Death in Uptown

by Michael Raleigh

  “But wouldn’t they leave? Wouldn’t they go off somewhere else?” Ewald asked.

  “Go where? Where do these people have to go? No, I think they’d just go under and, eventually, come out when they got tired of hiding. And if they do, you fellas will see ’em. No, you guys are already helping me a lot.” As an afterthought, he took out the picture of Gerry Agee.

  “And maybe you’ll be able to give me something on this guy. Nothing yet, huh?”

  They frowned and craned their heads forward, again in unison, but could tell him no more about the picture now than they could the first time.

  “It’s okay, guys. It’s not a very good picture, and I’m not at all sure he’s anywhere around here.” He thought for a moment. “Tell you what: when you’re making your rounds, if you happen to hear there’s anybody new camping out in one of these old buildings, let me know.”

  They looked at each other and then Tom Waters nodded knowingly, and Whelan wondered if either of them had the faintest idea what he was talking about.

  “We’ll keep you posted, Mr. Whelan.”

  “My name’s Paul. Call me Paul.”

  They grinned and looked at each other again.

  “See you soon, guys.” They nodded and got up and bumped into each other and laughed and reshuffled his chairs and finally left, and he let out a deep breath. He looked out the window at the marquee of the Aragon and thought about going to the fights to get his mind off other things.

  He sat back in his chair and stared at the calendar on the wall. Idly, he picked up the picture of Gerry Agee and took another look at it. After a moment, he got out his wallet and called Captain Wallis’s number.

  “Hello, Mr. Whelan. How’s the detecting business?”

  “Complicated and unsatisfying, and it pays badly. And the social services business?”

  “Oh, about the same,” Captain Wallis said and laughed, a delighted cackle, and Whelan smiled to himself. This was a guy who didn’t get out of bed groaning in the morning.

  “So what can I do for you, Mr. Whelan?”

  “Just a quick question. When did Billy first get here? When was the first time you saw him?”

  “About this time last year.”

  “You’re fairly sure of that?”

  “Fairly sure. I can tell you with certainty that he was here for Thanksgiving Dinner. I remember that he was the youngest person at his table.”

  “Yeah. That’s about what I thought. You said you’d known him awhile. I was just fishing.” And doing it badly, he thought. A long shot, trying to simplify what could not be simplified. Gerry Agee was not Billy.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about Billy, Mr. Whelan?”

  “He was seen the other night down at Clarendon Park. That’s all I know.”

  “And the police are still looking for him?”

  “Yes. But he’s not necessarily a suspect. Just someone everybody needs to talk to.”

  There was a slight pause on the other end and then Captain Wallis said, “Well, if I can be of any further help, just let me know.”

  “Sure. And…if I hear anything about Billy, I’ll be in touch, captain.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Whelan.”

  “Sure. Talk to you later, captain.”

  “God Bless.”

  Ten

  Late in the afternoon he tried one more time and a new receptionist or clerk told him that Miss Agee was not answering. Time to stop feeling embarrassed and to start worrying, maybe. A woman alone in a strange city, gone for an entire day and most of the next. It hadn’t occurred to him that anything might be wrong, and his stomach made a little flutter. He had a sudden afterthought and called his service. He winced as the voice of Abraham Chacko volleyed into his ear.

  He calmed himself, composed a greeting carefully and turned it loose. “Hello, Abraham.”

  “Hello, Good evening, sir, yes, sir.”

  “Do you have any phone messages for Mr. Paul Whelan, Abraham?”

  “Yes, sir,” Abraham cantoed. “I have the phone message,” his little Indian flute of a voice intoned.

  There was silence. That was all Abraham was prepared to give. He swallowed and suppressed his irritation. “And what is that message, Abraham?”

  “Miss Jean called. She is calling to tell Mr. Paul that she will call tomorrow for Mr. Paul’s report.”

  “Tomorrow. Ah.” He felt the color returning to his face. She was all right, she was speaking to him. He thought for a moment. “And how long ago did, ah, Miss Jean call, Abraham?”

  “Three-oh-four she was calling, sir.”

  Three-oh-four and it was now 3:55. All right. If he’d stayed in his office awhile, he could have talked to her. Damn. But he felt a giddy relief that she was all right and he would be talking to her in the morning. He felt a sudden wave of affection for old Abraham, who was absolutely the worst answering service employee on God’s earth.

  “Well, thank you, Abraham. You are a fine telephone operator.”

  “I am thanking you quite nicely, sir. Very kindly.”

  He went back to his apartment and sank into an armchair and knew he would not be able to spend much time here tonight. He wanted to jump into his car and tear down to South Michigan Avenue and catch her just as she came back from a walk in Grant Park or as she stepped uncertainly from a cab, and grab her and say, “Let’s cut out all the b.s. and go get something to eat,” and knew he could not, that this was a young woman whose responses he couldn’t predict. And he wondered again, as he’d been wondering most of his adult life, if there was anyone who misread women as often as he did.

  He put off calling Marie Shears till he was just about ready to go to the park.

  “Hello?” She sounded good, composed.

  “Hello, Marie. Paul Whelan.”

  “Hello, Paul. Nice to hear your voice.”

  “How’s it going, Marie?”

  “We’ll make it, Paul. But thanks for asking.”

  “That’s good, Marie, but I never had any doubt about it. I wanted to ask you something. The guy Artie was talking to just before…just before. Did he tell you why he was so interested in this guy?”

  There was a pause at the other end. “Paul, you wouldn’t be asking something like that if…if it was just a robbery.”

  He hesitated, then could see nothing wrong with the truth. “No, Marie, I wouldn’t. I don’t think it was a robbery.”

  She paused again for a moment, then said, “Oh, my God,” in a quiet voice.

  “I know it makes it worse, Marie.”

  “It’s just a shock, Paul. It’s so hard to believe that anybody would intentionally…But he’s still dead, either way.” She sighed. “All right. The little derelict. No, Paul, all he said was that the man had a story behind him.”

  “Yeah, he told me the guy was on the run. Acted like somebody was looking for him.”

  “Right. For something he did.”

  “But he didn’t tell you anything more specific, Marie?”

  “No. He said the man was drunk when they talked, Paul.”

  “Yeah, that figures.”

  They talked for a moment about the boys and he told her he’d let her know if he turned anything up.

  The lights had gone on at the softball field but there was still an hour of daylight. It was apparently a playoff game and the two teams had drawn a good crowd for a softball game. There were a couple hundred people, and the teams, primarily men in their thirties, were good, and very intense, as all Chicago softball players were. In other parts of the country men hung up their spikes and baseball gloves when they got a little wide at the waist and a little thin on top. In Chicago, they had sixteen-inch softball, with short base paths and underhand pitching and a ball apparently modeled on the grapefruit, and they could play forever. Some did—the pitcher on the mound at the moment was at least forty-five, maybe a well-preserved fifty.

  Whelan watched the game with some interest, just because of the fervor of the crowd of wives,
girlfriends and family. Occasionally, casually, he surveyed the stands, the area just beyond the field where three old black men passed a bottle and the small parking lot beside the field house. There was no sign of a skinny red-haired street boy.

  He watched the game for a couple of innings and then noticed Rooney and Bauman at the farthest end of the stands on the third base line. Bauman had changed into a mustard-colored knit shirt for the occasion and stood out like a wart on a centerfold. He seemed to survey the crowd, focused on a couple of young blond women in halter tops a few rows away, for a moment, then looked back toward the street. Rooney squinted and moved restlessly and seemed to be in the grip of an attack of acid indigestion.

  A tall black-haired woman arrived, tan and slender and tightly wound into a white tube top and hip-hugger jeans, and there wasn’t an eye on the ballgame. Whelan looked across the field and laughed: Bauman had picked her out fifty yards away. Whelan watched Bauman until the detective turned in his direction, and looked right at him. Whelan waved; Bauman nodded and looked back at the woman.

  At the end of the next inning, Whelan descended from the stands and walked around the backstop to the end of the third-base seats.

  “Evening, gents.”

  “What’s happening, Whelan?” Bauman cocked an eyebrow and seemed in a jovial mood. Rooney simply nodded curtly and stared out at the field.

  “Nothing much.”

  “These games draw a lot of women.”

  “They do that. See anything you like?”

  Bauman gave him a shrewd smile. “I like ’em all. All shapes and sizes. All colors, even. All the various colors.”

  Bauman seemed to he amused at his own remark. He looked at Rooney, who shook his head but refused to meet Bauman’s eyes.

  “You see, Rooney and I, we got differences of opinion about that. He don’t believe in, uh, mixing the races. Me, I’m a liberal.” He grinned at Whelan.

  “That’s just how I had you figured. Well, since you guys are here to serve and protect, I think I’ll go on break.”

  Bauman laughed and nodded. “You do that, Shamus. We’ll take this shift.”

  Whelan nodded, took a last, amused look at the dyspeptic Rooney, and left.

  He told himself he had plenty of time to kill and took off southbound on Lake Shore Drive, past the dying crowds on the beach, past the boathouse on North Avenue beach that was built and painted to look like a beached ocean liner, past stretches of the calm lake inhabited only by lifeguards. He followed the Outer Drive to the Field Museum and eventually made his way over to Michigan Avenue and found himself driving slowly past the Estes Motel and hoping now she wouldn’t see him. He was caught by a red light directly across from the motel and felt foolish. When the light changed, he gunned it and didn’t look back.

  Back in the neighborhood, he drove back to the burned-out building on Beacon and parked there for twenty minutes on the far side of the street. He saw the usual street types scuttling in for shelter and a solitary mumbler who stood in front and alternately conversed with and screamed at faces only he could see, and just off to the side of the building, he watched a minor drug transaction. It’s only a hunch, he told himself. Then he took a look at the windows where boards had been removed.

  I think you’re in there. And then he drove off.

  The park was a changed place now. The ball field was empty and the banks of lights were dark, and the emptiness made an eerie contrast with the cheerful noise of the crowd that had occupied the spot just a few hours earlier. He climbed up onto the grandstand, moved to the top row and stared out over the field and the surrounding park till his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  Just past the stands on the third base line he could make out three benches, each ten yards or so from the next. A man was sleeping on one of them, from this distance little more than a mound of rags with an arm dangling almost to the sidewalk. He heard voices to his rear and turned to see three young black men getting noisily into a car just outside the park. It was a genuine beater, and coughed its life out before they got it started and it pulled out with a heavy grinding noise and the birdlike whirring of cracked or broken bands beneath the hood. The noise made him uneasy, for it blocked out any chance of hearing other noises, and his heart began to beat faster. All right, not my best idea.

  But he stayed there another twenty minutes, watching the sidewalks and the parking lot and the street just outside the park. He forced himself to remain motionless, to make no sound, to be receptive to the smallest change in the darkness beyond the softball diamond. And then he heard a sound behind him.

  He held his breath and listened and the sound came again, and stopped. A man walking, then stopping. Whelan listened and the noise resumed; he began to count to ten and then the footsteps came faster, someone running. He turned and stood up in time to see a dark form turn the corner around the field house. He ran down the grandstand, taking two steps at a time, jumped the last three and hit the ground running. He made for the other side of the field house, hoping to cut the runner off behind the building.

  He ran across the grass of a smaller baseball diamond, his street shoes slipping on the waxy surface of the weeds, and rounded the corner of the building, and the crystalline voice of reason asked him what he planned to do when he caught the runner.

  Shit, I don’t know.

  He came out behind the building and knew instantly that he’d lost him. He couldn’t get the idea out of his head that it had been Billy. Whelan panted and wheezed for a moment, then had a cigarette. Two puffs and he was hacking again. He walked back toward the grandstand, wondering what to do and then he saw that something in the landscape had changed. He looked around slowly, taking in every detail, and then realized that the sleeper on the bench was gone.

  He moved across the ball field till he reached the bench. The sleeper had left his bedding behind: a plump, trash-filled paper bag he’d used as a pillow and the sheets of newspaper he’d covered himself with against dew and the night air.

  Whelan looked back toward the field house and down at the empty bench and shook his head. Great detective work: flushed out another one. He sat down on the bench to think.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the dark shape emerge from the bushes a few yards to his left and stood up. The man stopped short, planted his back foot and cocked his right, keeping his left low. Whelan stood up, sidestepped into the dim light over the sidewalk and took a good look at him.

  He was young and thin and over six feet tall but couldn’t go more than 150: welterweight posing as a light-heavy.

  “Hello, Billy. Now what?”

  The boy moved a little closer and to one side, just to the edge of the little circle of light. Whelan sidestepped with him and brought his left up and his right to his chin and wondered how he’d get inside those long arms. The boy licked his lips and Whelan realized that the kid was afraid.

  “Do we really have to do this dance?”

  The boy sneered but the fear never left his eyes. “You wanted it. Now you got it.”

  “I don’t even know you, kid. We don’t have to do this.”

  The boy nodded slowly. “You know me. Thought you was heat. You ain’t no cop. You been askin’ around about me, followin’ me. I saw you here tonight. Now you’re fucked, man.”

  “Won’t be as easy as you think, kid. Come on, let’s save us both some trouble. I just want to talk to you, that’s all. Just talk to me for a minute. I’ll even throw in—” The kid surprised him with a long looping right that he blocked. Whelan threw a left at the air, just to keep him honest, and when the kid stuck his left out and pawed in Whelan’s direction, Whelan smacked him with the right. The punch caught the kid just below the eye but there wasn’t much behind it; enough to sting, not enough to drop him. The kid touched his cheekbone, took a step to one side, nodded once and threw his left and got nothing, a right that Whelan slipped, and another left that Whelan took on his forearm.

  And then he walked into the kid’s foot. It
seemed to come up from out of nowhere, quick and hard and sure, and dug deep into Whelan’s midsection just below the rib cage. He expelled breath, fought nausea and lost his balance, and the kid threw a combination that caught him in the side of his face as he went down.

  He hit the sidewalk with both hands and one knee and was attempting to get to his feet when the boy’s foot dug into his stomach again and Whelan thought something would be ruptured.

  He collapsed on the sidewalk and covered the side of his face with his arm. Above him, he heard the boy panting and then he could feel and smell the kid’s breath on his arm. He waited for more. There was the sound of a car turning a corner somewhere in the background and then he sprang up at the kid, caught him around the knees and brought him down hard on the pavement. He scrambled up onto the kid and sat his weight high up on the boy’s back and then relaxed. Billy jerked his body suddenly and Whelan fell forward, stopping himself with a hand against the sidewalk. Then Billy bit him on the wrist, and Whelan yelled and straightened up, and the kid bucked him off. They both scrambled to their feet and the kid was off into the darkness like an alley cat. Whelan ran after him but knew within a half dozen steps that he’d lost the boy for now. He stopped, hands on his knees, bent over with exhaustion and hurting in half a dozen places, and waited for the air to come back into his lungs. He heard the sound of a car door somewhere back near the field house, then heard the car start. He looked up briefly, saw a small dark compact pull out of a parking space just outside the park entrance and watched it move away.

  He walked tiredly back to the field house parking lot and lit a cigarette as he slid in behind the wheel. He started the Jet, backed up and felt a strange but immediately recognizable lurching to the left. He backed it up a few more feet and heard the loud flopping of flaccid rubber and stopped the car. He rested his forehead for a moment on the steering wheel, then got out to verify what he already knew.

  Both tires on the driver’s side had been slashed.

  I am having a very bad evening.