The old man nodded. “You got a name or did your people just send you out on the street?”
“Paul Whelan.”
“I’m Tom Cheney.”
“Pleased to meet you, Tom. And I like your place. I really do. It’s better than mine.”
“Well, now, young men don’t usually have the time nor the inclination for housekeeping, and I lived with a pretty fair housekeeper for thirty-eight years, my Betty.”
“You’ve got a twang, Tom.”
Tom Cheney shook his head. “You talk funny. I speak the king’s English. At least, the way I was taught in school.”
“Where was school?”
“Greybull, Wyoming.” He smiled.
“What’s a fellow from Greybull, Wyoming, doing in Chicago?”
Cheney shrugged. “In the thirties, everybody was movin’ around. People’d go all across the country to find work. I came here, made some money, went back home and got married. Wasn’t much for me out there except cowboyin’ so I come back here, worked in the stockyards and for the railroad, made me some money. Sent a lot back home to my folks and Betty’s dad and my brother. He’s still there. Earl.”
“You never see him?”
“Haven’t had the money to go back, not since my father’s funeral. Nineteen sixty, that was.” Tom Cheney’s attention drifted for a moment, and Whelan wondered if he was thinking of the great windswept vistas of Wyoming and the irony of living his last years in such a place.
“So, what did you want to know?”
The question startled Whelan, and he shifted on the sofa. “This is gonna sound odd, but I’d like to know just what you told the cops. Especially the fat one.”
“The one with the crewcut? That one?” Cheney gave him a little smile. “Now he’s something, that one. Smiled and called me ‘sir’ like they do but he’s about as patient as a moose in rut. Kept that smile on his face like it was plastered there.” Tom Cheney leaned forward and looked Whelan in the eye.
“Now, why do you want to know what I told him?”
“I think you gave him a suspect. Whether you meant to or not. And…I’m not sure—I just don’t know what to make of him.”
“You think he’s a bad cop?”
“No, not really. I’m just not sure how seriously he’s gonna take all this. He’s a strange one, and I think he’s got a hard-on for me and I’m not sure it’s going to help him see this thing clearly. I’ve got a better chance to find something than he does.”
“Why, ’cause you’re smarter?”
“No, he’s smarter than he looks. A lot smarter.”
“Be hard not to be smarter than he looks.”
“Yeah. But he’s just too much of a hard case. He’ll scare off more information than he’ll collect. So. What do you think, Tom? You want to trust me with what you told him? Tell you what, once you tell me what you’ve told him, I’ll be happy. I’ll have exactly what he has and he can’t do anything about it. And if you don’t trust me, you can call him and tell him. And he’ll be at my door in five minutes.”
Cheney rubbed his hands on his pants and nodded. “This is pretty interesting, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“What in the world was your friend doin’ down here?”
“Oh, Jeez. He was…things weren’t going real well for him and he was trying to start over. He was going to write a book, had this idea to write a book about the streets up here. He’d been talking to some of these guys that live around here, in particular to an old guy named Sharkey, who he thought had a ‘real story.’ He thought this guy was on the run. Ring any bells?”
Tom Cheney pursed his lips. “Nope. I don’t know nobody out there, Whelan. Only people I know is people who live in houses. I ain’t no gentry but I don’t have much call to talk to somebody that lives in an alley.”
“I can understand that.”
“I don’t know this Sharkey. Same name as the fighter, huh?”
“Same name.”
“Almost beat Dempsey, you know.”
“Read about it. Thought he was getting hit low and complained to the referee while the fight was still in progress and Dempsey cold-cocked him.”
Tom Cheney nodded and sighed. “I’ll tell you what I told that big one. And it ain’t much. You’re gonna think you wasted your time. I heard something that night. Heard somebody talkin’. Somebody angry or scared or something. Two voices, I guess. And I heard noises like people fighting, and I heard a garbage can go over. And I went to my window there and I saw…two men. One of ’em was down too close to the wall for me to see clear but the other one was over near the, you know, the entrance to the alley.”
“Near Leland?”
“Yep. And he was close to the streetlight, so’s I saw him clear. I saw him real clear. He was young, with kinda long hair, red, it looked to be, and he was real skinny.”
Whelan thought for a moment, excitement mixed with disappointment. No description of the man beneath the window, but this other man, the young one, fit no description he’d heard so far and he realized he’d already made his first mistake, that of anticipating what a witness would say.
“The man beneath the window—was he doing anything you could see?”
Tom Cheney looked down for a moment, rubbed his hands on the tops of his legs again, then looked up at Whelan.
“He was goin’ through the pockets, I think. Couldn’t say for sure.”
A faceless man going through the pockets of the dead Artie Shears. He felt sick, chilled. For a moment he could say nothing. Finally he took a deep breath.
“But you couldn’t tell anything about him.”
“Nope. And I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. And the other guy, the young one with red hair, what about him? What was he doing, exactly?”
“He was watching. He was kinda leanin’ forward, looking into the alley.”
Whelan thought for a moment. “You think they were together?”
“No. This young one, he took a step or two into the alley, then he froze, like. Then he started moving backwards, real fast, and then he took off runnin’.”
Whelan got up from the sofa.
“You gonna go?” Tom Cheney’s disappointment was obvious. “You don’t want a cup of coffee?”
Whelan was about to plead a heavy schedule but heard himself say, “Sure, I’ll take a cup of coffee. And here, for your trouble.” He took the twenty from his shirt pocket.
Cheney looked at the bill, waved it off and started for his little kitchen. “Shit, I don’t want that. I was only gonna take it if you turned out to be an asshole.”
Whelan laughed. “And I didn’t?”
“Not yet, anyways. How do you like your coffee?”
“Black.”
“Good, ’cause that’s how it’s coming.”
Seven
He walked back to the office and on a hunch called Jerry Kozel.
“Sergeant Kozel,” the voice droned, and Whelan laughed.
“Hey, sarge, now you sound like all the other desk sergeants. They send you to school for that?”
“Oh, hi, Paul. How you doing?” He didn’t sound interested.
“I’m okay, Jerry. Am I calling at a bad time?”
“No, no. No problem,” Jerry said but didn’t sound convinced.
“I won’t keep you,” he said, surprised at the reception. “I want to know if you can tell me anything about—”
“Al Bauman,” Jerry Kozel said, and now he laughed.
“You reading minds these days, or has he been asking about me?”
“You say something to piss him off?”
“Not that I know of, unless you count my existence, which seems to piss him off. What did he say?”
“He wanted to know, did I know you well, why did you quit the force, are you honest, did you ever take as a cop. Uh, let’s see, did you have anything going on the side, were you dangerous, ever take anybody out in the line of duty, were you a drink
er, ever gamble. Like that.”
“I’m flattered to be the object of his lust. We’re both interested in the same case.”
“Art Shears.”
“Yeah. And Detective Bauman’s got a hard-on about me. Can’t make up his mind whether I’m a suspect in his case or just meddling in it. What he’s sure of is that he doesn’t like me, and I can live with that. I don’t like him either. Is he a straight cop?”
“Oh, he’s straight all right. Don’t fuck with him, Paul. He’s bad, he really is. These other guys that run around playin’ John Wayne, they’re just pulling on their dicks, you remember how that is. But Bauman is just what he looks like. A tough fucker with not much of a sense of humor and no patience. Thinks he’s a one-man avenging army. He’s had five citations and been suspended once. Undue force.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. What about his partner, this Rooney?”
“The Odd Couple. Rooney’s a short-timer, wants to be home at his place in Wisconsin catching walleyes and Bauman wants to go to war. They don’t care for each other much.”
“Anybody who likes Bauman?”
“His ma did but she’s dead.”
“When he gets on a case, is it his custom to go a little bit crazy about it?”
Jerry Kozel laughed. “Yeah. He’s got his share of nicknames, but the one that tells it all is ‘C.C.’ Constant Cop. He don’t let go for nothing, Paul.”
“But he’s straight?”
“You mean is he on our side or the other side? He’s ours, far as I know. And Paul? You never talked to me. He asks you, you haven’t talked to me since last year.”
“Okay, Jerry. Thanks.”
J.B. showed him into the captain’s office. Captain Wallis was looking at what appeared to be a budget and laughing. Across the room, stuffing envelopes, Eunice laughed with him. Whelan wondered what their secret was. The captain looked at Whelan over the tops of his glasses. “You’re growing fond of us?”
“I’m growing dependent on you. More questions.”
“Have a seat. Coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’ve had about seventeen cups already. I won’t sleep again till Sunday.”
Whelan took the side chair and straddled it. He laid the picture of Gerry Agee on the captain’s desk. “Know this kid?”
The captain looked at the picture for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t. How about you, J.B.?” The guard paused at the door and came back. He looked at the picture for a second and shook his head.
“He live up here, he don’t look like that no more,” the guard added.
“Is this boy involved in your…problem?”
“No. This is something else. Family’s looking for him. He came here in the fall from a small town in Michigan and the city swallowed him.”
“Sorry. Wish we could help.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got another one. All I have here is a description and not a very complete one. Young guy, very thin, with long red hair.”
“That sounds like Billy.” The Captain wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Billy?”
“Billy the Kid,” J.B. said.
“Billy the Kid, huh? Is he the local desperado?”
The captain shrugged and looked at his papers for a moment, then looked up at Whelan. “He’s certainly one of the more volatile people around here. He’s wild and quick-tempered and very…youthful.”
The buzzer to the outer door sounded and J.B. left.
“Can you tell me something about this kid?” Whelan asked. “I take it…you know him pretty well. Is that what I’m picking up here?”
“He’s a sort of special case for me.”
“He’s your project. I’ve got one too. Kid named Wade Sanders.”
The captain raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I know Wade. I guess everybody knows Wade. Well, then you understand. The young ones are always sadder cases, it seems to me.”
“Does this Billy have a last name?”
“Not one that he’s telling. Most of the people he seems to associate with are older, so it was a short jump from Bill to Billy the Kid. He’s a very tough kid. He came to the center one night when he’d been in Chicago for six months or so and it had dawned on him that he was a man in free-fall. He’s from Missouri. Where, I don’t know. He came to see me and he was drunk and babbling and lonely, and sick to death of this city, and he sat there in his black T-shirt with his homemade tattoos and he cried his heart out to me.” Captain Wallis looked at Whelan for several seconds. He made a little gesture of helplessness with his hands and then let them drop. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Whelan, I’ve never been so moved to help anyone in my life. It’s not so much that he was helpless because every minister on earth has seen someone truly helpless. It’s more that he…he spends every waking hour acting a part, the tough, hardened street kid who’d just as soon crack your skull open as look at you, and it bears no resemblance whatever to the scared country boy within.”
“Who does he hang around with?”
“Oh, it varies. He has no particular set group of companions. My Lord, in a neighborhood of lost, lonely people, the poor boy doesn’t even have a circle that he fits into.” He gave Whelan a frank look. “And why, Mr. Whelan? Why are you looking for Billy? Do you think he might have killed your friend?”
“No. I think he saw it. I think he’s a witness. I have information that puts him there at the time of the killing, and I think he saw the whole thing. Which makes him the best lead I’ve got, and probably the best lead I’m going to get.”
“I see.” The captain appeared to be struggling with something. “When he has money, he takes a room at the Wilson Men’s Club Hotel.”
“So does Wade.”
“They may know each other, Mr. Whelan.” He looked away and shook his head. “I’ve done everything I can to keep Billy here, to get him into detox and get him into a stable environment, just to put a roof over his head. I’ve even hired him a couple of times, just to keep him where I could see him. But the idea I have, the one that recurs over and over again, is to get him drunk and put him on a Greyhound for that little town in Missouri. Any little town in Missouri, because that’s where he belongs. I know it’s not my role or my business, but that’s what I think.”
“Maybe he’ll turn out all right.”
The captain thought a moment and shook his head slowly. “No. He’s too explosive, too violence-prone. He thinks he has to fight to maintain his image. He’ll fight over anything. In a small town, it would just get him thrown in jail. Here, it would get him killed. He doesn’t even have Wade’s prospects.”
Whelan watched him for a moment. “You’re not exactly a typical Sal Army officer, are you?”
“So they keep telling me downtown. My supervisors are wonderful people but they have trouble figuring me out.” He smiled archly at Whelan. “And you had better be on your guard if you go looking for Billy, my friend. He’s a very hard young case and if he finds that you’re looking for him, he’s liable to let you find him. Don’t get into a street fight with Billy, Mr. Whelan. You don’t want that to happen to you.”
Whelan laughed. “I have every intention of avoiding violence, captain. But thanks for the advice.”
He got up to leave and Captain Wallis came around the desk. “Mr. Whelan, I take it you heard about Billy from someone else. May I assume the police are looking for him as well?”
“Yeah. They probably don’t have a name yet, but they have what I have. That a tall skinny redhead was there.”
Captain Wallis nodded slowly and looked resigned.
He blew off another hour and a half on the street. Doorways and alleys and vacant lots. Vacant stares, half-truths, outright lies and occasional hostility. Several of the men he questioned knew Hector and Sharkey but hadn’t seen them recently. The clerk at the Wilson Men’s Club Hotel knew Billy but said Billy hadn’t taken a room in weeks. A couple of older ones simply told Whelan whatever he wanted to hear. The high point of the afternoon came a l
ittle later.
His shirt clung to half a dozen places on his body and his feet burned, and he retreated into the cool darkness of a little Guatemalan restaurant on Wilson. The lone customer, he ordered carne asada and a chicken taco on the side. The carne asada was a little mountain of food, a dark spicy heap of carefully trimmed beef atop a hill of rice, and the taco came neatly wrapped in wax paper to hold it together and give the diner a fighting chance: there was a healthy portion of chicken inside, and lettuce and diced tomatoes and a few pieces of onion, but the crowning glory was the huge dollop of sour cream slathered from one end to the other. He took a bite and shut his eyes and moaned, and wondered how many Guatemalans died of heart disease. The hot sauce was an ordinary bottle of La Victoria but perfection would have made him suspicious.
He watched the street as he ate and was soon rewarded for his day’s labors. Bauman loomed into view, horse-blanket coat flung over one shoulder, and Whelan watched with delight as the detective questioned a pair of very drunk old men that Whelan had talked to earlier. They had lied shamelessly to Whelan and were now giving Bauman the same treatment. As he watched, Bauman went through a series of poses and gestures, and his body language bespoke volumes. He scratched his bullet-shaped head, waved his arms, poked the men with his fat fingers, shook his head and at one point put a hand over his eyes. Finally he asked a question and one of the derelicts pointed east, toward the lake, and the other pointed due west. Bauman stalked away fuming and Whelan laughed happily. The Guatemalan woman came out from the kitchen to ask if there was anything wrong with the food.
He killed time at his apartment, waiting for darkness. He had coffee, smoked a couple of cigarettes and noticed that the pack he’d bought that afternoon was almost gone. He couldn’t remember smoking that much and hoped he’d given away more cigarettes than he remembered. At nine he turned on the Cub game from Houston. Rick Reuschel was pitching and in three innings he registered six strikeouts. What the Astros were able to hit, they hit on the ground. Unfortunately, the Cub infield couldn’t catch any of it, and at the end of three, Reuschel had a one-hitter and the Astros had a 3-0 lead. At a few minutes to ten, he left and walked once more to the red-brick building where the Indian in the bar had told him Hector and Sharkey stayed. He passed the vacant lot at the east end of the block and drew stares from a group of young whites in T-shirts sharing a six-pack. They leaned against a pair of rusted cars with Rebel-flag decals on the bumpers. He took a quick look to see if any of them were the kids he’d had words with on the street earlier in the week but recognized no one.
Death in Uptown Page 13
