Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Wow,” Doyle said. “I never had any idea that someone else owned it.”

  I could feel the clock ticking. Jimmy would be struggling through his last subject of the day right now, counting the minutes until the bell rang and we could go home for the final game.

  “So you really didn’t find him?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Know who did?”

  “Nope.”

  I sighed. This case was getting stranger and stranger.

  “Thanks,” I said to Doyle, and started down the stairs.

  “You know, this Hanley guy,” Doyle said, “he was one mean piece of work.”

  I stopped and turned. Doyle was coming down the stairs beside me. He glanced over his shoulder as if he didn’t want to be seen.

  We hit the parking lot together and he led me to one of the mail trucks. We stood beside it, hidden from the back door.

  “You didn’t like him?” I asked.

  “Hell, if I had found him, I woulda left him there to rot,” Doyle said. “And my friends would not call me a particularly vindictive guy.”

  “What’d he do?” I asked.

  “What didn’t he do?” Doyle said. “When I got the route, he called and complained. He’d throw crap at me, stuff I couldn’t identify, and he said he wouldn’t touch any mail that I touched, demanded I wear gloves. Called that in too.”

  “What’d your boss do?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Doyle’s mouth thinned. “That’s just part of my job. I got a crossover neighborhood.”

  No wonder he looked so strong. He probably kept himself in shape just in case something did happen in one of those neighborhoods he had to walk into alone every day.

  “I’ll wager you didn’t wear gloves,” I said.

  “I didn’t,” Doyle said. “And they didn’t put me on a different route. They told him he could sign up on the waiting list for a post office box or he could deal with it. He told me one morning that he disinfected the jigaboo germs off the letters before he opened them.”

  I shook my head. Stories like this made me glad that I worked for myself. I wouldn’t have taken such abuse day after day. I would have had to respond to it or avoid it. I couldn’t have walked the route every single morning knowing that Hanley and his foul mouth waited for me.

  “Did he ever harm you?” I asked.

  “No one gets that close to me,” Doyle said.

  “Did he try?”

  Doyle shook his head. “He was one of those all-talk bigots. I was glad too. Last thing I wanted was him aiming a gun at me.”

  “You don’t think he was violent?” I asked.

  “Maybe if he had someone weaker living with him, a woman or a kid, he mighta been violent. But he wasn’t going to go after – what’d he call me that time? – a big strapping spade like me.”

  “Every day he’d say something like that?” I asked.

  “Every day for ten years,” Doyle said.

  “You didn’t report him?”

  Doyle gave me a cold smile. “To who? I got my job to do, and part of that is interacting with the customers, good and bad. And you know about the cops around here.”

  I nodded. “But there are blacks on the force.”

  “Sure there are,” he said, with great sarcasm.

  I almost corrected him, and then I understood what he meant. He felt that the blacks on the force were more interested in keeping their jobs than helping their people.

  “Not every cop is bad,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but none of them would’ve helped me. Besides, they were visiting that house enough.”

  I frowned. I hadn’t heard this. “Domestic disputes?”

  “I don’t know what it was, but it seemed like every coupla weeks I saw some cops there.”

  “Doing anything special?” I asked.

  Doyle shook his head. “We’d just get there around the same time, is all. I don’t know if they were responding to something or bringing donuts, and I didn’t want to know. I got outta there as fast as I could.”

  “Was that around noon?” I asked, remembering the police car I’d seen driving by.

  He shrugged. “Early afternoons, usually. That’s when I got to that house.”

  I frowned, wondering what that meant. Surely the police had known that Hanley was dead by the time I’d seen them. Or had there been a lot of visible trouble at the house, trouble that made them stop on their regular sweep of the neighborhood?

  “When did you find out that Hanley was dead?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “End of September, maybe? Around the first time I saw your van there.”

  I turned and looked at it. I hadn’t even thought of parking a block away from the post office. I hadn’t thought he’d recognize the van.

  “You investigating something in that house?” he asked. “Because until today, I thought the van belonged to some painters.”

  “Not in the house,” I lied. “We’re trying to find out more about Hanley. Can you tell me the names of anyone who wrote to him?”

  “Besides Commonwealth Edison and Illinois Bell? Nope, and even if I could, it wouldn’t be legal. I’m not supposed to notice.” Then his features softened a little. “But I’ll tell you this. He never got a lot of mail, and I was happy for that.”

  In other words, not many people wrote to him at all.

  “Did you ever hear why there weren’t any tenants toward the end?” I asked.

  “No one said, but I think old Hanley scared them away. I saw a couple of prospectives last summer, and they were paler than pale coming out of that house.”

  “White kids, then,” I said.

  “With what I told you, you think he would’ve rented to us?”

  “Just checking,” I said. “He didn’t work for himself, so maybe he had a mandate.”

  “Like one of those quotas?” Doyle grinned at me. “Thank God he didn’t. Could you imagine having to live near that guy?”

  I couldn’t, but not for the reasons Doyle mentioned. I couldn’t imagine living near anyone who kept those mementos in that attic room.

  “Thanks,” I said, extending my hand. “I appreciate your time.”

  He took my hand, shook, and then said, “You have any idea why someone would say I found him?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Despite what I’d said to Doyle, I couldn’t find out who had lied about him right away. I was running late. I picked up Jimmy first. I hoped that no one was still tailing me — I wasn’t being as cautious as I had been earlier in the week — but I had Jimmy keep an eye out the back windows, and he didn’t see anything.

  Jimmy complained about the change in plans all the way to the Queen Anne, and by the time I’d come out with LeDoux, Jimmy had found the game on the radio. The three of us rode in silence to LeDoux’s apartment on the north side, listening to the game instead of talking.

  We got home in time for the third inning. Jimmy parked himself in front of the television while I made some popcorn on the stove. As I rubbed the covered pan against the burner, I mentally listed all the things I had to do the following day.

  A few of them I could do as soon as the game ended. I could call Laura and ask about that mailman story, and I could call Jack Sinkovich for two pieces of information — Hanley’s death report and the whereabouts of Irving Talgart.

  The last game was a game, and for a while I forgot about the case. The Mets won 5-3, which gave them the entire series, and the crowd — including the two in our household — went wild. While Jimmy danced around the living room, I decided to hell with it. We needed a real celebration. So we went out for pizza and soda and one long round of pinball. By the time we got back, it was nearly nine.

  Jim went to bed soon after. I brought my notepads to the living room and placed my two calls from there. I had expected to reach Laura and hear the phone ring at Sinkovich’s. Instead, Laura didn’t answer and Sin
kovich did.

  “I been meaning to talk with you,” he said. “I got an idea, but it’s gotta be in person.”

  “All right,” I said, wondering what he could want. He probably figured I still owed him for past favors. I figured he owed me for the time he stayed in my apartment after his wife threw him out.

  “I got your message,” he said. “I ain’t been in the precinct lately, and it took a while for someone to tell me you called.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “It’s not all right. They got me on stupid duty. I’d tell you about it, but I’m not supposed to talk, and I ain’t gonna do it on the phone. But I gotta say they’re pushing hard enough that I might take them up on it. They want me out, but they want me deciding, maybe so I don’t get no pension or something. I gotta check that.”

  “Do you want out?” I knew the last year had been hard on him. As he followed his instincts instead of the culture of the police department, he lost friends and eventually got relegated to a desk job. His wife left him and took his child with her because, she said, she didn’t know him anymore.

  “I dunno. I gotta keep the job so I got some leverage with the wife, you know. The divorce’s nearly done, but they tell me we can ‘revisit’ custody any time. She’s already got most of the stuff she wanted and alimony too, and she’s talking about moving to Wisconsin. She does that, I’ll never see my kid.”

  “You can fight it,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. I just gotta question what it’s doing to the kid, you know? All he hears about is how much we fight, how we don’t get along, and probably what a shmuck I am, and what’s that gonna do to him? How’s that raising him good?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I had my own problems raising Jimmy.

  “So the job, it’s good because it’s money. It’s bad for a million other reasons, most of them got nothing to do with nothing except they want the old Jack Sinkovich back, and they ain’t getting him. I actually almost bitched about that Panther raid last week.”

  “Almost,” I said.

  “Listen, if I could tell you what I been sitting through, you’d understand the almost. If I don’t quit, they’re gonna have me on mudhole duty by next year.”

  “Mudhole duty?”

  “Guarding manhole covers so nobody steals them. It don’t exist as a job, not yet, but everyone says it will someday, and the lowest of the low’ll get it. That’d be me. Which, I suppose, sounds like self-pity to you, and it does to me, so let’s get to it. What do you need?”

  I felt odd asking him to help me when he was having so much trouble helping himself. Maybe I did like Sinkovich more than I wanted to admit.

  “I have two things,” I said. “First, I need to see a copy of the report filed on the death of Mortimer Hanley.”

  “You sure there was a report? Because you can just ask for the death certificate from the county.”

  “I was sure this morning,” I said. “Then I talked with the man who supposedly called the police, and he had nothing to do with this. So I need to see this report more than ever.”

  “You gotta date?”

  “Not an exact one. The middle of September sometime.”

  “I’ll see what I can find. What else?”

  “Do you know a black cop — I’m sure he’s retired by now — named Irving Talgart?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can you look him up for me? I need to talk to him.”

  “How soon you need it?”

  “Tomorrow, if you can get it to me.”

  Sinkovich sighed. “I gotta be at the courthouse by nine. If I got stuff for you, it’s gotta be before that. I’m sure I can’t find that report that early.”

  “Talgart would be good enough for a start,” I said.

  “Expect a call about seven.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I’d say don’t mention it, but you will. It’s gonna take some to get that report, but when I get it, I’m bringing it to your place. We need to have a conversation.”

  “Deal,” I said, and wondered what I was getting myself into.

  FORTY-THREE

  The following morning, the phone rang before seven, but it wasn’t Sinkovich. It was Laura. She wanted to catch me before we both headed off to work. She knew I would be away from the phone, and she felt this was important.

  She had had no idea that I was trying to reach her.

  “Someone asked me what we’re doing at the Queen Anne,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “A man by the name of Kaztauskis. They call him A.A. because, I’m told, his first name is Lithuanian and nearly unpronounceable.”

  “A.A. Kaztauskis?” I asked. “Have I met him?”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I barely know him except to nod at him in the hallways. He nodded hi yesterday, then nearly walked by before he called my name. I stopped, feeling a little confused, and he said, ‘Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Hathaway—’”

  “He called you Mrs.?” I asked.

  “A lot of people do. They don’t know what to label me now that I’m back to my maiden name. Especially the old-timers.”

  “He’s one of them?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She sighed, and in her voice I heard her frustration. “He said he lived near the house, and some of the neighbors were asking why it was taking so long to paint the place.”

  My breath caught. “What did you say?”

  “I told him that you weren’t just painting. That Hanley’s body had been in there long enough to permeate everything with the smell. So you were cleaning and disinfecting, and restaining some of the wood. I almost told him that you were tearing off plasterboard, but then I realized that was the wrong thing to tell anybody.”

  She was right about that. We had no idea who had been involved with that house, if anyone, and we had to be cautious.

  “Did he buy it?” I asked.

  “I think so,” but she didn’t sound as sure as she could have. “He said, ‘I hope you’re not paying them by the hour,’ and walked away. What should I do, Smokey?”

  “Nothing yet, at least about the house,” I said. “But if you can surreptitiously check his files, maybe ask someone you trust about him, that might be worth your time.”

  “Do you think he was putting me on notice, or do you think he was actively curious?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But either way it worries me. Because if he isn’t involved, then the neighbors are wondering, and if he is, then someone else is noticing and put him up to asking you. Did you check his home address? Does he live nearby?”

  “I did think to do that,” she said, “and yes, he does.”

  I didn’t like any of this, and not just for the reasons I told Laura. The mailman had claimed he didn’t know Sturdy owned the house. If Kaztauskis wasn’t lying, some of the neighbors did know who owned it. If he was lying, then we had a whole other problem.

  “We’re going to be there weeks longer,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “We’re going to have to come up with something other than painting to explain our presence. And you’re going to have to come up with a reason to keep such a valuable property under wraps. Let’s give it some thought, and try to have a plan by Monday.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “We also need that secondary storage area.”

  “I have it,” she said. “It’s—”

  “Why don’t you drop off the key, and we’ll talk about it then.”

  “How about after work today?” she said. “Bring Jim. We’ll have dinner.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I almost hung up, and then I remembered I had wanted to talk with her as well. “Laura, who told you what happened to the manager?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Someone at the rental agency. Why?”

  I told her about the discrepancy between what she’d heard and what the mailman had told me.

  “I’m positive that he was there,
” she said.

  Then I told her how the body couldn’t have been seen from the window, not if he had died in the bedroom.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “What’s going on there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’ll need your help to find out.”

  We hung up after making plans to meet at her office around six. Then the phone rang again. It was Sinkovich, complaining about my busy phone line. When I finally got him calmed down, he told me Irving Talgart’s current address.

  “I did a little digging,” Sinkovich said. “He’s got a good record. Lotsa collars, most of them clean. Nothing bad in his file. No commendations, neither, but then you said he’s Neg — bla — ah, hell, Grimshaw, what do I call you people now?”

  And that was the problem he had with sensitivity. He tried, and usually failed.

  “People is good,” I said.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” he snapped.

  “I know,” I said. “I appreciate it too.”

  “So you know, the department ain’t in the habit of — or at least wasn’t in the habit of — recognizing the work of people, not until the last few years, and even then the rumor is that they only get the commendations when they’re being run out or getting too much media attention.”

  “Yeah,” I said dryly.

  “Didn’t know if you knew that,” he said. “What it means is that I can’t tell from his record how good a cop he was, but he looks okay — at least on paper.”

  “That’s good to know,” I said, and meant it.

  “Wasn’t able to look up the other thing for you, though. Tried, but half the crap isn’t filed yet or in the right place. So I’ll get back on it soon’s I can.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I’d rather be chasing your paperwork than putting on this monkey suit,” he said, and hung up.

  Since he wore a suit every day to the precinct, I didn’t know quite what he meant. But I did know that some of the detectives had their suits for work and their suits for court. And Sinkovich had mentioned that he was going to the courthouse today.

  I just hoped it wasn’t more hassle with the divorce.