Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  “My hours are civilized. You just get up too early. So now that we’ve made small talk, what’s up?” But he was fairly sure he already knew.

  “Just wanted to, you know, apprise you of, uh, recent developments.”

  “Such as.”

  “Homicide up here on Windsor. Guy strangled to death. Looked like somebody used one of those little mallets on him, you know? The ones they use to tenderize meat?”

  Whelan nodded and sipped his coffee.

  “You heard about it? Anyhow, I think you knew this guy.”

  “Who was he?”

  Bauman smiled. “The old guy, the one you asked me about: Whitey.”

  Whelan gave him a long look. Bauman’s eyes were positively dancing. “Was he wearing a name tag, or did he identify himself?”

  “He wasn’t makin’ a whole lot of small talk. That’s just who I think he was. And you don’t look surprised, so I’m thinking you called it in. Doin’ a lot of that lately.”

  “So what if I did?”

  “You didn’t give your name.”

  “I got caught up in the excitement of the moment.”

  “What’re you getting pissed off for? These are normal questions I’m asking.”

  “I was further into it than I ever wanted to be. So I didn’t want to spend the night answering questions from strange cops.”

  Bauman ran a hand over his chin. “You find that kid?” he asked, looking out at the street.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “And…what?”

  “And nothing. I found him, I’m going to tell Mrs. Pritchett he’s still alive and the guy that was looking for him is dead.”

  “Where’s the kid, Whelan?”

  “Not on the street. He was staying with some people who were covering for him but by now he’s long gone.”

  “What if he whacked this guy?”

  “You saw the corpse. You think a hundred-twenty-pound teenager did all that?”

  “Nope, I don’t. But that’s got nothin’ to do with it. Bet if I want to, I can make you give the kid up.”

  “You could if I still knew, but I don’t. Just leave me alone, Bauman. You got a homicide, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Okay. You gonna confirm it was this guy you called Whitey?”

  “Yeah. It was him.”

  “And you think this is the one that took out all these other guys.”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Take me a while but I think I’ll have a name to go with the stiff pretty soon. If we put in a Code One…”

  “Save it. You can’t put a Code One on every stiff you find. Save it for a big deal. I’ll give you a name to put on him.”

  “Okay,” Bauman said.

  “Leonard George McCarty.”

  “Nah,” Bauman was saying, and now he looked irritated. “Leonard George McCarty is…”

  “Senior,” Whelan said. He met Bauman’s gaze and repeated “Senior. Leonard George McCarty, Senior. The father of the one that died in prison. And the stepfather of Jimmy Lee Hayes.” He felt the words come as though of their own volition, and it left him with a surprising sense of relief. “Jimmy Lee’s daddy.”

  Bauman stared unblinking and then said, “Give.”

  “You told me once that Jimmy Lee Hayes studied at the knee of his daddy, kind of a robber chieftain. Learned from his stepbrother, too.”

  “The old man’s retired, he’s probably dead.”

  “Oh, he’s dead now but he didn’t go gracefully. His kid died in prison.” Whelan paused. He could see Bauman putting it all together and wasn’t even sure the rest was necessary, but he went on with it.

  “From the fine character portrait you gave me a while back, Jimmy Lee would inform on anyone for a price, and I’ve got a hunch he had some negative feelings for his stepbrother. Somebody gave up the stepbrother, Whitey, and I’m thinking it was Jimmy Lee. When the brother died in prison, the old man decided to visit the scenic North for a little payback. I think he pretended to be joining Jimmy’s bunch and then you started finding people in vacant lots and trucks.”

  “What else you got?”

  “Not much. I talked to Jimmy Lee Hayes’s woman. She runs that tavern. They hated each other, Jimmy Lee and the old man. And they finally got a piece of each other.”

  “So you think Jimmy Lee Hayes killed our stiff.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Bauman nodded. “And where do you think we oughtta look for him, Whelan?”

  “Beats the hell out of me, but I’d check out Ed and Ronda’s tavern on Clark Street, and I guess I’d hit a couple of hospitals to see if they treated any knife wounds last night. Looked to me like the old man cut Jimmy Lee.”

  “That’s very good thinking, Whelan,” Bauman said too sincerely. “Very neat package, there. So if we find Jimmy Lee, we got the whole thing.” Bauman put an elbow on the counter and rested his round face on one hand. Whelan was conscious of the odors, of smoke on his clothes, last night’s liquor, Right Guard fighting a losing fight. He looked in Bauman’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw coming.

  “You got that look, that nice contented look, Whelan. You know you did a nice piece of work and you’re finished, all the pieces fit so it’s over for you.” Whelan finished his coffee and waited. “Help me out. See, I’m not finished with it yet. If he isn’t in a hospital takin’ care of his ‘owee’ and he’s not havin’ piña coladas with this broad, where else would you look?”

  “I’d look for a little red Chevy with a big guy driving it.”

  Bauman milked his moment, waited for a five-count and then said, “We found it, Whelan. We found that little car. If we’da found it earlier, we could’ve given the driver a ticket, ’cause he was driving on an expired license. Now he’s caught up with his license. He’s expired, too. The driver was Mr. James Lee Hayes, Whelan, you’re right about that. But Jimmy Lee Hayes is dead.”

  “Cause of death?” he forced himself to ask.

  Bauman knocked two inches of ash from his cigarillo and took a puff. He filled the air with more of his rancid smoke and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Gunshot, Whelan. A bullet in the head. Looks like…”

  A .22, Whelan said to himself.

  “…a twenty-two. I could be wrong.”

  Whelan shrugged and turned away so that Bauman couldn’t see the wind go out of him. He felt a fistlike pressure in the middle of his chest and wondered if he looked as confused as he felt.

  “Nothin’ else to give me, Whelan? No ideas?”

  “The woman,” he forced himself to say. “The woman,” but he didn’t believe it.

  Faces watched him get out of his car, a pair of faces. The Vietnamese woman folded her arms around her and looked worried, the old man drew up next to her, no ax handle this time, but the look in his eye said he didn’t think he needed one. Whelan took a deep breath and went in.

  They met him at the door, the woman moving back a step but the old man giving no ground. Whelan closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

  “Open later,” the woman said.

  “We need to talk,” Whelan said, looking at the old man. “Maybe you and I, maybe the three of us, I don’t care. But somebody’s going to talk to me or I’ll stay here forever.” He stared at the old man and willed himself not to blink, but a little voice told him the old man could smell fear like an attack dog.

  “Where’s Mickey?”

  The woman opened her mouth but the man said something to her in Vietnamese. Then he looked at Whelan. “Not here,” the man said. “He is not here.” His English was heavily accented, nasal, his voice youthful sounding.

  “Then I can talk to you.”

  “No.”

  “Sir, I’ll talk to you or this lady or Mick. I’ll even talk to the boy. If I don’t talk to somebody here, I’ll talk to my friend Detective Albert Bauman and the shit will hit the fan, if you will pardon my lapse into street talk.” A trace of doubt came into the old man’s eyes and Whelan
gave it a push. “Where’s the boy?”

  “He is not here,” the old man said with a stiff shake of his head.

  “Then you have to tell me where he is. I need to talk to him. I thought he was out of danger and now I’m not so sure.”

  “He is in safe place.”

  The world is full of liars, Whelan thought, and the ones that live by it are good at it. You’re not, old man. He studied the look in the man’s dark, deep-set eyes and shook his head.

  “I think the safe place is here. I think he’s still here. And maybe he’s safe here but I have to talk to him.” The old man said no with a slight jerk of his head and Whelan held his ground. He was wondering which of them would blink first when he heard the shuffling sound, shoes on creaking wood, that told him someone was on the stairway leading to the basement. He could just make out the dark shape of the doorway beyond the kitchen entrance. The old man stiffened and fought the impulse to turn around. I’d creep up the stairs to listen, too, Whelan thought.

  He indicated the doorway. “Have him come out. I need to say something to him.” He indicated the unseen boy in the doorway, the old man, and himself. “The three of us, here at this table.”

  Whelan pulled out the nearest chair and dropped himself into it. He took out his cigarettes and hooked a finger over the rim of an ashtray, pulling it toward him. He shook out a smoke, lit it and took a puff, then put it in the ashtray. For several seconds the old man stared at him. Then he said something in Vietnamese to the woman, who nodded, shot a look of worry in Whelan’s direction and went back toward the stairs. When she came back she had a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  The old man nodded to him and said “Okay,” and then indicated a chair. Tony Blanchard shuffled forward like a felon meeting the hangman, eyes down, arms hanging limp at his sides, and Whelan realized there was probably no one in the adult world that he trusted completely. Not even this Vietnamese hardcase who had protected him so forcefully. Without lifting his gaze once, Tony lowered himself to a chair, perching on the very edge, as though prepared for flight. The old man eyed Whelan as he slipped into the third chair and the woman retreated to the kitchen.

  “Tony? I have some news for you. Will you look at me?”

  The boy shrugged—Marty’s shrug, these kids all had the same gestures—and met Whelan’s eyes. The facial expression said alley fighter but the body language told another story, an animal mute with terror. Back stiff, eyes wide, breath coming through his mouth.

  Whelan sighed. “Tony, take it easy. The first part is good news, sort of. Are you listening to me?” The boy nodded, blinking. “Whitey,” Whelan said carefully, “Whitey is dead.”

  The breathing became audible. “For real?”

  “For real. I saw the body. I checked for a pulse. He’s dead.”

  “That’s cool,” he said tonelessly but color flooded his face and his eyes seemed to take on life, as though he’d had a sudden transfusion. He looked at the old man for reassurance, found none, and looked back at Whelan.

  “Jimmy Lee Hayes killed him. Tony, you know why, don’t you?”

  The boy looked past him and said nothing.

  “He’s dead, Tony. He can’t do anything to you now.” Whelan waited for a moment and then tried again. “Did you know about them? That Whitey was his father?”

  After several seconds, the boy nodded. He scratched at the top of the table with a fingernail. “Not his real father. Stepfather or something.”

  “Right. He told you?”

  “No. I heard him talking to Bob and I put it all together. Jimmy dropped a dime on somebody that was family…”

  “His half brother.”

  “That was it. He dropped a dime on this dude and, like, the guy got sent up. Then the guy died in prison and the old man, he comes up lookin’ to kick some ass. Pretends he’s come to join up with Jimmy but he’s really lookin’ for payback.” Tony paused for a moment to see if Whelan was following, and added, “Big-time. Big-time payback.”

  “Well, if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he got. Directly or indirectly. All these guys you ran with, they’re dead.”

  “I didn’t run with ’em. I, like, did shit for Jimmy and some of these other dudes. I made good bread, too.”

  Whelan stole a look at the old man. He was watching the boy with an odd look in his eye, and Whelan wondered if the old man understood half of what passed for English with Tony.

  “Which brings me to the rest of it.” The boy cocked his head and waited. “Jimmy Lee Hayes is dead.”

  “Who…oh, the old man and him, they got each other?”

  “Nothing so tidy. No. Somebody else got him. Somebody shot him—it’s too early for a ballistics report but I’m thinking it was the same gun that killed Makowski.”

  He watched and the boy’s eyes told him he was putting this together, saw that it might have something to do with him. Tony’s gaze flitted around the room and his confusion was obvious.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s hard to come up with sense out of all of this. I’d like to think this last part has nothing to do with you, that it means you’re safe but if that’s true…” He looked at his cigarette burning itself down in the little tin ashtray. If it is true, he thought, it means the killer is someone I don’t want it to be.

  “Tony, where’s Mickey?”

  “I don’t know. He went out. He goes out a lot.”

  “Have any idea where?”

  “Different places, I don’t know. The cemetery sometimes.”

  Whelan winced inwardly. I bet he does. “Did he go out last night, after I left here?”

  After a short hesitation, the boy nodded. “Yeah, for a little while.”

  “How little?”

  “I don’t know, man, how should I know—”

  “Jesus, you sound like Marty. Was he gone more than a half hour?”

  The boy looked at the old man, whose face told him nothing. Then he nodded. “I guess.”

  “He found out where Whitey was staying, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know. I never heard him say.”

  A chair scraped on the tile floor and Whelan turned toward the old man. He had moved closer to the table, closer to Whelan, and there was an urgency in his eyes that had not been there before.

  “He hurt no one. Mickey. He hurt no one.” The old man peered at him as though to see if his words had any effect. “You know this man, he hurt no one. You go from here, you leave now. You make trouble for him…”

  “Take it easy, I’m just—”

  “No.”

  No, Whelan thought, you’re not the guy to take it easy. He slid his chair back and stood. The man got to his feet slowly and flexed stiff knees. Across the table, Tony Blanchard blinked at Whelan and looked on the verge of panic.

  “He ain’t in trouble, is he? Mick? Is Mick gonna be okay with this stuff?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit. I didn’t want to make no trouble for him. This is all on account of me.” He looked down at the table and his eyes grew moist.

  “No, I think it’s on somebody else’s account, Tony. You just had your own trouble.”

  “I caused all of this. Oh, shit, I wish I was back at Archer House. They told me. Told me I’d be in deep shit if I didn’t get out.”

  “Your counselors?”

  He nodded. “Jack did. Mr. Mollan. He told me the same shit he told Sonny Portis. He was right about Sonny and he was right about me. You know about Sonny?”

  Whelan blinked and said nothing for a moment, confused and trying to force it all to make sense. “Yeah, I do. Sonny was your friend?”

  “Yeah, he was okay but he got himself in deep and tried to get out by, you know, talkin’ to the cops and shit like that.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Jimmy killed him?”

  The boy nodded. “Couple times, I wondered about that but then other shit started comin’ down, you know?”

  Whelan studied the boy for a second thought about Sonny Port
is and what he’d been told before, and finally formed the question to sort it all out. “Did Jack Mollan tell you he tried to talk Sonny off the street?”

  Tony shook his head. “Sonny told me.” He looked off into the distance, shoulders slumped. He had a hunch to his back that made him look small and frail, this boy who had taken Whelan into so much trouble.

  Whelan shook his head: Jack Mollan and Sonny. A pattern began to form in Whelan’s mind and he nodded slowly. “The guy in the baseball cap, the one that was down here looking for you—when did you see him for the first time?”

  “I don’t know. Last week, maybe.”

  Whelan nodded again. This one might turn out yet. “Thanks for talking to me, Tony. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. I know you have no way of figuring out whether you can trust me but I might have an idea about, you know, a place for you to stay.” The boy nodded absently but said nothing, and Whelan decided to let it drop for the moment.

  He turned to the old man. “Maybe we have no trouble after all. But I still need Mick to come see me. My office or my house, it doesn’t matter. He can call if he doesn’t trust me.”

  The man made a slight nod. Whelan indicated the restaurant with a wave.

  “This is your place, isn’t it?”

  “My daughter’s restaurant. She is good businessman, she is good cook too. I am soldier, no businessman.”

  Soldier. Right.

  “Thanks.” He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the brass handle. “It was you that hit me in the alley.”

  For the first time, a glint of humor came into the old man’s eyes. His cheeks and forehead seemed to darken and Whelan was sure the old man was fighting a grin.

  “Yes, I hit. You chase boy.”

  My mistake, Whelan thought, and went out to make a phone call and one final visit to put it all to rest.

  Greg Purcell opened the door to Archer House and stood for a moment in the attitude of a man expecting no visitors. The midday sun glinted white off his glasses and gave his face a blank, unfinished look.

  “Yes? Oh, Hi, Mr.…Whelan, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Something on Tony?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Whelan nodded. “Uh, yeah. I did find him.”