“Tall?”
“Not as tall as you. A little taller than me.”
That made the man about six feet tall.
“And his hair,” Marty made a vague motion toward his hair, “it sticks up like…” He shook his head. “He’s a freaky-looking dude.”
“You know where he is?”
“I don’t know where nobody is. I got nothing to do with any of this shit.”
“Hope not. What’s going down isn’t very nice, and the bad part is, it’s not over yet—but you knew that.”
Marty nodded hesitantly. Then he shot Whelan a sly look.
“Any luck with Tony?”
“No. You’d have been the first to know.” He studied the kid for a moment. The slyness came back into Marty’s face, and something else. Then he looked away.
“I gotta go.”
“All right. Thanks, Marty. Hope you feel better.”
He was back in his car, heading north, thinking about the look he’d seen in Marty’s eyes. It was amusement—if only for a second, but amusement, nonetheless.
Glad you found something to smile about, kid.
Whelan parked across the street from the tavern but went around back. Two cars were parked in the yard, a little red Chevy and a dark blue Olds. A woman was just emerging from the apartment above the tavern. She was a slim weathered-looking woman in her late forties with dark reddish hair piled high and tight jeans that she filled well. She gave a start when she saw him, paused at the top step and then came down, looking past him.
He pushed open the sheet-metal rear door and entered the tavern. Bobby Hayes had changed his red shirt for a green one and had moved one stool closer to the television; other than that, nothing had changed at Ed and Ronda’s. Hayes looked up briefly when the door opened and looked away quickly. Whelan moved past him and slid onto a stool beside him.
“How are things, Bob?”
Hayes looked up, blinked as though in sudden recognition, and shook his head. “Snuck up on me there, son. Pull up a stool and sit down—oh, you already done that. Hey, Ed. Get this Yankee a drink.”
The potbellied man plodded over and looked at Whelan. “You want a drink?”
“Too early for me.”
“Hell, it’s nighttime in China,” Hayes said, and tried on a smile that didn’t take.
“In China, they put dead snakes in their liquor. I’ll have a ginger ale.”
“So what can I do you out of?” Hayes asked. He kept his left hand on his drink and fumbled for a cigarette with the other, shaking one out, picking it up, popping it in his mouth and then lighting it with the monogrammed lighter. “Still looking for them li’l boys?” He blew smoke out in the direction of the bar mirror, looked at himself through the cloud, and then turned for Whelan’s answer.
“No, not kids this time. A full-grown man, old guy. Fellow you probably did some business with yourself.”
Bobby Hayes smiled and the smile looked real this time. He shook his head and pointed his finger at Whelan. “You’re a smart ol’ boy but I’m a smart ol’ boy, too.”
“That’s us, Bob. Couple of Rhodes scholars.”
“I don’t know nothing about that, but I do know you been talking to folks, and I know who some of ’em are. I know you been talking to Lester. I like your style: you talk to Lester ’bout me and you talk to me ’bout Lester.” Hayes took a sip of his drink and shook his head. The world was an amusing place this morning. “So whatcha want to know about ol’ Lester?”
“Nothing.” He took a sip of his ginger ale and took out a cigarette, and when he thought he’d made Hayes wait long enough, he said, “Whitey.”
“Say what?”
“Whitey. I want to know about Whitey.”
He turned and looked at Bobby Hayes. The smile died young. For a moment, Whelan was convinced Bobby Hayes was no longer breathing. Hayes watched him for a three-count and began to shake his head. He puffed up his cheeks and looked up at the ceiling as if trying to place the name and shrugged. Whelan would have laughed out loud if Hayes hadn’t looked so terrified.
“Don’t know any ‘Whitey.’ Sorry.”
“You’re sorry, all right. You’re sorry you came back to Chicago and sorry your brother’s people all started getting whacked in vacant lots and sorry your last name’s Hayes, and you’re probably sorry you can’t run faster. But you know Whitey.”
“No, sir, I sure don’t, and that’s a fact.”
“Bob, I think every time that door opens, you expect to see an old guy named Whitey. All I want to know is, why?”
Hayes was still shaking his head, still refusing to look Whelan in the eye. “You’re pretty far off base, Whelan. You’re way out there in left field. I never heard of nobody named Whitey.”
“Guess not. But if you run into anybody named Whitey, or figure out where somebody like me might find a guy named Whitey, you’ve got my card.”
“Sure will.” Bobby Hayes sank back into his chair and Whelan could see him begin to relax. Whelan climbed off the stool and patted Hayes on the back.
“Thanks for the ginger ale.”
“Any time. Good luck finding this Whitey.”
Whelan smiled. “I’m going to need it, Bob. I think he kills people.”
The troubled look came back into Bobby Hayes’s eyes and he looked away. When Whelan pushed his way out the front door, Bobby Hayes was singing with Linda Ronstadt. A little boy whistling past the graveyard, Whelan thought.
As he drove away from the bar, he went over the sketchy picture he had of this man and wondered what there was about this skinny man in his fifties or sixties that terrified everybody.
What do they know that I don’t?
Lester the fence wasn’t at his regular stool yet so Whelan left the grill and drove up Sheridan to the Carlos Hotel. He parked directly across the street and began reading the paper, from time to time glancing at the ornate white marble facade of a landmark from another time.
In a town filled near bursting with shady hotels, many of them famous, the Carlos held a unique place in street folklore. A small gray building two blocks up the street from Wrigley Field, it had passed into local legend in the 1930s, when a star Cub player had been shot in one of its rooms. The shooter was his distraught young lover. These days the Carlos was a hotel for transients. It was not known whether the current crop of Cub players held their assignations there anymore.
Whelan was finishing the sports section when Lester came out. There was no evidence that he’d changed clothes in the past two days. Whelan gave him a half-block start and then followed him on foot to a newsstand under the El station at Sheridan and Irving, where Lester bought the green sheet and headed for the restaurant. Whelan gave him a minute, then went in.
The old fence was bent over the green sheet, squinting, his nose nearly touching the paper and his right elbow resting in a pool of ketchup. The nasty hat sat a few feet away and cast evil spells over other people’s lunches. Lester circled one horse, shook his head, scratched it out and circled another.
Whelan watched Les doping his horses: The Poor Man’s Pension. All over town, guys like Lester were hunched over the racing form and hoping to make a fast buck, maybe even The Big Score. Somebody somewhere had been telling them all that this was America, anybody could be rich, everybody had a shot at the big money, and they all bought it, every last one of them, and they’d all go to their graves clutching the green sheet or a lottery ticket or their daily number and wondering who had screwed them out of their payoff.
“Lester.”
The old man cupped a hand over his picks and looked up, eyes wide with worry. He tried on a scowl but it didn’t take. “What you want now?”
“I don’t want your horses, Les. Relax.”
“Don’t tell me to relax.”
“Okay, I won’t.” He sat down next to Les and gingerly shoved the hat away with his finger. Immediately Les grabbed it and slapped it on the counter away from Whelan. It landed in a little puff of dust and
debris. Lester glared at him.
“I got a name to try out on you.”
“I ain’t giving you shit.”
“This would be worth a couple bucks.”
Lester sneered and allowed himself a hoarse whisper of a laugh. Whelan put his hand on the counter and let the corner of a ten show and Lester stopped to collect his thoughts. While Lester considered his options, a consumptive-looking waitress started toward Whelan. He gestured to the coffee pot she carried and she brought him a cup.
To his left, Lester grunted and rooted around in his dirty pockets and came up with what had once been a pack of Luckies. He lit one, looked again at the ten, and made a subtle nod.
Times must be tough, Whelan thought. He should have laughed at my ten dollars.
“I’ve got a guy I need you to tell me about.”
Lester made a little bored shrug of his bony shoulders.
Whelan said “Whitey,” and old Lester wasn’t bored anymore. The old fence put on a nonchalant face but he couldn’t quite get the stiffness out of his shoulders.
“Tell me about Whitey, Les.”
“Don’t mean nothing to me.”
“If you knew Jimmy Lee Hayes, you knew Whitey. I need to know about Whitey.”
Lester started to pull back into his shell and Whelan pocketed the ten. The old man looked at Whelan’s empty hand and said, “Hold on a minute.”
“I can’t. Time is money, Les. You’re a busy guy, I’m a busy guy. Give me something worth ten bucks. Who knows—maybe I’ve got another picture of Hamilton on me.”
“He’s just a guy.”
Whelan laughed. It was genuine and he hadn’t laughed in a while, and the feeling surprised him. “Les? This is not ‘just a guy.’ I don’t know quite what he is, but he’s not just a guy, he’s somebody’s nightmare. A kid I know is terrified to say this guy’s name, another kid hits the bricks when he starts showing up in the neighborhood. A grown man watches the tavern door hoping Whitey won’t come through it. And you want to tell me he’s ‘just a guy’?”
“I don’t know what you want to find out about ’im.”
“Let’s start with him and Jimmy Lee. Partners?”
“Long time ago.”
“And now?”
“Jimmy Lee don’t need no partner.”
“So they were partners a long time ago and—then what?”
“Then nothin’. He didn’t tell me nothin’ else.”
Whelan decided to try a new angle. “When did Whitey start showing up again?”
“I don’t know. I can’t keep track of every goddam—”
“Stop bitching at me and try to make a couple bucks here, Les.”
Les puffed at his unfiltered cigarette and put it down in the ashtray, where the lit end rested on a discarded filter and sent up a plume of yellowish smoke. It smelled like somebody’s hairpiece had caught fire.
“When, Les? I have to leave soon—it smells like a camel died here.”
“A ways back…”
“Dance faster, Les, and drop the farmboy routine.”
“End of the summer, maybe. September, like that. I know he was here during the Series, I remember that. I had a few bucks on the Series.”
The sour look on Lester’s face told Whelan how the World Series had gone for at least one small-time gambler.
“Did he start working with Jimmy Lee?”
“Nah. He come around and, you know, hung around waiting for people to throw money at him. They did a few jobs together but I know what he wanted. Wanted to take over, that’s what. And Jimmy Lee wasn’t about to let that sumbitch take his operation, after he built it up and all.”
“Some operation. A handful of guys grabbing VCRs and boosting cars and running down alleys. Big deal, Les. What would Whitey want with that? What would anybody want with it? Jimmy Lee was a loser.”
Lester stared at him for a moment. “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think. Jimmy Lee was one smart fella.”
“Smart enough to go into the tank, maybe. Smart enough to get all his people killed. A towering intellect, Les.”
“You know so much, how come you’re the one has to ask all these questions?”
“Never said I was smart, Les. Just rich. Is Jimmy Lee hiding from Whitey?”
Les chuckled and took up his Lucky again. He puffed and put it back, shaking his head. “What would he do that for? Run from some old man? He just knows when to lay low, you understand? He run into trouble with some people, is all.”
“What people?”
“People that’s afraid Jimmy’s gonna get a piece of their operation.” Lester gave him a knowing look and Whelan fought the impulse to tell him how completely and remarkably full of shit he was.
“Names?”
“Have to ask Jimmy ’bout them.”
“You have any idea where I could find Whitey?”
“Uh-uh. Nope, I sure don’t.” Lester looked down at his ashtray and Whelan wondered if anything Lester said was true.
“Here’s your ten.”
“You said twenty.”
“I didn’t get twenty, so you don’t either. Take it easy, Les.”
The old man muttered “shit” and covered the bill with a dirty hand.
“If you come up with something you think I might be interested in, like, you know, the truth, give me a call.” Whelan paid for his coffee and left.
He waited in his car fifty feet from the restaurant and watched Les through the wide window. The old fence got up and walked to the phone in the entrance way. He spoke to someone on the phone and hung up after less than a minute. When he emerged, he looked up and down the street and then began walking back toward his hotel. There was a little smile on his face and Whelan thought he looked like a man who has found money.
Lester emerged from the Carlos twenty minutes later and flagged down a northbound Checker cab. Whelan hung back three car lengths and followed the cab up Sheridan to Windsor and then went east. Near the corner of Windsor and a little street called Hazel, the cab pulled up in front of a small shabby apartment building flanked by bigger, newer ones. A small sign attached to the brown brick said it had been turned into a rooming house. The rest of the street seemed to be having trouble making up its mind what it was going to be. A couple of the buildings looked to be in fine condition and one appeared to be in deep need of a cash transfusion. The lot across the street from the rooming house was overgrown with a dense tangle of weeds. The cabbie waited while Les went in; a moment later, Lester emerged, looking puzzled and tucking what appeared to be a note into his coat pocket. The Checker pulled out, made a U in the service drive of a building and headed back to Sheridan, then on to Broadway. It continued on Broadway all the way south to Diversey, where Broadway ceased to exist. The cab then went up Clark to Armitage, and from time to time, when he allowed himself to get closer, Whelan could see Lester shaking his head angrily in the backseat. At Armitage Lester got out across from the Academy of Sciences gesturing and yelling. From his angle, Whelan could see the cabbie gesturing back.
An unhappy transaction, Whelan thought: the cabbie had taken the longest, slowest way here and old Lester probably wouldn’t tip him. Whelan smiled. A couple of small-time con artists trying desperately to screw one another. He waited till the cabbie moved off and then parked and fed a meter. When he crossed Clark to enter Lincoln Park, Lester was already crossing Cannon Drive and heading toward the Farm-in-the-Zoo.
He moved faster and entered the zoo area just in time to see Lester disappear into the nearest of the farm buildings. He hung back for a moment, then entered. This building held a group of sheep and lambs, a sow with a litter of five, and two goats. The goats stared at him. Over it all was the smell of animals and straw and the things animals do in straw. He found himself at the tail end of a school field trip, as a young woman in a khaki zoo employee shirt explained to three dozen giggling children the intricacies of animal husbandry.
Whelan thought the matter could have been simplified: we
feed them and when they’re fat, we eat them. He looked around the building and saw several adults at the far end but not Lester, and he realized that the old fence had just cut through the building, in one door and out the far one. Whelan followed. A few yards east of the Farm-in-the-Zoo lay the dark green expanse of what zoo people called the South Pond, but one of at least three little man-made bodies of water that the populace called “the Lincoln Park Lagoon.” Whelan could see ducks swimming in a long line, and a couple of the little blue paddle boats were already out on the water.
The next building housed chickens and roosters and he waited at the door to allow a mother with two small children in a double stroller to enter ahead of him. The mother was explaining the chicken-and-egg relationship to the kids, who looked puzzled. Lester wasn’t in this building either, and Whelan began to have a familiar feeling.
He went through the remaining buildings and found no trace of Lester, then left the Farm-in-the-Zoo. Just beyond it lay the figure-eight shape of the pond, cut in half by a bridge that managed to hide the northern end and the rest of the zoo from view. A pair of tiny, densely overgrown islands sat in the widest part of the pond; as a boy he’d swum out through the murky water and explored them, disappointed to find only a couple of discarded beer cans. From where he stood, he could see only a part of the southern end of the lagoon. A few yards out, a pair of young women laughed and pedaled one of the paddle boats out toward the islands.
Whelan went quickly up the sloping walk to the bridge to have a look around. In Chicago the weather was considered warm any day after February that the sun was out, and it was out today, bringing hundreds of people to the zoo. There was a line of people waiting to rent paddle boats, and the cafeteria seemed to have a decent crowd, and people strolled along the far ends of the lagoon, but none of them was Les. He scanned the crowds carefully and then allowed his gaze to move along to the eastern side of the lagoon, where there was normally the least foot traffic. He could see no one there. At the far southern end, a small tattered-looking man dozed on a park bench. A few feet from the bench, a man in a Russian-style fur hat was tossing something that looked like bread into the water and had been rewarded for his pains by a collection of several dozen ducks and a couple of white geese. Behind him and apparently hoping to be taken for ducks stood a handful of pigeons. Whelan looked again at the crowded northern loop of the pond and started walking.
Killer on Argyle Street Page 12
