Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  “Maj Kirsten.”

  “We got other fish to scramble,” said Lee Horowitz. “The mayor’s man indicated this morning you could drop the whole thing. Everyone go back to what they were doing.”

  “Fine. But I think we ought to keep in touch on this investigation.”

  “That’s for the cops to do,” said Horowitz. “We got to sharpen up on the West Side. I looked at the figures for last month. The conviction rate is way down and you know Bud ran last time saying he maintained the highest conviction rate of anyone.”

  “Yeah.” Politics bored him. He yawned. Despite his depression he felt better these days; his stomach didn’t bother him. It was probably Mrs. Woljczek’s evening meal.

  “Well, Mario DeVito may be good at trial work, but he couldn’t administer his way out of a briefcase.”

  “So what do we do about the murders?”

  “Nothing. That’s the police’s business.”

  “The mayor said he wanted—”

  “The mayor wants when the heat’s on. Like everyone else. This is politics, Donovan, not tiddledywinks. When the heat ain’t on, he don’t want so bad.”

  “Lee. We’re going to get him.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Jack? You running for something?”

  “No. But we know who he is. And we’re tailing him. I talked to him, Lee. Like this. Like I’m talking to you. He’s a bad man.”

  Lee shrugged. “There’s a lot of bad guys. You think this guy is bad. Good. Lock him up. Indict. Who cares three months from now?”

  “I do.” He couldn’t believe he was saying these things.

  “We’re going to get him. We all feel it. It’s going to end up okay. That bastard killed three women and he doesn’t care about it, and we’re going to get him.”

  Lee shrugged.

  “Don’t shrug, Lee. Don’t gimme that shit.” Jack Donovan stood up. it’s worth more than a shrug.”

  “What do you want to do, Jack?”

  “I want to keep it alive. For a while longer. Hell. For a long while longer.”

  “Jack, in seven years I never knew you to get so passionate.” It was how long Donovan had been in the office.

  He waited.

  “Good, Jack.” Lee Horowitz stood up. “Get the prick.”

  21

  When they finally devised a plan, it seemed so logical to all of them that they thought they had decided on it at the same time. Actually it was Sid Margolies who had provided them with the information that eventually led to the scheme.

  On September 23, the leaves were already beginning to fall from the trees. For two days it had been raining, and strong winds had whipped the elm and oak leaves from the trees and flung them into clogged gutters. Several streets were flooded at the places where they passed under railroad bridges—hundreds of such bridges crisscrossed the city. Police on the South Side arrested a gang of juveniles who attacked motorists stranded by the little street floods in the underpasses. The weather was miserable, and there was every indication that once again fall would be short and ugly.

  There had been five hundred sixteen murders in the city so far in the year. There was still a good chance they might break a record.

  This time they all met in Jack Donovan’s temporary office in the Civic Center building downtown. It was after six P.M., and the building was nearly empty. Bright lights still illuminated each of the wide halls. In the broad plaza in front of the building rain dashed against the rusting hulk of the Picasso statue. There was no one in the plaza.

  They had chosen to meet here because the room was so large. The heating system continued with its omnipresent hum. There were chairs enough for all of them, but they chose their usual places to stand or lean or sit.

  Because the windows in the Civic Center went from floor to ceiling and had no ledge, Jack Donovan sat on top of a two-drawer steel file cabinet on one white wall. Karen Kovac sat at the table with Matt Schmidt. Terry Flynn sat on the edge of Jack Donovan’s desk with his feet propped on the wooden chair next to it. And Sid Margolies leaned his elbow against the four-drawer file cabinet on the opposite side of the room. Margolies was the only one who had his ballpoint out, poised over a clean page of his notebook.

  Margolies had just delivered his report on the routine movements in the dull life of Frank Bremenhoffer.

  With fall, Bremenhoffer had altered that routine somewhat.

  He slept earlier. After work he went directly home. Presumably he slept then because at four or five P.M. he appeared on the street again and walked three blocks to Irving Park Road, to a tavern called the Lucky Aces. It was an ordinary neighborhood tavern, like a thousand others scattered throughout the city.

  They had wanted to see what went on in the tavern where Bremenhoffer spent at least two hours each night before returning home. But that was the tricky part.

  As Terry Flynn interjected, “A policeman in plainclothes looks exactly like a policeman in plainclothes.” If Margolies went into the tavern, there was the fear that he would be recognized.

  They had chewed on that problem for nearly a week. They wanted to see if Bremenhoffer was meeting someone in the bar. Perhaps a woman.

  The plan, haphazardly but logically, had developed from the problem.

  Karen Kovac came up with the solution on her day off and without telling anyone.

  She was off on Thursday. At three P.M. she walked down her block to Irving Park Road, then walked three blocks east to the Lucky Aces. She wore a white blouse, black skirt, and nylons. She wore lipstick and had powdered her face and put eye shadow on. She looked altogether different.

  She ordered Scotch and soda at the bar in her husky voice and drank it slowly.

  She had had three drinks when Frank Bremenhoffer entered the tavern a little after four o’clock.

  Karen Kovac did not look at him at first, but she was aware he was in the taproom. She saw his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. By now she was engaged in conversation with a man who appeared to be a construction worker: he had mud on the cuffs of his jeans and wore several sweatshirts in layers instead of a jacket. He was drunk.

  “Heya, Frank,” said the bartender. He was a slight man and wore a plastic bow tie on his white shirt in the old-fashioned style. His name was Jerry, and he didn’t own the place.

  Bremenhoffer chose to sit down across the bar from Karen Kovac.

  The bar was U shaped. Karen Kovac, the construction worker, and four other patrons sat on the west side of the bar, near the bowling machine and cigarette machine. Bremenhoffer sat alone on the east side, near the silent jukebox.

  Above the bar, on the south wall, a television set flickered multiple ghost images of a Chicago Clubs baseball player at bat. It was the end of the season, and the game had been delayed twice by rain. No one was watching the game, and the sound was turned off.

  There were two fat women on the other side of Karen Kovac. They seemed to know Bremenhoffer, and one of them said, “Hiya” to him. He didn’t answer except for a slight nod.

  It was four twelve P.M. Jerry the bartender brought Frank Bremenhoffer a glass of tap beer and a shot of Christian Brothers brandy.

  The construction worker suddenly decided to kiss her. His breath smelled of cigarettes and beer. She let him kiss her but then pulled back as he touched her breast. She wore a brassiere. For a moment she let his hand linger there and then straightened up. “Too rough,” she said pleasantly. He lurched at her and nearly fell off the barstool.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  “C’mon,” she said. “Finish your drink.”

  She looked across at Bremenhoffer, who was staring at her.

  She looked into his eyes. It was the first time they had seen each other. For a moment she thought of Bonni Brighton.

  “You’re cute,” she said to the construction worker.

  Bremenhoffer stared at her.

  “Hi,” she said across the bar to him.

  She looked at his face, a smile frozen on hers. He
was impassive. His eyes were wide open. Cold. Drowning blue eyes. She forced herself to continue smiling. She was not sure of what she was doing; she was acting on instinct. He finished his beer quickly and then got up.

  “Heya, Frank,” said Jerry.

  But Bremenhoffer was out the door. Jerry went to his place at the bar and felt for change. There was none.

  After a fourth drink Karen Kovac disentangled herself from the affections of the construction worker. He wanted to take her to his place. He lived in Argo.

  She told him she wouldn’t go with him.

  He asked her for a kiss.

  She got up and left the bar, leaving a fifty-cent tip. The bartender said, “Seeya” as she pushed open the door.

  All of which—except for a graphic description of the embrace—she related as part of Sid Margolies’s report. They sat transfixed during the narrative.

  “I think he would have killed me,” she said.

  Matt Schmidt glanced at her. “You’re right. Why the hell did you do that? Why did you talk to him?”

  “It seemed exactly right at the time.”

  Schmidt looked angry. He broke a pencil in half and rummaged on the table for another.

  “Look, Matt,” she said. “He never saw me. Remember? You sent me home when you arrested him.”

  He stared at her. “It’s a helluva time to get back at me through women’s lib.”

  Terry Flynn laughed out loud. “For Christ’s sake, Matt. It was a terrific idea. If I worked an idea like that—on my day off, no less—you’d get me the Lambert Tree Award.” The award was given annually to the policeman who had committed the most heroic act of the year.

  Donovan smiled. “If you did it, Flynn, I don’t think the construction worker would have tried to kiss you,” said Schmidt. That loosened it up for all of them.

  “I think it’s the way to get him.”

  Karen Kovac said it softly after they had finished razzing Flynn. They looked at her, and she saw Flynn nod. He understood.

  Jack Donovan put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the wall, one foot propped on the low filing cabinet. “Karen is right.”

  Sid Margolies said pedantically, “You mean you figure you can get him to attack her?”

  “Something like that,” said Donovan.

  “Isn’t that entrapment?”

  “No,” said Donovan. “If we do nothing illegal and suggest nothing illegal to Bremenhoffer, it isn’t entrapment. Any more than Karen’s decoy operation in Grant Park would have been. And it’s either do it this way or wait until he decides to kill someone else ten years from now.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Matt Schmidt.

  “Why not, for Christ’s sake?” asked Flynn.

  “It’s a risk,” he said.

  “So’s everything else,” said Karen Kovac.

  “You understand the purpose of the plan, do you?” asked Matt. “You want Frank Bremenhoffer to attack you with a knife and try to kill you. You understand that?”

  “Yes,” said Karen Kovac quietly.

  “All right.” He sighed and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. But, of course, there were none. “What’s the risk?”

  Sid Margolies said, “I’m on him every day, from morning until late afternoon. We can put a bug in Karen’s purse—”

  “Stop talking like we were feds,” said Matt Schmidt. “Where the hell are we going to get devices that small? We don’t have all the money in the world, you know. If you want to play G-man, go join Drug Enforcement Administration or something.”

  “All right.” Sid Margolies sounded hurt. He shut his notebook. “I’ll keep her in sight.” He said it with some confidence. In fact, Sid Margolies had never lost a tail.

  “What if he wants to go home with her?” asked Matt Schmidt.

  Donovan said, “I live not far from there, but I’ve got the kids living with me. And Karen’s got her boy.”

  “Well, that shoots it,” said Schmidt.

  “Not necessarily,” said Terry Flynn. “I don’t think Bremenhoffer’s gonna want to walk her home.” Donovan looked at him. “I think he’s gonna want to follow her home.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, for starters, we get a key from someone to walk through an apartment building. All she needs is a downstairs key, for the vestibule door. In case he follows her just to see if she’s on the square. If he’s suspicious, that is.”

  “He’ll check the names on the mailboxes,” said Schmidt.

  “Matt, when’s the last time you knew the last name of someone you picked up in a bar?”

  Margolies guffawed and Donovan smiled. Matt Schmidt blushed.

  “All right. But I don’t want Karen using her own building. Or Donovan’s. I don’t want their kids involved in this mess,” said Schmidt.

  “We get another building,” said Terry Flynn.

  “That’s an awful lot of easy getting.”

  “Remember Artie Shay?”

  “The real-estate man?” asked Donovan. “Yeah.”

  “Well, Artie manages or owns a helluva lot of buildings up in that area. About two years ago there was this homicide in a whorehouse on the North Side and I was sitting in for the sergeant at Area Six and we got Shay’s tit out of the wringer. He wasn’t mixed up in the killing, but he was in the whorehouse. Anyway he’s married and got ninety kids, so we did him a favor. Now he can do us a favor. And get us a building key.”

  Schmidt nodded. Then said, “But what is Karen going to do exactly?”

  “In the bar?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What comes naturally,” Flynn said.

  Karen Kovac did not smile. “I think it’s the only thing that might work.”

  “Well,” Jack Donovan said, leaning forward and putting his feet on the floor. “Yes.” He stood up and stretched. “This case is nearly four months old. Lee Horowitz has talked to me and so has Halligan. Leonard Ranallo is running interference for Matt with the police superintendent. They’re tired of the case. And they don’t want all this manpower tied up on it.”

  They waited.

  “Ranallo thinks he can buy us another month. Of course, he doesn’t even know that Karen Kovac is on Matt’s squad now. That would really drive him crazy.”

  They smiled at this. All except Karen Kovac.

  “We’ve got to flush Bremenhoffer,” said Donovan. “I can’t think of any other way. We don’t have any hard evidence except that he was at the movie house the moment his daughter was killed. That’s good if it would stand with something else. But there’s nothing. Nothing to link him with Maj Kirsten and Christina Kalinski either. Except possibly Karen’s theory is right, that he killed Christina because he heard about her. We’ve checked his acquaintances at the Loop bars he hangs out in and at the Halsted Graphics place. But we didn’t know about the Lucky Aces until this past week. So maybe Karen can find the link to Christina there. Or maybe Bremenhoffer will go after her. And if she wants to do it, we’ve got to give it a chance. It’s our only chance, I think.”

  The little boy had dark hair, but he looked like his mother. Terry Flynn guessed he was about nine years old. Karen had told him the age but he had forgotten. Like his mother, he had a quiet demeanor and large eyes that seemed to absorb more than mere patterns of light and shape.

  “This is Mr. Flynn,” she said, taking off her raincoat. He unbuttoned his trench coat and shrugged himself out of it and then extended his large, freckled hand to the boy. The boy took it and shook it gravely.

  “I’m happy to meet you,” he said. “Are you a policeman?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  An old woman came out of the kitchen. She had a thick body and dark hair that was pulled back fiercely into a tight knot.

  Karen Kovac said something to her in Polish and the woman smiled. She had a gold tooth in the front of her wide mouth. She wiped her hands on her apron and extended her hand. “Hullo, Mister.”

  “Hiya,” said
Terry Flynn, and he took the woman’s grasp. Her hand was surprisingly soft and small.

  Karen Kovac made Terry Flynn a drink—Scotch and water—and he sat down in the living room. The apartment was small and the living room narrow. It was deep inside the U of a courtyard apartment building—a building constructed like Frank Bremenhoffer’s—and he could look out the front windows and see the rest of the three-story brick building extended out in two wings to the street beyond. It was raining.

  She had invited him to supper two weeks ago. This was supposed to be her day off. Of course, she and Terry had been at the conference in Jack Donovan’s office downtown and now it was nearly nine P.M. They had stopped to have a drink before going home.

  Mrs. Krabowski, the woman who sat with Tim and prepared his evening meal, was at the door with her black coat on and a babushka tied around her head. She smiled at Terry Flynn and her eyes sparkled darkly; he thought she must once have been a beautiful woman. He got up from the couch to say good-bye.

  And then Tim appeared in the doorway as well, dressed in a fall coat.

  He carried a little bag.

  “Where you going?” Flynn said.

  “Tommy Kubliczek’s house. I’m staying overnight. It’s Friday night and we’re going to watch monster movies. Tommy Kubliczek’s got his own TV set right in his room. How about that?”

  “How about that?” said Terry Flynn, who did not know what to say. He had expected only supper. With Karen. And with Tim, her boy. And dull talk. And the chance to look at her again, to study the angles of her face and to remember what her eyes looked like.

  The door closed on them after motherly admonitions about brushing his teeth and not making her ashamed of him. He held firmly to Mrs. Krabowski’s hand.

  They heard the vestibule door close downstairs and then Karen Kovac went to the window and watched the boy and the old woman hurry along the wet walkway to the street.

  “I didn’t know Tim wasn’t going to be here,” said Terry Flynn.

  “Neither did I.” She went to the kitchen and returned with a drink. “He makes his own arrangements. He’s a sensible boy and I know the Kubliczeks. So I told him it was all right.”