The Hearse You Came in On (22 page)

Charley Russell inspected the books, the manifests, the schedules, etc. There was practically no paperwork on the mysterious shipments of drums from Baltimore. The origin of the barrels went unnamed. Likewise, the order to off-load the barrels into the Des Moines rail-yard bore no indication of ownership. If the barrels had
any subsequent destination other than the railroad’s own warehouse and fenced-in yard, Charley Russell could find no hint of it. This, then, was when Detective Russell began to formulate the plan to conduct an undercover investigation.

Kate got up and stretched her legs and paced back and forth as she read over her husband’s rationale for going undercover. I suppose in a way she was hoping to determine that his decision had been the only conceivable one to have made. For it was this decision, after all, that would result in his being in the warehouse that evening, stepping out from behind a stack of steel drums.

Kate read:

“Have determined ownership of receiving warehouse to be B&O. Railroad officials in Des Moines know little about warehouse. According to records, unused for over a year. Truth? Origin of shipment unknown. Baltimore. Point: boxcars don’t load themselves. Don’t hook up to trains by themselves. Postponing interviews with B&O in Baltimore pending internal investigation. Contacting teamsters for immediate ‘employment,’ B&O railyard, Sparrows Point.”

She lowered the report.

“He didn’t want to confront anyone at the railroad. All they would have to do is lie and begin covering their asses. The trail would have grown cold before he ever got on it.”

“Assuming that it was railroad people doing it,” I pointed out.

“Oh it was definitely railroad people. Charley was right on the money there. Somebody had to load those drums. And somebody had to look the other way.”

We went back to the reports. Charley Russell had continued to file his reports religiously, once a week. Through whatever connection it is that the police have with the teamsters, Russell found immediate employment in the railyard, helping to load train cars. He kept his eyes and ears open and after a while began letting it be known to the right people that he was interested in any “moonlight shifts” they might know about. At first this merely landed him offers to work double shifts. He did so—complaining to Kate that all of his overtime salary was being funneled into a city escrow account to eventually be returned to his employer. But he hung in there, advertising his desire to earn extra cash and his willingness to bend a few rules—if necessary—to do it. Eventually he was approached by a fellow named Earl DeLorenzo. I recognized the name from Kate’s newspaper clippings.

“The man on the walkway.”

Kate confirmed. “DeLorenzo. That’s the man I supposedly shot and killed. He’s the one Alan identified as Charley’s killer.”

DeLorenzo offered Charley another moonlighting job. This one, however, was off the books. It was pretty simple, really. DeLorenzo led Charley to a warehouse in Sparrows Point. It was empty. Charley was told to return two nights later, at midnight. When Charley did as he was instructed, a flatbed truck was parked in the loading dock. The truck held close to a hundred steel drums. Charley and Earl DeLorenzo and the driver of the truck unloaded the barrels into the warehouse. They used hand trucks. No forklifts. No cranes. According to his report, Charley attempted to ask a few casual-sounding questions
about the drums and what was in them and where they had come from, but DeLorenzo made it clear that he was being paid to work, not to ask questions. Two nights later Charley was summoned to the warehouse again, where he and DeLorenzo and the driver slapped labels on the drums. Silica gel. The three men then loaded the barrels—again by hand—onto a boxcar that was parked on the loading dock track. When all of the barrels were securely loaded onto the boxcar, Earl DeLorenzo handed each of the men ten one-hundred-dollar bills, reminded them that none of this had ever happened and wished them a good morning.

Kate sat back on the couch. For nearly a minute she said nothing. She was staring at the floor. Though in fact, she was staring into the past. She was looking at a thousand dollars in cash being handed over to her husband. No doubt she was looking very intently into his eyes, trying to read what might have been in them.

Finally she spoke. “Is that enough?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean is that enough? Is a thousand dollars enough money for work like that? For two nights of moonlighting. Something clearly illegal? Is a thousand dollars enough money?”

I was confused. “What are you asking?”

“I’m asking if Charley is lying in the report. I’m asking if Earl DeLorenzo didn’t hand him twice that much. Or maybe three times that much. Charley did make that comment to me more than once, the one about all of his salary and his overtime going into the
escrow account. If Alan was telling me the truth, that Charley went bad on this assignment, it’s right here, Hitch. This is where it would have happened. Earl DeLorenzo hands Charley, I don’t know, maybe three thousand dollars? Five thousand dollars? Charley writes it up as a thousand, hands that much in and pockets the rest. Who loses, right? He’s busting his tail and he’s pulling down his detective’s salary, which is not exactly a cash crop, believe me. Some dirty money comes into your hands. What do you do? That’s what I’m asking. Is a thousand dollars enough? Does this sound legit to you?”

“Kate, don’t do this to—”

“Don’t try to soothe me!” she snapped, cutting me off. “This is why we’re doing this, damn it. This is why we’re here.” She took a deep breath. “I got this damn file out so I could decide one way or the other if my husband was a criminal. That’s it. If it turns out to be true, so be it. I can’t be hurt any more than I already am. I just have to learn this. So please. Don’t patronize me, Hitch. Help me, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“So what’s your guess? Is a thousand dollars enough? Does it sound like enough or does it sound low?”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a guess. And my guess is, it sounds okay. It’s a good round figure. A thousand clean. Tax free. It sounds legit.”

“You’re sure you’re not Mr. Nice Guying me here?”

“You’re asking me to tell you something that I can’t possibly know.”

“It could have been two thousand. That’s a round
number too. A thousand a night, Hitch. Isn’t that a round number too?”

“Kate …” I didn’t know what to say. With the man who gave the money dead and the man who took the money dead, how could she ever know the truth on this one? And she knew this was the case as well; I could see it in her eyes. She picked up the report and then let it drop again onto the table.

“This doesn’t tell me shit. Goddamn it, Hitch. This stuff isn’t telling me shit. How am I supposed to know if my husband pocketed a couple thousand dollars or not? He’s sure as hell not going to include that in his report. ‘Oh, and by the way, I skimmed a few grand off the top. Hope you don’t mind.’ How the hell am I supposed to figure this out?”

It was not really a question that she expected me to answer, so I didn’t even try. Instead I said, “Let’s go over the rest of it. Maybe something will pop up.”

“I pop up,” she said grimly. “With a gun.”

Kate flicked her hair off her shoulder and leaned forward one last time to finish going over her husband’s final days. “I hate this.” She shot me a warning look. “I’m having a drink after this. I’m just telling you now.”

“Fair enough.”

“No,” she corrected me.
“More
than fair enough.”

She turned to the last report.

After the loading of the boxcar, Charley had informed the authorities in Des Moines to be on the lookout for its arrival. As with the previous shipment, the minimal paperwork had been mysteriously slotted into place, an untraceable invoice marking the shipment
of barrels to be unloaded at the warehouse outside Des Moines.

Charley had ventured to ask Earl DeLorenzo two important questions that he prayed the man would answer. DeLorenzo answered them both. The first question was: Will there be a chance of running this same job again? The answer that he received was yes. When, Charley wanted to know. DeLorenzo could not be specific, but he estimated sometime in about a month.

Russell laid out his deductions and his hypotheses thus far. Somewhere out there, in or near Baltimore, a considerable amount of earth was being excavated. That earth was saturated with chemical waste, toxic sludge. It was garbage dirt, and for one reason or another, somebody was terribly interested in removing this tainted dirt and shipping it the hell out of Baltimore. And they were terribly interested in doing it quietly. Charley Russell’s next course of action was to locate the origin of the toxic dirt. Whoever owned the property from which it was being dug up and loaded into steel drums… that was the person—or people—to whom Detective Charley Russell would next be paying a visit. That was the key. Who owned this shit?

That was the end of the file. If the word “abrupt” springs immediately to mind, feel free to indulge it. It
was
abrupt. One minute Kate and I were sifting through the story of Charley’s investigation of the toxic dirt, seemingly one step away from discovering along with him the source of the stuff… and then suddenly, no more reports. Of course we both knew why.

Pow.

Kate and I fell silent. There was—literally—nothing to say. The ending of the file reports was abrupt and it was final. I wanted to reach out to Kate, but I didn’t dare.

Suddenly Kate opened the folder and began flipping furiously through the reports.

“Something’s wrong.” She grabbed a handful of the reports and began comparing them. “Something’s not right here.”

“What is it?”

“Look,” she said breathlessly. “Look at this. Look at the dates. We noted this earlier. Charley was incredibly methodical about this. Every week. Religiously. Every week he filed a summary report. Some of these are interim reports. But no matter what, he always filed a summary report every single week. Same day of the week. Wednesday.”

I looked at the reports and basically followed along with what she was saying. “So?”

“So this,” she said excitedly. “So I… so Charley was killed on a Friday. I think you can pretty well imagine that I’ll never forget the date. Friday, November eighteenth. But look at this last report. Look at the date.” She poked at the date with her finger. “This is dated November ninth. Wednesday.”

“Yes? All of his summary reports are dated Wednesday.”

“Exactly. So then where is November sixteenth? Wednesday the sixteenth? It’s not in here. It is the only Wednesday that shows no report. That’s not my Charley. That’s not our Detective Russell. You take one look at this folder and you can tell that. Three entire
months of reports filed every single Wednesday, and then …” She held her hands out, palms to the ceiling.

“Hitch. Charley filed a report on November sixteenth. I would bet my life on it. And two days later, he was back in that warehouse. He filed a report, Hitch. He had to. And according to the sequence of events we’ve got here, I’m also willing to bet my life that I know what was in that report.”

“The location.”

“The location. The source of that goddamned dirty dirt that someone was so all-fired interested in getting rid of. He found it. Charley located the source of that stuff. He put it in his report. In this folder. And that report is missing. Someone took it.”

“But who?” And since I was asking primary questions, I added, “And why?”

Kate was gathering up all of the reports and stuffing them back into the folder. Her eyes were on fire.

“Somebody got scared,” she said. “Somebody got very scared. I’m going to find out who it is. When I return this file tomorrow I’ll see who was the last person to sign it out. I’m going to find out who stole that report. Maybe they think they’re safe now. But I’m going to make them scared all over again.”

She then did a beautiful thing. She drop-kicked the file folder. A perfect kick. It flew into the air, the pages flying all the hell over the place.

“I’m going to find out who it is.”

Kate stayed over. She was as supple as an oyster as she slid between me and my sheets.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by someone licking my face. It wasn’t Kate; it was Alcatraz. I
opened my eyes. My dog’s happy yap took up the entire screen. I was just about to mutter “What is it, boy?” when I heard the front door click. As Alcatraz flipped his head around to look at the door, one of his ears whipped me in the face. Some dogs tell you when people are entering your place. My dog tells me when they’re leaving.

I scrambled out of bed and over to the front door and pulled it open. I heard the click of the downstairs door. Kate was already out of the building. I ran down the stairs, purposely pigeon-toed to keep from tumbling and breaking my stupid neck. Alcatraz was right behind me. By the time I dashed out to the sidewalk, it was empty. She could have gone left or she could have gone right, popped around either corner. The pale moon cast little light on the matter.

A light in the house next to mine flipped on and I saw a face appear at the window. Alcatraz let out a big chesty
woof.
I looked down at myself. I was incandescent. And totally naked. Alcatraz barked again. A second face appeared at the window. Pale moon or not, I was apparently a sight to behold. Well, what did my neighbors know? Maybe I
always
take my junkyard hound out go for a naked late night walk around the block.

I squared my shoulders and did a smart about-face.

“Heel!”

To my astonishment, Alcatraz slotted obediently into place.

Shoulders squared, head erect, eyes fixed on the front door … man and dog returned to their home.

J
eff Simons was in serious but stable condition. As rumored, he had suffered a heart attack. The story on the airwaves was that the beloved newsman had been washing his car in the driveway when he keeled over. His heart condition had been diagnosed several months earlier but had been kept from the general public. Simons was under doctor’s instructions not to indulge in strenuous activity. It’s a fair crapshoot as to whether or not washing one’s car should be considered strenuous activity. I suppose one could do it nice and slowly, making an entire day of it.