by Mark Zubro
“Yeah, I guess.”
Paul leaned back slightly and looked at him carefully. “You know you could just have asked to talk to me or Ben. And Brian loves you. He would have tried to help. And telling your brother to go to hell is not acceptable. I’ll expect you to apologize and mean it.”
“I will. I’m sorry I smashed the trophy. It was my favorite.”
It was hard to take privileges away from Jeff since most of what he enjoyed were boring intellectual things. How can you tell a super-bright kid, “And for a punishment, don’t do your homework?”
Paul said, “And you’ll do Brian’s chores for two weeks.”
“Dad!”
Paul held his son’s eyes for a long moment. He said, “Be glad I don’t make you do his laundry.”
“Euww, gross.”
Paul pointed to the desk top. “And you’ll need to sand that and revarnish your desk and pay for any materials you need, out of your allowance.”
“Okay.”
“And if Arvin’s teasing is a problem, you let me know.” Paul was all too aware of non-special needs kids’ willingness to inflict verbal pain on the less fortunate.
“He’s not bullying me, Dad.”
“Okay, just checking.”
He hugged his son. “I love you.”
Jeff held him tight for an instant and muttered, “Love you too.”
Paul found Ben in the kitchen. It was after eleven. He hadn’t been aware of the time while talking to his son. He’d have taken as much time as it took. Ben was putting away the groceries. Paul began helping with the provender. “Sorry I wasn’t able to help with the shopping.”
“Is he okay?”
Paul explained.
Ben said, “He’s going to want to date and have sex.”
“And fall in love. And get a driver’s license. And be on his own. We’re going to have to look into cars that are set up so he can drive. At least that’s a few years away.”
Ben said, “We’d better monitor him a bit more closely for a while.”
Paul shook his head. “It would be easier if he did sneaky things, but mostly he does Chess Club, reads books, plays computer games, and finishes his homework, not quite a delinquent in the making.”
“We’ve been lucky.”
Paul said, “We’re good dads.”
Brian breezed into the kitchen in full baseball uniform. Paul suspected his son enjoyed wearing the tight fitting uniform almost as much as he liked playing the game. Brian tended to go early and stay late, to practice his skill with the sport and flirt with any of the high school girls who happened to stop by. At the moment there was no fairly significant other.
“How’s Jeff?” Brian asked.
“Doing better. He’ll apologize.”
Brian looked at his dads. “That’s cool. He’s an okay kid.”
Paul said, “Thanks for letting us know something was bothering him.”
Ben asked, “Did you call to order your corsage?”
“Got it covered.”
Planning had been going on for next week’s senior prom for months. Brian had put off ordering his tux, making restaurant reservations, and ordering the corsage. Brian could dither about date details with the best of them, but this time his parents had insisted. The corsage had been the last item to be taken care of.
“What kind?” Ben asked.
“A white orchid.”
Brian and a bunch of his friends had rented a limousine and were going as a group with each paired into ‘close friends’ but supposedly no one seriously dating. Paul figured this meant less commitment and less possibility of random sex. At least he hoped so. Brian was off to college in the fall, and he wasn’t, as far as Paul knew, leaving any lovelorn young women bereft.
Brian took his slime-juice out of the fridge, finished it, and set the bottle on the edge of the sink.
Both parents frowned at him.
“Okay,” Brian mumbled. He took the bottle, washed and rinsed it, then set it in the dish drainer. Paul and Ben didn’t have an automatic dishwasher. “See you guys.” The teenager grabbed his baseball glove from the kitchen table and dashed out the door.
Ben said, “Jeff’s going to Mrs. Talucci’s until I’m back from the shop.” Ben owned an imported car repair shop in the neighborhood. He often worked on the cars himself. Paul enjoyed the occasional dalliance with Ben while his husband was still in his oil and grease-stained work clothes.
Paul said, “I’ve got to get to work, but I should be able to finish fixing the screen door on the back porch before I go. I’ll bring Jeff over.”
“Then I’ll head for the shop.”
The two men embraced. Paul nuzzled Ben’s neck, pulled him close.
The back door slammed, and Brian rushed into the room. “Forgot my cleats.” He glanced at his parents. The two men did not unclinch. They had long ago decided it was okay to express non-erotic affection in front of their kids. Brian said, “I can’t leave you two alone for five minutes.” He pulled the shoes from under the stepstool in the corner and dashed back out.
Ben repeated the universal parental dictum, “Kids are the greatest condoms in the world.”
Paul said, “It has ever been so.”
They resumed their embrace.
Then they heard Jeff’s wheelchair coming down the hall. He had the trophy shards in his lap. Jeff said, “I’m sorry I made a mess. I know it’s better to talk when I’m upset. I’m really sorry.”
Paul said, “We appreciate the apology.”
Ben said, “You want me to help you re-glue those?”
“You got time?”
“Plenty before I walk down to the shop.”
The rest of the morning and early afternoon passed quietly. Before he went to work, Paul walked with Jeff to Mrs. Talucci’s. The ninety-three-year-old neighbor lived by herself on the ground floor of the house next door. She cared for Jeff every day after school or on weekends depending on the families’ schedules. For several years after he started, she refused all offers of payment. Being neighbors, and nearly family, precluded even discussing such things. But one day Mrs. Talucci couldn’t fix a broken porch. Paul had offered, and since then he’d done all repairs. He and Ben had even completed several major renovations.
One daughter and several distant female cousins still inhabited the second floor. While Mrs. Talucci ruled this brood, her main concern was to keep them out of her way and to stay independent.
She rarely lost to Jeff when they played chess.
TWO
Saturday 3:12 P.M.
Harold Rodriguez slumped into the squad room. His sad, droopy eyes hunted the corners and alcoves. Then he slouched over to where Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick sat at their desks doing paperwork.
Rodriguez said, “Has anyone seen shit-for-brains?” He planted his skinny butt on Turner’s desk.
They knew who he meant, Randy Carruthers, perhaps the most inept detective in the Chicago Police department whose inability to communicate with criminals, victims, suspects, or his colleagues was legendary. Carruthers was Rodriguez’s partner.
Even Fenwick didn’t have the nerve to ask Commander Molton, their supervisor, what kept Carruthers on the job. Everybody assumed the incompetent cop knew an alderman, a ward committeeman, someone in the mayor’s office, or the police superintendent’s office, or was a friend of the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, or was a close relative of one of the above. Staying power such as Carruthers had, assumed a clout of epic proportions.
Turner thought of clout in the correct Chicago parlance as in, “Who’s your clout in City Hall?” Not how much clout did you have in terms of how much influence you had. In Chicago clout was a person first, then possibly a verb describing how much power you had.
Fenwick said, “I heard he’s planning to run for office in the Detective’s Association.” This group served as the Union for Chicago’s police detectives.
“What office?” Turner asked.
Rodriguez said, “Probably all of them. Wh
at difference does it make?”
“Maybe he died,” Fenwick suggested.
“I couldn’t be that lucky,” Rodriguez replied.
Commander Molton strode into the room with Barb Dams, his secretary. Everyone greeted everyone. Molton began passing out handouts. The department had been undergoing changes and consolidation in the past few years. The most immediate effect being that of almost-daily, thick handouts.
Threats had been made recently that the directives would be sent electronically. While Turner did bring his own laptop from home, and his phone connected to the Internet, there was no assurance that others would have such connectors and, if they did, that they would be networked to the department. If Area Ten and the detectives there could all be guaranteed computers, perhaps that change would have happened already. And Fenwick, while not a Luddite, would consider a shoe-phone as used on the old Get Smart television show an upgrade from his “stupid” phone.
So far the new system had meant few immediate alterations in the detectives’ work patterns. The most significant new thing was that the Area Ten perimeter had been expanded. With the changes in the department, the Area’s boundaries were now Belmont Avenue on the north and Ashland Avenue on the west, but still all along the lakefront south to Fifty-ninth Street. They also got to stay in the old crumbling Area Ten headquarters which was south of the River City complex on Wells Street on the southwest rim of Chicago’s Loop.
The building was as old and crumbling as River City was new and gleaming. Fifteen years ago the department purchased a four-story warehouse scheduled for demolition and decreed it would be a new headquarters. To this day, rehabbers put in appearances in fits and starts. The building had changed from an empty hulking wreck to a people-filled hulking wreck. With all the so-called improvements, departmental or structural, crime hadn’t decreased, and the number of personnel hired to fight it hadn’t increased.
In the Chicago police department, the Areas still took care of homicides and other violent crimes. The Districts took care of all the minor incidents and gave out traffic tickets. There hadn’t been Precincts in Chicago since O.W. Wilson was in charge of the department in the 1960s.
Fenwick called the blizzard-like increase in paperwork, “Reinventing the wheel with a badge.”
Fenwick glanced at the cover of the new handout. Turner watched him stifle a comment. Molton had long since lost patience with Fenwick’s grousing about the changes over which he, Molton, had no control. The Commander had let him know that the complaining was to stop in his presence. Fenwick was no fool. In front of the Commander, he kept his mouth shut.
Fenwick asked, “Anything practical we need to know?”
Molton glared, daring him to bitch about the thing. “Just read it.”
Fenwick nodded.
Rodriguez turned to Molton and Dams. “You guys seen Carruthers?”
Molton shook his head. Dams said, “He was upset earlier.” She pointed at Fenwick. “I had to listen to him rant about your blaspheming.”
“Me?” Fenwick asked.
Dams gave him a mischievous smile. “He doesn’t like you referring to visits from your goddess.”
“People took that goddess shit seriously?” Fenwick asked.
“Carruthers did,” Dams said.
“He’s an idiot. Nobody with an ounce of sense believes that shit. It was just a joke.”
“I don’t remember the funny part,” Turner said.
Fenwick sulked. “They can’t all be gems. I’m doing my best.”
Turner said, “Stick to chocolate. You’re much better at that than making feeble attempts at satire.”
“Or puns,” Molton added.
“Or humor of any kind,” Dams finished.
Molton sighed. “He complained to me about that goddess stuff, too.”
Fenwick said, “He was dumb enough to believe it? It was a joke!”
Rodriguez harrumphed. “As far as I know, Carruthers believes in fairies, sprites, the faces of weeping Madonnas on toast, and things that go bump in the night.”
Fenwick got a twisted gleam in his eye. “We’ve seen one or two semi-clever murders in our time. A few tweaks and turns and voila, Carruthers dies, and we’ve got a perfect murder. And if I get caught, all we need to have is one person on the jury who’s ever known someone like Carruthers. They’ll never convict.”
Barb Dams laughed. “You’re home free. Everyone’s known someone like Carruthers.”
Turner held up a hand. “Wait!”
“Wait what?” Fenwick demanded.
“I have a solution.”
“This I gotta hear,” Molton said.
Fenwick cocked an eyebrow.
They all leaned closer to Turner. “Carruthers believes that goddess shit, right?”
Fenwick snorted. “Who cares?”
“No, listen to this. This will work.” Paul Turner’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “See, we put Carruthers in charge of enforcing anti-blasphemy laws.”
Barb Dams said, “There aren’t any anti-blasphemy laws, except maybe canon law, and I know for sure Carruthers is not a canon lawyer. And I’m even more sure that canon law is not part of the Chicago municipal code.”
“All the better,” Turner said. “We put him in charge of enforcing laws that don’t exist. He won’t know the difference. He’ll be too busy trying to figure it out. The key is, he won’t be bothering the rest of us.”
“Do I have to help him?” Rodriguez said.
That stopped them for a minute. They all liked Carruthers’ long-suffering partner.
“Maybe you’d have more time to get real cop work done,” Turner suggested. “Carruthers doesn’t get any real cop work done now. How could it hurt?”
“There are so many blasphemers,” Barb said, “he’d never get all of them.”
“That’s even better,” Turner said. “We’d have selective enforcement of non-existent laws, a perfect combination.”
Sergeant Felix Poindexter from the front desk downstairs interrupted their repartee. He handed Molton a note and retreated. The Commander read the note and snorted, “We’ve got a dead bishop.”
“Chess piece or person?” Fenwick asked. “Or is there a difference?”
“The body is on the banks of the Chicago River at the foot of Willow Street, just north of Goose Island.”
“What’s it doing there?” Fenwick asked.
Molton frowned at him. The Commander wasn’t about to become part of one of Fenwick’s gag lines. Besides this one was getting pretty old. Everybody else ignored Fenwick too.
Molton slapped the note down on Turner’s desk. “Have a good time, gentlemen.”
He left.
THREE
Saturday 3:48 P.M.
Fenwick settled his ever expanding bulk into the driver’s seat of their unmarked police department wreck. He ran his hand over his still-thinning blond hair, and struggled to get the extended-length seat belt around his gut. Today they were lucky as they needed neither the heat nor the air-conditioning in the car. They drove with the windows down and let the calm spring air replace the normal interior reek of vomit, piss, and blood. No matter how often the back seats of the department issued cars were vacuumed, sprayed, and scrubbed, the noxious odors never really came out.
They took Harrison Street over to Halsted then drove through Greek Town up to North Avenue, turned left to Sheffield, made a right, and took another left on Willow. The street dead-ended at a junkyard that bordered the river. Fifty feet to their right they saw a patrol car. They pulled up behind it. There was only one other vehicle. It was parked at the dead-end.
This was another part of the city on its way up and down. A few super trendy restaurants and art galleries had encroached on the shuttered and dingy warehouses a few blocks away. On this street all the store fronts here to the river were empty. A long abandoned rail line ran down the middle of the street.
Between the river with its struggling bits of greenery and the dead-end, was a junkyard
. The chain link fence facing the street had razor wire at the top. Brick walls lined the two sides. The gate was open. Inside Turner saw twelve-foot piles: one of gravel, another of metallic junk, and a third with twisted metal rods.
A tall, skinny beat cop, Mike Sanchez, emerged from the patrol car ahead of them. His uniform pants fit tightly on his lanky frame, his bulletproof vest barely bulged out his shirt front, and his regulation hat was pulled low almost to the top of his mirrored sunglasses. The hat had two rows of Sillitoe Tartan blue and white checkered bands.
Turner and Fenwick had worked with Sanchez before. He was an efficient, no-nonsense beat cop, who had the unfortunate habit of finding Fenwick’s comments funny.
Sanchez said, “The call came in about half an hour ago. We contacted the owner, he got here and opened up. We confirmed the dead body and called it in.”
“How’d you know he was a bishop?”
He pointed to the dark gray Mercedes at the end of the street. “See that car?”
The detectives nodded.
“It was here when we got here. Nobody was inside. It wasn’t the caller’s. We did a little assuming, and it was unlocked, so we looked inside. Stuff in the glove compartment had the name of Bishop Timothy Kappel.”
“Nobody noticed a car sitting here?” Fenwick asked.
“Wasn’t reported,” Sanchez said. “The owner of the junkyard is Darryl Dalrymple. He’s…” A short squat man emerged from the opened gate. He rushed up to the detectives. “I got taken away from my family. My kid’s got a sports thing tonight. How long is this going to take?”
Turner responded, “In a murder investigation, things take as long as they take.”
Dalrymple gasped. “Murder! The beat cops didn’t say nothing about no murder, just that I had to open the place up so they could look around. I don’t know nothin’ about no murder.”
Dalrymple subsided from belligerence to compliance as he gave them not an iota of useful information. He’d gone to work the day before, locked up, went home. He had no awareness of any activity outside the perimeter of his property. Turner didn’t get any indication of evasion or dissembling in his answers. When the detectives were done with their questions, the junkyard owner stumbled off.
