Jelly's Gold (16 page)

“I was hoping you could help us find out,” I said.

“Me?”

“He told you to call me.”

“Yes, but like I said—I don’t know why.”

“What did he say? Do you recall his exact words?”

“Josh told me to get a pencil and a piece of paper and write this down—this being your name and number. He said, ‘If anything happens to me, call McKenzie.’ He said to tell you, ‘Don’t let the bastards get it.’ I asked him what he was talking about, but he just laughed. Then he said he’d call me later, except he never did.”

“How long had you known Berglund?”

“Only a couple of weeks. No, less than that.” Genevieve stopped again and looked up and to her right, remembering. “Twelve days. It seemed—it seemed so much longer than that. It was as if—as if we were ancient spirits that had known each other for a millennium.”

“Berglund told you that,” I said.

“Yes.”

And Heavenly and Ivy, too,
my inner voice said.
That bastard.

“Where did you meet?” I said aloud.

“I volunteer at a nursing home in Arden Hills. Helping the staff sometimes, but mostly just being there for the residents to talk to. Some of those people—it’s like their families abandoned them, put them in the home and forgot that they’re alive. I talk to them and play cards with them, board games. Most of them are pretty old; some have Alzheimer’s. I’ve learned if we live long enough, and we’re all living longer and longer these days, half of us will get Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Frightening,” I said.

“It sure is,” she said.

Genevieve drifted away then, thinking, I was sure, terrible thoughts about dementia and the loss of memory and language. We took a few more steps before I prompted her again.

“You met Berglund at the nursing home.”

“Yes, yes I did. He was writing a book. He said it was going to be
about the gangsters who ran things in St. Paul in the thirties. He said it wasn’t going to be salacious, that he wasn’t going to make heroes out of those men. He said he wanted to write a book that reminded people we all need to be vigilant in order to protect society, to keep such men from rising to power again.”

Sure he did,
my inner voice said.

“He came to the nursing home because he learned that Uncle Mike lived there, and that’s when we met.”

“Tell me about Uncle Mike.”

“He isn’t really my uncle. He’s just this great old guy—he’s confined to a wheelchair, but he’s so lively. He’s ninety-five years old, yet you wouldn’t know it to talk to him.”

“He’s in good health, then.”

“Yes, no—Uncle Mike … his health is uncertain. Sometimes he seems fine, and sometimes … he has to take so many pills, and he gets tired easily, and he forgets things. He remembers years and years ago but has trouble with yesterday. Although”—Genevieve looked up and to her right again—“he always seems to remember me, so, I don’t know, maybe he remembers only the things he wants to remember.”

“What did Berglund want to talk to him about?”

“About the gangsters. Uncle Mike knew them all, I guess. He told Josh stories about them. What were their names? Harvey Bailey, Jimmy Keating, Tommy Holden, Carl Janaway—I guess there was like a fraternity of bank robbers.”

“How did Mike know all these people?”

“He was one of them. A bank robber. Mike used to rob banks. He robbed something like thirty banks before he was caught. They sent him to Stillwater Prison for twenty-five years. I guess I shouldn’t say that with such pride, but I really like Uncle Mike and that’s part of who he is. I asked him once, if he could live his life over again, would he do the same thing, and he laughed and said, ‘Sugar’—he calls me Sugar—‘I probably
would, only I’d be more careful.’ Either that, he said, or get smarter about breaking out of prisons, like Frank Nash.”

That stopped me.

“Your uncle Mike knew Frank Nash?” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

We had reached the end of the sidewalk and were coming up on a rose brick chapel with huge bells extending from the wall.

“He was friends with Frank Nash,” Genevieve said. “Mike said he and Nash once stole some gold from a bank in South Dakota. Josh was very interested in that.”

I’ll bet,
my inner voice shouted.

“I want to meet your uncle Mike,” I said.

“Oh, he’d like that very much. He doesn’t get a lot of visitors. Just about everyone he knew has been dead for many years. When would you like to see him?”

“How ’bout right now?”

Genevieve glanced at her watch and then up at the chapel. “I have a business class—Information Technology and Applications,” she said. “I suppose I could get a friend to take notes for me.”

The nursing home was located in Arden Hills just down the road from a strip mall. There was a chapel on the right as we entered and an office on the left that you could step up to like a counter in a deli. Genevieve waved at the woman behind the counter and announced, “A friend to see Mike.” That, and the way she led me by the arm as if I were a lost child being returned to his parents, seemed to satisfy the woman, who merely nodded in return. I was surprised by how quiet the home was as we walked down the carpeted corridor to an elevator and up to the second floor. I guess I was expecting a scene out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
—I couldn’t tell you why.

Genevieve left me in a room she called “the commons” and went off
to fetch Mike. There were two doors, one in the front and one in the back. The room itself was large and also thickly carpeted, with plenty of tables, chairs, and sofas. There were shelves filled with books and games, and in the corner there was a big-screen TV mounted halfway up the wall; no one was watching. Two men and three women were playing hearts at a square table at the far end of the room. I wandered over to watch and accidentally slipped between the table and the window.

“Get out of the fucking light,” one of the old men said without bothering to look up. I apologized and moved away from the table.

A few moments later, Genevieve pushed a wheelchair into the room. The man sitting in the chair was smiling like a kid on a merry-go-round. He was wearing black slippers, black slacks, a black shirt, a gold cardigan sweater, and a jaunty yellow seersucker men’s dress cap like the kind golfers wore in the fifties. He had been tall once, and big, bigger than me, but he’d shrunk a few inches. All of his clothes seemed three sizes too large for him except the cap.

He looked up at me and said, “You’re a cop.”

“Uncle Mike,” Genevieve said, as if she had just heard him utter an obscenity.

“I used to be a cop in a previous life,” I told him. I offered my hand, and he took it; his bones felt like dry twigs, his skin like parchment. “I’m McKenzie.”

“Yeah, I could always spot a bull, McKenzie,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I like cops. I have more in common with them than hardly anyone else. My best friend was a cop, yes he was. Used to be with the BCA. I hooked up with him after I got out of stir. He had retired by then, but so had I. We used to get together every Sunday for brunch, play cards, watch the ball games. When that got too boring, we opened a bar in Minneapolis. The license was in his name. Who was going to give me a liquor license?” Mike laughed at the telling of it. “We were like a curiosity at a carnival. The cop and the bank robber. Everyone came to our place. Cops, crooks, lawyers—it was like a license to steal, that liquor license.”
His face became red as he laughed, and his entire body shook. “When my partner died, I sold the joint. Made out like a bandit. How ’bout that, Sugar? Made out like a bandit.” He laughed some more.

“Oh, Uncle Mike,” Genevieve said.

“A bandit,” Mike repeated.

I decided I liked him. I liked them both.

“I’m sorry to see you in a wheelchair,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t really need it. I can still get around pretty good, can’t I, Sugar? Sometimes I’ll amble over to the shopping mall down the road just to prove that I can. Don’t need a walker, neither.” Mike began massaging his right leg with both hands. “ ’Course, the ol’ pins ain’t what they used to be, no sir. Can get pretty tired dragging this ol’ carcass around. ’Sides, would you rather walk or get pushed around by this sweet thing?”

Mike and I both looked at Genevieve. She blushed.

“Can I ask you some questions, Mike?” I said.

“See, a cop, what did I tell you, Sugar? Softens you up by showin’ concern for your health, then starts askin’ the hard questions.”

Genevieve shrugged.

“So, what’ll it be, copper?” Mike said. “Want to talk about the new days or the old days?”

“Old days,” I said. “What can you tell me about Frank Nash?”

“Jelly? We used to thieve together, me and Jelly. I remember this one time—wait.” Mike looked up at Genevieve. “Didn’t we just talk to some kid about Jelly just the other day?”

“Last week,” Genevieve said.

“Yeah. Some kid. Kept giving you the big eye. Stay away from that one, Sugar. He’s a weasel. I can spot a weasel from a block away.”

“I will,” Genevieve said.

“You live a life like I did, you learn about weasels.” Mike was looking at me again. “Now this one, Sugar, he’s a cop. Stand-up cop. You can tell. It’s in the eyes. McKenzie here, he’s got a cop’s eyes. That other one, that kid. His eyes were all wrong. Hear what I’m sayin’, Sugar? All wrong.”

“I hear,” Genevieve said.

“Don’t be sheddin’ no tears over that one.”

“I won’t.”

“So, you want to know about Jelly?” Mike said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Nah, you don’t. I bet you really want to hear about the job. The last job we pulled together. The South Dakota job.” “Yes,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what the kid wanted, too. He wanted to know about the gold. Thinks it’s still here, waitin’ to be dug up. Maybe it is. Only he wouldn’t admit it, no sir. Kept talkin’ about that book when everyone knew he was after the gold. A weasel. Well, copper, what about you? You’re lookin’ for the gold, too, ain’tcha?”

“You bet I am, and if you help me find it, I’ll give you ten percent of my share.” I pointed at Genevieve. “You, too.”

“Hear that, Sugar?” Mike said. “Like I said. Stand-up.”

Genevieve smiled slightly.

“Okay, copper. Where should I begin?”

June 7, 1933

Near Huron, South Dakota

Frank Nash spread the map over the hood of the black roadster. In the corner was the seal of Beadle County, South Dakota. Mike smiled at the sight of it. Jelly Nash walkin’ into the surveyor’s office as bold as brass and asking for the county’s road maps to help plan his getaway—wait until he told the boys over to the Green Lantern about that one. Amazing. Then touring the town. Wandering about, checking out the stores and shops around the bank, sizing up the folks behind the counters, buying the things they sold, just as pleasant as could be. “It’s a brand-new day,” he’d tell them, reciting the City of Huron motto.

Nash tapped his forefinger on a crossroads. “We might have to make a decision when we get here,” he said. “What do you think? North or south?”

What, is he asking me?
Mike wondered.

Nash turned. Mike was standing a few feet behind him, a slightly frazzled expression on his face. “Kid,” he said, “I’m not doing this for my health. You’ll be driving the car. Now tell me, which way do you want to go, north or south?”

Mike stepped up to the map. “Umm, why not straight east?”

“If you wanted to stop a band of outlaws from hightailing it to Minnesota with a car full of gold bullion, where would you put up a roadblock?”

“Umm.” Mike traced the highway with his finger. “Here?”

“Where is ‘here’?”

Mike tapped the same intersection Nash had earlier. “Just east of this intersection. They’re not going to have enough time to put up a roadblock, though.”

“Who says?”

“Didn’t you?” Mike said.

Nash folded his arms and stared at the young man. Mike found himself taking a step backward, a student being admonished by the schoolmaster. He glanced over his shoulder at the Finnegan brothers, Jim and Joe, standing behind him. They were both grinning, holding gats in their hands like they never set them down. He knew they’d be of no help. They were big men and tough, but not particularly bright. Jelly had chosen them for muscle, not brains. It wasn’t that long ago that Nash had hired Mike for the same reason. “Do exactly what you’re told and keep your mouth shut,” he had been warned—but this time Nash demanded that Mike actually think. It was the moment he had been waiting for; a chance to prove that he belonged in the same fraternity as Harvey Bailey, John Dillinger, Verne Miller, Volney
Davis, George Kelly, Jimmy Keating, Tommy Holden, and, yes, Frank Nash.

Mike pulled out a second map, this one depicting downtown Huron. There were lines and stars drawn on the map, and Mike used them for effect. “We know exactly where the deputies are gonna be at nine in the morning,” Mike said. “At the café here, at Huron University here, and way down here at Prospect Park. Now, according to the plan, we hit the Farmers and Merchants Bank here, we’re in there for no more than nine minutes, whether we’re finished or not. We drive, turning here, turning here, following the railroad tracks along Market Street to Dakota Avenue, then straight east on Fourteen.” Mike tapped the crossroads. “We should be past here exactly seventeen minutes after we leave the bank. No way can they get a roadblock organized by then. We’ll be across the state line before the county cops even know what happened.”