Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  “You’re a hypochondriac, Sid.”

  “So what? One of these days I’m going to be right.”

  The call from Cleveland police came at two A.M. Neither of the Bremenhoffers appeared related to Bonni Brighton or knew a Frank Bremenhoffer or had anyone in the printing trades.

  At two thirty-four A.M. they got an answer at the residence of Bruno Bremenhoffer in California.

  Terry Flynn told him what happened to his sister, and there was a long silence.

  He then asked him the whereabouts of the rest of the family. Another silence. “Who killed her?” he asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “You think it was someone in my family?”

  “No. We want to notify your parents.”

  “I see.” Another pause. “I suppose.” Another pause followed that.

  “Hello, Mr. Bremenhoffer?”

  “Yes, I’m here. We don’t have trouble with the cops, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Flynn.

  “My father is afraid of the police, you know. He doesn’t like police. It’s because of what happened in Germany. Before the war and after, when he had to live in East Germany. I want you to understand that.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Terry Flynn.

  “Actually, it isn’t my father. It’s my mother I’m worried about.”

  “I understand.”

  Another pause. It was maddening. Flynn could hear the line crackle over the two-thousand-mile distance. When Bremenhoffer spoke, it sounded like there was an echo.

  “They live in Chicago,” he said at last.

  Terry made a thumbs-up sign to the rest of them.

  “Yes?” he said. He tried to sound calm.

  “Here’s the address: 4597 North Kedvale Avenue.”

  “Yes,” Flynn repeated it. “Your father doesn’t have a phone?”

  “No.”

  “What does he do?”

  “What has that got to do with it?”

  “He’s a printer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “What if I do? Why do you have to know that? You want to cause him trouble?” The voice seemed very agitated. Flynn said, “Take it easy, Bruno. I just asked. It’s all right.”

  “What are you going to do with Mathilde’s… body?”

  “She’s at the morgue now. We’ll release her body. After tests.”

  “Yes. I see.” The voice sounded very weary. “Well, you must let me know. What Father decides to do.”

  “We will. Do you have any other relatives?”

  “What? What kind of a question is that?”

  “Just a question. Does Bonni… did Mathilde have an uncle here?”

  “No. There’s no one else. Don’t call her that name to my father.”

  “Bonni?”

  “Yes. He hated that. More even than what she… did.”

  “He didn’t approve?”

  “No. Would you? If your daughter decided to run away and become a whore, would you approve? Don’t be stupid.”

  Flynn flushed and seemed about to make an angry retort. Matt Schmidt, who was listening in at the extension, shook his head vigorously at Flynn who saw the movement in time. He took a deep swallow and tried out his calm voice again: “Of course. Did Bonni run away from home?”

  “Her name is Mathilde. Was Mathilde. Yes. She went to Haight-Ashbury when she was sixteen. We found out later. To become a hippie.”

  “Did she see your father?”

  “Why don’t you ask my father?”

  “All right. It’s just that we didn’t wish to disturb him with these questions, we thought—”

  “How considerate,” said Bruno Bremenhoffer. “I didn’t know the police were so considerate.”

  Matt Schmidt glared at Flynn who was flushing dangerously red again. Flynn said nothing.

  “All right,” said Bruno. “I apologize. I’m upset as well. I liked Mathilde very much. No, she didn’t see my father. He was very unforgiving and she did not bother to see him anymore.”

  “Or her mother?”

  “No. My mother is very much of the old country. My father rules her, if you understand.”

  Flynn waited.

  “I’m sorry to be rude. I am not usually rude. This is upsetting to me. Have I answered all your questions? Can I go now?”

  “Yes,” said Terry Flynn quietly. They broke the connection.

  Flynn turned to Matt Schmidt and the others.

  “He sounds screwy,” said Flynn.

  “Just natural belligerence,” answered Matt Schmidt. “You bring out the best in people.”

  “That isn’t fair,” said Flynn. “Anyway, we got a name and an address now and I’ll bet you a dime to doughnuts that the guy we saw coming out of the theater was Frank Bremenhoffer.”

  They all stared at him when he said this.

  “It stands to reason,” he said. “The old man killed her.”

  No one spoke.

  Sid Margolies finally said, “I’m glad you weren’t on the Kennedy assassination committee investigation. You’d hang first and ask questions later.”

  “Sure,” said Flynn cheerfully. “I’m not an intellectual like you, Sid. I’m just a simpleton from the South Side who likes to bash in heads first and then find out if they have anything in them.”

  Karen Kovac was amazed at the mildness in Terry Flynn’s voice. He sounded happy.

  “What do you think, Matt?” asked Sid Margolies, ignoring Flynn.

  “We are basing all this on hunches,” said Schmidt. He coughed again into his handkerchief. “Karen has given us a reasonable base of speculation. She noted that one of the men running out of the theater appeared to resemble Bonni Brighton. From this, we proceeded to question her agent, who told us what he knew about her family.”

  “Not really,” said Flynn. “But let it go.”

  Schmidt frowned at him. “From this we learn that her mother and father happen to live on the Northwest Side. The question is: What do we do at this moment?”

  It was nearly three thirty A.M.

  “Roust him up,” said Flynn. “Talk to the guy.”

  The others waited.

  “I think we ought to call Jack Donovan,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “Look,” said Flynn. “Jack is a good guy and all and you’ve explained about the problem of this special task force he’s suppose to have set up. But for now we’ve got no reason to wake him up. Let’s go get Frank Bremenhoffer and see what he looks like and then we can call Jack Donovan.”

  “We’ve got less to go on now than we had with Norman Frank,” said Schmidt.

  “Yeah,” said Terry Flynn. “It’s a shame that murder ain’t neat.”

  Schmidt glanced at him but decided not to take offense. It was too late in the night or too early in the morning for anger and short tempers.

  They waited until dawn. Schmidt telephoned Gert and told her he would not be home.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “It’s supposed to rain today,” she replied. “You have to take care of yourself.”

  “I feel all right,” he said. They had been married for twenty-nine years, and they did not have a lot to say.

  “You don’t sound good. Don’t catch cold if it rains. You’ve got the umbrella downtown.” He had a downtown umbrella and a home umbrella.

  “It’ll be good if it rains,” he said. He tried to put a smile in his voice. “The tomatoes need it.”

  “All right.” She always said that at these moments; anything else would just upset him.

  Karen Kovac went with Terry Flynn to the Little Corporal Restaurant, an all-night place on Wacker Drive. It was nearly two miles across the Loop from central police headquarters but he told her that it was good to get out of the area when you worked around the clock.

  They had breakfast together and returned by five A.M.

  Sid Margolies was instructed to call Jack Donovan, but Donovan had removed the plug from the
telephone receiver and there was no answer. They decided not to send a car for him.

  The sun came up over the lake suddenly, as though it were not expected. The sun looked bright gold at first and then orange as it moved above the clear horizon. Because Lake Michigan is so wide, the horizon was a sea horizon, meeting water and sky. The sun splattered light on the dark purple-lit buildings of night. It was warm again. In the west clouds bunched, waiting to spring across the city.

  Frank Bremenhoffer lived in a courtyard building, typical of a certain construction type in Chicago. There were twelve apartments on three floors arranged in a deep U shape around a central court that faced the street. These buildings were invariably made of brick, and most had been erected between 1918 and 1930.

  They were comfortable places to live.

  Matt Schmidt had arranged for two men from the district to wait in the alley behind the building and for two more men to wait on the street in front.

  Terry Flynn and Sid Margolies were going in. Matt Schmidt and Karen Kovac waited on the sidewalk in the courtyard.

  Flynn went into the building and rang the doorbell marked with Bremenhoffer’s name. He waited and rang it again.

  “Maybe there’re on vacation,” said Sid Margolies logically. He only made Terry Flynn sneer at him.

  Flynn rang the bell again and then went downstairs to the locked door. It was a simple catch lock. Flynn took a heavy piece of plastic from his wallet and inserted it between the door and the jamb. The door opened.

  “So which floor is it?” asked Margolies.

  “It must be the second.”

  “But which door?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They went up the carpeted stairs quietly, but still the weight of their bodies made the stairs creak. On the second floor they paused.

  “You want to flip for it?” asked Sid Margolies.

  Flynn frowned again. Sid was making him mad.

  There were two doors on the second landing. It was a fifty-fifty chance. Impulsively Flynn knocked at one door. He waited for a moment and then knocked again. He listened at the door. Suddenly he signaled to Sid.

  Sid Margolies unbuttoned his coat and snapped the safety off his pistol, which was in a shoulder holster. He waited at the side of the door.

  Terry Flynn’s coat was also unbuttoned. The .357-magnum revolver was visible in the clip on his belt.

  “What is it?”

  The voice sounded strange, lost in sleep.

  “Police,” said Flynn. “Is this the residence of Frank Bremenhoffer?”

  Silence.

  “Police.”

  Silence still.

  Flynn knocked at the door again and tried to press himself against the side of the wall. It would not be usual for anyone to shoot through the door at him but, on the other hand, it was never unexpected.

  “Who is this?”

  “Police, ma’am. We want to talk to Frank Bremenhoffer.”

  “He’s not here.”

  So it was the right door. Flynn glanced at Sid Margolies and then gave him the finger. They waited.

  “Come back,” the voice of the woman said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Work.”

  “We’re police. Open the door.”

  Another pause. And then the door opened a crack, held by a strong chain. They saw an old, wrinkled face peering out. The eyes were young and shaped like almonds.

  “Frank not here.”

  She said the English words with seeming difficulty but with directness.

  “Where is he?”

  “Work. I told you.”

  “Yes. Where?”

  “He work at printing plant.”

  “Yes,” said Sid Margolies, peering into the crack of the door. He could not see the inside.

  “When will he be back?”

  “He off work at seven A.M.” The “A.M.” sounded odd, memorized. “He back this morning.”

  “This is important, Mrs. Bremenhoffer. We have to talk to him. Where does he work?”

  “Why?” She looked at the two of them.

  “Mrs. Bremenhoffer,” Flynn decided to tell her. “Your daughter, we think, Mathilde, is dead.”

  She stared at him.

  “Your daughter is dead.”

  Her eyes looked vacant. “Frank will be home this morning. Guten Tag.” She shut the door.

  “What the fuck,” said Flynn softly. “What the fuck.”

  “Look, Terry.” Sid touched him on the sleeve. “Get Matt up here to talk to her.”

  They went downstairs and talked to Matt Schmidt. It was decided that Matt alone would go upstairs.

  He returned to the courtyard ten minutes later.

  “She won’t let anyone in. She’s afraid. I told her again that Bonni was dead and showed her the picture in the papers, but she just shook her head. She told me her husband works at Halsted Graphics and Printing. He’s on the eleven-to-seven shift. He ought to be here in a couple of hours.”

  “Should we go down and pick him up there?”

  Schmidt shook his head. “Let’s wait for him. And let’s lay off the two uniforms in the front of the building.” But he told them to keep the two men posted at the back of the building in case Frank Bremenhoffer had been in the apartment and would try to escape.

  There was something else.

  Schmidt went to the second unmarked car and looked in. Karen Kovac was sitting in the passenger seat. “You live near here,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Go home.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “No,” said Schmidt, “I’m the only one who’s tired. It’s clear to me that you and Terry could go for days without sleep. But I want you to go home and rest up.”

  “I really want to be in on it at the end.”

  “This isn’t the end,” said Matt Schmidt. “I can feel it like I can feel the rain coming. Go home and see your kid and get some sleep.”

  “You’re saying that because I’m a woman,” she said sharply.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. But I still want you to go home. We’ll call you in a couple of hours when we get him and interview him.”

  She was still angry, but she got out of the car and slammed the door. “Boys always want the girls to go home when they’re planning to have fun.”

  “That’s our homosexual need,” said Matt Schmidt. He was trying to be funny. But she wouldn’t smile.

  “I’ll go home, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “There’s more to it,” he said. “What if this isn’t the end of it and we have to resume the decoys in the park?”

  “You know he killed her. If he’s the man in the film. Coming out of the movie theater.”

  “No,” he said. “We don’t know that. Terry is going to poop out soon. So am I. When we get Bremenhoffer into the area, I’m going to call you and Jack Donovan. And someone from the day shift. We’re going to have to stay with him.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Karen.”

  “What?”

  “You might have broken this for us.”

  “I want to be in at the end.”

  “You will,” he said. “I’m worried about you. You haven’t slept for twenty-four hours. I know, that’s nothing. But I like you. Unlike Terry Flynn, whom I don’t care about.”

  She shrugged. She felt deadly tired and still awake, too excited to sleep. She started to walk away.

  Terry Flynn came up to Schmidt who was climbing into the squad.

  “Why did you do that? Where the hell is she going?”

  “Home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she looked tired to me.”

  “What the fuck kind of shit is this?”

  “Lieutenant shit,” said Schmidt. “Now leave me alone. I want to close my eyes.”

  “She practically broke this case.”

  “Yes,” said Matt Schmidt. None of them would understand his premonitions so he did not try to explai
n them. They would just hate him, but that was all right.

  Schmidt fell asleep dozing against the window. When he awoke, the sky was gloomy and rain clouds filled the horizon where there had been a sun. He reached under the seat and felt for his umbrella. His mouth was dry.

  “What’s going on?” He realized Terry Flynn had awakened him.

  “Look.”

  Coming up the street was a man in gray clothes—gray work shirt and gray cotton work trousers—carrying a gray jacket under his arm. He walked with a barely noticeable limp. He had gray hair and thick eyebrows that nearly joined above his long, symmetrical nose.

  “That’s him, Matt. The one on the film.”

  They opened the doors of the squadrol and slammed them and walked across Kedvale Avenue toward the man. It was nearly eight thirty A.M., and they could hear the sounds of the rush-hour traffic from the Kennedy Expressway four blocks away.

  “Frank Bremenhoffer?” Terry Flynn barked the name in the stillness of the street. He held up his hand as he crossed the street.

  The gray man stopped and stared at Flynn.

  “Bremenhoffer? Police.”

  The man had brilliant blue eyes and immense shoulders. He seemed to be taller than Terry Flynn though he was the same height. “What do you want?” He spoke with contempt. And without an accent.

  “Frank Bremenhoffer.” Flynn said it softly like repeating an incantation. “It’s about your daughter, Bonni Brighton. We want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t have a daughter. Excuse me.”

  Bremenhoffer started into the courtyard, but Flynn blocked his way on the sidewalk. “Excuse me,” the gray man said.

  “Your daughter is dead.”

  “Is that so?” Bremenhoffer looked at Flynn and seemed to be on the verge of smiling.

  “Your daughter was Bonni Brighton. She was murdered yesterday morning in a movie house in the Loop.”

  “Not my daughter. My daughter’s name was Mathilde Bremenhoffer, and she ran away from home seven years ago to become a hippie in California. So it can’t be that this person you mentioned is my daughter.”

  Flynn stared at him. He looked at the big man’s shoulders and wondered if he could take him. He wanted to have the chance.

  “I’m very tired,” Bremenhoffer said. “I worked all night. I would like to go to bed.”

  “We want to talk to you. We want to ask you some questions, that’s all. About the murder of your daughter.”