Mean Streets Read online

  My thanks are due to Joe, Nancy and Laramie Moore, of the Moore Ranch in Bucklin, Kansas, for their good company, great advice and astonishing ability to take this greenhorn and make him vaguely saddleworthy

  First published in the UK in 2010 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com

  epub edition © 2010

  Copyright © Graham Marks, 2010

  The right of Graham Marks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Cover illustration by Sam Hadley.

  Extract from The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

  The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or used in any way except as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or loaned or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781409531852

  Batch no. 02166-2

  CONTENTS

  1 7.15A.M., AUGUST 15TH 1928, TOPEKA, KS

  2 A CALL IS MADE

  3 ROUND UP!

  4 CURIOUSER...

  5 AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

  6 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH, CHICAGO

  7 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH, TOPEKA

  8 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH, CHICAGO

  9 THE BEST-LAID PLANS

  10 POINT OF VIEW

  11 THE REAL WORLD

  12 2 + 2 = 5

  13 A FILE IS OPENED

  14 ALL DOWN TO THE TIMING

  15 MAKING PLANS

  16 BEANS ARE SPILLED

  17 MIDNIGHT OIL

  18 TICK-TOCK ...

  19 ... BOOM!

  20 MOVES ARE MADE

  21 A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY

  22 FOX LAKE

  23 STEPS ARE TAKEN

  24 MANY A SLIP ...

  25 ... ’TWIXT CUP AND LIP

  26 CATCH AS CATCH CAN

  27 ROAD RACE

  28 END OF THE ROAD?

  29 THE QUIET IS SHATTERED

  30 AFTERMATH

  31 TIME TO GO

  32 AT THE END OF THE DAY

  33 QUID PRO QUO

  34 LOOSE ENDS

  35 ALL TIED UP

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I SPY - THE CONSTANTINOPLE CAPER

  OTHER BOOKS BY GRAHAM MARKS

  1 7.15 A.M., AUGUST 15TH 1928, TOPEKA, KS

  T. Drummond MacIntyre III, son of T. Drummond MacIntyre II (Senior Vice President of MacIntyre, MacIntyre & Moscowitz Engineering, of Chicago, Atlanta and New York City), sat on his horse, Biscuit, and watched the dogs bring the last of the cows across the dirt road from one field into another.

  Trey (as he was generally known by one and all) got down, draped the reins over the fence and set about closing both gates. He could almost smell the bacon he knew Gramma Cecilia would be cooking, along with eggs over easy and hash browns, and his stomach growled and rumbled in anticipation. He’d been up since before 6.30 so he was somewhat ravenous.

  Job done, Trey got back on Biscuit, whistled for the dogs and set off back towards the ranch house, just a short ride away. He’d been down at the Circle M – Gramps’s spread just outside Topeka, Kansas – for almost a month now and there was no doubt that life on the ranch was about as far from the day-to-day to and fro of Chicago as it was possible to get.

  And none the worse for that, he reckoned as he rounded a bend in the road and saw a very unusual sight – for the time of day and this neck of the woods as his gramps would say; some hundred yards or so up ahead a very classy white automobile had stopped. It looked like it’d been jacked up, and someone, who’d taken their jacket off and rolled up their sleeves, was kneeling down by one of the rear wheels. The other side of the dirt road, three men in sharp pin-striped suits and slicked-back hair were smoking cigarettes and seemingly in deep discussion.

  As he got nearer, Trey could see that the man kneeling down was doing something to the wheel, and getting pretty mussed up in the process. Easiest thing in the world to get a flat tyre on these roads, he thought to himself as he got nearer.

  “Mister!” Trey called out. “You need a hand?”

  The men smoking glanced up, then went back to whatever it was they were talking about, but Mr. Shirtsleeves stood, wiping his hands on a grubby cloth, and shook his head. “No thanks, bud,” he called back. “Almost done here.”

  Trey could see the dogs were getting interested in what was going on up ahead and he whistled them back to him as the tallest of the three suits ground his cigarette out with the toe of his highly polished black-and-white shoe, and crossed over to the car with one of his colleagues – a pale man who was wearing a pair of heavy-framed tortoiseshell spectacles.

  As he approached, Trey saw that what he had here was a very fancy Buick Monarch, its black Landau top and streamlined coachwork covered in a layer of grey Kansas dust; definitely not the type of vehicle you saw very often in these parts. Being, it would not be exaggerating to say, very keen on automobiles, Trey knew this particular model had a six-cylinder 4.5-litre engine that developed 2,800 rpm; not quite as big as his pop’s 4.7-litre Chrysler Imperial, but no slouch. And he could see that the owner had opted for the wooden 12-spoke wheels, and the whitewall tyres that, if he remembered correctly, came with aluminium hubs.

  He was about to stop for a look and a friendly chat, the way everyone did in these parts, when he noticed the Buick had Illinois plates…but his attention was snatched away by the sight of the third suit, a shorter guy, walking across the road and flicking his lit cigarette behind him.

  “Hey!” Trey yelled, without thinking, pulling Biscuit up.

  “You mean me?” The man stopped and looked up at Trey, frowning. “Who you think you are, punk? Talking to me like that…”

  The man’s aggressive tone of voice and heavy scowl wasn’t missed by the dogs, particularly Blaze, who started growling, his hackles right up.

  “One of them mutts touches me, kid,” the man started to reach into his jacket, “I’ll make it sorry, so help me…”

  Trey froze, his eyes wide and seemingly glued to the man’s hand, knowing it must be a gun he was going for. All he could think of was how he would tell Gramma Cecilia if anything happened to one of her dogs. Then he somehow managed to break the spell of fear. “Blaze!”

  “Stub the butt out, Frank. This ain’t Chicago.”

  Trey glanced to his left and saw the taller of the two suits by the car coming towards him. He could tell that Biscuit had picked up on the rising tension, and was aware of the dogs nervously pacing near him. Feeling that his control over the animals was in danger of slipping away from him, all he wanted to do was get on his way before he lost it completely.

  “You hear me, Frank?” said Tall Suit. “You could start a fire out here, right, kid?”

  Trey looked at the man who’d just spoken, aware that his face seemed oddly familiar. “Yeah,” he nodded, trying to figure out why he recognized him, “you bet.”

  The short guy didn’t move.

  “What I tell you, Frank?” Tall Suit raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Stub it out, capich
e?”

  “Sure. Anything you say…” Frank’s lip curled, revealing a snaggle of yellowed teeth, and he shot Trey a filthy look as he crossed back over the road.

  “I apologize for my associate, he doesn’t spend too much time in locales such as these that don’t have pavements. And thanks for the offer of help. Much appreciated.” Tall Suit grinned, his smile wide and apparently friendly. He began to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “One thing, how far are we from this place – the T-Bone ranch?”

  “Not so far, mister.” Trey nodded down the road. “A couple of miles is all, you can’t miss the signs they have up.”

  “Good to know.” The man gave Trey a mock salute. “Thanks.”

  Trey glanced the other side of the dirt road and saw the one called Frank stamping around in the dry grass. Frank looked up and caught Trey watching him. His eyes narrowed as he stared back at Trey and spat like he really meant it into the dust.

  “I see you again…” he whispered as he passed by, close enough for Trey to smell his oddly flowery cologne; his face was split by a humourless smile as he drew a finger slowly across his throat, leaving the sentence unfinished.

  Gathering his reins up, Trey kicked Biscuit into a gallop and made tracks, his heart beating like a jackrabbit’s back leg, his mouth drier than a sand pie…

  2 A CALL IS MADE

  Trey made it back to the Circle M in double-quick time. He could hardly believe he’d just been threatened with death by some mobster! As he rode he kept on seeing the man’s gesture, his finger drawn like a knife blade across his throat; truthfully, he had thought people only did that kind of thing in the movies.

  None of what had just happened seemed possible, and as the ranch house came into view Trey was still trying to make sense of things. Coming across the type of big-wheel gangsters who got their faces plastered all over the front pages of the Herald-Examiner newspaper back in Chicago (heck, they even got their pictures in the Tribune, the altogether far more serious paper his pop disappeared behind every morning at the breakfast table) was not what you expected out here in the country.

  So, exactly what was a car full of hoodlums doing driving down the back roads of Shawnee County, Kansas? Because, if you believed everything you read in the popular papers (or what his father, rather scathingly, in Trey’s opinion, called the yellow press), these types were more likely to be found in the big cities, making and selling illegal booze and blasting away at each other with tommy guns, than out here in cattle country.

  For as long as Trey could remember there had been this thing called Prohibition, which meant it was against the law to drink – not stuff like Pepsi-Cola and root beer, but real beer, gin and bourbon whiskey and such. He’d grown up with his gramps – a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat (his own description) – telling anyone who’d listen, and plenty who didn’t want to, that he thought it was a hare-brained Republican party idea to stop a man having a glass of his favourite tipple.

  Quite a few times Trey had seen his grandfather wag a finger at someone daring to express an opposing view, telling them in no uncertain terms that Prohibition hadn’t stopped anyone drinking, it had just let gangsters make a fortune selling illegal booze on the black market. It was one of the few subjects that Gramps and Gramma Cecilia, who never drank anything stronger than the occasional home-made sarsaparilla, disagreed on.

  Riding under the wide-arched gateway, with the big Circle M brand up on top, Trey thought it curious that the men hadn’t stuck to Route 66 instead of taking the back roads. They could, of course, have come to fill someone with lead, or put a guy in a pair of concrete boots, or merely scare the living daylights out of them. The man called Frank certainly looked like the type who did that kind of thing on a regular basis. But who would they do that to round here? And why?

  Biscuit knew the way blindfolded round to the rear of the ranch house where there’d be some feed, so Trey let the pony take over while he continued to puzzle over what gangsters were doing so off the beaten track. It wasn’t as if this place was buzzing, what with the nearest neighbours being at least a couple of miles away.

  It was a mystery, and there was nothing that Trey liked more than the idea of being involved in a mystery. He believed – the same as his favourite private detective, Black Ace magazine’s Trent “Pistol” Gripp – that “the need for answers was in his blood”. Although questions that desperately needed answering had very definitely been missing from this stay with Gramps and Gramma Cecilia. Mind you, he thought, as he tied Biscuit up to a rail, it meant he’d had plenty of time to pore over the book he’d saved up and sent for by mail order. He’d seen How to Become a Private Eye in 10 Easy Lessons, by Austin J. Randall, advertised at the back of Black Ace magazine, and, as the quote on the book’s dustjacket said, it definitely was “A veritable mine of useful information”.

  Somehow the sight (not to mention the smell) of plates piled high with strips of crispy bacon, eggs, hash browns and, this morning, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, pushed all thoughts of Chicago gangsters from Trey’s mind. For the moment.

  By the end of breakfast, while he was helping Gramma Cecilia clear the table, it all came back to him as he picked up Gramps’s empty plate.

  “Guess what, Gramps,” he said, watching his grandfather fill in a crossword clue in the Topeka Daily Capital’s puzzle.

  “I try not to guess, son. I prefer to know…” He looked at Trey over his half-glasses and raised one eyebrow. “Six letters: S-blank-blank-M-blank-E; another word meaning ‘thwart’. Any ideas?”

  Trey shook his head.

  “Too bad…now what were you saying?”

  “Want to know who I saw out on the North Road this morning with a flat tyre and looking for the T-Bone ranch?”

  “Stymie!” T. Drummond MacIntyre, the first – known to close friends as Ace – sat back in his chair, smiling.

  “What?” Trey frowned.

  “It’s the answer to a clue, dear.” Gramma Cecilia took the plate away from Trey. “For heaven’s sake, Theodore, put that silly game down and listen to what Trey is saying to you.”

  “It is not a silly game, Cessy, it’s vital brain exercise!” Gramps tucked his pencil behind one ear and turned to Trey, nodding. “Vital, mark my words, son. Now who was it you saw with a flat tyre?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it was a bunch of hoodlums, Gramps.”

  “Come again?”

  “You know, mobsters? Like Al Capone?”

  “You saw Al Capone out on the North Road, son?” Gramps looked over his glasses, a twinkle in his eye.

  “No, Gramps, not him!” Trey knew he was having his leg pulled and was anxious to be taken seriously; after all, it had seemed pretty serious back out there. “They had a brand-new white Buick Monarch, with Illinois plates, wood-spoke wheels and all!”

  “I’m sure there are no people like that around here, dear…” Gramma Cecilia cleared the place mats off the table and disappeared back into the kitchen. “Thankfully, Chicago is five hundred miles away.”

  “It’s five hundred and seventy, Cessy,” Gramps called after her.

  “Don’t split hairs, Theodore…”

  “But Gramps, I’ve seen people just like ’em in the papers, I’m sure of it!” Trey didn’t think it a wise move to explain about the Death Threat, grown-ups having a tendency to overreact somewhat in such situations. “There were three of them, and a driver, and one of them was a real goon called Frank, and—”

  “Well, you may well be right, son.” Gramps got up, pushing his chair back, and pulled a gold pocket watch out of his tweed waistcoat to check the time. “And woe betide them if they come here looking for a glass of water – your gramma will give them a piece of her mind they won’t forget in a hurry! Now come on, son – we both have places to go, people to see and things to do, have we not?”

  Ace MacIntyre waited until his grandson had left the ranch house and his wife was busy with something in the kitchen before he went into his study, closing the doo
r behind him.

  Sitting at his roll-top desk he pulled open a drawer and took out a small, linen-bound notebook, flicking through its pages until he found what he wanted. Putting the notebook down, he picked up the telephone handset and tapped the bar, taking the pencil from behind his ear and doodling while he waited for someone at the local exchange to come on line.

  “Is that you, Mr. MacIntyre?”

  “Sure is.”

  “And what can I do for you today?”

  “Put through a person-to-person call, please?”

  “That’d be a pleasure – what’s the number?”

  Referring to the notebook, Gramps read out the number he wanted and then sat back listening to all the clicks, buzzes and hums it took to complete the connection. Finally he heard the sound of the phone ringing at the other end and he put the pencil down. Robertson Ely Bonner – Bob to his pals, “Behind Bars” to those he caught – was one of his oldest friends, and now headed up the Chicago branch of the Bureau of Investigation. Since Prohibition had begun, some eight years ago, Bob had become a very busy man, the “no drink” legislation, in both their opinions, having done nothing but give mobsters carte blanche to ride roughshod over the law.

  “Yes?” The voice at the other end was crackly but clear.

  “Bob? Ace MacIntyre.”

  “Son of a gun! To what do I owe this pleasure – you back in town and looking for a game of golf?”

  “No, still out in the boondocks looking after cattle. Be back for Christmas, probably, to spend some time with the family.”

  “And how is everyone?”

  “Fine, fine…” Gramps took a cheroot from the cedarwood box on the desk, struck a match and puffed it alight. “Fact it’s because of my grandson, Trey, that I’m calling.”

  A chuckle came down the line from Chicago. “Oh yeah? What’s he gone and gotten himself up to?”

  “He says he saw some mobsters on the North Road this morning, early, while he was out doing chores. Seemed pretty sure, too, said there were three of them, and a driver. Considering Trey says he spotted an Illinois registration on the car, I thought you might like to know.”