotel, and he undressed slowly, with pauses while he scratched his head and frowned. Then, when the light was off, he lay there in the gray murk, staring at the ceiling, thinking, concentrating. Then his hand went up in the air, a thick middle finger met thick thumb and hesitated a fraction of a second. Then came the snap, like a pistol shot, and he reached for the phone.

"We're early birds this time, Mr. Grace."

"What time is it, by the way?"

"I have five-thirty."

"O.K., we got the road to ourselves."

"And what is the big idea?"

"Why would they put him in a barrel?" would they put him in a barrel?"

"Now that, that, I can't even imagine." I can't even imagine."

"I couldn't either, till a half hour ago. I heard about this concrete overcoat, as they call it. But then, when I got to thinking about it, the more I thought the dumber it seemed. I mean, it looked like going out of your way to be crazy, putting yourself to a whole lot of trouble and not getting any advantage out of it. But that's one thing about friend Sol; he never does anything without a reason-unless he gets sore at you or something, and flies off the handle, but even then there's generally something in it for Solly. So I thought and I thought. And the only case I could remember, I don't know if I saw it in movies or read about it in the papers, was a bunch in New York that knocked off a guy and put him in concrete and dropped him in the East River. Does that mean something to you?"

"Not a thing."

"They put him in concrete to sink him!" to sink him!"

In the early morning light every grain of powder stood out on her face, and what seemed pa.s.sably girlish at other times was now woman, squinting at him, trying to guess his meaning. Talking as he drove, he went on: "If it would stay down, there's no place for a body like deep water, is there? But it won't. Pretty soon it's coming up, and ain't that nice? But-imbedded in concrete it'll stay down. Then it's really really out of sight, and I guess that's why Lefty was bragging to me, how fine this guy was put away." out of sight, and I guess that's why Lefty was bragging to me, how fine this guy was put away."

"...you mean the lake?"

"It's the only deep water around here."

He spoke with the exultant tone of one who has already solved his problem, but when they arrived at Lake Koquabit they both fell silent, their spirits somewhat dampened. It looked, indeed, quite big; certainly its five miles of length and two of width were sufficiently appalling if Ben had had some idea of dragging the bottom for one barrel of concrete. Slowly they began running past the cat tail marshes on the south sh.o.r.e. Then presently she asked, "How did they get it into the East River?"

"Boat, I think."

"That would be pretty hard here."

"Why?"

"Well-what boat?" boat?"

"Sol has a boat."

"Is it big? big? Concrete is heavy." Concrete is heavy."

"Big enough. It's a cruiser."

"Where does he keep it?"

"In front of his shack. Moored to a buoy."

"Then they didn't use that...To get it out to the cruiser they'd have had to put it in the rowboat, and that would have been impossible. Or else they would have had to run their car, with the barrel aboard, out on a dock, and run the cruiser around to meet it, and the only dock they could have used would have been the Lakeside Country Club dock, and they'd have run the risk of meeting late poker players, or the watchman, or yacht parties-they simply couldn't have risked it. And besides, they were caught by surprise, from the way you said Lefty acted the other night. They had to get rid of this body in a hurry, and they had no time for a complicated maneuver with a car, a cruiser, and wharf, and I don't know what all."

"So?"

"Maybe they rolled it into the lake direct."

"How?"

"Just push it to the top of a bank and let it go plopping down over the sand. Unless it hit rocks or something it would keep on rolling, even under water, for quite a way. Anyway, until it was out of sight."

"We'll look for marks."

They rode along more purposefully now, their eyes staring at the sh.o.r.e. Once or twice, where the road ran out of sight of the water, she got out and looked, from the top of the bank. But at the end of a mile they had seen nothing, and hadn't even come to a place where a barrel could have been rolled in, considering the problem of the marsh. Then they came to the bridge, and he instinctively pressed the brake, and they looked at each other.

"This is it, Ben. This is where they got rid of it. It was right on their way out from town, and there was no other place. Especially not at night."

To him at least, her confidence didn't seem at all farfetched. Koquabit, local philologists agreed, came from the Navajo "K'kabe-bik-eeshachi," meaning silver arrow, and this is a fair description of the lake's geography. The lake proper was shaped like an arrow's point, with barbs and all. Making into it was a small lagoon, known as the Inlet, and shaped like the wedge to which the shaft is attached. And Lowry Run, emptying into the inlet, would make a sort of shaft. Connecting inlet and lake was a deep narrows, perhaps two hundred yards across, and it was over this that the bridge ran that they had now come to. It was, as she said, about the only place where a barrel of concrete could be conveniently disposed of, at least by a panicky crew of thugs anxious only to do their work and run.

Ben started over the bridge in low gear, and they both saw the mark at the same time: a white, zig-zagging scratch that would be just about the trail left by a heavy barrel if it were rolled over the concrete parapet. They stopped, counted spans, and then he raced for the end of the bridge, and presently for a side road that forked off the main highway, and made off through the trees.