The envelope on Lockington’s desk was a cheap manila three-by-five-inch with a shiny tin clasp—nothing distinctive about it, it was of a type readily available in office supply shops and drugstores. It’d been addressed in sprawling black ballpoint, its upper left-hand corner blank. Lockington studied the postmark. It was smudged, but he could make out Chicago, Illinois. He balanced the envelope on the palm of his hand, then shook it briskly. It didn’t rattle, jingle or tick, and it weighed no more than an ounce. He pinched the flaps of the clasp together, opened it, and tilted it over the desk. A depleted book of matches skidded out to tumble on the green blotter pad. The envelope wasn’t empty and he freed its remaining contents—a slim sheaf of United States currency. He riffled rapidly through the money, his eyes widening. Ten one-hundred-dollar bills—probably more money than he’d handled at one time since the day of his birth.
He counted again. He’d been right the first time—one grand. He folded it, placing it under the baseball encyclopedia in his bottom desk drawer. Then he concentrated on the empty matchbook. It was glossy white with bold red-block lettering: CLUB CROSSROADS—AUSTINTOWN, OHIO. There was a telephone number in smaller print.
He sat at the desk, frowning, tugging at an ear, staring into space. Apparently something was expected of him, a service had been paid for in advance. Prepayment by whom, and for what? And Austintown was in Ohio, obviously, but where in Ohio?
He picked up the telephone, signaling for an operator. The area code for Austintown, Ohio, please. I’ll give you the number of Ohio information, sir. She gave him the number and he rang it. What city, sir? Austintown—I’d like to have the area code number for Austintown. One moment, pleeyuz—Austintown is listed in the Youngstown directory. The Youngstown area code number is two-one-six—do you have the number of your Austintown party, sir? Lockington said yes, thanking her.
Youngstown, Ohio—Lockington had heard of it. He’d known a bartender who’d been from Youngstown—Whitey Greb, who’d worked at Imogene’s Interlude on North Cicero Avenue until Imogene had been busted for peddling her ass. Whitey had been homesick and he’d talked incessantly about Youngstown. It’d produced steel and lots of it, a prosperous city. Then, almost overnight, the steel mills had moved or folded. Union demands had become insatiable, driving the cost of making steel higher than the stuff could be sold for, and Detroit’s automobile manufacturers had turned to Denmark, Sweden and Japan, washing fifteen thousand Youngstown jobs down the drain. A city with a diversified industrial base might have handled such a kick in the economic groin, but Youngstown had been founded on steel, it’d made steel and steel only, and the area was still in a state of paralysis, according to Whitey Greb.
Lockington shrugged, turning to the telephone, dialing 1–216, then the number on the Club Crossroads matchbook. He heard one ring before a recording cut in, a sultry female voice. “Hel-lo, there! Club Crossroads opens at six pee-yem, seven days a week! You’ll just love our headline attraction, Pecos Peggy and the Barnburners! Come visit us soon, won’t you?” The answering device snapped off and Lockington hung up to lean back in the swivel chair, certain of one thing—the envelope had been mailed by Rufe Devereaux.
It’d been established that Rufe had flown into Chicago from Cleveland, and Whitey Greb had mentioned that Cleveland was just sixty-eight miles from Youngstown—an hour’s drive, give or take. For reasons as yet unknown, Rufe Devereaux had gotten his ass in a sling in Youngstown or its environs, he’d been tracked to Cleveland and intercepted in Chicago. He’d been in danger and he’d known it, otherwise why the Keystone Cops chase on the Kennedy Expressway and why the peek-a-boo routine prior to his arrival at the International Arms Hotel? If the Club Crossroads matchbook hadn’t been a cry for help, it’d certainly been a plea for vengeance, indicating a starting point—square one: the Club Crossroads in Austintown, Ohio.
Pecos Peggy and the Barnburners—the names smacked of country entertainment, and Rufe Devereaux, a Louisiana man, would have gravitated toward it. He’d thrived on the stuff and the knock-down, drag-out places where it could be found—the atmosphere had been an elixir. Not so in Lockington’s case—country music joints spooked him. He had no objections to the average two-fisted workingman’s taverns—these were predictable to an extent, but the country dives were explosive without cause. One midnight in a Chicago cesspool called Dixie Central, he’d watched a big hillbilly rip a toilet from the floor of the men’s room, then heave it through a plateglass window into the middle of North Austin Boulevard. When the police had arrived and subdued the miscreant, they’d inquired as to why he’d done it. The big guy had thought it over and said, “Wall, goldang iffen I know why—it juss seemed lak th’ thing to do at th’ time.”
Lockington checked his watch—going on four o’clock. He kicked off his shoes and hoisted his feet onto the desk, tilting his head to a comfortable angle, permitting his eyelids to droop and close. “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care”…Shakespeare. Lockington dozed off, wondering how Shakespeare would have fared in Chicago, deciding that he’d have despised it.
So did Lockington.