A President In Peril (A Snap Malek Mystery) Read online

  Praise for Robert Goldsborough

  SHADOW OF THE BOMB

  "The author's own secret weapon is the way he stirs in just enough period detail to make you believe it really happened this way."

  –Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune

  "Featuring great characters and wonderful dialog… Goldsborough's description of Chicago has the quality of Max Allan Collins' fiction and Erik Larson's factual The Devil in the White City."

  –August P. Aleksy, Centuries & Sleuths, Forest Park, IL

  "In 1942 most of the newspaper coverage is on the war, but Steve Malek covers the local police beat for the Tribune. Readers obtain a glimpse of how the war impacted Chicago and how careful everyone is not to reveal anything on weapons development. Malek is more interested in solving the homicides than in uncovering top-secret weapons that could harm his nation if revealed. His investigation is realistic and engrossing as he works his crime beat to the delight of fans of historical mysteries. Robert Goldsborough is a fantastic storyteller."

  –Midwest Book Reviews on Shadow of the Bomb

  THREE STRIKES YOU'RE DEAD

  "Goldsborough, best known as the heir to Rex Stout via his half-dozen Nero Wolfe novels, creates a prewar Chicago that is at once sinister and appealing. He also weaves an engaging subplot involving Dizzy Dean and the Chicago Cubs' drive to the 1938 World Series. An enormously entertaining caper."

  –Wes Lukowsky, Booklist 100th Anniversary Issue

  "Robert Goldsborough, the man who so brilliantly brought Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin back to literary life, has returned with a new detective, all his own–and that's cause for any mystery fan to rejoice! Goldsborough is a master storyteller, providing crackling dialogue and plot twists around every corner–readers are in for a real treat!"

  –Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Purgatory

  "You don't have to be a fan of the city of Chicago, or '30's-era gangsters, or baseball's Chicago Cubs, or suspense to enjoy Three Strikes You're Dead but if you are, you will love this book! Three Strikes You're Dead is a very well developed and written story. Mr. Goldsborough clearly knows and loves Chicago, and provides a delightful tour! Of course, even in fiction the Cubs can't win the series. Move this one higher on your to-be-read pile."

  –Sandi Loper-Herzog

  MURDER IN E MINOR

  "Goldsborough has not only written a first-rate mystery that stands on its own merits, he has faithfully re-created the round detective and his milieu."

  –Philadelphia Enquirer

  "Mr. Goldsborough has all of the late writer's stylistic mannerisms down pat."

  –The New York Times on Murder in E Minor

  "A smashing success…"

  –Chicago Sun-Times

  "A half dozen other writers have attempted it, but Goldsborough's is the only one that feels authentic, the only one able to get into Rex's psyche. If I hadn't known otherwise, I might have been fooled into thinking this was the genius Stout myself."

  –John McAleer, Rex Stout's official biographer

  and editor of The Stout Journal

  Also by Robert Goldsborough

  Snap Malek Mysteries From Echelon Press

  Three Strikes You're Dead

  Shadow of the Bomb

  A Death in Pilsen

  Nero Wolfe Mysteries from Bantam Books

  Murder in E Minor

  Death on Deadline

  Fade to Black

  The Bloodied Ivy

  The Last Coincidence

  Silver Spire

  The Missing Chapter

  Robert Goldsborough

  A

  P3 R1 E1 S1 I1 D2 E1 N1 T1

  in peril

  A Snap Malek Mystery

  Echelon Press, LLC

  A PRESIDENT IN PERIL

  A Snap Malek Mystery

  Book Four

  An Echelon Press Book

  First Echelon Press paperback printing / June 2009

  All rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2008 by Robert Goldsborough

  Cover illustration © Nathalie Moore

  White House Photograph © Amelia Arria

  City Shapes Photography

  Echelon Press, LLC

  9735 Country

  Meadows Lane 1-D Laurel, MD 20723

  www.echelonpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Echelon Press, LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-59080-616-6

  1-59080-616-6

  eBook: 1-59080-617-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Augie Aleksy,

  friend, confidant, and

  bookseller extraordinaire

  Scrabble. A brand name for a game combining anagrams and crosswords in which two to four players use counters of various point values to form words on a playing board.

  –The Random House Dictionary

  of the English Language

  Prologue

  The marksman in the darkened second-floor room peered from his open window onto the sidewalk below, where onlookers had been gathering in clusters for the last half hour or so. The majority of them were the flophouse habitués who spent much of their time idling outside anyway. This was a break in the monotony for these pathetic souls: a chance to see a president of the United States, however briefly.

  The marksman had no sympathy for the sad denizens of Chicago's Skid Row. To him, every man had the power to better himself, and these people were no exception. They dwelt in this miserable stretch of

  West Madison Street in the shadow of the downtown skyscrapers because they were weak, undisciplined, and in most cases hopelessly alcoholic. He would be glad when his task ended in the next few minutes and he could leave this urban hellhole. The sound of a marching band wafted in from the east. The motorcade would soon follow. As if to presage its arrival, two squad cars, lights flashing, and four helmeted police motorcyclists roared by, directing the onlookers to stay on the curbs. The marksman looked down the barrel of his bolt-action Winchester 70 .30-06 rifle, hefting the familiar weapon and relishing its comfortable, secure feel in his skilled hands.

  Because his target would be no more than forty feet away, he felt no need for a scope. He had killed at several times that distance on Okinawa during the war in the Pacific without using a scope–although that was with a different rifle: the standard-issue M1 Garand. He far preferred the lighter Winchester. He had always been glad he hadn't had to serve in Europe, against the Germans. That would have been like fighting friends.

  He vaguely took note of a pedestrian below in a business suit and a crisp fedora. The man stood out from the otherwise seedy crowd, but the marksman remained so focused on his assignment that he gave the well-dressed pedestrian little thought. He did not realize he had seen the man before.

  The band was louder, only a couple of blocks away. It should not be more than ten or fifteen minutes at the most now. The president's motorcade, close behind the band, probably contained several convertibles filled with self-important figures including the mayor and every Democrat of note who was a candidate in the election.

  He caressed the rifle once again, running his hands along its smooth stock. He rested the barrel on the windowsill, careful to keep it out of sight from the street below. He knelt on the floor, finding the most comfortableposition, padding one knee on a pillow he had pulled off the rickety bed.

  The trumpets and trombones blared still louder. He sighted down t
he barrel once more, but was jarred by a hammering on the door.

  "Police! Open up!"

  The marksman swung his Winchester around to face the door and dropped into a crouch. The banging on the door continued, then the wood shattered and splintered. The door tore open, its knob bouncing along the floor with a clatter. Silhouetted in the dim light of the hallway stood a man in a fedora holding–what the hell–a baseball bat!

  Momentarily stunned, the marksman fired and the man in the fedora uttered a groan. Stumbling, lurching forward, he cocked the bat.

  The marksman stood, backed against the windowsill, and raised his weapon into position for a second shot at the charging man.

  Chapter One

  P3 O1 M3 P3 O1 U1 S1

  (adj) characterized by an ostentatious display of dignity or importance

  October 1948

  "Truman's gonna get murdered next month, and I do mean murdered," Dirk O'Farrell of the Chicago Sun-Times pronounced as he leaned back with his feet propped on the desk and blew smoke rings toward the grimy, flaking ceiling of the Police Headquarters press room. "Boys, I still stick with what I been saying since summer: the Democrats were nuts to nominate the guy, even if he is the incumbent."

  "Afraid I can't agree there, Dirk," rumbled Anson Masters of the Daily News. "The working men, the union men, will all rally to him, and their wives will vote the way their husbands do. Always have, always will."

  "Oh, hell, Antsy, you can't be serious," O'Farrell shot back, jabbing his cigarette toward Masters as if it were a fencing sword. "Harry's losing big chunks of Democrats all over the place. You've got them Dixiecrats, as they like to call themselves, who jumped the party and have that Strom Thurmond character from South Carolina running for president. He'll take votes away from Truman all across the damn South. Count on it.

  "And then there's that pinko Henry Wallace and his wacky Progressives; they'll eat into Truman's support even more, especially in places like New York. Dewey'll romp home. Take it to the bank."

  "I have to agree with Dirk. What's your take, Snap?" asked Packy Farmer of Hearst's Herald-American, grinning and stretching his suspenders. "The way your fine old Tribune is beating the drum for Dewey and hammering away at Harry–no surprise there–one would think by reading its pages that the election is just a formality, an afterthought."

  I laid the three-star edition of the Trib down on the desk and took a long drag on my Lucky Strike. "It might just surprise you boys to learn that I agree with my esteemed Daily News colleague," I said, gesturing toward Masters. "The fact is, I do believe that Anson's got it right, although this may sound strange, coming from one who takes his paychecks from the dear old Tribune."

  "Indeed!" Farmer guffawed. "And I won't quote you, Snap. I understand that Colonel McCormick fires anyone on his Trib who doesn't hew to the party line. But, honestly, why do you think that Truman's got a chance?"

  "First off, Packy, let me clear one thing up. The Colonel may be a rock-ribbed Republican, but he's got a healthy share of Democrats scattered around in his newsroom, and I suspect he knows it–and grudgingly lives with it. Now, as to the election: Like he proved against FDR in '44, Dewey's a stiff. Pompous is too generous a word for him. He works crowds with all the warmth and grace of a maitre d' at the snootiest restaurant in town. And he even looks like a maitre d', for God's sake, with that cute little mustache of his. Presidents don't have mustaches any more, not since the days of Teddy Roosevelt and fat old William Howard Taft.

  "The guy just doesn't connect with the average joe. And this country's filled with what? Average joes, that's what. Millions of them. My paper may have already put Tom Dewey in the White House, but I'm not ready to buy it. And in truth, the Colonel himself isn't all that fond of Dewey as a candidate; he far preferred Bob Taft of Ohio, that fat president's son."

  "But that won't stop him from endorsing Dewey," Anson Masters remarked.

  "Not at all," I said. "The last time the Tribune endorsed a Democrat, or so the story goes around the Tower, was when Horace Greeley ran against U.S. Grant just after the Civil War."

  "Well, at least your paper was smart enough back then to see that Grant would be a disaster–which he was," Masters said. "A great general, but a miserable president."

  "Hell, Antsy, you're so old you probably remember Grant first-hand," Dirk O'Farrell gibed. "Which Chicago paper were you working for when he got elected?"

  * * *

  The preceding badinage typifies our mornings in the press room at Police Headquarters,

  1121 S. State St., Chicago USA. The cast of characters–and I'd have to say we qualify as characters, present company included–all have worked as long-time police reporters on the city's four big daily papers. Anson Masters of the Daily News has been around longer than the rest of us, a fact he is not shy about mentioning every chance he gets. The long-divorced Masters, with a bald, freckled, and ruddy pate, must be pushing seventy now, but if he has any plans to hang it up and go fishing someplace, I've never heard about it. My guess is he'll be carried out of the press room in that proverbial pine box. The Herald-American's Packy Farmer, also divorced, is about the same age as Masters, although he wears his years somewhat better. Even with his once-black hair yielding to gray, he still has the look of a riverboat gambler with his center-part and a thin mustache similar to Dewey's. To further the image, he plays a mean game of five-card stud, as I've learned much to my regret.

  The lanky, white-haired Dirk O'Farrell, who toils for the newly formed Sun-Times, had previously been with Hearst's old Herald and Examiner and then with the Sun, a forerunner paper to his current employer. When the Sun and the Times merged in February of '48, Dirk landed the press room assignment, squeezing out Eddie Metz, who had been the Times man at Police Headquarters for years. That was a good call, as O'Farrell is twice the newsman Metz was–although that isn't saying a lot. Last I heard, Eddie–who should be in another line of work, maybe slinging burgers in a hash house–was employed as a clerk in the Sun-Times reference room, where he can't do a lot of damage.

  There's one other desk in the press room, which belongs to the City News Bureau of Chicago, a reporting service owned by the daily papers and which covers a lot of police and court news that the papers don't want to waste a man on. It's a journalistic version of boot camp for young reporters just breaking into the business who hope to land a job eventually on a daily paper whether in Chicago or elsewhere.

  The City News reporters change frequently, and their current day shift guy in the press room was a twenty-one-year-old lad named Jeff, who seemed to have some promise. I liked him and he frequently asked my advice about his future as a journalist, although my own career hardly qualifies me as a job counselor.

  That brings the picture around to me, Steve 'Snap' Malek, age forty-four, and feeling younger. I got the moniker because I wear snap-brim hats, sometimes indoors as well as out, although my late and sainted mother would have been appalled at that breach of etiquette. I've been with the Tribune for almost all of my professional life, the last fifteen years of it on this beat–except for a short stint in England as a foreign correspondent in the closing year of World War II. If you'll allow me to dispense with the false modesty, I'm by far the best writer of the bunch in this press room, and the best reporter as well.

  So why am I hanging around this dreary room in this dreary building? Because, truth to tell, I'm basically lazy. I've had other opportunities at the paper, including general assignment reporting where I would have roved all over the city and suburbs covering everything from gangland killings to hotel fires to ward elections to airplane crashes and train wrecks. But I've turned down these opportunities, in part because I like the day shift.

  Years ago, I decided I preferred working days because it left my evenings open for drinking, something I used to do far too often, destroying a marriage and damned near a career in the process. Now I still prefer working days but for an altogether different reason: I'm happily remarried and commute home ever
y night on a swaying old Lake Street Elevated train to Catherine and our stucco house on a shady street in the quiet and stately near-western suburb of Oak Park.

  Actually, it's her stucco house, the one she grew up in and has lived in for most of her life, except for the few unhappy years of her own first marriage. I would have preferred living in the city, but Catherine loves the house and the village where she works as an assistant librarian at the public library.

  Not only has Catherine been a personal godsend after what I see now as a decade spent in my own personal wilderness, but she is far more than I deserve. Beautiful without question–to the point where one of her co-workers once told me at a Christmas party that at least three different men were regular visitors to the library just so they could hang around her desk and ask questions that they easily could have found answers to in the card catalog.

  She stands about five-feet-four without heels, although her passion for shoes means she's usually two or three inches taller. She has curly dark brown hair, animated brown eyes, and a figure that draws looks from both men and women when we walk the streets of Oak Park. Her clothing, while tasteful, would hardly be termed provocative. She has a delightful sense of humor and a way of making me laugh at myself when I come home angry over some real or imagined slight from my editors in Tribune Tower. And yes, she has stirred a passion in me that I thought had been lost somewhere along the way. I can only hope, as I do every day, that I have been as good for her as she has been for me.