“Yes. I'm downtown, thought we might have a bite together.” Although if Uncle Frank didn't reach for the tab first, I'd be in a fine spot.
“Who has time for lunch? I just ate a stale sandwich and a bottle of soda. My ulcer will kill me tonight. When will you be over?”
“About a half-hour, I have a few calls to make. Take it easy, Uncle, I just left another man whose blood has turned to coffee. See you soon.”
I hung up and dialed the Owens house. Susan's sharp voice asked, “Yes?”
“It isn't yes, it's no.”
“What? Who is this?”
“Dave Wintino.”
“I've been waiting for your call. What about the money, can we—”
“So far no. Actually I still don't know, so leave the dough alone. I've found the guy who handed out the money but things are still foggy.”
“Who's Francis Parker?”
“Your father, on a tax dodge. Remember, don't touch the cash and let me talk to your mother.”
“If Parker was Pa then the money should be ours.”
“Well see. I don't know yet that it isn't yours. Put your mother on,” I said, hoping I could finish the call without paying an extra nickel.
I heard Susan yell, “Ma, come to the phone,” her voice a hard bark. Then she told me, “One thing, if there's any doubt it's going to be in our favor. Not handing out four grand like—”
“Take it slow, we're giving it a try. That's what you wanted. Where's your mother?”
There was a moment of silence and then the old lady said, “This is Mrs. Owens.”
“Dave Wintino, Mrs. Owens. During March did Mr. Owens ever mention doing any outside work? I don't mean at the brokerage house, but detective work?”
“Why, I—” Jane Owens began as the operator cut in with, “Five cents for the next three minutes, please.”
“What did you say?” Mrs. Owens asked as I told her to hang on,. dug out a nickel and put it to work. “Did Ed ever mention doing any private detective work in March?”
“No.”
“When he talked about getting the little farm in California soon—about when was that?”
“About two months ago.”
“And he didn't say how he expected to get the money for the farm?”
“No. He was just talking big.”
“At any time since he retired did he ever talk about doing private detective work?”
“No. He couldn't have done any work like that, he was home till he left for the brokerage office and then he always came right home to work in his garden before it got dark.”
“Okay. Thanks. I'll keep in touch.” I hung up as she started to ask about the money. I got the manager of the brokerage house on the phone, another fifteen-cent call since I had to wait till he finished talking on another line. He said Owens had never missed a day since he'd worked there. Wales had been sick sometimes. “You know the kind of sickness, he drank too much of his favorite pain-killer,” the manager added.
“If you knew he was a lush, why did you hire him?”
“I never said he was a drunk. I wouldn't talk harshly about the departed or—”
“Which way do you think you were talking now about him?” I asked and hung up.
I stopped at a stand for an orange drink and a couple of doughnuts and food reminded me I was supposed to call my folks. I chewed the junk slowly, I usually can do my best thinking when I'm stuffing my mouth. But now I thought about Wren and came up with nothing.
Wren's yarn was crazy enough to be true. The only important angle was it gave a possible motive for killing Owens: Wren was taken for four grand and he paid off with a bullet. Not that he would do the actual killing, but he might hire a goon. But that didn't make sense, a big businessman doesn't go in for punk stuff. And that wouldn't explain Wales' murder. I had an uneasy feeling about things—I was playing it wrong by holding out on Reed and the boys downtown. Trouble was I was in over my head, playing a lone hand when I'd never even been on a murder before, much less a double one. If Reed ever found out I'd look like a kid playing amateur dick. Keep up the way I'm going and I'd end up minus my badge—unless I could come in with the whole answer.
I decided to give myself a deadline—by tonight I'd tell Reed about the four grand, Wales watching the garage for years, and Owens working for Wren. In the meantime I still had a couple of hours in which to dig. No sense wasting time with Uncle Frank. I got some change and phoned Rose. No answer. I was counting on her for more dope on Wren. I called Ma and she said, “Davie, I've been trying to reach you. I'm cooking, are you and Mary coming up for supper?”
“Well I... uh...”
“Davie, we haven't seen you in two weeks. Papa is so hurt, you mustn't ignore us.” Her voice was full of shrill pleading.
“Aw, Ma, I'm not ignoring you. I've been busy. Okay, we'll be up for dinner. Around six-thirty. And Ma, it's hot, don't make nothing heavy.”
“Don't you worry about my food, it will stick to your ribs. Don't bring me any candy or other dreck. You're not a guest, you're my son.”
“Okay, Ma, see you tonight.
The phone company was getting rich off me. I dialed Mary and she blew her top when I told her. “Dave, this is Friday night, I want to go out, see a movie, have a drink.”
“We'll see a movie tomorrow. You know how Ma and Pop are, and we haven't been up there for weeks.”
“Tomorrow? Sure, you have to be at your lousy job by midnight! Why didn't you go up and see your mother this afternoon?”
“I was busy and she wants us up in the evening when Pop's there. I'm on my way to see Uncle Frank now. Come on, Mary, you know this family stuff, I can't get out of it.”
“Dave, it's been a long week for me, I'm tired. I'm definitely not in the mood to eat one of those heavy meals, listen to your folks gab in two different languages or—”
“You mean language-wise you're bored because they don't talk that cocktail drip like the queers in your office?”
There was a heavy silence at the other end till Mary said calmly, “Dave, I'm not going to make a scene. I'll phone and beg off, tell them the truth: I'm tired. You go up and—”
“You bet I'm going!” I said and hung up.
Sore as a boil I tried Rose again and she was still out. I might as well see Uncle Frank and get some peace at home. I took a bus down to his sweatshop. All the time Wales and Owens and the money kept turning over in my mind, like those little steel balls you try to wiggle into holes in hand puzzles—only nothing fitted.
I'd heard a lot about Uncle Frank's joint but I'd never visited the place before. It actually was a beehive of activity, or something. And it really wasn't his place, he was a one-third partner. They had the basement and first floor of a large building in the heart of the garment district, and the whole place was a lacework of conveyer belts and endless tracks of rollers with packages moving in a steady stream on top of the rollers.
Uncle Frank looked as though he was made up for laughs— an old pair of dungarees straining to cover his medicine ball gut, a dirty loud plaid shirt, a dead cigar in his mouth like a whistle, and a pair of pince-nez glasses on his fat nose. He looked a little like Mary's father, something about him that still shouted hayseed.
Frank never stood still for a second; walking and running all over the place, taking packages from one conveyer belt to another, or throwing them down a chute, bawling out people, screaming orders. There seemed to be thousands of packages, from thin tie boxes to big crates. At the end of each roller, where the chutes started, there were scales and girls, mostly colored, perched beside the scales and writing down the weights and addresses as men and boys lifted the packages onto the scales, then tossed them down the chutes where they were stacked, or put on skids and pulled out to trucks.
Uncle Frank always was a jerky talker and as he showed me around he would break off a sentence with a nervous yell to somebody about, “Why are you shipping dresses today? It's Friday. All dress goods go express. Express, goddamn it!”
He asked me, “Well, how do you like it, Davie? Plenty of action, and this is the start of the slow season. Around November we're busy as crows at seeding time—packages stacked right to the ceilings. The way it should be, we pay rent for space up to and including the ceilings and then...” He stopped to grab a large carton marked “fragile—glass" off a roller and throw it on a pile across the room as he shouted at a kid who didn't look over sixteen, “Where's your eyes, Paddy? That was plainly marked 'air freight.' See that it gets to the last chute and be careful.”
He ran a hand over his big lantern jaw and whispered loudly to me, “The breakage these darn kids cause. I don't know, when I was coming up kids were... How do you like it, Davie lad? We go like this from eight in the morning up to ten or eleven at night.”
“Sure a lot of movement. What's it all about?” I asked, thinking it was odd about Wren coming across a retired cop in a bar just when he needed one.
“This is a very big operation,” Uncle Frank said, blowing up his chest as if making an after-dinner speech. “New York is the style center, the clothing center. Let us suppose you own a shop out in Dayton, Ohio. Well, you have to buy here, either directly or by mail, and you have to pay the shipping costs. Now say you buy a dress for two dollars and plan to retail it at three-fifty. The shipping—hey, you in the blue sweatshirt on the south roller, don't pile those boxes so high, they'll fall and jam the roller. What was I saying, Davie?”
“A dress for three-fifty,” I said, watching an old man neatly toss a flat dress box on top of a pile of boxes about ten feet high, tossing it like a basketball player sinking a foul shot. Did the four grand have anything to do with the Owens killing, or was it another blind alley? As a motive it wasn't so hot-why wait, six, seven weeks?
“Oh, yes, you buy the dress for two dollars. If you have it sent parcel post, insured, the postage will amount to, say... about seventy cents. This means you can't retail the dress for under four dollars. A dress weighs about three to four pounds, packed. Suppose you're buying fifty dresses, that's over forty dollars in postage alone. Are you following me?”
“Right behind you.” Had Wales and Owens been doing private work all along? That would account for the wad Wales had on him. But the private eye business wasn't that good... unless they were doing blackmail. Then why the crummy messenger jobs? A cover? And why wouldn't Mrs. Owens know? Or had she been lying all the time? No, then she would have kept quiet about the four grand.
“... And so you have all your orders delivered to us—the manufacturers deliver free within the city. We wait till you have a hundred pounds of freight and ship by hundred-pound lots, thus cutting your shipping costs in half, including the few cents per item for our service. Handling thousands of packages per day, we make a nice profit, although we carry a terrific overhead and have to... Tom, did you call West-side Motors for another truck? Well what are you waiting for? It's late. Come on, Davie, we'll go up to my office. We'll be able to hear ourselves think there.”
We climbed around and over wooden crates, walked through zigzag aisles of packages. I was watching my clothes while Uncle Frank was barking instructions at people as he walked, most of the people not even listening to him. We went up some stairs where a bevy of elderly women were working adding machines fast as typewriters, and into a battered office. Uncle Frank sat down behind his old desk and relit his cigar, mouthed a couple of pills as he said, “Always around now, when business is slow, my stomach acts up.”
“Is any business worth a nervous gut?” I asked, studying Uncle Frank. I was screwy. He'd never have anything to do with a murder. And neither would Wren, they were businessmen not goons.
“Ulcers, nervous stomach, piles, I've had them all. But I have an appointment in a few minutes, so let me tell you our proposition. I've talked this over with my partners and they agree you're the ideal lad for us.”
“I am? What makes me so ideal?”
“Davie, as you saw, we have a very democratic sort of hiring system here, and we're proud of it. We give colored women office jobs, use youngsters just out of school or going to night school as part-time workers. Or we help men out who put in a few hours in the evening to supplement their take-home pay. We even give handicapped people a break, hire deaf and dumb people. You would start in shipping, at the bottom. That would make things look good and also give you a chance to learn the business. With your Italian name nobody will ever suspect you are related to me. Starting pay will only be about thirty-five dollars a week, but within two months I guarantee you will be taking home fifty-five dollars every Friday night.”
“That still isn't any hell.”
Uncle Frank chewed on his cigar as he tried to smile. “Now, Davie lad, I know all about you policemen; you pay for your gun, for your bullets, money is taken out of every check for your pension, then there's the station house tax, and this and that bite. Mary told me over the phone that you were paid a few days ago and it's gone already. You can't expect to start at the top, or to get rich overnight.”
“I don't,” I said, wondering if Owens had, in his old age.
“You must look at this as a long-range deal. You saw how I work and I mean physical work—I'm working harder than when I was a youngster at haying time. I'm too old for this, and so are my partners. In time you'll be in charge of the day shift and that means a hundred dollars a week, perhaps a share in the concern. And there's extras to be had—trucking outfits hand out cash Christmas presents. Lad, you have to see this as an opportunity, not merely as a job.”
“I certainly appreciate your thinking of me,” I said, wondering why I was wasting precious time here, “but I don't know if I'm suited for this....”
“But you are!” Uncle Frank said, bending over the desk and whispering; his breath smelled like last week's food. “You speak Jewish and Italian. You see, we employ a good many Eyeries and Jews here and you would know what was going on all the time. Let's say, if there was any union talk. And although you don't look it, you're tough, an ex-fighter and a cop. Sometimes we have a little trouble—suppose the kids we hire are a little wild, or the old-timers turn out to be drinkers. You could keep them in line. And occasionally there is some theft. Not so much with our employees, although for minimum pay we can't expect the cream, but in this area you find winos, especially at night. They swipe packages if the doors are open, or while the kids are loading a truck.”
