Windy City Knights

by Michael A. Black

  “Do you really think so?” she said. Her gaze sank to her lap. When I didn’t answer, she said, “Yeah, of course. She tried to double-cross them, and they killed her. That’s what happened, isn’t it? Can we do anything?”

  Luckily my answer was delayed by my getting on the expressway. We clattered through a couple of invisible potholes filled with black water as I pressed the accelerator down and The Beater’s big engine swung us into the entry lane way ahead of a swarm of approaching cars.

  “Like I told you, babe,” I said, “all we have to do now in figure out a way to hook ’em up and George can reel ’en in.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I took the luxury of sleeping till six, then got up for my early morning run, taking my time on this one. I wanted to draw it out to think, and also didn’t want to risk tripping in the dark and getting hurt with the fight so close. The rain had greatly reduced the snow, allowing patches of green to show through wherever the big dirty piles hadn’t been substantial enough to endure. I whimsically hoped that it was some kind of omen: things obscured before, now coming into view. But as I ran across the park, several times my shoes sank into the murky grass with a sucking sound. So much for omens. I stayed to the asphalt and streets as much as I could.

  When I got back, Laurie was waiting for me dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. Her face had a freshly scrubbed look, and she held a small mirror in one hand and a mascara brush in the other as she sat on one of the kitchen chairs with her leg curled under her. The back porch had the smell of a recently smoked cigarette.

  “You’re up early,” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Want me to fix you something to eat?”

  “No thanks. I’m supposed to meet George for breakfast. I’d better run some things by him to bring him up to speed.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll keep myself busy doing some cleaning around here. If that’s okay, that is.” She smiled.

  “Sure,” I said, “it’s the maid’s day off.” After giving her a quick course on using my ancient vacuum cleaner, I showered. In fifteen minutes I was walking out the door and steering The Beater toward Karson’s Restaurant at 111th and Western. When I walked in, George was already sitting at a booth reading a copy of the Sun-Times and sipping from a cup of dark coffee.

  “Morning,” I said, slipping in opposite him. He grunted and drank some more coffee. The bags under his eyes made his skin seem more sallow than usual. “You look like shit. Didn’t you get any sleep?”

  “Some,” he said. “Kept waking up.” He yawned, blinked twice, and managed a weak grin. “You didn’t bring that damn cat with you this time, did you?”

  “No.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Real good,” I said, “Except I think he was disappointed that I didn’t name him George Jr.”

  He frowned.

  The waitress came and we made our standard orders. Eggs over easy for him, scrambled for me.

  When she’d gone I gave him a quick synopsis of what we’d found in the storage compartment last night and the theory that I’d come up with. His face brightened as I gave him the details.

  “This changes things,” he said. “A lot. So you’re thinking that Paula was a mule for this Olijede guy, and that her and Peeps tried a rip. They found out and killed her. But why’d they take so long to ice him?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know he was involved in the rip-off part of it,” I said. “Or maybe she was planning on cutting him out. The phone records show that Paula called Peeps from my house that last morning, right? Obviously they were gonna meet. She must have told him something about me, because I’ve pretty much confirmed that he was the one who set me up on that wild-goose chase and then burglarized my house. Probably Paula’s place too.”

  “Looking for the key to the storage locker,” George said.

  “Right,” I said. “And when he couldn’t find it, he went to the storage place and tried to bluff his way in. Only the old guy who runs the joint wouldn’t let him in without a key. So that means he knew about the locker, but not where she’d put the key. Which means she didn’t trust him completely.”

  “Or she was planning on cutting him out, too,” George said. He took a long sip of his coffee, and set the cup down in its saucer. “So you figure that she called Peeps from your place to set up a meet?”

  “Or maybe to explain why she’d missed one,” I said.

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “Then she called a taxi and went back out to the Lincoln Estates Holiday Inn,” I said. “Probably to pick up her car, which she’d left there. I figure that she was originally supposed to be met at the airport by Red, but she must have taken an earlier flight. She took the shuttle bus to Alsip from the airport, and dumped the suitcases in the storage facility. It’s not that far from the shuttle bus stop. Then she took the next shuttle to Lincoln Estates. Her car had previously been left there. Maybe by Peeps with some decoy suitcases in it. She had the original luggage tags in her purse. I saw them. Attach those tags to the decoy suitcases, and she’d have some breathing time before the switch was discovered. But Red must have figured out the double-cross when she didn’t show, and traced her to the hotel. Probably through the car being there. Maybe some more of Olijede’s goons saw Peeps drive it there.”

  “And they grabbed her the next morning when she went back to get her ride?” George said.

  “Right. And remember the coppers out there said the trunk had been punched?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I figure that maybe Red did that, found the decoy suitcases, and figured he had the stuff.” I took a deep breath, trying not to extrapolate about the next part. “Then when Paula showed up out there, they grabbed her, thinking that they had the stuff and…”

  “They decided to tie up their loose end right then and there,” he said. Pausing, George ran his tongue over his teeth. “But why did she go back for her car? She had to figure that Red might be watching.”

  “Remember that she’d left the key to the storage locker in the ladies’ room at the hotel,” I said. “Plus, she called me back and asked if she could lay low at my place. They must have grabbed her right after she left that message and before she could retrieve the key.”

  “And they obviously wanted to make her death look like a hit-and-run to divert suspicion. It wasn’t until later, when they checked the suitcases, that they discovered that she’d stashed the dope,” he said.

  I glanced down at the table, trying not to think too hard about that portion of it.

  “But that still don’t tie in Peeps’s murder to all this,” he said. “And that’s what we really need.”

  “Unless old man Turner, the building super, had called Red and tipped him that we were in Paula’s apartment that afternoon I caught him with the clone phone,” I said. “If Red was lurking close, he could have followed me to Peeps’s office building…”

  “And whacked him after you left,” he said. “Makes good sense, Ron. Especially if they knew that Peeps was connected to Paula.”

  “I’m sure they did,” I said. “She must have been using her modeling assignments as a cover to travel out of the country. Peeps probably went along as part of the scam on at least a couple of them.”

  “Might even have avoided X-ray detection by claiming that his undeveloped negatives were in the suitcases,” George said. “So where’s the shit at?”

  “Everything’s still at my place,” I said.

  “Well, hell, you’ve got to make arrangements to turn it in,” he said. “We can inventory it, then get started on reopening the investigation of Paula’s death.”

  “What about the bag of money?” I said.

  “Ron, it’s evidence,” he said. “And you’d better check out that safety deposit box too. If there’s more cash in it, that’s a federal offense.”

  “I’ll have to talk to my client about that first,” I said.

  He frowned. “You ain’t thinking about keeping it, are you? How you g
onna explain that to the IRS?”

  “It’s not mine to keep,” I said. “But I’m just not sure that turning it over to the state is the right answer either.”

  “It’s fucking drug money, for Christ’s sake.”

  “It’s also what Paula died for,” I said. “Maybe her family should get something out of all this besides a lot of bad memories and shattered illusions.”

  He exhaled loudly through his nostrils. “All right, goddammit. But at least let me confiscate the dope. You definitely don’t want to get caught holding any of that shit.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But where do we go from here?”

  “Well.” He raised his eyebrows and rubbed his jaw. “We got some leads to explore. Maybe the best thing would be to see what came back on those names you gave me yesterday. Then pull a couple of them in for questioning. The main thing is we can probably introduce all this stuff and it’ll be enough to get those two pricks Reed and Randecki off your back.”

  I stared at him. The waitress came and set down our plates. When she’d gone I said, “I been thinking.”

  “Oh no,” he said, spreading some strawberry jelly on a piece of toast. “That’s always a danger sign.”

  “Suppose I contact this Olijede guy…Offer to sell him back the dope for a finder’s fee.”

  He blew out another slow breath as he dipped the toast into the yoke of his eggs.

  “I don’t know, Ron. You been making a real mess out of things as it is, and that sounds kinda risky.”

  “Hell, everything’s risky. And what do you mean, I been making a mess out of things?”

  He smirked. “I mean that it’s time to leave this to the professionals.” He bit into the jelly-covered toast.

  “Thanks a lot. So what’s your idea to tie all this together?”

  He considered this for a moment.

  “It’s gonna entail some major planning,” he said. “We got to move real cautious on this. Plus, what ever it is, I’ll have to sell it to the brass.”

  After breakfast I picked up Alley from his midnight maintenance job. His head shot up when I tapped the horn, and he smiled wearily as he trudged over to The Beater, looking like he’d been run over by a truck. I took him home, over his protestations, and told him that Father Boris had made me promise to make sure he got some sleep. He finally acquiesced. As he got out of the car at the house where he rented a room, he moved with the stagger of exhaustion. I wondered, with all the problems I had going at the moment, what I was going to be able to do to help him.

  Laurie wasn’t there when I got back to my house. I found all of my laundry stacked and folded in the red plastic basket, and a note written in her flowing script on top.

  Dear Ron,

  Gone shopping!!! Be back later with enough groceries to fix you a very special dinner. Go for your workout and I’ll see you later this afternoon. Took your spare keys.

  Love you, Laurie

  Love? I wondered if that meant she was thinking seriously about staying. I re-read the last lines. Pretty soon we were going to have to sit down and have the talk. I glanced over at the four light-blue suitcases sitting in my living room and remembered George’s advice: “You don’t want to get caught holding that shit.” He was right. My house wasn’t the best place for them. I’d decided to take them back to the storage facility for the time being when the phone rang. It was Chappie.

  “What you doing?” he asked me. I sensed a tone of subdued excitement in his voice.

  “Just getting ready to go out,” I said. “Why?”

  “Saul called,” he said. “Some dudes from ESPN are coming over to do an interview with you and maybe some filming of you training. What time can you get here?”

  “Give me an hour,” I said.

  “Okay,” Chappie said. “Saul was real excited. Figures this will really hype the fight.”

  “I’m surprised that they’re paying this much attention to a kick-boxing match,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too. But I guess they was up at Detroit last night for a Red Wings game, and Elijah Day was there doing some woffin’. Now they want to get you doin’ some too.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m in a woffin’ mood.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Before hitting the gym I shot over to the storage facility and dropped off all of the suitcases. I figured the cash would be safe enough there, and I certainly didn’t want to take the chance that Reed and Randecki would unexpectedly show up with a warrant to search my house and find a large stash of money and dope. That would just about guarantee my future. As it was, I wasn’t worried about being framed for the Peeps murder. I mean, I wasn’t overjoyed about being number one on their hit parade, but I had faith that George would be able to clear things up, especially the way they were falling in place.

  Still, I didn’t want to take a chance. I had enough to worry about with the fight now only about fifty-five hours away. I pondered the situation as I drove to the gym for my fifteen minutes of fame.

  Inside a crew of three guys was there. One guy to interview me, one guy with a camcorder, and another guy who set up a small TV to monitor everything. They asked me to take off my shirt, then let Chappie and me watch the tape of Day shooting his mouth off at the hockey game the night before. On the small screen, standing next to the diminutive announcer, Day looked as big as a house, his dark, shaved head glistening under the stadium lights, along with the thick gold rope around his neck.

  “The Red Wings are kicking butt, just like I’m gonna do Friday night in Chicago,” Day was saying. A Bundini Brown-type sycophant stood just behind him, echoing everything Day said like some poor man’s version of a Greek chorus.

  “Yeah, we gonna be kicking butt,” the sycophant said.

  “Now, correct me if I’m wrong,” the announcer said, “but didn’t Ron Shade beat you in your previous fight?”

  Day shot the smaller man an intimidating glare, causing the announcer to edge away slightly.

  “Nah, that ain’t true,” Day said. “I didn’t even train for that fight, and I still gave him all he could handle.”

  “He didn’t even train,” echoed the chorus.

  “I been training harder than I ever trained…”

  “Harder than he ever trained.”

  “And now,” Day said, grinning into the camera, “I’m the champion.”

  “We the champ, we the champ,” said the chorus.

  “So you’re predicting a victory then, Elijah?” asked the announcer.

  “I’m predicting that I’ll take Shade out,” Day replied, holding up his massive fist. “Shade’s gonna think it’s Friday the thirteenth, and I’m that dude in the hockey mask. What’s his name? Jason?”

  “Yeah, Jason,” the sycophant said. “Friday the thirteenth!”

  The announcer started to wish him luck, and Day and his chorus began to mug some more for the camera by saying in unison, “Remember, always bet on black.”

  I wondered what Wesley Snipes was going to say if he heard Day was stealing the line from Passenger 57. “Shut that motherfucking thing off,” Chappie said. “We gonna really have to kick that boy’s ass now, after he be woffin’ like that.”

  The guy who held the microphone smiled as he came forward. He looked to the cameraman and asked if they were rolling. The cameraman nodded and focused on the face of the other man. The twin globes of the camera lights felt hot and blinding. I canted my head so I wouldn’t have to look directly into them.

  “This is Todd Tracey and we’re at The Beverly Gym in Chicago where Full-contact Karate fighter Ron Shade is training for his match Friday night for the Heavyweight Championship against titleholder Elijah Day.” He paused and turned to me, holding the microphone between us. “Ron, how long have you been preparing for this fight?”

  “It seems like forever,” I said.

  “You look in pretty good shape. Do you feel ready?”

  “I’m ready.” I saw Chappie standing in back of the cameraman frowning and jerking his rais
ed thumb up and down, which was his signal for me to elevate the hype. “I’ve trained for this fight harder than any match I’ve ever had. I’ve beaten Day before, and I’ll do it again.”

  “That’s right, you did win your last matchup,” the announcer said. “Do you feel his style will present a problem for you this time?”

  “Day’s a good fighter, no doubt about it,” I said. Chappie frowned and started with the thumb again. “But he keeps forgetting that I didn’t just beat him last time. I knocked him out.”

  The announcer winced and drew his forefinger across his throat. The cameraman stopped.

  “Ron, we’d rather you didn’t mention that you knocked him out,” the announcer said.

  “Why the fuck not?” Chappie asked. The announcer smiled.

  “It’s a matter of marketing,” he said, almost apologetically. “We’re trying to promote this bout as a potential war, an even-money match up. If people think that Day was knocked out last time, it diminishes his stature, and hence, the fight will be seen as a cakewalk.”

  “A cakewalk?” Chappie said. He snorted in disgust. “You ain’t never stepped inside them ropes for real, has you?”

  The announcer smiled again. More nervously this time.

  “No, sir,” he said. “Nor would I. But, gentlemen, if you please, time is the network’s money.” He flashed his smile again.

  “Maybe you could pan around the gym some and do a voiceover?” I said. “Give the place some publicity?”

  “Sure, we’ll get it in,” the announcer said. “Now let’s take it from the point where I asked you if his style will present any particular problem for you. Okay?”

  I nodded. Chappie grinned.

  “All I can say is,” I said, glaring and holding my clenched fist toward the camera, “Day’s gonna wish he was wearing that hockey mask he was talking about once he steps into that ring, regardless of whether it’s Friday the thirteenth, or not.”

  It went on like that for about twenty more minutes, then they interviewed Chappie a bit. I silently wondered how much of the interview would be edited out, and asked them as they were packing their stuff.