Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  “That body in the river ours? I didn’t see a report,” Schmidt said.

  “Oh. Last week? No. Snagged on the other side so Area Six is handling it. Just a wino, I guess. I talked to Haggerty up at Area Six, says the guy had a liver like a dried balloon, lot of booze when he died. Nobody’s pressing them.”

  “And what about our other wino?”

  “Who? Norman? He’s got the state’s attorney’s office shitting little green apples.”

  “What about us? We recommended they prosecute.”

  Flynn shrugged. “We made a mistake. Maybe. But he killed someone. Even you said that.”

  “I could be wrong.”

  Flynn didn’t say anything.

  Then Matt Schmidt understood. He swung out of his chair and went to the file drawer and opened it. He thumbed back through the reports until he found the one he wanted. He looked at it and then replaced it.

  When he sat down again, he was smiling.

  Terry Flynn, perched on his desktop, his feet on his chair, watched Schmidt.

  “Where’d Norman come from?” Schmidt asked.

  Flynn looked across at Margolies, but Margolies was working the Tribune crossword puzzle. He wouldn’t be any help.

  “Is this a Wally Phillips quiz?” He referred to a local radio program.

  “Where?” Schmidt repeated.

  “Tennessee. Do I win?”

  “Not yet.”

  Schmidt threw across a piece of paper and Terry Flynn read it. “Yeah. I saw this. I told you it was handled by Area Six.”

  “Nothing connect?” asked Matt.

  Terry Flynn hated this. “Fuck this shit,” he said. He got up from the desktop and went down the hall. When he returned he had coffee in his mug. His mug said CHIEF FLYNN on it. It had been a present from his ex-wife when they had first married. He didn’t keep it for sentimental reasons; he kept it because it kept the coffee hotter than a paper cup.

  “Come on, Flynn.”

  Flynn thought he had gotten to know Matt Schmidt in the six weeks since they were pulled together on the Maj Kirsten case. Schmidt ran an independent wing within Area One, and Flynn had looked forward to moving into that wing and learning from Matt. But now he was frustrated by Schmidt’s tutorial approach.

  “This says this guy comes from Red Earth, Alabama,” said Flynn harshly. “And Norman Frank came from Tennessee. So what the hell does it mean? Two shitkickers. The city’s full of them.”

  “I’ll bet you the guy they found in the river wasn’t bigger than five foot five,” said Matt Schmidt. “I’ll lay money on it.”

  Flynn gaped at him. Even Margolies put down his pencil and stared. Finally Flynn said, “You saw the report?”

  “No. Honest,” said Matt Schmidt. “Call Area Six and you’ll see.”

  Flynn knew he was being suckered, but he picked up the pax line, the internal police telephone, and called Area Six. “Yeah, this is Flynn down at Area One. Is Haggerty around?”

  He waited. “Hiya, Jimbo. I got a question for you. How tall was the stiff you guys got out of the river last week?”

  He waited.

  “Yeah. I know. But my Supreme Allied Commander says he was under five foot five, and he’s going to buy lunch for everyone at Diamond Jim’s if he’s wrong.”

  Again Flynn waited.

  “Yeah? Yeah? How ’bout that shit, sports fans. Okay, Jimbo. Yeah, I will. Yeah. Yeah.”

  He hung up the phone. “Five foot two, eyes of blue.”

  “So now what does that tell you?”

  “He was short, Jack.”

  “Short,” said Matt Schmidt. He waited.

  Flynn wanted to punch Matt Schmidt in the middle of his gray face.

  “Terry, use your head on this. Connect the dots.”

  Margolies stared at Schmidt. He was thinking about it, now, and his eyes were focused on a middle distance that was not in the tiny squad room.

  “Norman Frank killed someone,” Matt Schmidt said at last. And then both of them understood.

  Margolies even spoke: “And where was Norman Frank born?”

  “The same town,” said Flynn. “He came from Tennessee, but he was born in Alabama. They came from the same town.”

  “Two good ole boys,” said Matt Schmidt, satisfied with the progress of his students. “Two shitkicker winos.”

  “Shorty,” said Terry Flynn. “We never found Shorty because he was in the river.”

  Matt Schmidt nodded. “And Norman Frank had a bloody shirt because he killed someone. His ole buddy who he liked to fight with—in that tavern next to the Red Lion Hotel, and even in the hotel. They’d get drunk together and start telling each other bullshit stories and pretty soon one or the other of them would get mad.”

  “So Norman was eighty-sixed from Krause’s saloon because Shorty was a good customer.”

  “Just a wino killing after all,” said Sid Margolies.

  “We got the right guy for the wrong murder,” said Terry Flynn.

  “We don’t have him,” said Matt Schmidt. “Not since yesterday morning.”

  “Matt, now how the hell did you do that?”

  Schmidt felt pleased but tried not to show it. “Elementary, Flynn.”

  “We got to make this positive,” said Flynn. “I’ll get a photo of the dead man and go back up to the Red Lion and Krause’s bar and Top’s and show the picture around. If we really got it right we got Mr. Norman Frank.”

  “When we find him,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “So who killed those women?” It was Margolies, and his voice was so unexpected that the other two lapsed into surprised silence.

  Margolies got up and went to the window and looked out. “We got two murders now in six weeks in Grant Park and we’re on square one.”

  “You suppose he killed anyone else?” Flynn asked.

  “Or tried to?” Schmidt added.

  Margolies joined in again. “They were both of a type. Blond and blue eyes. You hear about blonds getting killed. He didn’t kill anyone else. But maybe he tried to.”

  “In the park,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “I’ll go down to First District and look up the assault records.” Margolies got up.

  “And put out a message to the other districts. In case. And the homicide units.”

  Margolies nodded.

  “He might have struck closer to home. Wherever he lives. Maybe in one of the neighborhoods. Hell. I suppose we’ll have to go through the rape reports.”

  “Except we can leave out the black neighborhoods,” said Flynn. “If the guy is black, then we won’t be able to figure out the killing from reading reports on black rapes.”

  “But what about black rape-murders in the past few months? Maybe he was practicing,” said Schmidt. “Maybe he wanted to try out his technique.”

  “This will take a couple of days,” said Margolies. He looked forward to the work. It involved patience and an eye for detail and he was suited for it; also he would not have to talk to anyone in the mornings.

  “And I better call Jack Donovan and Leonard Ranallo.”

  Flynn shrugged. That was Schmidt’s job, to run interference, to handle the political parts of the business. The murders in the park were very hot and very public, and Matt Schmidt was paid to take the heat and the glare.

  “Let me know something by eleven. I’ll call Ranallo and Donovan then,” said Schmidt. “If we can throw them something—clear the murder in the river—then we can get a little bit ahead on the park murders. We got to get a little time.”

  “What about Area Six?” Flynn said. “It’s their case.”

  Schmidt smiled. “But we solved it for them. We’ll let them know after we talk to Ranallo. Part of this little game is figuring out who to tell. And when.”

  Flynn looked at him and nodded. Matt Schmidt was one hell of a detective.

  Though detectives on a case despise interference from the brass or the state’s attorney’s office, Lieutenant Matt Schmidt had guessed correctly th
at interference was going to come in any case, and he might as well be prepared to meet it. Schmidt talked to Chief of Homicide Leonard Ranallo about the second park murder shortly before ten, and Mario DeVito called Schmidt right after. The meeting was arranged for three. Because he wasn’t sure then about the identity of the man found in the river, he did not say anything about their speculations.

  At three ten P.M. the chief of homicide was sitting in Matt Schmidt’s chair in the little office. Schmidt was sitting in Terry Flynn’s chair. Margolies was not present—he was still in statistics, poring through arrest sheets.

  Flynn sat on the edge of Matt’s desk behind Ranallo. And Mario DeVito was left standing at the filing cabinet, leaning on it with one arm.

  It had been a bad day for the brass. The newspapers had screamed in the afternoon about police incompetence and about arresting the wrong man for the wrong crime and about terror in Grant Park. The radio stations were full of the same messages, and that night the television stations would join in.

  “So. What’s new on Norman Frank’s whereabouts?” began Mario DeVito. He had eaten spaghetti with clams for lunch at La Fontanella on the West Side. He still savored the meal while he probed his strong flat teeth with a toothpick.

  Ranallo lifted his thick brows and looked a question at Schmidt but Schmidt shook his head. He was waiting for them to finish. “Nothing. But he’ll turn up.”

  “That’s what they said about Judge Crater,” said Mario DeVito, referring to the famous 1930s disappearance.

  “We usually get them back,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “That’s because you have so much practice,” said Mario. He was feeling feisty and enjoying himself. He threw the toothpick into the wastebasket. “Two points,” he said.

  “All right. We’re all here to get some answers and to find out what we’re going to do on the case,” Ranallo said.

  “I think we’ve solved one murder,” said Matt Schmidt.

  They stared at him. His face was gray and his voice was quiet. “Last week Area Six pulled a body out of the river later identified as Albert C. Rogers. He had been stabbed and dumped in the river. The report says they also recovered a weapon believed used in the murder. We’ve solved that case.”

  “I’m sure Area Six will appreciate that,” said Leonard Ranallo. “But we’re interested right now in the park murders.”

  “We now believe that Rogers was killed by Norman Frank. Which would explain his bloody shirt and other indications that he had killed someone on the day or night when Maj Kirsten was murdered in Grant Park.”

  Mario found another toothpick in his shirt pocket and began to chew on it. Terry Flynn took a Lucky Strike out of his coat pocket and lit it. He threw the match on the floor.

  “You got a blood type on Rogers?” DeVito said at last.

  “Type A. The same as that found on Norman Frank’s shirt. And the same as Maj Kirsten’s. It’s very common.”

  “How did you clear this, Matt?” asked Ranallo.

  “Terry Flynn did most of it,” said Schmidt. “At the time we were investigating the Maj Kirsten murder, he got a number of witnesses who said Norman Frank had a buddy he quarreled with frequently. Naturally, we tried to find the buddy, but he drifted out of the picture, which was not that unusual. They were both transients. But all of the witnesses identified the buddy as “Shorty” and they all told Terry Flynn that Norman Frank and Shorty came from the same town in the south and that they quarreled together frequently when they were drinking.”

  He paused and did not look at Terry Flynn. “We didn’t connect any of this, of course, until the business of Norman Frank’s escape and the second murder in the park.”

  “Shit,” said Ranallo. “You mean that Norman Frank is the wrong man.”

  “No,” said Matt Schmidt. “It means he’s the right man for the murder of Shorty Rogers.”

  “We’re going to look like fools,” said Ranallo.

  Schmidt didn’t say anything.

  “So the cops are saying now that Norman Frank didn’t kill Maj Kirsten.” DeVito said.

  Schmidt waited. He could see that Ranallo and DeVito were tensing, verbally squaring off with each other.

  “So it seems,” said Ranallo.

  “Jesus Christ,” said DeVito. “You wanted to prosecute and now you don’t is that it?”

  “Look,” said Ranallo. “The police uncovered new evidence linking Norman Frank with another murder. We serve the innocent as well as the guilty.” They all stared at him as though he were an idiot. In fact he was trying out the statement he would give to the newspapermen.

  “We still have two murders,” said Schmidt.

  “Important murders,” said DeVito. “And we’re six weeks behind on them because we fucked up, because we thought it was all solved.”

  “We didn’t all ‘fuck up,’ DeVito,” said Leonard Ranallo. “The police don’t prosecute.” He felt uncomfortable. He twisted in his chair and pulled at the seam of his trousers so the legs would not wrinkle while he sat. The chief of homicide dressed very well.

  “The police don’t prosecute and justice is blind and the tooth fairy is real,” said DeVito. He didn’t like Ranallo; he had once told Jack Donovan that Ranallo dressed like a mob hood from Melrose Park.

  DeVito wanted to continue the quarrel. “You guys steered us the wrong way.”

  “Poor baby,” said Ranallo. “Let’s stop pissing on each other.”

  Schmidt broke the tension. “We need surveillance in the park. And I think we should run a decoy operation. In the meantime Investigator Sid Margolies is going through reports to see if there were any assaults or attempts in the past few months that might give a bigger picture of what we’re dealing with.”

  “We’re dealing with a guy who goes into the park from time to time and kills women,” said Mario DeVito.

  They were silent at that.

  Ranallo said, “When did this Jane Doe die?”

  Schmidt winced. “The victim apparently was killed sometime Sunday morning. The coroner can’t be precise yet but it was probably late morning.”

  “He’s an early riser,” Ranallo said.

  Now they were all offended. Flynn threw his cigarette down on the floor. He had been at both murder scenes. “Both women were killed in the morning. There has to be some reason.”

  They all looked at him. It seemed very logical. Schmidt was pleased.

  “They were both of a type—blond, young, blue eyes.” Schmidt said. “We need a decoy. Terry Flynn went down to personnel this afternoon and made a request for some names. Someone from patrol of the type attacked in the park.”

  “For how long?” asked Ranallo.

  “I don’t know,” said Schmidt.

  “I suppose—”

  “The mayor has seemed upset by the park murders.”

  Ranallo made a gesture. He considered himself a political animal and did not want to be reminded of the obvious. “I understand the situation. But we don’t have that many people.”

  “We have to do it,” said Schmidt. “We can’t have another murder in the park.”

  “We’re six weeks behind on this. What makes you think you’ll get a break now—unless he has the chance to kill someone again?” It was Mario.

  Ranallo frowned. He touched the sleeve of his chalk-striped suit coat. A woman manicured his fingernails every two weeks and his hair was styled. Ranallo thought DeVito looked like a common Dago.

  “Why do you think it’s the same guy?” Ranallo asked. “This second broad was naked.”

  The two policemen winced. The word “broad” made the dead woman seem meaningless. Ranallo had spent only a little time in homicide before commanding the division; he did not understand the tenderness with which the detectives addressed the victims of murder. To cheapen the dead cheapened their search for the killers.

  “We have to assume for the moment that it’s the same man,” said Schmidt. “We have to find a pattern to it. And we might catch him before the ne
xt time if we have a decoy. We can work the parks with a policewoman and a team behind her. And at the same time if Margolies comes up with any assault victims in the park in the frame of the last few months, we’ll pursue it from that end.”

  “So we should drop the indictment against Norman Frank,” DeVito said.

  “Quietly,” said Schmidt.

  “It’ll only make a bang big as a headline. Halligan won’t be happy,” said DeVito. “But he’s going to have to bite the bullet. I’m glad I didn’t have anything to do with this fuckup.”

  Terry Flynn laughed.

  DeVito smiled. “But if we throw the papers that Norman killed Shorty Rogers, it might keep them off our backs. They can’t concentrate on two ideas at the same time.”

  “Is the killer a colored guy?” asked Ranallo.

  Schmidt shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s nothing to tell us.”

  Then Flynn saw it. While they were talking, he had chewed on the thought and now he understood. He blurted it out in an unfinished form: “Who’d go to a park near the Loop on Sunday?”

  They stared at him.

  Flynn reddened. “The park. I mean, Grant Park.”

  “Everyone goes to the park on Sunday,” said Leonard Ranallo, who had never gone to the park on Sunday in his life.

  “No, not that kind of park,” Flynn said rapidly. He stood up and paced to the door of the little office and turned. “I mean Grant Park in the Loop. On Sunday morning. There’s no reason to be in the park. Not for the girl. And not for the killer. No reason at all for either of them to be there. So why the hell were they there? And why Grant Park?”

  Schmidt nodded at Flynn and permitted a little congratulatory smile.

  Mario nodded as well. “Flynn is right. The Loop’s deader than Kelsey’s nuts on Sunday except for the flops and the downtown hotels. And the sailors from Great Lakes training center who come downtown in the afternoon.”

  “And colored guys,” said Ranallo.

  “There’s no black downtown on Sunday in the Loop, not that early,” said Mario.