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?”
“Kids don’t play stickball anymore. They play video games,” I said.
“A construction worker, then, or a nosy neighbor? The place had to be to be dry, don’t you think?”
“Probably,” I said. “At least, the two keys would suggest the money isn’t buried.”
“I’m sorry Gilbert got his hands on those keys. Gives him the edge if we identify the place.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got a set of key picks I dutifully tote with me everywhere. If we find the right locks, we’re in business.”
“We can always hack through the locks,” Ray suggested. “I learned that in prison, among other things.”
“You got quite an education.”
“I’m a good student,” he said modestly.
The three of us were silent for a moment, trying to get our imaginations to work.
I spoke up again. “You know, the locksmith who first saw the big key thought it might fit a gate. So how’s this for a guess? Maybe Johnny had access to an old estate. The big key fit the gate and the smaller key fit the padlock on the front door.”
Ray didn’t seem that happy. “How’d he know the place wouldn’t be sold or torn down?”
“Maybe it was a historical landmark. Protected by historical preservationists.”
“Suppose they decided to restore the place and charge an entrance fee? Then everybody and his brother could walk around the place.”
“Right,” I said. “Anyway, once they got in, they couldn’t find the money sitting out in plain sight. It’d have to be concealed.”
“Which puts us right back where we were,” he said.
We were silent again.
Ray said, “What gets me is we’re talking big. Seven, eight big canvas bags loaded down with cash and jewelry. Those suckers were heavy. We were big strappin’ guys in those days, all of us young. You should have seen us grunting and groaning, trying to get ’em stashed in the trunk of the car.”
I looked at him with interest. “What was the original plan? Suppose the cops hadn’t showed up when they did? What did Johnny mean to do with the money in that case?”
“Same thing, I guess. He always said the reason bank robbers got tripped up was they went out and spent the money way too fast. Started fencing silver and jewels while the cops were circulating information about what was in the heist. Made it all easy to trace.”
“So whatever the plan was, he’d set it up well in advance,” I said.
“He had to.”
I thought about that. “Where was he caught?”
“I forget now. Outside town. On the highway, heading out in that direction somewhere.”
“Ballardsville Road,” Helen said. “Don’t know why, but that sticks in my mind. Don’t you remember?”
Ray flushed with pleasure. “She’s right,” he said. “How’d you remember that?”
“I heard it on the radio,” she said. “I was so frightened. I thought you were with him. I didn’t know the two of you had separated, and I was convinced you’d been caught.”
“I was. I just happened to be somewhere else,” he said.
“How soon after the robbery was Johnny picked up?”
Ray’s eyes rested on mine. “You’re thinking he stashed the goods somewhere between the bank downtown and the place he was caught?”
“Unless he had time to go to some other town and come back,” I said. “It’s like saying you always find something the last place you look. I mean, it’s self-evident. Once you find what you’re looking for, you don’t look any place else. The last you saw him, he had the sacks full of cash. By the time he was arrested, they were gone.
Therefore, the money had to have been hidden some time in that period. By the way, you never said how long it was.”
“Half a day.”
“So he probably didn’t have time to get far.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I always pictured the money around town somewhere. It never occurred to me he might have left and come back. Shoot. I guess it could be anywhere in a hundred-mile radius.”
“I think we should operate on the assumption that it’s here in Louisville. I don’t want to take on all of western Kentucky.”
Ray glanced down at his notes. “So what else do we have? This don’t look like much.”
“Wait a minute. Try this. The little key had a number on it. I just remembered that,” I said. “M550. It’s close to my birthday, which is May fifth.”
“What good does that do us?”
“We could go to the locksmith and have him grind one.”
“To use where?”
“Well, I don’t know, but at least we’ll have one key in our possession. Maybe the locksmith will have some other ideas.”
Ray said, “This feels lame to me. We’re really grasping at straws.”
“Ray, come on. You work with what you’ve got,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve started with less and still pulled it off.”
“All right,” he said skeptically. He made a note of the locksmith’s address. He reached for his jacket hanging over the chair.
I rose when he did and buttoned my blazer for warmth. “What about your mother? I don’t think she should be left here alone.”
She was startled by the mere suggestion. “Oh, no. I won’t stay here by myself,” she said emphatically. “Not with that fella on the loose. What if he come back?”
“Fine. We’ll take you with us. You can wait in the car while we go about our business.”
“And just set there?”
“Why not?”
“Well, I might set, but not unarmed.”
“Ma, I’m not going to let you sit in the car with a loaded shotgun. Cops would come by and think we’re robbing the place.”