“You’re welcome. Think we’re finished with snow?”
The man shrugged. “God, I hope so. Got snow in May once before, though. Big snow, too.”
“I remember.” Whelan looked over at the two islets. In a couple of weeks the young trees would erupt in buds but at the moment they looked as desolate, as dead, as the forest in a Gothic tale. The islets were alive, though, on this sunny morning: crows, it looked like a hundred of them, and they were moving from branch to branch and cawing to one another and making occasional visits to the ground below. Whelan remembered what his father had always believed about crows: that they were intelligent, that they spoke to one another and had the human race figured out. Whelan’s friend Sergei, an elderly Russian Jew who spent his mornings in coffee shops and his evenings studying English at Truman, told him the crows in Russia could talk. Whelan had always ascribed that to the Russian need for supremacy in little matters.
He looked at the man on the bench. “I was here a couple of days ago. I was supposed to meet a man and I missed him but I think you were here. This guy is an older man, about six feet tall, walks with a stoop. Blue raincoat and a blue hat. Had a newspaper that he carried under one arm.”
For a moment Whelan wasn’t sure the man would answer. He cupped both hands around his cigarette and leaned forward, watching the blue paddle boats making their lazy circuits of the lagoon. Then he met Whelan’s eyes and held up a finger stained from a lifetime of cigarettes.
“One guy, this was?”
“Right. He’s…” Whelan caught himself. “But he might have been with another man. He might have run into another guy here.”
The man on the bench nodded. “I dunno if this was the guy you’re looking for but he was wearing a blue raincoat and had this blue hat like they used to wear. Don’t know about a newspaper.”
“There you go. What did the other guy look like?”
“He was old, too. Didn’t have no hat. Glasses, white hair. He was wearing a raincoat too. He smiled a lot, he had real big teeth. Funny teeth, made him look strange.”
Whelan took a puff at his cigarette and forced himself to slow down. “Looks like a skull sometimes,” he said casually.
The man smiled for the first time. “He sure does. That’s just what he looked like to me, a skeleton.”
“Wonder how much I missed them by. You got a good look at them, did they meet here?”
The man made a little shake of his head. “No.” He screwed his face up in a frown and gestured toward the water with his cigarette. “They were in one of them boats.”
Whelan watched a pair of young women make the turn a few feet away from the spot where the bearded man was feeding his birds. They were laughing and panting, apparently unused to this kind of exertion in the morning.
He stared at the water and let it come together. “A boat,” Whelan heard himself say. Then, to the other man, “So what did they do? Go cruising around the lagoon?”
The man shrugged. “That’s what they do in them boats. Nothin’ else to do, really. They come right by here, that’s how I saw their faces so good. And then they went in there close to them little islands.”
“Then what?”
“That’s all I saw. I wasn’t watching them. There was a bunch of kids coming in a couple of them boats, and they were all laughing. It was kinda nice to watch. I didn’t pay no attention to them two old men after they made the turn by the islands.”
“Well, I appreciate your help.”
The man nodded and worked at the last half inch of his cigarette and stared out over the water. Whelan took another look at the man and wondered if he’d make it through any more winters.
I don’t know how you got to where you are, Whelan thought, and it’s none of my business. I just know you’re not going to be here long.
“Here, maybe buy yourself a hamburger or something.” He held out a folded ten. The man covered it with his dark hand, flashed a quick look at one corner of the bill and looked at Whelan.
“Thanks, mister. Thanks a lot.”
“It’s all right.”
Whelan got up and stretched, then walked on past the bench. As he moved in front of the man, he touched him lightly on the shoulder. “See you around.”
“Sure.”
He followed the curving wall of the pond and as he drew even with the little islets, the crows renewed their raucous noise. Whelan gave them an idle glance and saw several birds descend from the upper branches to the ground, where a dozen or more crows already bunched together. The crows in the high branches called out and the ones on the ground cawed and shouldered their way in, and then Whelan stopped.
They were feeding.
He backed up a few paces till he was at the point nearest the larger of the two islets. The floor of the islet was alive, a dark roiling mass of birds, and whatever they had found was big enough to feed all of them.
“Damn,” Whelan said, and knew that he had found Lester.
He made the call from the pay phone inside Café Brauer, the zoo cafeteria, and made it anonymous in case he was wrong. Then he retreated to the high ground, to the raised driveway that overlooked the pond. Behind him stood the massive monument to Grant, a columned granite superstructure topped by an equestrian statue of Grant gazing out upon the zoo. Generations of teenagers had met in the dark under the stone canopy, where presumably the bronze general couldn’t see them, to drink, make out, spray-paint the walls and do anything else that came to their fevered minds.
Directly below him were the islands. Whelan had a cigarette and waited, and eventually things began to happen. From a tunnel to the south, a squad car appeared and rolled up the broad park sidewalk till it perched at the lip of the pond. Two cops got out and stared at the larger islet for a long moment, occasionally speaking. One of them shook his head and walked back to the car while the other moved toward the Bird Man. Whelan was pleased to see that the bearded fellow had little more to say to the cop than he’d had to Whelan. A few shakes of the head was about all the cop got. Whelan watched him walk back to his partner.
A few minutes later another squad car came around the curve of the pond, from the direction of the zoo itself, and the four cops had a conference. As they talked and gestured toward the islet, the crows continued to move from tree to ground and back again, keeping up their strident chatter, oblivious to their growing audience.
Eventually a new player came onto the scene and Whelan knew the cops had taken it all seriously. The Fire Department Rescue Squad showed up, and after a short talk with the street cops, two fire department divers in wet suits lowered themselves into the cold water. They weren’t going to be doing any scuba diving: the water was only chest high, but the wet suits were coming in handy. The four cops watched the divers wading out toward the islets and Whelan remembered something an old sergeant had once told him: “A cop gets punched, a cop gets shot at, a cop gets called a lot of names, but a cop don’t get wet.”
All at once the crows flew up in a dark cackling cloud and then the divers were on the islet. A moment later one of them shouted back to the police. The birds’ cacophony hid part of what he said, but Whelan heard enough. He heard the diver say “We’ve got a body.”
He waited in General Grant’s company for twenty minutes as the operation wound itself up. When the body had already been brought off the islet, a gray Caprice pulled up behind the first of the two squad cars. The south end of the pond was already a crowded place, what with three squad cars and a wagon, plus two Fire Department vehicles and a Park District car, and a small crowd of onlookers had materialized. Whelan watched the little audience split as a familiar figure, a thickset gentleman in a loud plaid jacket and a peacock blue shirt, bulled his way through.
Whelan gave Bauman time to talk to the uniforms who had been first to respond, then to the divers. He saw Bauman bend over the covered corpse and pull back the covering, then stoop closer. One of the cops shook his head. Whelan lit up another cigarette and decided it was time to
go down and meet the guests.
The little squadron of cars was already breaking up when Whelan got down to the pond. He sat on a bench on the far side of the pond for a few minutes, hidden from view by the islet itself, then, when only the Caprice and one squad car were left, got up and walked toward them.
Landini saw him first and mouthed an obscenity. Bauman was puffing on one of his little cigars and turned, looked at Whelan, then back at the island. He said nothing till Whelan was a few feet away, then squinted at him.
“Well, now here’s a fucking bolt out of the blue. We get a call about a stiff on this island and who shows up as soon as we get the guy off but Paul Whelan the famed investigator.”
“Yeah,” Landini said, “I wonder why that is.”
Whelan ignored him. He met Bauman’s eyes. “Lester?”
“Part of ’im. The birds were hungry, Whelan. But it was Lester, yeah.”
Landini moved closer to Whelan. “I still want him to tell us how come we get this call, and all of a sudden he shows up.”
“He didn’t just show up.” Bauman sniffed. “You called it in.” He stuck a finger in Whelan’s chest.
“Yeah.”
“Anonymous tip, they told me.”
“What would you have done? I couldn’t be sure I was right, but I could tell there was something out there and I was pretty sure it was something dead.”
“How come you didn’t go home and get your mask and fins and find out.”
“How was he killed?”
“The fuck do I know? This is not exactly a pristine corpse here. The M.E. can tell us how he was killed, that’s what he gets paid for.”
“He touched it,” Landini said to no one in particular.
Bauman indicated Landini with a nod. “It. He calls a stiff ‘it.’ Yeah, I touched ’im. I touch ’em all. You seen me touch a dozen stiffs. Whelan’s seen it too. It’s something I do.”
Landini looked away in exasperation. “He fucking touches dead bodies, don’t know what the fuck kinda disease and shit they might have, he touches ’em.”
“Somebody should always touch a dead man,” Bauman said quietly. He took a puff on his little cigar and then shot it into the pond, near a duck. The duck fluttered away and landed again a few feet from the cigar. “Looks like that thing that Joe Danno’s got hanging from the ceiling.”
“No,” Whelan said. “That one you’re annoying is a mallard. The dead one at the Bucket is a merganser.”
Bauman shook his head. “This really pisses me off.”
“I’m not real happy about it either.”
“What do you care? You’re lookin’ for the kid.”
“I told you before, I’m looking for anybody that can tell me about the kid.”
Bauman’s look made his feelings clear. “Lester? Lester couldn’t find his dick with both hands. What was he gonna tell you about this kid?”
“I don’t know. And now we’ll never know.”
Bauman stared at him for a moment and then looked back at the water. “This fucking makes my day.”
Whelan looked at Landini. “And you know what kind of a day that means you’re gonna have.”
“I need you to tell me that?”
“Later, guys.”
When he’d gone a dozen paces or so, Whelan heard Bauman clear his throat.
“I’ll be talkin’ to you, Snoopy. We got to compare notes.”
Whelan waved and kept on walking.
Sam Carlos was humming and setting out strawberries in pint baskets, and Whelan knew why he was humming: at the top of each little plastic basket was a layer of perfect strawberries, a layer thinner than baby hair, and below that layer, a wet clotting mass of berries in various stages of decomposition. Sam’s hand-lettered sign said the strawberries were a buck and a half a pint.
Sam was driving a new Buick these days, and Whelan was fairly sure he’d paid cash. Sam noticed him and waved, a happy American businessman.
Whelan was opening his door when the one across the hall opened. He turned and saw Nowicki peering out at him.
“Hi.”
“Uh, yeah, hi, you had a whaddyacallem, a client.”
“Oh yeah? Did he leave a message?”
Nowicki shook his head. He seemed to be uncomfortable with his information.
“Did he say who he was?”
“Said he was a friend of yours.”
“No name?”
“Nope.” Nowicki looked up and down the empty hall. “He tried the door.”
“They all do.”
“No, I mean he was tryin’ to get in. You know, like he was breaking in.”
Whelan stared at him for a moment. Nowicki licked his lips. “He said you usually leave it open.”
“He did, huh? What did this old friend look like?”
“Big, maybe your height but bigger built. Dark hair, kinda slicked back.” Nowicki ran his hand over his own disappearing hair and looked at the palm, as though afraid more had come off.
“Slicked back? Not a crew cut?”
“No, not that cop.”
Whelan found himself smiling. “You’ve met the cop?”
“No, no,” Nowicki said. “Never met him, but…I mean, hell, anybody’d make that guy for a cop. No, this was a different guy, this wasn’t no cop. Hillbilly.”
“What?”
Nowicki shrugged. “Hillbilly, he was. You know, a stump-jumper. Had a southern accent. You don’t know him, huh?”
Whelan shook his head and said nothing.
“I thought you oughtta know. I like to mind my own business, you know, but, I mean, if you saw somebody tryin’ to get in my joint here, I’d wanta know that.”
“Right. Well, thanks.”
“It’s okay. He said he’d be back. Said he’d see you later.”
Whelan nodded and then closed the door behind him. He crossed to his desk and set down his coffee and sank into the chair. A familiar churning had returned to his stomach, and the office seemed unusually chilly.
At any given time in a neighborhood like Uptown there would be some small-time thief trying to burgle an office. I’ve got a burglar, he told himself, but he knew better.
Twelve
Roy’s Garage was on Broadway, a short block from Argyle Street, and a relic of bygone days, like armor and flintlock pistols. Flanked by newer, taller office buildings, it hugged the ground and clung to its space, and made Whelan think of a sapling fighting for sun among the big trees. The garage was a boxy white building with the shiny, porcelainlike front of a fifties’ gas station, which was probably what it had been. Roy still had a pair of gas pumps, both promising a brand of gasoline that Whelan had never heard of. A small sign on each pump said the gasoline contained 15 percent alcohol.
No one came into the office when Whelan entered, and no one would have stopped him from grabbing the contents of the register and all the Snickers bars on the counter display. He went through the back door of the office and walked into the garage itself. Two men, one in his sixties, the other barely out of puberty, were staring in obvious concern at a faded yellow Olds 88. The car’s engine was idling and the noises emitted were not good noises; they bespoke a car about to meet the ghost of Mr. Olds himself.
The only other vehicle in the garage was a motorcycle, and it didn’t look any better than the dying Olds. Whelan cleared his throat but the two mechanics didn’t hear him over the car’s death rattle. He moved a few paces closer and got the attention of the older man. He had gray hair in need of cutting, and a flat nose that appeared to have been broken at some time. The man’s stained blue coverall said ROY but then so did the young man’s.
“Sounds like mine,” Whelan said, nodding toward the Olds.
“Bring ’er in, we can take care of ’er.” He looked at the Olds. “We’ll be through with this one in a little bit,” he said but it didn’t sound as though he believed it. The young man looked at him for a moment, then back at the Olds, and shook his head.
“You Roy?”
“The owner, yeah. His name’s Roy too. He’s my nephew.”
Whelan shook his hand and said “Paul Whelan,” then handed Roy his business card. The old mechanic squinted at the card and picked at his chin with his free hand. He looked like a man reading bad news.
“I’m looking for Tony Blanchard. I understand he used to work here.”
“Yeah. But he don’t work here now. I ain’t seen him in a long time. Maybe a year.”
“Now I was under the impression that he was still working here in the summer.”
Roy looked puzzled, then nodded. “Wait, wait, you’re right. He was here in the summer.”
“And he did some work for Jimmy Lee Hayes.” Roy began to protest and Whelan held up one hand. “And then the kid quit and started running errands for Hayes. Who you knew pretty well.”
Roy didn’t like the choice of words. He frowned and shook his head and looked for support or suggestions from his nephew. The boy looked at his uncle and then at Whelan, showing wide pale gray eyes as vacant as Roy’s grease pit. Only the sound of his breathing showed that the boy was a sentient being. If fixing the Olds required any kind of thought from this apprentice mechanic, the owner might as well buy a bus pass.
“I’ve talked to the police, Roy. I know Detective Bauman, and we talked about you: I know you let Jimmy Lee use this place for a while.”
“I got nothin’ to do with any of that. Jimmy Lee used to come here and meet his friends…”
“And do business. Selling things that didn’t belong to them.”
Roy surprised him with a hostile look. It changed his entire face, made him appear capable of something more than the futility in his grease pit.
“What you want from me, mister?”
“I want the boy. I want to know anything anybody on earth knows about that boy and I don’t much care what I do to get it.”
“You don’t think the cops was here, asking all this same crap? I told them everything I know about Jimmy and that whole bunch.”
“I doubt it.”
Killer on Argyle Street Page 17
