The Crop of Wickedness – EXCERPT #2
Harold’s case involves locating someone described only as a rich old lady’s confidant. He starts his research by inquiring at his old stomping grounds: the police station.
A quick stop by the main police station was worth the possibility of any indirect information about Art Stover. Melvin Bronsky held down the fort. He enjoyed the extra shifts as a desk sergeant because of his five children. First, he made more money. Second, he was glad to be away from his five children. He always looked as though he had not gotten enough sleep. Both his work and his family led him to that appearance.
“Mel, what do you know about Art Stover?”
“Name rings a bell,” he replied while he looked at the ceiling to jog his memory. “Private dick, I think. Like you.”
That surprised me. I tried to imagine such a decline in my business that I needed to take on the chores of companion to an elderly rich woman. Then again, he might have been more like the late Mickey Dowell. Anything for a buck as long as it was relatively legal and not subject to too much scrutiny.
“Any gab on him?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
Just then, Detective H.L. Watts of the Night Detective Squad, walked past with a handful of files, a sharpened pencil stuck behind his ear.
“Watts, Bergman here is looking for scoop on Art Stover.”
I never met H.L. Watts before, only knew him by reputation through my buddy Clarence Mendenhall, the head of the squad. Apparently, Watts was the final selection after many desperate attempts to lure me back after the war. Anyone invited to join had to have immaculate qualifications so I couldn’t doubt his skills.
“Hey, Bergman.” We shook hands. “Stover, huh? Doesn’t beat on our door all that often. Only thing I can recall is him nosing around a couple of months ago about the killing of Chubb McFarland.”
“That the old timey bootlegger?”
“One and the same.”
“What was Stover’s interest in him?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
Watts indicated a backlog of reports, so I let him go on his way.
I knew there had to be other facts about McFarland that I couldn’t remember. As best as I could figure, he would be about the same age as my client. Perhaps Art Stover had been hired to solve his murder. Then again, what would a highfalutin wealthy matron have to do with a rumrunner from the 1920s? I’m sure she had the means in those days to have a well-stocked liquor cabinet without associating with the hoi polloi. Most of those types did. On occasion, the thrill of rubbing elbows with ‘bad men’ got the better of these folks. Mrs. Sylvia Morgan-Smith did not come across as a thrill seeker.
Harold Bergman, Jewish shamus and WW II vet, is ready to settle down with his high school flame. When a society lady offers a job too simple, Harold winds up neck-deep in a 25-year-old murder tied to a dead gangster and secrets no one wants unearthed. Just as the dust settles, a regular job with an insurance outfit drags him into something darker and more sinister. Now the dead are whispering and the living are lying. He’ll need the strength of his five-thousand-year-old religion to survive the wickedness of the past.
The Crop of Wickedness, Volume 3 of The Wichita Chronicles, will be released October 8, 2025
“THE PAST HAS COME TO HARVEST”
