H.J. Gaudreau - Jim Crenshaw 02 - The Collingwood Legacy Read Free Page A

Yacht” race, and the most famous of those racers was the “Volstead Act,” a 34 foot locally built Chris-Craft.
    Not knowing the monthly river races were fixed Sutker, Paul and Lebowitz bet big on the “Volstead Act.” Unfortunately, they lost to members of Detroit’s Italian East Side Gang. The East Side Gang, with its heavy New York connections and Sicilian pedigree was not in the habit of overlooking debts. To say that losing a bet to the East Side Gang was bad business was like saying Babe Ruth was just a ball player. It didn’t come close to describing the reality.
    Hymie and the boys knew of only one way out. Trading on their association with the rest of the Purple Gang they bought a hundred gallons of Canadian booze on credit. They then watered down the whiskey and sold it, undercutting the Purples’ price for the same watered down booze. It didn’t cover the debt, but the boys figured to make the rest up through their gambling operation.
    The big score, and their only hope of salvation, was the boat races. Hymie and his friends only succeeded in proving that stupid really can strike the same spot twice.
    They again set odds on a river race, again the race was fixed, and again they lost big to the East Side Gang.
    Forgetting the “First Rule of Holes”, the boys didn’t stop digging. Since the scheme had worked before they again approached their associates in the Purple Gang and again made a deal. A hundred gallons of Canadian whiskey were purchased, all on credit. Again they diluted the stock and undersold the market. It was one time too many for the Bernstein brothers. Hymie and the boys had forgotten they were cutting into the Purple’s trade. To make matters worse, they didn’t make enough money on the watered down booze. They couldn’t pay back the Purples and they couldn’t pay off the East Side Gang. They had succeeded in provoking not one, but two of the most powerful criminal organizations in the United States.
    Paul, Sutker, and Lebowitz were already dead and had simply been waiting for the Purples to tell them.
     

 
    Chapter 4
     
    April – This Year
     
    Herman James Crenshaw preferred to be called “Jim”. It never became an issue, but this morning a new teller at the bank had insisted he show two forms of identification. Ordinarily this wouldn’t bother Jim; in fact, he was a big believer of better safe than sorry, but in this instance the young man knew Jim personally. Not only that, but Jim was putting money into his checking account, not taking it out.
    He knew everyone in town, they knew him. Jim had umpired the kid’s Little League games and coached his pee-wee basketball team. He knew it was “procedure,” but knowing everyone was why he’d returned to a small town and not retired in D.C. or Boston or some other big city.
    Plus, the whole idea of showing two forms of identification to put money INTO his account struck him as absurd. Jim didn’t care who put money into his account; he just didn’t want anyone taking it out.
    Leaving the building he shook his head, smiled and started his truck. He had two more stops on his morning errands. He needed to stop at the dollar store and pick up five packs of suckers, five packs of number 2 pencils and a pack of colored paper. Apparently, Eve’s kids had earned a reward of a sucker and had also broken, stolen or sharpened to extinction the five packs of pencils he bought two weeks ago. Computers and the internet hadn’t made pencils obsolete, at least in Eve’s classroom. Next was a quick stop at the combination feed and seed store and grain elevator office to check on the price of fertilizer. Here he parked his truck in front of the building, rolled both the passenger and driver’s windows up to the two-thirds position and got out. His dog Molly watched him walk away from the truck with sad eyes, gave one bark, then curled up in Jim’s seat to wait for his return.
    April was a wonderful time of year, the snow was gone,