The Yankee Club by Michael Murphy

knew. He didn’t let me out of his sight, no doubt still feeling guilty he’d let Jimmy Vales corner me in the restroom while he helped Cole Porter write a show tune.
    We spent the rest of the day searching my old neighborhood for Belle, starting with the hotel across from Mickey’s office and the apartment building where we first saw her.
    Frankie took me to all of Belle’s hangouts and then some, but we drew a blank. No one had seen her since the shooting. As the day wore on, irritation over not finding Belle increased, along with the throbbing in my leg.
    We sat in the car across from the Carlyle and passed Frankie’s flask back and forth. He thought Belle had caught a train or bus out of town. Although I could write a book about running from one’s problems, I wasn’t so sure.
    The whiskey helped the ache in my leg and the frustration over not finding out what she’d seen the night of the shooting. We finished the booze, and Frankie agreed to pick me upearly the next morning for another day of searching for Belle.
    When he drove off, I limped to the hotel entrance, nodded to the doorman, and took the elevator to my suite. I tossed the room key beside the phone. I downed a couple of aspirins, loosened my tie, and dropped into a chair next to the phone on a corner table. After a twist of the cane handle, I set the dagger beside the phone. The contents from Mickey’s folder slid easily onto the table. I flattened the articles and arranged them in chronological order.
    The articles revealed little I didn’t already know about Giuseppe Zangara and the February shooting in Florida that struck five people, including the mayor of Chicago, but missed Roosevelt.
    On March 6, two days after Roosevelt’s inauguration, the wounded mayor died. Zangara pled guilty to a murder charge, the judge imposed the death penalty, and, inexplicably, authorities carried out the execution ten days later. Any secrets about the man’s motivations or involvement with coconspirators went with him to the grave. The government considered the case closed and declared the unemployed bricklayer a crazed lone gunman. Imagine that.
    The clippings didn’t end with Zangara’s execution. One story dealt with the impact of Roosevelt removing the United States from the gold standard. A photo showed bankers opposed to Roosevelt’s plan.
    It came as no surprise that powerful bankers opposed Roosevelt’s policies. The president’s efforts to bring the country out of a depression would lessen their influence and jeopardize the empires they’d established since the turn of the century. The article quoted a dozen business leaders about their concerns, but one name leaped from the paper—Spencer Dalrymple.
    From my suit coat pocket, I removed the blank sheet of paper I’d shaded while in the speakeasy restroom. Golden Legion. What did that mean?
    I leaned back in the chair and stared at the articles. Who hired Mickey to investigate a solved assassination attempt? My gut told me Mickey felt Zangara hadn’t acted alone, but there were no other names in the file. Were the bankers behind a conspiracy to kill Roosevelt? Had they ordered Mickey killed because he’d come close to the truth?
    After I reassembled my cane, I paced the room. The thought that powerful bankers conspired to plan the death of a president-elect and silenced Mickey because he’d discovered the plot sounded preposterous, even to a writer who’d spent the past few years making up plots and scenarios. Laura wouldn’t marry a man Mickey suspected of conspiring to kill Roosevelt. I had to be missing something.
    I dropped into the chair and read the articles again. When I finished, I came to a conclusion about the night a man in a black sedan shot Mickey and me. Jimmy Vales wasn’t really behind the hit. I had to convince the cops.
    I peeled Detective Hawkins’s business card from my wallet and grabbed the phone. I wouldn’t spill what I’d learned about Mickey’s last case until I