Jelly's Gold (6 page)

“Our records only go back to the 1970s,” she insisted for the second time. “We have nothing from the twenties and thirties.”

“How is that possible?” I asked for the third time.

She spoke slowly, like someone explaining a difficult concept to a child. “The files were lost in the early 1980s with the renovation of the central police headquarters,” she said. “Everything went into the trash.”

I had a hard time getting my head around it. Every page of every file concerning John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, the Barkers, Harvey Bailey, Machine Gun Kelly, Leon Gleckman, Scarface Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Verne Miller, Baby Face Nelson, Frank Nash, and all the others had been destroyed. So had the names and files of the corrupt police and political figures who took bribes from them, as well as all the wiretaps, surveillance reports, and “mail covers” that were conducted on the civilians who socialized with them. I don’t know why I was surprised. In the SPPD-commissioned history
The Long Blue Line,
published in 1984, the only reference to the gangster era was an anecdote about how the local cops
almost
captured Dillinger.

“They probably thought that the files were unimportant,” the clerk said. “None of them were pertinent to ongoing investigations. They were just taking up much-needed space.”

“You don’t think it looks bad?” I said.

“I guess you could argue that the department destroyed the records
to avoid embarrassment over its involvement with criminals, but when they switched to a computer system in the early seventies, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension shredded hundreds of documents from that era, and I promise you, those people, they couldn’t care less about our reputation. Besides, it’s not like the police are the only ones anxious to edit history. There are a lot of prominent citizens, people who have buildings named after them, and their children—well, it’s all in the past, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I’m not sure why I was so surprised. Americans have always had short memories, haven’t they? It’s like there’s a statute of limitations imprinted on our brains. What occurred ten years ago doesn’t matter much to us. Fifty years ago? That’s too far back to remember. Seventy-five years? It might as well be the Peloponnesian Wars. I suppose it’s because as a people we are constantly reinventing ourselves.

“You could try the Minnesota Historical Society,” the clerk said. “They pay attention to these things.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course …” She was staring up and to her left now, as if experiencing a moment of inspiration. “We still have the homicide files. You could request those.”

“Homicide files?”

“There’s no statute of limitation on murder.”

The bright red card the desk sergeant gave me allowed access to
RECORDS UNIT ONLY
on the third floor. Just the same, I rode the elevator down to the second floor, where the homicide unit resided.

There were two secured doors right and left when I stepped off the elevator and a glass partition in front of me. A woman sitting behind the glass smiled. If the receptionist in records was a lumpy leopard, this one was a black panther, sleek and powerful.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I wish you would,” I said. Perhaps I sounded too flirtatious—sometimes I can’t help myself.

The receptionist grinned at me as if she had heard it all before but didn’t mind. Unfortunately, our budding relationship was interrupted when a woman strolled up behind her.

“McKenzie? What the hell are you doing here?” she said.

I was smiling at the receptionist when I answered. “Looking for help.”

“Yeah, you need it.” Detective Sergeant Jean Shipman rested a hand on the receptionist’s shoulder. “Lisa, this is Rushmore McKenzie.”

Lisa looked from me to Shipman and back again. “Really?” she said.

“In the flesh,” Shipman said.

Lisa smiled again, but it wasn’t as much fun this time. “You’re him?” she asked.

“’Fraid so.”

“Cool.”

Or not so cool, depending on your point of view. I had been a good cop, spent eleven and a half years on the job; the Ranking Officers Association once even named me Police Officer of the Year. Yet most of the officers who knew my name didn’t remember me for that. To many I was the guy who hit the lottery, the cop who quit the police department in order to collect a three-million-dollar reward from a grateful insurance company on an embezzler I tracked on my own time nearly to the Canadian border. In moments of frustration they would sometimes invoke my name—
if I could get a deal like McKenzie, I’d be out of here so fast!
To the others I was the asshole who sold his shield for cash. I often wondered which side Shipman was on.

“Is Lieutenant Dunston around?” I asked. I deliberately projected a degree of formality because I didn’t want to compromise his command position. Shipman didn’t seem to mind.

“Nope,” she said. “Bobby must have seen you coming and snuck out the back.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Shipman swung around the receptionist’s desk and slid out of my sight behind a wall. A moment later the secured door on my right opened. She held it for me, and I slipped inside the inter sanctum of the homicide unit. There wasn’t much to see. If you didn’t know where you were, it could have been an insurance company, advertising agency, newspaper office, law firm—any place where professionals work side by side and carry guns.

“How are you, Jeannie?” I asked.

She flashed a two-second smile at me. “Excellent. You?”

“Good as gold.”

“What brings you by? Nostalgia?”

“In a manner of speaking. I want to take a look at your files.”

“No, no, no, no, no, I don’t think so.”

“Not current files.”

“Not any kind of files.”

“Jeannie—”

“McKenzie, no. Bobby would have a heart attack. You know that. You know better than to even ask.”

“I’m not looking for open cases, or even cold cases.”

“What cases?”

“Anything and everything between, say, January 1930 through May of ’33.”

That slowed her down.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said.

“I could fill out an Information Disclosure Request form, but I figured this would be easier.”

Shipman led me to her desk. She sat behind it while I settled in a chair in front. Morning sunlight streaming through window blinds illuminated artfully tangled hair that was the same color as her freckles. Shipman was an attractive woman when she smiled, not so much when she frowned. She was frowning now.

“What are you up to this time?” she asked. Another woman who knew me well.

I came
this
close to telling her the truth, then thought better of it. There were already too many people who knew about the existence of Jelly’s gold; I probably should have sworn Nina to secrecy.

“Nothing even remotely illegal,” I said.

“That would be a nice change of pace,” Shipman said. “Seriously, McKenzie.”

“Seriously, Jean—I’m doing research on the gangsters that used to roam the city back in the day. I went upstairs, but records doesn’t have anything. The department purged all of its files in the early eighties. Except for homicide.”

“I think we have stuff in old boxes from back then, but I don’t know what’s there.”

“Is there a problem with me taking a look?”

“Probably, if I thought about it long enough.” Shipman studied me from across the desk as if she were indeed thinking about it. “Why are you doing this?”

“A friend asked me for a favor. A lit major at the U. He thought I might get better cooperation over here than he would.”

“A favor for a friend. I should have known. C’mon, McKenzie, let’s see what we have.”

Surfing through several boxes, it didn’t take long to discover that despite the O’Connor System, there were plenty of homicides committed in and around St. Paul in the early thirties. Three Kansas City mobsters were slain near White Bear Lake. Bank robber Harry “Slim” Morris (a.k.a. “Slim Moran,” “Slim Ryan,” or “Slim Ballard”) was killed in Red Wing. Murder Incorporated hit bootlegger Abe Wagner and his partner in St. Paul’s Midway District, not far from where I live now. The Barker-Karpis gang killed two police officers during a bank heist in Minneapolis, and
Fred Barker murdered an innocent bystander in St. Paul’s Como Park while they were switching getaway cars. None of them involved Frank Nash, which wasn’t a surprise to me. Murder wasn’t his game.

Yet there was a tiny fragment of information that made my hands tremble as I read it.

The SPPD had conducted surveillance on an auto dealership located on University Avenue not far from the state capitol that was suspected of supplying heavily armored getaway cars to the gangsters. The cars would come equipped with police radios and quick-release bolts so the crooks could change license plates in a hurry. The cops were hoping to get a line on “Shotgun” George Ziegler, a Chicago killer with ties to Al Capone’s syndicate; they suspected that he had been involved in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and was now working freelance for the Barker-Karpis gang. Instead, they came across something else.

A man identified as Oklahoma gunman Frank “Jelly” Nash was observed returning the 1932 Oldsmobile Series F Roadster he had leased from the dealership three days prior (see report filed 6/6/33).

The report said that the Oldsmobile had been reinforced according to Nash’s specifications to accommodate a heavy load—as much as an additional one thousand pounds.

The vehicle in question was returned to the dealership at exactly 8:16
P.M.,
Thursday, June 8, 1933.

The same day as the gold heist in South Dakota, I reminded myself.

“Jeannie, may I use your computer?” I asked.

Shipman reluctantly allowed it, watching over my shoulder as I asked
Ask.com
for the weight of a standard bar of gold—approximately 27.56 pounds. I multiplied it by thirty-two (using Shipman’s PC calculator). The
extra load in Frank Nash’s car would have amounted to approximately eight hundred eighty-two pounds.

“Sonuvabitch,” I said. “It was him. He really did pull it off.”

“Who pulled what off?” Shipman asked.

I spun, cupped her face in my hands, and kissed her full on the mouth.

“Be still my heart,” she said.

By the way it was pounding, it was my own heart that I should have been concerned with.

Although I become upset—if not downright insulting—whenever I see people talking on their cell phones while driving, I was talking on my cell phone while driving.

“You believe me now, don’t you?” Berglund said when I told him what I had learned.

“Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind,” I told him.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m driving to the Minnesota History Center.”

“I’ve already read everything the Historical Society has on Frank Nash.”

“Yeah? What about the fences he might have worked with?”

“Fences?”

“A very wise man once said”—actually it was the actor Chris Tucker in a scene from the film
Rush Hour 2,
but I didn’t tell Berglund that—“behind every big crime is a rich white man waiting for his cut.”

“So you’re looking for a rich white man?”

“That pretty much covers it.”

“Good luck. In the meantime, I’ll be looking into some private collections for letters, diaries, that sort of thing. I’ll contact you later. We’ll arrange a meeting to compare notes.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“By the way, those men yesterday, I haven’t seen them. Do you think they stopped following us?”

I watched a red Chevy Aveo cautiously round a corner in my rearview mirror.

“No,” I said.

5

The Minnesota History Center is a sparkling gem of a building located on a high hill overlooking the sprawling State Capitol Campus, the majestic St. Paul Cathedral, the Xcel Center, where the Minnesota Wild play hockey, and much of downtown St. Paul. Still, it was difficult to reach, especially from police headquarters. A lot of corners needed to be turned and a lot of stoplights needed to be waited on. Which made it easy to spot the red Aveo following me. I figured it must have picked me up when I left my home early that morning and tailed me to the cop shop. I cursed myself for being so careless that I didn’t detect it sooner.

I couldn’t make out the driver or his passenger, but I was willing to take bets that it was Ted and Wally. I could have lost them easily enough—it was hard not to—only I didn’t want them to know I had spotted them. Not yet, anyway. Still, they had to speed through a red light to keep pace.

“C’mon, guys,” I said aloud. “Are you even trying?”

Eventually, I led them up Kellogg Boulevard into the History Center’s pay-as-you-go parking lot. I might have taken my chances at a meter, except
it was Monday morning and you do not want to park illegally in downtown St. Paul in the morning. Parking enforcement officers are expected to document an average of fifty-five violations a day—two hundred seventy-five each week—and for reasons that maybe a psychologist might be able to explain, they just go crazy in the mornings, especially between 9:00 and 11:00
A.M.
It’s worse on Tuesday mornings when they write enough tickets to meet over 20 percent of their weekly quota. Not that the local government minds. Since the PEOs generate three million bucks a year in revenue, the City wishes they would become even more fanatical more often.

The parking lot is cut into four tiers on the side of a hill. I managed to find a spot on the top tier nearest the door. The Aveo parked at the bottom. I pretended not to notice it as I made my way to the History Center.

A wonderfully wholesome-looking blue-eyed blonde, a true Nordic princess, sat just two tables away from me in the Weyerhaeuser Reference Room of the Minnesota History Center Research Library. She was examining the contents of several file boxes scattered around her. Normally I would have given her a nod and a smile, for I believe that true beauty must always be acknowledged (even if Nina disagrees), except I was enthralled by the astonishing cache of 1930s data available for the perusing to anyone who took out a free library card.