Windy City Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  “That’s right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  47

  “You can go on back,” the grouchy receptionist said as soon as I walked in, surprising the hell out of me.

  Konigson stood on the threshold to his office talking to someone behind the partially opened door. He signaled me to join him. Inside the office, a man sat at one end of the sofa with an open briefcase on his lap. Konigson pointed me to the other end of the sofa. From there, I watched the master deftly employ scornful laughter and blunt retorts to the man’s sales pitch. Clearly, Konigson was showing off.

  “You get my money, I get fifty-five percent of the company,” Konigson finally said with a dismissive wave. “Take it or leave it and get the fuck out of my sight.” The man walked out mumbling something about “vulture capitalists,” before closing the door.

  As he walked around his desk to sit, I said, “That’s no way to talk to the king’s son.” Konigson faltered just enough for me to notice, then continued to his chair.

  “Bernie Landau,” Konigson said. “I remember a Bernie Landau who sold women’s coats.”

  “How did you know my father?”

  “When I started making some real money, I wanted to diversify. I was invited to invest in a fund that I could assist in managing. Your father was in on some meetings. He was good at recruiting small-town investors.”

  “Yeah, he did well—until.”

  “Until some cunt fucked him over. Now what do you want?”

  “How does one so thoroughly diversified know which investments are paying off?”

  “Who cares? And what does this have to do with Jones?”

  “I’ll get to that. I’m trying to learn something.”

  “How do you think you know? You keep track. See what’s paying off and what isn’t. Most people don’t have time for this. That’s why they hire a professional to do it.”

  “Most people just assume their money is being used in an ethical manner.”

  “Ethical?” Konigson spat out. “Nobody gives a shit about ethics. Ethics has nothing to do with Joe Blow getting rich.”

  “I would guess a man of your background would know where every dollar is invested.”

  Konigson was becoming impatient. “Okay, you got me. I profit from the defense industry, the gaming industry, the energy industry, and many other evils. Now what about Jones?”

  “How about prostitution?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Pimping out beautiful Russian girls to wealthy clients. I’m going to take a wild guess and say barely legal women provide a pretty good return on investment.”

  “I don’t know anything about prostitution.”

  “A package of cash walked into your office five days ago.”

  “Other revenues.”

  “Like what? Parking-ticket earnings?”

  “Enough. Say what you want about Jones and get out.”

  “Jones is dead.”

  A pause, then, “Tough luck. He wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “He knew you were in love with Lada.”

  Konigson stood then walked out from behind his desk. His face began turning red as he formulated a response. “I protected her! I took care of her! Nobody could hurt her because of me! Do you have any idea how much money I spent making sure nobody else touched her?”

  “Are you sure nobody else touched her?”

  Konigson’s mustache lent a ferociousness to his stare, but his response was measured. “Nobody else paid for her company.”

  “You knew Jones introduced Lada to Jack Gelashvili. The dead parking officer.”

  “So what? You think I killed Gelashvili because of that?”

  “Gelashvili was in love with her.”

  “Oh, you’re so clever, aren’t you? Nail a murder on the rich man because he was jealous. What horseshit. When she gets back from Russia, she’ll tell you the truth.”

  “Prepare yourself, Konigson. Her swollen corpse was just pulled out of the river.”

  Konigson stared at me a moment then stumbled, as if from a blow. Bracing himself against the desk, he maneuvered back to the chair. I watched closely, observed involuntary physical reactions bounce around his body. It looked as though breakfast might reappear. Instead, he fell forward onto his desk and began sobbing into his arms. “My little Lada,” Konigson whimpered. “Why? That bastard. That fucking bastard.”

  I waited for Konigson to regain some control. “Who killed her?” I said.

  Konigson looked up then wiped his eyes. “It’s the Russians who do the killing. It has to be.”

  “Why did they kill Gelashvili?” Konigson sat frozen. “Just come out with it already!”

  “I told Lada I wanted to buy her freedom and take care of her. But she had to end it with Gelashvili. Like a fool, I thought Elon would then leave Jack and Lada alone if they had nothing to do with each other.”

  “Elon would leave them alone?”

  “It was my fault. I told her too much.”

  “Elon is the bastard? Just say it already.”

  Konigson nodded while slumping low into his chair. “Elon makes the decisions.”

  “Who does he give the orders to?”

  “I don’t know. But Lada told me about two guys that scare all the girls. She called them mafia soldiers. They’re Russian. So I assumed Elon has a connection to Russian mobsters.”

  “Let’s get back to the other revenues of your portfolio. Prostitution earnings—”

  “Christ almighty, Landau. I don’t know where all the money comes from. What I know doesn’t even matter. It’s what I can be connected to that matters.”

  “How about Elon? You think he knows where all the money comes from?”

  “Russians give Elon money to launder. You think he gives a damn where it comes from? What does anyone care?”

  “Didn’t your relationship with Lada potentially connect you?”

  Konigson looked away. His chin started quivering then he blinked away a few tears. “Elon told me not to worry. But I had to give her up, he said. Nobody would get hurt.”

  “Then you offer to buy Lada’s freedom. Elon doesn’t like it. He’s worried about what she knew. He’s worried about what Gelashvili knew. He’s worried about what Jones knew. He’s worried about a newspaper story inspiring someone to poke around Gelashvili’s life. So he tells you to make sure there’s no article.” We sat in silence awhile until I said, “I referred to you as the king’s son.”

  Konigson shrugged. “You know some German.”

  “Elon is trying to get the letters.”

  Konigson leaned forward on his elbows and covered his face with both hands. He stayed silent for about thirty seconds. Then he said, “How did you find out about the letters?”

  “Lada gave them to her sister, Marta, to prove a rich man was going to help her. Marta came to see me. She told me about Lada’s journey to America. She gave me the letters hoping they will help me find Lada’s killer. Each letter is signed, Your Prince or The King’s Son.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “How could you be stupid enough to write letters?”

  Konigson pounded his fist on the table. “Because I’m a weak, pathetic old man! Is that what you want me to say?” Konigson returned his face to his hands for a couple of moments then slammed his fist on the table again. “Goddamn Elon! Lada and Jack are dead, what does he want the letters for?”

  “He’s scared,” I told him. “Elon’s in bed with Russian mobsters, for fuck’s sake! He can’t risk the flow of money being disrupted by some prostitute or her boyfriend. The letters provide a motive for you to be Gelashvili’s killer. He’d use those letters against you, if it came to that. My apartment and Gelashvili’s apartment were ransacked looking for them.”

  “Killing and pimping.”

  “You don’t seem too shocked.”

  Kongison looked at me, snarled, “I would never kill anyone!” then looked away.

  “Jones told me e
verything runs through Revenue. Whether it’s cash from parking tickets or prostitution, it all spends the same. And like you said, the Russians do the killing—and the pimping. They’ve just become part of the red tape. Elon’s got a huge bureaucracy between him and the nasty work. He’s like an overseer making sure the money flows in one direction and the girls in another.”

  “I’m a businessman,” Konigson said quietly. “I’m no goddamn Boy Scout, but I never crossed into murder and pimping.”

  “For some capitalists, it’s just the cost of doing business. In the last year alone, a vitamin tycoon, a real estate mogul, and an Internet billionaire all hired hit men to kill their wives because it was cheaper than divorce.”

  “I’ve known Lou Elon for forty years. And all that time I was in denial. I pretended his narcissistic, egomaniacal behavior was just his style for business and nothing more.”

  “Put yourself in Elon’s head. He’s thinking about what an infatuated old man might say to a beautiful young woman. He’s thinking about what the same beautiful woman might say to her lover who happens to be a parking officer—one of several dots connecting back to Elon. Think of all he has to lose.”

  “So now you want to bring him in, huh? The great Detective Landau vows to see Lou Elon frog-marched off to jail.”

  “I think Lada and Jack deserve justice. Don’t you?”

  “How?”

  “Not sure yet. But before I leave, tell me what Elon looks like.” Tamar needs to know, I said to myself, and it suddenly occurred to me why.

  —

  Sitting in my car, I dialed Tamar’s number. When she answered I said, “Gigi is on a first-name basis with the big shots who meet at the bakery after hours, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is one of those big shots named Lou?”

  The initial silence confirmed what now appeared ridiculously obvious. Then Tamar said, “Fifty-something, gray hair, tall, slim.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s Lou Elon.”

  48

  Kalijero answered his phone with, “What’s up, jailbird? I heard you got sprung.”

  Why was Kalijero happiest when something bad happened to me? I told him I had more information but wanted a meeting with his boss, Deputy Chief Hauser.

  “You gotta give me something now for Hauser to bite, and I don’t mean some crazy-ass finance conspiracy.”

  “I’ve had a couple of nice discussions with Konigson.”

  Kalijero waited a beat. “No kidding. And?”

  “I want a meeting with you and Hauser.”

  “Did he confess? You want me to go arrest Elon?”

  “I want you to go fuck yourself.”

  Kalijero laughed. “Settle down there, tough guy. I’ll see what I can arrange. Happy now?”

  I pushed “end” and, after a quick shower, kicked back on the couch. Of course they still use tugboats, you idiot, I said to myself. Chicago’s the commercial “crossroads of America.” Highways, railroads, and yes, waterborne cargo, all interconnected. But where would Elon’s human goods embark on dry land? The river is at least a hundred miles long and has three branches. Any hope of Hauser allocating police resources my way depended on keeping things simple. Forget about cash streaming into the pockets of business and political elites after cycling through a municipal washing machine. This was how “The City That Works” worked. Instead, sell corpses, crack, Russians, and whores.

  Kalijero called back an hour later. Too soon for good news, I thought. “Get over here,” he said. I asked if we had a meeting. “Just get your ass over here.”

  —

  Kalijero sat on the bench outside the detectives’ room. “Hauser’s in his normal shitty mood,” Kalijero said. “I told him I needed to talk. He said, ‘Later, now get the hell out.’ ”

  “You didn’t mention me?”

  “We’ll have to ambush him. I’m sticking my neck out for you, Landau. Make sure you weren’t bullshitting me about talking to Konigson.”

  I reassured Kalijero and waited for him to clue me in on the plan. Apparently the plan was for Kalijero to say, “C’mon,” and for me to follow him through the detectives’ room, where he conducted a no-knock raid on Hauser’s office.

  Hauser looked up from his desk with a savage expression. “What the fuck are you doing, Kalijero! What’s he doing here?”

  “Now, Karl, just relax. We’ve known each other a long time—”

  “I said we’d talk later! And I don’t care if you’re about to retire, you don’t just barge in like you own the place.”

  “Landau might be onto some—”

  “He’s looking at a murder rap, for chrissake! What’re you doing with him?”

  I said, “Four stiffs, a prostitution ring, cocaine, city officials, and a powerful business icon—all connected.”

  “Konigson,” Kalijero said. “He’s got Konigson’s ear.”

  Hauser looked back and forth between Kalijero and me. “Of course. You’re pals with a billionaire. And you’re here to tell me the billionaire is what? A crook? Why would a billionaire trust a little shit like you?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Hauser rubbed his temples. “So I’ve got nothing better to do than listen to a murder suspect out on bail who doesn’t know why the billionaire trusts him.”

  “You know damn well Landau’s got nothing to do with murder and that Horowitz is just fucking with him!” Kalijero nudged me. “Talk!”

  “It was a setup. I was told I’d find Jones in that alley by the Parking Authority supervisor who works for Elon at Revenue.”

  Working backward from Jones’s murder, I retraced my steps to Lada’s body and followed the dots all the way back to Jack Gelashvili’s corpse outside his apartment on Farragut Avenue. Hauser avoided eye contact but didn’t interrupt. I took this as a good sign.

  Silence greeted the end of my speech until Kalijero said, “If Konigson—”

  “You bust in here,” Hauser interrupted, “to tell me the deputy director of Revenue is running a whorehouse out of city hall and that four people are dead to keep it a secret.”

  “Well, it’s—”

  “A conspiracy with dozens of city employees who don’t notice a damn thing. And all this came about because your media billionaire pal personally called an editor of one of his newspapers.”

  I said, “Prostitutes are coming in Saturday—”

  “What’s gotten into you, Kalijero?” Hauser said. “You’re buying all this? This is what you wanted to meet me about—to help Landau bring down the big bad politician and be the people’s hero?”

  I said, “I want to know who killed Jack Gelashvili. If I’ve got to go through Elon’s white slave trade to prove he’s a murderer, fine.”

  Hauser grabbed a folder off his desk and held it up. “See this? A report by another dumb-shit commission telling us how we stink at being cops. Everybody telling us how to do our job. So in response, I’m supposed to prove city hall ain’t nothin’ but a big cathouse? Goodbye, Landau. Kalijero, you stay.”

  Back on the hallway bench, I caught snippets of the ensuing argument. Kalijero reminded his boss that solving Lada Soboroff’s murder was his assignment. Hauser declared nobody cared about a dead whore.

  Kalijero emerged from the detectives’ room looking like a beaten man. “Let’s go,” he said and I followed him outside. “The pressure’s killing Hauser,” Kalijero said as we walked down the sidewalk. “He’s a shithead, but all the deputy chiefs got chiefs breathing down their necks and the chiefs got superintendents doing the same, and it’s coming down all the way from the city council and the mayor. The streets aren’t safe; the schools aren’t safe. What are you doing about it?”

  “So what’s he got against me? I’m trying to help.”

  “Gelashvili’s case is closed. You want it reopened. That’s moving in the wrong direction.”

  “So focus on Lada and connect it to the prostitution and money laundering.”

  Kalijero groane
d. “Use your brain! Whores and money launderers aren’t killing kids walking to school.”

  “How the hell were you allowed to bust my dad? He was a petty crook.”

  “An informer wanted cash so he came to me with everything we needed. That was an easy sell. You don’t got anything like that with Revenue. And what you’re claiming is pretty tough to swallow.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jimmy! I saw the money moving, the motivation is obvious—”

  “Landau, go tell the world the city operates a giant money laundering machine through Revenue and the boss has people killed. See what happens. I don’t care what evidence you have, you’ll be torn to pieces, called a tinfoil-hat-wearing lunatic. You’d be finished!”

  I paused to let Kalijero simmer a bit. Something else was bugging him. “Does Chicago have a main dockyard where commerce is off-loaded?” I said.

  Kalijero gave me his are you a dumb shit? look. “Haven’t you lived here your whole life?”

  “I grew up in the suburbs, remember?”

  “It’s called the Port of Chicago.”

  Jones’s face flashed before me with the words “at the port” coming off his lips just before his head exploded. I grabbed Kalijero’s arm. “That’s it!” I said. “I can’t believe it took me this long. The tugboat where Elon brings in his merchandise is at the Port of Chicago! Pier twenty-four!”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Just before he was killed, Jones told me the smuggled illegal aliens—all beautiful young women—are lined up and then Elon picks one out and takes her to his car while the others are driven off in a van. Jones would wait for Elon to get his rocks off and then drive them to one of his apartments. She would be Elon’s new sex slave until the next shipment of girls arrived. That’s ten P.M., tomorrow night, pier twenty-four!”

  Kalijero’s stare bored a hole into my skull. I dared think he saw some light. “Where are the girls in the van taken?”

  “I don’t know the whole process, but they’re sometimes brought to the bakery. Tamar’s seen them. The prostitution biz is run by that character you said is known by the cops. He uses the bakery to hold after-hours meetings. A couple of Russkie mob soldiers are always present, too.”