Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  “Paulie?”

  “Come on in, Mick.”

  “I called first…”

  “I know. She told me.”

  “I think she thinks I’m some kinda weirdo.”

  “No. She thinks I’m some kinda weirdo. Come on in and sit down.”

  Mick Byrne closed the door behind him and crossed the room with his stiff-legged walk.

  Whelan indicated the leg with a nod. “That recent? Or a souvenir from Nam?”

  “Nam. Most of my kneecap is over there.” He looked around the office. “How come it’s so dark here? Were you getting ready to leave, Paul?”

  “No. I was working myself into a catatonic state.” Whelan got up and opened the shades and both windows onto Lawrence.

  “Nice view,” Mick said.

  “I always wanted an office with the Aragon Ballroom in the background.” He waited for Mick to sit. “I can offer you a cup of water from my top-of-the-line water cooler. I just had that installed.”

  “No thanks.” Mick eyed the cooler. “There been days, though, when I woulda jumped through hoops for a cup of water. You never think what a big deal a cold glass of water is till you’re out on the street and it’s ninety-five and you can’t have one.” Mickey stared at the cooler for a moment. Then he looked back at Whelan. “I’m really sorry about last night.”

  “It’s all right. I wasn’t…I didn’t know what was going on, and now I do. You were trying to protect the kid, I was trying to find him. It’s okay, Mick. And I think you saved my bacon with the old man. He’s bad, isn’t he?”

  Mickey nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. People look at him and see an old guy pushing a broom but they don’t know.”

  “How are you, Mick?”

  “I’m alive and that’s gotta count for something.” Mickey rubbed his palms against his knees. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Start with you, maybe. I thought you were dead.”

  “A lot of people thought I was dead. I let ’em think that. Seemed pretty simple to me: I figured I’d be dead soon enough. Can I smoke here?”

  “You can if you give me one. I’m out.”

  Mickey Byrne slid a pinched pack of cigarettes across the desk. They each lit up and Whelan waited, discreetly watching Mick. His cheeks showed red webbing of broken blood vessels, his lips appeared to be chapped and his light brown hair was a tangle.

  “Anyhow, I was real sick and I was drinking and getting sicker. I was in pretty bad shape when I got back, Paulie.”

  “I don’t know anybody that was improved by Nam.”

  “Yeah, but I was really messed up. My head, Paulie…And I was drinking all the time. That’s why I didn’t come back here to stay. I came back to see Rory a couple times but I didn’t let anybody know. I didn’t want people to see me. For a while I thought I was going to be all right. I was in Seattle for a little while, then I moved. I had a little place—”

  “Where was this? Portland?”

  “Yeah. I had a little furnished place. Then I lost that and I got a room but it was just a matter of time before I was on the street. People were sending me letters, and I just stopped answering them. I think I stopped opening them.”

  “I sent you one,” Whelan said.

  “You did?” He looked surprised and gratified. “Thanks, Paul.”

  “I heard you were in the hospital.”

  Mickey leaned forward with a white-knuckle grip on the seat of the chair. “I was in a bunch of ’em, all kinds. You know, I was in a mental hospital for a while, too.”

  “No,” Whelan said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “When I wasn’t in a hospital I was living on the street, more or less. If I had a few bucks I got a flop for the night but…you know how it is, Paulie, it’s the same here.” He indicated Lawrence Avenue with a nod toward the window. “That was real bad. You try to stay drunk enough so’s you’re not, you know, aware of how fucked up your life is but you can’t get enough money to be wasted all the time. And then…man, it’s so bad.”

  “How’d you get out of it?”

  Mickey gave him a surprised look, then smiled and showed smoker’s teeth. “What makes you think I am?”

  “You are. You’re not drinking anymore. I can tell, I know about that. I watched your hands when you took out the cigarette and when you lit up, you don’t shake at all. You’ve got better hands than I do. Your eyes are clear and your color’s coming back. You made it out, Mick.”

  Mickey made a little jerky nod of his head as though fighting his own eagerness. “Maybe. Maybe. I ran into a guy while I was on the street, outreach worker at a shelter, a former boozer. He caught me when I was half sober and talked to me about a program. One day a couple weeks later I kinda crawled into this place and they took me in. Eight weeks later I was earning my keep again. After four months I had a room of my own and some clothes and, you know, odds and ends that you need to live. And I was sober. I couldn’t find a fulltime job but I put a couple part-time things together: I worked a couple days a week with a house painter and I worked in the kitchen of a restaurant—you know, a place that’s open like twenty hours a day, soda fountain, a Greek runs it. Just like here.”

  Whelan laughed. “They’re everywhere, Mick.”

  Mickey nodded. “I started washing dishes and then I got to cook once in a while when the head Greek was busy.” He gave Whelan an apologetic look. “I’m a cook, Paulie. And I found out I liked it. So I was feeling okay about things. Then Rory got killed.” He looked past Whelan and took a long, tired sigh, and it was a while before he spoke again. “When I came back to visit him, Paul, he was in with these fucking people already. I told him they were trouble but he insisted he was okay, said he wasn’t into any kind of shit, he just did a few things here and there for them. Had money in his pocket, thought he was hot shit. I don’t even know how he met any of them or really what he did with them. I just know he got in with the wrong people and they killed him. I don’t know what he did, even, that they killed him.”

  “Nothing. The guy he worked for got somebody sent up, and this old killer came looking for him, and Rory was caught in the middle of it. I’m sorry about him, Mick.”

  “He was never smart, Paulie. Never really figured out what to do with himself. But he was good people.” Mickey’s eyes moistened and he looked away with a jerky motion. He sat half turned in the chair with his skinny legs crossed and looked to Whelan like a little lost boy. When he’d taken a couple of hungry puffs at his cigarette he turned back to face Whelan. “He said most of this was cars, what they did. Is that what you heard?”

  Whelan thought for a moment. Sometimes the details did no good at all, partial truth was good enough. He nodded. “Yeah, they had a chop shop for a while and operated out of a garage. It was small time, Mick.”

  “That’s how it seemed to me.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mick. Tell me about the kid, Tony.”

  He shrugged. “It happened by accident. Last time I came back to see Rory, he had the kid with him, the kid was just staying there for a few weeks, he didn’t have a place and Rory didn’t like being alone. Rory took him in, I guess. He’s a good kid. Anyhow, when I found out about Rory I came back. I stayed with Minh.”

  “That’s his name, the old guy that cleaned my clock?”

  Mickey grinned. “Yeah, Dao Minh Tri. Major Tri of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and if they’d all been like him, Paulie, they wouldn’t have needed us. I knew I was welcome at Minh’s.”

  “Why? You know him in-country? You met him there?”

  “Better than that. I knew his kid. His son was a lieutenant and I saved his ass in a firefight. Minh thinks I’m the greatest thing since rice. The kid has a little restaurant in Seattle. When I was living there he threw a little work my way and he gave me the old man’s address here, said to see him if I ever came to town and needed anything. Well, that’s what I did. Didn’t mean to get Minh involved in anything but he was going to the wall with me if it came down to
that.

  “Anyhow, I started asking around and looking around for these people and I ran into the kid. He’d been staying with that other kid, Marty, and people started getting killed, so he went under. I took him back to Minh’s place with me. For the last month, we’ve been one big happy Vietnamese family, me, the kid, Minh and his wife, his daughter and her husband and two kids. Everybody in five rooms.” Mick laughed, a boy’s high-pitched laugh that Whelan hadn’t heard in many years.

  “They probably think their place is too big.”

  Mickey nodded but his attention seemed to be on something else. “They said you needed to see me, Paul. What did you want to talk about?”

  “At the time, I wasn’t sure. Now I just want to tell you it’s over.”

  “That guy Whitey? I don’t want just him, Paulie, I want—”

  “Jimmy Lee. He’s dead, Mick, they’re all dead.”

  “Who killed him, this Jimmy Lee asshole?”

  “Another guy he pissed off. He made lots of enemies, Mick, and now he’s dead.” He watched as his friend turned this over in his mind, allowed him a moment, then asked, “What were you going to do, Mick?”

  “I was gonna make that fucker pay.”

  “How?”

  “Who knows,” he said, and Whelan didn’t push it.

  “I’ve had a bad morning. Bad couple of days, actually. I even missed lunch, which is almost unheard of for me. Come on, we’ll go eat—I’ve got a restaurant for you, Mick, that’ll change all your ideas about food service, ambience, hygiene, you name it. You can give me your professional opinion.”

  Mick shifted in his chair. “I’m a little short.”

  “Come on, I get nervous when I eat alone.”

  Whelan pushed open the door to the House of Zeus just as a skinny gray-haired man launched a basket of fries at Rashid’s head. The Iranian ducked and the fries went sailing through the air like potato shrapnel. Rashid laughed delightedly and then feigned injury. He cupped one hand over his eye and yelled.

  “Oh, oh, I have eye injury from french fry. Where is lawyer?”

  The gray-haired man turned and stalked out, muttering to himself. Still grinning, Rashid bent down and began picking fries off the floor. When the basket was filled again, he dumped it into the bin where the new fries sat under a heat lamp. He paused when he saw Whelan. He flashed all his many teeth and called out “Hello, Mister Detective Whelan.” To Mick, he added, “Hello, Detective Whelan’s friend.”

  “Hello, Rashid. How’s your eye?”

  “Oh, okay, no problem.”

  Whelan turned to Mick, who was watching him with an expectant look. “Welcome to the House of Zeus. What would you like?”

  “Anything but fries,” Mick said.

  As they ate—Mick had let Whelan order, and the little table was covered with half a dozen baskets, more than any two people could eat but a generous sampling of the sublime and the bizarre—Whelan tossed questions out and let Mick field them as he chose. He wanted to hear it all, wanted to know where this man had spent all the wasted years and how it had been for him but he knew better than to force it out. There were things no one need know about another person, things a person should never have to divulge, private shame and missteps that need never see the light once a person had learned to deal with them, and he restrained his impulses to pry and prod.

  When Mick fell silent Whelan got them each a cup of Rashid’s acrid coffee. For a few moments they listened to a running argument in Farsi and English between Rashid and Gus about a case of frozen beef that had apparently been left out overnight. At one point, Gus punctuated an opinion by grabbing a knife and Rashid took the heavy fire extinguisher off the wall.

  Mick watched them and shook his head. “You eat here all the time?”

  “Nobody could eat here all the time.”

  “I feel like I’m in Oz or someplace.” Mickey lit a smoke and smiled at Whelan. “All afternoon I been spilling my guts and I don’t know a thing about Paul Whelan. So what’s the story, Paulie?”

  “You know what I do for a living and where I go for lunch. What else do you want?”

  “I also know you’re the same old Paul Whelan and that’s good. But how come you’re not married? Seems like you’d do okay married.”

  “I’m kind of stubborn. Slow to change.”

  “That thing with Liz, lasted all those years—that didn’t work out?”

  “Nope.”

  “And now? You got somebody you’re seeing?”

  “Yeah, I do. Nice lady, too. At present, I think I’m testing her patience.”

  “On purpose?”

  “No. I think I’m nervous about her.”

  “Don’t screw it up, Paulie.”

  “Right.”

  Mickey leaned back. “I oughtta go, Paul. I actually want to get back to Portland. I got a life there. It’s nothing fancy but there’s people there who know what I’m like now that I’m not drinking…”

  “You get away from people for a while, you forget that they find a lot of reasons to like you.”

  Mick looked embarrassed. “Yeah, I guess so. And I keep thinking how I’d like to run into some of the folks that saw me when I was goin’ under, I want ’em to see me now that I…you know, now that I’ve got it together again.”

  “I’m glad I finally got to sit down with you, Mick. And I’m also glad…” and Whelan found that he didn’t know how to say any more.

  “That I’m not living out of garbage cans? Yeah, me too.”

  “No. That you’re okay. Listen,” he said, and then Mick stopped him with an upraised palm.

  “No, man, you’re not going to give me money, are you? You gonna insult me now? Don’t do that, Paulie.”

  “You’d do it to me. I’d be a little pissed, too, maybe, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Fine, so you offered and that’s enough. I don’t need handouts now. I need to get back home and get back to work in my kitchen.”

  “All right, Mick.”

  Outside, the day was giving hints of high summer to come. They stood shuffling from one foot to the other and puffing at cigarettes and then Mick tossed his into the street.

  “What about the kid, Mick?”

  “He can come with me. Or he can stay with Marty and his brother. They’re pretty tight, and Marty—he’s a good kid, Paul, he’s a lot more, you know, solid than he seems.”

  “Yeah, he is. I underestimated him. But living with them…I mean, if that’s what Tony wants…but Marty’s brother’s a loser, Mick. Tell you what, if he’ll do it, I’d like a chance to talk to him alone. See if he’ll go for that. If not, have him get in touch with Mrs. Pritchett and I’ll sit down with the two of them. I think I can put him in touch with people down south, his mother’s people.”

  “Indian people? Yeah?”

  “Choctaw people, his mother’s tribe. It’ll be his choice but he needs to know all his options. And whether he’ll talk to me or not, he ought to call Mrs. Pritchett. I figure the lady who hired me and got me into all this has a right to see him one more time.”

  “Must be a nice lady,” Mick said.

  After another moment of silence, Whelan said, “I’m glad it never got down to you doing something crazy, Mick.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “What were you gonna do?”

  Mickey shrugged and looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. Maybe break his arms for him. Maybe club him some night when he was coming out of a saloon, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have a gun, or anything like that.”

  “No, man, I never had nothing to do with guns.” A look of amusement came into Mickey Byrne’s eyes and a slow grin appeared. “You didn’t know about that, though, right? How could you? No, Paulie, I never had a gun over there and I don’t have one over here. I told anybody who’d listen that I wasn’t gonna shoot anything. I let ’em make me a medic.”

  “A medic.”

  “Yeah, a medic. That’s what I was, a medic. Like y
ou, Paulie. Like Paul Whelan, like my friend Paul Whelan.” He stuck out his hand and Whelan ignored it, grabbing him in a bearhug. He could feel the ridge of Mick’s spine, the points of his thin shoulders through the cloth of his jacket. He smelled of old cotton and cigarette smoke. Whelan hugged him and patted him on the back and when they finally freed one another Mickey gave him one final shrug and said, “See you, Paulie.”

  “Listen to me, Mick. If I don’t get a call or a note or a card, I’m coming out to find you. And that’s one thing I can do. I find people.”

  Mickey Byrne nodded and gave him one last final wave and then was walking north on Broadway toward Argyle Street. He moved fast on his stiff leg, like a man accustomed to covering long distances on foot, and Whelan stood there and watched till he could no longer make him out in the distance.

  They had to page Mrs. Pritchett for him at the hospital and she sounded just this side of annoyed when she picked up the phone.

  “This is Evangeline Pritchett,” the voice said. It wasn’t her home voice but he believed it was just the voice that would make a wardful of nurses and aides and orderlies jump when it was time for them to jump.

  “Paul Whelan, Mrs. Pritchett. Sorry to bother you at work, but I thought—”

  “Mr. Whelan, oh, I’m glad to hear from you. Have you found anything about Tony?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is he alive, sir?” The voice dropped down another notch, tougher, ready to deal with things.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Oh, thank the Lord. Where is he—or can you tell me that?”

  “Right now, he’s staying with some people a little north of your place. Nice people, but it’s only temporary.”

  “And he’s all right?”

  “Physically he’s fine. Who knows about a kid’s mind?”

  “Oh, this is wonderful. You’re a smart man, Mr. Whelan. I need to pay you what I owe you, sir.”

  “We can talk about that later. I want to talk to a couple of people about him, and then I think we should meet and discuss the boy. I’m hoping I can get him to come in to see me. We can go over the options he has available, the three of us. If he doesn’t come in, well, maybe he’ll at least get in touch with you.”