Windy City Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  “Good morning,” the woman said and smiled warmly. “Can I help you with something?”

  I introduced myself and told her I was looking for a couple of police detectives I had spoken with two days earlier. “We’re collaborating on a case.”

  She laughed. “I’m Elaine and this is a good place to start, depending on how long they’ve been cops. You won’t find many officers with less than twenty years on the force hanging out here.” She had one of those personalities that instantly exuded kindness.

  “I’m going to guess you’re the daughter of a cop.”

  “That’s a good guess, but I’m actually the daughter of the man who first opened Reilly’s.”

  This intrigued me. “Okay, give me another try. When you were a child, this place was like a second home and you grew up knowing all the cops that hung out here and they treated you like an adopted daughter.”

  “That’s true! But it wasn’t just cops back then. This used to be where all the machinists in the neighborhood came after their shifts ended.” She sipped her drink and laughed. “Or before their shifts started.”

  I said, “Gradually, automation and cheap labor overseas closed the shops and changed the neighborhood.”

  “Yep. The cops stayed loyal to my dad, but after he died, a lot of the original crowd started retiring and moving away.”

  “Why do you keep it open?”

  “I own the building and don’t need to do much. I’m a Realtor by trade.” She pointed at the old guy. “Billy over there runs the place. I promised Dad I would take care of him. As you can see, the neighborhood is becoming more well-to-do, so I’ll probably shut it down soon and either sell the building or lease it out. Which cops are you looking for?”

  “Detectives Calvo and Baker.”

  Elaine took another sip of tomato juice. “I know them. They’re both about to retire. Kind of a dopey duo. A pair of clichés—you know what I mean?”

  “I was told they got a couple of months left before calling it quits.”

  Elaine gulped down the rest of her juice and then carefully pressed the napkin against her lips. “I don’t think that long,” she said. From underneath the newspaper she pulled out an appointment book and began paging through it. Most of the dates were filled with addresses all over the North Side. One date was circled in red. “Yeah, they want to use this place for a private party next week. Retirement party.”

  Elaine shut the appointment book and eyed me knowingly. “I can hear the little wheels in your head spinning, private investigator.”

  “I’d call you a sharp dame, but we both realize how cliché that would sound.”

  Elaine laughed. “Nowadays, most private investigators are retired cops. A bright, nice-looking kid like you with a North Shore accent collaborating with a couple of goldbricking buffoons like Calvo and Baker? You want something from them. Now you got me curious.”

  She turned to face me and crossed her legs. Had she been the offspring of educated professionals, she would have been a successful corporate attorney or college professor. But as a bartender’s daughter, her intellect would have to first fight through the affections of big-city cops and machine-shop serfs before seeing opportunity in real estate.

  “A man they had under surveillance as a prime suspect confessed to the murder in his suicide note. I have a feeling a retirement bonus was paid for not noticing anything suspicious leading up to the suicide.”

  Elaine frowned. “Well, that’s a convenient way to declare a case closed.” There was a pause in the conversation before Elaine said, “I may be able to help you. Give me one of your cards.” I did as told and watched her put it in a Fendi wallet. “I have a side business,” Elaine said. “I use one of my properties to introduce people.”

  We locked eyes for an instant. I nodded. “Like a dating service,” I said.

  “Yes, like a dating service. A high-end dating service. One does not have to worry about being rejected. Everyone wins.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but—”

  “No!” Elaine laughed loudly and gave my hand a squeeze. “That’s not what I meant! I believe there is a detective you are looking for who has recently been utilizing my service. Should I notice an impending appointment, I could give you a call, and, perhaps, you might just find him in an agreeable mood to answer all of your questions.”

  I thanked Elaine for her generosity and told her I understood the importance of repaying favors.

  —

  At The Chicago Diner, I indulged in thoughts irrelevant to the case as I ate a banana coconut muffin and then an apple cider muffin. A few blocks away, Wrigley Field sat empty, as it had every October since 1945. I wondered if the North Side would ever experience a World Series during my lifetime. I was also conscious of hearing the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth. Then I remembered my new ringtone.

  “Yeah, it’s Rich Jones, the parking officer. Can we talk?”

  “Sure, Rich. You don’t sound so good. You want me to call a cop?” I was half serious.

  “No, no, no, no, I just remembered something, that’s all. And I wanted to tell you about it.”

  After suggesting we meet at the Kutaisi Georgian Bakery, I arrived there half an hour later to once again see the white van double-parked, pissing people off. This time I stopped to study the decal, but apart from the letters “IIPD” above a bald eagle holding a snake in its mouth, I learned nothing new. Once inside, I saw Jones in street clothes waving at me from a table near the far corner. His face looked more drawn than I remembered, his eyes more sunken. A large glass of water sat in front of him. Another waited for me. Tamar was nowhere to be seen.

  “Want something to eat?” I said.

  “Huh? No, not hungry.” He wiped his nose with a napkin.

  I sat. “Allergies still bothering you?” He nodded. “Today your day off?”

  “Huh? Yeah, sort of.”

  His eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated. “Rich, relax, man. You look as gray as your hair.”

  “I didn’t tell you everything. About Jack, I mean.”

  He reminded me of a panicked kid who’d just broken a window. “So tell me. I won’t be mad, I promise.”

  Jones took a deep breath. I thought he was about to talk but instead he took another deep breath. On the third try, after exhaling, he laid his torso on the table and sobbed into his folded arms.

  “What is it?” I asked. “C’mon, Rich, whatever it is I’m sure we can work it out. I’ll help you, man. I know you’re a good guy.”

  It took a few minutes but he managed to sit up and dry his tears on his sleeve. “I think it might be my fault Jack’s dead.”

  I waited a couple beats. “You didn’t kill anybody, Rich. Don’t give me that crap.”

  “But I think it’s my fault.”

  “Tell me why you think it’s your fault. Take your time. Start from the beginning.”

  One last deep breath, then, “I’m the longest-serving parking officer. The supervisors kind of look to me, you know? I train new officers. I let them know when someone has a bad attitude or a problem at home. I don’t snitch, though. I would just say that I thought someone wasn’t very happy or didn’t take the job seriously, and they would ask me to get that person right or maybe suggest they get a new job or whatever.” Jones gulped down half the glass of water.

  “So one day the boss called me to his office, which was weird because I’d never even talked to the guy before. And he started saying how he was trying to avoid budget cuts and the department wanted to try to hire foreigners because they’d work for less. And I asked him how he could get away with that, and he said he already had gotten away with it and pointed out that Jack was working for like half the wage of everyone else and nobody cared. And since he knew my neighborhood had a lot of Mexicans, he asked if they spoke English good enough for this job.” Jones chugged the rest of the water.

  “Your boss wanted you to recruit foreigners to save money on wages?”

  “Yeah. But he
was, like, ordering me to do it. Then he said it was more than just the budget, that he needed cheap labor to prevent my job from being ‘outsourced.’ Then he started asking how my kids were doing, you know? So I started getting scared. Because at my age, I don’t want to be looking for a job and lose my health insurance. I told him I would do my best, and he patted me on the back and said he trusted me not to go telling everyone because he didn’t want the papers and TV to get a story and have all them community organizers screaming about discrimination or this and that.”

  “Your boss told you to get cheap officers or you and your family might end up on the street.”

  Jones looked at me, wavered a bit. Then he said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. But I started getting mad. My wife kept telling me to play but I got madder and madder. I got a lot of Mexican friends in my neighborhood. They just want a better life. But goddamn it, why do they work cheap? You know?”

  “Bring this back to Jack’s murder.”

  “My brain starts taking off with crazy ideas. And I remember seeing on TV stories of terrorist bombs in Russia blowing up all over the place and that they were planted by mafia guys where Jack came from and how powerful and crazy those mafia guys were over there.”

  I thought of asking about the Russian woman Jones had set up with Jack, but then remembered Frownie’s best advice—don’t trust anyone. “That was the Chechen mafia from Chechnya, not Georgia, but go on.”

  “Oh, okay. But then some guys were talking about Jack being connected to the Russian mob. I asked them about it and they laughed. They said they heard it somewhere else but thought it was a joke. But I get this idea to start playing up the rumors that Jack is part of that mafia group and he’s here to get connections so that he can send money and guns back over there. So I thought as nutty as it might’ve sounded, maybe I could get Jack canned and maybe change the attitude about hiring foreigners. That’s what I thought, but I think maybe I just wanted to hurt someone because I was so pissed off. I didn’t like that he undercut our wages by working cheap.”

  “So who killed Jack Gelashvili?”

  “One day Jack came to me and wanted to talk. And that’s really weird, because he didn’t talk to anyone. I mean he didn’t just chat about life and all. But he told me the boss took him out to lunch. Jack’s English was not that good. But what I got was that the boss wanted to know about where Jack was from. And I think he tried to explain how things worked in Chicago—in the slimeball politician kind of way. So even though he wasn’t sure what the guy was saying, I guess he just went along. And then the boss met with him again, and showed him pictures of dollar signs with arrows going here and there. Jack kept repeating ‘money this money that.’ I think he was offering Jack some kind of deal.”

  Jones took out a wad of tissue and began a cavalcade of nose blowing dissonance. I turned away from the noise and was instantly charmed to see several young teens of differing skin shades, clearly enjoying themselves around a table full of baked goodies.

  After Jones finished, I turned back to him and said, “You think this rumor made its way to a city big shot who wanted your boss to get Jack as a contact with the Russian mafia?”

  “Yeah. Something like that. But then a few weeks before his death, Jack came to me all freaked out and showed me an envelope stuffed with cash. ‘What to do! What to do!’ he kept saying, and he jammed the envelope into my pocket and backed away shouting, ‘You take! You take!’ I just stood there watching him. I figured the money got passed down from up top. But what do I do with it? If I take it to the boss, he’s gonna know Jack was talking to me. And then what?”

  “Where’s the money now?”

  “I—I hid it.”

  “You think Jack was killed because of the rumor you started?”

  “They found out he wasn’t connected. They had shown him stuff about the city he should not have seen.”

  His scenario seemed plausible although the simplicity of the events troubled me. But under the right circumstances, rumors often took on lives of their own, and this kind of conspiracy fit the tangled world of politics, money, and media empire pricks like Konigson.

  “When you told me about Baxter, did you really think he could’ve been the killer?”

  “Yeah, until those two detectives told us to shut up about him. That made me wonder. And something else I should’ve mentioned. It was the tow truck guys that put Baxter’s car back in the same spot. They would just drive around until Baxter was hauled off and then re-park his car.”

  “You know Baxter is dead, right? Overdosed?” I didn’t mention the suicide note. If he knew about it, there was more he wasn’t telling me.

  Jones looked confused. “Wow. What does that mean?”

  “It means nothing. Starting rumors about people isn’t cool, but you are not responsible for Jack’s death. If anything, you’re helping me find his killer. In the meantime, just go about your business. If your boss, uh—what the hell’s his name?”

  “Robertson.”

  “What is he, a sergeant?”

  “Civilian.”

  “A civilian working for the CPD?”

  “Department of Revenue.”

  “You guys don’t work for the cops?”

  “We work with the cops but for the Department of Revenue.”

  Strange. I thought about my first conversation with Kalijero regarding Gelashvili. I had said Jack “worked for the police department” and Kalijero had not corrected me. Maybe he didn’t know.

  22

  Jones appeared calmer when he left the bakery, although I feared he could easily swing back into doom and gloom. One of the ladies behind the counter told me Tamar had the day off. I thought of calling to make sure she knew the way to my apartment but realized how stupid that sounded.

  I drove east on Devon to Broadway, where I started snaking toward the lake on my way downtown. Just as I merged onto Lake Shore Drive, Kalijero called.

  “Toxicology confirmed overdose,” Kalijero said.

  “Who do the parking officers work for?”

  “What? The police—I think. When I started, they worked for the police. Then they put them somewhere else. I don’t know. Nobody ever knows who the hell they work for. Did you hear me? Toxicology—”

  “Department of Revenue. Overdose of what?”

  “What difference does it make? He took too much and died.”

  “What’s more useless than a short-timer cop? Couldn’t you have at least verified the drugs were for schizophrenics?”

  “He intentionally took too much of some goddamn drug and he’s dead!”

  “How the hell do you know it was intentional? How do you know he didn’t unknowingly take a drug someone put in those capsules?”

  Either the signal dropped or Kalijero was developing a behavioral problem with cell phones.

  Light traffic allowed an easy drive to Monroe Street. From there I weaved my way to the concrete chasm of LaSalle Street, where I parked at a standard coin-op meter. After loading it up with all the silver in my pocket, I set my sights on city hall, a pretentious neoclassical structure arrogant enough to incorporate an entire city block. I explored the lobby of white marble, gaudy electrical appliances, and numerous bronze tablets honoring long-forgotten political hacks, before finding the Department of Revenue on the first floor. In the waiting area, a morbidly obese man wearing a bright orange vest sat on a folding chair. He cheerfully said “Hi!” and waved as if he were the greeter at Walmart. On his baseball cap, a large button read, “Ask Me About Paying Parking Tickets!”

  I asked directions to the administrative offices, and he pointed to a television on the counter of the deserted reception desk showing a woman frozen in time by the pause button. I looked back at the man. He nodded enthusiastically. I thanked him, walked to the reception desk, and after pushing the play button watched the woman on the television explain how to pay bills using the Internet, pay-station machines, or with a customer-service representative located down the hall. I tu
rned and saw only a wall with the mayor’s portrait, then noticed an opening set forward about ten feet. The “hall” appeared more like a short passageway to a crowded section of what reminded me of a gigantic Vegas casino. In addition to the multitude standing in a roped-off corridor facing a row of customer-service tellers, pay-station machines along the walls commanded lines ten people deep. Armed security guards roamed about. At that moment, I realized the so-called hallway was really an enormous metal detector.

  I remained on the periphery of the patrons and observed the machines sucking in bills of varying denominations through metal slots. Those waiting in line revealed no emotion other than boredom or resignation. Some absentmindedly rolled and unrolled thick wads of cash in their hands while others re-counted what they were about to forfeit.

  I repositioned myself against the wall near the end of the teller row. From there I obtained an interesting perspective on checks, credit cards, and driver’s licenses being pushed back and forth under thick plastic windows. The continual movement of paper and plastic from one hand to another entranced me. Every transaction represented money flowing from one bank account to another, five days a week, eight hours a day but available twenty-four-seven on the Internet.

  Several security guards opened a route to one of the pay stations. An armed Bankroll Warranty driver followed and set up a curtain around the back of the machine. Minutes later, he was escorted out pushing a dolly cart piled with money bags.

  About thirty yards behind “teller row,” a line of desks spread out evenly across the room, each commanding a queue of Chicagoans waiting to visit with a department agent. I walked closer and observed the troubled faces of shabbily dressed citizens. A man spilled the contents of a coffee can onto an agent’s desk and then stood and pulled his trouser pockets inside out. The agent leaned back and crossed her arms while the man pled his case. I caught enough words to surmise the man wanted his car back.

  At another desk, a young woman signed documents with the help of the agent’s pointing finger. There must have been a dozen or more pages, each requiring several signatures. Unlike the others, her expression and body language did not betray a sense of doom. At one point she looked up and laughed, provoking a similar response from the agent.