Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  “Larry’s? On Montrose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wills.”

  “Keep him outta this shit.”

  “I will.”

  “Okay, man. Cool.” Wills nodded and then, apparently experiencing a relapse, fell back on the couch.

  “Hope you make it,” Whelan said as he left.

  He drove the long way, back up Lawrence and onto Broadway, a route calculated to take him past the melancholy site of his favorite local establishment, the most bizarre of all restaurants, the late, lamented House of Zeus, now shut down by order of the City of Chicago. What he saw there made Whelan pull into the first parking space he found. Then he got out and crossed Broadway to take a closer look.

  The audaciously purple curtains were open, the orange lights were on, the smells of Greek, Persian and American food battled and rose in a gray cloud from the tiny grill near the back, dazed-looking customers stood at the counter waiting forever to order: the House of Zeus was open—again.

  Things are looking up, Whelan told himself.

  The last time he’d walked down Broadway, a notice from the Board of Health had been affixed to the door and the House of Zeus had been closed, a casualty in a bloody but ultimately one-sided conflict between the restaurant’s mad Iranian owners on the one hand, and the City of Chicago on the other. Or, if you listened to the proprietors, Rashid and his cousin Gus, the conflict was between good and evil, or between the ancient and cherished culture of Persia and the tasteless barbarism of America. They tended to lean heavily on the good-versus-evil theme, for the other seemed insincere even to them, given their “Streets-paved-with-gold-or-at-least-dollar-bills” attitude toward their adopted country.

  The trouble had come as no surprise to Whelan, arising as it did from what he saw as the natural conflict between the City of Chicago’s health code and the Persian boys’ murky notions about cleanliness. Whelan himself had witnessed the start of the problem, a brief but memorable encounter with a health inspector. The boys had tried out a few of their more outrageous excuses and alibis on the inspector, a pinch-faced man with the animation of a cadaver, and that gentleman had responded by citing the House of Zeus for several dozen health violations, notably the absence of any rigorously applied plan of hygiene and the sale of rotten meat. A guerrilla war had ensued.

  Gus and Rashid had hired their cousin Reza to sue all manner of government entities, including the governor of Illinois, on the grounds of harassment—though what sort of harassment was never made clear. City inspectors overran the House of Zeus, violations were tabulated, citations made, additional suits were filed by the tireless Reza, suggesting racism, anti-Iranian feeling, corruption and malfeasance. A half-hearted attempt by a minor inspector to glom onto a little extra cash became a flashpoint. In Reza’s febrile worldview, all human interaction was nothing more than dueling conspiracies, one cabal colliding with another, and the dapper little barrister was quick to label the inspector’s request for a handout as a vast extortion scheme reaching to the fifth floor of City Hall.

  The mayor lost his temper: more inspectors showed up, in squadrons. They examined the pipes and the cracks in the ceiling, the sidewalks and the stairs, the lead content in the paint and the condition of the boiler.

  After a month of citations and accusations, letters to the editors of all possible newspapers, appearances on local newscasts and even a feeble show at picketing outside the mayor’s office by a tiny group of Iranian women, mostly relatives of Gus and Rashid, the City shut down the House of Zeus. A last-minute attempt by the cousins to secure an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show was fruitless. Thus Chicago’s only Iranian-run Greek restaurant fell before the unleashed might of City government. Like its predecessor, the Persian A & W, the House of Zeus was but a culinary memory, and Paul Whelan had thought his heart would break.

  One winter morning, Whelan had run into Reza downtown, and had asked what was going on with the restaurant. Reza, resplendent in a leather coat and matching cap, took a colorful pose in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, hands on his hips, feet wide apart, and told Whelan and anyone within twenty feet that the war was far from over.

  “You have not seen last word of this one, Mr. Detective Whelan. I have more tricks up my coat, yes. We will fight this one out in courts of America, one little business run by political refugees standing up to fight entire government of city.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “We will have good luck, and more important, excellent legal counsel. First-rate counsel.”

  “How can you lose?” Whelan asked.

  Whelan had watched the little Persian lawyer trot off, smiling to himself over his grand plan to bring down the government.

  And now the House of Zeus was open.

  Whelan stepped inside, smelled the familiar, slightly rancid odors of the grill, the deep fryer whose oil was never changed, the huge conical chunk of gyros turning slowly on a spit. He looked around and reassured himself that it was all still here: the ugly leatherette chairs, the little plastic red food baskets left over from the old A & W, the bloody murals on three sides showing Persian warriors butchering Greeks.

  At the counter, people were murmuring about the service and Rashid was shouting at them from the grill, and Gus ducked his head out from the back room. He had a cleaver in one hand and a look in his eye that bespoke hatred for either his fellow man or his cousin.

  “Hi, Rashid. Hi, Gus. Just like old times, huh?”

  Both of the proprietors turned at once and grinned at him.

  “Hello, Detective. You see we are back!” Rashid yelled. His little paper cap chose that moment to slip from his hair and fall onto the cheeseburger he was making, and Whelan heard a man at the counter mutter, “Damn, I’m glad I didn’t order a hamburger.”

  Gus emerged with his cleaver and Rashid approached the counter with the hamburger on a spatula. He tossed it in a basket on top of a mound of fries and handed it to a middle-aged woman without looking at her. She frowned at her burger and walked away with it, shaking her head.

  Rashid showed his many teeth in a grin and threw his arms open wide. “You see! We are back on top.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Hey, how ’bout some service here?” a man at the counter growled.

  Rashid gave the man a look that suggested they belonged to different species and then pointed to Whelan. “You cannot wait for one moment while I talk to my friend? This man is detective, he is important man in community.”

  The five people left in line all turned on cue to have a look at Whelan. From their facial expressions, he could tell they weren’t impressed.

  “I don’t care who he is,” the first man said.

  “I don’t care if he yo’ mama,” a young black man said.

  Rashid faced the line of customers with his hands on his skinny hips and stared at them, giving them the full force of his contempt. He glared, showing them the anger of ancient Persia. They were unmoved. Whelan could almost hear Rashid’s thought processes: half a dozen customers at four or five bucks a pop. Rashid relaxed, showed them all his teeth, shrugged and said, “Everyone is in hurry in Chicago. Okay.”

  He took orders and continued to grin, and Gus came over to the counter. “He’s gonna lose all our customers, this one. Then we’ll be closed for good.”

  “But I’m glad you’re back. What happened?”

  “It is the will of God,” Rashid yelled over from the grill.

  Gus sneered at him. “There was problem, we fixed. Little problems, no big deal.”

  “Seemed like a big deal when you were trying to sue the mayor and the governor at the same time. I think I heard the word ‘conspiracy’ a few times.”

  Gus laughed. “That was Reza’s idea. He is lawyer, they are not normal. Lawyer’s mind is not normal mind. Lawyer’s mind is like…” Gus looked off into the distance, groping for more English and finally gave up. “Lawyers, they are strange. All lawyers, ever
ywhere.”

  “So how did you ‘fix’ the trouble?”

  Gus shrugged. “We fixed all trouble. We clean up kitchen, we buy new coolers, we fix pipes in toilet so now this one, it can flush, even in cold weather.” He scratched under his paper cap, considering the many improvements. “We took class in restaurant management, class in hygiene so this poisoner…” Here he turned to stare at his cousin, who shot him an evil look. “…can’t kill people with his food.”

  Rashid straightened up from his grill and pointed at Gus with a spatula. “You want to see poison, Gholam? You want poison? Look in your lunch today. You will see poison. I will spit on your food, I will put slime from under stove on your—”

  “Hey, I’m trying to eat here,” a customer yelled from a side table.

  Gus leaned closer to Whelan and lowered his voice. “It is true. He is poisoner. The health inspector, the one who made all trouble, Rashid tried to poison him. Tried to give him bad food here.”

  Rashid, scraping the surface of the grill, said nothing, but his grin showed that he had heard.

  “Rashid?” Whelan said.

  “It is joke,” he said, still scraping at the grill. “He makes jokes. Who dies from my food? Name one.”

  Whelan stared at Gholam for a moment and shook his head. “So you fixed the place up and behaved like good boys? You’re telling me that’s all it took? Nothing else, Gus?”

  Gus sighed. “Maybe we pay a little money.”

  “Fines.”

  “Yes, fines and…you know…” Gus made a motion as if peeling bills off a stack.

  Whelan laughed. “The Chinese call it ‘squeeze.’ The hoodlums call it vigorish. A fine Chicago tradition: a modest gift of currency to your favorite local officials.”

  Gus hung his head and Whelan saw that the “gifts” had not been so modest.

  “It’s okay, Gus. You made it through, you’re in business, and the city teems with folks who’ve never had Shalimar kabab. Speaking of which, I need lunch. I’ll have a falafel sandwich and an order of rings, and a root beer.”

  When he was finished, and reasonably certain that the universe had stabilized itself, Whelan strolled out onto Broadway, and lit a cigarette. He walked a few paces and stopped to peer into the window of the African import shop. The window displayed crafts from a half dozen or so different African countries, including kente cloth caps and handbags, beadwork, little statues in a dark wood and boats of various sizes carved in a light wood and peopled with little crew members. Whelan was toying with the idea of buying the biggest of the boats, a two-foot-long affair with a dozen rowers on each side, and trying to get a better look at the price tag. The tag proved to be upside down. The store was in darkness, so he checked the hours posted on the door and decided to come back another time. As he turned, he saw the car and wondered how long it had been on his tail.

  “Well, here’s a surprise,” Whelan said.

  The gray Caprice was parked in a good spot, on the far side of Broadway and halfway up the block. Only somebody used to seeing it would actually have picked it out, but Whelan was used to seeing it. Even at this distance, the two figures in the front seat of the Caprice were a mismatched pair, the one on the passenger side a lot bigger and heavier than the driver. The Caprice was positioned to pull out into traffic as soon as Whelan drove past.

  Whelan looked at his car, then shrugged. He pretended to watch a couple of kids arguing over money, then moved on to the corner on foot, where he made a sharp turn onto Leland. The Caprice was still a couple of car lengths past the corner, so they’d have to go around the block to head him off. He shook off the impulse to duck into the alley: a few feet down this alley, in another time, they’d found the body of Artie Shears. Instead he walked on and found a sunken gangway between an apartment building and a two-flat and went down the steps. After a ten-count, the Caprice came up Leland and he could see Landini peering over the steering column. Bauman, a little more used to Whelan’s ways, was just shaking his head and looking into the gangways and halls.

  “See you guys later,” Whelan said to himself. He watched the Caprice turn south on Broadway and then emerged from the steps.

  The signs painted on all the windows of Larry’s Dog ’n Chicken Shack bragged of a menu of broasted and Cajun chicken, ribs and rib tips, burgers, Polish, hot dogs, and corn dogs, the latter labeled “specialty of the house.” The faces behind the counter were Korean, all but one, for there was no Larry running “Larry’s.” This was after all Uptown, where a couple of deranged Iranians could run a Greek restaurant, and a Vietnamese family could run Chop Suey Kitchen, and the New Yankee Grill had a Greek guy dishing up the Denver omelets, and Whelan reflected that the populace would be less than likely to buy corn dogs and Cajun chicken from “Kim’s Dog ’n Chicken Shack.”

  The one non-Korean face behind the counter was a younger, just barely healthier version of Danny Wills’s. Marty Wills was filling a juice dispenser. Whelan got a coffee from the Korean woman taking orders and then found himself a stool along the window. Marty Wills came out from behind the counter and began busing and scrubbing the outer counters and refilling napkin holders and saltshakers. Whelan sipped at his coffee and watched the traffic till Wills was a couple of stools away.

  “Marty?”

  The boy stiffened and looked at Whelan but said nothing.

  “Dan told me where to find you. My name’s Whelan. I’m a private detective and I’m looking for Tony Blanchard.”

  Marty Wills gave a quick shake of his head. “Don’t know where he is. He don’t stay with us no more.”

  “I know that. But I need to find him.”

  “I don’t know where he is, man.”

  “But you do know he’s in trouble.”

  Wills shook his head again and jammed a wad of napkins into a holder.

  “I need to know where he is, Marty.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” the boy whined.

  “I want you to give me some idea where to look. Maybe you don’t know where he is, but you’ve got some notion where he might go. Your brother said Tony’s got a place of his own, but I don’t think so. There aren’t a whole lot of people who rent to a sixteen-year-old. I think he’s staying with somebody or he’s out on the street.”

  Marty Wills said nothing for several seconds. Finally, he shot a quick look at the Korean woman, then faced Whelan. “He don’t have no crib. He, like, stays sometimes with this old black lady.”

  “Over on Wilton, in the high-rise?”

  Wills nodded.

  “He’s not staying there now.”

  “Maybe not, but he could show up there if, like, he needs a place to flop.”

  “But where would you look for him?” The boy hesitated and Whelan pushed. “It might save his life, Marty.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, you do. Would he ever go back to the garage?”

  Marty rolled his eyes in the look all adolescents reserve for their retarded elders. “No way, man. Roy sucks.”

  Whelan thought about Mrs. Pritchett’s present and threw his knuckler. “I know he was spending some time up on Argyle Street. Is he still hanging around there?”

  The boy blinked in surprise, then recovered quickly. He pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. “Nah, he don’t hang out in Chinatown.”

  “Chinatown’s on the South Side, Marty. I said Argyle Street.”

  “Hey, like, I don’t know what you call it. He ain’t there, that’s all I know. Why would he hang out in a place like that?” Marty sneered but his eyes had a panicked look.

  “Okay, you know more about this than I do. But he was up there before. I know that.”

  Marty wrestled with this and finally made the faintest shrug. “For a little while, maybe.”

  “Why there?”

  “Man, I don’t know every little thing about the guy’s life. I think he knew this guy at one of the joints up there.”

  “And let me guess, you don’t know wh
ich place.” The boy gave a sullen shake of his head. Whelan took a sip of his coffee. “Did you know the guys he was hanging around with? Jimmy Hayes or any of the other ones?”

  “No, man. If I did, I’d be fucking out of here, I’ll tell you that. They’re all dead, man.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “They fucked with somebody and they got wasted.”

  “So you think Jimmy Lee Hayes is dead, too.”

  “Absofuckinglutely.” Marty forced a last wad of napkins into the holder and slid it across the little table.

  “Something they did or…” A thought struck Whelan. “…something they took? I keep hearing they were into cars and stereos but maybe this is about something else. Drugs, maybe.”

  “Beats the fuck outta me,” Marty said, but something in his eyes told Whelan that the boy had the same suspicion.

  “You have any idea who—”

  “Nope,” the boy said, getting there seconds before Whelan.

  Whelan studied the kid for a moment. The boy poured four ounces of salt into a three-ounce shaker and shot a quick look at Whelan.

  “Maybe you heard Tony mention a name or something.”

  “He mentioned some names. He talked about Jimmy, mostly.”

  “What other names?”

  An irritated shrug. “All the ones that got wasted, man. Matt Makowski, this dude Chick Nelson, Rory Martin. This little dude Sonny that got took out last year.”

  “I don’t know about him. Got a last name on him?”

  “No but…that was before any of this other shit went down.”

  “Did you ever meet any of the guys that Tony was hanging around with?”

  Marty shrugged and tried to scoop the spilled salt back in through the spout. “I seen a couple of ’em around.”

  “Which ones?”

  “I seen Jimmy Lee a couple times. I seen Matt Makowski. Matt was younger than those other guys. I knew him, kind of.”

  I bet you did, Whelan thought. “How did you know him?”

  “We had, you know, a couple brews together. That’s all.”

  “Did you work at the garage with Tony?”