Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  “Not in the park,” said Schmidt.

  “Not that early. They’d be picked up just for being there.”

  “So maybe the killer is a lover.”

  “He takes them down to the park to kill them,” said Ranallo.

  “But what about our Swede?” asked Mario.

  Schmidt said, “We got a statement from a guy she dated the night before she was killed. She had gone to bed with him. Maybe we should talk to him again.”

  “Maybe the killer lives downtown, in Outer Drive East or something,” said Flynn, still in a trance of his own making.

  “Or the victim,” said Mario. They nodded at that. Suddenly, after a quagmire, they were back on solid ground. There were leads. There were questions to be asked.

  “So does that mean you won’t need a decoy now?” asked Ranallo, who seemed a little lost.

  “Goddamn it, yes we will,” said Schmidt, who rarely raised his voice.

  Ranallo stared at him coldly. Schmidt had cancer, maybe he was going to die. He was pretty old.

  “So the guy works nights,” said Flynn in his last revelation of the day. DeVito stared at him in surprise. In the weeks they had prepared the Norman Frank case, DeVito had not been impressed with Flynn; he had seemed just another loud cop who sometimes drank too much.

  Schmidt said, “Go ahead, Terry.”

  “Maj Kirsten was killed on Tuesday morning. The second victim was murdered on Sunday morning. The guy has got to work sometime, it would seem. So he works nights.”

  “If he’s employed,” said Ranallo.

  “And he works shift work. Odd days off, like cops,” said DeVito.

  Ranallo glared at him.

  “Yes,” said Matt Schmidt. “One on a Sunday, the other on a Tuesday.”

  Schmidt almost felt Flynn’s excitement; the room seemed to tingle with it. Schmidt never really believed in the hunt, only in the result, only in the closing of the circle that ran from the anarchy of the act of murder to the solution, the reaffirmation of order. Flynn was a different man; he only believed in the hunt, in the everyday.

  7

  They learned her name early Wednesday. It came from an old man who would not stop crying. He walked into the Jefferson Park police station on the Northwest Side shortly after midnight. He went up to the desk sergeant and, without a preliminary remark, began to repeat the name. Large tears fell down the ridges on his brown face; the desk sergeant thought the man was drunk because he couldn’t understand him and because his breath stank of beer and cigarettes.

  One of the beat men came around the desk and put a hand on the man’s elbow. It was not a particularly threatening gesture, but the old man shoved his hand away. Then he said the girl in the park was named Christina Kalinski, and she was his daughter.

  Then he said he knew the man who killed her.

  At first they didn’t know what to do.

  The desk sergeant called for the watch commander who came out of his office eating a doughnut. The commander listened to the crying man and to the desk sergeant and then suggested they call Area Five Homicide on the Northwest Side.

  The homicide divisions had been asked by Ranallo to call Matt Schmidt on anything involving the Grant Park murders. The homicide sergeant called Schmidt. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and Schmidt was asleep. His wife, Gert, would not wake him but gave him the number for Sergeant Terrence Flynn. The Area Five man shrugged and called Flynn.

  Which was why, shortly after three A.M., a bleary-eyed and hung over Sergeant Flynn entered the Jefferson Park police station.

  The man who said he was Christina Kalinski’s father was still sobbing.

  He sat in a corner of the station, near the pay telephone. One of the policemen had gotten him a paper cup of coffee, but he had let it grow cold without touching it. The remains of cigarettes littered the floor around his feet. Flynn looked at him a moment while the watch commander said: “His name is Michael Kalinski. He says his daughter is Christina and that she’s the one they found in the park Monday. That’s all we know now. Some guy named Schultz was supposed to be called in—“

  “Schmidt.”

  “Something. Kraut name. So they sent you, huh? You’re Finn?”

  “Flynn.”

  “Helluva thing in the middle of the night. You’d think the guy could have waited until morning.”

  Flynn blinked.

  The watch commander, whose name was Burnett, went on: “We really ain’t got nothing out of him. He’s just on this crying jag. I think he got stiff someplace before he came here. But he keeps saying he knows who killed the broad in the park.”

  “Christina Kalinski,” corrected Flynn. He really did not want to hear any of this. He went over to the man and put his hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. Without a word the crying man got up and followed Flynn into the empty locker room. They sat on a bench. Flynn offered him a Lucky Strike, and the crying man took it in strong, trembling hands. He cupped the light and blew the smoke quickly out of his nose.

  “My name is Sergeant Terry Flynn. I’m working on the case in the park. You say it was your daughter?”

  “On television. My daughter. Jew bastard kill my daughter.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I tell you name.” The accent was thick. The blue eyes of the old man burned.

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “Jew bastard.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Christina.”

  “Christina. Christina what?” He wrote down the first name.

  “Christina Kalinski.”

  “How do you spell that name?”

  “I kill Mr. Weiss.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Fancy Weiss.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He Jew bastard, kike son of a bitch. Kill Christina.”

  “Slow it down, will you? Look Mr. Kalinski. Just slow up. Sit there a second and have a smoke.”

  The man looked up as though coming out of a trance. “Who you?”

  “Sergeant Terry Flynn. From homicide.”

  The words seemed to start the tears again. Flynn was embarrassed. He reached for his handkerchief and realized he didn’t have one. The tears rolled down the old man’s face.

  Finally there were only sobs.

  Terry Flynn said, “Tell me about Mr. Weiss.”

  “I kill him.”

  Flynn said, “Look, Mr. Kalinski. Someone raped your daughter and stabbed her to death. We’ll get him.”

  Raped and stabbed. The words cut through the sobs. For the first time the old man was silent. He had gray hair that grew in spiky clumps on his head, and thick gray eyebrows.

  “Tell me, now.”

  So the old man began: “My daughter is Christina. Good girl. Momma die ten years ago, my daughter then is good girl. Go to mass, go to communion, always. Everything. She is only twenty-two years old.” He seemed on the verge of tears again.

  “How do you spell that last name?”

  The old man pulled out his worn wallet and passed it over. Flynn opened to the driver’s license. He wrote the name down on his pad and then flipped the pages of the wallet. There was a picture of a little girl about ten years old. He really couldn’t see the resemblance between the picture and the body in the morgue.

  “Your daughter lived with you?”

  “No. Mr. Weiss. She live with that kike. She whore now. She sleep with him.”

  “Who is Mr. Weiss?”

  “Mr. Weiss. You cops know place. Cops all know. I tell them, they do nothing.”

  “What place?”

  “Place Susy.”

  “Susy?”

  “Yah. Susy, Susy, Susy. I tell cops. You know.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Downtown. Bad place.”

  “Susy?” Flynn thought a moment. His mind scoured the streets of downtown in his memory. And then he thought of Rush Street, the heart of the sleazy, faded nightclub district. Susy-Q Lounge.

&n
bsp; “Susy-Q.”

  “Ya. Susy.”

  “On Rush Street?”

  “Ya, ya. Dhat place.”

  It was a strip joint.

  “She work in Susy-Q?”

  “Yah. I tell you cops this before, you do nothing. You no get my daughter. My Christina.” His eyes filled again. “Now he kill her. I kill him.”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Kalinski. She a stripper?”

  “No clothes.”

  Flynn didn’t understand.

  “No clothes,” the old man repeated. He was not talking to Flynn.

  “What’s no clothes?”

  “On television,” he said.

  “What about television?”

  “Christina on television. Her face. My daughter. Man say, she got no clothes. No clothes. My daughter. She whore. He started to cry.

  “On the news last night.”

  “Shame to me. They say she have no clothes.”

  “Yeah,” said Flynn. He was bone tired. His head threatened to drop onto his chest. He wanted to sleep or he wanted a drink, but he didn’t want to talk to this old man in his inarticulate grief.

  “You cops do nothing.”

  Flynn waited.

  “Cops. Pigs.”

  Flynn thought, fuck this. “Someone raped and stabbed your daughter. And her body is down at the morgue right now and you’re going to have to go down and see it. So don’t tell me about your daughter being a whore. What’s the matter with you, man? She’s dead. Dead. Now tell me who the hell Weiss is.”

  The old man was stunned. It was as though someone had struck him in the face with a shovel. The tears stopped. “Mr. Weiss. Four months ago she meet Mr. Weiss. I don’t know other name. She run away from home.”

  “A runaway? At twenty-two?”

  “She go away, no tell me. I tell cops. They no look for her. One day, then, she come home. She strange. She come home, no talk. She take clothes. I hit her then. She cry. I go away, work, I come home, she gone. Christina.”

  “Was she on drugs?”

  The old man shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You met this guy, Weiss.”

  “One time only. He came with her when she take clothes, put in car. But he wait outside. I not know. I go outside, go to work. I see him. Cadillac. Jew bastard. I tell my friend then, he have daughter too, she run away. We find car is Mr. Weiss.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I not tell you.”

  “You traced the license.”

  “Why you ask then?”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Friend.”

  “Policeman?”

  “Bah. No police friend. Cops. Pigs. Fuck cops.”

  “Fuck you too.”

  “We go down to see Mr. Weiss.”

  “How’d you find him, I asked.”

  “Collection man.”

  “Friend of yours in a collection agency?”

  “We find him.”

  “Where’d you find him? Home?”

  “No. We go to Susy place. The place you said.”

  “So you followed him.”

  It was obvious the car was registered to this Weiss man, with the address listed at the Susy-Q Lounge.

  “Bastard cops,” Michael Kalinski said. “We go, me, my friend. And she is there.”

  “Why not call the cops?”

  “I do call.” The old man stood up. “Cops say she is twenty-two, can do nothing. What rule is this? She is my daughter. She call me name in this place. Place of devil. She not my daughter, she is whore. Man throw us out.”

  He paused and then: “Big nigger man at door. Mr. Weiss send him.”

  “The bouncer?”

  “Ivan take me home.”

  “Ivan who?”

  “My friend.”

  “Yeah. Ivan who?”

  “I not tell you.”

  Flynn got up. He thought he couldn’t take any more of it. He let his cigarette drop to the floor, and he crushed it with his shoe. He left Kalinski standing by the lockers and went into the front room of the station. Commander Burnett was eating another doughnut.

  “I need someone to take him down to the morgue for an identification.”

  “So that was her?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Why can’t you take him down?” asked Burnett.

  “I got to see a man. I’d appreciate it,” said Flynn.

  “Who you gotta see?” asked Burnett out of curiosity. Nights were slow and long in Jefferson Park district.

  “A guy named Weiss who was shacking up with his daughter. Who is ninety percent sure to be the corpse we found in the park Monday.”

  “You solved it?”

  “Who knows?”

  “I’ll get Gloves to take him down. Gloves?” He called into his office. A man wearing white gloves came out.

  “You gotta take Mr. Kalinski down to the morgue to eyeball his daughter, the broad they found in Grant Park on Monday.”

  “Shit,” said Gloves.

  “Why are you wearing those gloves?” said Flynn.

  “Eczema.” The man had a sour look on his face.

  “Oh.” Flynn lit another cigarette.

  “All right. Who’s who and what’s what?”

  Flynn gestured toward the locker room. “Guy named Michael Kalinski in there says that was his daughter we found in Grant Park on Monday. So I need a positive ID before I talk to this other guy. What time is it? I left my watch.”

  “I dunno,” said Gloves. “Big clock on the wall there says the time is three thirty.”

  “Shit. I’m not going to make it.”

  “Okay. Say, what do we do when he eyeballs the stiff?”

  “Call me. No, I’ll call you at the morgue. And then take him home.”

  “Shit,” said Gloves.

  Flynn flushed. “Look, you’re not doing me a favor, you know.”

  “Sure he is, Flynn,” said the commander mildly. He had finished the doughnut.

  “Look. This is a very hot case, as you know, Commander. I got to have that ID one way or the other by four A.M. I’m going over to the guy’s club and betting it has a four o’clock license. It’s a joint on Rush Street. I gotta have a positive ID before I talk to him.”

  The commander shrugged. This guy Flynn was a pain in the ass, but Burnett didn’t know how much clout he carried downtown and he didn’t want to get into any trouble. Not for Gloves’s sake. “Take him down, Gloves,” he said.

  Flynn called the morgue from a pay phone outside the Susy-Q Lounge at four ten A.M. and neither Kalinski nor Gloves had arrived. Flynn cursed Gloves roundly to the startled morgue attendant on the other end of the line and then hung up.

  Rush Street was fading fast. It would be dawn in an hour.

  The hookers were booked or going home; the drunks were weaving down the streets, making final pickups. The cabbies prowled for conventioneers who wanted an after-hours drink joint or a black whore in a blond wig who’d be willing to go down on them in the backseat for twenty-five dollars. The hustlers and pimps and strong-arm boys lounged in the shadows of the garishly lit buildings, waiting to pick off the drunks or fools or both. The “he-shes,” black gays dressed in women’s clothing, pranced their final tired poses beneath the glittering marquees.

  Flynn realized he might get into trouble moving in on the club without a search warrant and without even a positive identification from Michael Kalinski that the girl in the park was his daughter and that she was “Weiss’s” mistress or employee.

  But there was no question that he was going in.

  He banged on the front door for several minutes, but there was no answer. He went around the gangway to the alley in back and knocked on the rear door. No answer. He knocked again.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” came the voice.

  “Police,” said Flynn. “You better open that door, you son of a bitch.”

  Silence.

  “Police. I want to talk to Weiss.”
<
br />   “He ain’t here.”

  “Open that fucking door.”

  “Who says you’re the cops?”

  “I say.”

  “Go ’way.”

  “Listen you son of a bitch, if you don’t open that mother-fuckin’ door right now, no one’s going to open any doors tomorrow. I’ll get your fuckin’ license pulled so fast you won’t be able to fart in there in the morning. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Go ’way.”

  “I’m from homicide,” Flynn tried. The door was steel.

  “What say?”

  “Murder. Open the goddamn door.”

  He heard the bolt at last and then the deadlock. He thought he heard voices. For the first time in months he felt for the .357-magnum pistol tucked into his belt near the base of his spine.

  The door opened on a thick chain. He saw a face in the dim light of the alley.

  “What you want?”

  He flashed his star. “Open up. I want to talk to Weiss.”

  “What do you want? We take care of them over at the district. We’re okay with vice. So what do you want?”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Flynn.

  “Hey, man, that’s no way to talk. You talk to Lieutenant O’Connor on vice, that’s my man.”

  “But I ain’t your man. My name is Flynn and I’m in homicide and if I don’t talk to Weiss in about ninety seconds, you’re going to the fucking shithouse for obstruction of a murder investigation. Can you dig it, shithead?”

  It appeared the black man at the door was a little drunk. He wore a shiny black velvet suit. “You shaking me down, man, or what? Whaddaya want? Ya want some whiskey, my man? You want some Johnny Walker Red Label or what?”

  Flynn shoved his wing-tipped black oxford into the crack of the door opening. He said it again: “I want to see Weiss.”

  “Sure, baby.”

  The face disappeared into the blackness beyond the door. Flynn felt angry and foolish standing in the alley with his foot wedged in the entrance.

  The headlights flooded the alley, and for a moment Flynn froze. He couldn’t see. His instinct was to duck into the service basement steps to his right and pull his pistol. He waited. And then the car door opened.

  “Stand right there. Police.”

  It was absurd.

  Flynn stood still. He was aware of a figure beyond the blinding headlights.

  “Put your hands away from your body,” the voice said.