Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  Halligan and Horowitz took the elevator to the state’s attorney’s office, which occupied a large section in the eastern part of the second floor.

  Horowitz led the way. He was a dapper man with impeccable taste in clothes who had first been a young lawyer in the same building forty years before. He thought the offices were immutable. Horowitz liked the old building and, as a native of the tough West Side of the city, he liked the atmosphere. But Horowitz had always played a power game, and now at the age of sixty-eight, he stayed downtown where the power was.

  Mrs. Farrell was startled to see the two men appear in Jack Donovan’s outer office and she gaped openmouthed for a moment while Halligan smilingly extended his hand. “Hello, Mrs. Farrell,” he said. He never forgot a name but in Mrs. Farrell’s case, it was easy to remember. She had been secretary to the past twelve chiefs of the criminal division.

  “Mr. Halligan,” she said, “I’ll buzz—”

  That’s all right,” said Lee Horowitz. He again led the way into Jack Donovan’s office.

  Donovan looked up from his desk. He didn’t appear surprised.

  “Hello, Jack,” said Bud Halligan, like a man looking for votes.

  “Hello, Bud.”

  Horowitz stood by the door and closed it. Halligan went to a chair next to Donovan’s desk. Donovan got up and walked to the window and looked out at the air shaft. Then he turned and sat on the ledge.

  “What brings you out here, Bud?”

  It was Horowitz who answered: “We wanna know what the fuck you’re gonna do with this Weiss character?”

  “He appeared this morning. We decided to tack kidnapping on him instead of imprisonment. That’ll put us in a better bargaining position later. It’s pretty solid all around and we can go to the grand jury in the next couple of days.”

  “I’m not talking about that stuff,” said Horowitz.

  “What are you talking about, Lee?” Donovan glanced at Halligan. “And who am I talking to?”

  “You’re talking to both of us,” Halligan rumbled. “When are you going for charges on those park murders? That’s why we came down here.”

  Donovan shrugged. “There’s no need to right now. We don’t have anything, but Weiss isn’t going anywhere. His bond is three-hundred-thousand dollars. That’s because we leaked it to the Tribune when he was going up, and they sat in the courtroom the whole time.” Donovan smiled.

  Lee Horowitz nodded. “Good trick for an amateur.”

  “But we’ve got to wait on the park murders. The cops talked to him a little bit but, we really don’t have anything.”

  “Nothing?” Horowitz spat. “You got nothing? You had nothing on that guy Norman What’s-his-name, but you sent him up to bat before he walked out of this fuckin’ building. You got us holding a sack of shit downtown and smiling about it.”

  “Are you with the sheriff’s office now, Lee? I thought the sheriff took the rap on the escaped prisoner.”

  “Yeah, but we got to say it’s the wrong guy and then it’s the right guy for the wrong murder. Shit. What a mess you got us into,” said Lee.

  Halligan held up his hand. “All right, you guys. Take it easy. I don’t wanna see a fight.” That was true, in fact.

  Horowitz said, “We want an indictment. Right away.”

  “There isn’t anything there to indict.”

  “So?”

  “We can’t indict.”

  “Who says?”

  “Come off it, Lee. Look at it. I talked to Weiss this morning.” He knew this surprised Lee. “We got him as solid as shit in winter on that little girl. We go to the grand jury, we’ve got it. And he knows it too. And we’ve got another guy we arrested with him, a black guy named Luther Jones, and we’re going to work on him because he’s gone down two times already. What I’m saying is, we don’t have to move on Morey Weiss on that Grant Park stuff yet. Until we get more. Until we’re sure.”

  “Sure?” Horowitz looked disgusted. “We get an indictment now. If it doesn’t hold up in three months, who’s going to remember? They remember now. They pick up the paper and they read about the politicians fuckin’ up the country and they read about the state’s attorney can’t even solve a fuckin’ murder when the cops hand him the killer on a silver platter. You wanna know about the public? They remember the girl in the park, two days ago, she was dead and Norman Who-Ha walks out of the Criminal Courts building and they say, “Same old shit. These guys are fucking up, cutting deals.”

  Donovan waited.

  “So where does all that leave Bud? Bud is all alone downtown. The mayor called him up this morning. And it wasn’t to talk about next year’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade either.”

  Donovan said, “You don’t want this, Bud. We don’t have anything on the park murders, nothing to tie it to Weiss. You announce an indictment now, and even the public is going to see holes in the thing. You don’t want that kind of publicity.” He looked at Lee. “I take the responsibility for the Norman Frank mess. I moved on it when I shouldn’t have. But this is different—”

  Horowitz started screaming, “Bullshit! What do the papers know about anything? That’s the public, you know. Who gives a fuck about the public? You bring an indictment, you got the guy, he’s guilty. You don’t have to apologize later. Even if he walks in three months, you won. No apologies. Three months from now, who gives a fuck? He’s guilty anyway. And we clear the murders.”

  “What if he didn’t do it?”

  “Cut the crapola, Donovan. You’re not the fuckin’ jury, you know. You’re the prosecutor.”

  “That’s right, Lee. I’m the goddamn prosecutor.” The mild response, delivered in Donovan’s usual flat tone, seemed to infuriate Horowitz. The little man looked as though he would strike Donovan.

  “Lee’s right, Jack,” Halligan said unhappily. He hated the wrangling. “We really need an indictment on this. The mayor’s man called me before the mayor called. They’re taking heat at City Hall.”

  “That’s right,” said Lee.

  “I’m going to give you a little scenario,” said Donovan mildly. He got up and went over to the couch and squatted on his heels beside it so that his face was on a level with Halligan’s. He tried to talk directly to the state’s attorney, shutting out Horowitz. The old man was forced to come around the couch to listen.

  “We indict Weiss. This guy killed Christina Kalinski. At least. Maybe we can even tag him with Maj Kirsten. Good enough for a grand jury anyway. We don’t have a weapon, a definite motive, but we indict. But everyone is happy. The papers praise thy name. The TV guys hang him on the air. Everyone is happy, from the cops, who think he did it, to the mayor, who now can get the Streets and Sanitation Department to stop chopping down all the foliage in Grant Park.”

  Halligan’s eyes were soft. He was seeing it, just as Donovan laid it out.

  “And suddenly, about three weeks from now or maybe four weeks from now or five, some blond, blue-eyed woman of twenty-four is strolling in the park one day and a man grabs her and rapes her and stabs her to death.”

  He got up. His knees cracked. He went back to the window while they waited in silence. He turned: “Suddenly, everyone says, ‘Hey, I thought Bud Halligan said he caught the killer of those women.’ Now it turns out we got a phony indictment and Weiss and his lawyer use it to mitigate the little girl case, which we’ve got solid. He’ll say there was no little girl, that we set him up just like we set him up on the other thing.” Donovan stared at Halligan. “You want that kind of trouble, Bud? Or do you want to ride out the trouble you got now?”

  “You really think he didn’t do it?” said Halligan at last.

  Donovan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s all bullshit,” said Lee.

  Halligan shrugged. “What if it isn’t, Lee? What are we gonna do then?”

  Horowitz was still worked up. “Crapola. I think this cocksucker has gone soft since he fucked up on the Norman Ho-Ho thing. Fuck this shit. We wanna indict.
I talked to Leonard Ranallo this morning and he wants to indict. The cops want to clean this one up. This ain’t Saint Joan of Arc you got. You got a miserable little prick in there. You got a soft spot for him?”

  Donovan flushed. “Who are you gonna indict with? You gonna walk in there with a prick in your hand and say ‘Boo’ to the grand jury?”

  “You can say black is shit to the fucking grand jury and get an indictment,” Lee Horowitz screamed. “You are the fucking prosecutor. That’s your jury. I can indict Snow White on charges of blowing the Seven Dwarfs. So what the fuck is this?”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Halligan said quietly, “What do you mean, Jack?”

  “I talked to him. He didn’t do it.” He was sorry he had blurted it out, but now it was there on the table for them all to pick over.

  “Did he tell you he didn’t do it?” Lee mocked.

  “All right. I feel about this one the way I felt about Norman Frank and I didn’t even see Norman Frank. I made a mistake. I let the pressure carry me along. I won’t do it again. You can’t indict and there’s no percentage in it for you anyway, Bud. But while we take the heat off, the guy who is killing those women is going to set up his next murder.”

  “Ranallo says he thinks it’s Weiss,” said Horowitz.

  “Ranallo doesn’t know his ass from third base,” said Donovan. “He’s beginning to believe what he reads in the papers. He hasn’t seen either victim and I doubt he’s seen Weiss.”

  Halligan said stubbornly, softly, “The mayor really wants this cleared up.”

  “And where’s the mayor gonna be tomorrow when you’re standing up there with an indictment that looks like Swiss cheese and another park murder?”

  He looked at Halligan and Halligan winced. Donovan suddenly knew he had won. He was aware, for the first time, that his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  Horowitz understood too. The tension seemed to drain out of the room like a storm disappearing to the east.

  “Okay,” said Halligan finally. “If that’s the way you see it right now, Jack, I’ll back you up.”

  Donovan nodded. Halligan’s words were worthless.

  “Yeah,” hissed Horowitz. “But I’m against it, remember. If it turns out okay, Donovan, you know I’ll be the first to say it. You know that.”

  Donovan stared at him.

  “But if you’re wrong, if we don’t get this guy, then I can’t stand by you.”

  “That’s nice to know, Lee,” Donovan said. “I appreciate the support. Nice to have you drop by and talk about it.”

  “All right there, Jack,” said Halligan. He was on his feet. He sensed the smell of the old building closing in on him. He wanted to get away, escape downtown. Have a gin and tonic at lunch. Maybe with Charlie O’Neill from the civil division. He looked at Donovan. Maybe, he thought again, he really wasn’t the man for the job.

  “See you, Jack,” he said vaguely. “We got to have lunch sometime soon.”

  “Anytime you say, Bud,” said Jack Donovan.

  “Soon,” repeated Bud Halligan. “I’ll check my calendar when I get back and call you. Come on, Lee, we got to leave the man alone. We’ve got things to do. You know what it’s like, I don’t have to tell you, Jack.”

  Donovan shook his head.

  Bud Halligan didn’t have to tell him.

  10

  Her name was Karen Kovac.

  Matt Schmidt looked up at her standing in the doorway of the special squad room, smiled, and waved her to a chair. She sat down. Schmidt glanced at the papers in front of him on the desk for a moment, then swiveled his chair and looked at her. She rested her hands on her lap and looked steadily at him.

  “Do you know about this?”

  “A little,” she said. “They said it was a decoy operation. I put in my name. They said you wanted me.”

  Schmidt smiled. The squad room was empty.

  “How do you like patrol work?” he asked.

  “It’s fine,” she said. Her voice was flat and husky as though she had grown tired of talking but that was the way she always spoke. She had blue eyes. Her hair was blond. That had been the description on the personnel form they had first consulted, and it turned out to be true.

  “You’re married,” he said.

  “Divorced.”

  “Children?”

  “I have a son.” She wasn’t going to say any more than she had to. She had learned that. She was not nervous and her hands did not fidget on the lap of her standard blue wool shirt. The sleeve of her blue uniform shirt said she worked in the Nineteenth District on the mid-North Side.

  “I’m asking because there is an element of risk in this operation,” he said. He tried a smile.

  “There’s risk in patrol,” she said.

  “You know this is about the murders in Grant Park.”

  “Oh,” she said. “No. I didn’t know.” She looked at the piece of paper on his desk.

  “We’re working a special investigation with the state’s attorney’s office. You probably read about Seymour Weiss.”

  “Yes. You picked him up yesterday.”

  “Yes. At first, we wanted to talk to him about the murdered woman. About Christina Kalinski, found Monday in the park. But then the other thing came up.” He meant the tortured girl found in the club Susy-Q.

  “Did he kill her?”

  “Who? Oh. Christina Kalinski? We don’t know. Some think he didn’t kill her.”

  “So you want to go ahead with the decoy operation. As long as you can.” This time she smiled.

  “Right,” he said. “There were two women murdered. Maybe Weiss killed Christina and maybe he killed them both. But that seems unlikely.”

  “Okay.” She nodded to him.

  “We want to work the decoy in the mornings. Both women were killed in the morning, within an hour of each other. One on Sunday, one on a Tuesday. But I’m afraid because of that, we’ll go at it seven days a week. For as long as we can.”

  “Until they don’t let you,” she said.

  Yes, he thought. He liked her. “That’s it.”

  “A woman comes in and watches my child.”

  “And there’s an element of risk,” he repeated.

  She shrugged. Her shoulders were thin, and Matt Schmidt thought her breasts were probably small. But Schmidt mostly looked at her eyes. They were set wide in her head and her face had a certain strength and sharpness of feature that is uniquely Polish. She did not blink while he examined her, and he was sorry he was so obvious about it. She did not move her hands from her lap.

  “We talked to three woman, including a young student at the Art Institute, who have been attacked—or reported they had been attacked—in Grant Park in the past few months. When we found Maj Kirsten—we never told this to the press—she had marked down next to the entry on her guide that said, “Art Institute” she had marked, “Must see.” We don’t know if she was going to the Art Institute the morning she was murdered. We’ve been talking to a few people at the Institute since her murder.” He did not want to say since Norman Frank was ruled out as the killer, only a few days before.

  She nodded.

  “If you want to sign on, we’ll talk with the state’s attorney’s office this afternoon to coordinate, and then we can start in the morning.”

  “How long will it be?”

  “I don’t know. The superintendent isn’t that crazy about the idea. And Ranallo thinks it’s a waste of time. He thinks we’ve got the killer.”

  “Do you?”

  “Think we’ve got the killer or that it’s a waste of time? No to both.”

  “Why do we have to talk to the state’s attorney’s office?”

  He smiled again and this time he didn’t have to try it on. “Some of them were on it from the start, and they’ve been okay with us. Besides, this whole thing has gotten so political that it spreads the heat around. And Jack Donovan asked in. He’s the chief of the criminal division. Apparently he stuck his neck out y
esterday when the brass wanted to indict Weiss. If that had happened, we would have lost the chance of running this operation at all.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I only wanted to ask.” She did not sound delighted. “What will I do?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose walk in the park.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all we know to do. They were both killed in the park and in the morning, and we don’t know anything else. We know less than we knew when the first woman was murdered because we don’t understand the killer—if it was the same man. There’s a psychologist from the University of Chicago who’s supposed to be putting together a profile of the killer. I don’t think he’ll have anything because he’s working with the same things we have. Nothing.”

  “Why do you think he killed them?”

  Schmidt shrugged. “He wanted to. He hated them. Why do people kill people like that? It’s become a strange world. Men hate women and women hate men for it. I don’t know.” He paused. Why was he talking so frankly to her? “He must have hated them. He raped them and he was very cruel. And he stabbed them. Viciously. As though he were angry.”

  “It must be more than that,” said Karen Kovac.

  “Why?” asked Matt Schmidt. And then he said, “You’re probably right. Fortunately or unfortunately, we don’t have to be the psychologists of the world in this thing. There is chaos, and all we have to do is make order again. We don’t have to solve the sexual problems of the society. Just murders.”

  “Why did you pick me?” she asked.

  “We didn’t have many choices. You seemed the type. They were both blonds, they both had blue eyes, were young.”

  “I’m thirty-three.”

  “But you look younger. Also, your watch commander said you were very quick, very smart.”

  She nodded. She didn’t blush.

  “It probably won’t matter in the long run. We’ll wait for weeks, or for as long as we’re allowed to do this, and he won’t strike again or it’ll turn out we’re wrong and Weiss will confess. Or maybe he’ll kill someone else, but not in the park. It’s the only thing we can do, though.”