The Case Of The Lumbee Millions (Woody Stone, Private Investigator, Series) Page 2
She sat down in her chair with a blank stare, in a trance, “What about Dupree?”
The phone rang before I could answer concerning our interloping house guest.
“Stone Investigations. How may I help you? One second, Mr. Logan, I’ll see if he’s in.” She covered the phone with her hand and held it down between her knees. “It’s Dan Logan, DA’s Office,” she said softly.
I sat the Percolator on the front of her desk and jerked a thumb towards my office. The light on Line Two was blinking by the time I got to my chair. I lit a Lucky with the Suribachi lighter and lowered my window a little. The night air hadn’t warmed up yet.
“Morning, Dan. How’s the crime fighting life treatin you?”
“Why does she do that?”
“Who?”
“Your girl.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend like it takes a while to determine if you’re there. You couldn’t swing a dead cat by the tail in your office without knocking all the occupants on their asses.”
‘Ouch,’ I thought. I said, “Gina’s very good at her job and her job’s mostly takin care of me.”
“I just called to check on your hillbilly ass, but it sounds like you’re in good hands and spirits.”
“If you’re talking about testifying at Gallo’s murder trial, I’ve had a craw-full.”
“I won’t pretend to know what a craw is, but I know the defense is stalling and dragging out their motion for a new trial hearing.”
“Damn right, Dan. I don’t mind testifying against the guilty prick, but that guinea lawyer has already brought up every time I ever jaywalked. Somebody’s feedin him things I’ve forgotten about. He’s gone so far back that next he’ll ask about the first time I touched a pair of panties.”
I heard Dan chuckle, “Don’t worry about it until he asks about the first time you wore a pair. Say, is Dixon watchin out for you?” Mark Dixon was the Assistant DA assigned as Prosecutor in the case.
“Yeah, Dixon’s sharp. That goombah shyster can’t push him around.”
“Well, look, bo, Dixon thinks Old Judge Bell is gonna set a date for that new trial hearing by next week. So, you doing okay?”
“I’m hittin on all eight, Lieutenant. It’s just that going to the Court House so often’s gettin to be like a regular job. You know how I feel about that.” He laughed again.
“Thanks for checkin up on me, bo,” I said and dropped the blower in the cradle. I decided not to tell Dan about me and the Stude being down-range the night before. It was a done deal, and mostly because it was just a fact of life in my current situation. That was the second time in as many months that some bent nose had squirted lead at me. I sure didn’t want ‘protective custody’. When I can’t front my own security, it’ll be time to cash in my chips. The dance will be over.
***
Dan Logan, First Lieutenant, USMC, medically retired, had been my Platoon Commander in Korea. He had just graduated law school in Philadelphia when the commie bastards swept south on the Korean Peninsula on June 25, 1950 I was enrolled in the two year Accounting Program at the University of Tennessee Junior College, Martin. I had read all about it in the Weakly County Press, a weekly newspaper printed in Martin, Tennessee.
‘Before dawn on Sunday morning, the monsoon rains were letting up. As the Republic of Korea was just waking up and farmers made their rounds collecting chamber pots for raw sewage to fertilize their crops, the long guns from the north spit fire and death from coast to coast. Two Divisions of bellowing mustard-shirted Godless commies drove south along every possible road and pass’.
Dan signed up, took a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps then volunteered for the Infantry. Dan was a very tough individual. He was a toe-to-toe fighter, but after the fifteenth round in Korea, you’d have to go to the scorecards to determine a winner. He’d gained a Silver Star Medal and one promotion, but lost his left leg. In 1954, he hired on with the New York County District Attorney’s Office. In 1955, when I decided to turn in my NYPD shield, he gave me a job as an investigator in his office. That had been a boost at a very low spot in my life. I’d take a bullet for the man.
***
I dropped the phone in the cradle, tilted my head back and breathed deep; the heady aroma of java brewing filled the room. Dragging a comb through my hair, I gave my face a quick rub to lose the pencil mark. I swallowed the last inch of Jack Daniel’s in my coffee mug, lit a fag and went to search out the source of that wonderful smell.
As I poured the black magic, Gina was looking at me in a… critical way, “Want I should get you a fried egg sandwich at the deli, boss?”
“No thanks, hon. I’ve got to drive up to the Bronx this morning to talk to the Braun widow. I’ll pick up something to eat on the way. Also, I want you to arrange a meeting back in Midtown Manhattan this afternoon, so I prob’ly won’t be back in here until tomorrow morning. If you get word on the Gallo new trial motion hearing, leave me a message at the Taft.”
Gina wrote on her yellow pad as I spoke. I didn’t have the afternoon meeting set up yet, but I wanted to talk to Leland Parris III, the Broadway actor, and frequent drinking bud of mine. He owned a suite on the twentieth floor of the Hotel Taft, same place I rented a room halfway up. He was familiar with the real estate scene, and I wanted to air out my new idea of buying the Wythe Avenue building. It was like the idea came to me in a dream.
Lee had been hitting the boards in the long-running production of “Toys in the Attic”, but I knew Mondays and Tuesdays were dark. So he might be out of the rack by noon on a Tuesday. “Wait a couple of hours, then call Lee Parris at the Taft. See if he can meet me at Dempsey’s about three o’clock, nothing important”
I went back to my private office and set the cup of joe on my desk. By craning my neck, I looked at the blood that had soaked through to my skivvy shirt - ‘shit’. I sat down, lit a fag and swiveled around to stare at my brick wall. The drive up to the West Bronx was to deliver good news to Anna Braun. She lived in a nice townhouse on Hull Avenue in the Norwood Neighborhood north of the Botanical Garden. Her policeman husband was murdered in the line of duty the previous year. The two perps had been caught and awaited trial; but she had another problem and the system was giving her the run-around.
CHAPTER THREE
Officer Coy Andrew Braun and Mike Sekach had worked in the same NYPD precinct and been close friends. Mike introduced me to Coy one time at Tank’s Bar in the Bronx. We enjoyed a few drinks and shared some Marine Corps stories.
***
In December, 1950, Coy Braun fought with Charlie Company, 5th Marine Regiment. They found themselves on Hill 1282 on the west side of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.
“It was the coldest night of my life - twenty below and the freezing wind made it worse,” Coy said. “Around 0400, everything lit up – flares drifted down on parachutes, bugles blared, explosions, whistles and everybody shouting. We knew the defecation had hit the ventilation.”
The 5th and 7th Marine Regiments that manned the ridge lines were attacked by a Chinese Communist force seven times greater in size.
“Battalion ordered Charlie Company up Hill 1282 to reinforce Easy Company of the 7th Regiment. Thousands of Chicoms had swarmed over them in a predawn attack, breaking through their lines. It was chaos. Caught off guard, a lot of Marines got shot or bayoneted before they could get out of their sleeping bags.”
The survivors and reinforcements reorganized, and beat back attack after attack on into the afternoon.
“It was a friggin nightmare,” Coy said. “Everywhere, the bodies of the wounded and dead were black lumps in the white snow. Between attacks, we dragged back the wounded. Corpsmen hustled around trying to save lives. The doc’s had to carry the morphine syrettes inside their mouths to keep them from freezing solid.”
As the day and the battle wore on, a dim reality set in with the Marines on Hill 1282.
“We knew we weren’t gettin off that hill. We would defend it or we’d die
. Everybody broke out their C-rats and ate all they could so the chinks wouldn’t get the food when they overran us.”
Through continued assault waves, Charlie Company did defend. With support from Marine fighter pilots strafing the Chinese with .50-caliber and rocket fire, they broke the back of the enemy. Over 400 Chinese lay dead around them on Hill 1282.
“Late that afternoon, our company was ordered off the hill and told to carry our dead with us. I carried a body on my right shoulder and my M-1 rifle strapped across the other.”
An artillery round exploded on the slope below Coy, and then another hit closer and left him stunned and bleeding face down in the frozen brush.
“The warmth spread over my back, so I knew it was blood. A corpsman came and shot me with morphine. He told me my dead Marine buddy saved my life.”
***
Sekach was my old friend. Mike had been there for me too many times to count in Korea and was like a brother to me. After we got home from the war, he and Dave Cournea caught a flight to Huntsville, Alabama when Virginia and I married in the summer of ‘53. Ginger was killed in a crosswalk in Memphis two months later, run down by a drunk trying to outrun the cops. It reduced me to a piss stain and I didn’t know it.
Sekach had grown up out on Long Island before joining the Marine Corps. A phone conversation with him convinced me to come to New York to attend the Police Academy. I used his address to establish residency. It took nine months of wearing the blue uniform and city tin before I split the blanket. But Mike took to the job like a tick on a fat hound - I knew he was inspired by his daddy, a Nassau County cop. Mike passed the Detective Test first time out the previous year. In April 1961, I drove up to the 33rd Precinct in North Manhattan when they pinned the gold shield on him.
With his promotion, Mike transferred to work Homicide in the 32nd Precinct; but he asked my help with some unfinished business at the 33rd. The murdered Coy Braun left behind a wife and three children, all under the age of six. Sekach and the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association were assisting the widow, Anna Braun. They were attempting to get the Police Pension Fund Board to award her line-of-duty death benefits of Coy’s full salary, tax free. The Pension Board had ruled she rated the taxable one-half pension because her husband had been out of his jurisdiction; his death was not in the line-of-duty.
Braun had been assigned to Traffic Division at Manhattan’s 33rd as a motor cop. One morning in early September, 1960, he parked his motorcycle at the west end of the bridge that arched over the Harlem River from the Bronx. He sat near Harlem River Drive observing rush hour congestion flowing west out of the Bronx.
At the morning start of shift brief, a BOLO went out to all divisions: be on the lookout for two white males who robbed the Carribe Pharmacy on Thayer street the previous afternoon. They shot and wounded the pharmacist. Two males, believed to be the same pair, later stole a blue 1956 Ford Thunderbird, New York License 4E-656, from the parking lot of the 900 Bar and Grill on Dyckman Avenue.
As Braun monitored the traffic movement, a young foot patrolman named Adams stood on the west side of Amsterdam Avenue. He was watching Braun and his Harley Davidson while he waited on the sidewalk; his patrol partner had ducked into a smoke shop. A blue Thunderbird fitting the description flew south on Amsterdam.
Adams looked around and decided to alert the motor cop as the best course of action. Throwing up a hand he ran through the light street traffic. He told Braun the drug store robbers in the stolen T-bird were speeding toward the bridge headed west for New Jersey. Braun mounted up and thundered off in that direction with his siren blaring.
The Pension Board made its decision based on the official report. That report contained the statement of the one witness, the Fort Lee, New Jersey resident at 2136 Linwood Avenue. Through a window, he had seen Patrolman Braun dismount his motorcycle in front of his address and to the rear of a blue Thunderbird. Walking forward, the officer drew his service revolver. Three shots were fired in rapid succession and the car sped away leaving the patrolman flat in the street. After calling the Fort Lee Police Department to make a quick report and request an ambulance, he ran out to the street. He found the policeman dead, without a pulse, still gripping his gun.
A sad ending for a dedicated police officer? Yes. But the Pension Board ruled that when Coy Braun took off to hunt down the suspects, he entered Bergen County, New Jersey at the halfway point on the George Washington Bridge. He left behind New York City and his authority to stop the vehicle in the city of Fort Lee. They determined him not to be in the line-of-duty when he died, and they denied the Braun widow’s petition for her husband’s full death benefit.
***
After several weeks’ worth of shoe leather and a little luck, I managed to locate one, Matthew Morrell, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, president of a chandelier manufacturing company. He had witnessed Braun standing, with gun drawn, beside a blue Thunderbird - on the New York side of the George Washington Bridge. He said he was driving toward New Jersey and had just gotten on the bridge, west bound. His attention was drawn to a policemen pointing his gun at the two occupants of a blue Thunderbird parked to the right on the bridge before the first tower. He said an NYPD motorcycle was parked behind the automobile.
I got Mr. Morrell together with the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association to double check my interpretation of his testimony. The implication was obvious; the crooks had broken contact with Braun during the traffic stop and fled into New Jersey. Braun had followed in ‘hot pursuit’. The action, and sad results, in Fort Lee, New Jersey were a direct extension of actions Officer Braun initiated in Manhattan in accordance with his authority.
***
The day prior, Fred Wilkerson of the PBA called me. He said the Police Pension Fund Board had reversed it’s ruling and was awarding Mrs. Braun full line-of-duty death benefits. I wanted to tell Anna Braun in person. I felt good about the latest development and knew she’d feel even better. She’d had a plenty rough time losing her husband then thinking she was going to lose the home they had shared.
I snubbed out my butt and pushed out of the chair. When I walked back out front to get another cup of java, I almost got caught staring at Gina. What a dish at any angle.
“Boss,” she popped her gum, “don’t you think you better get cleaned up before going to talk to civilized people? Shu-wa you don’t want any breakfast?”
All New Yorkers (they called themselves, ‘New Yawk-uhs’) sounded plenty strange to my ears used to an easy Memphis drawl. It was different with Gina. The spoken evidence of her upbringing sounded as alien to me as the voice of any other Brooklynite, but it was exotic and more pleasing coming from her perfect lips.
I winked, shook my head, and returned to my office to add a shot of Jack to my steaming cup. I pulled a clean shirt from my lower desk drawer and broke the paper laundry tape. Clean socks and skivvy shirts were stowed in the next drawer up. Skinning the plastic sack from the dry-cleaned suit Gina had hung behind my door, I pulled the pants off the hanger and transferred my belt.
I untied my shoelaces and pulled my tired dogs out of my wingtips. Balancing my stack of clean duds in one hand, my coffee mug in the other, I plodded back out to the small bathroom in my socks. Leaning on the sink with both hands, the mirror held my father’s face staring at me, and he needed a shave and some shuteye. I rubbed the Eagle, Globe and Anchor tattooed on my shoulder. It made me think of the men I’d been through Hell with - there were as many that didn’t make it back from Korea as did. What does it all mean?
‘Well, one thing it means, I need to get a shower installed in this friggin’ bathroom cause here I stand again, washing my armpits with a dirty skivvy shirt’.
***
A few weeks back, I had located Matthew Morrell by putting my ear to the citywide party line. It’s made up of the near invisible army of men who stock bars, mop floors, admit patrons and guard whorehouse doors. Most are washouts, rejects or hangers-on of the sweet science of boxing. No one pays any attention to
these men and nobody hesitates to talk around them. They’re part of the background, no more noticeable than the wallpaper. Mobbed up goons and elected politicians, alike, spill the beans in front of them without giving it a second thought.
Not that Mr. Morrell was trying to hide anything last September at the Flamingo Club, his favorite watering hole in South Hackensack, New Jersey. He was just bellyaching to some friends, telling how dangerous it was for the police to stop cars on the George Washington Bridge; and he shared what he had seen that very morning. It was downright unsafe for the public, like himself, who needed to cross that bridge several times a week.
The next morning’s paper bore news of a young NYPD motorcycle officer gunned down on a quiet street in Fort Lee. He read that the shooter was driving a stolen blue Ford Thunderbird. Unbelievable, he had seen them stopped on the George Washington on the previous morning, as he reminded his pals back at the Flamingo Club bar that very night.
For eight years, Louis Roundino had been doing the general maintenance and cleanup at the Flamingo. One in ten of the paying customers could have picked him out of a lineup, maybe. He had left his heart, a lot of blood and more than a few brain cells in the square circle over a lifetime.
Louie was sliding beer bottles into the back bar cooler when Morrell and company were loudly trying to put two and two together. The band of drinking brothers all appreciated the irony of a New York cop getting shot in Jersey. They were intrigued with the coincidence of what their pal, Morrell, had seen. They drank, debated, and argued. Finally, they were satisfied to agree on in-house celebrity status for their friend who had been associated with an incident that spawned so much media attention.
Nobody appreciated how much that information could mean to a widow and mother going through the most trying experience of her young life. And nobody knew that the fifth party to their conversation was the watery-eyed man with the much-broken nose bent over behind the bar. After that night, of course, it was no longer a topic of discussion for the four friends; after all, a cop had been killed.