Operation Underworld (26 page)
“Sir, by order of the Department of the Navy you are to open it in our presence.” In his short time in this billet, Ensign Lamberson had never heard the Commander speak in a more commanding tone of voice. “And then return it to us.”
Lyons’ face clearly registered his anger as he opened and read the classified document. He was incensed and wanted only to expedite the officers on their return journey as quickly as possible.
“I’m a god-damned former police inspector. I worked in New York City risking my life for half my career! I was appointed by the Governor himself! And now some god-damned Navy guy gets to tell me what to do with my prisoners? Son-of-a-bitch!”
Cowen and Lamberson fought back their smiles not out of any kind of respect, there was none, but out of the military discipline they had been taught by men whom they did respect.
Cowen held his hand out and Lyons threw the message on the desk. Lamberson moved a gilded ashtray from one corner of the Commissioner’s desk and Cowen lit the piece of magnesium-impregnated paper with a match and dropped it into the ashtray.
“You bastard! That’s my Governor’s award for exemplary performance!”
“Sorry, sir. It looked like an ashtray to me,” Lamberson said, with no trace of sincerity.
“Sir, you’re required to answer to the Third Naval District Headquarters within twenty-four hours and you are cautioned against revealing the contents of this message to anyone. Thank you. Sir.”
“Get the hell outta my office! I mean right now, god-damn it!” Lyons was on his feet, as was the guard with the clean nails. Cowen and Lamberson walked out the door and once in the hallway, clear of the secretary, Lamberson questioned Cowen.
“Suppose we should have asked him for a ride back to town?” Cowen snickered. “C’mon. Let’s find Floyd.”
Doc was up an hour before Louie and so cleaned up, made coffee and went straight back to work on some diagrams. He’d been using the technique of flow charts ever since he happened to read about their application to any given problem in
Science Illustrated
magazine about five years ago. So why not, he reasoned, apply them to detective work? The thing that kept eating away at him was that he couldn’t come up with any plausible theory as to why the DA would meet with someone as high up the chain as Meyer Lansky. There could be many reasons, theoretically, but the fact that he was trying so hard not to be seen could only mean one of two things. Either he didn’t have Hogan’s okay on the deal, or if he did, Hogan wanted it under wraps as well, which could only mean it wasn’t legitimate. That was the part Doc was interested in.
Everyone on the DA’s staff disliked, if not hated, men in Doc’s profession. Partially because they were more trusted on the street than the DA’s and their investigators. Of course it never occurred to the DA’s that the PI’s didn’t have a corporate-styled political ladder to climb and so could go wherever the case took them. If they didn’t perform, they didn’t get paid. In addition, the DA’s professional success was measured by how many convictions they have to their credit. Sorta like RBI’s in baseball, Doc always figured.
However, to compound matters, beyond their dislike of PI’s the DA’s had nursed a special hatred for Doc McKeowen ever since the fatal incident involving his father. And Doc remained ever vigilant to any crack in their defences so that he might one day demonstrate the fact that the feelings were mutual.
Doc decided Louie had had enough time to sleep off his biannual dose of hard liquor and so woke him at about half past nine. Louie fought but lost the battle to remain in bed and a half hour later, they were in a mid-town restaurant finishing breakfast and preparing for the day’s events.
“So what the hell’s at the library, Doc? We gonna sit around reading all day?”
“Hopefully not all day, Louie. But I think if we look in the right place we could improve our battin’ average a little.”
“Well, the Silver Clipper ain’t got nuthin’ta worry about, that’s for sure. What the hell we lookin’ for anyway, Doc?”
“Not a clue Louie. Not a clue.”
Doc paid the waitress and they walked the four blocks to Bryant Park and entered the 42nd Street branch Public Library on the Fifth Avenue side. The two men were forced to detour into the street for a short way as there was a large crew of steel workers replacing a twenty-foot section of wrought-iron fencing.
“We’ll check the records here first, then shoot over to the Times Building this afternoon,” Doc explained as they climbed the granite stairs. Doc watched Louie rubber-necking as they entered the foyer.
“You‘ve never been to a library, have you?”
“Yeah, sure. All the time.”
“You ever check anything out other than the librarians?”
“You mean you can take these books home?” Louie knew Doc was angling to give him a lesson and he wasn’t disappointed. After a fifteen minute introduction to the card catalogue, Louie learned about periodicals.
“The advantage of periodicals is they can supplement your research because they contain information that’s not included in things that are on microfiche. Few other investigators use the library. If they don’t find it in the newspapers or in the public records, they usually give up. That’s where you can get a leg up. Got it?” Louie didn’t respond. “Well, any questions?”
“Yeah! What the hell’s a microfinch?”
“A very small bird. C’mon.”
Five minutes later, Louie was an expert at locating, inserting and scanning microfiche film. Each of them took a booth and several canisters of film. Louie went to work on the
New York Daily News
and Doc took the
Times
. Doc instructed his partner to take notes on anything to do with the DA’s office, starting back two months before Pearl Harbor. Two and a half hours later, he was snapped out of a mesmerising tedium when Louie suddenly yelled out.
“Incredible!”
“What? What’d ya find?”
“This lady, in Saskatchewan, not only gave birth to triplets that lived, but all three of them were breeched! That’s amazing!”
“Am I gonna have ta go back over all your work and check for myself? What the hell good are you here, Louie?”
“Doc! I got all the DA shit! There just ain’t that much of it. It’s all shoved aside for the war news. The Japs doin’ this and the Russians doin’ that. Hell, all I came across was about ten articles havin’ anything ta do with Hogan’s office.”
“Yeah, you got a point, I guess.” Doc set his pencil down and rubbed his eyes. “Hell, most interesting thing I found was George M. Cohan’s funeral and the Normandie thing.”
“Yeah, I read that too.” Louie sat back and yawned. “They sure stepped on that story.”
Doc looked at Louie while digesting the offhand remark. “How do you mean?”
“Well, one day it’s front page news all over the world, next day there’s one paragraph on page two or three, and then, the story vanishes. Like it never happened. But she’s still sittin’ out there like a beached whale.”
“Ya know what struck me funny? The API reports the eyewitness, Eddy Sullivan, saw the fire start from the welder’s torch. But nobody ever mentions the welder, where he is, what he was doing, or who he is. And to top it off, the papers all said Eddy Sullivan’s a carpenter. There’s no wood anywhere near that part of the promenade deck. What the heck was a carpenter doin’ there?”
“Doc, I’m startin’ ta smell the same thing you are.”
“What’s that, Louie?”
“Not a clue, Doc, not a clue. But there had to be a reason for that DA goin’ into Third Naval District Headquarters yesterday.”
McKeowen sat back in his chair and gave a tilted nod to Mancino.
“Louie! I take back almost everything I ever said about you! Let’s copy all the Normandie stuff, the rest of the DAstuff and get some lunch. I think you might have something!”
Murray Gurfein was not a happy DA as he stepped off the passenger train onto platform 12 at Penn Station. The cold, damp air was scant relief after two and a half days travel roundtrip to Albany. He had been sent there by Hogan in an attempt to avert a head-banging contest between the City and the State.
Hogan deduced Lyons was not over the moon about cooperating with the Navy and their little venture, and was attempting to force the issue back onto the New York City DA. Hogan was getting tired of being tangled up with the FBI, the USN and now the State Correctional Facilities Office and wanted out of the net.
To cover his own ass, Lyons sent a memo requesting “firm” backing from the NYC DA’s office. So rather than post a letter, even a certified letter, Hogan thought it more prudent to send a representative and, since Gurfein was already in the middle of it, Hogan volunteered him for the mission.
Commissioner Lyons was none to happy about this counter strategy and, to show his deep appreciation, he sent Gurfein back with a laundry list of restrictions to be given to the Navy before he would consent to their little adventure. In this manner he was able to assure himself he hadn’t lost any authority, and was able to keep the DA in the game for insurance against any future accusations of wrong-doing.
Gurfein cursed the cold. Then he cursed the baggage handlers for not being able to find his luggage. Then decided to go into the station and look for Hogan. The DA expected his arrival and cabled the hotel in Albany that he would meet Gurfein at the Whistle Stop, a coffee shop in the main concourse of the station.
As Gurfein walked towards the café, weaving through the crowd with the intermittent blasts of the public address system echoing through the terminal, he wondered at the complexity of the civilian chain of command, and how much trouble it was to get anything done in the tangle of bureaucracy. At this level everyone had their own agendas, and before anything was allowed past them, they had to assess it in terms of its value to them.
In the military chain on the other hand, at least outside of DC, something was ordered done, and it was done. Next task, thank you very much.
“Murray!” It was Hogan. He was sitting at a table outside the café waving at Gurfein.
“How was the trip?”
“Complete shit! Next silly question.”
“Speakin’ of shit, you look terrible! You okay?”
“Thanks for the update, boss. Look, these clowns can’t find my luggage, so let’s get this over with. You can take off and I’ll catch a cab back to the apartment.”
“Yeah, sure. Look, don’t bother coming in today. Take the rest of the day off.”
Gurfein had no intention of coming back in anyway. On the other hand Hogan didn’t give him the day off out of the kindness of his heart. Hogan did it because he wanted the rest of the day to assess the situation after he talked to his underling. Also, he knew Gurfein would be useless to him for the rest of the day, anyway.
“Talk to me about Lyons.”
“Well, for starters – ” Just as Gurfein began to speak, a waitress interrupted them. Hogan ordered two regular coffees and the girl disappeared through the maze of tables.
“For starters, Sing Sing’s a no go.”
“Why, for God’s sake? It’s maximum security and it’s real close.”
“That’s probably the reason. He wants it perfectly understood we’re on his turf.”
“Is that the feeling you got from him?”
“No. That’s the words I got from him.”
“Did he say that?” Hogan was shocked.
“Verbatim. Next issue. It’s probably going to be Great Meadows.”
“Hell, that’s ten to twelve hours from here!”
“For us. For him it’s right up the road. Less than two hours from Albany. He wants us on a short leash.” Gurfein had had hours to consider these possibilities while sitting alone on the way back to the City.
“You don’t think it’s just a matter of keeping a low profile up there?”
“C’mon! Which of the four high security prisons is less high profile than the rest? They’re all the same. Besides, that ain’t all.”
“I can hardly wait for the rest.”
“All visitors will be required to give twenty-four hours advance notice of arrival, and on arrival register with proper identification.”
“That’s standard for any prison.”
“And all visitors will be required to be fingerprinted.”
“That I’d like to see.” Hogan rearranged his chair, crossed “That I’d like to see.” Hogan rearranged his chair, crossed his legs and folded his hands behind his head. “I told Haffenden he was pissin’ in the wind.” Gurfein took a long drink of coffee.
“That ain’t the whole shootin’match.”
“There’s more?”
“As I left, he called his secretary in. There was no one else in the hall, so… “
“So, like a good little DA, you eavesdropped.”
“I took my time putting my coat on. Lyons calls the Warden at Great Meadows, fills him in and then tells him he’s gonna get a memo. He’s to keep track of everything and everybody, and send it all back to Lyons. The same day. They’re gonna set up a special courier system. Nobody’s to know about this except him and Childs.”
“Who’s Childs?”
“Warden at Great Meadows.”
“Why the hell does he want all that the same day? It’s all gonna be in the register, anyway?”
“Apparently he don’t trust the register.” Hogan finished his coffee, had a short think about what to do and came to a conclusion.
