Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  “How can I get in touch with him?”

  The man pointed and Whelan turned to see a sign above the back door that read BLAKELY MANAGEMENT and gave a phone number.

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay,” the man said, and picked up the solitary piece of cardboard again.

  At the office he called Blakely Management and spoke to Mr. Blakely himself. Blakely sounded like a man with things to hide: he danced and dawdled through the conversation and played dumb, and Whelan’s description of Whitey did nothing to jar him out of his performance.

  “Let me ask you this: have you rented rooms or apartments to anyone in the last six months?”

  Blakely shuffled through what sounded like a file and grunted. “Yeah, a couple. But to younger people. Nobody old. Maybe you got the wrong building.”

  “Yeah, maybe. All right. Thanks.”

  Whelan had another look at the notes he’d taken on the three killings. He flipped through the pages of his notebook and stared at his own scribble, waiting for something to jump out, a pattern, something in the method of the killings, the time, the locations. Makowski, the first victim, had been shot at close range on a side street in Uptown, and his body dragged into a nearby vacant lot; Chick Nelson had been found dead in his truck in the parking lot at Waveland Park, two hundred yards from the lake; Rory Byrne, the last one, had been found on a tiny patch of unused land where North Avenue met the river. Makowski and Rory Byrne had apparently been killed at night, Nelson during the day. Nelson and Rory had been stabbed, their stab wounds in front.

  The three places had nothing in common, at least not at first glance. Whelan tucked the notebook in his shirt pocket and left the office.

  He drove first to the spot where they’d found Makowski. He parked and got out to look around. The building to the left of the lot was under rehab, a hulking structure of yellow brick, perhaps twenty units, but empty now unless squatters had set up in the back rooms.

  To the right stood a smaller building, most of its windows boarded up. The newspaper accounts had not speculated on the exact spot of Makowski’s murder, but no effort had been made to hide or bury the body, and Whelan was fairly sure he was standing close to where it had happened. He stepped through a gaping hole in the chain-link fence around the lot. Brownish clumps of prairie grass and weed blew in the wind and fought to keep their hold on the earth. Much of the lot was bare gray dirt, and the afternoon sun picked out the shards of glass, green and brown, where wandering drinkers tossed their bottles.

  He got back into his car and drove to the lake, entering Waveland Park at Irving and cruising the narrow parkway that navigated the parking lots. The writer in the Tribune had been a bit more specific, mentioning that Chick Nelson’s truck had been parked in full view of tennis courts and the playground. That made it the far lot, east of the courts. The dark form of the totem pole came into view. Whelan made the turn and drove into the lot, then parked. A couple of Filipino-looking women sat shuddering in the playground and watched a trio of fair-haired children clambering over the slide. The women looked miserable. A couple of nannies earning their nickels the hard way.

  Behind him, the tennis courts were busy with several pairs of energetic players, including one pair of young women. Despite the cold, they wore short tennis skirts and Whelan found himself wishing he were twenty-two, with a racket. He remembered sitting on a bench no more than fifty yards from this spot and watching a series of drug transactions in progress. On that chilly fall afternoon, a smiling young man with curly blond hair spilling out from under his Sox cap had gone from car to car and done business. The cars had been parked in the farthest corners of the lot, for none of the motorists realized they were all there for the same reason.

  Whelan had watched the kid climb into one vehicle after another, sit for a while, make small talk, pass the driver a small parcel or plastic bag, grab a handful of cash and slide back out the door, smiling. It had all taken less than a half hour, and when it was finished, the parking lot was empty and the young guy in the Sox cap was walking east, as though to watch the big gray waves come in to smash the rocks.

  Sitting there now, he recalled the enterprising young dope dealer and realized that the killer had picked another spot where you could get away with all sorts of things in broad daylight.

  He drove south on Sheffield and stayed on it through the thickening traffic that marked the Lincoln Park neighborhood, and on to the place where Sheffield disappeared in a line of railroad tracks just past North Avenue. He parked behind a warehouse and walked back to North.

  Half a block west, the street became a bridge over the north branch of the Chicago River, the murky brown artery that bisected the city. North branch met south branch at the edge of the Loop to form one big brown nasty river and, in times past, had gone on to deposit their scary contents in Lake Michigan. Eventually the Army Corps of Engineers had produced a series of locks designed to reverse the flow of the river, so that it now moved away from the big lake with its bluish green water. Now, the Chicago River deposited the bad things it carried in other places. Whelan was unsure exactly where the river did this, and thought it was one of the things one didn’t want to know.

  But whichever direction it flowed, the Chicago River had its own folklore. Farther north, boat enthusiasts who lived alongside it built piers for their motorboats and ignored the giant rats that scrambled along its muddy banks. Factories deposited poisons in it and a few heroic souls still sat on its banks and took out catfish and bullhead. A friend of Whelan’s, a city man with dreams of wilderness adventure, had once taken a canoe trip upstream on the north branch. Whelan’s friend had envisioned himself basking in the sun and waving to the smiling crowds as he navigated through the various neighborhoods. Reality had proven to be something else again: the would-be canoeist was horrified by the rats and repelled by the smell. In the poorer neighborhoods the children pelted him with stones and as he got near the Loop a group of teenagers had taken turns trying to find his range with beer cans and sticks.

  A few feet from where they’d found Rory Byrne there was a shrimp house. This one was Ben’s. Not far from here, also along the river, was Joe’s. Four blocks south and a stone’s throw from the river, was another, Goose Island. It was a Chicago tradition, fish and shrimp houses along the river, and no one alive knew why. Whelan had bought fried shrimp and fish chips and smelt from all of them, and in each place had asked why fish houses were always located along the river. No one had ever been able to give him an intelligent answer, and he knew a couple of people who actually believed that some of the fish sold at these little shacks was brought out of the murk of the river. It was a terrifying thought.

  The wind hit him with the fish smells and the odors of deep-fried batter, and when he passed the hut he could see three or four people lined up at the counter for their little greasy bags of fish. Whelan cut across the tiny side yard that served as a parking lot and walked to the edge.

  The superstructure of an old railroad bridge, long since abandoned, formed a sort of visual frame for the place. In the daylight there was a rustic quality to the scene, a pair of railroad tracks stretching out toward the south on their way to infinity. They were overgrown with weeds and grass, the rails coated with a thick skin of rust. A few yards down, Whelan could make out the evidence of habitation: fast-food wrappers and stale buns, a wine bottle, an orange rind. A man without a home had camped here, probably for more than one night.

  Closer to hand, the ground was strewn with bottles and cans and plastic bags. Fifty feet below, the brown water of the river moved by at a fast pace. He picked his way over to the old bridge and sat on a crosspiece and had a smoke. This was where Rory had been killed. The body had been found in the morning, so he had to assume the killing had taken place at night. Whelan took another look around and envisioned this place at night. What would make someone come here at night?

  “What a place to die,” he said aloud.

  He thought about the sites of the thr
ee killings and shook his head. Early on, he’d assumed that the victims were followed and killed where it was convenient, but now that theory was out the window. This wasn’t a place where somebody came by chance, nor was the place where they’d found Chick Nelson. He didn’t have a handle on the first killing, but these other men, they hadn’t been pursued. They had been lured to their deaths.

  Whelan tried to imagine what it would take to get him to come down to such a place. A familiar face, that’s what it would take. Familiar face and a good story. For a moment he sat watching the water rush by and finished his smoke. He wondered what assumptions Bauman was working on, and asked himself, not for the first time, when people would start telling him the truth.

  Marty Wills left the grill in a hurry and walked north on Sheridan. There was still a good deal of light in the sky but the day was rapidly cooling off. The boy moved in a hunched-over walk, collar up and hands thrust deep into the pockets of his khaki jacket, and Whelan wondered how the kid ever made it through a Chicago winter.

  He stayed on the opposite side of the street and followed Marty at a distance, keeping well back. Loser or not, Marty was proving not to be quite as simple as he seemed. Every few yards he looked over his shoulder, and when he paused at the corner of Sheridan and Wilson to light a cigarette, he took a long look back up the street. The boy stood there for a moment waiting for the light to change, then crossed Wilson at a trot. Whelan let him get halfway down the block and then picked up his pace. At the next corner, Marty stopped, looked around again, and then turned right.

  Now there was no way to play this one safe, and Whelan broke into a run. He covered the block quickly, crossed over to the east side of the street and hid behind a parked car. The lights at the far end of the block were out and with the coming darkness, he could barely see down the street. He strained to focus on the dark figure moving rapidly away and saw the boy turn south at the next corner. Marty was doubling back.

  Aw, come on, kid. No spy movies.

  Whelan moved back across the street and retraced his steps to Sheridan and Wilson. He ducked inside the McDonald’s and took a seat at a booth by a side window. At the next booth, an elderly woman nursed a cup of coffee and stared out at the gray street. Eventually he could make out the slender hunched-over figure of Marty Wills approaching the intersection. Twice as he watched, Marty stopped and let his gaze sweep the street behind him. When he was a few yards from the corner, the boy broke into his stiff-legged trot and Whelan realized that he was headed for the Burger King on the corner. The two dueling hamburger stands were across from one another on a diagonal line, and from his window Whelan could actually see into the front section of the Burger King. He watched Marty Wills enter and move quickly into a back section of the restaurant and it was plain that he was meeting someone.

  The sense that he himself was being watched made Whelan look around. A slim black man in a tie was watching him from the counter. As Whelan looked at him, the man said something to one of the teenage counter workers.

  Great. I’m about to be rousted from a McDonald’s. He got up and approached the counter and the manager moved to meet him.

  “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I help you, sir?”

  Whelan grinned. “I was supposed to meet somebody here and now…Well, I don’t want to take up your space without buying something. I’ll have a cup of coffee and a piece of your famous apple pie.”

  Mollified, the manager nodded, said “Yes, sir,” and rang up Whelan’s order while his staff fell all over themselves to bring the coffee and the tentlike little cardboard package containing the pie.

  Whelan took his tray back to the booth and slid into his seat. Eyes on the door across the street, he stirred the coffee and then sipped at it and shook his head. Not good, but unmistakably McDonald’s coffee: he’d had it in Ohio and Michigan and Montana and Seattle and in two dozen different places here, and it always tasted exactly the same, and he wanted to know how they did it. The pie he’d bought as a prop.

  He waited and watched the street and drank his coffee, and eventually the door opened and gave him what he’d been waiting for. He watched Marty Wills come out alone and look up and down the street before crossing Sheridan and heading in the general direction of his home. Whelan blew on his coffee and stared at the glass door of the Burger King and waited for Tony Blanchard, and when the door finally opened, it gave up Mickey Byrne.

  “Aw, Mick.”

  He put the coffee down and stayed frozen to his seat as a knot formed in his stomach. For a long moment he watched the narrow back in khaki trudge up Sheridan with that stiff-legged walk, toward Argyle Street. Mickey Byrne and Marty Wills. He shook his head: the combination made others possible. Mickey Byrne and the missing boy, Mickey Byrne and Jimmy Lee Hayes. Mickey Byrne and…all of them.

  He had a cigarette and finished the coffee, and when he was leaving, he stopped at the next booth and slid the little pie container toward the old woman.

  She glanced at it, then up at Whelan.

  “I bought it and I’m too full. I haven’t touched it.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.” One bony hand moved out and took the pie by one corner of its package. She slid it toward her and began studying the picture, and when Whelan left, she was just peeking inside.

  Outside, Whelan stared up Sheridan and thought he could just barely make out the fragile shape of a boyhood friend. He realized that the best thing he could do for himself this night would be to call on Sandra McAuliffe. Instead, he went home.

  Eleven

  In the morning he woke fuzzy-headed and unable to lose the image of Mickey Byrne. To fight it off, he went over the places he’d seen the day before and tried to squeeze something new out of them.

  Eventually he found himself thinking about his life, his daily bachelor patterns, and the possibility that he might be letting go of them soon. No matter how he looked at it, it was clear that he’d have trouble adjusting to a life with different patterns—he’d been in this one for a long time. There was, of course, the possibility that they could work something out, come to some mutually satisfying arrangement that allowed each to hang onto some vestige of independence, some illusion of complete freedom. And if they couldn’t?

  He got up on one elbow and found his cigarette pack on the bedside table. Two left. It occurred to him that he’d begun to smoke more, just this past month and a half, and he realized that Sandra McAuliffe was the cause.

  More correctly, Paul Whelan’s multiple reactions to Sandra McAuliffe were the cause.

  You’re running scared, Whelan, he told himself, and put the cigarettes down.

  In fifteen minutes he’d shaved and run through a quick shower, then put on water for coffee. He walked to the kitchen window and threw back the yellow curtains the way his mother had done five thousand mornings in this very room. The sun sat high in the east.

  “Hang in there, babe, we need you.”

  In a few moments there was coffee and a couple pieces of slightly burnt toast on the table, sun in the room and Stan Getz on the radio, and he had no answers for his life, but a new plan for his day.

  Except for the bright sunlight he could almost have convinced himself that he’d stopped time, that he had just lost Lester moments earlier and was now standing on the bridge trying to find him in the crowd. A bigger crowd today, a sunny Friday crowd. At the north end, people were lined up for the blue paddle boats to go out onto the little lagoon, and behind him a line of small children tugged and fought against authority as authority dragged them into the Farm-in-the-Zoo, and down at the south end of the pond he saw the same two men as before, the big one feeding his birds and the other man sitting on his bench a few feet away.

  Up close the big man was something out of Lives of the Saints, six three or six four and heavy, with close-set dark eyes and a thick red beard that covered his face up to his cheekbones. He held a plastic bag in his left hand and with his right dug into it and came out with fistfuls of crumbled bread. He tossed
the bread out onto the water. Some of it made it that far, some fell at his feet, and wherever the bread landed it was appreciated: he was surrounded by wood ducks, mallards, teals and geese, half a dozen pigeons and a couple of starlings that stole in at the very edge of the circle and pecked quickly at the bread.

  This urban Saint Francis didn’t seem to enjoy his work: there was an intensity to him that demanded attention, an urgency in his face, in his eyes, that contrasted with the peaceful nature of his work.

  “Looks like the sun is gonna stay a while,” Whelan offered. The man said nothing, gave no hint of having heard. Whelan stood a few feet from him and when he was certain the man would not speak, he moved on.

  The second man shot Whelan a quick look and then let his gaze drop as Whelan lowered himself onto the bench two feet from him. He was a wreck, this man, a dirty, skinny, weathered survivor of the streets. He’d made it through another northern winter but not by much, from the looks of him. Where his skin had been exposed to wind and sun, it was several shades darker than the rest of him, and there was dirt in the folds of his knuckles that was never coming out. He sat with his knees crossed and legs tucked under him, like a small boy, and kept his arms folded tight around him.

  Whelan made a show of taking out a cigarette and lighting it. The man turned slightly to watch him from the corner of his eye, and Whelan held out the pack.

  “Smoke?”

  “Yeah,” the man said in a high, unsteady voice. He poked and pawed at Whelan’s cigarettes until he got one to come out, then stuck it in his mouth and puffed at Whelan’s match until he had a light. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  Whelan nodded. The man was sporting a thin black mustache, a Clark Gable kind of mustache. Filthy clothes and rotting shoes and matted hair and dirty hands and all, and this man was still keeping one last shred of his vanity. The man met Whelan’s eyes for the first time. Large dark eyes, kid’s eyes, and a little boy’s body language that told the world he thought he was in a harsh, hostile place.