“I don’t think we should go down there,” Betty whispered to her sisters while looking down the steep set of stone steps that led to a dark space beneath the depot. The dank, musky smell gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach and made the hair on her arms stand on end.
“This could be it,” Jane said. “Where the mole is hiding the goods. Maybe that’s why Henry called us.”
“I know,” Betty said, with both hands on her stomach. The address she’d been given last night was for this, an old depot building. She hadn’t even wanted to get out of the car, but as Jane had said, Henry had called them. “But I don’t think he’d want us going down there. We should just leave.”
Jane sighed. “Quit being such a mother hen.” She slapped four fingers against her lips, then shrugged, and pulled them away. “You’ve always been a mother hen. Making sure everyone is safe and following the rules.”
Her sister was right, but that was her role. As the oldest she had to watch over them, set a good example. “I’ve had to with you two.” She pressed a hand more firmly against her stomach. She would be that way with her baby, too. Watch over them, keep them safe. Betty looked at Patsy, hoping she would agree. “Let’s leave. We can wait in the car for Henry.”
Patsy nodded. “Yes, let’s wait in the car.”
Jane huffed out another sigh, so loud it echoed off the brick walls. “All right. This place is a little creepy.”
“A little?” Betty walked past Jane and entered the hallway that would take them back to the large central room with the large open archways that they’d first entered. She’d only taken a few steps when a muffled thud stopped her. She twisted, looked at her sisters. “Did you hear that?”
They both nodded.
“It was probably a train,” Jane said.
There were train cars lined up on the numerous tracks surrounding the depot, but Betty shook her head. “The sound came from inside the building,” she whispered.
Patsy nodded. “Someone else is here.”
“Henry,” Jane said. “He called us.”
“No.” Betty’s heart crawled into her throat, pounding so hard she could barely breathe. “If Henry was here, he’d say so. The sound came from up there.” She pointed down the long hallway that led to the central room. “The way we came in.” Twisting, she glanced down the hallway behind them. She hadn’t wanted to explore the building, but upon entering it, with its high, domed ceiling and brick pillars, it had seemed safe enough to look around for Henry. But they hadn’t found him, because he wasn’t here. She was sure of that.
“There has to be another way out,” she said. The hall was dim, but not dark; light was shining in from a room near the end. “This way.”
They tiptoed quickly, like they did while sneaking out at night, so their heels wouldn’t click against the wood floor. Hurrying past the basement steps, they stayed near the wall, single file. Betty hoped beyond hope that the room providing the light into the hall would have a door leading outside.
She slowed her steps as she neared the room, and held up her hand, so her sisters would stop behind her for a moment, then peered around the corner, into the room.
It was huge, ran nearly the length of the hall, and empty, but there were windows, and a door.
She rushed into the room, ran across it to the door, and grabbed the big brass knob.
It didn’t move. She tried to twist the knob harder, with both hands, but it barely moved no matter which way she twisted. “It’s locked!” she whispered, trying to shake the door with the knob, but that didn’t budge it, either.
“Let me try,” Jane said, grasping the knob.
Betty stepped aside, doubting, yet also hoping that Jane would have more luck than she had. As her sister tried making the knob work, Betty scanned the room. The windows were near the ceiling, far too high to reach, let alone climb out if they could somehow manage to climb up there and open one.
“Maybe the noise we heard was just a bird or something,” Patsy whispered.
Betty doubted that as much as she did Jane getting the door open.
Jane kicked the door. “Why would they lock this door when the entire front is wide-open?”
“Shhh!” Betty said the same time as Patsy.
“I’d say because they don’t want people trespassing.”
Betty’s insides leaped, at the same time a wave of relief washed over her. She didn’t need to see him to know it was Henry. His voice made her heart race, even when she wasn’t scared, but it was the unique warmth filling her that confirmed it was him.
Jane let out a groan and leaned her head against the door.
Patsy had already turned around, and let out a tiny gasp right before saying, “Oh, Lane, am I glad to see you.”
“Glad?” Jane spun around. “They just scared us to death.”
Betty still hadn’t turned to face the men, because she was afraid that when she did, she was going to latch on to Henry and never let go. This place had scared her like she’d never been scared before.
“You should be scared to death,” Henry said. “All three of you.”
Betty’s heart thudded harder, and she couldn’t stop herself from spinning around. He was right there, grasped her arms and pulled her up against his chest. The comfort of his body touching hers was so great, she gasped and then wrapped her arms around his waist. “Why did you ask us to meet you here?”
“I didn’t,” he whispered and kissed the top of her head.
She leaned back, looked up at him. There was strain on his face, lines on his forehead and around his eyes that she’d never seen before. “You didn’t call Patsy?”
“No.” His hold tightened even as he said, “It’s time to go.”
He kept one arm around her as she turned around and began walking toward the door.
Lane peeked out the door, and then led Patsy into the hallway, followed by Jane, and then Henry and her, but they all stopped at nearly the same time, when a man stepped into the hallway from the basement steps.
Betty’s lungs locked tight. It was him. Elkin.
Wearing a brown tweed suit, and with his brown hair combed flat down to his eyebrows, and a menacing glare enhanced by his thick round glasses, he looked far more evil than a mole.
Henry pulled her backward, behind him as he stepped forward. He also pulled Jane back, too, behind Betty.
“I knew those cute billboards would lead you here, Randall.” Elkin let out a bitter laugh. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw you last night, at that joint, dancing with a doll. You, the supreme agent, mixing pleasure with work. Didn’t think you’d ever cross that line.”
Betty saw how hard and stiff Henry’s entire body grew, and her mind frantically searched for something she could do, other than grasp ahold of Jane’s hand as her sister wrapped an arm around her waist from behind.
Patsy was behind Lane, who was standing next to Henry, and she shot a quivering look at Betty.
Betty reached over and took ahold of Patsy’s hand with her free hand. She had to get them to safety. They were her responsibility. Slowly, cautiously, she took a step back, forcing Jane to back up and tugging Patsy with them.
“Did you really think you’d get away with it, Elkin?” Henry asked. “Being a mole? Selling out?”
“I already did,” the man said.
Henry shook his head while asking, “Why’d you do it?”
“Because I was sick of putting my life on the line for seven bucks a week!” Elkin shouted. “I’m worth more than a buck a day. Others believe that, too. One little piece of information brought me more money than I made in a year working for the Bureau.”
“That’s called bribery,” Henry said. “And it’s illegal.”
Elkin laughed. “Dough is dough.”
“The dough you took was dirty money, but you still wanted more.” Henry said. “Your greed is going to make you rot in jail, Curtis.”
Elkin’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, grew beady. “I should have tossed that barrel in the ocean.”
“Why didn’t you?” Henry asked.
Betty couldn’t believe how calm Henry sounded. Her entire body was trembling. She was scared stiff. For Henry. For herself, and her sisters, yet she knew she had to get her sisters out of here and took another step backward, forcing Patsy and Jane to do the same, slowly, quietly.
“Because you didn’t want my body to be found too soon?” Henry asked. “Because you had to fake your own death, too? Hoped the badges would be enough for people to believe we were both dead?” Henry shook his head. “You didn’t think that one through, did you? Didn’t think I’d survive?”
The mole shifted his stance, lifted his head as if that made him taller. “That bimbo helping me said you weren’t breathing when we stuffed you in that barrel.”
“The bimbo you killed?” Henry asked.
Elkin shook his head. “You don’t know that! No one does!”
“Because his body hasn’t been recovered? The one you were hoping people would believe is your body?” Henry shook his head. “You failed, Elkin.”
An evil smile formed on Elkin’s face. “No, I haven’t.”
Betty couldn’t hold back a gasp as the man lifted his hand and pointed a gun at Henry. She’d never felt so scared, or helpless. There was nothing she could do.
“You have,” Elkin said, waving his gun.
“What do you think you are doing?” Henry asked.
“I’m going to get rid of you for good.” He laughed. “And your friends. Including your doll.”
Betty had been about to step forward and grab Henry, pull him back into the room, but froze, because he suddenly had a gun in his hand, too.
“I don’t think so,” Henry growled. “You’ve seen me shoot. You might get a shot off, but mine will be a kill shot. You know that. Dead center. You call it, your chest, or your head.”
Betty’s knees nearly buckled at how harsh and grim Henry sounded. The other man sounded serious, too, but Henry sounded far more believable. Like he was going to kill this man.
“What’s it going to be, Elkin?” Henry asked, taking a step forward. “Head or chest?”
“You don’t scare me, Randall.”
“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m telling you how this will play out if you pull that trigger.” Henry took another step toward the man.
Betty was torn between reaching forward, grabbing him, and pulling her sisters backward. She didn’t want anyone to die and pinched her lips together to hold a sob in.
He shook his head. “I don’t think you want to be dead, Elkin, and I know I don’t want to kill you, but I will.” He took another step. “I will, right here. Right now.”
Betty squeezed her eyes shut against the tears now blinding her. This couldn’t be happening. Henry talking about killing a man.
She wasn’t sure what happened next, because when a loud grunt and thud made her open her eyes, Henry and Elkin were on the floor near the basement steps, fighting.
A gun went off.
Screaming, Betty shoved both of her sisters through the doorway behind them.
More furious than he’d ever been, Henry leveled a blow that knocked Elkin’s glasses off his face. Then he flipped Elkin over onto his stomach and planted his knee in the man’s back. As he grabbed both of Elkin’s wrists, he shouted to Lane, “Get the women out of here.”
“You aren’t going to win this, Randall!” Elkin yelled. “I have backup. Here and everywhere else.”
Henry knew that was a real possibility and dug his knee deeper into Elkin’s back as Lane led the women down the hall.
He felt Betty’s eyes, but kept his eyes averted. Unable to look at her. He might have just captured the man he’d been searching for, but he wasn’t proud of the way it went down, at gunpoint, with him threatening to shoot a man and her watching. Her in danger!
That was the worst part. If Elkin’s finger had touched that trigger, he would have shot the mole. Dead. Because he couldn’t have taken the chance that a bullet would have hit her. The Bureau should never have issued Elkin a gun. The man couldn’t hit a target three feet away.
Henry exhaled the hot air burning his lungs. That was what had scared him to death. Elkin’s aim. They’d been five feet apart. Elkin’s bullet would have struck one of them, and there was no telling who that might have been.
Holding Elkin’s wrists with one hand, he reached down and picked up his gun, shoved it in his waistband, and then picked up Elkin’s.
He’d grabbed Elkin’s wrist when he’d tackled him, and had twisted the man’s hand upright, diverted the gun, so the bullet that had been fired had hit the ceiling. The fact it could have struck someone still nearly gutted him. And still infuriated him.
The hallway was empty. Betty and the others were gone. Henry jumped to his feet, and then pulled Elkin off the floor. Rage had his blood boiling and he fought to keep from spinning Elkin around and slamming his fist in the man’s face for putting Betty in such danger. But the truth of it was, he’d put her in danger just as much as Elkin had. More so, she was here because she’d wanted to help him.
Elkin started spouting off again, about how other people knew he was here.
“No, they don’t,” Henry said. “You don’t want them knowing you screwed up. That you hadn’t killed me. That’s why you gave out this address, knowing I’d come. Thought you’d get a jump on me.” He gave Elkin a hard shove, forced him to move down the hallway, quickly, all the while glancing behind them, toward the basement stairway. Others could be coming, but he doubted it. “You’ve double-crossed too many people, Elkin.”
As they entered the main room of the depot, Lane appeared in one of the open archways.
“They’re gone.” Lane jogged toward them. “I told them to go to our apartment.”
“Good,” Henry said, breathing out a sigh of relief that Betty was safe. Tightening his hold on Elkin’s wrists, he said, “Take his belt off. My cuffs are in my car.”
It would use precious time, but he had to make sure Elkin was secure if someone else did enter the building. He’d need both hands to respond and keep ahold on Elkin.
Lane pulled off Elkin’s belt, and Henry used it to bind the mole’s wrists together behind his back, and then nearly dragged Elkin as he ran through the depot, to get where he and Lane had parked their cars as fast as possible.
He had the mole, and should be happy, but wasn’t. This wasn’t over. He didn’t have the evidence he’d hoped to have upon capturing the man. Elkin wasn’t going to give a full confession. He could bet on that.
Once at his car, he pulled his cuffs out from beneath his seat and clamped them on Elkin’s wrists.
“The central precinct?” Lane asked.
Henry nodded. “Yes.” That was the only police precinct he could trust. Like most other cities, the mob bosses had bought off police departments from beat cops to captains in charge, but the chief at the central precinct had let it be known no one was immune to arrest within his jurisdiction. Henry had already met with Chief Miller several times over the past few weeks and knew Elkin wouldn’t stand a chance of escaping detention under Miller’s care.
“I’ll follow you,” Lane said.
“No,” Henry answered while shoving Elkin into his car. “You go check on Bet—the women.” She’d been frightened; he’d heard her gasps and sobs as she’d stood behind him and he wished he could go comfort her, but duty called. Took precedence. He hated that, but had no choice.
“All right, I’ll meet you at the precinct afterward.”
Henry shook his head. He had a lot of work to do before he could make sure Betty was all right. He rubbed his forehead. She may never be all right after what she’d just been through. “No, I need you to see that Betty and her sister get back to their house. Once I get Elkin behind bars, I’ll round up some prohibition officers to scour this place, see what we can uncover.”
“Will do,” Lane said. “I’ll go to the precinct after that, give them my statement of what happened. How Elkin confessed to shanghaiing you and taking bribes.”
Henry nodded, but didn’t tell Lane that a statement of hearing Elkin’s minor confessions wasn’t worth more than the paper it was written on when it came to putting the man away for good. Federal crimes were never that easy. He needed a lot more evidence to hand over to the Justice Department in order for Elkin to get what he deserved.
He did have one hope left. Vincent Burrows.
Upon arrival at the precinct, he informed Chief Miller that prohibition agents and police officers needed to be dispatched to the old depot, and then requested the opportunity to interrogate Burrows.
He’d wanted to interview Burrows since the man’s arrest, but knew Burrows wouldn’t sing until he was backed into a corner.
“Tell the deputy to walk Burrows past Elkin’s jail cell,” Henry told the chief. “Make sure they see each other.”
With a barrel chest and bald head, the chief looked as no-nonsense as he was, yet, right now, he grinned. “We could clean up this city if we had a man like you around here on a regular basis.”
Henry knew it would take more than one man to clean up this city, but was glad to be ridding it of both Elkin and Burrows.
As soon as Burrows entered the room, Henry said, “You should have taken the bait, Vincent. Your future would be looking a whole lot brighter if you had.”
Wide-eyed and turning whiter by the second, Burrows smoothed his thick black mustache with a trembling hand.
“You thought I was dead?” Henry asked.
Burrows shot a nervous glance around the room, then back at him.
Shrugging, Henry said, “Elkin tried, but he failed.”
Burrows half sat, half dropped into the chair on the other side of the metal table. “Don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Yes, you do. You know Curtis Elkin. And you know that I was pretending to be Rex Gaynor.” Henry leaned across the table, looked the criminal straight in the eye. “That was for your benefit, you know. If you’d taken the bait, came to me, you’d be where Curtis Elkin is right now.”
Burrows shook his head even as sweat beaded across his forehead. “I said I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“I know you do,” Henry said. “You just walked past his jail cell. His glasses broke during his arrest, but you still recognized him. The federal agent you’ve been paying off for years.” Although he didn’t have the proof, he had his instincts and went with them. “You and your family. He’s been spilling since I handcuffed him. How you paid him to tell you about the money on that train seven years ago, and for that shipment of Minnesota Thirteen you hijacked, and that counterfeiting ring up in Seattle, that train robbery in Kansas.”
Sweat poured down the man’s face as he shook his head nonstop. “I ain’t never had nothing to do with counterfeiting, never robbed no train.”
“That’s not what Elkin says,” Henry lied.
“He’s trying to pin them on me,” Burrows insisted. “It wasn’t me.”
It was amazing what a mobster would say to save their own neck. Henry shrugged. “Looks like you’re the one left holding the bag.”
“No! No!” Burrows shoved his hands below the table to hide how they trembled. “I’m not taking the fall for someone else.” He pulled out his hands, waved them in the air. “Jimmy Tribbiani, he’s the counterfeiter, and Tony, Tony, his cousin, he’s the train robber.”
The dots of Elkin’s trail started connecting in Henry’s head. The leaks had been so random, and so far away from New Jersey, which was where Burrows’s family operated their bootlegging business, that Henry had never made the connection before. It made sense, though, that the family started sending members west, and explained why they weren’t caught for their crimes. They’d been new to the areas. Unknown to locals. They’d also thought that they were untouchable with a dirty agent informing them of anyone on their tail. They practically had been.
“He’s the reason you were busted,” Henry said. “So he could take over the West Coast operation that you were setting up.” Taking it one step further, even though he had no proof of the correlation, he added, “Your uncle Leonardo, the one who built the house here in Los Angeles.” He paused for a moment, to make the image of Betty and him in the basement of that house fade. “Didn’t your family question why his operation was raided?”
“That rotten stool pigeon! He’s been double-crossing my family from the beginning.” Burrows slammed a hand on the table. “He double-crossed me on that shipment of hooch! Gave me ten cases. I couldn’t make any money on ten cases. Had to borrow money from that old dame so I could start a still and cut it so I had enough to distribute to the joints to even get things rolling.”
If there was one thing a mobster hated, it was being double-crossed. That was the surest way to get bumped off. Elkin should have known that. Probably did, but had gotten away with so much over the years, being a federal agent, he’d thought he was untouchable.
That was no longer the case. Henry leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “How much time do you want to serve, Vincent?”
Burrows attempted to cover up the way his jaw dropped by rubbing his thick mustache before he said, “None.”
That wasn’t about to happen, but there was no sense in telling Burrows that now. He’d find out soon enough. “I know you killed Billy during the robbery. Why’d you have Gaynor knocked off?”
“It was Elkin’s idea when he heard that I was coming out here. He said Gaynor was talking, that he’d identified me. Gaynor had shown Elkin where he’d pitched his share of the money. Elkin took mine, too. That’s how we paid him to give us tips on busts. He knew where it could be spent.”
That was what he needed. As an agent, Elkin knew where the money could be pawned off on innocent folks not knowing it had been taken out of circulation. He also knew why, after seven years, Elkin had decided it was time to completely switch sides, and Vincent moving to California, to expand the business out here, was Elkin’s chance. Henry was happy. He was more than ready to be done with this interview. He needed to get to a phone, call Lane, and make sure Betty was all right. “Let me tell you how this is going to go down, Vincent.”