He looked inside the men’s room first—in his youth, a storied place for assignations and chance meetings between lonesome men. It was empty now but still had the same time-honored public toilet smells he remembered.
There were a number of old men nursing cups of coffee in the cafeteria but Les was not among them. He approached the counter and a friendly-looking young man smiled at him.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m looking for an older guy about six feet tall, needs a shave, wears a blue raincoat and a ratty blue fedora.”
The young man scanned the room and gave Whelan a loopy smile. “I don’t think I saw him.”
“Okay, thanks.”
As Whelan left, the young man called out, “But we get a lot of old guys in ratty hats.”
“I know. I hope to be one someday.”
He stood outside the cafeteria and watched people getting into paddle boats. They were smiling as they got into their little blue boats and laughing as they struggled to get the proper rhythm going, but when they got out into open water and the wind coming in off the lake hit them, they weren’t grinning anymore.
Whelan scanned the area once more and shook his head. I lost him. I forgot people are seldom as dumb as they look. He turned and looked back toward Clark Street, where a bus was just pulling into a corner stop, and he was fairly sure Les had doubled back to conclude whatever business he had in mind.
“Damn,” Whelan said, and went back to his car.
Nine
Well, he told himself, I’ve already demonstrated that I can’t follow a sixty-year-old fence. Let’s see what else I can put on my résumé.
He drove up Clark Street to Lawrence, then began cruising the area in ever-widening circuits, and twenty minutes later, when he was on the verge of giving it up, his luck changed.
Whelan picked up the Caprice on Clark Street and decided he needed diversion. He kept back in traffic, allowing almost a block between the two cars. The Caprice made a bulky tour of Clark for several blocks and stopped twice, once at a small grill where a trio of kids stood just outside the door and the second time at a game room just off Wilson.
At their first stop, he pulled into a parking space across from a Korean importer advertising all manner of clothes and a new approach to grammar—BEST PRICE MEN’S SHIRT, PANT, HAT, GLOVE, JACKET—and watched as Bauman and Landini got out of their car, each slipping into his own particular gait—Landini in a lazy strut like a bored bodybuilder, Bauman rolling from side to side like a pro wrestler. As they approached the three kids, Bauman looked around with a sour expression—a pro wrestler with heartburn.
He let Landini open the conversation, and Whelan enjoyed the rich interplay of meaningless hand movements as Calabria met Clark Street: Landini made his wonderfully expressive gestures and the three white kids went through their repertoire of rap singer movements and signifying, and through it all Detective Bauman shook his head and smoked his wretched little cigars. Eventually he bulled his way into the little circle, put his great pouch of a stomach in one kid’s chest and did his own well-honed act, and the three kids weren’t rapping anymore.
Next Whelan followed the Caprice to the game room where the two detectives disappeared inside for less than five minutes. When they emerged, Landini was angry and Bauman was rubbing his stomach and looking like a man in need of a menu. From his spot in front of a hydrant, Whelan could see Landini waving his hands and trying to exact from his immovable partner a concession of some sort and getting nowhere.
At the corner of Clark and Wilson, he pulled up alongside the Caprice and rolled down his window.
“Hey, sailor, how about a good time?”
Bauman looked straight ahead for a second, then turned and blew smoke at him. “Playing detective again, Sleuth?”
“I’m just a lonely guy cruising the streets.”
Bauman jerked his thumb toward the rear of the car. “I made you a couple lights ago.”
“Not bad. But I’ve been watching you guys strut your stuff for about a half hour. I took notes.”
Landini snorted and shook his head but refused to look at him. Bauman turned slowly and stared at him. Just when Whelan was expecting a short burst of Bauman’s temper, the detective laughed silently.
“Gettin’ even, huh? Kinda childish, ain’t it? Feel better now?”
“I feel like lunch.”
From Landini he heard an irritable mutter that sounded like “thinks he’s twelve years old.”
“See?” Bauman said. “You pissed off Landini here. That what you wanted? I don’t know, Whelan, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. These young cops, they got no sense of humor about theirselves.”
“I remember that. I thought I was Sergeant York. They should have given me a plastic gun.”
The light changed and a motorist in back of them leaned on his horn, earning for himself the finger from Landini, a gesture casual yet rich in feeling. Bauman leaned out the window and told the motorist to “Eat shit and die young.” Whelan glanced in his rearview mirror and saw an Arab-looking man gripping his steering wheel in open terror.
“Come on,” Whelan said to Bauman. “Follow me and we’ll talk.”
He pulled out in front of the Caprice and amused himself by cutting Landini off, then went on up Wilson to Broadway. He turned onto Broadway and drove on to the House of Zeus.
At the entrance to the restaurant he waited. As he slid out of the car Landini was combing his hair and muttering. He slipped the comb into a back pocket, peeled off his cashmere sweater and tossed it into the front seat. Bauman’s heavy wool sport coat hung open so that his great gut could get some sun. Today’s shirt was the color of canned salmon.
Landini said something and Bauman threw back his head and laughed. He patted his partner on the shoulder and grinned at Whelan.
“You really pissed him off, Shamus.” To Landini he said, “You got a hard-on ’cause he made you the other day and now he’s been on your tail and you didn’t see ’im.”
Landini’s response was to look up at the marquee of the House of Zeus and grimace. “I hate this fuckin’ place.”
“Many a customer has expressed the same feeling,” Whelan said, and pushed his way inside.
There were no arguments in progress unless one counted the unending dialogue between the two cousins. Rashid barked something over his shoulder at Gus, and Gus spat back and pointed his paring knife in his cousin’s direction.
If there’s a hell, Whelan thought, and these guys wind up there, I know exactly how they’ll spend their days.
Half a dozen customers sat at the tables and booths and ate in an uneasy peace. A small boom box perched at the far end of the counter and rained noise on them.
Landini shook his head and made a face, and Bauman smiled at Whelan. “Have your friends kill the rap music or I take out the radio.”
“Hey, Rashid.”
Rashid turned slightly and flashed his thousands of teeth. “Hello, Mr. Detective. And you have brought your friends the Police.”
“This one says to turn off the rap music or he’ll shoot the radio.”
“Good,” Gus said. “Shoot it. I hate that shit anyhow. This one,”—he indicated his cousin—“wanted to be American businessman, now he wants to be American teenager.”
Rashid held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I gonna turn him off. You don’t like my nice music, okay.”
“Rap is not music, Rashid. Rap is what people do when they can’t sing or play an instrument.”
“This is American music. American culture.” Rashid’s eyes bulged with the effort of restraining his laughter.
“I don’t like these two assholes,” Landini muttered. “You sure they’re Greek?”
“Hey, Gus. The detective here wants to know if you’re Greek.”
Gholam turned and squinted at Landini. On matters of ethnicity and national prejudice, he knew no fear, saw no humor. He pointed with the knife blade at the most prominent of the restau
rant’s macabre murals, a blood-spattered canvas epic in which Darius the Great hacked and carved his way through the Greek army.
“That one, with his head cut off and foot of great Persian king Darius on his back, that one is Greek. He is only Greek in here.” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “Maybe your family is Greek.”
Landini looked like a man who has smelled bad things. He pointed to his chest. “You talking to me? My family? My family came from Italy.” He made two syllables of it, “It-ly.”
“If you guys can interrupt your ethnic festival, we can order lunch. I’m buying,” Whelan said.
“Best news I’ve heard all day,” Bauman said. Landini just shrugged.
They ordered and waited at the counter, then carried the little plastic red baskets back to a corner booth. Whelan had a falafel sandwich and onion rings, Bauman ordered a gyros and a Shalimar kabab. Landini had a Greek salad. The tomatoes looked good, the slab of feta cheese was still white, the olives were Spanish and the lettuce was going brown fast. Landini shook his head and began eating.
Bauman tore off half his gyros in one bite, chewed for a moment, then nodded. “Thanks, Whelan,” he said through his food. Landini looked up, gave him a short nod, and resumed eating.
“You’re welcome.”
Landini cut his salad with a watchmaker’s precision and used his fork so that each mouthful of salad had a small bite of feta cheese on top. As he ate and chewed, his gaze moved from Whelan’s plate to the mountain of food in front of his partner. He watched Bauman gnawing at the gyros and shook his head.
Bauman paused with a piece of meat hanging from the corner of his mouth. He looked like a snacking Rottweiler.
“What you lookin’ at? You got no manners, or what?”
“I’m lookin’ at all the fat and cholesterol you’re putting in your body, that’s what I’m lookin’ at. For Chrissake, you might as well eat poison.”
“Look at you, Landini, you eat what the fucking turtles eat.”
“Yeah? They ever have heart attacks? They die young? Fuck, no, they outlive everything.”
Bauman looked at him for a moment, blinked several times, then turned to Whelan. “I got a partner that admires turtles.” He looked back to Landini. “Who cares how long they live, they eat flies and shit, they’re stupid. What do you care what I eat? My food bothers you, don’t look.”
Landini glanced at Whelan and shook his head again. “Lunch yesterday, two Polish. Dinner, tacos, six tacos.”
Bauman laughed. “You’re talkin’ to the wrong guy, Landini. Whelan eats the weirdest food in the city.”
“Be nice to him, Bauman. He’s concerned about your diet, he likes you.”
This earned a sudden stare from Landini. The young cop leaned forward so that Whelan could almost read the inscription on his gold medallion. He pointed his fork at Whelan.
“You watch your mouth, you hear?”
“Easy, friend. You commit a violent act, they’re not gonna let you be a cop anymore.”
“Back off,” Bauman said quietly. “How come you don’t like our boy Whelan? Guy buys you lunch, you can at least be nice.”
Landini gave him a sullen look and said nothing.
Bauman turned back to Whelan. “Want to get down to business, Snoopy?”
“Why not? I’ve been out humping for you.”
“Not for me. For that nice lady.”
“Right. Anyhow, I came across a couple of people and I wanted to know what you know about them.”
“Arright. Who?”
“A guy named Lester, for one.”
“Lester,” Bauman said in a dull voice.
“Old guy. Runs a little book.”
“Oh, Lester Dixon, sure. I know ’im. He’s proof that hoods aren’t too smart. Who gave you Lester?”
“Street kid.”
Bauman’s eyes said he didn’t think so, but he let it go.
“Lester give you anything?”
“Nothing worth the time. I thought for a while he might—somebody gave me the impression he worked with Jimmy Lee Hayes. Thought they might be partners.”
Bauman ate a french fry. “He’s a sleazy old guy. Not what you’d call a pillar of his community. But he wasn’t Jimmy Lee’s partner. Just his fence. Jimmy Lee used to run his goods through a genuine operator named René Oboza. René had a classy operation, a warehouse, fleet of trucks, his own network of places to sell the stuff. Very nice. Your top-of-the-line hood. We busted old Rene and now he’s probably selling candy bars to the other guys in the joint. Jimmy Lee had to find him a new guy, and times are tough, so Lester’s what he come up with. Small-time fence for a small-time thief.”
“Doesn’t look smart enough to be a fence.”
“Who says these fuckers are smart? Lester’s tried just about everything: his sheet is a comedy. Been busted for auto theft, for runnin’ his book, possession of cocaine, sellin’ handguns to minors…” Bauman laughed and covered his eyes with his hands. “He did everything and he was dogshit at all of it. He’s a fuckup, Whelan. Anyway, he’s not a fence anymore. Semi-retired now.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means we put him out of business but if he got a chance he’d be out there selling what people steal. He’s sixty-something and he’s got a bad heart. Went straight from the slammer to a hospital. But if he started doin’ situps and watching his cholesterol, there’s no doubt in my mind what kinda hobbies he’d take up. Probably still moves goods now and then, just to keep his hand in.” Bauman grinned. “He’s got a little room up there in the Carlos Hotel, probably full of stolen cameras and hot stereos.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“We’ve talked to everybody that knew these guys. That’s a stupid question.” Bauman washed his french fry down with some A & W root beer, then looked around. “I get this feeling you knew who Les was, Whelan.”
“He didn’t show me a business card. And now I’m a little disappointed. I thought I had come up with a new angle, somebody who worked with Jimmy Lee Hayes and wasn’t dead yet.”
“Not yet, you haven’t.”
Whelan nibbled at his food and bided his time.
“What’s the green shit?” Landini peered at Whelan’s Shalimar kabab with a wary look.
“It’s just the sauce. It’s kind of a paste with different spices in it. It’s hot. Want to try?”
“Fuck, no.”
“No sense of adventure,” Whelan said, and took a bite. Time to try out the other name. He looked at Bauman. “How about another old guy, somebody named ‘Whitey.’ ”
Bauman was shaking his head before Whelan was finished, and then he stopped. “ ‘Whitey’? Who’s that?”
“Couldn’t tell you. It’s a name I got.”
“From where?”
“A guy in a gin mill.”
“I think maybe Les give you this guy, that’s what I think, Whelan.” He took a last bite of his sandwich and chewed slowly.
“No. But you can ask him.”
“I will.” Bauman watched him for a moment. “So what’d you hear about this Whitey?”
“Nothing substantial. Like I said. It’s just a name I came up with. I thought you’d be able to put a person to it.”
Bauman pursed his lips and pretended to think. “No. Don’t ring no bells. You?” he asked Landini.
“No. And what’s he care? How come you got your nose in this stuff when you’re supposed to be looking for the kid? Why is that?”
“Eat your lettuce,” Bauman said. “It’s brown,” he said, frowning at Landini’s salad.
“I’m looking for anybody that can give me the kid. Anybody that knew him. And so far, I’m striking out because I think Officer Friendly here set me up looking for a kid that nobody’s ever gonna find.”
“You’ll find him, Snoopy. I got confidence in you. You’re always comin’ up with something.”
“You never heard of anybody named Whitey doing business with Jimmy Lee Hayes?”
&n
bsp; “No, I don’t think so,” Bauman said, and gave Whelan a little smile.
“Okay,” Whelan said, and smiled back.
He blew off much of the afternoon trying to pick up Lester again, making several trips to the grill on Sheridan and Irving, as well as hitting a tavern up the street. At the Carlos he went in to speak to the desk clerk.
“I’m looking for a man who lives here. Mr. Dixon.”
The clerk, a young black woman in the process of winnowing through a pile of receipts, looked at Whelan for a moment with slightly narrowed eyes and then shook her head. “He’s not in, sir.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?” She shook her head.
“Can you give him a message for me?”
“Of course.”
He handed her his business card. “Have him call me when he gets in, and tell him if I’m not in to leave a number where he can be reached. I have an answering service.”
She nodded and studied his card, obviously interested. “All right, sir. I’ll put your card with his other messages.”
He looked at her. “Let me guess: one of his messages came from two police officers, a big heavy one with a crew cut and a young dapper guy with a medallion the size of the moon.”
The woman stared at him and gave away nothing, and he helped her out. “The young one smells like he drinks his cologne.” She looked away to hide her smile and when she was able to meet his eyes, he said, “You can tell them I said hello when they come back.”
She allowed herself a little nod, and he left.
There was no answer when he called Sandra around five-thirty, and no way to leave a message. Another clue that he’d found a soul mate: the last remaining woman in Chicago without an answering machine. He decided to drop by her apartment later. For now, there was no way to put off another night on the street.
Killer on Argyle Street Page 13
