The American Murders: A Dan Delaney Mystery

By Laura Joyce Moriarty

In the case of The American Murders, Dan is called to the States to help solve two murders in the Tampa - St. Petersburg area of Florida, but before he even takes off from Dublin, another request takes him into Cleveland, Ohio where a bank vice president and a low level bookie are both presumed dead.

All of the murders stem from post-Capone connections when bootlegging and racketeering openly controlled U.S. cities. This story picks up in 1961 when gangs and protection still poisoned American cities, but the giants of the past and their mafia partnerships have splintered, moved underground, and corrupted the operations of local governments and businesses.

Once again, the persistent Irish sleuth pulls the missing pieces together and uncovers the strange connections that exist among all the murder victims.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Joyce Moriarty
• Release date: Feb 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310713354

Laura Joyce Moriarty

Laura Joyce studied Political Science at Emory University and went on to the University of Georgia to complete a Masters in Public Administration. She then worked at Emory University in Information Technology for seventeen years. During part of that tenure she wrote extensively on various technology topics and was the chief editor of a scholarly journal entitled, A Publication on Information Technology from Emory University [POINT]. Many of her papers on information technology can still be found on the Internet.She has completed a trilogy:The Secrets of Nine Irish Sons I – The BeginningThe Secrets of Nine Irish Sons II – The Rose OisínThe Secrets of Nine Irish Sons III – The Forces of StonesShe is now retired and living in Florida.Extended Bio at: http://www.fourrosesandbrownpublishing.com/aboutlaura.htm

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Chapter One

Introduction

Sunday Evening, September 10th 1961

When Delaney’s old friend from New Jersey called him and asked him to fly to Tampa, Florida, he was stunned. He couldn’t imagine what he would know, if anything, that could help a murder investigation in the U.S.

Look Sam. You do know that I am the Commissioner and can’t just walk away from my job on a whim?

You have Murphy to take over and you can take a few weeks leave. I spoke with him already this morning before you got in. He said you were waiting for forensics on a bombing and it would take weeks to sort out the details before you can investigate the murder of your previous commissioner. Besides, you haven’t had a vacation in nine years, so I don’t think anyone is going to gripe if you are away for a couple of weeks. And, you are needed badly.

Delaney was not happy about the fact that Sam had made inquiries with Murphy behind his back. How would he know what I wanted? he thought. Now he’s ruined any opportunity I might have had for backing out of something I may not want to do.

Why’s that? he asked sounding a bit more surly than usual.

Several reasons. First, it looks like a double homicide. Second, there is a familial connection similar to your recent murders in Dublin. You are one of the few people in the investigative world that keeps solving two murders at the same time. It’s unprecedented. You may not even understand why, but the scope of your mental meanderings is unbelievable to the rest of us.

Just luck . . . timing I think. Besides, I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that we don’t have that many murders to deal with---that is compared to the numbers in the U.S. We can mull on them for a good while.

You are right there, but still, you have a knack for putting the puzzle pieces together. And these two recent murders have a common thread, though a very weak one. We believe they are tied to the old Capone rackets. He’s been dead for over a decade, but the word is that some of his associates have secretly continued to run and grow his businesses.

And what else? he asked sounding unconvinced.

The challenging part of solving these murders is that the police force in Tampa are backed up with work. They are simply overwhelmed. You know that sometimes they have more mobsters hanging out in the Tampa area than in Miami or Chicago?

Why’s that?

Hard to say exactly. The gangsters from up north have always liked to winter in Florida---probably because there is so much uncontrolled vice in the area. These cities are the perfect place for them to play---friendly hotels, lots of payoffs, private restaurants, the race track, and lots of pools. Those guys love to hang out in their silk robes and slippers while smoking their stogies poolside.

Sounds somewhat creepy from this side of the pond.

From over here as well. Anyway, right now Tampa suffers from understaffed or mismanaged police forces, and they know it, so they are in the process of planning a department-wide reorganization. Meanwhile, this case not only involves old connections to the mafia, but also a strange association with a Cleveland, Ohio bank.

What do you know about the two Tampa murders?

Only that the victims have a puzzling history with Capone connections. We have checked with all the local informants and they have nothing else to offer. The most that they can say for the moment is that they don’t think the murders are related to the Tampa mafia family wars.

Is Tampa connected to the families up north?

"There are communications, but the bosses in Tampa haven’t been openly associated with the big mob families or the gangland massacres typical of the big cities in the north. And they steer clear of any links with the mafia in St. Petersburg, which from my understanding still does some smuggling and money laundering with the families in Chicago and Cleveland. Most of the gangsters in St. Pete are old comrades of Capone in Chicago and some of the bosses in Cleveland that ran the bootlegging business from the islands through Florida, and then up north.

Exactly how many of the old businesses have moved underground, we do not know. Even when Capone was still around, he ran his operations in St. Petersburg, and owned several properties there through a legitimate front. The local lore says he bought houses for his relatives. But after he got out of prison, he moved to Miami where he died. He’s not even a legend around St. Petersburg anymore.

One more distinguishing point about these different mobs. In Tampa, usually only one guy gets hit at a time. Here’s an example. Beginning in the 1920s, they had a guy who controlled a number of gambling rackets named Charlie Wall. Every time he got into a turf war, you’d see a guy gunned down and hanging out of the side of his car door in a bloody mess. Despite these murders, Wall was a local favorite.

But, here’s what makes a guy like him different. A don up north might have a family and most of his guys are Sicilian, or at least Italian. But this guy Wall was different. He ran a cigar factory . . . a main place of employment for immigrants that came in from the islands and Mexico. And just like the diversity of the employees in his factory, the men in his criminal organization came from all kinds of backgrounds---Italians, Haitians, Anglos, Cubans, and Spaniards to name a few. In fact, it was anyone he felt fit the bill for one of his jobs---regardless of race, creed, or color. The man didn’t discriminate when it came to hiring his protection.

For the police, dealing with him was difficult because Wall really knew how to charm the residents. He was a carbon copy of Capone’s habits. He would treat the children around the neighborhoods throwing money out the window of his car, especially on Sundays when the churches emptied out."

Funny, our past Commissioner probably trained him in the art of public opinion.

"The major vice he controlled was the Bolita game, a tough gambling epidemic that nearly controlled the entire population.

While the public may have guessed there was something about the lottery that wasn’t on the up and up, they had no way of knowing just how the corruption worked. In fact, very few people have ever been privy to the scheme. If the people really didn’t know the games were crooked, they certainly knew that there was a lot of crime going on around them. The morning news was filled with incidents of gangland murders, heists, and bombings.

They knew it, but didn’t believe it because they couldn’t imagine how they could control something that looked like pure luck. If you know about bingo, you can guess what the game looks like. So when the court of public opinion was held in Ybor City in downtown Tampa where the cigar factories and their owners dispensed justice, there was very little control over the graft.

But you don’t need all that history because we are fairly sure these murders are not related to the current organized crime in Tampa. And most of the old gangsters in St. Petersburg are a bunch of old, lazy goombas who have been living off the bounty of past generations.

I understand the problems you’ve described, but to tell you the truth it simply doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.

OK. You win. I didn’t want to beg, but there is more to it. I have a buddy from the war who’s working down there and he’s getting kicked six ways to Sunday because they can’t close any cases. He’s spread too thin and while the brass knows all the problems, they can’t stop beating up on this guy. He was in my platoon and frankly saved my life on more than one occasion. I’ve been trying to help him out with some of his cases, but we are swamped with the same problems---understaffed and trying to get something accomplished around all the payoffs. It’s almost impossible to close anything. I don’t want my friend to lose his job. He’s two years away from retirement and will have to work another job to finish paying off college bills. The only way he can keep it is by running some good news in the papers and get public opinion behind him.

Why didn’t you tell me that before? If anyone understands problems with an inflexible brass, it’s me. Make my reservations.

Chapter Two

Grace Magdalena Lambertson

Born 1939

Grace Magdalena Lambertson was born to a Norwegian father and Croatian mother, both of whom swore they loved her---but from a distance. They were way too much into each other and did their best to be in a different room the whole time Grace grew up. Partly it was because of their persistent physical attraction. Her mother couldn’t even lean over the kitchen sink when she was exhausted without her husband putting his hands up the back of her dress. If she rebuffed him, a few punches would come her way until she capitulated.

Luckily, her Croatian grandmother, Lily, lived with them and kept Grace in her bedroom with her. She would have milk and cookies waiting for her as soon as she got off the bus from school. She would help her with her homework, and they would watch TV together until the evening meal was set out. She adored her granddaughter. She was as good as a full-time mother, and filled her head with beautiful fairytales of love and living happily ever after. Lily told the child that her parents were very unusual, and that she would see that Grace found a kind man who was attentive without being---what she called suggestive with every touch.

Her grandmother’s incessant attentiveness was obvious from the first day of school. She had braided her granddaughter’s white blond hair with strands of pink satin ribbon and wrapped the braids on top of her head. Every day Grace was dressed in freshly starched and ironed pinafores and looked like something straight out of a 19th century elite European family photo. On Grace’s 14th birthday, Lily changed Grace’s hairdo. She left a partial braid crown around the top of her head and let the rest fall from the encircling braids in three or four thick golden locks. Then she looked like something out of an 18th century portrait.

Grace knew that her classmates found her a bit odd, but didn’t care. She would do anything for her grandmother, and while the girls in her class made fun of her, some of the most popular boys found her beautiful. She would show her grandmother the private notes they would pass to her in the hallways. Lily explained that many of the girls could be jealous. But not because she was beautiful. It was because they couldn’t help but envy the child who had so much delicate attention given to her---they presumed by her parents.

Think about it, she would say. What if you were one of those kids who never had anyone pay any attention to you? Most kids are very aware when they see someone who is obviously doted on, especially if they have never had anyone pamper them. They wonder and feel naturally envious.

They didn’t know that it was Grace’s grandmother that doted on her. But they did know that the old woman loved children and was very kindhearted. She would come to the school twice a month as a substitute for Grace’s mother. All mothers were expected to come for at least an hour once a month to help the teacher with unobtrusive classroom duties, but the circumstances of Grace’s mother’s endless bruising prevented her from going out into public.

Lily, on the other hand, was persistently hopeful that she could create a new fate for her granddaughter. She replaced Grace’s mother at every opportunity so she could observe the children in the classroom as inconspicuously as possible, and so she could be Grace’s best friend after school. There was no way anyone would be allowed to play with Grace in her home---nor could she play in theirs. So she had to fill a gap. She would point out the children that were nice and well-raised and those she thought were doomed for a life of failure. Grace loved to listen to her grandmother’s thoughts on her classmates.

Lily dreamed of taking Grace out of the house for good, and moving into an apartment with her until she was old enough to live on her own safely. But it was not to be. The day after she graduated from high school, Lily died unexpectedly. And it was the very moment after the funeral that Grace’s parents looked at her as if her status had changed at the same time.

When do you plan to move out? asked her father.

I will look for a job tomorrow, answered Grace.

That was the moment when Grace learned that her father hated her and that her mother was a helpless woman. So she went down to the employment agency to discuss her qualifications which were minimal. Still, by the third day of job hunting she had landed a nearly perfect one at The National City Bank in downtown Cleveland.

I will not have a paycheck for two weeks, but I know where I want to live. I will need to make a down payment of $50 on the apartment and pay $150 in advance for the first month’s rent. I suppose I must stay here for two weeks---at least, she reported back.

She didn’t tell them that her grandmother had opened a savings account for her in first grade and had put a half dollar into it every week. She had more than enough to move out immediately. She was simply curious about how badly they wanted her to leave. They weren’t rich, but her father had plenty of money to spend on himself, and since he had not felt the need to buy her a simple graduation present, she thought he should give her something if he was so anxious to get rid of her. Certainly, none of her friends had been asked to move out of their houses, and in fact, some had complained that their parents had insisted that they live at home indefinitely.

It didn’t take him long to come up with $200 to get her out of the house. So the next day, she took the bus from South Euclid, Ohio on the east side of Cleveland over to Lake Ave. on the West side. She had picked out a building called Michael’s Towers. She had heard about it from one of her friends who said it was a great place for singles and they got together every Wednesday night to ice skate and then drink at a nearby pub while they made plans for the weekends. She couldn’t wait to be on her own, and signed a lease that very afternoon.

She had very few belongings, but her father was glad to fill up his pickup truck with hers and her grandmother’s furniture and the rest of her personal items and she was moved in the next day. She had twin beds, several small tables with lamps, two dressers, and a beautiful rocking chair she put in the living room with her grandmother’s TV console.

She went to a used furniture store the next day and bought a couch, and for the next few days, she was busy sewing new slipcovers. She made the place her own in a week. She bought a potted tree for her deck and spent a great deal of time lounging with a book while looking out at the lake. In her mind, her grandmother may not have been alive, but was with her every moment of her existence.

After a few months of living serenely away from her parents, her mind seemed to open to new possibilities. She noticed how some of the women at work dressed, especially the ones who seemed to advance in their positions. She planned to spend some of her earnings and a bit of her savings on an improved wardrobe---some items that were interchangeable, but very sophisticated. She bought a Vogue magazine and realized that the things she really loved, like a camelhair pants suit with a chinchilla boa that went all the way down the front of the jacket were way out of her league for the moment. But she tore out the picture of the item along with a few other outfits she liked and put them in her nightstand drawer.

Once her apartment was suitable, she took off on a bus downtown, visiting Halle Brother’s and Higbee’s. When she got back home on the last bus of the night, she was thrilled with her new outfits. On the very next Monday, she wore a gray angora sweater---plain with a small collar, and a matching gray wool skirt. It too was plain and straight, and was adorned with a one-inch pleat down the front and an open kick pleat in the back. She wore one of her grandmother’s small pearl necklaces and matching earrings. She put on her new patent leather pumps and hoped that she wouldn’t have to walk very much during that day.

She felt like a million bucks and the people in her office noticed. She looked completely different from the girl who had left her home in South Euclid, Ohio. Everything about her had changed---except for her hairdo.

She knew that people in the office had noticed, but she could not figure out if they had positive or negative feelings about her. Still, she felt as if they were showing her more respect than they had when she was still wearing her plaids and sweaters from high school.

She began to look forward to her day at work more than anything. After a year, she had acquired a reputation for offering the best service to any customer, rich or poor, and after two years, the customers would demand that she handle their transactions. At that point, she walked into her boss’s office one day, and said briefly, I have a friend down at Bache who said they are desperate to hire me. The rumor is that they will pay me more than twice what I make here. She walked out.

The next day she received a slip from the Personnel Supervisor saying that she had been promoted and would be receiving a two hundred dollar a month raise. That Saturday afternoon she went to Halle’s and bought the camelhair pants suit with the long jacket that was trimmed with Chinchilla fur. Once she got home she almost regretted buying it. It was so expensive. She didn’t want to wear it on the bus to and from work, because they were so dirty, and in no time, she’d have an exorbitant cleaning bill. She would have to find a seamstress---someone much more experienced than she was to remove the fur and add snaps to it and to the coat. That way she could clean the fur herself with baking soda and a hair dryer.

As she was going to sleep that night, she was complaining to her grandmother about how foolish she had been, but then she had a thought. Maybe someday a suitor might come along and invite her to dinner and to the Playhouse. The outfit would be perfect with a black turtleneck sweater. In fact, rarely had anyone ever had anything special to wear on a cold winter date. She brightened as she fell off. But I don’t really like the way the pants fit. I will have to take them in, she thought.

She never had the chance.

Chapter Three

1959

Right after Grace was promoted, she noticed that the vice president of the bank would show up in the middle of a transaction she was having with a customer, and look over her shoulder. At first, she hesitated for a second and then quickly decided to go on with her business. To her, the customer came first, and they were the ones who ultimately made her promotion possible.

One day, she came into her office as usual and the first thing she did each morning was unlock her desk and check the overnight box that held any checks or certificates that came in after the messenger’s last delivery.

This day, she opened the box as usual expecting to see a thirty thousand dollar cashier’s check she had left on the very top of the box. It wasn’t there. She tried not to panic and looked carefully between the stock certificates, taking each one out and unfolding it completely. Then she looked in every file, under every paper, and even under the desk and could not find the check. She felt like she was going to faint.

She sat thinking for a few moments. She had followed the procedures she had been given exactly. If any of the upper management felt that her office, which was inside an alarmed cage on the first floor was vulnerable, then it was their responsibility to change their procedures or come up with something that would not be vulnerable---if indeed, the check had been stolen.

She sat a little longer wondering if she was losing it. Maybe she had put the check in the cashier’s desk, and placing it in the overnight box was just a figment of her imagination. Maybe it was some kind of déjà vu playing tricks on her since she went through the exact same procedure every night before she left. She went out into the cage and checked the desk of the stock cashier, and it wasn’t there. She had one more place to check. She walked up to the front window and opened the top metal drawer of the desk counter that spanned the width of the windows where customers came for service. The morning cashier, a woman in her forties with red frizzy hair she wore in a French twist, and who usually looked very polished and professional, slapped her hand. Grace was stunned. She was just about to say something when the dreadful vice president snuck up behind her.

Looking for this? he asked as he held the thirty thousand dollar cashier’s check in front of her.

By now she was angry. She stared at the elderly man with his thin white hair, mangled black eyebrows, and ugly glasses.

April Fool’s! he said smiling.

It was April Fool’s day on Saturday.

Yes, and that’s the day I came in and moved the check, he smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

It was at that moment she decided she would never be a permanent employee for such a mean man---indeed, such a crazy place. She didn’t smile back. She took the check out of his hand and went back to her office.

He followed her to her door, and then just stood there looking at her. What the hell is wrong with him? she thought. After a few moments he disappeared.

Months went by, and once again, Grace fell into her well-known routine of responsibilities, forgetting her secret promise to look for a new job.

Then one day, the vice president’s strange habit of incomplete and odd instructions started up again.

By the way, he said and paused for a long time as if she couldn’t wait to hear his next sentence. I have a customer coming in at one this afternoon. He has asked that you handle his family’s estate. I understand you have handled several estates and are capable of handling a large one?

A mass of responses jumbled through her mind and a second or two later she just said yes as if it was a rhetorical question. She sat for a moment trying to regain her composure. She wondered why the man hadn’t communicated his expectations . . . did he expect her to be somewhere---his office, a