He heard the movement again, faint but unmistakable.
I’m better at this than you are, he told himself, and then took the next four steps in a noisy rush. His foot missed the edge of the third step and he began to fall toward the outside railing and two feet away a gray thing with a long thin tail jumped and tore off into the darkness.
“Shit,” he said and lurched against the railing. He could hear the rat scuttering away in the brickwork.
Whelan leaned against the railing and panted. For a moment he allowed himself to relax, watching the staircase ahead and listening for any other surprises the old building might have.
Then he saw the leg.
He saw immediately that it would not move, not under its own steam, but waited till his breathing was close to normal again. Then he moved up a couple of steps to where the staircase made its turn toward the third-floor landing and faced the dead man.
The man he knew as Whitey gaped at him through eyes made huge by the stress of his death. The dead man’s mouth was open and his tongue dark and thick, and the outsize dentures that had been his entry to his various personas had come loose during his final moment of violence, so that they threatened to slip from his mouth and gave the lower half of his face a twisted look. The nose was gashed, the one eyelid swollen and purple, and Whelan saw other places that would probably have swollen grotesquely if the man hadn’t been killed so soon afterward. Whelan shook his head: he’d seen faces in death, many of them, in a number of places, but he’d never seen one quite so terrible. It occurred to him that Whitey might have been pleased with the overall effect, if not the method used to achieve it.
Whelan moved up a couple of steps until the third-floor landing was at eye level. He scanned the porches on both sides and then retraced his steps and turned his attention back to the dead man.
He leaned over and touched the forehead: the skin was cool but not cold. Taking the pulse was a formality but he did it anyway and found what he’d expected.
The cause of death, cause of the blood-darkened face and protruding eyes and gaping mouth, had been strangulation. Strangulation by a pair of large hands, big hands that had left their dark imprint on the old man’s throat.
Whelan stepped back, hands on his hips, and studied the dead man. On his final foray onto the streets Whitey had been in the guise of a gentleman going out for his paper. He wore a gray cardigan sweater and a corduroy touring cap. The cap had fallen from his whitish hair and the paper sprawled under him.
Whitey’s left arm had been bent back under the body, and just on a hunch Whelan pulled it out, prepared to look Bauman right in his beady eyes and say he’d disturbed nothing. In his final moment Whitey had been quick enough to get the knife out one more time, and he’d found his mark. The blade, worn thin from years of obsessive honing, was wet with blood. Whelan stood back and examined the stairs and lower landing. Dark splashes marked the wooden slats near the body, and a short trail of droplets showed the killer’s retreat. Backing up, Whelan studied the trail and saw where his own feet had smeared part of it. A steady line of dark wet spots led from the back of the rooming house to the curb outside, and Whelan could almost see him getting into a car.
How bad did he hurt you? Whelan wondered. Bad enough to slow you down, I’m hoping.
Whelan got into his car and went through the reassuring little ritual of a cigarette. He sat for a moment with his elbow resting on the open window and went over the courses of action open to him. Probably a good time, no, an outstanding time, to pull out of this one. He’d found the boy, and the spectral figure of Whitey had been removed from events.
No. A man who had tried to kill him once was still out there. Whelan was still unsure what convoluted thought processes had sent this man after him but it wasn’t likely that it was over yet.
Nighthawks called out overhead, elegant, predatory birds perfectly adapted to life in the big dirty crowded city: they lived on rooftops, came out when the cool night air rid itself of some of the exhaust fumes and lit out after the teeming clouds of things that flew over Chicago.
Whelan watched one circle overhead and thought about the other people involved in this one, and the questions that he hadn’t had the chance to ask yet. Well, he was going to be in it for a while yet. Then an image came to him that took on new significance. In his mind’s eye he saw Ronda coming down the back stairs of her tavern, and the tension in her body told him things now that he hadn’t thought of. His conversation with Ed had confused him and he now understood why.
He parked across the street from the tavern and sat with his radio on low: trumpet noises, early Miles Davis, but he wasn’t listening. It was on for the company, not the entertainment. From his angle he could see that there was no car parked behind the tavern. The lights were on, the place was open: there should have been a little red Chevy there but he now understood why it was gone. He gave himself five minutes to watch the windows on the second floor and when he saw no sign of life, he got out of the car.
He paused at the front door and decided to go around back. The rear door was a single piece of sheet metal with a handle, with little round indentations where a dissatisfied customer had apparently emptied a small-caliber gun into it. Whelan shook his head: firing into sheet metal at close range demonstrated, if not the marginal intelligence of the shooter, then some kind of death wish. He pushed open the door.
Ronda was leaning next to the register smoking a cigarette and gazing down toward the middle of the bar, where a pair of noisy middle-aged drunks snarled at one another. As Whelan came in, he could hear the drunks more clearly: the argument was ostensibly a debate about Mays and Mantle but was probably about a half dozen other things. Ronda watched the two men as though she’d seen this performance a hundred times and it never got any better.
A man watching TV turned to look at him but Ronda didn’t notice him until he moved to the bar and pulled out a stool. Then she paused with her cigarette halfway to her mouth and blinked. The hopeful look that came and went in half a second told him she’d been expecting someone else. The look gave Whelan a little edge, told him the someone hadn’t shown yet, and he felt himself relax. Ronda recovered her stage presence and puffed at her cigarette and blew smoke in his direction, as if smoke could send him away forever.
Whelan set his cigarettes and money on the bar the way it was done in a neighborhood place where you assumed your neighbor wouldn’t steal from you. Now he was a customer, and now Ronda had to move down to see him. She took a sip from a drink sitting next to the register and then pushed herself away from the back bar.
But it apparently didn’t mean she had to speak to him. She set her smoke down in an ashtray a couple of stools from him and lifted her chin toward him.
“Evening,” he said.
“Coke?” she asked and made it sound beneath her.
“No. Not this time. This time I need a shot of Walker’s DeLuxe. And a short beer.”
The tired blue eyes lingered on his for a moment. She tried to keep the rest of her face impassive, but it was a lost cause.
Without looking, she reached behind her, walked her fingers across bottles and came up with the Walker’s. The other hand found a shot glass and she placed the glass on the bar and poured in front of him, as they had always done in the old days. Then she went to the tapper and pulled a beer into one of the tapered short glasses and brought it back to him.
“Dollar twenty-five,” she said in a stiff voice and when Whelan nodded toward his money, she took a pair of singles from his pile.
She came back and laid the change on his pile of bills. She had broken off eye contact and was about to turn away when he spoke. “I just came from a place where I nearly tripped over a dead body.”
She reached quickly for her cigarette and the rest of her went stiff, and for a heartbeat he felt sorry for her.
“Oh, yeah?” she said, and squinted at him through her own smoke. He nodded and sipped at the whiskey, then took a mouthful of the beer.
“This was someone I’d already seen.”
She folded her arms and made her thin self smaller and waited for the rest.
“It was an older man who called himself Whitey. Somebody had strangled him, after beating him half to death first. Seemed to me that whoever did it really meant to do a complete job.”
She uncoiled slightly and took a puff of her cigarette. Down the bar, the two debaters had worked up a thirst and one of them was tapping an empty beer bottle on the bar. She shot the man a poisonous look and he seemed to shrink down into his bar stool.
“Just need a couple beers down here, hon,” the man said, and tried on a smile.
“Don’t call me ‘hon’ and don’t bang your bottle on the bar or I’ll tell you what you can do with it.” She spoke while moving down the bar toward them. The two men suddenly found great interest in the change they had on the bar and didn’t look up again till she’d set up two more beers and taken out the money.
Ronda sauntered back and took her time fishing another smoke out of a small red leather cigarette case. When she’d lit up, she allowed her gaze to fall on Whelan.
“You’re ready for trouble and I don’t think I came here to give you any. From what I know, this Whitey was a bad man, the kind we put away for a long time. That part’s none of my business. But I noticed when I went around back that your car’s not here.”
“Ed took it.” She picked up the watery-looking drink and took a sip.
“Ed’s got his own car.” Ronda looked away. “I think somebody borrowed your car and took care of some old business that I don’t pretend to understand.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what this was about.”
She gave a lopsided shrug, one bony shoulder at a time.
“Don’t know what ‘this’ you’re talkin’ about.”
“I think you and Jimmy Lee Hayes have a special friendship. And I think this man named Whitey was trying to kill him, I think Whitey killed several of the people around Jimmy and was probably pretty close to finding Jimmy. And I think, without any hard evidence, that old Jimbo took your car tonight and killed this man. That’s what I think.”
She blew smoke out and sipped at her drink. “You know so much, why you botherin’ with me?”
Whelan finished the rest of his whiskey, took a sip of the wretched tap beer and leaned back. He pointed up toward the painted tin ceiling. “I want to know why.”
She gazed at him calmly and said, “Have to ask somebody else, hon.”
“I plan to. Gonna keep asking. That’s how I am, as you probably figured by now. I just thought I ought to tell you, when I leave here, I’ll be talking to the guys over at Area Six to let them in on some of this. I expect you’ll be seeing them soon.”
“Don’t make me no nevermind. Got nothing to do with me.”
“Just your car. And the fact that you’ve been hiding him.” She gave him a smirk and he added, “upstairs.”
“That’s just a storeroom,” she said quickly.
“He was in no position to be choosy.” She forced nonchalance and said nothing. “I called the homicide in already and gave them your car, and when they find it, it’ll be a little messy. Whitey cut him. Going to be hard to explain the blood.”
She gave him a sardonic smile. “So maybe he’s dead, too.”
“If I were you—”
“You aren’t me, mister, so don’t be talking that stupid shit to me. You don’t know a damn thing about me.” She moved over to the bar and put her face close to his. “If you did, you’d know you can’t scare me. Can’t scare me, can’t con me.”
She leaned against the back bar again and took a puff of her cigarette. “You know what I hate about men? You’re all so damn stupid, and every last mother’s son of you think you’re smart. Those two down there, they think they’re smart, for Chrissake.” She gave the two debaters a look rich in loathing and shook her head. “The fat one? He thinks the Communists are putting poison in the grass, so’s the cows’ll give poison milk and bad meat.”
“The world’s full of stupid people that think they’re smart.”
“And most of ’em is men,” she said through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Her voice came out harsh and coarse. She took in another lungful and looked away.
“Did you meet Jimmy Lee up here?”
“No. We knew each other years and years, I knew ’im in Knoxville. He knew my brother, I knew all his people down there. We even went out a couple times back then. Wasn’t nothing to it.”
“You came up here with Ed?”
She gave a little snort of laughter. “No, honey. Ed’s just…he’s just a mistake I made along the way. Second husband, second mistake. Wasn’t for my tavern, bought with my own damn money, Ed would be out on the street, where he belongs. That’s one worthless man.”
“What were you going to do if all this ever blew over?”
She didn’t answer immediately. For a few seconds she busied herself by mixing a highball, a strong one: dark brown, easy on the ice. She took a sip, raised her thin eyebrows and nodded.
“I thought I was going to divorce Ed and leave with Jimmy Lee. That was the original plan. Months ago, that was. Then this other trouble come up, the old man come up and pretty soon Jimmy was in trouble. You can tell a lot about people when they’re in trouble. And it didn’t take me no time at all to see that this big, good-lookin’ man was full of shit and dumb as a milk cow. And if I thought he was gonna be around for me after all this was over, that made me dumber than him. And then I got a new idea. More I thought on it, the better I liked this one: I’m gonna sell the damn tavern and give Ed a couple thousand dollars and divorce papers, and then I’m goin’ out west, no Ed, no Jimmy Lee Hayes. Got a sister in Oregon.”
“Did he tell you what he was going to do tonight?”
“No. Just said he was goin’ out. I told you already, none of this has anything to do with me. I didn’t know he was gonna kill anybody. He kept telling me the old man was hiding from ’im, but he knew all along where he was. Jimmy got that place for him. Just took ’im a long time to get enough spine to go after ’im.”
For a moment she held Whelan’s gaze and he decided he believed her. “Got any idea where he is right now?”
“Who knows? Maybe dead, like I said. Maybe in a hospital.” She seemed to be struck by a new idea and she laughed. “Knowing old Jimmy Lee for a lyin’ sack of shit, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was headin’ for the south right now in my little car. Still thinkin’ he’s smart.” She shook her head.
“What was it all about, Ronda?”
“Old poison. All it was, old poison. And if the old man cut him and killed him, I’d say it was just old business takin’ care of itself after years and years. Forty years, must be. That’s all it was.” She gave him a shrewd look and allowed herself a smile that was obviously at his expense. “Still don’t understand, do you?”
He started to shake his head and then caught himself. Forty years. “Old poison,” Ronda called it. “The Old Man,” they kept calling him. Ronda was right: he was stupid.
Jimmy Lee Hayes had killed his father.
He looked up and saw her amused look. “Just like the fairy tales, huh? An evil stepfather.”
Ronda pointed a thin finger at him and nodded. “There’s hope for you yet, son. See you around,” she said and then moved away silently down the bar. As she did, she touched the dark, smooth wood of the bar exactly the way Whelan had once seen a man touch a car he was about to sell.
He left a couple of singles on the bar, nodded once to Ronda, and went out the front door.
He used a pay phone to call in the homicide. He described the location of the body and told the 911 operator that he thought the killer had been driving a red Chevy compact, but that he hadn’t gotten the plates. He declined to leave his name.
Monday night: the Bucket was closed. Whelan looked for Bauman at the Alley Cat, but Ralph the bartender said he hadn’
t seen Bauman. His tone said he felt fortunate. Okay, Whelan thought. I’ve done my part.
He got into his car and sat for a moment. It was after ten and he’d been aching since Argyle Street. The aches were now showing signs of stiffening and he could feel a headache coming on. Sandra McAuliffe’s apartment beckoned, but he’d just seen a dead man and he’d been in a fight with a boyhood friend, and if ever a Monday needed to be put to bed, this was the one. He started the car and drove home.
Seventeen
All was normal in the Subway Donut Shop: Spiros had six breakfasts going on the grill and Ruth the waitress was nose to nose with a customer who had crossed her. A thin man in a sweater with a tom sleeve was staring at the day-old-doughnuts counter and a dozen smokers had turned the air gray.
Whelan waved for Ruth’s attention. She raised one finger for him to wait, finished reading off the errant customer, and turned to Whelan.
“You eatin’ or just takin’ up space today?”
“Just coffee, Ruth.”
She nodded, filled a brown ceramic mug and slid it to him. He paid her, tipped her thirty cents and found a seat at the window, where he could watch the street entertainment. Just outside, a sleepy-eyed man with matted hair was talking to invisible companions. A Vietnamese family, all six of them in new gym shoes, gave him a wide berth as they passed by.
He lit up a cigarette and blew smoke at the window, and then a new cloud of smoke, rancid smoke that smelled like old tires and dead beasts, overtook his and scattered it. He didn’t have to look up.
“Morning there, Snoopy,” said a familiar voice, a voice with the rumble of a cement truck on bad pavement.
“Have a seat,” Whelan said, but Bauman had already dropped his bulk onto a stool.
“I called your house, called your office. You got hours like the Park District.”
Killer on Argyle Street Page 23
