Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  But I knew who could help me. A woman who loved this sort of research. A woman who specialized in the Levee. She might even know something about Baird, something she had come across in her various readings.

  Serena Wexler.

  FORTY-SIX

  I had forgotten that I had told Serena Wexler I would return to the library that afternoon. So many things had happened since we first spoke, and my question — what was Calumet-214? — no longer mattered. I had gotten the answer.

  But I felt relieved nonetheless that I would be able to see her. I had liked her. I wouldn’t be able to bring her the matchbox like I’d promised, but I would show up just the same.

  First, I had to help Minton remove some of the bodies. They were intact enough that he had put them in body bags. We draped the bags in a tarp, and carried them out as if they were stacks of wood that we were trying to protect from the impending rain.

  I hoped no one was watching too closely. Our behavior bordered on suspicious, and if Laura’s employee had been right, the neighbors already worried about what we were doing.

  Even though the following day was Saturday, Minton and LeDoux wanted to come back to the house. I promised to drive them – I only wanted the van here while they worked – but I wouldn’t stay. I had promised the weekends to Jim, and I was going to keep that promise as much as I could.

  We dropped off Minton and the bodies at Poehler’s. Then LeDoux and I picked up Jimmy. Jim was excited about having dinner with Laura, and I had to admit that I was too. For the first time in a long time, it felt like we were going on an actual date, even though we weren’t. Perhaps it was because it was Friday night, or maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part.

  LeDoux wanted to talk to Laura as well, but I told him to call her. I had other stops before we went to her offices. I let him out near his apartment building, then back tracked to the library, parking in the same old spot.

  I had an odd sense that I was still being followed, but not by someone as obvious as the FBI had been. Even though I hadn’t seen cars for the last two days, I had that creepy, eyes-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling that you sometimes got when people stared at you too long.

  “How come we’re parked here?” Jim asked as he plugged pennies in the meter for me.

  “I’ve been doing it ever since those guys started to follow us,” I said.

  “I haven’t seen them,” he said. “They’re not even at the school any more.”

  That made me look at him. “They were at the school?”

  “Yeah. Every day somebody’d wait there and then followed us to the church for after-school. I thought you knew that.”

  I hadn’t, even though it made sense. Two black sedans — one for the apartment because they knew I’d return to it eventually, and one for Jimmy because I’d return for him too.

  “We all took turns watching them,” Jim said as we walked to the library. “Keith wanted to go knock on their window and scare them, but I told him to stay away. Told him we didn’t know who they were and they might hurt us if we got too close.”

  “Good thinking.” I was taking slow, deep breaths, trying to force back my anger. If I had known those clowns had gotten that close to my son the day they spoke to me, I’d’ve taken them apart.

  “It’s okay, Smoke,” Jimmy said, looking up at me. He could sense my change in mood. “They’re not going to do nothing now.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “We’re going to keep an eye out anyway.”

  We went up the stone steps into the library. Jimmy did what he always did in this place — looked up at the ceiling three stories above us. He loved the feeling of space and had told me, after we returned from Yale, that his favorite part of the campus had been the spectacular buildings. That was when I started to point out Chicago’s spectacular buildings as well.

  He wanted to go to the children’s section, and I let him, promising to get him within the hour. Then I walked across the large lobby to the information desk, and Serena Wexler.

  She was there, just like she’d promised she’d be. Her hair wasn’t pulled back as tightly today, and she wore more makeup. Her dress was a pale peach, which was a better color for her skin tone. At first glance, she no longer seemed severe.

  I hoped that she hadn’t changed her look for me, and then I grinned at my own egotism.

  “I was afraid you would be gone already,” I said.

  She smiled at me, and took her glasses off her nose. They hung on a pearl-studded chain that fell around her neck like a piece of jewelry. She did look amazingly good this afternoon.

  “Was that your son I saw come in with you?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I had to pick him up from school today, so I didn’t have time to go home and get the matchbox.”

  Her smile faded just a little. She had been looking forward to my return, but to see a bit of history, not me.

  “Well, that just gives you an excuse to come back,” she said.

  I nodded. I would have to figure out a way around that evidence bag.

  “I guess we’re even then,” she said, “since I wasn’t able to find that phone number.”

  “I did find it.” I rested my hands against the polished marble surface of the information desk. She had a stack of books behind it, all of which looked older than both of us. “It was for the Everleigh Club.”

  “How did you find that?”

  “I ran into an old woman who wanted to work there,” I said.

  Serena’s eyes sparkled. “Now, why would she tell you that?”

  I shrugged. “Why would you tell me about your fascination with the Levee?”

  “You’re just that kind of man, huh?” she asked.

  “I guess,” I said. “I still have some research I’m doing for my friend. Since you’d been so knowledgeable about the Levee before, I thought maybe you’d know this.”

  She rested a hand on those books. “Let’s give it a try.”

  “You ever hear of a man named Gavin Baird?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not once. He’s not in the materials I read, that I know of. I’ll look for him, though.”

  “Look for some friends of his too. Two policemen, one named Rice and the other named Dawley.”

  Her face lit up. “I don’t have to look for them. That’s Stanton Rice and Alfred Dawley. They’re notorious.”

  She said the word “notorious” like it was a good thing.

  “For what?” I asked, surprised that they were better known than Gavin Baird. Had I misjudged the relationship? Had the police officers been the ones in charge?

  “They were so crooked, they outdid the crooks. They took payoffs from the entire Levee, said it was protection money. And they did protect. Their favorite method was to extort money from big winners of various card games — gin, poker, bridge. I heard they sometimes took as much as two thousand dollars a week off unsuspecting types, which was a lot of money in those days.”

  “I’d heard five thousand,” I said.

  “From your lady of the night?” Serena asked, that sparkle still in her eyes.

  “Ex-lady of the night,” I said. “She’s a grandmother now.”

  Serena shook her head. “That’s what I love about history. People become such different things as they get older. All those secrets.”

  “What were Dawley and Rice’s secrets?” I asked.

  “They were big rough-’em-up men. They didn’t have a lot of secrets. Even the other cops knew to stay away from them and knew why.” She frowned, then thumbed through her pile of books. A few titles caught my eye, but I didn’t recognize the subjects. Then I saw Gem of the Prairie go by. That had been the book she’d recommended to me.

  She stopped near the middle of the pile, looked in a battered old book with yellowing pages.

  “Here it is,” she said. “In the early twenties, a reformer named Stuart Breen caught wind that Rice and Dawley had a dump site for the people they’d killed. Un
til then, everyone who crossed them just disappeared and people believed they had given them concrete boots and tossed them in Lake Michigan.”

  “Concrete boots?” I said.

  She raised her head and grinned at me. “You’re lucky I’m paraphrasing. This is a self-published book, a memoir of the gangster period, as the author called it, and I just love it. But to call the language colorful is a bit of an understatement.”

  I stood very still, trying not to let my curiosity overwhelm her. A dump site.

  “Breen claimed it was on the South Side, that he’d actually seen them carry bodies to it in the middle of the night. He promised the Chicago Evening Post an exclusive story, but the day they were supposed to run it, they ran a retraction instead. Apparently Stuart Breen vanished a few days before. His family said he was murdered, but other witnesses say he ran off, afraid of Rice and Dawley.”

  “What does your author say?”

  “My author coyly avoids the entire issue of what happened to Breen. My author knew Rice and Dawley, and occasionally acted — at least in this book — as if they’re still alive.”

  “They’re dead?” I asked, even though I knew they were.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Theoretically, they died in a shoot-out with some of Capone’s boys when they tried to confiscate some moonshine out of one of his South Side warehouses.”

  “Why do you say theoretically?” I asked.

  “Because Capone always denied involvement.”

  I shrugged. “Why would he admit to the murder of two police officers, even corrupt ones?”

  “Because a flat-out denial wasn’t Capone’s style,” she said. “He was good at sideways stuff. He let people know when he did something he thought was in their best interest. And he could have made shooting two corrupt police officers sound like it was in people’s best interests.”

  A body dump on the South Side. Rice and Dawley were friends of Baird’s. I wondered if my scenario was right: they had helped Baird by killing Ellis, Talgart, and Pruitt, and they had taken the five grand as payment for doing so. Baird had made the tactical error of suggesting his basement as a dump site — or had Rice and Dawley suggested it so that Baird would get in trouble if the bodies were found? And then, somehow, Rice and Dawley had continued using the basement for their site through the twenties.

  “Does your self-published author have a name?” I asked.

  Serena flipped to the front of the book. “Twombly,” she said. “Lloyd Twombly.”

  “Is he still around?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s how I got interested in the Levee in the first place. I couldn’t believe the stories this little old man used to tell me when he’d come in here. I thought he was trying to shock me. Then he told me to read his book. He’d donated a copy to the library, and the head librarian took it because she considered it history of a period we didn’t have a lot of first-person accounts for. I read it, and then I went to the other books and realized, if anything, Mr. Twombly was holding back.”

  “How do I find him?” I asked.

  “He spends Sunday mornings in the newspaper room,” she said. “He claims it’s better than church.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Laura met us in the lobby of the Sturdy building. She wore her rabbit-fur coat, which I hadn’t seen since last winter, and her blond hair was piled high on top of her head. Her skirt was too short, her boots too high, and her makeup too pale. It looked like a rebellion outfit instead of something a woman who was trying to be taken seriously would wear.

  “No more Model Cities people, huh?” I asked.

  “I hated those people,” she said, and grinned. “They were convinced I was some kind of front for the organization, as if Sturdy thought it could hide something behind a dumb female executive.”

  “I’m sure you set them straight,” I said.

  “I did.” She put her arm around Jim and pulled him close. “I missed you, kiddo.”

  “Me, too,” he said, his face so red I thought it was going to explode.

  She handed me a key on its own ring and a number-ten envelope. “The address is inside,” she said.

  I pocketed the envelope and put the key ring on mine. Then we walked to dinner, which surprised me. I would’ve thought that we would go away from the downtown.

  Until we went into the restaurant — a diner not too far from the Chicago Theater. It was filled with young people in blue jeans, longhairs, and mixed race couples.

  “Thank the Conspiracy Trial,” Laura said as we waited for a table. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of people who’ve been hanging out downtown.”

  “Is it safe?” Jimmy asked me. Anyone else would have thought he meant being around hippies. I knew he meant being downtown, so close to the police and the FBI.

  “No one important comes in here anymore,” Laura said to Jim. She nodded at a balding man in a blue shirt and black pants. “See the manager? He wishes it were still as dead at night as it used to be.”

  The manager stood behind the cash register, which was next to a counter filled with people of indeterminate gender. The tables that went all the way around the counter were full too.

  A waitress saw us, grimaced, and grabbed some menus. She led us all the way to the back, near the kitchen door, not because she disapproved (which she clearly did), but because that was the only available table.

  Still, I looked around to make sure I didn’t recognize any faces.

  “Is this gonna be business, or can we talk about cool stuff?” Jimmy asked.

  “How about both?” Laura said. “You first.”

  “No,” he said. “You guys first. I gotta figure out what to order.”

  In a low voice, I told Laura the good and bad news — that our discovery predated her father’s purchase of the building, but that the basement was being used illegally for years afterward.

  “You think he knew?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how he couldn’t,” I said.

  She chewed the lipstick off her bottom lip.

  “But I’m only guessing at this point,” I said. “We may never know for certain.”

  “You keep saying that, and then we get more and more certain.” Her gaze flicked to Jimmy, who seemed preoccupied with the menu. “My father couldn’t have used that basement himself, could he?”

  “I don’t know.” That thought had crossed my mind, and then I had ruled it out. Initially, it didn’t seem like something Earl Hathaway would have done. Now, though, it made an odd kind of sense. If he had decided to become a thug, he had the perfect storage space.

  “This is a mess no matter what,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and it was a mess all the way back. I’ll give you a fuller update later.”

  “When the kid’s not here,” Jimmy said. “Because, you know, it’s all confidential.”

  “It is,” I said. “There are some things you’re better off not knowing.”

  “Then you shouldn’t talk about them in front of me,” he said, a little earlier than I expected. The waitress hadn’t even taken our order yet.

  I ignored that last comment. “Did you find out about Kaztauskis?”

  “Loyal soldier to Cronk,” she said. “He’d been doing yeoman’s work for a long time. Nothing really identifiable. Mostly overseeing projects that existed only on paper. Needless to say, he’s going to be one of the first to go in the next round of layoffs.”

  “Why not ask him to retire early?” I said.

  “And give him a pension?” she said. “With all that I suspect he’s done?”

  “It might be better for the company,” I said.

  She grimaced. “I hate it when you think like a corporate man.”

  I grinned. “I’m practical.”

  The waitress hurried past us, setting three waters on the table as she whooshed by. Jimmy tried to catch her — he wanted to order so that he could eventually take over the conversation — but she didn’t seem to notice.


  “I don’t think he’s speaking for the neighbors,” she said. “I think someone’s noticed what you’re doing. Someone who shouldn’t.”

  I was afraid that would happen. I was amazed we’d had this much grace time.

  “What are you doing?” Jim asked.

  “Helping Laura,” I said in my best imitation of my adopted father. That tone meant children-should-not-ask-questions-in-an-adult-conversation.

  Jimmy flounced back in his chair.

  “Do you think anyone is going to do anything about it?” I asked Laura.

  Her lips thinned. “I got a personal phone call from Cronk just the other day.”

  “At the office?” I asked.

  “At home,” she said. “I think he’s the one who’s been hanging up on me.”

  My stomach clenched. “What did he say?”

  “He asked if I had any questions for him.” Two spots of color decorated her cheeks. “When I said no, as innocently as I could, he said I’d been in charge for nearly a year now and people would think that I knew more than I did. I asked him what that meant, and he laughed. He said I would know soon enough.”

  “He was threatening you.”

  Jimmy stopped fidgeting. “You gonna be okay?”

  Laura smiled at him. “He threatened my reputation. He’s too much of a coward to hurt me.”

  “Do you think he’ll act?” I asked.

  “Not until he’s sure we have something,” she said. “At least I hope so. I have a hunch he’ll sic Kaztauskis on me before he does anything else.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “But we’d better take precautions.”

  She laughed. “Smokey, we’re taking all the precautions we can. If something comes out, I’ll go after the messenger first. He’s giving me some time to think about it.”

  Jimmy seemed reassured by her tone, but I wasn’t. I knew this frightened her. It worried me.

  “What about the mailman story?” I asked.

  “So far as all my records go, it’s accurate. I don’t think it came from within the company.”

  “Where do you think it came from?” I asked.

  “According to the records, we got a call from the local precinct asking if Hanley had listed next of kin with us.”