L is for Lawless

19

The Louisville Locksmiths shop was located on west Main Street in a three-story building of dark red brick, probably built in the 1930s. Ray found parking on a side street, and a brief argument ensued during which Helen refused to wait in the car as agreed. He finally gave in and let her accompany us, even though she insisted on bringing along her baseball bat. The storefront was narrow, flanked by dark stone columns. All the wood trim was painted mud brown, and the one street-facing window was papered over with hand-lettered signs that detailed the services offered: deadbolts installed, keys fitted, locks installed and repaired, floor and wall safes installed, combinations changed.

The interior was deep and narrow and consisted almost entirely of a long wooden counter, behind which I could see a variety of key grinding machines. Row after row of keys were hung, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, arranged according to a system known only by the owner. A sliding ladder on overhead rollers apparently supplied access to keys in the shadowy upper reaches. All available space on the scuffed wooden floor was taken up by Horizon safes being offered for sale. We were the only customers in the place, and I didn't see a bookkeeper, an assistant, or an apprentice.

The owner, Whitey Reidel, was about five feet tall and round through the middle. He wore a white dress shirt, black suspenders, and black pants. I didn't peek, but the pants looked like they'd leave a lot of ankle showing at the cuff. He had a soft, shapeless nose and big dark bags under his eyes. His hairline had receded like the tide going out, the remaining wisps of white hair sticking up in front in a curl, like a Kewpie doll's. In his habitual stance, he tended to lean forward slightly, hands on the counter, where he braced himself as if a hard wind blew. He let his eye trail across the three of us. His gaze finally settled on Helen's baseball bat.

"She coaches Little League," Ray said in response to his look.

"What can I do for you?" Reidel asked.

I stepped forward and introduced myself, explaining briefly what we needed and why we needed it. He began to shake his head, pulling his mouth down the minute I mentioned a Master padlock key with the M550 code stamped on one side.

"Can't do," he said.

"I haven't finished."

"Don't have to. Explanations won't make any difference. There's no such thing as a Master padlock key series starting with an M."

I stared at him. Ray was standing behind me, and his mother was standing next to him. I turned to Ray. "You tell him."

"You're the one saw the key. I didn't see it. I mean, I saw it, but I didn't pay attention to any numbers."

"I remember distinctly," I said to Reidel. "You have a piece of paper? I'll show you."

Clearly indulging me, he reached for a scratch pad and a pencil. I wrote the number down and pointed at it, as if that made my claim more legitimate. He didn't contradict me. He simply reached under the counter and pulled out the Master padlock index. "You find it, I'll grind it," he said. He rested his hands on the counter, leaning his weight on his arms.

I leafed through the index, feeling stubborn and perplexed. There were numerous series, some indicated by letters, some by numbers, none designated by the M I'd seen. "I swear it was a Master padlock key."

"I believe you."

"But how could a key show numbers that don't exist?"

His mouth pulled down again and he shrugged. "It was probably a duplicate."

"What difference would that make?"

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a loose key. "This is the key for a padlock back there. On this side is the manufacturer, a Master padlock in this case, like the key we're discussing. Did it look like this?"

"More or less," I said.

Helen had lost interest. She'd moved over to one of the free-standing safes, where she was perched wearily, leaning on her bat like a cane.

"Okay. This side says Master, right?"

"Right."

"On this side, you got numbers corresponding to the particular padlock the key fits. Are you following?" He looked from me to Ray, and both of us nodded like bobbleheads.

"You give me those numbers, I can look 'em up in this index and get the information I need to reproduce this key, making you a duplicate. But the duplicate isn't going to have the numbers. The duplicate's going to be a blank."

"Okay," I said, drawing the word out cautiously. I couldn't think where he meant to go with this.

"Okay. So the numbers you saw must have been stamped after the key was made."

I pointed to the scratch pad. "You're saying someone had those numbers put on this key," I said, restating it.

"Right," he said.

"But why would somebody do that?" I asked.

"Lady, you came to me. I didn't come to you," he said. When he smiled, I could see the discoloration in his teeth, dark around the gums. "Those numbers are gibberish if you're talking about a Master padlock."

"Could they be code numbers for another key manufacturer?"

"Possibly."

"So if we figured out which manufacturer, couldn't you make me this key?"

"Of course," he said. "The problem is, there's probably fifty manufacturers. You'd have to go through two, three manuals for each company, and many I don't stock. Stamped numbers or letters might also identify the key with a property or door, but there's no way to determine that from what you're telling me."

"Have you ever heard of a Lawless lock?"

He shook his head. "No such thing."

"What makes you so sure?" I said, irritated by his know-it-all attitude.

"My father owned this company and his father before him. We been in business over seventy-five years. If there'd been such a company, I'd have heard the name mentioned. It might be foreign."

I made a face, knowing there'd be no way to track that down. "Is there any chance whatsoever that Lawless was in business back in the forties and is now defunct?"

"Nope."

Ray put a hand on my arm. "Let's get out of here. It's okay. We're doing this by process of elimination."

"Just wait," I said.

"No way. You got a look on your face like you're about to bite the guy." He turned to his mother, "Hey, Ma. We're going now." He helped her to her feet, taking her arm on his right while he took my arm on his left. The pressure he exerted made his intentions clear. We were not going to stay and argue with a man who knew more than we did.

I felt my frustration rise. "There has to be some connection. I know I'm right."

"Don't worry about being right. Let's worry about getting Gilbert off our backs," he said. And then to Reidel, "Thanks for your help." He opened the door and ushered us out. "Besides, we don't need the key. Gilbert's got one."

"Well, he's not going to give it back."

"He might. If we can find the locks, he might cooperate. It'd be in his best interests."

"But what are the numbers for? I mean, M550 has to be a code, doesn't it? If not for a key, then something else."

"Quit worrying," he said.

"I do worry. Gilbert's going to want answers. You said so yourself."

Out on the street, it was surprisingly dark. The late afternoon wind whipped off the Ohio River, which I gathered was only three or four blocks away. A few isolated snowflakes sailed by. Streetlights had come on. Most of the businesses along Main were closing down, and building after building showed a blank face. The buildings were largely brick, five and six stories high, the ornamentation suggesting vintage architecture. Several ground-level stores had retracting metal gates now padlocked across the front. An occasional dim light might be visible deep in the interior, but for the most part, a chilling dark contributed to the overall look of abandonment along the street. Traffic in this part of town was thinning. The downtown itself, visible to the east, displayed a lighted skyline of twenty- to thirty-story office buildings.

We drove back to Helen's house, circling the block once for any sign of Gilbert. None of us knew what kind of car he was driving, but we kept an eye out, thinking we might spot him lingering in the shadows or sitting in a parked vehicle. Ray left his car in the cinder alleyway that ran behind his mother's place. We went through the backyard to the darkened rear entrance. None of us had thought about leaving lights on, so the house was pitch black. Ray went in first while Helen and I huddled on the back steps off the utility porch. Helen was still supporting herself with her baseball bat, which she'd apparently adopted as a permanent prop. All across the neighboring yards, I could see the towering shapes of winter-bare trees against the light-polluted November sky. Branches rattled in the wind. I was shivering by the time he'd turned on lamps and overhead lights and let us in. We waited in the kitchen while he checked the front rooms and the unused bedroom upstairs.

We'd been gone for less than an hour, but the house already seemed to smell dank with neglect. The bulb in the kitchen threw down a harsh, unflattering light. The patch of cardboard in the kitchen window showed a gap at one edge. Helen worked her way around the room, from the pantry to the refrigerator, taking out items for a makeshift supper. She moved with confidence, though I could see that she was counting steps. Ray and I pitched in, saying little or nothing, all of us unconsciously waiting for the phone to ring. Helen didn't have an answering machine, so there was no point in wondering if Henry or Gilbert had called in our absence.

We sat down to a meal of bacon and scrambled eggs, potatoes fried in bacon grease, leftover fried apples and onions, and homemade biscuits with homemade strawberry jam. Too bad she hadn't found a way to fry the biscuits instead of baking them. Despite the cholesterol overdose, everything we ate was exquisite. So this is what grandmothers do, I thought. I had, by then, abandoned any hope of getting home that day. It was still only Monday. I had all of Tuesday and Wednesday to catch a plane. In the meantime, I was tired of feeling stressed out about the issue. Why get my knickers in a twist? I'd do what I could here and be on my way.

After supper, Helen settled down in her bedroom with the TV on. Ray got busy with the dishes while I cleared the kitchen table. I was in the process of wiping down the surface, moving aside the sugar bowl, the salt and pepper shakers, when I noticed the sympathy card Johnny Lee had sent. Helen had apparently left it on the table, anchored by the sugar bowl. I read the greeting again, holding it slanted against the light.

Ray said, "What's that?"

"The card Johnny sent. I was just checking the message inside. The verse looks like it's been typed."

"Read it to me again," he said.

"'And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Matthew 16:19. Thinking of you in your hour of loss.' I think this is one of those blank cards where you write in the greeting yourself."

"That makes sense. If the verse was meant as a secret message, how's he going to find a card with that particular quote? He almost had to buy a blank and fill it in himself."

I stared at the Bible verse. "Maybe the M550 stands for Matthew chapter five, verse fifty," I suggested.

"Matthew five is the Sermon on the Mount. Doesn't have fifty verses, only forty-eight." He glanced at me, smiling self-consciously. "That's the other thing I did in prison besides boning up on crime. I was part of a Bible study group on Monday nights."

"You're a man of many surprises."

"I like to think so," he said.

I turned the card over and studied the black-and-white photograph pasted on the front. The photo showed the faded image of a graveyard in snow. I picked at the loose edge, peering at the card stock under it. The print had been glued or pasted over a standard commercial picture of the ocean at sunset. I peeled it off and checked the back, hoping for some kind of handwritten note. The print itself was four inches by six, processed on regular Kodak paper, matte finish, no border. Aside from the word Kodak marching across the back, the rest was blank. "You think this is a new photograph reprinted from an old neg? Or maybe a new photo reproduced from an old one?"

"What difference does it make?"

I shrugged. "Well, I don't think a picture of the ocean at sunset tells us anything. Maybe the keys aren't related. Maybe the photo is the message and the keys are a diversionary tactic."

He took the card and moved to the table, holding it to the light as I had, examining the photograph. I peeked over his shoulder. All the headstones looked old, the ornate lettering softened by rain and sanded by harsh winter snows. There were five shorter headstones and three larger monuments of the lamb and angel school. Even the smaller markers, probably granite or marble, were carved with bas-relief leaves and scrolls, crosses, doves. The dominant monument was a white marble obelisk probably twelve feet tall, mounted on a granite pedestal with the name PELISSARO visible. All of the surrounding trees were mature, though barren of leaves. A thin layer of snow covered the ground. One cluster of headstones was enclosed with iron fencing, and I could see a section of stone wall to the right.

"I don't suppose you recognize the place," I said.

Ray shook his head. "Could be a private graveyard, like a family plot on somebody's property."

"Looks too spread out for that. Seems like a private graveyard would be more compact and countrified. More homogeneous. Look at the headstones, the variation in sizes and styles."

"So what's this have to do with two keys? He didn't have time to dig up a coffin and bury the stash. It was the dead of winter. The ground was froze hard."

I looked at Ray with interest. "Really. It was winter? So this might have been taken at the time?"

"Possible, I guess, but if he buried the money, he'd have needed grave-digging machinery, which I guess he could have got hold of somehow. Seems like he told me once he'd been a groundskeeper in a cemetery. He could have put the money in a mausoleum, I suppose. Anyway, what's your thinking?"

"But why a picture of this? Maybe it's the name Pelissaro. I'm just spitballing here. He might have left the money with someone by that name. In a building or business in the general vicinity of the cemetery. The Pelissaro Building, Pelissaro Farms. The old Pelissaro estate," I said, wiggling my brows.

Ray shook his head. "You're barkin' up the wrong tree."

"Well. Maybe it's something visible from here. A water tower, an outbuilding, a stone quarry. Where's the phone book? Let's look. Let's dare to be stupid. We might hit pay dirt."

"Look for what?"

"The name Pelissaro. Maybe he had a confederate."

I glanced around the kitchen and spotted the residential pages sitting on the chair where he'd left them. I pulled out a chair and sat down, flipping through the White Pages to the P's. There was no Pelissaro listed. Nothing even close. I said, "Shit. Ummn. Well, maybe there was a Pelissaro back in the 1940s. We'll try the library in the morning. It can't hurt."

"We better do something fast. Gilbert's going to call any minute, and I'm not going to tell him we're off to the public library. I'd like to tell him we're on to something instead of sitting here daring to be stupid. That's the same as dead in his book."

"You're a pain, you know that? Here, try this." I reached for the Yellow Pages and looked up "Cemeteries." Approximately twenty were listed. "Take a look and tell me where these are located," I said. "If we got out a map and drew a big circle, we could probably narrow down the area. At the very least, we could check out all the cemeteries within a radius of the spot where Johnny was apprehended. Wouldn't that make sense? There couldn't be that many. Judging by the photograph, this cemetery is well established. Those graves are old. They haven't gone anywhere."

"You don't know that. Around here, they move graves when they dam up a river to make a lake," he said.

"Yeah, well, if the money's underwater, we've had it," I said. "Let's operate on the assumption it's still aboveground someplace. You have a map of Louisville? You can show me what's where."

Ray went out to the car and came back with the big map of the southeastern United States, along with a set of strip maps and a map of Louisville. "Compliments of Triple A. Car I borrowed was well equipped," he said.

"You're too thoughtful," I said as I opened the city map. "Let's start with this first one. Where's Dixie Highway?"

One by one, we worked through the cemeteries listed in the Yellow Pages, marking their locations on the map of Louisville. There were four, possibly five, within reasonable driving distance of the place where Johnny Lee had been apprehended by the police. I listed each cemetery along with the address and telephone number on a separate piece of paper.

"So now what?" he asked.

"So now, first thing tomorrow morning, we'll call each of these cemeteries and find out if they have a Pelissaro buried there."

"Assuming the cemetery's in Louisville."

"Would you quit being such a butt?" I said. "We have to assume this is relevant or Johnny wouldn't have sent you the picture. His object was to give you information, not to fool you."

"Yeah, well, let's hope he didn't do too good a job. We might never decipher it."

By nine o'clock, I was exhausted and began to make mewling noises about turning in. Ray seemed restless and jumpy, worried because Gilbert hadn't been in touch.

"What are you going to tell him if he calls?" I asked.

"Don't know. I'll tell him something. I'd like to get him and Laura over here first thing tomorrow morning so I can see she's okay. In the meantime, let's get you settled. You look beat."

He found a couple of blankets and a pillow in the top of his mother's closet. "You better make a potty stop first. There isn't a bathroom up there."

I spent a few minutes in the bathroom and then followed Ray up. As it turned out, there wasn't much of anything else up there, either: a single bed with a wood frame and a sagging spring, a bed table with one short leg, and a lamp with a forty-watt bulb and a yellowing shade. I worried briefly about bugs and then realized it was too cold up here for anything to survive.

"You got everything you need?"

"This is fine," I said.

I sat gingerly on the bed while he clumped downstairs again. I couldn't sit up straight because the eaves of the house slanted so sharply above the bed. It was bitterly cold, and the room smelled of soot. As a form of insulation, someone had layered sheets of newspaper between the mattress and the springs, and I could hear them crackle every time I moved. I lifted one corner of the mattress and did a quick check of the date: August 5, 1962.

I slept in my clothes, wrapping myself in as many layers of blanket as I could manage. By curling myself into a fetal position, I conserved whatever body heat I had left. I turned out the lamp, though I was reluctant to surrender the meager warmth thrown off by the bulb. The pillow was flat and felt faintly damp. For some time, I was aware of light coming up the stairwell. I could hear noises – Ray pacing, a chair scraping back, an occasional fragment of laughter from the TV set. I'm not sure how I managed to fall asleep under the circumstances, but I must have. I woke once and turned the light on to check my watch: 2:00 a.m., and the lights downstairs were still on. I couldn't hear the television set, but the nighttime quiet was broken by occasional unidentifiable sounds. I wakened some time later to find the house dark and completely quiet. I was acutely aware of my bladder, but there was nothing for it except mind control.

I really don't know which is worse when you sleep in someone else's house – being cold with no access to additional blankets or having to pee with no access to the indoor plumbing. I suppose I could have tiptoed downstairs on both counts, but I was afraid Helen would think I was a burglar and Ray would think I was coming on to him, trying to creep into his bed.

I woke again at first light and lay there, feeling miserable. I closed my eyes for a while. The minute I heard someone stirring, I rolled out of bed and made a beeline for the stairs. Ray and his mother were both up. I made a detour to the bathroom, where, among other things, I brushed my teeth.

When I returned to the kitchen, Ray was reading the morning paper. He hadn't had a chance to shave, and his chin was prickly with white stubble and probably felt as rough as a sidewalk. I was so accustomed to his various facial bruises, I hardly noticed them. He'd covered his habitual white T-shirt with a denim workshirt that he wore loose. Despite his age he was in good shape, the definition in his upper body probably the result of hours lifting weights in prison.

"Have we heard from Gilbert?"

He shook his head.

I sat down at the kitchen table, which Helen had set at some point the night before. Ray passed me a section of the Courier-Journal One more day together and we'd have our routines down pat, like an old married couple living with his mother. Helen, for her part, limped around the kitchen, using the bat as a cane.

"Is your foot bothering you?" I asked.

"My hip. I got a bruise goes from here to here," she said with satisfaction.

"Let me know if I can help."

Coffee was soon perking, and Helen began to busy herself frying sausage. This time she outdid herself, fixing each of us a dish she called a one-eyed jack, in which an egg is fried in a hole cut in the middle of a piece of fried bread. Ray put ketchup on his, but I didn't have the nerve.

After breakfast I hit the phone, making a quick call to the five cemeteries we'd put on our list. Each time I claimed I was an amateur genealogist, tracking my family history in the area. Not that anybody cared. All were nondenominational facilities with burial plots available for purchase. On the fourth call, the woman in the sales office checked her records and found a Pelissaro. I got directions to the place and then tried the last cemetery on the off chance a second Pelissaro was buried in the area. There was only the one.

Ray and I exchanged a look. He said, "I hope you're right about this."

"Look at it this way. What else do we have?"

"Yeah."

I excused myself and headed for the shower. The phone rang while I was in the process of rinsing my hair. I could hear it through the wall, a shrill counterpoint to the drumming of the water, the last of the shampoo bubbles streaming down my frame. In the bedroom, Ray answered the phone and his voice rumbled briefly. I cut my routine short, turned the water off, dried myself, and threw my clothes on. At least I had no problems deciding what to wear. By the time I reached the kitchen, Ray was in motion, putting together an assortment of tools, some of which he brought in from a small shed in the backyard. He'd found a couple of shovels, a length of rope, a pair of tin snips, pliers, a bolt cutter, a hammer, a hasp, an ancient-looking hand drill, and two wrenches. "Gilbert's on his way over with Laura. I don't know what we're up against. We may have to dig up a coffin, so I thought we'd better be prepared." The Colt was sitting on the tin pull-out counter of the Eastlake. Ray picked it up in passing and tucked it in the waistband of his pants again. "What's that for?"

"He's not going to catch me off guard again." I wanted to protest, but I could see his point. My anxiety was rising. My chest felt tight and something in my stomach seemed to squeeze and release, sending little ripples of fear up and down my frame. I teetered precariously between the urge to flee and an inordinate curiosity about what would happen next. What was I thinking? That I could affect the end result? Perhaps. Mostly, having come this far, I had to see it through.