Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “I was changing my film when I heard shrieking—it wasn’t screaming, you know. There’s a difference.”

  I wanted to ask him why he was changing the film. What had he been shooting before the screams began? But I didn’t. I figured he could tell his story, then I’d ask more questions.

  “These kids come running past me. They couldn’t’ve been more than thirteen, fourteen. They see me and one of them grabs my arm. ‘Mister, there’s a guy. He needs help.’”

  His words had the polished familiarity of a story that had been told a hundred times. A cop would have interrupted the flow, but I didn’t. Sometimes I found the stories as revealing as the truth.

  “So I let them take me to the guy. Big guy, like you, on his side in front of a tree, not too far from where I’d been sitting. Only, he was beyond help. That was clear right from the start. I sent the kids to call the cops, and then I started taking pictures.”

  I was just beginning to take in the details. His description was interesting. Most white guys would have mentioned that Foster was black. Had he avoided it out of sensitivity toward me?

  “How many pictures did you take?” I asked.

  “My last three rolls. I left the best ones with the Defender.”

  “And the Tribune and the Daily News, and the Sun-Times, right?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Hey, you go legit first.”

  I winced. The Defender was legit, at least in my community. “Do you still have the other photographs?”

  “Sure.”

  “May I see them?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” he said.

  A woman stopped beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. Her skin was mahogany dark, her lips full, and her hair in the beginnings of an afro. It was thin on top and wispy on the sides, the way women’s hair got when they’d left the straightener in too long or burned it beneath a hot iron. She wore a pale pink mohair sweater, dark blue pants, and high-heeled boots.

  She smiled at Epstein. The look warmed her face, giving her a radiance that she didn’t have in repose. “You didn’t stay.”

  He shook his head and nodded toward me. “Been talking to Mr. Grimshaw here about that dead guy in the park.”

  I noted that he had used the “Mister” this time.

  “Oh?” Her gaze turned toward me. Her dark eyes were as intelligent as Hampton’s. “What’s your interest?”

  “I’m investigating for the family.”

  She nodded. I didn’t have to explain to her. “Learning anything?”

  “I just started.”

  “He found me,” Epstein said.

  “You gotta show him the pictures,” she said.

  “He has those.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “I was promised the rest,” I said.

  “Good.” She shoved Epstein aside with her hips, sat next to him, and then draped her legs across his lap. He flushed, but didn’t move her. After a moment, he rested a hand on her thigh.

  The ease between them made me uncomfortable and she knew it. I made myself look away from his hand.

  “Were you with him?” I asked.

  “All night.” She gave me another radiant smile. “But I stayed in bed when he went out into the cold morning air.”

  “Elaine!” Epstein’s flush grew deeper.

  She was watching me closely. I wondered how much of her relationship with Epstein was designed to provoke other people and how much of it was just for her.

  “So you don’t know anything about the murder,” I said.

  “Only what Saul has told me.”

  I nodded and turned my gaze back to Epstein. His face was bright red, the embarrassment painfully obvious. His hand had moved off Elaine’s thigh and was toying with the cameras again.

  “Tell me about the teenagers.”

  “I did,” he said. “About thirteen, fourteen. They were scared.”

  “What did they look like? What were they wearing? Why were they there?”

  His face closed down, and I realized I was onto the reason he was in the park.

  “Gang kids,” Elaine said.

  “Goddammit, Elaine,” Epstein said.

  She shrugged and leaned into him. “You may as well tell him. The cops never bothered to ask you.”

  “They didn’t follow up?”

  Epstein shook his head. “I kept expecting them to, you know. I gave them all my information, but no one called. No one ever got back to me. I watched the papers, figuring maybe they’d solved it, but I never saw anything.”

  “They didn’t solve it,” I said, “and they don’t seem to be trying. That’s why Mrs. Foster asked for my help.”

  Elaine’s face lit up. “You one of those detectives the cops been harassing?”

  The police had been stopping employees of black private detective agencies and arresting them if they had guns, even if they had licenses for those guns. A lot of cops just sat outside the agencies, waiting for someone to leave—usually headed for a security job—and then arrested them once they got outside the Black Belt. It was so egregious that the agencies were thinking of banding together and filing a complaint with the state.

  I had looked at the entire affair as one more reason why I didn’t have an official license.

  “I don’t carry a gun,” I said, although I had one. I kept it locked in the glove box of my car.

  “I thought all you guys did,” she said.

  “Sorry to disappoint.” I looked at Epstein. “Did you get the teenagers’ names?”

  “Yeah.” He shifted forward, unsettling Elaine, who took her legs off his lap. He took the notebook out of his back pocket, thumbed through the pages, and stopped near the front. “Names and addresses. I’ll copy them for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He wrote the names down on another sheet of paper. I watched him. Elaine stared at the floor as if the conversation were already over.

  I took the moment to study her face. There were premature lines and shadows in it, and I got a sense that she was not as content as she pretended.

  When Epstein finished, he handed me the paper. I didn’t look at it, but I didn’t pocket it either. I didn’t want to give any signals that we were done. “So your story’s about gangs.”

  “Mostly,” he said.

  “The Blackstone Rangers?”

  “They call themselves the Black P. Stone Nation now.”

  “Some of them do,” I said. “They’re pretty dangerous.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m careful.”

  “What were you watching? A drug deal?”

  “Just a meet between rivals trying to broker a truce.” He sounded sad that I knew what he was doing.

  “I’d like those photos too,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “They’re part of the story.”

  “How about you let me look at them when I pick up the remains of those three rolls?”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You want to share what you learn with me?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “If it’ll do any good.”

  “Who decides that?”

  “Me,” I said.

  Elaine smiled to herself and leaned against the wall, watching me sideways.

  “You think it was a gang hit?” I asked.

  “No,” Epstein said. “That’s not how they do things. They got a whole system, usually, and they leave the body somewhere more obvious. That part of the park isn’t anyone’s special turf. If he was a hit, he’d’ve been left on the side of the street. You know, like maybe Sixty-third if he was a warning for the Stones, or west of Cottage Grove for the Disciples. But he was just there by that tree—and it wasn’t messy. Gang killings’re usually messy, just for a lesson.”

  “And he was too old.” Elaine was still studying me. “Like you.”

  “You don’t think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and the gangs took him out?”<
br />
  “Stones don’t let that happen anywhere near their turf, man,” Epstein said. “Killings happen for a reason. They send a message. All they have to do with a guy like that is scare the shit out of him, maybe beat him up. They don’t need to kill him.”

  That had been my sense of it, too. “So who was out of place in the park that morning?”

  “You mean besides me?” Epstein asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “No one so far as I could tell.”

  “Did the kids call the cops or did you?”

  “I told you,” he said. “The kids did.”

  “Gang kids?”

  “I didn’t say that they were.” He tilted his head toward Elaine. “She did.”

  She wasn’t paying attention. She was staring down the hall. “There’s Fred.”

  And without a good-bye, she got up and walked away. Epstein watched her go, his face a painful mix of desire and wariness.

  The speaker and his bodyguards had stopped near the doorway. They were talking with some people I didn’t recognize. Elaine joined the group, leaned forward and caught Hampton’s arm. He gave her a dismissive smile, moved away slightly, and continued the conversation.

  “So they’re not gang kids,” I said, “and they did call the cops.”

  “Why’re you having trouble with that?” Epstein asked.

  “Just trying to get the story straight, that’s all.”

  “They’re not gang kids. They did call the cops. And it took a while for the cops to get there, too. I sent the kids back twice.”

  “They came back to the body?”

  He sighed and nodded. I finally had his attention. “I made them stay away as best I could. They didn’t need to see that. But I get the sense they’d seen a lot more than that over the years.”

  “How?”

  He shrugged. “Just some things they were saying, you know, like how it was amazing a guy could be dead and not be bloody.”

  “Do you think they touched the body?”

  “No. They kept their distance.”

  “Did you touch it? Move it?”

  He grimaced. “What do you think I am, man?”

  “Have you ever seen any other body like that?”

  His eyes narrowed. “It was my very first. Are we done yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “You only took three rolls even though you were alone with the body for some time?”

  “I ran out of film.” He said this slowly, as if explaining to a stupid person. But I had a very real sense that he was lying. Why would he lie about the number of rolls he shot of the body?

  “How much film do you usually carry?”

  “Enough,” he said.

  “Cooperate with me,” I said. “I’m not the cops, I’m not a reporter out to get your story. All I want to do is find out what happened to Louis Foster.”

  He glanced at Elaine. She had moved as close to Hampton as she could, her head tilted back as she listened to him speak. But he didn’t seem to notice her at all.

  “I got eight rolls from that morning. Most are pretty useless to you.”

  “Let me judge that,” I said.

  “I’m not letting you have them,” he said. “You can just look at them.”

  “Fine with me. Tomorrow afternoon suit you? At your grandmother’s?”

  “I’ll be there at three,” he said. “If you’re late, I’m gone.”

  “All right.” I was willing to wait. He might be more cooperative at his grandmother’s house, without the distraction of Elaine.

  Epstein stood and started to walk away, his gaze focused on Elaine. She saw him and smiled at him, extending her hand. He put up a finger, turned around, and came back for his coat.

  As he grabbed it, he paused. “Look,” he said to me, “I’m really sorry that guy is dead. But I told you everything I know.”

  “No,” I said as I stood. “You told me everything you think you know.”

  He looked at me, surprised.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, and left him.

  FIVE

  THE ADDRESSES Saul Epstein gave me were on the University of Chicago side of Washington Park. I slowly made my way back toward my own neighborhood, almost as if I’d planned my route in advance.

  When I got south of Thirty-fifth, I found myself in a traffic jam on the Dan Ryan Expressway. As I looked over the freeway walls toward the city, I saw crowds of people moving along the sidewalks and cars backed up on the side roads. Apparently the parade had ended.

  The afternoon was still gray, and the clouds hung thick overhead. They seemed heavy with moisture, but so far, nothing had happened. I was beginning to think this was what Chicago’s winters were like—continually overcast, always promising but never really delivering serious snow.

  I exited the Dan Ryan near the Amphitheater and headed into the heaviest traffic. Cars sat bumper to bumper, some in the middle of the road, while people walked by, laughing and having a good time. Some adults had children on their shoulders. Others held hands like a human chain, so that no one would get lost.

  I didn’t see Jimmy, Franklin, or any of the Grimshaw children, although I doubted I would this far north on the route. I also didn’t see any red tams. Maybe the Stones had stayed away from the parade.

  It took fifteen minutes for the traffic to clear. I continued toward the lake, then turned south, finally ending up on the correct street.

  The block was filled with single-family dwellings, nice houses with what had to be, in the summer, nice lawns. Even now the yards were well-kept, leaves raked and the grass clipped close before the winter began. I hadn’t expected it; I had thought that the neighborhood would be full of apartment buildings like the one I lived in.

  These streets were empty. Apparently, they were far enough from the parade route so that they didn’t get the traffic or the pedestrians. Most of the houses looked occupied: cars parked in driveways, lights on inside despite the early hour. One house, in the middle of the block, already had its Christmas decorations up. A battered, white-flocked sign wished everyone who passed “Happy Holidays.”

  I squinted at the addresses, most of them marked clearly beside the doorbells. The numbers moved logically, unlike some parts of the city, and I found the first address with ease. It belonged to a large brown house on a corner lot. Even though the second address had a different street name, I realized that the houses were directly across from each other. The boys were neighbors.

  A woman stood on the porch of the second house as if she were waiting for someone. She wore a heavy, floor-length sweater over a pantsuit. The sweater was unbuttoned and she clutched it closed with one hand. The other hand was cupped at her side.

  I parked the car in front of the house, checked Epstein’s crabbed handwriting, then slipped the note into my pants pocket. Then I opened the car door and slid out.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “I’m looking for Gus Foley.”

  Her eyes seemed pale in the thin afternoon light. “You the police?”

  The question surprised me. Why would she think the police would show up in front of her home in a rusted Impala? “No, ma’am.”

  She grunted softly, an eloquent comment of disgust. “What do you want with August?”

  It took me a moment to realize that Gus was a nickname for August. “I’m following up on the death of Louis Foster. I understand your son found the body.”

  “He and his friend Van, yes.”

  I had continued walking forward. I was most of the way up the sidewalk toward the porch. She hadn’t moved.

  “I’d like to talk to one or both of them if I could,” I said.

  “But you’re not a police officer.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “The victim’s family, ma’am. The police aren’t doing much investigation.”

  “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “The boys are in the basement. I’ll take you there.”

  That surprise
d me, too. I figured she’d bring them outside, if she would let me speak to them at all.

  From her cupped hand, she flicked a cigarette over the porch rail. I put out the still-smoldering tip as I mounted the steps. She waited until I was beside her before opening the front door.

  The house smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish. A bouquet of dried flowers stood on an occasional table beside the door. A curved wooden staircase, leading to an upstairs floor and to the basement, was on my right. To my left was the neatest living room I’d ever seen in an inhabited house.

  “Down there,” she said, gesturing with her thumb. As she moved, she released the scent of fresh cigarette smoke like perfume.

  The steps were bare wood, polished to a gleam. The banister shone, too, and I didn’t touch it as I walked down. A deep and irregular tick-tick greeted me as I went farther; it took me a moment to recognize the sound of a Ping-Pong game in progress.

  The basement was another world. An old ratty carpet covered the floor. A round leather ottoman, at least twenty years old, was pushed against the paneled wall. The matching chair had a split across the back that someone had tried to repair with cellophane tape.

  A couch, covered with several mismatched blankets, was pushed against the far wall, and a black-and-white television nattered to itself from a crudely built-in bar. The Ping-Pong table wasn’t visible until I was nearly to the bottom of the staircase.

  The table dominated the room. The furniture had been pushed aside to accommodate it. Two teenage boys, still reed-thin and not yet into their growth, concentrated on the match. Both stood as far from the table as possible and gripped their paddles like weapons.

  “Boys,” the woman said from behind me. “This gentleman would like to talk to you.”

  It was then I realized that we hadn’t even gone through the ritual of getting each other’s names.

  The boy closest to the couch glanced up and the Ping-Pong ball sailed past him.

  “Mom,” he said, making the word two syllables long to show his irritation.

  “You can take a break,” she said.

  “Yeah,” the other boy said. “You need one. That’s two in a row I got.”

  “We replay this point,” said the first boy, who had to be Gus.