“Leave him alone,” Whelan said.
The kid blinked and looked around in confusion, then saw Whelan. “Who’re you, my old man?”
“I wouldn’t admit to it if I was. Leave him alone.”
“I ain’t doin’ shit. Am I, bro?” He took a step toward the man, holding out his hand as if to shake, and the man took another step backward.
The kid was turning to grin at his friends when Whelan caught his arm. “You’re not big enough to do this kind of shit on the street.”
The kid spun free and faced Whelan, his face red and hard.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me, man, or I’ll—”
The kid never finished his speech. He never saw the apparition in red that burst into the scene and actually was unaware of the newest development till he was already airborne. Whelan hadn’t seen Bauman coming, either, but he saw the big cop put a shoulder and 230 pounds into the skinny kid’s back. The boy left his feet with a deep grunt and struck a lightpole.
For a moment he lay motionless, then rolled over on his back and made sucking noises as he tried to get air back into his lungs.
Whelan turned to the other two kids and shrugged. “He’s dead. You have to avenge him.” The bigger kid blinked and began to back away and the little black kid looked about ready to give up his lunch.
Bauman knelt over the stricken boy and held out his shield. The boy stared at it and made goggle eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Can’t breathe.”
“I don’t give a shit. Breathe later. What’s your name?”
“Jerry. Jerry Oleski.”
Bauman sniffed. “Dog-shit name. Where do you live?”
“Montrose and Ashland.”
“In what, a cave?” Before the kid could respond, Bauman said, “Go back there. Now. Go real fast. I see you here again. I’ll make you wish you were born in a fucking foreign country.”
The kid made a whimpering sound. “I’m hurt.”
“Nobody cares.”
“I think you broke my ribs.”
“No, next time. Next time you get the ribs.”
The boy stared for a moment, gasping, and then began crawling slowly to his feet. His companions were already long gone.
Bauman stood up and turned his back on the kid, then growled at the little crowd that had assembled.
“You got nothing to do? Get outta here. What, nobody’s gotta go to work? Move! You.” He pointed at a little man in sandals, a Slavic-looking little man with an unruly fringe of dark hair around an otherwise-bald head. “Move it.”
The little man tugged at one of his stray locks and smiled shyly. “Not speak English,” he muttered, still smiling at Bauman.
“What?” Bauman took a couple of steps and started to give the little man the Chicago version of the evil eye.
“Not speak English, mister,” the little man repeated. He tried on another, slightly toothier smile and blushed slightly. Bauman started to say something, then seemed to wilt in the face of the little man’s diffident good humor. He broke off eye contact and put his hands on his hips, then had to turn away completely and Whelan saw that Bauman was fighting to keep from laughing.
Whelan walked over to Bauman and nodded to the little immigrant.
“Not speak English,” the man said, apparently wanting Whelan to have as much knowledge of the situation as Bauman.
“It’s okay,” Whelan said. He patted Bauman on the shoulder and said, “Nice man. Very nice man.” The little man nodded and Whelan pointed to Bauman’s chest and said, “American general—strong man,” and struck a bodybuilder pose. Someone in the crowd, someone with a little more English, snickered, and Bauman scanned the bystanders with blood in his eye.
“I said take a walk, alla you.” He made an all-inclusive motion with his finger and the crowd evaporated. “And you,” he said to Whelan, “be careful.”
Whelan pointed to the little man. “He likes you.”
“Go away,” Bauman growled, and made shooing motions. The little man finally began backing away, still smiling.
Whelan patted Bauman on the back. “You made his day. He thinks he’s met Sergeant York.” Bauman half-turned, glaring. “Come on, Bauman. You’re just worried you’re losing it. You’re trying to give the guy the evil eye to take back with him to Transylvania and he smiles. Your feelings are hurt.”
“You wanna get hurt?”
“Not me. I saw what you did to that poor youth who got in your way.”
Now Bauman smiled. “The future of our country.” He hitched up his pants and looked around to reassure himself that the crowd had indeed dispersed. Whelan took a moment to admire the detective’s wardrobe. For the occasion, Bauman had poured himself into a dark green sport coat and a knit shirt the color of Bing cherries. Little purple squiggles were woven into the body and the collar. A pair of sky blue slacks and then just the right touch of Bauman: dull brown wing-tip shoes.
“I like your ensemble.”
“You called me. Whaddya want?”
“What do I want? Since when do I ask you for anything? Seems to me, you’re the one who sponges off me.”
“Who what? Sponges? I sponge off you? Oh, wait. You’re pissed, huh? I told you, you gimme something last night and now you’re pissed. Well, tough shit, Whelan. What I got wouldn’t help you any. Got nothing to do with you. We’re not working on the same case, remember?”
From the corner of his eye, Whelan saw a gray Caprice slide along the curb and come to a stop a few feet behind Bauman.
The driver climbed out and leaned against the roof of the car. He was out of season but stylish, dressed in a purplish pastel knit shirt with a pale lavender stripe coming down diagonally from one shoulder. The man peered out at Whelan from behind wraparound sunglasses. Whelan nodded and Detective Rick Landini returned the greeting, though only one accustomed to the minimalist macho gestures of Landini would know a greeting had been exchanged.
Whelan pointed at him. “His shirt clashes with yours.”
Bauman snorted. “He’s got colors I never saw in my crayon box, Whelan. So what do you want from me?”
“Tell me what I gave you.”
“Nah. Like I said, got nothing to do with you. You’re after this guy for this old lady, I’m after a killer. Two completely different things. Now I gotta go before the wind messes up my partner’s do.”
“Suit yourself. But don’t ask me for a thing—about this or anything else.”
“Whatever,” Bauman said over his shoulder.
Whelan watched the big detective shoehorn himself into the passenger’s side of the Caprice. It was moving before Bauman had shut the door. As he watched it pull away, he realized that it was no coincidence that Bauman appeared moments after his conversation with Dutch Sturdevant.
All right, he told himself. At least now I’m in a mood to visit Fritz Pollard again.
Ten
Whelan drove up Elston, following the river, past the warehouses and factories. If you drove this stretch enough, you began to recognize the products of each factory without necessarily being able to say which building produced which smell. At one point Whelan could smell smoked meat and he knew this was from the big Vienna factory where God’s Own Hot Dogs were made. He could smell roasting coffee beans and the darker, harsher smells of the big tannery at Webster and the river. If he drove far enough down Elston, he would eventually pass the yards where, during winter, people rich enough to own boats but not rich enough to own a place for them dry-docked their yachts and sailboats, creating an unlikely forest of masts and rigging.
Fritz Pollard’s place of business was visible from a quarter-mile away. It clung to the tag end of a block dominated by two factories.
He pulled up across the street and studied the place before he went in: a small storefront on the ground floor, apartment above it with plywood in a couple of windows. The building looked as if it was beginning to give up its long fight against gravity: the rear of the building had a
sag to it, lower on one side than the other. It looked like a fighter going down on one knee.
Just under the roof Whelan could see the remains of the delicate wooden scrollwork that had once gone all the way around. In its day, it had probably been a nice piece of work: a heavy stone foundation, top-quality planks, fine woodworking at the corners and under the eaves—probably built just after the Fire in 1871 and now the last of its kind, the sole building from its time left in the area. To one side, a vacant lot had been hastily walled off with planks and two different sizes of cyclone fence, and inside Whelan could see piles of junk, car parts, cardboard cartons, paint cans and tires. Just beyond it all, he could see the cab of the blue pickup truck.
Something moved just behind the door and Whelan realized he was being watched. He got casually out of the car, took his time lighting a cigarette and crossing Elston. The man behind the door seemed to step back, and Whelan picked up his pace. Just as he put his foot on the curb, an unearthly growl curdled the air around him and the nearest section of plank fence shook with the weight of a big heavy body being hurled against it. Whelan jumped back and nearly fell into the street.
“Shit.”
Of course, he’d have a dog. This is a junkyard, there has to be a dog.
He looked at the bulging, sagging fence. From a tiny space between two of the planks a moist, dark, crazed eye stared at him unblinking.
I know you, dog. Without even seeing the rest of you, I know you. You’re a mutant German shepherd, two hundred pounds: you’ve got mange and rotten breath, one eye and a bad attitude and people in the next county can smell you when the wind changes. And you’ve eaten human flesh.
The dog made one final assault on the wood, the fence held, and Whelan crossed the sidewalk to the door. A hand-lettered sign, a little neater than the one on the truck, read simply F. POLLARD. SALVAGE AND HAULING.
He opened the door and found Fritz Pollard watching him from behind a long low counter as old as the building. Pollard’s face was pale with exhaustion but his eyes were clear and alert, and in one hand he held a long pipe wrench.
“Mr. Pollard?”
“Whaddya want?”
“Easy. I just need to talk to you.”
“I already told you, I got nothing to tell you about…nothing.” He hefted the pipe wrench. “So just go on and get out.”
“I intend to. Just give me five minutes.”
“I’m tired, I don’t have five minutes for this shit.”
“I know, time is money. You’re a businessman.” Whelan held up a twenty. “This is for five minutes of your time. Just talk to me for a couple minutes and then I’m out of here and you take my twenty and buy a sandwich and a couple of cold ones.”
Pollard refused to look at the bill. His small dark eyes remained fixed on Whelan and for several seconds he said nothing. Then the pipe wrench was lowered to the countertop and the man’s posture relaxed faintly.
“Arright. Five minutes, that’s all you get. Then you get out or I’ll set the goddam dog on you.”
“No thanks. I saw this movie.”
Whelan moved closer to the counter and tossed the bill on the scarred surface. Fritz Pollard hooked a finger into the pocket of his stained shirt and came up with a pack of Luckies. The cigarette that emerged from the crushed pack had a pinched look like its owner, but Fritz smoothed it out and patted it back into shape and popped it into his mouth. He lit it, blew smoke into the air and said, “So?”
“So tell me what you know about Joe Colleran that I don’t know.”
Pollard shrugged. “He’s dead.”
“How? When? Where?”
“How? Got killed in a car accident. Some kinda car accident. Years back, this was. Nine, ten years.”
Whelan pretended to be straying. He let his gaze move around the cluttered little office: call himself what he wanted, Fritz Pollard was still a ragpicker, what they had called a junkman in Whelan’s boyhood. There wasn’t a bare surface in the shop, not a shelf or countertop or even a windowsill. Tools, pipe fittings, old toys, crockery, glasses, cheap tableware, clothing, shoes: Pollard had found, piled and stored the leavings of a thousand people’s lives in his shop on the outside chance that someone would someday pay him cash for a piece of it.
“Where?”
Pollard watched him, his slightly manic gaze moving across Whelan’s face, as though he suspected he was being tricked.
“Whaddya mean, ‘where’? Where’d it happen? The hell you think? Here!”
“In Chicago?”
“Yeah. He was livin’ here.”
“A car accident in Chicago about ten years ago.”
“That’s all I know.”
“How do you know?”
“What kinda stupid-ass question is that?”
“I’ve got a million of ’em. For twenty bucks, humor me.”
Pollard snorted and shook his head, then said, “I heard from somebody.”
“Who was that? Who do you still talk to from the old days?”
“Shit, I don’t know who.”
“Your brother?”
“My brother? What do you know about my brother?”
“I know he’s dead, but was he around then?”
Pollard wet his lips and looked away. “Nah. I mean, he was around, but it—I don’t think it was him that told me.”
“Michael Minogue?”
Pollard shrugged and a stubborn look came into his eyes. “Maybe it was him. Minogue.”
Whelan nodded. Their short conversation had now gone full circle and had slid into territory as comfortable as old shoes: the source was now lying.
“Were you and Michael Minogue good friends?”
A quick squint, a shrug. “We went way back, you know.”
“And what about your brother? When did he die?”
Pollard made a small sideways nod and shrugged, then said, “Christ, he’s dead years now.”
Whelan looked around the little office. “Let’s see, what else did I want to ask you? Oh, yeah. Chick Landis. What can you tell me about Chick Landis?”
“Don’t know nothing about him.”
“You grew up with him.”
“Grew up with a lotta people—don’t mean I know anything about ’em now. That’s forty, fifty years ago, mister. The hell’s wrong with you?”
“I’m just trying to get information, that’s all. It’s what I do. Ever do any work for Landis?”
“No.”
“You know the kind of stuff he was involved in, though.”
Pollard thrust his hands into his pockets.
“I’m not saying you had anything to do with…you know, with that other stuff. The robbery stuff, I mean. I know he was in trouble with the law and, maybe more important, he was in trouble with somebody else—the kind of people you’re not supposed to screw around with. You know about that, don’t you?”
Pollard stiffened and for a moment Whelan wondered if Fritz Pollard was holding his breath.
“Were you with Landis that time, Fritz? The German guy?”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I don’t think you know what you’re talkin’ about, either.”
“Maybe not. I’m confused, Fritz. Seems to me there’s a bigger picture here that I’m not getting. And I think it has all you guys in it: Michael Minogue, Joe Colleran, Chick Landis, you”—Fritz Pollard put his hands on his bony hips and sneered—“your brother Casey”—Pollard looked off in the distance and Whelan threw the slider—“Ray Dudek,” and Pollard’s eyes met his.
After a moment of paralysis, Pollard began to collect himself. “Mister, some of these guys are dead forty years. They got nothing to do with me. Know what I think?”
“What, Fritz?”
“I think you ain’t looking for Joe Colleran at all. I think you’re trying to find out something about Chick Landis and you think you can scare me into telling you something. You asshole, you got another think comin’.”
He picked up the pipe wrench an
d moved around in front of the counter. He was faster than Whelan had expected, and now he didn’t seem so tired. With a sudden movement, he grabbed Whelan’s forearm and raised the pipe wrench with his free hand. Whelan put a stiff-arm into the center of Fritz Pollard’s chest and pushed, and the older man’s balance left him. He fell back into his counter and slid down onto one knee.
Whelan backed away, took a quick glance around and saw a flashlight on a shelf next to the door. He picked it up and let it hang at his side. “Come at me with that pipe wrench and I’ll feed it to you.”
Pollard got slowly to his feet. His face was white except for points of high color in his cheekbones. His chest heaved and he moved slightly forward, and for a moment Whelan thought the man would come at him again with the wrench. Then Pollard leaned back against the counter.
“Get your ass outta my shop and don’t come back here no more.”
“Well now, I might have to come back, Fritz. You know that.”
“You come back, you’ll get your ass busted, mister.”
“Won’t be the first time, Fritz.”
At the door he paused and looked at Pollard. “You know, you’ve got eyes just like your dog.”
Before Pollard could answer, Whelan pulled the door closed behind him and walked toward his car. Darker color was coming into the sky and the big dog renewed his efforts to come through the fence. Whelan could hear the hard scratch of the animal’s claws as he tried to climb up the wood.
“Easy there, Rex. Halloween’s coming. You’ll get to terrify the children.”
There was no mail. There was no electricity, either, because Commonwealth Edison was attending to a problem somewhere down the block and the power had been shut off.
He went to the refrigerator for a beer and realized belatedly that the refrigerator was, of course, off.
I have no mail, I have no lights, I have no cold beer. I’m having a bad day. My woman is on the other side of the Atlantic, probably having a dalliance with some guy who talks like Michael Caine. Maybe she’s having a dalliance with Michael Caine.
The Riverview Murders Page 14
