Whelan tried the door and found it locked. He looked at the man, knocked, and waved when the man looked up. The man peered at him for a moment, then pressed a buzzer under the counter and the door opened.
The man moved a few feet up the counter to greet him. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m looking for somebody. An American boy.”
The bald man pursed his lips and shook his head. “No boys come in here. All steal, all boys: American boys, any kind boys. I don’t buzz in any kind boys.” He touched the buzzer in demonstration.
“Maybe you’ve seen him on the street. About the same size as your customer there. Long hair.”
He gave his head a quick shake. “You try Apollo.” He pointed in the direction of the El tracks. “Maybe they see him.”
“Apollo? Okay, thanks.”
The Cambodian man was back into his delicate negotiations before Whelan made it through the door.
He crossed Winthrop, went past a market that boasted fresh ginseng and its own collection of dead ducks hanging in the window—Argyle Street was hell on ducks, apparently—and passed into the chilly shadow of the tracks, where he found the Apollo.
It was as close as one could come to a cave in the middle of the city, jammed under the concrete superstructure of the Argyle Street El station and spreading back in the semidarkness to the alley. A squad car sat out front and the cop who belonged to it was sitting in the window of the Apollo reading a newspaper. On the window over his head were the words WE SERVE BEST OF FOOD.
Whelan walked into the steamy air and the heavy odor of bacon and ham steaks frying. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sepia light in the Apollo and then Whelan saw that he’d found the place where the outsiders came to hide. White faces and black looked up when he approached the counter, with nary an Asiatic in the bunch.
I’ve found the Island of the Lost Gringos.
An angular man in an Army coat brushed past him on the way out and Whelan narrowly missed walking into the cop, who was heading back to the counter for a refill on his coffee. Eventually Whelan found himself an empty stool where the counter made a ninety-degree turn.
He slid onto the stool and a plump young woman with a Mediterranean face came to take his order. She appeared to be having a running battle with the cook, a potbellied man whose stomach threatened to touch the surface of the grill. They were speaking in a language Whelan didn’t know—Assyrian, maybe.
“What you gonna have today, sir?” the waitress said, shooting one last venom-laden glance at the fat man.
“Just coffee.” He waited for her to fill a brown mug from a small pot. When she returned, he said, “I’m trying to find a runaway boy. He’s about sixteen, with long hair, brown, has a little scar on his chin and a tattoo on his right arm. Tattoo of a comet. Ring any bells?”
She started to shrug and her face was wrinkling up into a doubtful expression. Then she paused. “There was a boy I saw a couple times on the street. But this boy didn’t have long hair.”
“He could have cut it. Did he have the scar or tattoo?”
“This one had something on his arm but I don’t remember if it was a comet. I don’t look at tattoos. They’re so ugly, you know? And most of the guys that got tattoos, they give me the creeps.”
“You said you saw him on the street. Where?”
She pointed out the window with the eraser end of her pencil. “Right out there. Across the street. He was standing in the doorway with another boy. I don’t know if it’s the boy you want.”
“What did the other boy look like?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“A white kid?”
She nodded. “But I didn’t see them real good. At night, this was. It was dark already.”
Whelan drew a card from his shirt pocket and put it on the counter. “If you see either of them again, call me. I have an answering service if I’m not in. Okay?”
The waitress stared at his card and a little glow appeared on her face. She looked from the card to Whelan and then back to the card. The fat man at the grill said something Whelan didn’t catch and she shot him a look over her shoulder that made her feelings plain. She looked back at Whelan and grinned.
“This is real?”
“Yep. So am I.”
She held the card in the palm of her hand. “This is really cool.”
“It would be cooler if I made a lot of money at it.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “So who makes a lot of money?”
The cook rumbled again and a man down the counter called out for a refill of his coffee. The waitress sighed, held out her hand and said, “My name’s Diana.”
“Nice to meet you,” Whelan said and shook hands. Diana went to fill the customer’s cup and the cook was growling at her again. She muttered something in the Middle Eastern language and the cook shot something back and Whelan thought he heard the girl say “Oh, fuck you.” He fought an impulse to laugh, finished his coffee and walked to the door. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking the cop in the window if he’d seen Tony Blanchard but there was something willful and single-minded about the way the cop stared at his newspaper and made eye contact with no one, and Whelan let it go. He waved to Diana the Waitress as he left, and she winked at him.
Outside he stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down Argyle Street. Dozens of Asiatic people passed him and paid him no attention whatsoever. He thought about what the waitress had told him and realized that if he wanted to catch sight of the kid down here, he’d probably have to come back at night. Whelan sighed.
I hate working nights, he told himself.
Dolly Parton had replaced Barbara Mandrell and the singing drunk appeared to have gone home but the rest of Ed and Ronda’s was the same bad dream it had been before. Whelan stepped into the dark little tavern and leaned against the nearest stool. A couple of the drinkers turned to look at him and then looked back at their drinks or their cigarettes. At the far end, a sharp-featured young man in a red knit shirt peered at him through cigarette smoke and then looked away. The bartender was bent over a large beer cooler, one arm lost from view as he reached for bottles at the murky bottom. He cursed and shook his head, and finally came up with a couple bottles of Hamm’s, dripping from the pool of slush where they’d been living these past weeks. He wiped the bottoms on a bar rag, opened them and set them up in front of a pair of old men, then seemed to notice Whelan. The bartender stared at him for a moment, stole a quick glance over at the man in the red knit shirt and made the faintest nod in Whelan’s direction.
Thanks, Whelan thought. Now we’ve been introduced. He smiled at the bartender and saw that the man already disliked him.
The man in the red shirt started to get off his stool, then squinted in Whelan’s direction and seemed to change his mind.
The bartender ambled in Whelan’s direction but Whelan ignored him and moved on down the bar. He put cigarettes and a ten on the bar and took a stool next to the young man in the red shirt. The other man busied himself with the complicated ritual of busting open a new pack of cigarettes. He tapped the pack on the bar, ripped open the cellophane, pulled out a smoke, tapped the filter end on the bar to settle the tobacco, flicked a monogrammed lighter and puffed away. He blew smoke out into the air and fingered his change, and his facial expression never changed. Up close, the man was not quite so young and he wore the marks of life in smoky taverns: dark patches under the eyes, crow’s-feet at the corners, reddish pimples across his nose and a few appearing on his cheeks. He’d slicked his blond hair back with a year’s supply of hair cream or motor oil that made it look darker than it probably was, but he wore his sideburns long and they were going gray fast. He smelled of his hair cream and cologne and he still hadn’t looked at Whelan.
“Bobby Hayes?” Whelan asked and without waiting for an answer, said, “My name’s Paul Whelan.”
The other man shrugged and continued to stare straight ahead of him. Whelan tossed a bu
siness card in front of Hayes. “I need to ask you some questions.”
Hayes looked down at the card for a moment, then picked it up and began tapping on the bar in front of him. “I ain’t seen him,” Hayes said. He spoke softly, with a noticeable twang. Hayes looked at Whelan for the first time. There was a washed-out quality to his pale blue eyes that made him look fatigued.
“Gee, you mean I came all the way here for nothing?”
“That’s about the size of it, Bo.” Hayes tried to look pleased with himself.
Whelan pretended to think for a moment, then looked back at Hayes. “Who haven’t you seen, Bob?”
“Who says I’m Bob?”
“He did,” Whelan said with a nod at the bartender. The other man squinted at the bartender in momentary confusion.
The drinker nearest the door called out “How ’bout some drinks here, Ed,” and the barman lumbered away.
Whelan leaned closer. “So who haven’t you seen?”
Hayes snorted and stalled and then said, “Jimmy. Who d’ya think?”
Whelan shook his head. The bartender approached and Whelan waved him away. “I’m not looking for him. Besides, talk is, he’s dead.”
Bobby looked away. “You think so, huh?”
“Yeah, I do. I think they’re all dead.”
“I’ll have to tell ol’ Jimmy that next time I see him.”
“Next time you see him, Bobby, you’ll both be able to fly.”
Bobby Hayes picked up his glass and sipped at what appeared to be vodka and the remains of a couple of ice cubes.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“What for?”
“So I can ask you about the person I’m actually here about.”
Hayes turned and looked at him for several seconds, then shrugged. Whelan caught Ed’s eye and pointed to Hayes’s drink. The barman poured a long shot of vodka from the speed rack and dropped a handful of ice cubes on top. He looked at Whelan.
“You want a drink?”
“No, thanks. Take it out of here,” he said, pointing at his money.
When he looked back at Hayes, he thought he could see confusion in the pale eyes. “What I really need, Bob, is information about Tony Blanchard.”
Hayes allowed himself a slight shake of the head and Whelan pushed. “I know you didn’t have much to do with Jimmy’s operation…” Bobby was nodding now. “…but I think you can give me some idea where to look.”
Hayes shook his head. “I ain’t seen him. Only saw those kids a couple times.”
“The other kid named Marty?”
“I don’t know any of their names, buddy. They were just kids to me.”
“Was the second one tall and skinny with black hair?”
Hayes frowned. “Nah. This was a little ol’ boy. Had blond hair.” Hayes held up the glass of vodka. “Thanks, son.” He took a sip and smacked his lips.
Whelan watched him for a moment. “Tell me, Bob—when did the shit start to hit the fan for Jimmy?”
“Couldn’t tell you, friend. I wasn’t here.”
He thought about Bobby Hayes’s reaction when he’d first come in. “Maybe so, Bob, but you’ve got the same trouble. Same folks looking for you as for your brother.”
Hayes shot him a sudden look. “I wasn’t here. Like I said before.”
“It doesn’t matter and you know it. That’s why you have your friendly neighborhood bartender telling people he never heard of you. And that’s why you got nervous when I came in, at least until you saw who it was. You were expecting somebody else.”
“I wasn’t expecting nobody. I come in for a little taste. I don’t bother nobody.”
“Maybe so, but I heard you have reason to worry.”
The other man was shaking his head before Whelan was even finished. “That’s bullshit, brother. Who’d you hear that from?”
“Somebody who did business with your brother on a regular basis and thinks you ought to be watching your back.”
Bobby Hayes studied Whelan, his pale eyes wide and nervous. “Why should I be watching my back? Who’s gonna give me trouble?” He made a little shake of his head. “I know what this is. You want something.”
“I told you what I wanted. But there’s a good chance the one looking for you is also the reason I can’t find this boy. I want a name.”
Bobby Hayes stared down into his drink as though it had disappointed him. His shoulders sagged slightly. Whelan took in the gold chain, the long sideburns, the heavy cologne, and saw a man who had been a step slow most of his life. Hayes lifted the glass and slurped at the melting ice, then turned to Whelan. He seemed to be on the verge of opening up, and then Whelan could almost see the fear steering him off. Hayes pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Got no name to give you, old buddy.”
“Okay,” Whelan said, and dropped the card back in front of Hayes. “Keep this anyway and give me a call if you change your mind.”
Hayes blinked and grinned at him, the portrait of false confidence. “Change my mind? ’Bout what, son? I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about, how’m I gonna change my mind?”
“Well, just in case. Maybe I can be of some help to you.”
Whelan got up and walked toward the door. Behind him, Bobby Hayes’s voice rang out, “Thanks for the drink, buddy.” And as Whelan reached the door, he could hear Hayes telling Ed that Whelan was “a real gentleman for a Yankee.”
The group home Mrs. Pritchett had mentioned was called Archer House and Whelan found it on Carmen, a narrow side street just west of Andersonville, the old Swedish neighborhood. The home looked much like the other houses on either side of the street, a squat redbrick structure with a small dark porch, a prime example of what passed for a bungalow in Chicago. There was nothing on the building to indicate that it was anything but a normal family residence.
As he approached the staircase, he realized he was being watched from the cover of Venetian blinds in the house next door. At the top of the stairs he saw a little brass bell plate that read ARCHER HOUSE. UNITED SOCIAL SERVICES GROUP RESIDENCE. He rang the bell and waited in silence.
He heard voices from inside and a moment later the door opened and he found himself facing a young white man in his twenties, a 1967-looking young man with curly light brown hair and rimless glasses and an expression in his brown eyes that said “Surprise me.”
The young man raised his eyebrows in question. Whelan held out a business card and waited as the young man’s gaze moved over it and a look of amusement came into his face.
“What can we do for you?”
“I understand that Tony Blanchard lived here for a while. I wonder if I could ask you some questions about him.”
Before the young man could answer, a second man appeared behind him in the hall, sipping at coffee from a paper cup. This man was in his mid-thirties and the hair at the front of his head was going fast. His hair showed a cap line all the way around. The young man turned and indicated Whelan with a nod of his head.
“Wants to ask us questions about Tony Blanchard.”
The older man frowned slightly. “Again? About Tony, or about those killings?”
“About Tony.”
“Okay with us but—”
“I’m not a police officer.”
“He’s a private investigator,” the young one said.
Whelan took out his wallet and showed his identification.
“Private investigator. Who are you working for? Or am I not supposed to ask that?”
“You can ask. Actually, I’m working for a woman that Tony lived with for a while. Mrs. Evangeline Pritchett.”
The young man looked to the older one. The man nodded. “Right. I heard he was staying with a friend of the family for a while. That her?”
“Right.”
“And…I don’t mean to tell you your business but—are we sure she’s, you know, all right?”
Whelan shrugged. “The cops referred her to me. I know the detective who’s been
working on the case. You probably made his acquaintance earlier, and if he’s in a good mood, he’ll vouch for me. You can call him over at Area Six if you want.”
“That guy Bauman?” The older one made a face as though a bad smell had come in through the door. “Never mind, forget it, we’ll take your word for it. I don’t need to talk to that guy again.”
“Had his party manners on when he was here, huh?”
“That’s about it. He wanted to question all the kids and most of them weren’t even here when Tony was.”
“There was no point in some of the stuff he wanted to do,” the young one added. “Pretty hostile dude.”
“He is that,” Whelan said.
The older man came forward, hand extended. “I’m Jack Mollan. I’m director of the home. This is Greg Purcell, he’s our staff counselor.”
“Paul Whelan.” He shook hands with the older man.
“Come on in, Paul.”
Whelan stepped into the hall and the men led him into a small, crowded living room filled with furniture that had seen hard use.
“Coffee?” Greg Purcell asked.
“Sure, thanks.”
The three of them sat in the living room and sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups for a moment and made small talk to get themselves acclimated to the situation.
“I already know a certain amount about Tony Blanchard. What I need from you guys is anything that might tell me where to look for him, or how to look for him. When did he leave here?”
Mollan leaned forward. “A year ago, at least. And I want to make clear, he left here on good terms. He didn’t run away.”
“Mrs. Pritchett told me that.”
“I just wanted to make sure you knew that. A lot of kids on the street are running away from their living situations. Some of them come from places so bad they’ll live in abandoned buildings without heat and water rather than go back to abusive or violent situations. Tony was just a kid who had no place. He came to us, went along with the program, pulled his weight, got along fine. He wasn’t the nicest kid in the home and he wasn’t the worst either. He worked for a while when he was here, bagging groceries at the Aldi over on Broadway to pay for food and things like that.”
Killer on Argyle Street Page 9
