TWO JACKS

by John Knoerle

JOHN KNOERLE was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1949. His family migrated to California in the early ‘60’s. John has an eclectic writing history. He started out as a stand up comic in LA, opening for the likes of Jay Leno and Robin Williams. He went on to write several screenplays, including Quiet Fire, which starred Karen Black and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs. He also wrote the stage play The He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, an LA Time’s Critic’s Choice. John also worked as a staff writer for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and as fiction editor of Mystery magazine. He moved to Chicago in 1996 with his wife Judie and began his quest to write the great American novel. His first book, “Crystal Meth Cowboys”, was published in 2003 by Blue Steel Press. His novel “The Violin Player” won the 2003 Mayhaven Publishing Fiction Contest and will be published in early 2004. He is currently at work on “Two Jacks”, a crime novel set in Cleveland in 1945.
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They’re all lined up like little dead soldiers. Overturned shot glasses on the bar. I’m going to have to pace myself. Each overturned glass is another free drink in waiting bought and paid for by my adoring public. I wasn’t a hero after World War II. I am now. Here’s how it happened.

      

Chapter 1

The day was Thursday, November 29th, 1945 in ‘the best location in the nation’. So said the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company billboards. T-bones were back. So was Reynolds Wrap and cooking oil and Friday fish fries and Sunday drives with a full tank of gas and a dame wearing a white cotton blouse with leg of mutton sleeves, a red cummerbund, a flared midcalf skirt and nylons. The war was over and Cleveland, Ohio, the smoke-belching colossus that smelted the ore and poured the heat and rolled the steel that won the peace, was feeling its oats.

My name is Hal Schroeder and I’m twenty-five years old. I walked from Mrs. Baugh’s rooming house to the Detroit-Superior Bridge and jumped on the rattler. The bridge has two levels, cars and trucks on top, streetcars below. I wore a pea coat over my armored car uniform, an empty boodle bag stuffed in the coat pocket. I looked out the window as we crossed the Cuyahoga River to downtown.

From a distance The Flats looked just like the Ruhr Valley after a B-24 raid, mountains of oil black smoke rent by stalks of torchy flame. I wiped fog from the streetcar window and looked closer. The long gray peak-roofed buildings along the riverbank were intact, ore trains steamed up slowly to their sidings, hoppers full to bursting. The oil black smoke poured from working stacks, the torchy flames from burn off pipes. This wasn’t oil black, flesh-smelling defeat I was looking at through the frosty glass. This was victory.

The rattler stopped at Public Square, Superior and Ontario. I got off and craned my neck at the Terminal Tower, the tallest building west of Manhattan and impressive as hell to a kid from Youngstown. The Society for Savings was a block away. It was impressive too. One of those Greco-Roman-Gothic-Renaissance jobs with granite pillars and arches and red sandstone turrets on the corners.

I checked my watch. Five minutes to go. I climbed up to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and hid my pea coat and my empty bag in the bronze sculpture of the Civil War cannoneers. The lake wind blew wicked cold as I crossed the street to the ten-story building in my spit and polished boots and gun belt, my cleaned and pressed uniform and my shiny gold Brinks Armored Security badge.

The bank interior was a showstopper. A thirty-foot ceiling with a stained glass skylight, murals of pioneers yoking oxen and raising barns, acres of white marble and miles of polished brass. It had the desired effect. I felt small and scared and insignificant but what else is new?

I walked right up to the banker’s gate like I had a right to be there. They didn’t buzz me in. I cleared my throat, loudly. A lower down signaled for a higher up. The higher up stood on the other side of the gate and said he didn’t know me.

"Pete’s out sick," I said. "I’m his replacement." I kept my mouth shut after that and let my shiny gold badge do the talking. The higher up consulted some papers. He consulted some more papers and had a whispered conversation. He buzzed me in through the banker’s gate. I collected two bags of banded bills in large denominations, signed a receipt for $18,750 and was escorted to the entrance by a bank guard.

I got in the revolving door ahead of the guard, pushed through and jammed a rubber doorstop into the side. The bank guard said, "Hey!" I ran down the block, across the street, and up the granite steps. I dumped the sacks of cash into the boodle bag and pulled on my pea coat. The armored car pulled up to the bank right on schedule. The bank guard bellowed at them from his glass cage. I ran down the steps on the other side of the Soldiers and Sailors monument. A big black sedan was waiting on Superior. I got in.

*

That night I put on coat and tie and hailed a cab. The cabbie told me all about the daring daylight heist at the Society for Savings. It was the headline story in the late edition of The Press. We drove west to Lorain and Rocky River Road. They call it Kamm’s Korners. I got out at the Green Light Tavern, paid the fare and added a dollar tip. What the hell, I was flush.

The Green Light looked like your standard issue beer and a bump dive. Sawdust on the floor, a jar of pickled pig’s feet behind the bar, Rams’ schedule taped to the wall. A spittoon. Only it wasn’t. I ordered a Carling’s Black Label from the barkeep. It tasted like tap water. Two years in Germany will do that to you. I paid the barkeep and said "Double feature." He picked up the quarters and inclined his head.

The steel door was down a narrow hall, past the bathrooms, past the coin-operated phone. It was open, held open by a gigantic man with a neatly trimmed white beard. He was Irish, had to be. He glowered down at me from a great height. "And you are?"

"Harold Schroeder, of the Gates Mills Schroeders," I said. "Here to try my hand at a game of chance."

The giant’s eyes narrowed.

"Perhaps a remuneration is customary," I said brightly, extending a sawbuck. The great green eyes and the steel door opened wide.

I had never been inside a gambling parlor before but I’d seen pictures. Monte Carlo it was not. No icy blondes with upswept hair, no bored silver-haired gents playing baccarat. Just a bunch of working stiffs gnawing on green cigars and counting their chips at the table. I sat in on a game of seven card stud and ordered a rye rocks from a waitress in fishnet hose. I lost two hands and ordered another round. I did it again. This went on for quite a while. Along about the fourth watered down drink I threw down my cards, stood up and accused the dealer of using marked cards or dealing off the bottom, I don’t remember which. The white-bearded giant scooped me up like a rag doll and headed for the back door.

"I’m Harold Schroeder, of the Gates Mills Schroeders."

"Yeah, you said."

"And you are?"

The white-bearded giant kicked open the back door and tossed me into the alley. "Kelley" he grunted as he pulled the door shut.

I dusted myself off and walked around the front entrance. I parked myself at the bar once again and asked the barkeep if he had a bottle that wasn’t half Lake Erie bilge water. He had to stand on tiptoe to nab a dusty fifth of Lighthouse Whisky, aged six years. I downed a shot, tipped him a deuce and said, "Tell Kelley that Harold Schroeder is here to kick his ass."

Kelley wasn’t long in coming. He looked scary as hell with his neck veins bulging and those green eyes opened wide as they would go. I had a moment’s panic. But I got over it.

"You got a private room where we can do this?" I said to Kelley. "I don’t want to embarrass you in front of the patrons."

Kelley grabbed me by the coat collar and dragged me up a flight of stairs, to an empty lounge outside a private office. I knew it was a private office because it had a plaque on the door that said so. The door was closed but light shone underneath it. That was good.

Kelley moved some tables to make room. I did some deep knee bends. Just kidding. I did take some deep breaths to get my heart quiet. Kelley rubbed his hands together and smiled. I assumed the position, arms relaxed, feet at ten and two. "You sure you’re up to this, old man?"

He was on me in two strides. I had hoped to demonstrate my expertise at the double sleeve throw, or the complex reverse elbow arm bar. But it was simpler just to dart aside and trip him with my foot.

He was a spry old gent, give him that. He was up and turned around in a blink, his face a fiery red. "You’re not gonna have a heart attack, are you?" I said. "I wouldn’t want that."

Kelley flew at me, his fists high. I couldn’t leverage his arm into a deft cross arm wristlock because I couldn’t reach that high. So I snapped kicked his knee and spun to my right. He stumbled. I could have put him down with a rabbit punch just above the occipital bulge but that wasn’t the point of this exercise. And I was starting to feel sorry for him.

Kelley got up and gathered himself. He advanced slowly, arms outstretched, grinning like a chimp. I no longer felt sorry for him. There is one principle central to both espionage and jiu jitsu. Avoid the head on collision of forces. My army jiu jitsu instructor had not prepared me to counter a deliberate 280 lb. opponent willing to absorb a thumb to the eye and a knee to the groin in order to wrap me in a monstrous bear hug and squeeze my internal organs out through my windpipe. I backed up a step, grabbed a chair and yelled. I smashed the chair against the floor and yelled some more.

The door to the private office opened. The man who stood in the doorway said, "What?!" Kelley stopped in his tracks.

The man was half Kelley’s size but looked twice as menacing. Everything about him sloped downward, the shelf of brow, the hooked nose, the frowning mouth and the chin like an icebreaker’s prow. He looked me up and down with his left eye. His right eye paid no attention. "What the hell is this?"

I beat Kelley to the punch. "Your bouncer was giving me a lesson in etiquette. I demanded to see you without an appointment."

Kelley didn’t say different. The man said, "Who the motherfuckin’ hell are you and about what?"

"My name is Hal Schroeder and it’s about a #10 envelope in my coat pocket," I said pleasantly. "And watch your mouth, you’re in polite company."

The man’s left eye blinked. Once. His expression didn’t change. It didn’t have to. The guy was born scowling. "Fuck you," he said in a measured voice. "Fuck you, fuck your mother, your father and the horse you rode in on. Kelley, throw him down the stairs." He turned back to his private office.

I whipped out the heavy envelope from my coat pocket and threw it as hard as I could. Bob Feller would have been well pleased. It hit the one-eyed thug square between the shoulder blades. He stopped. When he turned around he had a nickel-plated heater in his mitt. He wanted to shoot me, he wanted to shoot me so bad he could taste it but the contents of the #10 envelope stopped him. Two stacks of crisp, bank-banded hundred dollar bills, scattered on the floor.

I bided my time and waited for him to ask the question.

"What’s this?"

"Call it a letter of introduction."

"To who?"

"To whom," I said. The man did not return my smile. "The Schooler," I said. "And yes, it’s from where you think it is and, no, it’s not a set-up."

The man nodded for Kelley to cover the stairs and pointed his nickel-plated in my direction. I sighed. "You’re not going to use that thing. Not here. Now get on the horn and arrange a meet. You can use that thing later if the Schooler doesn’t bite."

The man trained his gat on my face and almost smiled. "Count on it."

*

My hands were bound with electrical tape. I was patted down and blindfolded and told to lie down in the back seat of a black Buick. Two car doors slammed.

We drove a long way, fast but legal. No horns sounded, no one in the front seat said a word. After about twenty minutes the hum of the tires got thin and I felt a jolt of cold air. We were crossing a bridge, headed east. Downtown.

We stopped a short time later. I was pulled from the back seat and stood up. The place smelled of creosote and old smoke. I was half-walked, half-carried for about fifty paces. The floor was slippery with oil and crunchy with metal shavings. Our footsteps echoed. We stopped and waited. We waited some more. We waited some more after that.

"This must be a new form of interrogation," I said finally. "Third degree boredom." Somebody slugged me in the stomach. I bent over and puked watered whisky all over my shiny black brogues. When I straightened up a short man pulled off my blindfold and shined a flashlight in my eyes.

"Who are you and what do you want?" His voice was soft, fatherly.

I told him my name and said I wanted to talk to the Schooler. "Is that you?"

"Please continue," said the short man.

"All right, I’ll do that. Just as soon as they untape my wrists. I use a lot of hand gestures when I speak."

I braced for another haymaker to the breadbasket. But the man with the flashlight chuckled and gave the order. This was good, this was encouraging. If this guy was indeed the Schooler then I might still be drawing breath after I finished saying what I planned to say.

I massaged my wrists and took my time doing it. "I robbed the Society for Savings this afternoon," I said. "$18,000 in unmarked bills. Not bad for a day’s work but not good enough. I’ve got completely worked out heist plans in the six figures, all right here in Cleveland. But they’re too big for one man. I’ll need a crew."

The echoey room got quiet. I couldn’t see diddly with that electric torch scorching my eyeballs so I shut my lids and enjoyed the silence. They were on my turf now.

"How did you pull off that job this afternoon?" said the short, soft-voiced man.

"I won’t answer that question till I can see who I’m talking to."

The flashlight clicked off. A portly middle-aged gent took shape once the starbursts faded. I’d seen his picture. The Schooler.

"I didn’t do that job by myself," I said. "I had an accomplice."

"Who?"

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation."

 

Chapter 2

It was a clambake that decided me. A Saturday afternoon clambake in Jerry Lemowski’s backyard in Youngstown. All my neighborhood pals were there, back from Corregidor and Anzio and the Aleutian Islands, the ink barely dry on the articles of surrender and most of them already hitched and half their wives in maternity smocks, working at the mill or the hardware store, living in trailers and crackerbox apartments. Jerry and his wife lived in the basement of his parents’ bungalow and considered themselves fortunate.

My neighborhood pals are good guys, salt of the earth, shirt off their back. But they’d been reading too many of their own press clippings. They think they’re heroes, still wearing their dress blues and oakleaf clusters to church on Sunday. They swapped their war stories and I listened. They gave me a hard time. ‘Hal was busy sipping champagne with some Mata Hari in a French café.’ Har har hardee har har.

I was an undercover wireless agent parachuted behind enemy lines to pose as a Kraut soldier and provide intelligence on troop movements and potential bomb targets. I was recruited because I was the grandson of German immigrants and spoke Deutsch. That much they knew. I didn’t fill my pals in on the gory details because I am prohibited by the Office of Strategic Services from doing so. And I didn’t feel like it.

I killed hundreds by remote control. I shot a two man jerry machine gun crew in the back. I cut the throat of a young Kraut infantryman who just wanted to reminisce about Stuttgart, my ‘hometown’, and got suspicious when I didn’t know the name of the star goalie on the soccer team. I may have even shot a GI or two when whatever German platoon I fell in with was ambushed. I aimed elsewhere, of course, but you never know.

I’m no hero. Neither were my pals. The real heroes, the ones who did what they didn’t have to do, they’re all dead. Like Alfred and Frieda. They weren’t awarded any medals and citations. Nobody knows what they did except me. And I ain’t talking.

The clambake got louder as night fell. Jerry sounded just like his old man when anyone stole a sniff of the five-gallon pot of steaming clams, chicken, red onions, potatoes and corn on the cob. "Close the lid! Close the lid, you’ll lose the flavor!" Somewhere along in there I decided. I told Jerry I had taken a job in Cleveland, a job in a bank.

"Cleveland? Didn’t Jeannie move up there?"

Jeannie was my high school sweetheart. We were plain crazy about one another. We would have been just two more dopey newlyweds at the clambake if Jeannie hadn’t eloped while I was overseas.

"I don’t know and I don’t care," is what I said to Jerry.

 

        Chapter 3

The FBI sent a registered letter to my address in Youngstown. It contained a roundtrip train ticket to Cleveland and a one-paragraph letter that invited me to a meeting, 2 November, 14:00 hours sharp, to discuss ‘a matter of mutual interest’. It was signed by Chester Halladay, Special Agent in Charge. It was not the sort of letter I got every day. Especially not from the FBI. The FBI and the OSS hated each other.

J. Edgar Hoover lobbied FDR to put the FBI in charge of overseas espionage during the war. FDR tapped William Donovan to head the Office of Strategic Services instead. And Wild Bill did a passable job, if victory counts for anything. But J. Edgar prevailed after the war. Franklin Roosevelt and William Donovan were fancy-talking bluebloods. Harry Truman and J. Edgar Hoover were plainspoken commoners. The OSS was disbanded.

Mind you I don’t give a rat’s patootie about the OSS. I signed on for a nine-month stint and was still humping my four-pound wireless set, dodging Yank P-51’s and Russian shock troops, two years later. I saw the pictures of the Times Square celebration in LIFE when I got home. Looked like quite a brannigan. But it couldn’t hold a candle to the joy and rapture and pure dumb speechless relief of my particular VE Day shindig. Picture it, me and three fuzzy-cheeked Kraut draftees passing around muddy bottles of sauterne in a bombed out bunker, a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’, our hale companions in those last few days, two scrawny wood rats we nicknamed Hans und Fritz, scurrying about excitedly, chasing their tails.

So I didn’t do as any self-respecting veteran of the Oh-So-Secret should have done. I didn’t tear those train tickets in two. I boarded the 11:45 to Cleveland the next day.

The Cleveland District Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is located on the 9th floor of the Standard Building, corner of Ontario and St. Clair. The elevator operator was an old man with a big Adam’s apple. I asked him what the ‘Standard’ stood for.

"Standard Trust, first labor bank in the country."

"I didn’t see a bank downstairs."

"Went bust. President did eight years for crooked loans."

"Was it the FBI who nabbed him?"

The elevator operator snorted and spat tobacco juice into a brass spittoon. He goosed the car to a stop at floor #9.

I announced my name at the front desk and was swept through a zigzag of corridors on a tide of smiles and bent back doors until I came to rest in a dimpled leather club chair across from the Special Agent in Charge. Chester Halladay stood up and gave me a smile as phony as his name. I shook his soft plump hand. I thought all G-men were jut-jawed tough guys who ate nails and pissed rust but Chester Halladay, with his fleshy jowls and wavy hair, looked more like a floor walker at Higbee’s. All he needed was a pink carnation in his buttonhole.

"How was your journey?" said Halladay when we had settled back in our chairs. "The trains run on time?"

I smiled and nodded. Nothing like a little Nazi humor to break the ice. A file folder sat open on Halladay’s desk. I recognized the upside down picture. Yours truly. Halladay leaned back in his spring-loaded chair and launched himself to his feet. He walked over to the credenza on the far wall, turned around and walked back.

"Organized crime in the greater Cleveland area prospered while you were busy making the world safe for democracy, Mr. Schroeder. War rationing opened up a lucrative black market and they took full advantage, full advantage. But now, they’re hurting."

Halladay walked over to the window above St. Clair Avenue, turned around and walked back. A pink carnation was all he needed.

"The mob doesn’t do well in times of freedom and prosperity. Prohibition gave them bootlegging, the depression gave them loan sharking, war rations gave them the black market. But now, they’re hurting."

Halladay leaned over and flattened his lunch hooks on the desk blotter which skidded forward, dumping an empty ceramic ashtray on the carpet. I bent down and picked it up. It bore the official seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"Thank you," said the Special Agent. "They, the mob, can’t make ends meet as racketeers these days. So they’ve reverted to form, to what they truly are - gangsters." He consulted a paper on his desk. "They’ve robbed four banks in as many weeks, though they didn’t make off with much." Halladay fixed me with a meaningful look. "That’s where you come in. We want you, Mr. Schroeder, to help them along."

This got my attention. I sat up straight in my dimpled chair. The phone rang. Halladay answered, cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Agent Schram will give you the particulars," dismissing me.

I was whisked away to an adjoining office. Agent Richard Schram was more like it. Ropey and crew cut as a drill instructor. A crooked smile but straight teeth. The handshake we exchanged was just this side of Indian wrestling. The crooked smile faded. Schram x-rayed me with a look. I got the feeling whatever cockamamie scheme I’d been summoned here for was Chester Halladay’s idea, not Richard Schram’s.

"War hero are you?" said Schram through clenched teeth. Teeth, hell. The guy had clenched hair.

"No, sir, I’m not a war hero."

"No?"

"No, sir."

"What then?"

"I was an agent for the OSS, sir. A spy."

"A spy!"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, of course. That makes you a perfect fit."

"A perfect fit for what? Sir."

Agent Schram’s eyes got sly. "You know."

"Just what the Special Agent told me, sir."

"Which was?"

"That the mob was doing bank heists and he wanted me to help them along."

"And what did you say to that?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing?"

"No, sir. Agent Halladay took a phone call before I could reply."

Agent Scram cranked up another crooked smile and held it for several seconds. I must have passed some kind of test. In any event the swollen vein in the middle of Schram’s forehead stopped pounding four beats to the bar and we got down to cases.

"We know who pulled those bank jobs," said Schram. "The Fulton Road mob. They’ve been acting up lately."

"If you know they did it why don’t you arrest them? Sir."

Agent Schram ground his teeth. "You are asking the wrong man that question."

"Yes, sir."

"The plan, the concept is to insert pre-arranged heist plans, use them to ladder up the chain of command and bring down the mysterious Mr. Big."

"Mr. Big?"

"Man’s a phantom, that’s the best we can do. We don’t have a name, an address, a next of kin, or a date of birth. Nothing. Not even a photograph."

"Then, uh, how do you know he really exists?"

"He exists. He’s been running the Fulton Road mob for ten years."

Agent Schram’s watery blue gaze turned inward. I kept my hands in my lap and my thoughts to myself. Someone in the Cleveland District office of the FBI would eventually get around to telling me why I was here. Wouldn’t they?

A fire engine honked and wailed its way down Ontario Street. The sweep second hand on the electric wall clock rounded third and headed for home. The potted philodendron on the windowsill sprouted several flowering tendrils.

"Sir…"

"So what have you decided?" said Agent Schram, snapping to.

"About what?"

"About signing on to become an undercover mob informant! I thought you were briefed?"

"No, sir."

"No, you’re not interested?"

"No, I wasn’t briefed. Sir. But I am interested."

I don’t know why I said that so quickly. I hated being a spy. But I saw a faint glimmer of opportunity glimmering way off on the far horizon.

Being stranded behind enemy lines for two years opened my eyes. It was a hard way to go but it opened my eyes. I didn’t get to buddy up with the other GIs like my pals in Youngstown. I operated solo. Could be the OSS did me a favor. Most Joes saw little more than the inside of a foxhole. I got to roam around and see the big picture. Good guys? Bad guys? Once the shitstorm starts there’s little difference. A five hundred pound grass cutter doesn’t care who it rips apart. The only solution is to get away, far away from the chest-beaters and the speechifiers before they find a way to start it all up again. Preferably to someplace warm.

So I was interested. Still, I couldn’t resist tweaking the FBI. "Why not get one of your own boys to do this job?" I asked Agent Schram. "Too dangerous?"

"Don’t be ridiculous."

"I’ll try," I said. "I’m just wondering why you’d want a broken down old spy from the Oh So Secret."

Agent Schram breathed deeply though his nostrils. His chin quivered. He started to speak, cleared his throat and started again. "Because your training and experience," he said in a low voice, biting off the words, "your training and experience in the OSS make you uniquely qualified for this mission."

I smiled and thanked him. I said he would have my decision in 48 hours.

 Copyright© 2004 John Knoerle

***