Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  Bobby Hayes emerged from the tavern combing his hair. He peeked in the darkened glass of the tavern window to make sure he had his “do” just right, then slid his comb into a hip pocket just as Whelan had seen Landini do it. Whelan watched him strut his way up the street. There was a slight wobble to the strut, an uncertainty of footing where the sidewalk got a little choppy. Bobby Hayes had a load on.

  Whelan gave him a two-block head start and then pulled out. At the corner of Clark and Lawrence, Hayes went into the Sugar Bowl, a twenty-four-hour grill across from the entrance to St. Boniface Cemetery. Whelan found a parking place a couple of car lengths from the restaurant and got out.

  Inside the restaurant, Bobby Hayes had found himself a booth. The waitress was just setting down cutlery and a napkin and water, and Whelan decided he had time to kill. He took a short walk up the street, grabbed a cup of coffee to go from a little sandwich place, then went back to his car and waited.

  Even on a full stomach, Bobby Hayes was walking no better when he came out of the restaurant: the liquor had had time to make its way through his system now. Whelan watched Hayes make his way back toward the tavern, then pulled out, drove into an alley and backed out onto Clark again and drove after Hayes. A few feet from Ed and Ronda’s, Hayes crossed Clark Street and got into a rusting black Mustang. Whelan drove on past him, then pulled into a parking spot and waited till Hayes went by, pulling out after him when Hayes was half a block away. Gradually Whelan gained on the Mustang and when Hayes turned west onto Montrose, Whelan was right behind him. The Mustang had Tennessee plates and a busted taillight. Hayes drove a couple of blocks west, past Ashland, and turned up a side street, Marshfield. Whelan turned right after him and when the Mustang parked in front of a hydrant, Whelan went on past and parked a few yards away. In his rearview mirror he could see the other man clearly.

  Bobby Hayes struggled out of his car like an arthritis patient, dropped his car keys and almost fell into the street retrieving them. He made it to the sidewalk and looked up at the apartment building in front of him. He dropped his keys again and seemed to have trouble locating them this time. Finally he picked them up, glanced up at the building again, and made his way into the hall. Whelan got out of his car.

  By the time he reached the building, the other man had made it up the stairs. Whelan walked over to the Mustang, leaned against it, and looked up. A moment later the lights went on in a second-floor apartment and Bobby Hayes appeared, lurching past the front window.

  As he drove away Whelan couldn’t shake the image of Bobby Hayes: an alcoholic little man struggling to look slick, a scared man, perhaps a lonely one, striving mightily to seem on top of it all. A loser in a bright knit shirt. Whelan thought about what little he knew about the players in this one: small-time crooks, old men, runaway teenagers. People sometimes imagined crime to be about people with power and money, and there was some of that, but most of it was about people like these, most of it was about losers.

  It was dark when he parked on Argyle Street and he could smell weather coming. A snow sky in May. Low and gray and dense, the cloud mass threatened to drop onto the city, and he could smell the wet in it. He wasn’t sure it was cold enough for snow, but it was up there hoping to happen and the damp in the air made him shudder. Sleet, maybe, a night of sleet racketing against his windows. The winter that never ends, he thought, in the City of the Big Shoulders and the Bad Attitude.

  Whelan stood shivering and gazing at the gaudy lights on Argyle Street. Up the street a couple of elderly Vietnamese women emerged from a store and scuttered along the street in high-top gym shoes, the best they’d ever be able to afford. A new Grand Prix pulled into the parking spot ahead of him and a young Vietnamese couple emerged on opposite sides. The man ran a hand across his hair and grinned as the woman clutched at the collar of her coat and said something unmistakably about the cold. Whelan watched them trot across the street and enter a Vietnamese restaurant. He looked longingly at the restaurant and then made his way up the street toward the Apollo.

  The same people were at work in all the places he’d hit, the same guy with the cleaver in the Lucky Grocery Market, the same confident-looking young woman stood behind the counter of the little restaurant. Behind her, he could see the old man standing at the register. The woman hesitated, then nodded when he waved. In the Cambodian jewelry shop another intense negotiation was in progress but the tall man with the high forehead gave Whelan a long look when he passed by.

  A few doors from the Apollo he found himself looking into the window of a grocery store and staring at a row of the rosy-colored ducks. He stopped and stared at them for a moment. They beckoned to him, called to him.

  I need a duck.

  He went inside and purchased one of the hanging ducks, then came out with the parcel tucked under one arm. He walked, head down and wondering how one served such a duck, and he was pondering the possibilities when his foot hit a raised chunk of broken pavement and he pitched forward.

  He lurched to the right to keep from falling and his momentum took him into the doorway of a gift shop, and he was almost on top of the man in the doorway before he saw him.

  The man stepped back with a sharp sudden movement and took a street-fighter’s pose. Whelan dropped the parcel and put out a hand against the doorway to stop his fall.

  “Sorry,” Whelan said, and looked the startled man in the eyes. He was tall and thin and worn at all the edges, a broom handle body in a khaki coat cut for a larger man. His hair was long and dark and dirty, and thin on top. There were purple circles under his eyes and what looked like scratches down one cheek, and his skin was the blotched red of a man who lived on the street.

  Whelan felt the breath leave him and saw the wide boyish surprise in the other man’s brown eyes, and then the shame and confusion in his face, and they recognized each other simultaneously. He opened his mouth to speak, and the other mouthed something that could have been “Paulie,” and moved farther away.

  Whelan stared. “Jesus,” he heard himself say. Then he blurted “Mick?” and the man was by him in one long movement and down the street. Whelan watched the other man rush off toward the corner in a stiff-legged stride and disappear around it. Confusion held Whelan back, confusion and the overwhelming sense that he’d witnessed something he should not have seen, and when he finally made it back to the corner, the other man had disappeared into the night.

  Paul Whelan took a few steps down the street, then stopped and lit a cigarette. He smoked in quick nervous puffs and then tossed the cigarette away and backtracked to the corner. There was nothing to be gained from remaining there but he stood there just the same, with the wind whipping at his face and coming in at his open collar and would have stood there all night if he thought it would do any good, for he had just seen a dead man.

  Sandra smiled when she saw him. “Well, hi,” she said, and he knew she was glad he’d come. Then something in her face changed. “Paul? What’s wrong? You look like…come on in.”

  She pulled him in from the hallway and half pushed him to the sofa. “Give me your coat…and I’ll take your—what is this?”

  He managed a smile. “It’s a duck.”

  “What kind of a duck is this long? Oh, God, it’s got the…” and she made a groping motion with her free hand.

  “Yeah, it’s got the head on, the beak, the whole deal. I thought we’d eat it. Sometime.”

  “A duck with the beak still on,” she said, the way she might say “a hamburger with maggots on it.” Then she gave him an appraising look. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, no.”

  “You sit. I’ll get you a cup of tea. Or do you want a beer?”

  “No. Tea is fine. I’m chilled to the bone.”

  “Sit,” she repeated, and then vanished into her kitchen, carrying the duck the way a person would carry a dirty diaper. A moment later the room was filled with the scent of cinnamon and clove and then she came back, carrying two mugs. There was a tea bag in each.
/>   “Cinnamon and clove,” he said, just to be saying something. “Reminds me of an old Sergio Mendes song.”

  “ ‘The Moon is like a tangerine,’ ” she sang. “I know that one. Don’t worry: yours is English Breakfast. No herbs and spices for Paul Whelan.”

  “I appreciate that. But I’m cold enough that I would’ve drunk the one with cinnamon.”

  “Doesn’t feel like May, does it.”

  “May in Chicago, sure it does.”

  She sipped at her tea and watched him over the rim of the mug. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I’m all right.”

  She shook her head. “You are not. And…you have to tell me things like this. That’s where we’re at, you and I. It’s got nothing at all to do with whether we’re going to be seeing each other six months from now. You have to tell me things like this.”

  “Or you’re gonna give me the gate?”

  “Oh, who knows. But it’ll certainly tell me a lot about us.”

  He sipped at his tea and nodded. “You’re right. I’m just kind of shocked. If I’m right, something is happening that’s going to make me wish I’d never gotten involved in this case. Also, I’m having a bad week.” He pointed to the side of his head. “You can’t see it now, but this morning I had a large egg right here.”

  “Somebody hit you?”

  “It’s important to make that good first impression. It was somebody good, too. I had to sit on my butt in an alley and wait for the earth to stop spinning.”

  “In an alley.” She stared at him for several seconds. “An alley. I know it’s what you do, but there has to be some way to avoid some of the things that happen to you.”

  He thought about that. “There are many ways, but I couldn’t do exactly what I do now, not in the same way. And I’m not ready to start going about my job in a different way. People still come to me because I do something they can’t get anywhere else.”

  “So who hit you?”

  “No idea. I was sitting in a restaurant on Argyle Street and I got a glimpse of somebody out the corner of my eye, and for a second I thought it was this boy I’m looking for. So I went tearing out the door after him and up this alley and somebody clubbed me. I’ll admit I could have handled it better. More carefully. Shit, I’m too old for people to be seeing me on my butt in alleys.”

  “Do you think it was him? The boy.”

  “No.” He was half surprised to hear his answer. “I think the kid I’m after is no banger. His first instinct is to get away, to find a place to hide, and this was somebody a little harder, a little more violent.”

  “And tonight? You went back there, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Of course. That’s where he is. The kid, I mean. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “You said you thought he was dead.”

  “I did. Then some street kids gave me a piece of information that made me think he might still be alive, and somebody else told me he might be up there on Argyle Street, though I can’t figure out why. And I go up there and somebody takes a serious whack at me.”

  “And tonight? Something happened to you tonight.”

  “Yeah, I saw a ghost. I saw Mickey Byrne.”

  She worked for a moment at placing the name. “The dead man’s brother, the one you grew up with.”

  “Right. I saw him.”

  “You sure it was him?”

  “I was close enough to touch him. I could smell him. He smelled like wood smoke, like a guy that’s been warming himself over a fire in a trash can. It was him. He was standing in a doorway maybe a hundred feet from the alley where I got hit and he looked at me and he was just as surprised as I was. I think he said my name, I think he said ‘Paulie.’ It’s what everybody called me.”

  “Then what?”

  “He ran from me. He acted like I was Typhoid Mary.”

  “And you’re thinking it was him last night.”

  “It’s a good bet.”

  She reflected for a moment. “You thought he was dead.”

  “For all that happened to him, he should have been. He was shot up over there, he came back and pretty soon he was living on the streets. I heard all kinds of things about what happened to him when he got out of the service and none of it was pleasant. I heard he was in detox, I heard he was living in alleys, I heard he’d lost his mind, I heard he had TB. Somebody told me he was dying in a VA hospital, then somebody else told me he was dead. And I saw him. And…” He fought for the words. “For a split second I was just glad to see him, I couldn’t even speak. Another moment and I would have hugged him. And then I saw his eyes, and they were telling me this wasn’t the same guy anymore. He wasn’t glad to see me.”

  “Maybe he’s still not…maybe he’s still a very sick man.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that. I just wonder if he’s turned into another kind of man because of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure how to explain it. But the guy I was looking at, the face I was looking into, was a hostile man, a stranger. If he hadn’t said my name, I would have bet the rent that he didn’t even recognize me.”

  “And you think he was the one who hit you.”

  He shrugged. “It’s sure looking that way. I need to know why.”

  “Paul, it doesn’t have to be connected to this other thing. People living on the streets get rough around the edges, and some of them are pretty tough. You told me that yourself.”

  “Well, sure. They get mugged by teenagers, rousted by cops, run off from half the places they show up. They’re in physical discomfort almost every moment they’re awake. They spend the winter wondering if it’ll kill them and the summer looking for water and shade.”

  “Yes. They go through all those things. So maybe…maybe it’s just the street that’s happened to your friend.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess I’ve always assumed there are some people who never completely change. I think there are people like that. And I thought he’d be one of them.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t changed completely. You told me he was always a little pugnacious to begin with, always quick to anger. Sounds like somebody who might have some rough edges as an adult. To that, add his life on the street…”

  Whelan nodded. “And all the other stuff: family dead when he was still young, then Vietnam.”

  “And he was wounded, you said.”

  “Yeah, shot up bad, and then very sick.” Then he thought of Rory. “And by now I bet he knows about his brother.”

  Sandy grabbed him by the shoulder, shaking her head. “Jesus, Paul, I think this man’s doing great just because he hasn’t killed himself.”

  “I suppose that’s the way I should look at it, but it’s not enough. He was a good guy, Sandy. He had a great heart, he wasn’t afraid of anything and he always talked like he thought good things were going to happen to him eventually. We used to sit on this other kid’s porch and watch the sky, look for constellations and shooting stars and talk about how our lives were going to be twenty years later, and every one of us thought special things were going to happen. We used to make fun of Mickey just because his particular pipedreams changed all the time. He’d get this excited note in his voice and say, ‘You know what I’m gonna do?’ and we’d all say, ‘What this time, Mick?’ and everybody’d laugh. He thought he was going to be a magician, and then a writer, and a scientist, and an explorer—he’d just come out with the most outlandish notions while other guys were talking about buying a car or coaching high school basketball.”

  She thought for a moment. “Let me ask you something. If you were Mickey, and your life had been very hard and you found yourself living on the street in your hometown and when you least expected it, you looked up and saw one of your best friends from your childhood…Put Paul Whelan in that doorway. How would you feel?”

  “Well, I know I’d be a little embarrassed, but I’d be glad,” he began, and caught the appraising look in her eyes
. She watched him, unblinking, not his lover for the moment but a tough street social worker who’d heard lies from far better liars than Paul Whelan. He sighed. “No. I’d want to die on the spot. I wouldn’t want anyone on God’s green orb to see me like that, least of all somebody I grew up with. Not somebody that liked me. I’d want to see nothing but strangers for the rest of my life.”

  She said nothing for a moment. He studied the pale green eyes and saw the intelligence and, right now, the satisfaction, and nodded.

  She got up to take her cup to the kitchen and reached out for his. As he handed it to her, she said, “Now what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what do you do first?”

  “ ‘First’?”

  “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  “I have to finish this other thing. I was wrong about that kid. I think he’s still alive and somebody’s going to kill him.”

  “Is it time to bring the police in?”

  “I don’t have anything to give them yet. Nothing they could use. And I think they know if the kid is out there, he’s in big trouble.”

  “And when you’re finished with this other thing, you’ll go look for Mickey?”

  “That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I don’t know about anything else.”

  “Yes, you do. I know you. You know what you want to do, and you know what you ought to do. And this time, I think they’re the same thing.”

  “Maybe I’ll find out that he’s in this. His brother was.”

  “And maybe you won’t. He’s not his brother.”

  Whelan pondered that for a moment and then realized that part of him was not convinced. “Sandy, you didn’t see his eyes. He wasn’t the same guy anymore. And I’m not so sure I’ll find him again: probably won’t hang around, now that I’ve seen him.”

  She was shaking her head before he was finished. “Maybe you’re right. I wasn’t there, I don’t even know him. But I think if you want to, you’ll find him. You just wanted somebody to tell you it wasn’t crazy. It’s not: if you don’t find him, you’ll never know.” She went to the kitchen with the cups.