The Riverview Murders

by Michael Raleigh

  “Never underestimate an old man with muscles,” his father had once laughingly told him.

  Next time, I’ll listen. Pa.

  Pollard slammed the door shut and glared at him, then gunned his engine and pulled at the wheel. Whelan stood rubbing the scratches under his shirt and watched Pollard’s truck grind its way out past the unending line of trucks bringing in new loads.

  He lit a cigarette and walked slowly back to his car. Then he took out his small spiral notebook and jotted down the address written on Fritz Pollard’s truck. It was an address on Elston Avenue, near the river. He didn’t relish the notion of visiting Fritz Pollard there but consoled himself with the fact that Fritz wouldn’t enjoy it much, either.

  Back at the office, he brought out his phone book and a pair of old suburban directories he’d picked up when one of the other tenants in the building had tossed them out. There were several Gerald Costellos listed but only one on the North Side—on Clark. Whelan squinted at the address: Andersonville, home of several of his favorite Swedish eateries. Things were looking up: if any of these Gerald Costellos was his man, it would be this one. An older man wouldn’t move to the South Side after spending most of his life as a North Sider. It would be like a German pensioner moving to France: within the realm of possibility but not likely.

  Though they appeared on the map to be part of the same whole, it was perfectly understood by all Chicagoans that the North Side and the South Side were actually two separate places, sharing the city name and at least certain aspects of a common language but little else. The South Siders had their own attitudes on social issues, their own baseball team, their own unique pronunciation of basic English words, their own system of numbering the streets, indeed, their own name for certain streets that ran the width of the big town: on the North Side, you drove down Pulaski. On the South Side, it was Crawford. Certain kinds of social change took longer on the South Side, particularly if they involved race.

  On the other hand, South Siders were less likely to fall victim to the senseless economic swindling that passed for business on the North Side, so that just about everything cost less once you got past the Loop.

  It was still possible for the mail carrier to be punched out because he stopped into the wrong South Side bar for a drink of water on a hot day, and pockets of the South Side still waited optimistically for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act. On the other hand, Whelan admitted a soft spot for certain of the South Side’s contributions to Chicago culture: the archaeological treasures of the Oriental Institute, the great James T. Farrell, and the Dove Bar, widely considered the perfect ice cream bar. He called the North Side Gerald Costello and heard the phone lifted on the third ring. After a heartbeat’s pause, a man spoke tentatively into the phone.

  “Hello?” It was a high-pitched voice, and the tone could indicate the querulousness of a man protective of his privacy or the confusion of one unused to human contact.

  “Mr. Costello?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Mr. Costello, my name is Paul Whelan. I’m doing some work for Margaret Colleran. Maggie Colleran, from the old neighborhood.”

  Whelan waited through a long pause, heard the man on the other end mutter, “Maggie Colleran,” and then Costello said, “I don’t see any of ’em anymore.”

  “That’s okay. If I could just ask you a few questions, it would be very helpful…”

  “I told you, I ain’t seen none of ’em in years. I don’t need this.”

  Before Whelan could try another tack, the phone call ended with a loud crash that popped his eardrum.

  Pretty smooth there, Whelan, he thought.

  He had a little more luck with the second task: a Lars Torgeson was listed as living in Arlington Heights. He dialed the number and a woman answered. Sometimes you could tell many things about a person by the way he answered the phone. Anybody could tell that Gerry Costello was uncomfortable with phone calls, and anybody could tell that the woman on the other end loved her phone. In case of a fire, she might run to rouse her husband from his nap, but it was more likely she’d try to save the phone. She didn’t so much say “Hello” as sing it. It didn’t much matter to her whether the caller was her best friend or a guy selling magazines, she was delighted to hear from anybody. He recognized the type; his mother had been this way, a chattery, cheery little Irishwoman living with the silent, moody type.

  “Mrs. Torgeson?”

  “Uh, yes. Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Paul Whelan and I’m a private investigator.”

  He decided to play just one card and see how she reacted.

  “A private investigator? Oh. Really? And what is it that you—what can I do for you, Mr.—did you say your name was Wheeling?” A note of suspicion colored the musical notes now.

  “Whelan. It is very complicated to explain, but I’m working for a woman named Margaret O’Mara, whom you knew as Maggie Colleran. That is, if you are the former Betty Henke—how am I doing so far?”

  “Maggie? Maggie Colleran? Oh, good God! What a name from out of nowhere.” She burst into laughter, and he could tell she was holding the phone away from her to be polite. It made a nice picture: the tall, angular girl from the 1940 photograph, now gone gray, throwing her head back and laughing unabashedly at the name of an old friend.

  “Now how—what are you doing for Maggie, exactly? First tell me, is she all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s, uh, she’s a widow, and she’s here in Chicago. She’s currently—”

  “She’s back here? Oh, what do you know! She was gone for years. She married a man from New York—oh, she’s a widow, you said. The poor thing.”

  “I can put you in touch with her if you like. I’ve also been in touch with another of your friends from the old days.”

  “Ellen Gaynor, you mean? Is that who?”

  “Yes.”

  “You certainly cover some ground!” She laughed again.

  Her good humor was infectious, and he let her pump him for information about Maggie Colleran for several minutes before he returned to business.

  “What I’m trying to do for her, Mrs. Torgeson, is find out something about her brother Joe.”

  “Oh dear. Oh, God help her, the poor thing. She probably—does she know?”

  “What?”

  “That he’s dead.” She spoke gently, quietly. “She doesn’t, does she?”

  “No, ma’am, she doesn’t, although I have a feeling that she suspects it. She just lost touch completely. How did you hear?”

  “An old friend of ours named Michael Minogue.” She paused after Minogue’s name.

  “I know about his death, Mrs. Torgeson.”

  “Anyhow. He wanted to get in touch with her and I didn’t know how to. I used the number I had for her in New York and she had moved, and I didn’t know how to contact her.”

  “Did Mr. Minogue tell you how Joe died?”

  “He was in an accident, a car accident.”

  “In Chicago?”

  “Yes, they were back here by then. Michael took care of everything because there was no family here. Then he left again, poor man. I don’t know where he went.”

  Whelan swore under his breath and tried to ignore the heaviness that was growing in his stomach.

  “You didn’t know any of this and now you have to break it to her.”

  “Uh, no, actually, I had already heard some of it, but…not with enough detail to convince me. Now I’m convinced. Do you, uh, remember the date? The year, maybe?”

  “No. It was eight or nine years ago, though. Maybe ten, but that’s about as close as I can come.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Oh, I wish I could tell you something else that would make her feel better. I know he—this sounds terrible, but it’s the only positive thing I can think of—he died instantly. That’s what the police said. He was never in any pain.”

  “That’s something. Thanks.”

  “Mr. Whelan, you have my number. G
ive it to Maggie and tell her to give me a call. Or ask her if I can have hers, and you can give it to me.”

  “I’ll do both. I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you. Maybe you and Maggie and Mrs. Gaynor can all get together.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Ellen isn’t much for socializing anymore. I’ve talked to her a couple of times over the years and, well, she always says the right polite things, but she’s not really interested in getting together.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Her husband. I don’t know if you’ve met him, but he’s a very unpleasant man and he doesn’t like her seeing her old friends. He cut her off from everybody when they got married. Such a nasty man.”

  “He did seem to have a few rough edges.”

  “He’s just one big rough edge, Mr. Whelan. Actually, he’s an old bastard. Excuse my French. He was an old man at the age of twenty-two. A nasty, suspicious, bad-tempered old man.”

  “Right now, he’s a pretty sick man.”

  She made a little snort that was anything but ladylike. “Mr. Whelan, he’s been sick forever.”

  “Well, thanks for everything,” Whelan said.

  “I didn’t do anything. And tell Maggie to call me.”

  “I will.”

  Now he was certain, now it was over, confirmed by not one but two sources. Whelan sat at his desk and looked around the room. Then he swore softly to himself. He’d been here before, more than once. There was nothing surprising about it: if you looked for people who’d disappeared from life, you weren’t always going to enjoy what you found. Still, there was an emptiness, an anticlimax to this one that bothered him. He pulled over the notepad and stared at Mrs. O’Mara’s number. This was his next call, should be, but he wasn’t going to make it just yet. He reminded himself that Mrs. O’Mara was a big girl, smarter than the dotty persona she stepped into so frequently, that Mrs. O’Mara probably had a pretty good idea that her brother was dead. Still, he needed to bring her more than that, he needed to be able to tell her something solid. Her brother was dead and in the ten or so years since his passing, he seemed to have dropped from people’s memories.

  You ought to be able to tell them something, he told himself.

  He looked out his window at the traffic on Lawrence and argued that he’d learn something about Joe Colleran if he could just find out what happened to Michael Minogue. If he waited long enough, Bauman would give him table scraps.

  Sorry, chubby, I don’t have the time.

  If you stood at the corner of Wilson and Sheridan long enough, you’d experience the local color, whether from the halfway house patients chatting to unseen companions or the street punks trying to give the world the evil eye. Homegrown blacks and Appalachian whites, Asian immigrants, Russian Jews, American Indians from a hundred different tribes, Latinos from a dozen countries, bag ladies with shopping carts, and the men and women who lived in doorways, they all passed through this intersection where the People’s Church met Burger King and McDonald’s.

  On a gaily painted bench at the bus stop, a bit of the local color was in evidence. A little man in a red jacket perched at the very end of the bench with his legs crossed and bopped to the music from the transistor radio in his hand. Oblivious to public opinion, the little man swung his free foot and smiled at the traffic.

  A heavyset Latin kid frowned at him and the little man leaned forward suddenly as if about to pounce. The kid kept on walking, shaking his head.

  Whelan sat down at the free end of the bench. “Easy there, Dempsey. He’s out of your weight class.”

  Dutch Sturdevant looked surprised and then broke into a grin, and the nasty little boy showed himself again. “Hey, kiddo. You come to back me up if I get into a street beef?”

  “When was the last time you got into a street beef, Dutch?”

  “Fuck. Lincoln was President. Last time I got laid, too, I think.”

  “So you come out here and frighten the neighborhood, huh?”

  “Ah, I like to get some fresh air. I stay in that joint”—he indicated the Empire Hotel with a nod—“I’ll go nuts. Whole place is fulla old people, kid. Ain’t my kinda place. I gotta be outside or I’ll crack up.” He shot Whelan a quick glance to see if perhaps his audience thought he’d cracked up already.

  Whelan just smiled and said, “I don’t spend too much time inside, either.”

  “I got that impression. So what’s up, or you just wanna share my bench?”

  “I was just wandering through the neighborhood and I thought I’d wander up here in your direction.”

  Sturdevant nodded. “Doing yourself any good looking for that guy?”

  “No. I’m finished looking for him.” For a moment, his own words startled him, and then he realized it was true. “He’s dead,” he admitted.

  “You tell his people? His sister, you said it was.”

  “Not yet.”

  “That’ll be a bitch.”

  “Yeah, so I’d like to have something to tell her. I’m trying to get a handle on how he died.”

  “Got anything so far?”

  “Nope. I think it would help me if I could piece together a little bit more about Mike Minogue. If I could retrace Minogue’s steps, I’d be closer to finding out something more about Joe Colleran.”

  “How’d he die, this guy?”

  “Car accident. I’m putting together a theory about something that happened a long time ago, something Mike Minogue was probably involved in. I wanted to run some names by you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Ray Dudek.”

  “Nope.”

  “How about Chick Landis?”

  Sturdevant’s face brightened. “Yeah, Mike called him a ‘hoor.’ The guy was in the paper, you know, the neighborhood one. He was shaking hands with some asshole from the Park District and Mike shows me the paper and says, ‘I knew this hoor in the old neighborhood. I woulda thought he’d be in jail by now.’”

  “Did he tell you anything about Landis?”

  “Just that he thought the guy was a thief. He said the guy got a bunch of them in some kinda trouble but he didn’t say what kind. You think this is that thing that happened in the old neighborhood, before the war?”

  “Yeah, I do. Did he express any fear of this man?”

  “Nah, it was more like he was irritated. He laughed a little bit about the picture—you know, a couple of fat political guys in ugly suits shaking hands and mugging for the camera. You had to see it, I guess.”

  “I’ve seen a thousand like it. And the guys in them always think they’re hot shit. How about Fritz Pollard?”

  “Don’t mean nothin’ to me.”

  Whelan thought for a moment. “Ever see a blue junk truck around here?”

  This seemed to tickle Dutch Sturdevant. “I seen a thousand junk trucks around here. Never noticed if one of ’em was blue.”

  “So notice now. If you see a blue one, especially if it says FRITZ’S SALVAGE on the door, give me a call.”

  “Can do.”

  “One more thing. The man you said Michael Minogue had words with on the street—the street guy in the windbreaker and baseball cap, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “If you do. I’d like to hear about it.”

  “Why? You think he knows something about…you know, about Mike?”

  Whelan got up. “Yeah, I do. So I’d like to hear.”

  “I see this guy, I’ll be on top of him like flies on shit.”

  “You’ve got a poetic streak, Dutch.”

  “I always thought so.”

  Whelan waved, moving off, and the old man nodded and went back to the big-band music.

  A chill wind had come up from the lake and announced a change in the season. The colder air had the smell of the icy water, the bite of the north, the promise of worse to come. Soon the clouds would join together and hang lower and stay that way till May.

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nbsp; He waved at Gus inside the House of Zeus and thought briefly of stopping for a cup of coffee, but the boys tended to make one big pot at lunchtime and let it stew and thicken till you could chew it.

  In front of the Walgreen’s Whelan threaded his way through a tight little knot of Vietnamese people, a family, eight or nine of them, all in tennis shoes. The oldest woman carried a plastic grocery bag and barked at the rest of them, making angry little gestures as she talked. Her wrath seemed in some way directed at Walgreen’s, and the two youngest members of the clan, a pair of pretty and Americanized girls, giggled unrestrainedly at Grandma’s anger.

  Directly ahead of them, a half-naked man stood blocking the sidewalk and talking to the sky. At least it seemed that his remarks were directed up there. He turned a sunburnt face up to the sky and squinted and pointed with his index finger, muttering and nodding at his own observations. His dusty T-shirt was tucked away in the waistband of his pants, he’d lost his shoes somewhere, and he was weaving.

  The Vietnamese family noticed him now, and the whole troupe came to a momentary halt as they studied the situation. Grandma wasn’t impressed, though. She had seen worse, probably people with guns running through the street outside her home, and she barked something, then pushed on around the bearded man, shaking her head all the time. Her family went around him on both sides and he never gave them a look, intent on his conversation with the heavens.

  From the corner of his eye, Whelan caught a stealthy movement and saw three kids, baseball caps sideways, sidling along the shaded wall of the Walgreen’s. One of the boys was black but the two bigger ones were white. They pointed at the bearded man and snickered, and it was clear that the biggest of the three was going to have some fun with the man. He hitched up his pants and moved till he was standing directly behind the bearded man. When he was close, he grabbed his nose and rolled his eyes, and the other two went into convulsions. Then he bent his knees sharply into the back of the bearded man’s legs and the man staggered forward. He turned, slightly off balance, and it was clear from the look in his eyes that he’d seen this routine before.