Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  The game wasn’t worth the trouble. The Mets won — and Jim loved that — but as baseball went, it was agonizingly slow. Five-nothing Mets in Shea, the lead so big that the game ended after the Orioles’ dismal at-bat in the top of the ninth.

  I hoped the next few games were more of a contest. I’d had trouble concentrating while I watched, my mind wandering to Colosimo’s and matchbook covers and Serena Wexler’s enthusiasm for madams of the past.

  Interesting that one of my first assumptions made before I found the bodies was probably right after all, that all this had to do with Chicagoland vice. That the vice predated Prohibition surprised me, and its location surprised me as well: How come bodies associated with the Levee were entombed nearly thirty blocks south of it?

  The problem was that I couldn’t look at any of that until Jim and I finished our game, our dinner, and our evening together.

  I had just convinced Jim to prepare for bed when the phone rang. It was Minton. I asked him to hold for a moment, then gave Jim another reprieve, allowing him to read in his room until I finished the conversation.

  My office was right near Jim’s bedroom, so I took the call in the living room and used that morning’s Defender as a notepad.

  “Got something for you,” Minton said.

  “Already?” I asked. “I figured you’d be at this for days.”

  “The skeletons were pretty much intact,” he said. “I’ll have to make sure some of the smaller bones were in the right place, but the longer ones were easier.”

  “So what did you find?” I asked. “More gunshot wounds?”

  “Better,” he said. “I found a name.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table and tapped my pen against the Defender. “A name?”

  “Sewn into the remains of one of the shirts — you know, like your mom used to do for your school clothes?”

  My mother never did anything like that, figuring if I lost my clothing it was my fault, and I’d have to use my allowance to buy something new. But I wasn’t raised poor — not in either household, my real parents’ or my adopted parents’. I was middle-class.

  Sewing names into clothing, especially adult clothing, showed how poor someone actually was. Nothing dared get lost because it often couldn’t be replaced.

  “Actually,” Minton was saying, “I’m not sure if it was a shirt or a jacket — you know, one of those heavy cloth jobs. Maybe you can tell from the piece, but—”

  “What is it?” I asked, still tapping my pen.

  “The name?” Minton said. “Junius Pruitt.”

  “Junius?” I said. “You sure it’s not Julius?”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Minton said. “In fact I’m positive. I went to school with a Junius Pruitt.”

  “But you said this body is over forty years old. You’re not even thirty.”

  “It’s not him. Junius is off at Stanford or Berkeley or someplace like that, getting too much education. But his mom is still here.”

  “And she named him after someone,” I said, finally catching on.

  “You got it. You want me to call her or should you?”

  Minton had worked with death a lot, and with grieving families, but he’d never done anything like this, at least that I knew of.

  “Let me,” I said. “But be prepared for visitors.”

  “Oh, I will,” Minton said. “She’s been in the same house forever.”

  He gave me the address. It was in the heart of Bronzeville, in a residential neighborhood that was still intact.

  “So Junius Pruitt is black,” I said.

  “Darker than either one of us, maybe than both of us combined,” Minton said. “Why?”

  I told him about what I’d found, and how my expectations had changed. I thought now that these victims were white.

  “Well, at least one of them’s black. Unless he stole that coat before he died.”

  Which was possible. Anything was.

  “Did you find anything else?” I asked.

  “Not yet. Can’t even tell how two of these poor souls died. There’s nothing on the bones, and most of the clothing that I brought with me is too decayed.”

  “Yet you saw the name,” I said.

  “You can see it tomorrow if you want. The shirt was underneath the last skeleton, the one that got shot in the head. It was attached to the wristbone, so I brought it with me to separate it. I think its position protected it from some of the worst of the body’s putrefaction.”

  “Was that near the wallet?” I asked.

  “That was on the other side, closer to the younger body. LeDoux made a diagram.”

  “I’ll take a look before I visit Mrs. Pruitt,” I said.

  “What do you think this is?” Minton asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, “but I think we’re about to find out.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Pruitt house sat in the middle of its block. It was a decaying, single-story starter, built after the war. Apparently that marked, in Minton terms, forever as longer than twenty years.

  I arrived shortly after ten. I had gone through what had now become my morning routine — driving like a madman through the Loop to lose any potential tail.

  The traffic was horrendous, in part because it was National Vietnam Moratorium Day. Marches, rallies, and speeches were going on all over the country, coordinated to draw the Nixon administration’s attention to the growing dissatisfaction with the war.

  Chicago’s main rally would happen after five, when Jimmy and I would be happily ensconced at home, watching the World Series, but there were some preliminary speeches and rallies already happening all over the city.

  I used them to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I hadn’t seen anyone, just like I expected, but I was paranoid enough to believe the tail could still be there.

  When I picked up LeDoux, he was happy to hear the news; happy too, I think, to have me out of the house again so that he could work in peace. He found it odd that I had thought the bodies were black. Until he heard about Junius Pruitt, he’d thought they were mostly white.

  Amazing the conclusions we came to, based on ourselves and our views of the world.

  LeDoux figured he’d be done with the first row of tombs by the end of the week. Then he’d need me again to see what was behind them.

  We both hoped that there would be a single large room filled with liquor. We both doubted that would be the case.

  I parked a block away from the Pruitt house and waited for nearly fifteen minutes, to see if anyone had followed me. The streets were quiet here; this was an old Bronzeville neighborhood, one of the few that hadn’t been destroyed by the city’s quest for housing projects that would “benefit” the poor.

  Most of the homes were stately or had once been impressive. This house looked like an afterthought, which seemed strange. Maybe it had been built on a parcel of land sold off for the money.

  I hurried up the cracked sidewalk, doubting anyone would be home at this time of the morning. I figured I’d have to come back three or four times before I found Mrs. Pruitt.

  Minton had told me that her husband was long dead — a heart attack in his forties, just after his eldest son, the Junius that Minton knew, had graduated from high school. Mrs. Pruitt had raised two more boys and a daughter, getting them through school on her own. The daughter stayed home to help her mother. The boys had all gone to college, a remarkable feat that I was beginning to realize was less unusual in this part of Chicago than it had been in my adopted hometown of Memphis.

  The stairs up to the front porch were also cracked, but the iron railing was new. I rang the doorbell and listened to the chimes echo through the house.

  Then, to my surprise, a woman yelled, “Hang on. I gotta get to you.”

  There was some banging, as if drawers or doors closed, a curse, and then a small woman, barely bigger than Jimmy, pulled the door open.

  She peered around it as if she expected trouble. Her hair was cut short, and her features w
ere delicate, making her small face seem even smaller. She wore gold eyeshadow that accented the brown of her eyes, but no other makeup. One eye appeared to have eyeliner, while the other didn’t.

  Apparently I had interrupted her morning routine.

  “Now what is it?” she snapped. “I paid off the stupid loan.”

  She thought I was some kind of enforcer.

  “I’m not here to collect a debt, ma’am,” I said, using the same soft voice I’d initially used with Serena Wexler. “My name is Bill Grimshaw. People hire me to investigate things, and I’d like to ask you some questions if I could.”

  “Sorry,” she said, starting to close the door.

  I grabbed it, knowing that would scare her, but I had no other choice. “Your son’s name is Junius, right?”

  She froze, and I saw fear in her eyes. “So?”

  “Was he named for someone?”

  She tilted her head slightly. I had her attention.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I came across a shirt with the name sewn in, and I have reason to believe that shirt had been hidden for a long time. More than forty years.”

  She stared at me as if I had just told her that President Lincoln was alive.

  “Who did you say you are?”

  “Bill Grimshaw, ma’am.”

  “You’re a detective?”

  “I do that work sometimes, yes,” I said.

  “Where did you find that shirt?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” I said. “But I can answer some other questions, if you would like to answer a few for me.”

  She opened the door wide, then stepped away from it. She wore a gold waitress uniform with white piping and nylon stockings, but no shoes. I clearly had interrupted her routine.

  As she walked across the worn gray carpet, she said, “I let you in, you hurt me, and my son-in-law’ll make sure you never hurt anybody again, you understand?”

  “I do,” I said. “I promise I won’t touch you.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder, grabbed a pair of white nurse’s shoes off a nearby wooden chair, and sat on the edge of an afghan-covered armchair. “Junius was named for his grandfather.”

  “Same last name?” I asked. “Pruitt?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Both names were in the shirt?”

  “They were,” I said.

  “How come you’re investigating this? An old shirt doesn’t seem like much.” She was clutching the shoes as if she would throw them at me if I came near her.

  I had thought all the way over here how much I would tell her and how much I would keep to myself. “It’s not a lot by itself,” I said. “But I found it in a bricked-up area, along with the skeletons of three men.”

  “My God.” She leaned back and nearly tumbled into the armchair, her hand over her breastbone. “You think that one of those skeletons might be Grandpa Junius?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” I said. “Until you asked that question, I wasn’t even sure he was dead.”

  She took a deep breath and got her balance again, setting the shoes on the seat of the armchair. “We didn’t either. We just guessed.”

  “Mind telling me what happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It was before my time. He disappeared when my husband was a little boy.”

  “Disappeared?” I asked.

  She nodded. “That’s all I know. I mean, there’s a family story, but it’s been years since I heard it. You’re probably better off talking to Minnie.”

  “Minnie?”

  “His wife.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Minnie Pruitt lived with her eldest son, Jasper, but she spent her days at the South Side Senior Center. The center wasn’t too far from Poehler’s Funeral Home. The neighborhood had deteriorated — gang graffiti decorated the door of a nearby building, and the dry cleaner’s next door had clearly gone out of business.

  But the Senior Center seemed to have an attitude that carried it through the decay. A sign on the door said Anyone Under Sixty Enter at Own Risk. Through the large, plate-glass window of what had once been a storefront I could see twenty or so elderly people at various tables, cards in hand. The group at table closest to me seemed to be playing for money.

  I knocked on the door and pushed it open, stepping inside as I did so. The place smelled of coffee and old age. A refreshment bar stood just behind the door, with coffeepots sitting on warmers. A window opened to a back room with a kitchen. More coffee percolated on a stove back there.

  “Kid, can’t you read?”

  The voice startled me because it came from directly behind me. An elderly man with rheumy eyes stood as close to me as anyone had gotten in years without me knowing it. He held a cane in one hand and a brownie in the other.

  His face was as scarred as mine.

  “No one’s called me kid in a long time,” I said.

  “You’re a baby,” he said. “And I don’t care how hungry you are, you aren’t getting our snacks. Danine made them special, and baking is something she can do, unlike playing cards.”

  “Sit down,” said an elderly lady with a voice deeper than mine, “and I’ll show you who can play cards.”

  She had to be Danine.

  “I’m looking for Minnie Pruitt,” I said.

  Half the room whooped at me. The other half laughed, and looked at a woman who stood near the kitchen door.

  “Told ya you still had it,” one of the men said to the woman.

  She was statuesque, with a long face and dark, dark eyes. Her hair had gone white, but that was the only sign of her age — that, and the orthopedic shoes she wore. She wore a blue dress that accented her still-impressive figure, and a single gold band on her left hand. Unlike her daughter-in-law, she wore no makeup at all.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, her voice a vibrato-filled tenor that suggested either a lifetime spent in music or standing in front of a pulpit.

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “My name is Bill Grimshaw. Your daughter-in-law sent me to you.”

  She made a sound like an elongated phshaw. “What’s that no-good girl done and got herself into now?”

  “Junius’s mother,” I said, just in case she misunderstood and thought I meant the other daughter-in-law, the one she lived with.

  “I know who you’re talking about. Jasper’s wife knows I like my privacy and wouldn’t send nobody here.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. “She didn’t explain that to me. But she thought what I had to say was important enough to tell me where you were.”

  Minnie Pruitt crossed her arms beneath her ample chest. “She thinks everything’s important.”

  The games around the room had stopped. The level of conversation had been high enough that I hadn’t realized a radio played in the background. WHO’s noontime news program thrummed across the room, too softly for me to pick out much more than the anchors’ voices.

  “Well, she may have been right this time,” I said. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  “Right here’s fine,” Minnie Pruitt said.

  “This’s rather personal. You might want—”

  “These are my friends,” she said. “They can hear this.”

  I glanced at them, feeling trapped. The more people who heard about this, the more the risk I took in getting the word out. “Ma’am, please. We can stand outside in full view. I just think—”

  “Heavens, young man,” she said. “You’re a caution. You don’t look it, but you are. Grab me a chair, Hector. I’m taking the young man to the woodshed.”

  Everyone laughed, and I felt my face flush. That phrase brought back old memories, memories that predated my parents’ death, and made me feel like I was six years old again.

  One of the younger men — he had to be about seventy — picked up a folding chair and carried it into the kitchen. “You asked for it, son.”

  “It’s not every day that Minnie takes a man to the woodshed,” said one of th
e nearby women, her eyes sparkling.

  “Thank you,” I said to Mrs. Pruitt, and followed her through the kitchen, ignoring the comments and the catcalls.

  The woodshed, apparently, was the back office. Hector flipped the light switch and fluorescents flickered, then caught. A desk was already inside, with a dirty coffee cup on top, and a half-eaten donut still sitting on a plate. Papers sat off to one side. I glanced at them as I walked in. They were registration forms for a bridge tournament that was going to be held on Halloween.

  “This isn’t the woodshed that I remember,” I said, and Mrs. Pruitt laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound, the sound of a woman who knew how to enjoy herself.

  “It’s all we have.” She sat behind the desk and looked pointedly at Hector. “You mind waiting in the kitchen?”

  “I’m winning penny-a-point,” he said.

  “Bring the game in there.”

  Hector sighed, then glared at me. “You be nice to her, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He backed out of the room, keeping his eye on me, pulling the door closed behind him. Mrs. Pruitt and I watched as he made his way to the kitchen serving window and beckoned the other players inside.

  “Your daughter-in-law sounds like she’s in some trouble,” I said.

  “She told me after my son died that her kids were going to get the education he promised them come hell or high water.” Minnie Pruitt stacked the papers, thumped them on the desk to even the edges, and then set them aside. “It’s been hell. I expect the high water any day now.”

  I sat on the folding chair. It creaked beneath my weight. “I’m not it. I’m here because I found something in the course of an investigation.”

  Her eyes brightened. I had caught her attention.

  “I do odd jobs,” I said. “Sometimes that includes finding things out for people.”

  She nodded her head once, indicating that she understood.

  “Recently I found a shirt hidden in an enclosed area. It might have been a jacket, it’s hard to tell. But it had the name Junius Pruitt stitched inside.”