Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  “Nah, I don’t need that shit.”

  “Tony must have told you a little about why he hung around with these guys.”

  Marty recovered some of his scorn. “Bread, man. Cash. Whaddya think?”

  “He tell you what kinds of things they asked him to do?”

  “Naw, he never said.”

  “Cars? Apartments? What?”

  “He never said.”

  “And you never did anything with them? You weren’t interested?” Whelan looked around the grill as though assessing Tony’s source of income.

  “Maybe with Tony, yeah. But not with nobody else, man.” The boy screwed the top back on the saltshaker and looked ready to move on. Whelan stared till the boy met his eyes again.

  “Let me try something else out on you. Jimmy Lee Hayes had a partner, an older guy. What was his name?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about any partner.”

  “I can’t believe Tony never mentioned the guy’s name. He lived in your house, you were running buddies. I want to know the guy’s name.”

  “He never told me shit, man.”

  “Yeah, he did, and if you don’t want to be doing this same dance with the boys at Area Six, you really ought to think about talking to me. I need to know about this guy.”

  Marty looked past Whelan for several seconds, breathing through his mouth. His eyes moved rapidly from one distant object to another and Whelan could almost hear him measuring his chances in one scenario against those in another. Finally he looked over his shoulder at the Korean man, who was talking to a woman at the counter. “I gotta go back behind the counter. They’re gonna think I’m pulling some shit here.”

  “Fine, I’ll come, too. You can give me another cup of coffee, to go this time, and the name of this guy.”

  Marty grabbed a styrofoam cup and a lid and set them down on a back counter. With his back to Whelan, he mumbled something.

  “What? I didn’t catch that.”

  Marty turned around to face him, holding a half-filled coffee pot.

  “Maybe you’re talkin’ about Lester. I think that’s who you want. Lester. He wasn’t Jimmy’s partner, though.”

  “What was he?”

  Marty moved his skinny shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “Just a guy they worked with.”

  “Worked with how?”

  “When they had, like, radios, car radios, he could get rid of ’em.”

  “He’s a fence.”

  “Whatever.”

  “He’s the one you moved all your stuff through?”

  “Not me, man. I never moved nothing. I told you, I didn’t have nothing to do with that shit. This guy Lester, he wouldn’t know me from fucking Adam.”

  Whelan nodded. “Where would I find him?”

  “Beats the shit outta me.”

  Somebody ought to, Whelan thought. To Marty, he said, “I think you’ve got some idea.”

  The boy looked down. “I think I heard Tony say they used to meet this guy at this place up on Irving.” He gestured with his chin to indicate south.

  “This place? Could we maybe narrow it down a bit?”

  “It’s a restaurant, man, I don’t know the fucking name. It’s on Irving, that’s all I know.”

  “Irving’s only about ten miles long. That’s really helpful.”

  The kid sighed. “Up there by the El station.”

  “Irving and Sheridan, okay. What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t know, man, how would I…”

  “Quit whining. I think you know what he looks like.”

  Marty rolled his eyes. “He’s old, man. He’s skinny and he wears this, like, fedora thing, got all kinda stains on it like he pissed on it, which wouldn’t surprise me, and this ratty blue coat, and he’s got yellow teeth and he’s got fucking hair growing out of his ears and his hair is gray and it sticks up on top.”

  “You were attracted to him.”

  “What?” Marty curled his lip.

  “Just kidding.”

  Marty turned back to pour coffee into the cup. He fumbled with the lid, spilled some of the hot coffee on his hand and cursed. He wiped his hand on his apron and set the coffee in front of Whelan without looking at him. “You finished, man? Can I get back to work?”

  The boy’s face had taken on a greenish pallor and for a moment, Whelan felt sorry for him.

  “Here, this is for the coffee,” he said, and handed Marty a single. “And this is for you.” He slid a five toward Marty. The boy’s hand snaked out and the five disappeared. “I might be back. I might have to ask you more questions.”

  Marty dared a quick look at Whelan, then stared down at the table.

  “It’ll be just between you and me.”

  “Yeah, right,” the boy muttered, and a stricken look came into his face.

  Outside, Whelan lit a cigarette and decided that this evening he would visit the lair of the redoubtable Albert Bauman to see what the good detective could tell him.

  Four

  There were three customers inside the Alley Cat, each sitting at least five stools from the others and all doing their best to ignore one another, and although one of them was a stout crewcut man in a plaid sport coat, he wasn’t Bauman.

  Ralph, the aging bartender, just shook his head when Whelan asked whether Bauman had been in.

  A half hour later, he pulled up across the street from the Bucket O’Suds and crossed the street. The lights out front weren’t on yet but there were two cars parked in front and one belonged to Joe Danno, the owner. The other was Bauman’s Caprice.

  Whelan pushed open the door and inhaled the smells that told the newcomer that there were three hundred opened bottles of liquor here and a kitchen where wonders took place.

  Two men sat in semidarkness at the far end. The stuffed marlin still hung over the upright piano, the ossified sea turtle still swam forever over a row of bourbon bottles and the dead merganser still flew across the bar. If you looked close, Whelan had decided, you could see confusion in the dead duck’s eyes. At the center of the bar was another odd creature, drinking a stein of BBK and a shot of bourbon. He’d shed the coat and plaid jacket, and the orange shirt lit up the area. Across the bar from him, Joe Danno held court.

  Joe was holding up a bourbon bottle and pointing out something about the label and Bauman was nodding. Only Joe turned when Whelan entered.

  “How you doing, Paul?”

  “I’m okay, Joe. But I’m tired and thirsty and my horse died.”

  “Can’t do a thing about the horse, but you we can take care of.”

  From the back room, Fena appeared carrying two pizzas to the men at the far end. She set down the metal plates, looked up the bar, noticed Whelan and waved. “Hi, hon.”

  “Hi, Fena. Joe, how about a beer. And a shot of G & U for Mr. Personality here,” and he tapped Bauman on the shoulder.

  “Coming up.” The bottle was already at the edge of the bar in front of Bauman. Joe ran a hand through his white hair and poured a shot into Bauman’s glass. He held up the bottle. “How about yourself, Paul?”

  “Not yet, Joe.”

  “Hello, Snoopy,” Bauman said, and knocked ash from his skinny cigar, then took a puff. He still hadn’t looked at Whelan.

  “We’ve got a problem, O Detective of Detectives.”

  Bauman looked at his cigarillo and said nothing.

  Joe returned with a stein of BBK that sported an inch and a half of foam. Whelan took a pull at his beer and then stared at Bauman for a moment. The earlier anger was gone and it was probably just as well. Anger would not move this hard-drinking hard-skinned man. Anger, Bauman could relate to. Confusion might be more effective. “I called Mrs. Pritchett, so you’ll probably hear from her again. I’m out of it.”

  Bauman turned slowly to look at him. “Why is that? You runnin’ out of gas? I thought you never quit anything. Isn’t that you, or am I thinkin’ of some other sleuth?”

  “First time for everything, Bauman. You can find th
is poor teenage stiff yourself.”

  Bauman leaned back and squinted at Whelan. “Is that right? So, what’s your hard-on this time, Whelan? Lemme guess, you’re pissed off because you saw us tailing you this afternoon. Is that it?”

  “Come on, Bauman, I lost you in five minutes—I wasn’t even inconvenienced. You’re the one that ought to be pissed off, you and your hard-guy partner.” He grinned. “You lost face. In Japan, you and Landini would have to cut each other’s fingers off. But I suppose if I stopped to think about it, I would be a little irritated that you decided I had to be followed. What does that mean, actually? Is there a message there?”

  “Aw, your feelings are hurt. You think I don’t trust you ’cause I had old Landini there tailin’ you.”

  “I was thinking along those lines, yeah.”

  “I trust you as much as I trust anybody, Whelan. I just know you got certain habits, you got this one habit in particular of keeping things under your hat till you think there’s a pattern. I told you if you found anything to give it to me, but I got a feeling I’ll hear from you when it’s all over. And I don’t need that here. There’s other things involved here. So, yeah, I was tailing you to see if you come up with anything I ain’t got yet. Besides,” he grinned and belched up bourbon, “it’s good practice for Landini. He’s really dogshit at puttin’ the tail on somebody.”

  “He’s not real slick but I’ve seen worse.”

  “Who?”

  Whelan smiled again. “Mark Durkin.”

  “That’s ’cause when Durkin tails somebody, he wants to run ’im over.” Bauman tossed the shot off at a gulp. “Thanks for the drink. So. You feel better now, or do you still have a hair up your ass?”

  Whelan looked at the other man and saw the expectant gleam in his eyes. “Yeah, I do. The tail was the easy part. The other part is more complicated. One of the dead men was a guy I knew, and you sucked me into this thing without telling me. You sent this lady to see me and then laid back to see what I’d do, and I’m not even sure why.”

  Bauman shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure if you knew this guy. What—you wanna be questioned like all the other people that knew any one of these guys? That make you happy?”

  “You could’ve said something up front so I’d know you made a connection.”

  “I didn’t make any connection. And I didn’t have no plan to screw you, Whelan. We had people all over the North Side looking for this kid and this old babe comes to me like I’m some kinda youth worker, and I figure it’s a good spot for Paul Whelan.”

  “You already knew I was acquainted with one of these men.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we found out you knew one of the three stiffs but I don’t get the idea he was a bosom buddy of yours. Thought it might make things interesting, that’s all. And it did, am I right?”

  “Yeah, it made things interesting all right. Makes me wonder what else you’re not telling me.”

  Bauman gave him a sly look and a little smile came to life.

  “We’re even…for the stuff you’re not telling me.”

  “No, we’re not even.”

  “Suit yourself, Snoopy. I don’t have time to argue with you. I spend half my fucking day arguing with Landini.”

  “You deserve each other.”

  “Maybe we do. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’ve got one.”

  Bauman ignored him. “Hey, Joe? We need a couple shots here.” Joe interrupted his conversation at the far end of the bar and came down to pour them a pair of shots. He was humming to the jazz coming from one of his many tapes.

  “Thanks, Joe,” Whelan said. “Who we listening to?”

  “Dexter Gordon.” Joe looked at Bauman’s pile of money, shrugged, took four singles and padded over to the register.

  “Tell me how you made the connection, Bauman.”

  “Like I said, there was nothing solid. This guy Byrne, we got not one, but two files on him.” Bauman held up two stubby fingers. “We got his sheet, which is not exactly short but mostly small time, and we got a personnel file on him.”

  Whelan frowned. “Rory was a copper?”

  “Naw, but he was one of these ‘Police Community Aides,’ remember them? Those kids that worked out of the stations and did odds and ends?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, this guy was one of them for a couple months. And on his application for the job, he had to list references.”

  “He listed me?”

  “No. Art Shears. Your friend. Shears was with the Trib then. From that, and from the address this guy Byrne give us, up in your old neighborhood there by the ballpark, I figured there was a pretty good chance that our boy Whelan knew him.”

  “Kind of a stretch. I didn’t know everybody Artie knew.”

  “You know just about everybody in your neighborhood now, you know people that live in doorways, and I’m thinking you probably always been that way.”

  Whelan drained his whiskey. On an empty stomach, it burned its way down. “I knew him, but we weren’t friends. He had an older brother, though, who was a good friend of mine. The whole family’s gone now—parents died when the older one was about fourteen. He kind of came apart after Nam, living on the streets for a while, then he got tuberculosis.”

  “Hard luck family.”

  “Yeah. I never really knew what Rory Byrne was into. He was no worse than most of the kids around there. It’s hard to believe he eventually got himself into something that would kill him.”

  “Well, he did. Him and a bunch of other guys. Happens all the time, Whelan.”

  “You have theories.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “It might help me out if I knew more about this Jimmy Lee Hayes.”

  Bauman sighed. “You’re not lookin’ for Jimmy Lee Hayes.”

  “I’m looking for anybody that knew this kid, so why not him?”

  Bauman gave him an irritated look. “He’s a sleaze. And now I think he’s a dead sleaze. He met an untimely end. Just a small-time hood, that’s all he was.”

  “What flavor?”

  “A thief. I mean, they’re all just thieves, but old Jimmy Lee was a genuine full-time thief. He stole cars, cameras, electronic stuff, jewelry. For a while, he was heavy into cars, had his own shop up there by the river, on Elston. You’d park your car on Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon it would be a pile of parts on the floor of Jimmy Lee’s chop shop. But that got him into heavy shit, he was cutting in on somebody else’s business. He got sent up for heisting a truckload of VCRs, probably saved his ass. While he was inside, one of his partners seems to have developed an insatiable need to swim in the Chicago River in November. When old Jimmy came out of the joint, he wasn’t in the car business anymore.”

  “Sounds like a good career move.”

  “Yeah. Went back to stealing small shit and selling it.”

  “You think he got big ideas again, and went foraging in somebody else’s backyard?”

  “That’s one theory.”

  “But not yours. What do you think happened?”

  “I think it’s personal.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do. It’s my opinion, all right?”

  Whelan said nothing. He patted himself down for his cigarettes and came up empty. “Damn.”

  “Here.” Bauman shoved the little thin pack of cigarillos along the bar with the edge of his hand.

  “God Almighty.” Whelan shook out one of the long dark things, looked at it, sighed and lit it up. He puffed at it once, then inhaled. A rasping filled his lungs, as though someone had stuffed sandpaper into his chest. He coughed and it was worse coming out. “Holy shit. These are terrible, Bauman. How can you inhale these?” He took several deep breaths. “I think I’m gonna die.”

  Bauman watched him in amusement. “Glad you like ’em. I got stronger ones at home.”

  “Might as well smoke inner tubes. No, you’ve probably smoked inner tubes already.”

  Bauman took the res
t of his whiskey in a gulp, then a swallow of beer. He lit one of his cigarillos and blew smoke up toward the dark ceiling of the bar. He had the contented look of a man who’s just had a fine meal, and Whelan laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. Just the weird company I keep these days.”

  For a moment neither said anything. Whelan turned on his stool and studied the back wall, covered with labels of distillers and famous whiskeys long gone. He was going over ways to get Bauman to open up when Bauman spoke again.

  “There’s talk that a shipment of drugs come in about a month ago, and the big bad city swallowed it up before it could get to the people that owned it, and these people are a little put out. That’s what the idea is now. Me, I think somebody a lot smarter took that shit off the street and we ain’t heard the last of it. Bad shit, new blood coming in to take on the old. Jimmy Lee Hayes couldn’t pull something like that off. But Jimmy Lee did something every day of his adult life to piss somebody off, and I’m thinking that’s what this is about, Whelan. He pissed somebody off and now he’s fertilizer.”

  “Pissed off how?”

  “Jimmy Lee Hayes was the Deep Throat of the North Side. He informed on everybody.”

  “You ever use him?”

  “I talked to him, but I put everything he told me through a strainer, and when I took another look, there was nothing left. He’d tell you whatever you wanted. You wanted a new name for the Kennedy assassination, Jimmy Lee Hayes would give you one. You wanted to bust his ma, Jimmy Lee would give her up. Just a simple country boy, old Jimmy Lee Hayes, carrying on a family tradition. Old man was a hood, too. Some of these families, Whelan, they carry on in that scumbag tradition. I read a book once, said when they got Pretty Boy Floyd back in the thirties, one of the guys with him was this old fuck that rode with the Daltons or somebody like that, and his father rode with one of these other gangs and it went all the way back to Jesse and Frank James. This old guy kinda taught the new guys the ropes.”

  Bauman took a slug of his beer and belched. “Yeah, old Jimmy just wanted to be left alone to make a few bucks. Thought he was a pretty smart fella, and a big-time hood. Some guys wanna be president and some guys wanna be Elvis and some guys wanna be hoods. Kinda like your old friend, the late Harry Palm. Even liked to use different names, like Harry: James Lee, Leon Hayes. Like that.”