Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  The door opened two inches on a brass chain and a light-skinned black woman in her late fifties or early sixties peered out at him. He held out his wallet to show his identification.

  “I believe you, sir. I just need to see folk before they come into my home.”

  Whelan heard the other message in the voice, that she wasn’t some senile ancient who could be swindled out of her savings or talked into a truckload of aluminum siding. The chain dropped, the door opened and Mrs. Pritchett looked him over. After a moment, she stepped back from the door. “Come in, sir.”

  Whelan followed her in, feeling much as he had when called into the principal’s office in the days of his barbarous youth.

  He saw her run a quick glance over the little living room to see if it was in proper order to receive guests. It was a cluttered room, with stuffed chairs and a sofa and several tables and standing lamps, and in the far corner of the room, a few feet from the television, a Victrola perched on a tall narrow table. The big brass trumpet gleamed from a thousand polishings.

  “Does that work?”

  Mrs. Pritchett glanced at her antique and gave him an amused look. “It does if somebody cranks it up, but I’m too old to be getting exercise every time I want to listen to a record.”

  “My grandfather had one. My grandmother hated it.”

  “She probably had to clean it.”

  “She didn’t share his taste in music, either. He liked comedy records, she liked nice music.”

  Mrs. Pritchett was nodding. “Men always like silly music. Sit down, sir.”

  “Thank you.” He took the nearest seat, an old armchair.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “No, thanks. You mentioned that Detective Bauman referred you to me.”

  “Yes,” she said, and paused. Her face clouded and she seemed to be running through something in her mind.

  “And if you survived your contact with Detective Bauman, you can handle anything.”

  She smiled and nodded. “He was nice to me, Mr. Whelan, but he is a very intimidating man.”

  “He is.”

  “I can also tell you he’s not a very healthy man. He’s a candidate for a heart attack. If that man came to see me when I was working in the cardiac unit, we’d have slapped his butt into a bed and strapped him in.”

  “You’re a nurse?”

  “Yes, sir. Why you look so surprised? I look too old to be a nurse?” Mrs. Pritchett gave him a slightly belligerent look and he realized he was out of his league. Start singing, Whelan.

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “You’re…you’re in your forties or thereabouts.”

  “Sir, you are a liar.” Then she laughed. Her laugh was a deep rolling sound, lower than her voice, a Pearl Bailey kind of laugh, and Whelan liked her. “My forties!” She shook her head. “Wish I had them back. Had a different life when I was in my forties, young man.”

  She allowed herself to sit at the edge of her couch, then took a very quick look at her watch.

  “Are you due at the hospital soon?”

  “No, this is my day off. Anyway, Detective Bauman was polite to me but he seems very hostile. And I know a drinker when I see one. He smokes too. I could smell it on him.” She gave Whelan an appraising look. “I can smell it on you, too.”

  Whelan blinked but said nothing.

  “He said you were very good at what you do. And that finding people is your specialty.”

  “He’s full of surprises, Mrs. Pritchett. He’d never say those things to me. Tell me about your case. I assume it’s a missing persons case.”

  “Yes. It’s about a boy. A missing teenage boy.”

  “Your son?”

  “No. He’s not mine, but I took care of him for a while. He’s not a black child, either, sir. He looks white.”

  “Looks white? What is he?”

  “His father was white, his mother was an Indian.”

  “They’re both dead, then.”

  “Yes—least I think so. Father run off when the boy was very small. Nobody ever heard from him again, not even his people. They were very poor, I guess they lived in a lot of different places. The boy’s name is Tony. He’s sixteen. They had two other children that died very young. So the boy has had a hard life, not much of a childhood at all.”

  “And where has he been living?”

  “A lot of places, Mr. Whelan, including the street. He lived with me for a while and now he’s missing and I want to find him, make sure he’s all right. And,” she took a deep breath and let it out, “…I’m not sure he is.”

  “What brought it to your attention that he was missing?”

  “The police came to ask questions and told me he hadn’t been seen in a while. Wanted to know if I’d seen him. There was some…trouble involving some people he had been, you know, running the streets with.”

  He thought about the pause before “trouble” and leaned forward in the chair. “What kind of trouble, Mrs. Pritchett?”

  “Very bad trouble. They found some men killed. Three of them, and they were people who Tony knew.” Mrs. Pritchett gave him a wide-eyed look of distress, and it was clear that the second fact was the greater shock for her. “I sure don’t know how he’d know these people. Mr. Bauman seemed to think Tony ran errands for them, and when the police went looking for him, you know, to ask him questions, they couldn’t find him anywhere.”

  “And they think he may be in some danger himself.”

  “Mr. Whelan, that boy was in danger from the day his mother died. He was sure enough in danger when he left here.”

  “How long did he stay here?”

  “A little under six months.” Whelan waited a few seconds and the woman added, “Leona was a very nice lady. We worked together.”

  “Where?”

  “Cuneo Hospital. She was a nurse’s aide. One of my aides.”

  “How did it come about that you took Tony in?”

  “After Leona died—the boy went on up there to Wisconsin to live with some people that knew his mama. They weren’t kin, though.”

  “Reservation?”

  “Yes, sir. ‘The Rez,’ he called it. He didn’t like it much up there. He’s a city boy, y’understand. So he came back here and stayed with some relatives on his father’s side. But they couldn’t handle him. He’s a moody boy, got a temper, and this family couldn’t do anything with him.”

  “His mother had no family?”

  “She told me once she had some people in the South, Alabama, she said. But I don’t know where in Alabama. Said she had a couple of aunts down there, told me one of ’em didn’t even speak English.”

  “What tribe was Leona?”

  “Some tribe I never heard of. Said a lot of the old folk still speak their old language.”

  Whelan remembered something Abby at St. Augustine’s Indian Center had told him once about a boy living with his grandmother who spoke only the ancient tongue, an old woman just up from the south. Chickasaw, maybe. No, Choctaw.

  “Choctaw?”

  “That’s it, Choctaw. You know about them?”

  “Not enough to be helpful, but I know some people who might be able to find the family. So—what happened after that?”

  “Went from one thing to another. He wound up in a group home run by some agency. Wasn’t happy there either, but he stayed for seven months and he was getting himself together. Then he ran away. I saw him on the street one day and told him he could stay with me for a while. ‘A while’ turned into six months. I had him in school for most of it, you see. But this is no life for a young man and I don’t think he was ever really comfortable with me. I’m not his family and there’s no way you can change that. Didn’t matter how I treated him, he still acted like he was just visiting. He wouldn’t hear of going to live with a foster family, and I wasn’t going to force him. I really didn’t know what to do about him, and finally he made the decision for me. Told me he was moving into an apartment with some friends, or a friend and his older brother.�
��

  “How long ago was this?”

  “In the fall. October. Never told me who these people were.”

  “Do you know the other people Tony was hanging out with, the ones the police are concerned with?”

  “No.” Mrs. Pritchett looked down, as though embarrassed not to have information.

  “You never saw them?”

  “I saw him with other boys a couple of times. On the corner. You know. But never with any grown men.”

  “How about names?”

  She nodded. “Detective Bauman told me three or four names but the only one I heard is ‘Jimmy.’ I know he did some work for a man named Jimmy, odd jobs, just pocket money.”

  “Do you know how he got involved with these people?”

  She made a visible effort to come up with this connection and began to shake her head, then she stopped. “I think it was the garage. He worked for a garage over on Broadway. I think he met them there.”

  “Where on Broadway?”

  “Up near that street where you find all the Vietnamese places.”

  “Argyle Street. Okay. Get the name of the garage?”

  “Roy’s. Tony worked for Roy, oh, maybe four months.”

  “Did he ever seem to be frightened or anxious about anything when he was here?”

  She lowered her head to look at him over her glasses. “Boy with no family, drops out from school, living with a stranger. Wouldn’t you be scared?”

  “I’d be scared of a lot less.”

  She nodded. “He was scared all right. But he didn’t say anything. Pulled his little self up into a shell, didn’t say anything, didn’t show any feelings. Watched TV, played those fool games down at that arcade, that’s all he did.”

  “So if he was afraid of something in particular, he wouldn’t have said anyway.”

  “That’s right.”

  Whelan sat silent and let her continue.

  “I did hear him say one time that this man Jimmy had a new partner, an older man, and I think Tony ran some kind of errands for this other man, but he never said a name.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “This was just before he moved out.”

  “In the fall, then.”

  “Yes.” For a moment, Mrs. Pritchett was no longer in the room with him. Her eyes moved around her little apartment and she blinked in her confusion, and she looked ten years older. Finally she met Whelan’s gaze.

  “I just don’t know where to look for him.”

  Whelan thought for a moment. “You’ve looked yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. I went to some of the places that I know he went to, a couple of places where I ran into him. But…”

  “You looked, Mrs. Pritchett. He’s not your boy, but you went out on the street looking.” Lady, you’re all right, he thought.

  “Detective Bauman said you could help me.”

  “Maybe. There’s no way of telling till we try it.”

  “He said you cost money though.”

  “Well, we…”

  “A lot. He said you cost a lot.” Mrs. Pritchett’s face registered a mild disapproval.

  “He said that? Now, that’s…it’s not exactly true, ma’am. I work for a fee but…”

  “I have some money, Mr. Whelan—what are your fees, sir?” Mrs. Pritchett drew herself up into an erect position and faced her financial fate.

  For a moment Whelan couldn’t say anything. Then he shrugged, promised to have his revenge on Bauman someday, and said, “My fees are decided on a case-per-case basis, ma’am. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Her hand went to her lips and she appeared on the verge of biting her nails. Then she seemed to come to a decision. “I have five hundred dollars I can pay you. Will that be sufficient, sir?”

  Sure, Whelan thought, that will cover my fee for two working days, lady. To Mrs. Pritchett, he said, “Yes, ma’am. Five hundred will do it. Now, the real business: what does he look like?”

  The woman smiled and a faint blush of relief came into her cheeks, and Whelan hoped he’d find this boy. “He’s about five seven or five eight, kind of thin, boy never eats. He’s got sandy colored hair and wears it long, sometimes he ties it back. Let me see now, he’s got a little scar here,” and she touched her chin, “and he has this nasty tattoo of some kind of comet on his right forearm. Paid good money to some fool to put marks on him,” she said with distaste.

  “What name does he use?”

  “Tony Blanchard. Blanchard was his father’s name.”

  “Fine. And I’ll need those corners where you saw him and any other place where he used to hang out. You mentioned a video arcade—which one?”

  “That one over by the college. On Wilson. Sometimes I think he went to this area where a lot of young people congregate at night, but I don’t know where it was. He mentioned a doughnut shop somewhere up by the ballpark once but that’s all I know. And he used to go hang out at a little restaurant over by the Uptown Theater.”

  “What kind of a boy is he?”

  “He’s a g— —Oh, you must hear that every time somebody asks you to look for a child, but—he is a good boy. He’s quiet, and he’s very smart, and he’s thoughtful about things.”

  “And when was the last time you heard from him?”

  “Christmas. He came by with presents for me. That little Oriental vase on the table, and a bottle of champagne. It was very nice champagne, too.” She smiled proudly. Whelan looked at the vase on the side table: Chinese, maybe Vietnamese. The garage she’d mentioned was up near Argyle, and Argyle Street was full of shops. “But I haven’t seen that boy since.” Her concern had come back.

  He looked around at her tidy apartment for a moment. “Mrs. Pritchett, I think if I were a street kid in trouble, I might think about coming back to a place like this and a person like you. It would give me a little edge just knowing I could come back here. And there’s a chance he will. If he does, get in touch with me, or with the police.”

  “I will.” Mrs. Pritchett seemed on the verge of asking another question, then caught herself but he read the question in her eyes.

  “If something had happened to him, we’d have heard by now. And you said he was smart.”

  “But he’s just a little boy: all these little boys always be thinking they’re smart.”

  Yeah, they all think they’re smart, Whelan thought. They’re all streetwise.

  He stood up and held out his hand. She reached for his hand and then stopped. “Do I pay you something in advance?”

  “Not necessary. It’ll keep.” Now she shook his hand and walked him to the door.

  When they reached it, she turned and looked him up and down again as she had when he entered her house. “No scarf, no hat. Men wonder why they get sick so much. At least you had the sense to wear a decent coat.”

  “I came out in a hurry. Besides, it’s supposed to be spring.”

  “Feel like spring out there to you?”

  “I’ll do better next time.”

  Mrs. Pritchett smiled and shook her head.

  He found a pay phone half a block away on Broadway and called Area Six. The detective who answered said “Violent Crimes” the way somebody might announce a flower shop.

  “Bauman around?”

  “No, sir. Take a message?”

  “Yeah, tell him Paul Whelan called. Ask him when he started referring business to me.”

  There was a pause as the detective wrote down the message, and then a chuckle. “This isn’t gonna make him mad at me, is it?”

  “Bauman? When did Bauman ever get mad at people?”

  “Right,” the cop said, and hung up.

  It wasn’t ten-thirty in the morning yet but the video arcade across from Truman College was packing them in. There were more than a dozen kids crowded into the little box of a room, all of them huddled around video games, the ones with no quarters fixated on the video adventures of the ones with money. Most of the kids were black, some were Latino,
a couple white. About half of them looked as though they belonged in school.

  A couple of the older-looking ones watched Whelan enter, and he saw one give an elbow to his companion. The second kid turned from the game he’d been staring at and gave Whelan the look. Whelan ignored him.

  I’m a busy man, he thought. No time for badass teenagers.

  He walked over to the register, where a Middle Eastern-looking man was arguing with a small boy over the probability that a machine had eaten three of the boy’s quarters. The man seemed to think it was unlikely, the boy insisted that the machine was alive and ravenous. At Whelan’s approach, the man broke off the debate and turned to him.

  “Yes, sir? Can I help you?”

  “Maybe. I’m looking for someone.”

  Several of the older kids nearby turned to stare at Whelan and he looked back at them.

  “Who you are looking for?” the man asked. “A kid?”

  “Yes,” Whelan said, still watching a tall black kid who had turned his attention back to a game in which rockets threatened the earth. “His name is Tony Blanchard. He’s about sixteen, light-colored hair, wears it long, has a tattoo of a comet on one arm.”

  The man nodded and looked knowledgeable. “The police were here about him. I know this boy but he’s not here. He don’t come in lately. Ask them,” he said, indicating the kids in his room.

  “I will.”

  Whelan made the circuit of the room and drew one-word answers or blank looks. One kid, no more than thirteen, swore at him when his pinball game ate the last ball.

  Whelan handed him a quarter. “Chill out, kid, it’s only a game.” Mollified, the boy mumbled something and took the quarter.

  “Tony Blanchard,” Whelan said to him.

  The boy shook his head. “Ask Ricardo.”

  “Which one is Ricardo?”

  “The brother over by the door,” he said without looking.

  Whelan patted him on the shoulder and crossed the room. Ricardo proved to be the tall one who’d been watching him, and now the boy folded his arms and went into one of his poses. He probably had a dozen: this was the “Whatchoo-want-wit-me-now-cop” version.

  “Ricardo?”

  The boy made a little jerk of his shoulders and looked across the room at the young one who had given up his name.