Death in Uptown

by Michael Raleigh

  “Oh, Paul. Didn’t mean to keep you waitin’.”

  “It’s okay, Charlie. How are you?” He extended a hand and they shook. Charlie was a thin old man who wore his white hair in a crewcut. The cataract had completely taken over his left eye now and Whelan wondered how long the right would last. Long-sleeve shirt, collar and cuffs frayed, and burn holes in his shirtfront. Charlie was one of a handful of old ones who could still speak the old Choctaw tongue. He smiled at Whelan and showed bad teeth.

  A young Indian in a red headband came to the bar, pool cue in hand, holding out a buck for change. He gave Whelan a slow look, then turned away, too polite to make his hostility obvious.

  Charlie took the dollar, made change, nodded to Whelan. “This fella’s a friend of mine, Warren.” The young Indian pursed his lips, nodded. He looked at Whelan.

  “Shoot a little eight ball?”

  “Not well enough to play with you, I bet.”

  The young Indian laughed and went off to the table in back.

  “He’s a pretty good boy,” Charlie said. “Just can’t see why whites want to drink here. So how you been, Paul?”

  “I get by.”

  “Still a detective?”

  “Sure.”

  “Runaways, still?”

  “Seems to be what I do. Right now I’m doing something else, though. For myself. You heard about that guy they found in the alley up there between Leland and Broadway?” Charlie nodded. “He was an old friend of mine. I’m trying to find people who can give me information about him. I don’t think the police are going to turn anything up.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “How about something cold first. And one for yourself.”

  “What kind?”

  “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  Charlie reached into the nearest cooler and came up with two cans of Dr. Pepper. He held them up and laughed.

  “Dr. Pepper, Charlie?”

  “I give it up, the booze. It was makin’ me sick to my gut, every day. Now I’m okay. Figure I can live a few more years this way.”

  “Good for you. It’s too early in the day for me, anyway. Dr. Pepper it is. Charlie, I’m looking for a guy named Sharkey, and a guy named Hector Green. Know ’em?”

  One of the Indians to Whelan’s right looked up and then away. Charlie opened his mouth and then closed it again.

  “Charlie, I’m just looking for Hector because of the other guy. My friend was talking to this Sharkey just a day or two before he was killed.”

  Charlie considered and nodded. He looked to the Indian closest to Whelan.

  “George? Can we help this fella out? He’s an old friend of mine. Got my nephew Alvin out of jail twice.”

  George looked at Whelan and nodded, then smiled shyly. “That Alvin sure was trouble. You a cop?”

  “Used to be. Now I’m a private investigator with a problem.”

  “Everybody got problems. Hector in any trouble?”

  “I think the trouble is the guy he’s with, for some reason.”

  He nodded. “There’s a building over on Sunnyside, had a fire there last winter. They boarded ’er up but there’s lots of folks stay there. Hector and them other ones, they stay there sometimes.”

  “Other ones?”

  “Sharkey and that Shinny that got killed.”

  “Oh. You know, there’s a lot of burnt-out buildings up that way, George.”

  “This one’s kinda red. Bout the same color as me.” He smiled. Whelan bought him a beer, had a cigarette with Charlie and drank some Dr. Pepper. When he got up to leave, he dropped a ten on the bar.

  “Get the boys a round, Charlie. Keep the rest.”

  He found the building with no trouble. It was one of three on the same block, one of scores in the neighborhood that had made “absentee landlord” a white-collar crime rather than a real estate term. There were three entrances leading to perhaps eighteen apartments. His work was simplified by the fact that two of the three sides of the building, entrances and windows, were totally boarded up, and in this heat no squatter would spend a night in an airless apartment. The main entrance had once had a glass door; now the pane was shattered. The boards from windows to two of its apartments bad been pried off. Whelan nodded to himself, muttered, “Shit” and clambered through the man-size hole in the glass door.

  The smells of squalor inside the hall were almost overpowering, the air heavy with the ammonia smell of urine. He moved quickly up the silent, airless staircase and stopped at the first-floor landing. A knock brought him nothing. He tried the knob and the door opened. Within, he found the skeleton of a human habitation. Bare, dirty walls, curling linoleum, broken windows, cracked plaster and peeling paint, all of it lead-based and toxic. A place that had not seen maintenance for years before its abandonment. The fire had gutted the rooms in the back, and the charcoal smell and odors of burned wood and cloth hung in the air. The living room seemed to have escaped the flames, and it was here that some wanderer had made a temporary home. Fast-food wrappers and bread crusts littered the floor, and an empty green wine bottle lay on its side in a corner. Whelan squatted down, staring at the primitive surroundings and trying to make them tell him something of their inhabitants. He touched an old hamburger bun: brittle and hard, days old. He poked around a bit longer and then gave up. He left and went across the hall to the opposite apartment. This time he didn’t bother to knock. The second apartment promised less than the other one. Fire had demolished the floor in all but one room, and the windows were still boarded up. Airless and dark, no one slept here.

  He went upstairs to the second floor, reached for a doorknob and froze when he heard a sound just inside the door. He waited a moment, then grabbed the doorknob, turned it and threw the door open.

  Movement in the room, someone moving away from the door. No time to think about it. He rushed in, turned the corner and found himself in a living room, facing a terrified woman in her seventies.

  “Oh, Jesus. I’m…I’m sorry. I was looking for somebody.”

  She stared at him in open-mouthed terror made more pitiful by the fact that she wore glasses. One lens was gone, giving her a wall eyed appearance. She was sun-browned and filthy and couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds. The hem of her skirt was torn and hung down in back to her shoes, and the black sweater she’d draped across her shoulders like a shawl was full of holes and festooned with loose threads. She seemed to be clutching a bag of some sort to her breast.

  “I’m sorry, lady. Ma’am. I won’t hurt you. I was just looking for a man named Sharkey. Do you know Sharkey?”

  Without realizing it, he took several steps toward her and the little woman retreated to the farthest corner of the room. The air was heavy with her stench and her fear and he wanted to be gone. Then he caught himself and stooped down, resting on his haunches, and lit a cigarette. Made thus smaller, he gave her breathing room and she seemed to relax a bit.

  “Cigarette?”

  She shook her head. She stared at him, breathing noisily through her mouth.

  “I know. Shitty habit. I’m really sorry I bothered you. I’m leaving.” He put three singles on the floor and got up. “Something for your trouble.” When he was at the door, she spoke. He was surprised at the loudness of her voice.

  “Downstairs. He stays downstairs, with that dark man. But I ain’t seen ’em. I think they’re gone. Thanks for the money.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He took the stairs two at a time and when he got down to the ground floor he burst outside and inhaled deeply. It was ninety-four, the air was suffused with the dirt and dust and exhaust fumes and acrid smells of a neighborhood coming undone, and to Whelan it was perfume.

  He had lunch at the Subway Donut Shop, a little grease and saturated fats for his pains: three eggs over easy, side of bacon, toast and hash-browns. He ate at the counter and watched the young Greek work his grill. The Greek would walk away for a few moments, talk to a customer withou
t looking at the food on the grill, then return to flip ham steaks, burgers, eggs, bacon, grilled cheese sandwiches and cube steaks, all of them done perfectly on one side. He was good, all right, though not the best. The best was an old black man named Leon, who ran a grill at sixty-third and Woodlawn and could do anything this Greek kid could do and more, cutting the potatoes as they were ordered, standing over his grill and slicing paper-thin disks of potato onto the grill with an evil-looking knife and singing to his radio as he worked.

  A couple of men nursing coffee in the coolness of the shop were men he’d questioned earlier. One nodded to him, the other looked away. There was no sign of Woodrow. He ate, dawdled over his coffee, had a smoke and waited to see if anyone he knew would come in. Eventually he grew restless and left.

  He didn’t really consider it a sixth sense but something close: he knew when someone was waiting for him upstairs in his office. Perhaps it was the rarity of the event, or perhaps he sensed some subtle change in his environment, but he could tell as he came up the stairs, he could always tell. In this case, there wasn’t much of a mystery, and the change was in the air and it wasn’t subtle. It was Right Guard, oceans of it, on a fat sweaty body.

  Bauman was inside the office. His beefy form was jammed into the guest’s chair and he had one foot on Whelan’s desk.

  “Oh, good. Company. You pick my lock, detective?”

  Bauman shrugged. Slowly he turned in the chair. He raised an eyebrow, smiled slightly and sank back, folding his arms across his chest. Whelan walked past Bauman and sat down behind his desk.

  He stared at Bauman and said nothing. Bauman stared back, a slight smirk on his face. He was dripping sweat. Whelan was conscious of the trains pulling into and out of the el station half a block away.

  Bauman smiled and Whelan raised his eyebrows in question.

  “What, you don’t feel like talking, Whelan?”

  “It’s my office. You talk. I’ll listen politely.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk. Anything you wanta tell me?”

  “Nope. Where’s Rooney?”

  Whelan thought he saw Bauman’s lip curl at the name.

  “Forget Rooney.”

  “Why?”

  “Rooney’s an old lady. He’s got a cold. Summer cold, he says. He’s six—no, five months away from retirement.”

  “And what can I do for you, detective?”

  “Like I said. You can talk to me. I’m lonely.”

  “It’s your deodorant.”

  “Shut up about my deodorant. Least I use one. Come on, Whelan. Let’s talk.”

  “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want to have anything to do with a private investigator, remember? You guys said my help wasn’t needed.”

  “Yeah, I did. And you didn’t listen.” Bauman leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. “You been a real busy guy.”

  “You know what they say, Bauman. You want something done, you have to do it yourself.”

  “What, you think we’re not good at our jobs?” Bauman was smiling.

  Whelan leaned forward now. “I don’t know what to think, pal. He’s been dead almost a week. We put him in the ground this morning, Bauman, and you guys don’t have any suspects.”

  Bauman’s face flushed and he straightened up. “No, huh? We don’t have suspects? Listen, Whelan. You know something? You give me a pain in my ass. I can’t figure out what it is you do for a living. I don’t like your stinkin’ office, I don’t like the way you talk, I don’t like the way you look at me. Look how you dress, you look like a goddamn Filipino.”

  “And I’m wild about your clothes, Bauman. I could hear your jacket a block away. I got a rug on my kitchen floor with that same pattern.”

  Whelan thought he saw the trace of a smile on Bauman’s face.

  “Where do you get shirts like that, Whelan? I mean, I see the Mexicans and P.R.’s wearin’ them but I wouldn’t know where to find one.”

  “Wouldn’t find one your size, Bauman. There aren’t any three hundred pound Mexicans.”

  Any trace, any chance of the smile faded. Bauman nodded. “Yeah, I’m carryin’ a few extra pounds, but I can still do what I got to do, Whelan.” He shrugged and forced a smile. “But I didn’t come here to put the arm on you.”

  “Could have fooled me. Why did you come here?”

  “To find out why you think you have to nose around up here, do my job for me. Makes me curious, Whelan.”

  “I told you. I get the impression nothing’s going to happen.”

  Bauman inclined his head and stuck his tongue into his cheek. “I don’t think that’s it, Whelan. I think you know we’re lookin’. Maybe not the way you’d like us to but we’re doin’ it. I think you got some other reason for wantin’ to have your nose in this, that’s what I think.”

  “I think ten years from now, you still won’t have a suspect.”

  “No, huh?” Malice in the small gray eyes now. Bauman nodded, sat back, crossed his legs and showed a hairy ankle above blue socks. “Well, now. Now, why’s that? ’Cause I’m, what? Fat and stupid like all the other cops, right? No suspects. Well, my friend, you’re wrong there, you know that?” He feigned a friendly smile and pointed a fat finger at Whelan. There was almost palpable tension in him and Whelan wondered if Bauman was about to come over the desk at him. He found himself planning his strategy: move to his left, hook to the body, uppercut to the head. No, better yet, hit him with the ashtray and run like hell. It might work. He relaxed when Bauman let out a gust of air and held up two fingers.

  “Two, babe. I got two.”

  “Two? I’m impressed. Who—” and the identity of the first hit him. “Oh, yeah, of course. That’s why you’re here. It’s why you came the first time.”

  Bauman shrugged. “Makes sense to me. Your business card, you knew the guy, nobody knows what kinda deal the two of you had going. The guy’s wife said you two were good buddies, you tell me you didn’t see him all that much. Then you go around asking questions about this guy your friend was talking to and—I assume—asking about me, about who I was looking for. How am I doin’ so far, Whelan?”

  “Not bad at all. It makes a kind of sense. Except—well, you don’t know me, so I suppose it fits better to you than it does to me. If you knew me, you’d know…I’m not what you’d call a violent person.”

  “You were a police officer. We’re all supposed to be violent.” Bauman looked at him coldly for a moment, then waved a hand at him. “Aw, we know about you, Whelan. And I don’t really think you whacked your pal or this other poor fucker we found. Shinny. You didn’t know about Shinny when you started asking around. Which puts you out of it. And you helped me out a little. I didn’t know I was looking for Sharkey till you started asking people about him. I used to know Shinny but I didn’t know he was runnin’ around with these other two lately”

  “Is that when you saw the connection?”

  Bauman smiled and shook his head slowly. “I look at two stiffs a week apart, both of ’em killed the same way, I don’t need any help makin’ connections.”

  “Shinny was stabbed, I thought.”

  “Stabbed after somebody beat ’im to death.”

  “Would Sharkey be capable of that?”

  “Naw. Jeez, sounds to me like he’s one of those guys, he’s afraid of the dark, for Chrissakes.”

  “Hector, then?”

  “The Indian guy?” He looked up at the ceiling, frowned, apparently at the cobwebs dangling from the light fixture. “Swell place, Whelan.” He grinned.“No, I don’t think so. He’s a pretty good size boy, this Hector, but he’s just a big, easygoing guy, likes his wine, likes Sharkey, don’t let nobody get near Sharkey. But he wouldn’t kill nobody, from what I know.”

  “What do you know? How do you know enough about these guys to—”

  Bauman looked away. “I just know, is all. I know some of ’em. I spent a little time up here. I seen you before, Whelan.” He made a pistol of his fingers and pointed it at Whelan. “I s
een you around here. You like these guys.”

  “I know some of them from the old days.”

  “When you were a cop.”

  “Right.”

  Bauman waved his arm, taking in the office. “Why would you quit for this? To do this stuff? I mean, didn’t you like being a cop?” Whelan almost laughed at the genuine puzzlement in Bauman’s face.

  “Sometimes. But it’s not for everybody.”

  “You lose your nerve? That happens to some guys.”

  “I just got tired of it.”

  Bauman shook his head. “I know lotsa guys leave the force but they usually do it for money. You did it—what, for this?”

  “Not exactly. When I quit I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing. I just kind of fell into this. But I like it.”

  “C’mon, Whelan, you can’t be making anything at this.”

  “I make enough. I don’t have a lot of overhead.” He laughed and Bauman smiled. “I also don’t pay rent or a mortgage. I’ve got a house. And I make pretty regular money doing odds and ends for a couple of lawyers.”

  Bauman made a grunting sound. “I hate lawyers.”

  “I’m not wild about some of them but they’re overpaid and sometimes they send some of it my way.”

  Bauman didn’t answer. He looked around the room and appeared to be thinking of something else.

  “So what do you really want, detective? I’m not a suspect anymore, right?”

  “You? Nah. You’re one of those guys—you probably voted for McGovern, right?”

  “You betcha.”

  “That’s what I figured. No, you’re no killer. I just want to know what you know. Anything you want to tell me?”

  “I don’t know anything. I know I’m looking for a guy named Sharkey because Art Shears was talking to him, trying to get him to open up about his past for some reason.”

  “His past.” Bauman chewed on his lip. “He say anything about Sharkey’s past?”

  “He told me Sharkey was from here originally, and he thought Sharkey was on the run from something.”