The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of an Old Dead Guy, Part 3 of 6

A weird death has rocked the Big Apple, and Mickey Malloy has been put on the case. He hit a dead-end going around the underworld, but he ain’t shy about plowing straight through it. With George Keaton and the officials in tow, he must go kowtow to the kings of crime to crack the case.

Until Only Roaches Remain is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 3 of The Case of an Old Dead Guy. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Content warnings: Mild swearing, alcohol use, tobacco use, violence.

THURSDAY NIGHT, JANUARY 7, 1943
NEW YORK MUNICIPAL AIRPORT
QUEENS, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Mickey could feel the tarmac’s chill seep up through the soles of his shoes. The rushing wind blew right up his coat, turning his ever-present back sweat to ice crystals in an instant. He pulled the coat tighter and dragged hard on his cigarette like he could draw the little flame into his lungs and warm himself from within. The frigid wind rattled the hangar door in front of him.

“Holy shit, it is cold,” he grumbled. Keaton rocked on his heels next to him, like he was listening to some song only he could hear. He had a scarf around his neck, mittens on his hands, and a wool cap pulled over his ears. He was puffing away on his fourth cigarette since they’d gotten there.

“These guys are not especially punctual,” Keaton noted, toasty as a bird in a nest.

“Thanks for cluing me in ahead of time,” Mick grunted. His afternoon bourbon had worn off, and his liquor jacket along with it. “Where’s our back-up?”

“Can’t have too much back-up, we don’t want to give them cold feet,” Keaton replied.

Mick muttered something regarding the state of his toes between his chattering teeth.

“We got our best inbound, any minute now,” Keaton assured him.

The hangar before them was named after some Italian importer-exporter Mick couldn’t pronounce. Despite the obvious connections to current enemies, the building was anything but shuttered. Light blazed inside, and they could hear men working inside, even late into the night.

“What did they tell you again?” Mick asked, his teeth chattering.

“They made a call,” Keaton repeated.

“And they think we’re… what?”

“Federal agents,” Keaton answered. Mick groaned. That hadn’t worked with the newshound, he wasn’t eager to try it with the mob. Keaton shrugged, saying: “These ones like feds.”

“Excuse me, what’s that?”

“The Bureau started a program where they paid the Five Families to keep the Port of New York and New Jersey secure against unwelcome arrivals and deliveries.”

“The government’s paying the mob?” Mike asked.

“They know the best ways to sneak contraband in and they’re already in place,” Keaton pointed out.

“Bang for your buck,” Mick agreed. “Who came up with that one?”

“Hoover’s getting creative,” Keaton said. “Well, not that creative. It’s called ‘Operation Underworld.’”

“Yeah, on the nose. Since we scooped him on the Crook Factory, he’s probably scrambling to hook every lowlife he can squeeze an ounce of patriotism out of.”

“You’re cranky that they’re stealing from your playbook.”

“George, Nazis don’t care if you’re a Boy Scout or coming straight out of Rikers,” Mick said, pointing across the water at the island prison. “Those fascist assholes will gut you all the - !”

The hangar door groaned, drowning out whatever else he had to say. Keaton dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his toe.

Six thick-necks were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, arms crossed and doing their best impression of a cinder block wall.

“You got the wrong address,” the biggest of the gorillas grunted. Mick wasn’t the greatest with accents, but he could tell this lout wasn’t any flavor of New Yorker.

“Sorry for not calling ahead, gentlemen, but we’re looking for Toolie Alinari,” Keaton called out, making sure his hands stayed visible and far away from his coat.

“You didn’t call ahead?” Mick hissed. It was a wonder they were still breathing at all.

“Never heard of him,” the biggest lunk said.

“And he don’t take callers,” the second-biggest added. Mick and Keaton looked at each other, then at the biggest, whose shoulders slumped. So much for a united front. The other goons looked at their chatty pal, incredulous and absolutely pissed.

“Stanley, would you keep your trap shut, for once, ever?” the biggest muttered.

“Yeah, shut up Stan,” the rest complained.

“What?” Stanley asked, genuinely confused about what he’d done.

“Guys, I’m freezing my cherries off over here, can you quit with this nonsense and let us inside?” Mick asked, interrupting the chatter.

“Hey, you can it, too,” the biggest snapped. His goon squad shouted at Mick in agreement, even Stan. At least they had a common enemy again, if only for the moment.

“So where is Toolie, anyway?” Keaton asked after the grousing died down.

“None of your business, flatfoot, now kick rocks if you know what’s good for you,” the bruiser snapped. He cracked his knuckles to show he meant business.

Mick was here for business, too. He groaned and urged his frost-hardened frame out of his typical slouch. Mick had a couple inches on even the biggest one, easy. The goons on either end of their line looked to their buddies for reassurance. These weren’t just suits they were trying to spook, but a lion and a tamer.

He stood on his toes, peering over the wall of muscle. The hangar was turned about inside-out. Crates were open and their straw drifting around on freezing winds like tumbleweeds. Every door, cabinet, and tool box was hanging wide open. He didn’t see any blood, but these seemed the kind of folks who knew how to keep that discrete. They’d definitely interrupted this crew ransacking the place. Which meant that these weren’t the gangsters Mick and Keaton had intended to run into.

And if these guys had the stones to mess with a Five Families facility, they were definitely heavyweights.

“You ain’t from around here, are you?” Mick asked. He might have connections that could get him out of this without cracking heads, he just needed to find out who he was dealing with.

“Chicago, I’d say,” Keaton offered. He took a casual step away from Mickey, angling himself so the goons couldn’t flank them as easily.

“Nobody said a thing about Chicago, pal,” Stan said. The crow squawk in his pronunciation of ‘Chicago’ sealed the deal for Mick.

“Shut up, Stan,” the biggest one groaned.

“There’s only one crew that isn’t allied with the Families operating out of Chicago,” Keaton pointed out. “You lot are Montuoso boys.”

“On second thought, you pair better stick around,” the leader said. He gave his goons a nod and they spread out, moving to encircle the two officials.

Mick looked around. He wasn’t a runner, and he wasn’t loaded out to take on six knuckle-draggers. All he could do was stall.

“Montuosos?” he stammered. “I thought they were too chickenshit to travel east of Ohio.”

Truth was, Mick didn’t know much about the Montuosos. They were one of two crime families that has squeezed in the fill the void Capone left in Chicago. Of the pair, Montuosos were the ones that showed up most often when Mick was looking over Silver Legion and Tridente Cremisi intel: both of the main Axis-funded militias had Montuoso names on their call-sheets. That, and the Montuosos didn’t sign on to this Operation Underworld thing. Every other crew had been eager to earn a fed hall pass; these jokers didn’t give a rat’s ass. That means they were protected in some other way.

“‘Chickenshit?’” Stan snarled, incredulous. He was used to being the big fish in a small pond.

“It means ‘yellow,’ you buffoon,” Mick taunted. He wished he had his sap gloves, but he hadn’t even brought mittens. He and Keaton edged away from the approaching mobsters.

“I heard the Billy Club Bastard’s been giving you the run-around,” Keaton chirped. The goons stopped.

“How’s that?” Mick asked, startled.

“They got some masked nut in the Windy City, and he’s been hassling these fine folks,” Keaton explained.

“The Bastard ain’t out there,” Mick said. He’d love to take credit for knocking over mob rackets, but this one wasn’t him.

“Then it’s a lookalike,” Keaton replied. “Masked man in all black, breaking legs and burning speakeasies. I hear he’s got good reason, too. I could tell you all about him.”

“Okay, wise guy, you want to run your mouth?” the big goon demanded. “I’ll tell you what: you tell me something I don’t know about the Slugger and I’ll leave your jaw unbroke. The palooka, I promise nothing, but you and me? We can make a deal.”

“My jaw? How about a toe or something?” Keaton asked.

“You and the little drummer boys think you can tune me up?” Mick asked. “You goons couldn’t tune a piano.”

“No stalling, him first,” the big goon said. That was fair enough, Mick had been stalling. For what, he had no idea.

“Say, do you guys have any heroin?” Keaton asked.

“Never heard of it.”

“No.”

“Shut up, Stan!”

“What about Walter Ortíz?” Keaton asked.

“Who?”

“You ever hear about Walter Ortíz. Great investigator, awful driver.”

“Why would I have heard of - ?!” The lout was cut off as a careening baggage cart skidded off the dark runway and collided with the knot of gangsters. The crew went tumbling like duck pins as dozens of suitcases, trunks, and hat boxes bowled them over.

A bundled-up man cut off the cart’s two-stroke engine and carefully picked his way through the scattered luggage and groaning gangsters. He was darker-skinned, with a part in his lacquered hair and a grin like a kid. He wasn’t much older than one, despite how desperately his thin mustache attempt to convince otherwise.

“Walter, Mickey. Mickey, Walter,” Keaton said. Mick shook Ortíz’s hand. He was smaller than Mick, but that wasn’t news.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Ortíz said, hanging onto Mick’s hand just a second too long. It took whatever Mick had left in him to stop from groaning. Ortíz had the same look in his eye that the McFife brothers did: that insufferable ‘I just met my hero’ look.

“Yeah, you too,” Mick grunted. He didn’t want to encourage that.

“Miss Marge talks about you a lot,” Ortíz told him.

“All good things, I'm sure,” Mick grumbled.

“Thanks for the save, Walter,” Keaton interjected. “Why don’t you collect their guns and ID’s before they come back to their senses?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Ortíz said, so chipper that it ground Mickey’s bones. He went and sifted through the bags and lugs, pulling pistols and knives out where he found them. “Hey, this one’s Chiclet Mancuso, I was just reading about him.”

“Great,” Keaton said, then turned back to Mick: “Damn I need a smoke. And these aren’t the guys we needed.”

“No shit. From what I’ve heard about them, they’re probably in town to move some irons,” Mick grunted. The Montuosos had started out with bootlegging, but they’d gone on to run guns of the German persuasion. A chill quaked up Mick’s spine. The adrenaline he didn’t realize had been pumping cut off like a spigot and the shivers came back in force. He grunted: “Why don’t you clean up here, figure out what happened to Toolie and the boys. I’ll run down some other leads.”

“You have New York connections?” Keaton asked, incredulous. He seemed skeptical that Mick would do anything other than hunt down the closest hot toddy.

“Keaton, buddy, I got connections like you wouldn’t believe.”

SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 8, 1942
NORFOLK CITY JAIL
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA

“We’ll be fine, nurse, thank you,” George Keaton said. The grim woman locked eyes with the grimmer officer, then left. Keaton interrupted her: “Hold that door, ma’am. Sir, you can go, too.”

The officer’s knuckles whitened where he was strangling the life out of his night stick. He looked like he’d rather swallow the badge on Keaton’s hip than acquiesce, but he had his part to play. Respecting federal authority was a piece of that at the moment.

“Sir, this suspect is highly dangerous,” he objected.

“Go now, or I call everyone from the dog-catcher to J. Edgar Hoover himself to ransack this building and peel you like a potato,” Keaton snapped. The red-faced officer nearly popped, but he followed the nurse out. Keaton could hear the murmur of the assembled cops outside, waiting for the chance to get at this suspect. He waited until the door was all the way shut and the murderous rumble silenced before he addressed the fettered inmate.

“I won’t tell you to wake up, Mister Ortíz, I know you haven’t slept a wink,” Keaton said. The young man’s eyes opened. “I wouldn’t either.”

Ortíz simply glared.

“It’s late… or early, depending on how you think about it, but you need to hear what I have to say,” Keaton asked.

The young man shot daggers at him between his bandages. Keaton waited for a moment, then dropped his G-man facade, set down his heavy briefcase on the floor, and snatched up the clipboard hanging off the foot of Ortíz’s bed. He flipped through the pages.

“They didn’t break your jaw, did they? That would be just like them to not report it…”

“My jaw is fine,” Ortíz grunted. “But I do not speak to detectives without my lawyer present.”

“‘Detective?’” Keaton wondered. He smacked his knee, plucked the badge off his belt, and tossed into onto Ortíz’s chest. The younger man groaned at the impact. “That badge would make me a ‘special agent,’ if anything. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“What is it then?” Ortíz asked. He tried to push himself, suppressed a yelp and thought better of it. Instead, he turned his attention to the badge, squinting to examine it where it lay.

“Mister F.B.I., why don’t you go ahead and get my lawyer?”

“First off, the public defender doesn’t get in the office until nine. The officers you injured, and their friends will be here well before that. So you tell me why I’m here,” Keaton offered. “Then, when we’re done talking, if you’re still alive, we really should have an attorney present.”

Ortíz’s face hardened to granite. There were people that wanted him dead, and they had him under lock and key. He was even cuffed to the bed.

“Fair enough,” Keaton replied. He took a seat on the unoccupied bed next to Ortíz and pulled a thick green folder out of his coat. He open it up and ran ran his finger down the first page, listing the facts aloud:

“Last night, you were arrested for assaulting not five, but six police officers with a deadly weapon, two counts of arson, and one each of grand theft auto, theft of government property, brandishing a firearm, wanton destruction of private property, and resisting arrest, and fourteen counts of reckless endangerment to round it all out.”

Ortíz nodded, keeping his lip zipped.

Keaton looked over the top of the file and eyeballed Ortíz’s injuries, those that he could see around the mummy-wrap of gauze. His left eye was about swole shut, his arm and leg were splinted. Every inch of visible skin was night-stick-striped with brownish purple bruises.

“Looks like those cops put up a fight.”

The younger man looked like he wanted to respond to that but kept mum.

“So as I understand it, you stole a pick-up truck, rammed it through the front window of O’Teagan’s Tavern, shot several of the patrons with rock salt, then lit the truck and the building on fire.”

Ortíz sat stoic. Keaton sighed.

“Now it seems that the men you shot were off-duty police officers, which is going to exacerbate your charges,” Keaton sad. He set the file to the side and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Did you know they were cops when you went after them?”

The kid must have found something especially interesting within the swirling patterns of old mold decorating the ceiling, because he acted like he hadn’t heard the question. Keaton double-checked the rap sheet. Walter Gustavo Ortíz was twenty-two, he lived with his mother, and worked at her clothing repair business. He was rated a IV-C by the draft board, presently deferred due to his Mexican citizenship. No priors, no affiliations with organized crome or political groups. Roman Catholic, so Keaton would have to check what stations the kid tuned in to, though if he was attacking these particular cops, it probably wasn’t Father Coughlin.

“I’m trying to help you, Walter,” Keaton offered. “Whatever else they are, the men you hurt are police officers. You will not make it to breakfast in this building without an intercession.”

“You said ‘whatever else they are,’” Ortíz pointed out.

“So I did,” Keaton said, impressed that the stone-faced kid had picked that up.

“So you know what those guys were doing,” Ortíz replied.

“Not everything, and not why you did what you did,” Keaton said. He set down Ortíz’s file and pulled his little notebook out of his pocket along with a nub of a pencil. “I’m going to read off some names, and you tell me if you've heard of any of them.”

Keaton started rattling them off:

“The Silver Legion, or a Mister Schmidt. Neither? I’m sure you’re familiar with the Klan, America First, the German-American Bund, the - !”

“I know those last few,” Ortíz cut in. Keaton set down his list. The collection of American malcontents and deplorables willing to entertain Nazi policies was growing depressingly long, he was glad he didn’t have to keep reading.

“Is that why you attacked those men, in that bar?” he asked.

“For what? No, I’ve seen them in the paper,” Ortíz said. “Is that who they are?”

“That’s still under investigation,” Keaton replied. “The fire department uncovered certain suspicious materials from the back office at O’Teagan’s.”

Calling the items the firemen found ‘suspicious’ was like calling the Hindenberg an ‘incident.’

“So you did not know what they were planning?” Keaton asked.

“Planning? No, I was trying to teach them a lesson. And I didn’t start any fire.”

“You’re saying the victims did that?”

“No idea.”

“So what lesson were you teaching?”

“‘Treat others how you want to be treated,’” Ortíz replied. “And those assholes got treated.”

“Indeed they did,” Keaton agreed. He’d seen the men Ortíz had tuned up. Swelling, stitches, concussions, fractured bones, one and all.

“I was arrested in less than five minutes, did you know that? But them, they walked around for weeks after what they did, like nothing happened.”

“What did they do?”

“The three of them, the one with the mustache and the cousins, they put my neighbor in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was delivering milk and didn’t get out of their way quick enough.”

“Mustache…” Keaton muttered, flipping through his file until he found a photo of a mustached man with both eyes swollen shut. “Plutter, Grady. And the cousins must be Hall and Denton.”

“Frank didn’t realize who was shoving him off the sidewalk when he shoved back, They dragged him into an alley and beat him unconscious with their night sticks. He never had a good back to begin with, and they broke him the rest of the way. His daughter calls me to carry him down the front stairs whenever he has to go to the doctor.”

“I’ll have to verify this,” Keaton said. He wrote ‘Frank’ down in his notebook.

“Francisco Hernandez,” Ortíz clarified.

“So those three hurt your friend - !”

“They crippled him for delivering milk!” Ortíz snapped.

“But what about the other three?” Keaton asked.

“They drew down on me,” Ortíz answered. “I’d be dead if I hadn’t shot them first.”

“So you wrecked a truck, got out, and disabled six trained men using a pump-action shotgun and rock salt before any one of them could get a shot off?”

“I need to speak to my lawyer,” Ortíz said, like he’d suddenly realized he’d been talking the whole time.

“That’s pretty impressive. You didn’t learn to shoot like that here. Maybe in Mexico?”

“We have lived here since I was six. You can learn a lot from movies,” Ortíz said with a shrug.

“And you took the shotgun from one of their cars, thus the theft of government property,” Keaton read aloud. “Winchester M97’s hold six shells, and you shot six men. Very impressive shooting.”

Ortíz stayed silent for that.

“You know why I’m here?” Keaton asked. He didn’t expect an answer. “I’m here because six police officers were attacked in the naval capitol of the United States. When the fire department came, those men were in possession of certain documents that lead me to believe they were in the midst of planning an act of terror against their own country.”

“They… what?”

“It seems you kicked in their door for one injustice, wholly preventing another that was to be even greater,” Keaton said.

He’d seen the propaganda those cops had been gorging on in the bar’s back room. Tables and chairs were plastered with dog-earred newsletters from the Silver Legion, the Bund, and America First. Fresh money was pumping into those recently defunct nut clubs, usually originating from a mysterious patron known only as ‘Mister Schmidt.’ Whichever group the bent cops aligned with, they’d bought in, hook, line, and sinker. The Manifest Creed Bible that he’d found in the john confirmed their contact with the Abwehr, because the twisted drivel between its covers was written in the psychiatric labs beneath Berlin. Not even their little radio was safe: it constantly churned out Father Coughlin’s venomous drivel on a highjacked frequency.

And Keaton had seen the plans those poisoned men had: bomb schematics, blueprints for the base’s dry docks and barracks, a schedule of the admiral’s comings and goings, photos of the ships in port. The whole thing left little to the imagination as to what their plans were when they weren’t assaulting milkmen.

The responding officers tried to bury it all, chastising their battered comrades over their carelessness. And if Ortíz was telling the truth, which Keaton suspected he was, then they started that fire themselves to try to get rid of the evidence. The firefighters spotted the quisling contraband when they showed up later, but the cops, whether they were backup, the victims, or their commanders, grabbed as much of it as they could and fed it to the flames. The concerned call into the fire station got scooped by HYDRA, and Keaton was in Norfolk three hours later, blinding everyone with a shiny new F.B.I. badge, hot off the presses.

“What were they up to?” Ortíz asked.

“That’s my business,” Keaton said. “I have associates that would appreciate your style, Mister Ortíz.”

“Ramming trucks through bars?” Ortíz asked.

“To stumble across something,” Keaton replied. “Do you know what happens next?”

“Those cops come back,” Ortíz said.

“And they will kill you, they’ll put some more charges on you, and they’ll get medals for it,” Keaton said.

“You’re not F.B.I., are you?”

“Not especially.”

“So what do you want?” Ortíz asked.

“I don’t want, I need. And you need, too.”

“What’s it that I need?”

“You need to get out of this building in the next thirty minutes before a gang of traitors in blue uniforms beat you to death in this bed. And you need to get your mother out of here before her shop gets burned down around her ears.”

“And you?”

“I need someone who can hit six targets in six shots, is not afraid to crash a truck into a cop bar, and will take down scumbags no matter where they are found.”

“A little late for me.”

“You want to work for me?” Keaton asked. “The pay’s not great, but the benefits are fantastic. Not getting bumped off by bent cops, for example.”

“If I did?” Ortíz asked.

“Can you walk?”

“If couldn’t, they wouldn’t have had to chain me up.” Ortíz rattled the chains on his wrists and ankles.

“Can you run?”

“I’m willing to give it a try.”

“You’ll have to.” Keaton hefted his briefcase with a grunt and laid it across Ortíz’s stomach. The chained man wheezed. It had to weigh thirty pounds. Keaton opened it up, revealing a tool box’s worth of gear. He selected something that looked like a set of reversed needle-nose pliers.

“Close your eyes,” he advised. He jammed the pliers’ pointed tips into one of the chain links at Ortíz’s wrist. He squeezed their grips and the tips lurched apart, snapping the link. Loose metal clanged around the room. He repeated the process three more times until Ortíz was free.

Keaton pulled the case off Ortíz and retrieved the parts of a dismantled shotgun from it. He hooked them together with practiced ease and offered it to Ortíz who’d swung his legs off the side of the bed to test his weight on them.

“Take this,” he said. Ortíz grabbed it. It was a Browning Auto5, a semi-automatic. He tested its weight and balance. Keaton passed him an ammo box. Each purple shell had a matte black knob sticking out of the end.

“Rubber ball rounds,” Keaton explained. “They hit like a prize fighter. Go nuts.”

“You want me to shoot more cops?” Ortíz fed shells into the gun and stretched. His muscles were tenderized where they weren’t knotted with bruises. Each joint he moved popped to let him know it was awake. His leg screamed in pain but held his weight. It probably wasn’t broken.

“All these officers are in on it. They’re planning on helping when your friends come pay you a visit,” Keaton said. “Besides, you got rubber there, not lead. Black eyes and headaches, that’s what you’ll be giving. Besides, nobody will notice a few bruises on these apples, the bunch is already spoiled.”

He pulled a couple canister grenades out of his briefcase then snapped it shut. Their cylindrical bodies were painted with yellow checkers. Keaton grinned.

“Cover your ears when I chuck this, then move,” he advised. “There’s a car for us out back, we’ll pick your mom up and you’ll be out of Norfolk before the sun’s up.”

“So I’ll be a fugitive?” Ortíz asked.

“Don’t worry, Mister Ortíz, we’ll make it official.”

“And what happens to them?” Ortíz wondered, nodding to the officers waiting on the other side of the infirmary door.

“We’ll teach the rest of them a lesson today and, when you’re ready, we’ll come back here and teach everyone a lesson.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ortíz said.

“It always is,” Keaton told him. He held out his right hand. “We have a deal?”

“Absolutamente.” Ortíz’s own right hand was swollen and bandaged, so he awkwardly shook Keaton’s with his off hand.

With that, Keaton cracked open the infirmary door and rolled the grenade into the room beyond, packed with vengeful traitors is tainted uniforms. He slammed the door back shut and turned behind the door frame, hands clamped over his ears. Ortíz ducked under his bed and copied the stranger.

The blast shook the building like they were inside a bass drum. Lights flickers, glass shattered, and dust fell out of the mortar between the bricks. The door shattered inward, splinters flying over Ortíz.

Keaton was on his feet an instant later, pointing out the door and shouting wordlessly. Ortíz took his meaning and hoofed it as best he could, limping on his splinted leg. The shotgun kicked against his shoulder with every trigger pull, cleaning the clocks of those few officers left standing.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Connors.

The Case of an Old Dead Guy is complete.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.