City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

shell shock, which probably contributed to his inability to keep a real job.

America was forgetting its Great War soldiers. The grand monument in Kansas City was dedicated in 1926. The British did it better with the inscription on so many of their memorials: “Their names liveth forever more.” They lost 744,000 to combat deaths, the French almost 1.2 million, the Germans 1.8 million. In America, where combat deaths totaled 116,500, people were eager to move on.

He continued pleading, “Show a man some compassion…”

“I’m a compassionate guy,” I said. “Tell me something I can use.”

“Like what? Prohibition’s going to end. There go the bootleggers. I wonder if booze will cost more or less?” He was hardly dressed for the chill, but he started sweating.

“That girl who fell off the train…”

He held out a shaking hand. “You got a smoke?”

I handed him a Chesterfield and my lighter.

After he handed back the lighter and took a long drag, I pressed him.

“What about the girl?”

“Word is she was murdered, cut up in pieces. This is your business.”

“What word? Where’d you hear that?”

“It’s on the street.”

“Whose street? Not mine.”

“Don’t do this.”

But I was going to do this. When he started to get out, I pulled him back in, hard, and slammed the door.

“Cop told me. You should know, too.”

“What cop, damn it?”

After a very long pause, he barely whispered, “Frenchy Navarre.”

“Tell me about Frenchy. What did he say, exactly?”

His eyes widened. “You want me to snitch on another cop?”

“I do.”

“You his buddy?”

I shook my head.

“I run errands for him sometimes. He gives me a few dollars. He mentioned the dead girl in passing, that’s all. Said I needed to stay away from the railroad yards, a maniac was loose.”

I wondered, not for the first time, if Frenchy was the maniac.

“What errands do you run?”

He rolled down the window and blew a plume of smoke outside. “Navarre is a bagman for the city commissioners and the cops. You ought to know that. And nobody messes with him. You ought to know that, too.”

So much to learn. I asked where he got the payoffs.

“Gus Greenbaum. He’s paying cops and the city commissioners to look the other way from his gambling wire and from bookies. Greenbaum and the Chicago mob have moved in. There’s so much money that sometimes Frenchy uses me. Don’t ask me where people get money to gamble in the Depression, but there’s a lot of it out there. Frenchy told me to stay away from the railroad.”

“Have you been breaking into boxcars? The bulls won’t like that if they catch you. And they will. They’ll remake your face with their billy clubs”

“No, I swear. I collect for Greenbaum south of the tracks, down in darktown.”

“How does that sit with Cyrus Cleveland?” He was the most powerful colored gangster in Phoenix.

“Sits fine with Cyrus,” Zoogie said. “Greenbaum had a talk with him. Cut him in on the action. Now all his shine bookies are part of Greenbaum’s network. Cleveland will do fine. He has other rackets: procuring whores, selling heroin and terp.”

I lit my own nail and let that sink in. “Does Navarre know you’re my snitch?”

“No.” A vigorous shake of the head. “I swear.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” I let five beats pass. Then, “Is he a killer?”

He stared out the window. “A month ago, I saw Frenchy do a beatdown on a bookie who was holding money back. Used a sap, you know, a blackjack. I heard bones breaking. Teeth flew out of his mouth. When he turned to me I hightailed it, but not before I saw that look in his eyes. Same look I saw on the faces of the murderers in Florence.” He flicked an ash out on the sidewalk. “Draw your own conclusions. What are you going to do? Go after a brother officer? That’ll be the day. You guys stick together like flies on flypaper. Kill people. Beat confessions. Plant evidence.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“He’s married.”

“So? Young thing. Blonde. Pretty.”

“What do you want from me, Hammons? Want me to make things up?”

I shook my head, peeled off twenty dollars, and handed it over. “I want you to nose around about that dead girl. Quietly.”

“That’s the only safe nosing with Frenchy,” he said.

I let Zoogie go, and he wandered west on Van Buren Street, past auto courts that should have been full of tourists this time of year but were barely hanging on. I slipped into a phone booth, closed the door, fed in a nickel, and shared information with Victoria. She had used her police connection to wander around headquarters and, when the Hat Squad was out, dig through files. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found much, not yet at least. No missing person report on Carrie. None on similar young women. The file on Carrie’s murder held one sheet of paper.

Next I called my brother. Driving downtown, I took stock.

Frenchy the bagman. Payoffs were a necessary evil in keeping the peace. Cops collected from selective illegal enterprises, and the money went to politicians, the city treasury, and other cops. The bribes were an incentive to look the other way, but also served to contain, monitor, and control illegal activity that was going to happen anyway. This maintained an equilibrium between otherwise law-abiding citizens and their vices. That was the old theory, at least. I tried to stay away from vice cases—other detectives, including my brother, thrived on them. But I had to take my share of the cut. Otherwise, I would have been suspect and might not have gotten backup when I needed it, or worse. Now it was my nest egg.

But Greenbaum was a new element, with plenty of money and juice from Chicago. And Frenchy Navarre was his bagman.

Eleven

I took a table at the Hotel Adams coffee shop to wait for Don and read to distract myself. The paper had a story about the Navy successfully staging a mock surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by planes from the carriers Saratoga and Lexington. Honolulu residents who witnessed