Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  A second voice said, “Turn and face the wall. Slow. And assume the position.”

  It was even embarrassing. Flynn pulled his foot from the door and turned to the brick wall and threw out his arms and spread his feet.

  “Wider,” came the voice.

  They patted him down.

  “Shit, he’s got a gun, Joe,” one of the voices suddenly cried. “Watch him, watch him.”

  They freed his pistol. Then one of them hooked one wrist with a handcuff and the other tripped his ankle. Flynn went sprawling on the floor of the alley and skinned his cheek. They dragged his left arm back behind him and snapped the other wrist into the cuffs. Then they roughly pulled him to his feet.

  “You tore my coat, you stupid bastards,” Flynn said quietly.

  “Shuddup,” said the first uniform. He took a step toward Flynn and cuffed him on the face. At that moment the back door of the Susy-Q was thrown open.

  “Whaddaya doin’ here?” said the second uniform.

  “I’m a police officer,” said Flynn.

  The two hesitated. The first one said, “Where’s your star?”

  “I wish it was sticking up your ass right now,” said Flynn. “Left-hand inside pocket.”

  The beefy one—the first uniform—stepped forward and reached inside Flynn’s coat and gingerly removed the black wallet. He flipped it open and saw the five-pointed shield that Chicago police call a “star.”

  “Let him go, Stan,” said the beefy one. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us?”

  “Why didn’t I pull my pistol and blow your fuckin’ stupid heads off?” said Flynn. “Nobody’d notice it was missing for days, least of all you guys.”

  The drunk in the door of the Susy-Q was watching all this and now he said, “Turns out he was a cop, huh?”

  “Goddamn it, Luther, you asshole,” said the beefy cop.

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  Stan was having trouble removing the cuffs.

  “Get these cuffs, you moron.”

  Stan finally clicked them open, and Flynn grabbed his wrists and massaged them.

  “What’s your fucking name?” he asked the beefy cop.

  “Tom Turner.” Then he thought to add: “Sergeant Flynn.”

  “You’re wrong. Your fucking name is Shit. Mr. I. M. Shit.”

  “We didn’t know who you were,” said Turner.

  Flynn snatched away his pistol and replaced it on his belt. “You get your fucking kicks shoving around citizens, do you, you stupid jagoff? You’re going to eat turd pie until your eyes are brown, Turner. What’s Micky the Mope’s name here? And how come you guys aren’t wearing your nameplates?”

  “Stan Barza,” said the other cop.

  “Which one of you guys tripped me?”

  They didn’t speak.

  “Assholes,” dismissed Flynn.

  “Say, officer, no need to be angry,” said the man in the doorway. “Shit. Just a mistake. How about a bottle of very fine whiskey? How about a little something for your trouble?”

  “How come you know this guy?” Flynn said.

  The two cops looked at each other. “We get around the district.”

  “How could he call you? He’s got to go through the dispatcher downtown. He can’t ask for the cop he likes. Can he?” asked Flynn.

  “Oh, shit,” said Luther. “I seen these fellas eating cross the street. I always know they’s there right now, having their lunch. So I just called across to them.”

  “Is that right?” said Flynn. “You boys are in a jam.”

  The two men looked at Flynn with white faces.

  Flynn turned to the door. “I still want to talk to Mr. Weiss.”

  “You can’t come in here without no search warrant—” the black man began.

  “Is that right?” grinned Flynn. “Turner—Mr. Shit—did Luther here call you?”

  “Yes,” said Turner.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Said someone was breaking in,” Turner mumbled.

  “Investigate then,” said Flynn. “Go ahead.”

  “Shit, man,” said Luther. “You can’t—”

  Flynn leaped at the bouncer and pushed him back inside and slammed him against the wall. The bouncer instinctively brought his hands up, and Flynn chopped him hard on the shoulder. He heard a crack.

  “Listen, motherfucker,” said Flynn. “I want Weiss in five seconds. Four.” He pulled his pistol. “Three, Two.”

  “He’s home. He went home. He had the flu.”

  “Where’s home asshole? Four. Three. Two. One.”

  “Man, don’t do that stuff. Outer Drive East. The cat lives in Outer Drive East. You killin’ me—”

  Flynn let go. “Bingo,” he said. Downtown in Grant Park. Not three hundred feet from the body of Christina Kalinski.

  The two policemen stood in the doorway, the light from the alley silhouetting them. At that moment Flynn heard a noise from the darkness inside the club.

  He pushed Luther aside and cocked his pistol.

  “Lights,” he hissed.

  “No one there, man,” said Luther.

  Flynn turned suddenly and Luther flinched. “Lights.”

  The man fumbled for the switches in the darkness. Two large ugly spotlights glowed on. There were brilliant shadows in the tawdry half darkness of the lounge. The stage was bare.

  “Who’s there?” said Flynn.

  He was sure he heard the noise again.

  Cautiously Flynn moved into the lounge. The two uniformed men hung back by the door. Both had drawn their pistols.

  Flynn saw the door on the far wall and moved toward it. He felt along the wall for a light switch. He suddenly shoved the door open but held back, pressed against the wall. The room beyond was dark, but someone was there. The presence of another human was palpable.

  He tried to find the light switch.

  He realized he was silhouetted in the dim light. His hands were wet. He moved suddenly into the darkness of the inner room and dropped to one knee, holding the pistol out in front of him with both hands.

  “Police,” he bellowed. “Who’s there?”

  “Don’t shoot, for God’s sake,” a voice screamed.

  “Turn on the fuckin’ lights now,” Flynn cried.

  “Don’t shoot,” the voice said.

  “Turn on the fuckin’ lights,” Flynn repeated. He was very frightened.

  He thought he heard another sound, like weeping. “Don’t shoot!”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot if you turn on the lights,” he said. He was aware that someone in the inky room was moving.

  And suddenly the lights flashed on and Flynn blinked. His eyes and the pistol scanned the room. Then he stood up, feeling sick. His hand went limp and the pistol barrel pointed at the floor.

  Standing on the other side of the room, near a light switch, was a middle-aged white man with a sagging belly and breasts. He was dressed only in undershorts. His gray hair was matted with sweat. Flynn thought he would vomit just looking at him.

  The girl was on the bed, naked.

  She had long black hair. Her genitals were small and very nearly bare of hair. Her arms had been stretched above her, tied to the rail at the head of the filthy cot. She had a leather gag in her mouth, and her legs were spread wide.

  There was blood on the dirty sheet and a plastic object protruded from her anus. Her buttocks rested on a pillow to lift them, and her ankles, tied to the rail at the foot of the couch, were raw where the leather straps bit into them.

  She appeared to be crying—that was the sound he had heard—but he could only see the convulsive rising and falling of her ribs.

  She had small breasts, hardly larger than those of the man who stood behind her.

  Flynn stepped toward the man and slapped the barrel of the .357-magnum on the side of his cheek. The man fell back, spitting blood. The two uniformed men crowded the doorway with their pistols drawn.

  The girl on the bed appeared to be about fourteen year
s old. She looked at Flynn, and Flynn could not look back at her. He looked at the tear on the sleeve of his sport coat. No one moved. The man in shorts began to sob.

  Flynn looked back at the door, at the two uniformed men. “Get out of here,” he said. They backed away.

  He went to the bed, untied the girl, and took the leather gag from her mouth. As he covered her with a blanket, he felt her thin body shake.

  And then they all heard her begin to cry.

  8

  The telephone began to ring, and Jack Donovan emerged from a deep, restless sleep like a drugged man. He rolled over in the bed and dragged the covers with him, but the phone wouldn’t stop. He opened his eyes and saw morning light streaming through the blinds in the bare little bedroom. Finally the phone stopped ringing.

  He was awake and his mouth was thick. An empty glass sat on the nightstand beside the bed; Donovan looked at the glass and tried to remember the night before. He closed his eyes. The telephone started ringing again.

  This time he pushed himself up, dragged the covers around him, and stumbled to the kitchen. In the living room the television set was on, but only a white static sound came from it; there were no images.

  He pulled down the receiver on the fifth ring. Beneath the covers, drawn around him like the robes of a king, he was naked.

  He did not speak.

  “You told me to call you.” Goldberg. What had happened now? He looked at the kitchen clock. It was nearly six A.M.

  “This is about the Kalinski murder. Sergeant Flynn just arrested a guy and he says he thinks the guy killed her.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Goldberg sounded excited, which was not unusual. Donovan leaned his forehead against the cool kitchen wall.

  I’m sorry, I forgot. It’s all happened overnight and I forgot… You didn’t know her name. We got an identification a couple of hours ago on the girl in the park. The second body. Her name is Christina Kalinski, age twenty-two. Her father made the identification. She was apparently a B-girl down on Rush Street and was shacking up with some guy named Seymour Weiss. So Flynn went down to Weiss’s joint—”

  “Slow down, Goldberg.”

  Goldberg seemed annoyed. “Sergeant Flynn,” he began slowly as though talking to an idiot. “He went down to the place where Christina worked, which is a club on Rush Street owned by this Weiss character.”

  Donovan nodded to himself. His forehead was still pressed against the cool kitchen wall and his eyes were closed.

  “So when he got down there, you know what?”

  Donovan waited.

  “He rousted Weiss and found a fourteen-year-old girl there, a runaway, all tied up. You know, in an S and M scene. And she was strung out on some kind of drugs. They got her at Henrotin Hospital now. And we got Seymour Weiss down here. They haven’t talked to him yet about the Kalinski woman.”

  “I’m coming down.” Donovan kept his eyes closed. “Did Flynn give him his rights and everything?”

  “Sure. Everything was careful. They’re going to charge him with deviate sexual assault, rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, imprisonment… shit, we can hold this bastard until doomsday.”

  “Just take it easy on the park murders. Tell Flynn I’m coming down.”

  “Sure,” said Goldberg. “He even got to call his lawyer. Guy named Larry Hopewell. You know him?”

  “Yeah,” said Jack Donovan. “An outfit lawyer.” He referred to the crime syndicate.

  “Oh. This guy Weiss in the outfit then?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Donovan. “Did Weiss say anything after he got his rights?”

  “He said he didn’t know the girl was underage. Oh, yeah. Flynn rapped him, I think. They had to take a stitch at Henrotin.”

  “Shit,” said Donovan. “What’s wrong with these guys? They got shit for brains?”

  Donovan hung up and went into the bathroom. While he shaved, he wondered if Flynn had really broken it open.

  In the kitchen he found a half carton of milk. He opened it and sniffed at it. It did not smell bad so he drank all of it and threw the carton in the garbage can.

  He turned off the television set in the living room and left the apartment.

  “You look like hell, Flynn,” Donovan said as he walked into the squad room next to the interview room.

  “I feel like hell,” said Flynn. “I called Matt twice, but I can’t get through Brunhilda to talk to him. He’s sleeping and she won’t wake him. She pulled the gizmo out of the receiver so now I can’t get through at all.” He handed the arrest sheet to Donovan.

  “How good does it look?” asked Donovan.

  “Very good. The bum lives in Outer Drive East. The Kalinski girl is found one hundred feet from the building, practically. Bingo. And this little creep was shacking up with her. Bingo again. And the guy is into beating up girls. He gets his kicks from whips and stuff. You oughta seen that poor kid he had tied up in his club. So bingo number three, and we get a free game on the pinball machine. I think he is candidate number one for the park murders.”

  “Just like Norman Frank,” said Donovan.

  Flynn frowned.

  “He’s been processed and we’ve got him stewing next door in the interview room.”

  “You slugged him?”

  “I had to.” Flynn looked back steadily at Donovan. Now they were policeman and lawyer. “He resisted arrest. I had two other coppers with me at the scene, and they’ll back me up. Both of them already made statements.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  Flynn smiled. They were on the same side again. “See, the little creep tore my coat.” He indicated the tear in his jacket.

  “Anything else? Where’s his attorney?”

  “He had to leave a message. The attorney has got an answering service. I asked him if he wanted to call anyone else, but he ain’t talking. See, everything is neat. He got his call, got his rights, got everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “One more thing. We also got a colored guy named Luther Jones. He’s a bouncer at the Susy-Q Lounge for Weiss, and he’s the guy that let us into the club to talk to Weiss. We think he was also into helping Weiss to tie up little girls. We got him locked up.”

  Donovan frowned. “So you didn’t have a search warrant for the club. Says here you effected the arrest after hours. What was the pretext for entering the property after hours?” Donovan was testing the strength of the legal web surrounding the arrest.

  Flynn still smiled. “Luther Jones called police to investigate a reported break-in at the club.”

  “Really?” Donovan was surprised. “Who broke in?”

  “No one. False report. It was me at the back door. The guy was a little drunk and decided to fuck me around by calling the cops when I banged on the door.” Terry Flynn grinned and lit a Lucky Strike. “We got a lot of shit on Luther Jones too. He’s gone down twice for very heavy stuff. Armed robbery fifteen years ago and attempted murder and aggravated assault five years ago. Luther’s on parole.”

  “So Luther Jones is our wedge with Weiss and our cover in case we made any mistakes.”

  “More than that,” said Terry Flynn. “This Susy-Q has got to be an outfit joint, especially with Weiss calling this shyster, Hopewell. Luther Jones just might like to talk ’bout all kinds of things.”

  “You’re dreaming,” said Donovan. “Luther would rather go to the joint again than end up on a meat hook on the West Side.”

  Flynn shrugged.

  “Well, let’s talk to him before Hopewell gets around to coming down,” said Donovan. Flynn led him into the interview room.

  Weiss looked up from the table where he sat. The room contained only the table, four folding chairs, and a chain attached to one wall. The chain had cuffs at one end and was used when questioning violent prisoners.

  Flynn thought Seymour Weiss had diminished in size since his arrest. He appeared now to be a little man. He looked at Flynn as the
two men entered. One eye was swollen and had turned blue, and there was a bandage on his cheek.

  “What now? You gonna beat me up some more?” The sniveling man found in the room with a naked girl on his bed had also changed; he was a mean-voiced man now with flat, crafty eyes.

  “Shut up, asshole,” Flynn said amicably. “You want another cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t want shit. I want my lawyer.”

  “Did we let you call him?”

  “I ain’t saying nothing.”

  “Did we let you call him?” Flynn repeated and this time Weiss felt he should answer. He nodded.

  Donovan said. “We’re going to ask you some questions.”

  “I ain’t talking. I told this one here I ain’t talking, so you can ask questions and you won’t hear nothing but echoes.”

  “Very hard case,” said Flynn in the same amused tone. “You want a cigarette?” He offered the pack and this time Weiss took it. “You ain’t got filters?” he asked.

  Flynn chuckled and held out a light. His mood was maddening to Weiss.

  “We want to know about Christina Kalinski,” said Donovan quietly.

  Weiss seemed to freeze in the act of puffing the cigarette to life.

  Flynn and Donovan both knew in that moment that Weiss was afraid.

  “Who?”

  “Christina Kalinski.”

  They fell silent and Weiss drew hard on the cigarette and lost himself in blue smoke.

  “What about her? She used to work for me but I ain’t seen her,” Weiss said at last. His voice had lost something in the past few seconds.

  “Since when?”

  “All week,” said Weiss. He suddenly tried out a smile on Flynn. “Hey. Come on. Look, I know you gotta do what you gotta do. Look, you know Lieutenant O’Connor with vice? That’s my man. Really, long as I been on Rush Street, O’Connor and I know each other. We go back, you know? I really run a clean joint, you know? Man? You figure I could talk to O’Connor, maybe we could straighten all this out? Look, I know you got your job to do and I got mine and sometimes we get a little misunderstanding, you know—”

  “O’Connor’s my brother-in-law,” said Jack Donovan. Even Flynn looked surprised.

  “No shit?” said Weiss, the smile widening.