Start with Chapter 1
CHAPTER 19
As Dean drove down Van Buren Street toward the Grim Devils clubhouse at the edge of town, Guthrie updated him on his conversation with the Pratts. All of them had been home the night of Billy’s last sighting: Wayne, Cole, Eileen, Joshua, and Kevin. Joshua and Kevin were home from university. The other Pratt children, including Cindy, were not in town for the New Year’s holidays. According to those that were there, all stayed in and did not hear anything. He finished as Dean turned left off Van Buren into the gravel parking lot of the clubhouse. Two pickup trucks, one shiny and new and one rusted along the bottom of the door and from the Sixties, sat near the entrance.
The building itself looked like one big, dark gray corrugated metal building punctuated by two doors at the front and several square windows. Two large garage doors with a single door between them were farther down from the entrance. The gravel gave way to a concrete patio at the front door.
Dean parked the car just beside the patio. He looked at Guthrie and said, “I’m not planning on getting much out of this. But I figure it can’t hurt to toss a grenade in the bunker and see what happens.”
Guthrie pushed the car door open. “Let’s hope that grenade doesn’t come flying back out at us.”
At the front door to the clubhouse, Dean knocked and then twisted the door knob, which was locked. He pounded on the door. Zorn pushed aside the blinds covering the front window, shook his head, and let the blinds swing back as he unlocked and opened the door. The thin, lanky man held it open, gesturing for the two detectives to enter.
Guthrie followed Dean in. Zorn wore blue jeans, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt from the 1977 tour, and a black leather jacket with the edges showing wear. Despite his thinning hair on top of his head, his long blond hair fell to just below his neck, and the goatee ended in a point a couple of inches below the chin. AC/DC’s “T.N.T.” roared from out-of-sight speakers. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Dean Wallace come to pay me a visit. Your dad tired of harassing me so he sends his kid?”
Zorn had been a notorious bully to a number of freshmen who had crossed him. Dean’s dad had defended a number of fellow students from the swirlies, circle games, and nipple cripples Zorn had his gang—even then he had a gang—inflict on a dozen other kids. His bad reputation and antics had grown up with him. After serving in the Pacific, Zorn had been arrested for a number of petty crimes, but nothing serious. Eric Wallace was convinced Zorn and the Grim Devils were major drug distributors, smuggling heroin coming from Montreal, which had originated in Sicily, down to New York or over to Boston. The Grim Devils ran most of the prostitutes in Zion and the surrounding area along with running illegal gambling sessions. He had blackmail material on dozens of city, county, and state officials, and he washed the money through the town’s small, four-lane bowling alley. Even darker rumors circulated. In the early Seventies, two state troopers were found decapitated on the Plattsburgh to Buffalo railroad, rope, duct tape, and their own handcuffs bound what was left of them. They had been investigating biker gangs ties to a series of bank robberies in small towns across the northern part of the state, robberies with strong circumstantial evidence pointing to the Grim Devils. The robberies and the murders remained unsolved.
“Hey Paul,” said Dean.
“And Jeremy.” Zorn shook Guthrie’s hand. “Where do you want to search now?”
Dean cocked his head to the side. “Not here to conduct any searches. Here to talk to you about William Nimitz.”
Zorn closed the door. “I see. He’s the one you guys found out in the woods?”
“Yeah, him.”
Zorn walked past the two detectives into the clubhouse. Two pool tables sat to the north, a makeshift bar just to the right of it, and a set of couches. Nothing matched, and the floor was left as bare concrete. A closed door in the middle of a wall led to the garage, a couple of small offices, and storage space. The Grim Devils president walked over to the Pioneer HiFi and turned the volume down before sitting on one of the couches. “How can I help you?”
“Did you know him?”
“This Billy kid?”
Dean and Guthrie nodded. Guthrie took a seat in the couch opposite Zorn.
“Knew him in passing. I mean, I could identify him on the street, but I wouldn’t say I knew him, no.” Zorn pulled at his goatee. “I’ll admit, I’m a bit confused why you think I can help.”
“We found thousands in cash in his closet.”
Zorn’s eyes narrowed, focused on Dean, and his hand stopped, gripping his goatee. “Did you now? And…hmmm…let me guess. Your dad says that the only reason someone has a lot of money is because they deal in drugs? That I couldn’t have earned it by working hard, saving, doing the good old American raising myself up, eh?”
Dean let a thin smile cross his face. “My dad didn’t say it. And when the money is found in a shoebox in the corner of a closet, one does indeed wonder where it came from.”
Zorn threw his arms out. “So you think of me first? I should feel honored? Tell me why you’re here, why you think you need to come talk to me?”
Dean paused before responding. He knew this visit was a long shot. In fact, he expected nothing to happen other than to rattle Zorn’s cage and see if anything fell out in the coming days. So how best to rattle him? “Simple really. Billy was working for you, stole your money or cut you short or something—there’s always something you bosses don’t like. So you killed him. You or one of your brothers on bikes.” He raised a finger to cut off Zorn from interrupting. “And you didn’t know where he had hidden the cash. Or you did and were waiting a bit.”
Zorn smiled and shook his head. “Detective, I’ll tell you what I tell your old man. I run a legitimate business and this club—despite our name—is just that. A club of motorcycle enthusiasts who like to spend some time riding in each other’s company. This Nimitz kid wasn’t a member of the Devils, he didn’t work at the lanes, and he didn’t bowl, so I didn’t pay him much attention.”
Guthrie scratched his head. “Look, Paul, we’re not all that interested in your business. We’re just trying to find out what happened with this kid. So he has a lot of money stuffed in a bag in his closet. Makes you wonder, you know?”
“Not really.”
“Well it does us.”
“Good for you.”
Dean crossed his arms. “Let’s try it this way. Can you think of any reason why Billy Nimitz, employee of McCord’s, would have that kind of money. Have you heard anything in your rides?
“Maybe he saved it. Maybe he worked hard for it. I don’t know.”
Guthrie stood up. “Nice to see you care about the town you live in.”
Dean said, “He loves this town.”
Zorn leaned over and put his hands together. “And I love my club. But you’ve got me all wrong. Talk to Quentin Trask. He and I were here the night Billy was killed.” He stood up. “If you’re so worried about this town, maybe you should check out the DA’s kid.”
“Alex Smith.”
“Yeah, that punk.”
Guthrie sat back down. “Why him?”
Zorn smiled and leaned back in the chair.
To Dean, this was beyond even the practiced confidence of a man often at odds with the law. This was a man confident because he was telling the truth. “Is this about McCord?”
“Charlie. I got nothing against him. Shit mechanic, but, well.” He shrugged.
“So answer Jeremy’s question, ‘Why Alex?’”
“Look fellas, I’m not too interested in bad-mouthing folks in this town. Let’s just say, I’ve heard things about Alex. Things that, well, seem like a reason for investigation.”
“Anything specific about Billy.”
“No.” Zorn shook his head vigorously. “No.” He stood up. “I think that’s all I can do, boys.”
* * *
Dean drove them back into town, and without asking his partner, straight to McCord’s Body Shop. Guthrie followed him into the shop, where they rang the bell. Dressed in the same gray coverall of the other day and perhaps the same cigar and red rag, Charlie ducked as he walked into the reception area.
“Hey there. What’s it today?”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve been conducting our investigation, and your name keeps popping up.”
Charlie squinted, and Dean saw the man’s fight or flight instincts rise to the surface. But Charlie fought them back, though he had stopped wiping his hands on the rag—they gripped the rag in front of them, stopped in mid motion. “How so?” He tucked the rag into his front pocket. “I can’t imagine why that would be.”
“Seems some people think you’re distributing drugs, part of the illegal border crossing of cocaine and heroin.”
Charlie shook his head and chuckled. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve seen Capone. Do I look like a gangster, here with my hands dirty.” He held them up. Dirt darkened the lines of this fingers and palms.
“The movies aren’t real life.”
“Yeah, whatever. I’ve got work to do.”
Guthrie asked, “So those rumors?”
Charlie paused at the door leading to the garage. “I’m not bothering to answer stupid rumors.” He went through the door.
Guthrie looked at Dean, walked to the door leading to their car, pushed it open, and said, “Well, that got us far.”
Dean followed him out. Once in the car, he said, “We hit something though. When we said his name keeps popping up, something was there. You seen his house?”
“What? What Alex said we’re paying attention to?”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Dean radioed in to Laura and asked for McCord’s home address.
“I know it’s north of here.” Guthrie cracked the window and lit a cigarette.
Dean pulled out of McCord’s and headed north. Within a couple of blocks, Laura responded with the address, in the Highland Estates housing division. The same division as the mayor and the Adamson’s family. After a few minutes, they arrived at the entrance, designed with two large brick walls with Highland Estates plaques in limestone either side of the road. Long driveways, spacious yards, and very large houses, with everything longer, more spacious, and larger the farther into the division they drove. Dean made a couple of wrong turns down cul-de-sacs. Guthrie mumbled, “Jesus,” a few times even though he had seen a number of these houses on the inside as victims of burglary and theft.
The McCord house, when they found it, floored them. Designed along federal style neoclassical lines, the rust brick, two-story house had the appearance of a squat rectangle on which sat a large cube. On the first floor, white-framed windows with black shutters. On the second, large Palladian windows. The double-door entry was covered by a flat-roof portico supported by four Doric columns.
Guthrie whistled. “I’ve only been back here once, I think, in this part of the division. I don’t remember that.”
“Hmm. It’s a palatial estate. Think what you want about Zorn, but he’s doesn’t show off his wealth. At least like that. That’s begging for attention.”
Zorn sank his money into the clubhouse and motorcycles. The Zorn house was a modest half-brick, half-wood siding house just south of the downtown circle.
“This sure as hell means McCord is up to something dirty or something we don’t know about. Legal that is.”
“If it were legal, we wouldn’t have people asking us to check him out. They would’ve just complained about it.”
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