Sue Grafton - L is for Lawless

"What flight? I've got reservations, but no ticket, and I'm flat broke."

"So how's it going to hurt you to hang out here and help?"

"Well, I'll tell you," I said. "It's two days until Thanksgiving. I'm in a wedding that day, so I have to get back. Two very dear friends are getting married and I'm a bridesmaid, okay? The airports will be jammed with all the holiday traffic. I can't just call the airlines and pick up any old flight. I was lucky to get this one."

"But you can't pay for it," Ray pointed out.

"I know that!"

He put a finger to his lips and looked significantly toward the bedroom where his mother was sleeping.

"I know I can't pay. I'm trying to figure that part out," I said in a hoarse whisper.

Ray took out his money clip. "How much?"

"Five hundred."

He put the clip back untouched. "I thought you had friends. Somebody willing to lend you the bucks."

"I do if I can get to the telephone. Your mother's asleep."

"She'll be up in a bit. She's old. She doesn't sleep much at night. She takes catnaps instead. Soon as she wakes up, you can put a call through to California. Maybe your friend can put your ticket on a credit card and you can catch that flight. Looka me. I'll peep in and see how she's doing. How's that?" He moved to the bedroom and made a big display of opening the door a crack. "She'll be out any second now. I promise. I can see her moving around."

"Oh, right."

He closed the door again. "Just help me figure out where the money's hid. Let's talk about it some. That's all I want."

He held a hand out, indicating a seat at the table.

I stared at him. Well, there it was, folks. Altruism and self-interest going head to head. Was I going to take the high road or the low? By now, did I even know which was which? So far, almost everything I'd done was illegal except the vacuuming – breaking into hotel rooms, aiding and abetting escaped felons. Probably even the vacuuming broke some union contract. Why bother to get prissy at this late date? "You are so full of shit," I said.

He pulled out a chair and I sat. I can't believe I did that. I should have walked to the corner market and found a pay phone, but what can I say? I was involved with this man, involved with his daughter and his aged, catnapping mother. As if on cue, she emerged from the bedroom, rheumy eyed and energetic. She'd hardly been down fifteen minutes and she was ready to go again. He pulled out a chair for her. "How you doing?"

"I'm fine. I feel much better," she said. "What's happening? What are we doing?"

"Trying to figure out where Johnny hid the money," Ray said. He had apparently confessed all to his mother because she didn't seem to question the subject matter or his relationship to it. At eighty-five, I guess she wasn't worried about going to jail. From somewhere, another pen and a pad of paper materialized. "We can make notes. Or I can," he said when he caught my look. "You probably want to use the phone first. It's in there."

"I know where the phone is. I'll be right back," I said. I used my credit card to put another call through to Henry. As luck would have it, he was still out. I left a second message on his machine, indicating that my return flight was in question because of cash shortages on my end. I repeated Helen's phone number, urging him to call me to see if he could work out some way for me to get on the plane as scheduled. While I was at it, I tried the number at Rosie's, but all that netted me was a busy signal. I went back to the kitchen.

"How'd you do?" Ray asked blandly.

"I left a message for Henry. I'm hoping he'll call back in the next hour or so."

"Too bad you didn't get through to him. I guess there's no point in going out to the airport until you talk to him."

I sat down at the table, ignoring his commiseration, which was patently insincere. I said, "Let's start with the keys."

Ray made a note on the pad. The note said "keys." He drew a circle around it, squinting thoughtfully. "What difference does it make about the keys as long as Gilbert's got 'em?"

"Because they're just about the only tangible clue we have. Let's just write down what we remember."

"Which is what? I don't remember nothing."

"Well, one was iron. About six inches long, an old-fashioned skeleton key, a Lawless. The other was a Master…"

"Wait a minute. How'd you know that?"

"Because I looked," I said. I turned to Helen. "You have a telephone book? I didn't see one in there, and we're probably going to need one."

"It's in the dresser drawer. Hold on a second. I'll get it," Ray said, and got up. He disappeared into the bedroom.

I called after him, "Have you ever heard of Lawless? I thought it might be local." I looked over at Helen. "Does that ring a bell with you?" She shook her head. "Never heard of it." Ray came back with two books in hand, the Louisville residential listings and the Yellow Pages. "What makes you think it's local?"

I took the Yellow Pages. "I'm an optimist," I said. "In my business, I always start with the obvious." He put the residential listings on an empty chair seat. I leafed through the pages until I found the listings for locksmiths. There was no "Lawless" in evidence, but Louisville Locksmith Company looked like a promising possibility. The big display ad indicated they'd been in business since 1910. "We might want to try the public library, too. The phone books from the early forties might be informative."

"She's a private investigator," Ray said to his mother. "That's how she got into this."

"Well, I wondered who she was."

I set the phone book on the table, open to the pages where all the locksmiths were listed. I tapped the Louisville Locksmith display ad. "We'll give this place a call in a minute," I said. "Now where were we?" I glanced at his notes. "Oh yeah, the other key was a Master. I think they only make padlocks, but again, we can ask when we talk to the guy. So here's the question. Are we looking for a big door and then a smaller one? Or a door and then a cabinet or storage unit, something like that?"

Ray shrugged. "Probably the first. Back in the forties, they didn't have those self-storage places like the ones they have now. Wherever Johnny put the money, he had to be sure it wasn't going to be disturbed. Couldn't be a safe-deposit box because the key didn't look right to me. And besides, the guy hated banks. That's what got him into trouble in the first place. He's hardly going to walk into a bank with the proceeds from a bank heist, right?"

"Yeah, right. Plus, banks get torn down or remodeled or turned into other businesses. What about some other kind of public building? City Hall or the courthouse? The Board of Education, a museum?"

Ray wagged his head, not liking the idea much. "Same thing, don't you think? Some developer comes along and sees it as a prime piece of real estate. Doesn't matter what's on it."

"What about some other places around town? Historical landmarks. Wouldn't they be protected?"

"Let me think about that."

"A church," Helen said suddenly.

"That's possible," Ray said.

She pointed to the pad. "Write it down."

Ray made a note about churches. "There's the water works by the river. School buildings. Churchill Downs. They're not going to tear that place down."

"What about a big estate somewhere?"

"That's an idea. There used to be plenty around. I been gone for years, though, so I don't know what's left."

"If he was running from the cops, he had to have a place that was easily accessible," I said. "And it had to be relatively free from intrusion."

Ray wrinkled his forehead. "How could he guarantee nobody else would find it? That's a hell of a risk. Leave big canvas bags of money somewhere. How do you know a kid won't stumble across it playing stickball?"