Cold Cash

By Gaylord Dold

When a young unmarried mom finds her baby kidnapped, Roberts uncovers a dangerous illegal adoption ring run by one of Wichita’s notorious gang figures.

Gaylord Dold is the author of fifteen works of fiction including the highly acclaimed private detective series featuring Mitch Roberts, a well as numerous contemporary crime thrillers. Many of his novels have been singled out for awards and praise by a number of critics and writer’s organizations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gaylord Dold
• Release date: Jun 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310113321

Gaylord Dold

Gaylord Dold is the author of fifteen works of fiction including the highly acclaimed private detective series featuring Mitch Roberts, a well as numerous contemporary crime thrillers. Many of his novels have been singled out for awards and praise by a number of critics and writer’s organizations. As one of the founders of Watermark Press, Dold edited and published a number of distinguished literary works, including the novel Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien, which was made into a movie starring Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue. Dold lives on the prairie of southern Kansas.

Book preview

COLD CASH

Gaylord Dold

Premier Digital Publishing - Los Angeles

Fiction by Gaylord Dold

Crime Novels

The Nickel Jolt

Same Old Sun, Same Old Moon

The Swarming Stage

Storm 33 (Originally titled, The Last Man in Berlin)

Six White Horses

The Devil to Pay

Schedule Two

Bay of Sorrows

The Mitch Roberts Series

The Wichita Mysteries

Samedi’s Knapsack

The World Beat

Rude Boys

A Penny for the Old Guy

Disheveled City

Muscle and Blood

Bonepile

Cold Cash

Snake Eyes

Hot Summer, Cold Murder

Copyright © 1987 Gaylord Dold

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

ISBN - 0-8041-0155-8

eISBN: 978-1-938582-77-6

Smashwords Edition

Published by Premier Digital Publishing

www.PremierDigitalPublishing.com

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-90999

I knew how it would be at Eddie's Bar. George would wear his gray suit and black shirt. He would have on his shiny, dangerous black shoes with leather tassles. His meaty fingers would be clean and perfectly manicured and very strong, and he would sit hunched over the bar sipping beer, neon bleeding into the sharp jaw, smoothing itself along the boneless features of his forehead. His eye would be the steel color of the flank of a shark, and his eye would glide silently as if underwater. He would ask me what I thought I was doing. I would have no answer.

For my dear friends Roger and Barbara Kenney, and for Rod Eaton and Gary Christian, who loaned me their lives.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Rainmaker

About the Author

ONE

From my perch halfway up the briar-choked cliffs I looked back to the beach and the sea. A sodden sky drained into a choked confusion of ships and men, and in the folds of black smoke drifting seaward a line of 88s thumped menacingly along the beach, hurling sand and flame in its wake. Machine gun fire popped. I cradled the head of my buddy Smitty and concentrated on the cool, blue hole in his forehead, then on the blood and pus that oozed from the hole. I extended my hand to caress the wound, and my hand floated down an inky corridor full of wheelchairs and portraits. Somewhere in that undefinable space a telephone rang, and I woke up.

I levered myself from bed and sat inside a gray March day fumbling for cigarettes and consciousness. Black shadows hung in my three rooms like portraits. Outside, a cold rain clattered through the elms like machine gun fire. One tattered awning thumped in the wind. I'd dreamed Omaha Beach for ten years, and the dream had become as much a part of me as private detection and baseball. I shoved aside an ashtray and a copy of Tal's chess games and answered the phone.

Hello, I managed. My voice clunked like a broken-bat grounder to first.

Is this Mitch Roberts? The detective? A rusty nail embedded itself in my ear. At the end of the rusty nail was a hammer, and at the end of the hammer was some dame being drop-kicked to Krakatoa. The scratchy noise of morning television came from the receiver.

What time is it? I offered.

I beg your pardon? said the other voice. One-two-three-four-five. Syllables sudden as lashes from a cat-o'-nine-tails.

I said, what time is it?

It's after noon. Is this Mitch Roberts?

I dangled my feet into a pool of winter. My three rooms were one-half of an old Victorian on Sycamore Street, across from a minor league ballpark. There were enough objects in the three rooms to sustain a sort of life: one great room with a brass bed and olive drab blankets, gray overstuffed chair, brass reading lamp, bookshelves, footlockers, and fishing gear; a kitchen set off by oak panels and stained glass; a dining alcove, antique table, and bay window, shelves crammed with dead cactus and chess books. A portrait of Carl Schlechter, the chess champ, stared across the room at Hopper's Early Sunday Morning.

I got a cigarette lit and inhaled.

Smoke snorkeled into my lungs. The lungs were astonished and began to breathe.

I'm sorry, ma'am, I said. I'm Mitch Roberts.

‘'I'm sorry, too. Sign on your door said all day Saturday."

All day starts around noon, I wisecracked.

‘'Are you going there? Our granddaughter's been taken."

I sat up straight. What do you mean, ‘taken'? Kidnapped?

Well.

Have you tried the police?

They won't do any good. It's a family matter. Well, I thought, at least we agree. Cops are great after the fact. Lawyers do nothing but take a cut off the top of trouble.

Get some lunch, and I'll be down as soon as I can pull myself together.

‘'We'll be there.’’ The voice hung up, taking with it the nail and the hammer and the television noise.

A hot shower kicked on the Briggs and Stratton in my chest. I'd been a detective for eight years, but I was beginning to feel like an etching submerged in mild acid: strong, but fading slowly. I dressed and sipped coffee and hurried, going into the wind and rain of early March.

Lincoln Street was the color of sweaty beef liver, and as I drove the Fairlane through the gathering gloom of spitting snow and sleet and felt the wind tug and tear at the cloth top of the aging car, I felt hungry and ready. I had a small hangover that would have kept King Kong moaning until eleven, and the soggy front seat stuck to the back of my cords like a leech. At the corner of Broadway and Lincoln I hit my first red light and sat smoking a cigarette, drawing the smoke into my lungs and puffing it out in a gray, wafting cloud that hovered against the windshield and gradually disappeared, leaving me with a perfect view of Wichita in late winter.

While I waited for the light, I peered through the frozen clam juice rain and down a muddy alley that ran behind a row of small businesses, disheveled single houses, dry cleaners, and beauty shops. The alley slumbered under a cover of deep gray mud, blue slush, and dirt. Piles of brush, discarded TV sets, oily transmissions, and layers of rusted pipe made a counterpoint to tipped garbage cans. The houses on one side were all dirty white, single story, and square, the backyards of mud and fallow vegetable gardens and broken birdbaths surrounded by ugly wire fence. In the backyard nearest Lincoln Street a dingy mongrel on a tether held his paws up to the wire fence and barked at nothing in particular.

Wichita, without its layer of elm leaves, lilac blooms, swaying mimosa, and yellow forsythia, without its Easter shawl of pink and white spirea and the drifting scent of honeysuckle, lay naked and abused and gray. It was like living inside an oyster, and looking up that alley was like stumbling into the bedroom at a party, looking for your coat, and surprising the host's wife and his best friend in a fiendish embrace. Nobody looks any good that way, and it's damn embarassing. Then the light turned green, and I drove through slushy Lincoln Street heading for my office.

I pulled the car into the gravel parking lot that fronted a row of tiny offices. I bounced through chuck holes full of ice and mud and stopped in front of Jake's barbershop. Jake stood inside an explosion of incandescent white light, cutting the wild red hair of a kid perched on a piece of pasteboard balanced between the arms of Jake's old black leather barber's chair. The kid squawked and squirmed, and Jake snipped hair and jawboned with a crippled geezer in overalls while the kid's old man dried tears and did a jig to amuse and distract his son. When I turned off the headlights, Jake looked up and saluted with his clippers and buzzed into a crooked red cowlick. Jake burred the cowlick down half an inch, then broke into a malignant, demented grin, swept the hairy white sheet from the kid's shoulders, and handed him a wad of bubble gum. The kid stopped crying, got down from the pasteboard perch, and stood between his father's legs while two grease monkeys in stained worksuits from a local car dealer escorted the old crippled geezer to the barber's chair for his weekly shave.

I rolled the window down on the car and flipped the butt of my dead smoke into a mud puddle, then got out and walked to the door of the barbershop and leaned beside the whirling red-and-white barber pole. The kid and his father came out the door, the kid bouncing on his old man's shoulders and chewing a mound of sweet, pink gum. His hair looked like a haystack the cows got into, and he wore a blue-and-red Wichita Braves warm-up jacket. My own father was dead before I said my first word, and this was a Saturday ritual I had missed. Just for a second it made me feel bad and wonder what kind of father I might be. Somewhere in my past there had been the thought of it, and the woman to go along, but it was all a memory now.

A bell over the door rang when I went inside the shop. Ten nicks for a dollar and a quarter, Jake said. The barbershop laughed in unison.

How about a special? I asked. Since we're just past Lincoln's birthday.

And what might that be? Jake asked.

"After the haircut I get a set of free tickets to the theater and a derringer ball in the back of the head. Deal?'’

‘'With a haircut like I give, who needs the derringer ball?" Jake said. The old geezer in the barber's chair guffawed, then quieted when Jake held the gleaming straight razor Hush against his cheek. The barbershop was full, and it was Saturday, and in the background KFH played Vaughn Monroe.

Say, Jake, how long has that old black Chevy been parked in front of my office?

Trouble?'’ Jake asked. He lathered the geezer's rough silver stubble. Then he reached in a hot, antiseptic cabinet and poked his hand into a rack of steaming, white towels. He got out a towel and covered the geezer's neck. I wondered about the black Chevy. Jake wiped his nose with the back of his white sleeve. The old dame inside there has a face like a C-clamp."

Fine, but how long?

Oh, said Jake. Thirty minutes.

What's the chance of a shave this afternoon?

Good, said Jake. What's it about?

‘'I'll let you know," I said as I walked out the door into the sleety downpour.

I ambled through the slush to the glass door of MITCH ROBERTS INVESTIGATIONS and stood staring at myself reflected back through the o of ROBERTS. My old gray felt hat with the black band covered a receding forehead and fading, ash-brown hair. Two furrows above, blond eyebrows tunneled east and west like back roads out of Stromsburg, Nebraska. I wore brown ribbed corduroys, a green-and-pearl-checked Pendleton shirt, and a light brown wool sport coat, complete with patches at the elbows. Drops of cold rain tumbled from the brim of my hat. I wore clean underwear. My tan oxfords were buffed and polished. For a time I stood in a reverie, and when I looked up and through the O in ROBERTS, I saw the woman with the C-clamp face staring in reflection through my own reflection. I pushed open the door and went into the dark and the damp.

Are you Mitch Roberts? Her voice creaked like a door to the haunted house at some magical amusement park. I turned and doffed my felt hat and sat down behind the old oak desk that housed half a dozen skip-chase files, a carton of cigarettes, and two twenty-dollar bills folded and taped to the bottom file drawer.

Please sit down, I told her politely. We looked each other up and down like Dempsey and Tunney in the center of the ring. She wore a black polka-dot dress that fell around her ankles and tickled black nursing home shoes. Her gray winter coat frayed at the cuff, and a cheap, glittery rhinestone butterfly flapped on her lapel. Her hair was stiff and flat, and her broad nose stuck out below mean black eyes. The rain plocked at the windows outside.

You're late, she croaked. "I'm Maud Cobb.’’

Mitch Roberts.

Yes, and you're late. This is our second time here!

"I'm truly sorry, ma'am. I had a big night last night, and I didn't get home from work until very late. In my profession you can't always pick your hours, and you certainly can't pick the hours of the people you tail. I've always loved sleeping on Saturday, and I picked this particular Saturday over all others because the weather was good for sleeping. You have my apologies. If you've got trouble, I'd certainly like to hear about it.’’ I hadn't been lectured like this since second grade when I'd broken four windows fouling off pitches by Skinny Wade.

My speech seemed to float out to sea. Then through the door slid a small man in tweed pants and a blue work shirt with Robert in script over his heart. The small man went about five-six and looked like a ferret.

I locked the car, Mother, he said.

Sit down, the old woman said. The small man sat down. He stared at his work shoes.

The old dame looked at me. My husband, Robert, she said. He works Saturday morning, and that's why we couldn't be here until noon. Of course, it's well after that now.

Madam, I sincerely and most honestly apologize for the inconvenience I have caused you and your husband. She frowned.

‘'What do you charge? We don't have a lot.’’

‘'It depends on the job. Not more than twenty-five dollars a day, and expenses. I work on Saturday and Sunday and evenings. I don't lie to clients, and I don't pad expenses. You get what you pay for, which is more than I can say for most."

Twenty-five, she murmured. That's a lot.

Suppose you tell me what's on your mind. Then we can talk money if you like.

It's about our daughter, Bonnie, she said. It is hard to talk about. Very hard. She isn't what we wanted her to be, and she hasn't behaved very well. It's not our fault. Not one bit. We did everything we could, but she isn't any good. We did everything the Lord commanded, but she isn't what she should be. The small guy fidgeted.

Now, Mother, he said.

You want me to talk to the Lord about your daughter? I joked.

You are a very sharp young man, Maud said stonily.

I'm sorry, Mrs. Cobb. Sometimes the use of humor is called for to loosen social situations. Perhaps this wasn't the time. Sorry.

The small man spoke. His voice was calm and came from years of speaking between the cracks. Please, Mr. Roberts. We do need your help.

Suppose you tell me about it. Skip the editorials.

Maud glowered at the small man. Suppose I do. Our daughter is not out of high school. She has had a child. She isn't worthy. We paid the bills at the hospital. Or, at least, we are trying to pay the bills. But the father does nothing. He won't. He doesn't deserve the child.

Let's back up a little, Mrs. Cobb.

Yes?

Your daughter doesn't have the baby now?

No. That's what we want. We want the child back. Her name is Elizabeth.

So where is the baby?

With the father. Maud Cobb puckered her lips. She looked as if she had just swallowed a green persimmon.

You tried the police?

They won't do anything. They told us this was a domestic problem. They said the father had as much legal right as anyone. They don't know. The father is a godless, soulless beast.

Maybe what you need is a lawyer. What about that?

A lawyer named Graybul said the same thing as the police. He told us that there was no more legal right on one side than on another. He said that this issue, as he called it, would go to court, and the fight would be long and expensive. He also said the father might leave at any time, and there wouldn't be a thing to be done. He could just disappear and take Elizabeth. Mr. Roberts, Elizabeth needs a home with us. She can't be raised in a godless home by that beast. She needs the guidance I can give her.

I see. What does Bonnie think about all this?

Bonnie? Maud said.

You remember. Your daughter, Elizabeth's mother.

"She agrees with me. She wants us to have Elizabeth and raise her in a Christian home. She is too young to make these decisions herself.’’

What did Graybul say about snatching the baby?

He said it would be quick, cheap, and legal. He advised that course. But, we can't accomplish it ourselves.

You want me to find the baby and snatch it home?

Yes.

And the father? Who is he?

The small man raised his eyes. ‘'His name is Richard. Ritchie Polkis. He works at an auto parts store on Washington Street, down near Waterman."

You mean the Greek Polkis?

Well, yes, the small man squeaked. Ritchie Polkis I'd never heard of. But Ritchie had an older brother or two who grew up in Wichita pulling