She said it so fast that it could have been “Thirty years,” or “Thirteen years,” or, for that matter “Furry ears,” but Whelan thought he’d heard correctly.
He nodded slowly, playing with the pencil. Thirty years. “Damn,” he said under his breath.
“What did you say, Mr. Whelan?” She stared at him, her thin lips making a little o.
“I…I stuck myself with the pencil.” He shook his hand as though in pain. Mrs. O’Mara was now giving his office a squinting appraisal.
“Well, let’s see what we can determine about your situation, Mrs. O’Mara. Your brother has been missing for thirty years. 19—what, ’55, ’56? Around there?”
She gave an irritated shake of her head. “He wasn’t missing then. I just didn’t see him, that’s all. That’s what you asked me, how long since I saw him. He was down there in Florida with Minogue. They had a tavern. It’s been thirty years since I saw him. And I can’t tell you exactly when he started to be missing, you see. I only know when I realized he was missing.”
“That’s an important distinction,” Whelan said, and nodded, partly to calm himself down.
I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs and this frail old creature will go into cardiac arrest, and they’ll come for me and put me in a cell, and none of it will be my fault. He took a deep breath and started again.
“Let’s start at the beginning. What can you tell me?”
“My brother’s name was Joseph Owen Colleran and he was born in 1917.”
“When was the last time you spoke to him?”
She was already shaking her head. “No, I didn’t speak to him, I got a letter from him. I think it was 1959. We always wrote each other letters. He wrote me letters from all over the world. He served in the navy.”
“I see. And then what?”
“I wrote him back. I was a great one for the letters. When I was a young girl, I wrote letters to a boy all through the war, you know. He was in the army, the other fellow. He was killed in the war. Just after the Normandy invasion, this was.” She looked off at a spot just beyond Whelan’s shoulder. A moment later, she collected herself. “Anyhow, I wrote Joe wherever he was, and he answered me.”
“So you last heard from Joe when he was in Florida?”
“Yes.”
“He wrote you a letter here and…then what? He moved?”
“Yes, he did. And so did I; that was the problem. I got married. O’Mara is my married name, and my husband worked for a big accounting firm and they transferred him to New York. My husband passed away in 1973.”
“So you lost track of each other at that point.”
“Yes,” she said, and he would have sworn that she was ashamed.
“And it is possible that he came back here to start a new business.”
“I don’t think so. But he always wanted to have his own business. That was always his dream, that after the war he’d open a business. Nobody in our family ever had a business. He’s always been very smart.”
“And what sort of business was he going to start?”
“A nightclub. With music.”
“That would take a certain amount of money.”
“Oh, there was a bunch of them that was originally going to be in on it, soon as they got home from the war. Joe and a bunch of boys from the old neighborhood. Fritz Pollard and Gerry Costello and Michael Minogue and some others. They all had some money. From the war.”
From the war? From what, sale of surplus tanks? Poker games with POWs? Whelan looked at Mrs. O’Mara’s earnest face and bit his tongue. “I see. And what happened then?”
“Ah, things didn’t work out for them here. So Joe decided to try something else. He went away.” She looked at him, sniffed, and looked back at the air bubbles rising slowly through the lovely blue contents of the cooler.
“And his other partners, the other men you mentioned?”
She waved this idea off. “Oh, they were gone, a lot of them.”
“Dead?”
“Well, for God’s sake, of course they weren’t dead, not all of them. They were all young men, Mr. Whelan.” She pursed her lips and Whelan felt like the slow kid in third grade.
“But you said they were gone.”
“They were. They all went their own ways. Joe and Michael went their way. Tommy Moran and Tommy Friesl, they were both killed. Tommy Friesl was a…a very nice boy. I don’t remember where the other ones went.” Her voice trailed off. Whelan decided that Tommy Friesl had meant a little more to her than the others. “All of them left, the other boys. Except for Ray Dudek. He got killed later. It was a terrible shame, a holdup, it was. Such a good-looking boy. They all were just a bunch of good-looking boys.”
She clutched her little purse on her lap and looked down, and Whelan’s next question caught her off guard. “Mrs. O’Mara, why are you looking for your brother now? What makes you think he’s anywhere around here? Somebody gave you information, perhaps? Or are you acting on a hunch?” She stared stubbornly at him, refusing to speak, refusing to move. He met her gaze for a moment and then realized that they were in a staring contest.
I’ve pissed her off. No, worse than that: she thinks I’m making fun of her. Whelan suppressed a smile, looked away for a moment and then back at the old woman.
“You’re misunderstanding me. I am not taking you lightly or trying to talk you out of your search. But something prompted you to begin looking for him now, after the passing of all this time. What was it?”
Slowly Mrs. O’Mara allowed herself to relax slightly. A new look came into her eyes, the look of someone who knows she’s been underestimated. She studied Whelan for a moment and then began rustling about with one hand in her battered little purse. After several false starts, she seemed to find what she’d been looking for, a newspaper clipping. She glanced at it and then held it out to Whelan.
He took it and saw there were two separate clippings. He read the first two lines of the top one and realized the story was simply the Tribune’s version of the article he remembered from the previous week, recounting the discovery of the body of one Michael Minogue, aged sixty-nine, on the lonely breakwater on Montrose Beach. He read a few more lines and then he made the connection with the name. The second clipping was the death notice from the Trib. He nodded, handing the clippings back to her.
“I thought the name sounded familiar when you mentioned it. I saw the same story in the Sun-Times when they found him. This was one of your brother’s friends. One of the men that he was going to go into business with.”
“Yes, Michael Minogue. He was always a nice boy, Michael Minogue. What a terrible thing. There’s all kinds of crazy people in the world now. I went to the wake but I didn’t know a soul.”
Whelan nodded and waited for her to make the connection. When nothing came, he prodded. “I’m still not clear as to what it is about this story…Why did you—”
“They were the best of friends, Mr. Whelan. Like brothers, they were. They left town together, Mr. Whelan. Just the two of them, my brother Joe and Michael Minogue. They were just a couple of young men looking to see another part of the country. They thought they might be able to start a business another place, maybe, after they saw a little bit of the country.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“All over the country.” She gave him a look of wonder from behind the thick lenses. “Joe sent me postcards from all kinds of places. Texas and Oklahoma and Wyoming and Montana. Alaska, even. They went up there to Alaska, where the Eskimos are.”
“Why not? A couple of young guys with no ties to hold them. I can see it.”
“That’s what I said. And after everything they’d been through, with the war and all. Best years of their lives, they gave up.
“And then they went east. They were in Philadelphia for a while and they went up there to Boston, Massachusetts. Then after that, they went down to Miami. They settled down there for a while, Miami. And they had their tavern there. The Banshee, they calle
d it. Joe came back to see me right after they opened it. He looked like a million dollars, he did. He had on a new suit, new shoes, a nice hat. He always liked his hats. Joe was very smart, Mr. Whelan. I told him he should come back up here and open up a tavern in Chicago. He laughed and he says to me, ‘I’ll have one in every city in the country, Maggie.’ But he just had the one. That was Christmas of 1952. Then he came back in the summer of 1955, for a week. He was with Minogue that time. We had a very nice visit. He took me to the Palmer House and the Drake Hotel for dinner. I never saw him again after that.”
“But you wrote him, you said.”
“Of course. Of course I wrote him, we always wrote letters. He was a grand letter writer.”
“Yes, you mentioned that. Did he ever call you on the phone?”
She nodded and gave him an appraising look.
“Oh, now and then, but he wasn’t much for the telephone. And I don’t like it myself. We were letter writers. People in those days didn’t mind sitting down to write a civilized letter. Anyhow, I got the one letter from him in 1959, but after that…” She shook her head and squinted distractedly at the watercooler. “And the tavern was gone. It wasn’t there anymore.” She shrugged. She looked embarrassed, as though she should have expected this. Whelan watched her for a moment and then her meaning dawned on him, and his opinion of Mrs. O’Mara changed.
“It was gone when? When…you went there? It was gone when you went there, you mean?”
She nodded, and Whelan thought he could read a mix of emotions fighting for primacy in her face: embarrassment was still there, and something like hopefulness, and there was just a trace of pride. She had looked for this missing man, this brother of hers; she’d gone off tramping around the country on her own and she was just a little embarrassed by it, by the craziness of it for an old-country woman like herself, but she was proud of what she’d done, as well.
“Yes. I went down there and the tavern was gone. There was a restaurant there—Cuban, it was. A lovely place. They have them down there, you know—Cubans.”
“I had heard that.”
“Nobody could tell me a thing about my brother. A policeman told me they’d sold the place awhile before and he didn’t know where they went.”
“Where else did you look, Mrs. O’Mara?”
“I went to Boston. Michael Minogue had a brother there. I couldn’t find him, though. There’s a lot of Minogues, but I couldn’t find the right ones. So I came back here. And I always thought he’d get in touch with me and let me know where he was. Just to know how he was getting along, you know. But he didn’t.”
She seemed to slump a little, as though acknowledging failure.
“Mrs. O’Mara,” he said gently, “have you given any thought to the possibility that your brother is dead?” She sniffed and said nothing, forcing him to go on. “From what you tell me, you had a very close relationship, and he wouldn’t have simply stopped communicating. My guess is that he’s dead.” Whelan stopped himself before saying any more.
Mrs. O’Mara began to nod slowly. She fumbled inside the tiny purse and came up with a small white handkerchief, a handkerchief like the ones his mother always used. He’d seen these little squares of cotton and lace and wondered where they came from—he had yet to come across one in a store.
Mrs. O’Mara did not use the handkerchief but rolled it into a little ball and began to worry it with her fingers. Whelan was about to say something to cover the awkwardness of her pain when she looked up.
“Ah, I know all that, Mr. Whelan. I know he’s probably been dead since who knows when. Somebody told me I should go look in the obituaries.” She gave him a helpless look. “I wouldn’t even know how.”
“You couldn’t. If you had the actual date—” He’d started to say “of death,” then caught himself. “If you knew that Joseph was dead, and when he died, it would be a simple matter of reading microfilm. But if you have no idea of the date, or even, as in your case, whether the person is deceased, you’d just be going through thousands of newspapers and reading thousands of death notices. The papers don’t have this stuff in their computers. They go back thirty days, maybe.”
She nodded. “I just want to know. You know, when I first read about poor Michael Minogue, for a minute I was excited, and then it occurred to me that the poor man was dead and wasn’t going to tell me anything about my brother. It’s just that maybe Joe’s still alive and he’s here. You know, if he was anywhere, it would be where Minogue was. Maybe he’s still alive. And if he’s not, maybe Michael said something to somebody, and I’ll know. Once and for all, I’ll know, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“And if you find he’s dead?”
“Then maybe I’ll know how. And when. And…” She waved at the air with the handkerchief. Then she gave him a pained look.
“People do this, don’t they, Mr. Whelan? They hire detectives to look for their families? Mr. Hill seemed to think it made sense.”
Yes, he thought, they do, but they usually don’t expect to pick up a trail that’s been cold for thirty years.
Whelan knew what to say here; he’d been here before. There was a whole set of polite, gentle formula responses to a would-be client about to set off on a fool’s errand, and it was time to select the proper response for this slightly addled old woman, time to set her straight and send her on her way. A simple matter of pulling the appropriate answer from the list.
“I can ask around, Mrs. O’Mara,” he found himself saying.
What am I doing? he asked himself.
“What? You can? Well, that would be grand.”
He held up both hands, palms out. “Don’t get excited. Don’t get hopeful, either.” His voice had suddenly taken on a raspy quality he usually reserved for unreasonable creditors.
“And if I don’t find anything at all after a couple of days, I won’t charge you. Unless I have out-of-pocket expenses.”
She frowned. “Is that how you do it? People only pay you if you find something?” She blinked, and Whelan realized he was poised to plummet again in her estimation.
“Uh, not always. But it’s how I’m going to do it this time. We can talk money later if we find out that there is something to investigate. So.” He leaned forward on his desk and tried his best to look professional. “I’ll need a little help, Mrs. O’Mara. Names and addresses of acquaintances, pictures, anything that might give me a leg up.”
“I’ve got pictures. I’ve got a thousand pictures, Mr. Whelan,” she said in an oddly quiet little voice. She rummaged in the tight little handbag and came up with a grayish brown studio portrait of a sharp-featured young man in a black suit. His hair was slicked back and parted just to the left of center, and he showed the camera the lopsided smile of a young man who thinks he’s got most, if not all, of the answers.
“Here, look at this one.”
She held out a small brownish snapshot of a young man in navy whites, standing at the edge of the curb. A 1940s model car was a few feet behind him, but the street was remarkably free of traffic. A picture from another time—when most people had no car.
“A young guy ready to conquer the world, huh?”
“Yes, that’s exactly how he thought of himself.”
Whelan studied the photo a moment and nodded. “That’s Clybourn Avenue. My grandparents lived over there. In the projects, eventually.”
“Ah, everybody wanted to live in the projects once. They were the newest thing. It was a different world then.”
“It sure was. But I know this neighborhood. This photograph was taken about two blocks from Riverview, right?”
“Yes. That was taken in front of our building, the corner of Clybourn and Oakley. You could see Riverview from there.” A note of melancholy crept into her voice and she looked away.
Then she collected herself and reached back into the purse. “And I have this.” She pulled out a photograph of a group of young men at the beach. It was classic 1940s mugging for the camera, with one of the b
oys even jumping up into the arms of another as if he were a baby. In the background he could see onlookers, a couple of older men, a little knot of smiling young women. A couple of feet behind the young men was a younger boy. As Whelan stared at it, he gradually got the bearings of the picture: North Avenue Beach looking north past the sprawling white beach house built in the shape of an ocean liner. The graceful curving overpass that allowed foot traffic across Lake Shore Drive was years in the future.
Mrs. O’Mara leaned over and made a little pointing gesture with one thin finger. “The one on the far left, that’s Joe—and the young boy next to him is Ray Dudek, him that they robbed and killed. The one second from the other end is Michael Minogue.”
He looked at her. “Do you know all the others?”
She made a curt nod and recited. “Sure, there’s Joe, and Ray, like I said.” She hesitated a moment. “And there’s Fritz Pollard, Chick Landis, Gerry Costello—and the one jumping up into his arms, you see”—she tapped the photo and looked up to see if he was still paying attention—“that’s Tommy Moran. The small boy behind them, that’s Casey Pollard, Fritz’s little brother. There’s Herb Gaynor. Her finger lingered on one grinning face. “And this is Tommy Friesl.” She gave Whelan a challenging look and he smiled.
Probably had every detail of the photo memorized, he thought.
“Let me write them down,” he said. He pulled over a scratch pad and jotted the names down, asking for confirmation of Landis and Gaynor. “All right. What about these other men? Any idea where I might find any of them?”
“Ah, they’re all gone now, dead or moved away. Most of them, anyways. Ray Dudek, I told you about, and you know about Michael, and Tommy Friesl and Tommy Moran died in the war. And that Landis, that one, he sells real estate somewheres. Always knew how to make money, that one. I don’t know what became of the others. I read the obituaries, Mr. Whelan, and sometimes, you know, I see old names. I know Herb Gaynor was very sick, so I think he’s dead. The others…I think they’re all gone. Except for Chick Landis.”
The Riverview Murders Page 3
