Death in Uptown

by Michael Raleigh

  “Okay.” They said goodnight and he left her room.

  Outside, the dirty air of downtown Chicago, the air of a million exhaust pipes and factories and barbecues was doing battle with the cool breeze from the lake, and it seemed more like spring than summer. Michigan Avenue was seething with Saturday-night life and traffic, and he told himself that there were times when this was the greatest of towns, particularly when you were under the influence of a woman, any woman.

  Nine

  He woke early Sunday and drove out to St. Joseph’s Cemetery. He spent a few minutes at the graves of his parents, pulling up a couple of weeds that had sprung up between the small gray headstones. He picked up a few pieces of paper that the wind had strewn in the grass covering the graves, stood in the hot sun for a moment, then nodded at each headstone and left.

  He had a sudden impulse to visit Artie’s grave, then thought better of it. A new grave was a desolate sight, and somehow he didn’t want to visit the grave till he’d accomplished something in this investigation. Nothing to report yet, he thought.

  On the way back he listened to jazz and thought about Jean Agee, going over every moment of the previous evening to assure himself that it had happened. He remembered her kissing him and shook his head. What is happening here, exactly? And then he remembered the time long ago when he’d had this same excitement, with Liz, and he grew uncomfortable.

  He spent an hour roaming the neighborhood on foot and turned up nothing. In the afternoon, he went for a long drive and knew he was trying to keep himself busy so he wouldn’t call her. He thought again about the difference in their ages and told himself he was going off the deep end.

  So what? What else is there in my life?

  It was almost three when he got back home, and he called her almost immediately. There was no answer, and when the switchboard operator asked him if there was a message, he ran out of nerve. He mumbled thanks and hung up, wondering where she was. More than that, he wondered if she was thinking about him.

  He watched a couple of innings of the Cubs game and turned it off when they were down five runs.

  At five-thirty he took the car out again, cruised the streets without getting out of the car and finally decided to have dinner. As he drove west on Wilson he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a gray Caprice fading back into traffic a block behind him.

  “Aw, give me a break, Bauman. Jesus, on Sunday?”

  He went to Cho Sun Ok on Lincoln, sighed when the air conditioning hit him and was pleased to see a dozen or so Korean faces look up from their food as he entered. As usual, he would be the only Caucasian in the place.

  The waitress, a tall, elegant woman, led him to a small side table and handed him a menu. He sank back and allowed himself the enjoyment of watching Koreans eat. Some of the tables were shared by families, others by groups of young men in dark suits, but at each table was an explosion of food, a riot of colors and smells: plates of dark, spicy bulgogi, platters of condiments and hot kimchee, huge bowls of Korean soups he’d never tried, clear liquid surrounding pyramids of Korean noodles and vegetables. At the tables of the young men, little bottles of Korean vodka seemed to evaporate before his eyes. A tall, dignified-looking Korean man of middle age entered and was greeted effusively by the owner, who emerged, panting and sweating, from the kitchen. After exchanging greetings and, apparently, a few howlers in Korean, the owner accepted a small key from the man, opened one of the beautiful little wooden liquor cabinets behind the counter and took out a bottle of Chivas. In almost every one of the locked compartments was a bottle of good scotch, and below each one, a nameplate indicating whose scotch it was.

  For openers he had the fried dumplings called Mandoo and sampled each of the condiments the waitress brought him, particularly the turnips soaked in vinegar and peppers, and the kimchee, hot and almost red from the peppers that the cabbage had been marinated with. Then, mouth still afire from the kimchee, he attacked his main course, a large steel bowl of bibim bop, his favorite and, for his money, one of the most bizarre dishes ever invented—four or five kinds of vegetables, including shoots, sprouts and cucumbers along with a garnish of carrot and several types of plant life he had yet to identify—and a good helping of bulgogi, the succulently spicy broiled beef. To one side of the bowl was a small, unprepossessing dollop of the bright red “barbecue” sauce that would breathe fire and personality into the otherwise harmless mixture, and atop it all, like someone’s idea of a joke, was a fried egg. He heaped steamed rice onto his plate, mixed the ingredients in the bowl so that egg and sauce mingled and permeated the other elements, and spooned it all onto his plate. Then he took a deep breath and fell to it. Strange-looking or not, it was a wonder, and with its garlic and hot peppers compounding the odors from the kimchee, it was a meal guaranteed to stop one’s social life in its tracks. It was not for nothing that a patron in a Korean restaurant was usually presented with chewing gum when the bill was brought. Whelan worked his chopsticks into the mound of food.

  I am a Korean at heart.

  He went home with a fire in the roof of his mouth and a gentle contented rumbling in his stomach, and his breath would have withered the flowers in Mrs. Cuelho’s garden. He opened his door, gasped at the stagnant heat in his place, shut the door behind him and then stopped dead at the entrance to the living room.

  Someone had been here. He stood still for a moment, making no sound, and then turned on the overhead light. He went quickly into the dining room and did the same there. At the door to his darkened bedroom he paused, then reached around the doorjamb and flicked on his light. He shook his head: it was nothing he could see or even explain, but he knew someone had been in his home. He walked toward the kitchen, paused at the hall closet: the knife was at the far side of the kitchen, so he settled for an old baseball bat from the closet. In a half crouch, he slid quietly into the kitchen—the light switch was halfway across the room, an aberration that had been a constant source of irritation to his mother; his father had never gotten around to rewiring the room. He paused and listened. His hands felt sweaty on the bat handle. Then he crossed the room quickly and flicked on the switch. No one.

  The backdoor was ajar and he pulled it open quickly. There was a small cut in the screen. He looked at the heavy wood door and saw that the chain had been broken. A matter of simple laziness: the chain had always been enough, so he’d gotten out of the habit of using the key. Now he’d have to use it. He shut the door and was about to search the rooms to see if anything had been taken when he saw the “evidence.” There was a piece of bread crust at his feet. On the kitchen table, at the very edge of it, was a small piece of ham, already turning dark. Beneath the table was a small portion of sandwich, bread rolled hastily around ham.

  He went to his bedroom and saw that the top two drawers of his dresser were open and the clothes had been tossed. The change he normally kept on the top of the dresser was gone. He walked slowly around his apartment: the TV and the stereo were still there. Some burglar. Change and a little food; the logical, reasonable side of his nature told him that a teenager had burgled his place. The intuitive side said two attempted break-ins in the same week were not coincidence. The intuitive side said a guy hungry enough to jam a piece of ham into a slice of bread during a burglary would take it with him, even if he was startled by something. No burglary. He’d been paid a visit.

  After a while he went next door and asked Mrs. Cuelho if she’d seen anyone prowling around his backyard. The old woman, now an implacable enemy as a result of his bellicose treatment of her cat, answered him in monosyllables. No. Hadn’t seen anybody. Nothing. When he told her his place had been burglarized, she was horrified. As he went down her front stairs, he heard her throwing the bolt and putting the chain across her door.

  He tried Jean Agee again and was told she was out. He left no message. Awhile later it occurred to him that, message or not, she’d be told she had calls and that the caller was the same man each time, and he was embarrassed. He didn�
�t try to reach her again that night, spending the rest of the evening watching TV and reading a couple of his father’s gardening books.

  His face looked better on Monday morning: much of the discoloration was gone and the swelling was down. He decided he looked more like an accident victim, a condition slightly more respectable than being the loser in a street fight.

  He went out for groceries and then went to the New Yankee Grill for coffee. He tried to read the paper but found himself on a stool between two old men, each poking at a plate of biscuits and gravy and arguing about whether Roosevelt had ruined the country. Eventually he gave it up, finished his coffee and left.

  For an hour and a half he drove or walked the same streets and alleys he’d covered the week before. This time he focused on the two young ones and by the middle of the morning Jean Agee’s photograph was beginning to wilt. No one had seen Billy the Kid or the all American boy in the picture except for one ancient drunk sitting on a curb on Wilton, who believed he’d known the boy in the picture back in Tempe, Arizona, just before the war.

  He stood on the corner of Wilson and Broadway and took a long, slow look at the neighborhood and its traffic. Four men, all of them probably within four blocks of where he was standing, and not a soul seemed to know where they were.

  I ought to be able to find these guys. There’s something wrong here. Maybe it’s just time to find a new line of work, Whelan.

  He went back to his car and sat there, listening to the radio and watching the pedestrians. After awhile he took out the photograph and studied it for a moment, trying to fit the picture with what Harvey had said about the young man. A picture gradually came to him, a picture he could not shake off for a time, of this promising young man, face contorted with rage at imagined injuries, standing over a stricken man and beating him to death.

  He drove over to Sunnyside and parked for a while in front of the building where Hector had taken him apart. A squad car pulled up beside him and the officer on the passenger side asked him what he was doing there.

  “Probably the same thing you’re doing, officer. Looking for a couple of old guys that were staying in there.” He showed the cop his license. The officer looked at it, then at Whelan’s face, and smiled.

  “You Al Bauman’s friend?”

  “I never thought of it that way,” he said, and the cops both laughed and drove off. He drove away, without a particular plan or destination. On Beacon, a block from the building where he’d been jumped, was another, almost identical, apartment building, this one built of yellow brick. A fire had put this one out of action, too, and boards covered most of the doorways and windows. Most, but not all. He drove by twice, first at normal speed and then slowly, and the more he thought, the more likely it seemed that a man run out of one building would seek a similar one. He shook his head: he would have to check this one out at night, too.

  They only come out at night, he said to himself. Shit.

  At his office he opened the window to exchange hot street air for hot stale air. There was no mail. He called Shelley.

  “Well, I was beginning to think you retired, baby.”

  “Just a slow starter these days. What do you have for me, Shel?”

  “Phone call from the President. He said to keep up the good work.” Shelley laughed and cracked gum in his ear.

  “My idol. I’ve always admired world leaders who wear makeup. What else? Anything?”

  “Just one call. Nice old guy named Tom Cheney. He was calling from a pay phone, said he had some information for you, to stop by his place.”

  “And that’s it, huh?”

  “That’s all you got, Hon.” Nothing from Jean Agee.

  He called the Estes Motel and was told that there was no answer in Miss Agee’s room. He hung up, feeling unsettled. He sat and studied the cobwebs on his ceiling and saw a young woman from a small town, sitting at the edge of her bed, mortified that she’d kissed a seedy stranger twice her age and telling herself to have nothing more to do with him.

  He left the office and decided to walk over to Cheney’s. As he walked up Broadway he saw Captain Wallis across the street, laughing and gesturing with a tall gray-haired Catholic priest. In front of Solomon Brothers’ Shoe Store, a pair of shifty-looking young white boys trying mightily to look streetwise attempted to sell him a Sony Walkman and a pair of running shoes. He told them he already had an extensive collection of stolen goods and they took off running. Near the corner of Broadway and Leland, a pair of young drunks, one white and the other black, were engaged in the ritualized combat of the inebriated: the white one stood rigidly in a parody of a boxing stance while the black one went through the poses of some sort of homemade karate. A few feet beyond them, an elderly woman dug through a garbage can and ignored them.

  He paused at Leland. Halfway up the next block, the twin angels of the Way Mission had found another customer. This one was not quite conscious and was attempting to pull himself up onto the curb he’d fallen off. They had him surrounded, Tom Waters was bending over him and speaking earnestly while Don Ewald shook his head and looked around. There was a distant look on his face and Whelan could almost feel his yearning for the clean streets of Bakersfield, California. Whelan waved and Don caught the movement, grinned and waved back. He started forward and Whelan quickly turned the corner. I have groupies, he thought.

  He went up Tom Cheney’s back stairs and knocked. The curtain beside the door moved slightly and a moment later the door opened.

  “Hi, Tom. Thanks for the call.”

  “Come on in, young fella. I got some information.” Tom Cheney was torn between a grin and an expression of profound seriousness, and the grin eventually won out, if only for a moment.

  “Come on into the living room and sit down. Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Next time.”

  “I seen ’im,” Cheney said before Whelan had fully settled into the chair.

  “The redhead?” Cheney nodded. “You sure?” Another nod. “Where?”

  Tom Cheney nodded toward the front window, east. “Down at the park.”

  “Clarendon?”

  “Yep. I go down there some nights, before it gets real dark. It’s cooler, and I like to look at the ballgames down there. Softball games, you know.”

  “Where’d you see him?”

  Cheney laughed and shook his head. “He’s a pistol, that one. He was in that little parking lot they have next to the field house. Tryin’ all the car doors, goin’ through the ones that was open. Saw ’im take a couple things out.”

  “He get caught?”

  “He got seen but not caught. Couple of the softball players saw ’im and started chasin’ him with bats. Big potbellied guys, couldn’t catch me.” He laughed at the image. “That kid, he took off soon as he heard ‘Hey you,’ didn’t even look back, like, like—”

  “Like he’s done it a thousand times and bolts as soon as he hears a voice.”

  “Yep, that’s it.”

  “And you’re sure it was the same kid you saw at the mouth of the alley that night?”

  Tom Cheney nodded and looked proud of himself. Whelan smiled and then a thought struck him.

  “He see you, Tom?”

  Cheney shook his head. “If he did, he didn’t make no connection. That night in the alley, he wasn’t lookin’ up at me. He was lookin’ at…at what was goin’ on down there. He don’t know me.”

  “That’s good,” he said but his mind was already working. It was a big park, there were literally miles of it stretching along the lakefront, with Clarendon simply a tiny section squared off for softball, and a man could hide down there for a long time in warm weather; it was cooler than the rest of the city, and Whelan knew that a number of men slept on the benches on any given night.

  He made small talk with Cheney for a while, suggested that they have a couple of beers together some night the following week and said he’d stop by. Then he left.

  The street was white with the heat and if it was
ninety-eight in the air it was ten degrees hotter on the pavement. He thought of the walking he would do later that afternoon, of the pointless questions he’d be asking, of Jean Agee and his own blundering vulnerability to any woman who smiled at him, and he wanted to escape from it all.

  He compromised and went to lunch.

  There were a half dozen customers in the A&W already. Several young black men munched at Polish sausage sandwiches and a white guy in a tie had a hamburger. No one was eating anything foreign. It was a time for boldness.

  “Hey, Mr. Paul. You gonna try this new guy? You gonna like him. He’s spicy, just like you like them.”

  “What have we got today, Rashid?”

  “Felafel. My own special recipe. Persian felafel. I make him spicy, not like the other kind.”

  Gus stuck his head out of the back room. “It’s all fucked up, too. Rashid fucked it up. It’s too hot. Felafel not supposed to be hot. He put jalapenos in the fucker. Rashid thinks he’s Mexican. Have the Shalimar kabob. I made it, it’s good. You like.”

  “I’ll have a Shalimar kabob and a felafel.”

  Rashid grinned and Gus shook his head. Whelan heard a couple of the customers laughing.

  Rashid nodded. “You’re a smart guy. Diplomat guy. You should be in the government.”

  “And you two guys are artists. Give me a large root beer with that, too.”

  The door opened and Bauman filled it. He stood just inside the door, hands on hips, letting the hot street air in, and looked around the room, seeking and getting the attention of everyone in the place. When he was finished bogarting, he walked over to Whelan.

  “Well, Sherlock, having an exotic lunch?”

  “Yeah. Want to expand your horizons or are you afraid of anything that’s not roast beef?”

  Rashid brought Whelan’s basket of food, two pocket pitas overflowing with their odd contents, and Bauman stared at it.

  “Root beer looks good, anyway.” He peered closely at the sandwiches. “So what is all that shit?”