Eig says, “Tracy Moens couldn’t figure the black guy in the straw boater, a West Indian by the shape of his face, but no one knows his name.” He runs his finger across straw boater no. 2, no. 3, and no. 4. “The other three dandies are Ralph Capone—Al’s older brother; artful Eddie O’Hare; and Eddie’s law partner, James W. Barlow Senior.”
I turn to my really cute date for the next Flyers game and motion for her to pull her earbuds.
She does.
“Hi. We’re friends of Denny’s.” I point at Jon. “Jonathan Eig from the Wall Street Journal. Would it be okay if we took this off the wall and looked at the back?” I add a lie. “Jon gave it to Denny six years ago, wants to show me something. Okay?”
“Gotta buy a hot dog.” She grins. “One each. House rules.”
“Make it ten, with everything.” I step to the counter and hand her two twenties. “We’ll have a picnic.” I match her grin and offer my right hand. “Bill Owens.”
“Selah Dune, proprietor, pleased to meet ya.”
Eig says, “Shit.”
I cut to his voice. He nods out the window at a big-body Buick out front, its doors popping open. My stomach sinks.
I yell to Selah Dune behind the counter: “Unlock the back door. Hurry.”
Two blacks from the Buick are already in the street. Both wear suit coats and blue jeans. Under their coats are short-barreled submachine guns with long magazines.
I pull the Beretta, fumble the safety, wave Jon toward the counter, and yell: “Selah! Back door. Right now or we’re all dead.”
She bolts for the short aisle to the back. I turn to Jon; he’s mid-room, reaching for Astor Argyle—
Engine roar; a white van slams into one of the two blacks, then careens into a car parked three cars behind mine. The black who’s still standing fires full-auto into the van’s driver’s side window, steps left to the van’s windshield, sets his feet, and blows the windshield apart.
A bloody white guy falls out the passenger side and fires a cut-down shotgun. The blast knocks the gun out of the black man’s hands and cuts a big chunk out of his midsection.
“Out the back!” I shove Jon. “Grab the girl.”
Two more blacks exit the Buick. Women? One charges Nick & Nora’s front door. A shooter from the white van flattens her in the street. Her pistol fires a round that shatters Nick & Nora’s door. The remaining black female loops their Buick’s trunk, shoots the white guy in the van, then charges Nick & Nora’s door. She pancakes before I can fire, shot from behind. Her porkpie hat coin-flips above her dreads.
Eig rips Astor Argyle off the wall.
My Beretta is stiff-armed at the street. Jon knocks me off balance and shoves us toward the back door. I stumble over Selah on the tile, reach down to help her up—she’s covered in blood, half her head missing. Jon and I bang through the back door.
Into two empty parking spaces and the side alley. A car I last saw out front at the Brehon squeal-stops inches before it hits us and Nick & Nora’s back wall.
I level the Beretta on the windshield. Jon jukes for our building’s back corner and is knocked sideways by an Irishman charging out of the Brehon car. Jon kicks the guy in the pelvis, pivots off the guy’s hip, and sprints the alley west toward Morgan Street.
The Irishman draws to shoot Jon. I shoot the guy twice, then fan back to his car’s windshield, fire twice into the glass, then sprint west behind Jon.
Gunfire erupts out front on Morgan Street. Car doors pop behind me in the alley.
Irish accent: “Stop, goddammit. We’ll kill ya!”
I fire blind over my shoulder, keep running, skid at the Morgan Street sidewalk, turn left, tumble over Astor Argyle on the pavement, and land on a knee. I swivel to fire just as an Irishman runs out of the alley.
He blows backward, shot from Morgan Street by a gray-and-white shape behind a flash.
I grab the framed picture, sprint farther south past Nick & Nora’s shattered front door, then across Morgan Street through the white and black bodies, and flatten against the front bumper of the blown-apart, bloody van, its driver splattered at the steering wheel.
“Jon!”
Sirens wail inbound. The white flash I saw is a woman in a combat stance. She fires down the alley where I just met Loef Brummel’s Brehon crew. A gray-checked keffiyeh covers her face and hair. She yells, “Bill! With me!” dumps her Glock’s magazine, slams another, and fires again.
I bolt, sprinting though alleys, over fences, through the old Stearns Quarry, under the Stevenson Expressway, through its homeless camps, and finally to the ‘L’ station at Archer and Halsted. The Orange Line train is on the platform. I throw a fiver at the attendant booth, leap the turnstile, and do the stairs three at a time.
The train’s doors are closing. I jump through. The doors shut; we lurch forward and I death-grip a pole for balance. The train adds speed and noise.
Sweat-soaked and panting, I slide into a seat. The Astor Argyle frame trembles on my knees. My hands are shaking. Clasping them doesn’t help. My gun hand is blood-spotted; so are my shoes and shirt. I just shot at least one man dead. Under my shirt, the Beretta digs into my stomach. I straighten, suck air, and cover my mouth.
Five riders stare . . . then look away.
I replay the blood splatter, dead people everywhere, a goddamn horror movie. The train screeches metal on metal. Face wipe. I pat places that hurt but aren’t bleeding. Eyes shut; eyes open. Gotta be seven, eight dead. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And Eig?
I palm my face; my phone bangs my eyebrow. Huh? How’d that get in my hand? I hit redial for Jon Eig.
The call goes direct to voicemail.
He could’ve lost his phone. Even so, he’d be able to call me . . . if he’s okay. I check my phone again for voicemail and messages, find none. I call Dave.
The ‘L’ veers left. Downtown’s skyline appears. We’re almost into the Loop—the elevated network of tracks and stations that surround the center of downtown. My cell phone rings, “Unknown Caller” on the screen.
“Hello. Dave? Dave?”
The call disconnects. I stare at the phone; will it to talk or ring again.
It does neither. I hit redial but the call won’t connect. Astor Argyle bounces on my knees. I’m gonna get the Irish-mob death penalty because of you, dog. Why?
I call Barlow’s cell phone; his phone picks up and I shout: “Hello? Hello?”
“Hello?”
“Barlow?”
“Mr. Barlow is on another line. Who’s calling?”
The voice is a man, and not polished enough to be a partner or associate working weekends. I look at the other passengers on my train, then Astor Argyle. “I’ll hold.”
“May be a while.” He reads me my phone number. “Is that the correct number?”
“Yeah.”
“And your name?”
“Have Mr. Barlow call me as soon as he gets off the line. Tell him it’s about Dave Grossfeld.”
“We heard.”
“Heard? Heard what?”
“Dave Grossfeld is in Haiti, Mr. . . .”
“Smith. Horace Smith. I’m a client.”
“Mr. Smith, this is Detective Roger Murphy, Chicago Police Department. What’s your relationship to Mr. Barlow and Mr. Grossfeld?”
“Me? I’ll let Mr. Barlow explain that. You said Dave Grossfeld’s in Haiti?”
“Yes, he is. On his boat. Dave Grossfeld committed suicide an hour ago.”
Chapter 11
Bill Owens
Saturday, 10:40 p.m.
It’s been six hours since the gunfight at Nick & Nora’s. I haven’t panicked like a sane person would. I want to, but haven’t. So far, survival—for me and others—trumps the fight or flee.
The hot water’s just starting to warm when I finish the speed shower in Lisa Reins’s
bathtub, sans her Bates Motel shower curtain. Her towel smells like a Victoria’s Secret store.
In her kitchen/office, I button the wall-mounted TV.
The sound is off. The screen is a crime scene. The graphic below the close-up and yellow tape reads “Morgan Street Massacre. Nine dead.” I hit the sound. The voice says: “Four black, five white, all dead, one of them the business partner of a Chicago police lieutenant.” None of them are Jon Eig.
Nine dead would be two more than the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The reporter speculates that the shooting is somehow connected to last year’s “French Connection,” an event that turned Chicago’s nine-digit heroin trade upside down.
The screen cuts to the WGN studio and “team coverage” that’s probably been running all day. Anchor Mark Suppelsa reads a garbled intro I can’t hear and the screen cuts to a daytime shot—the front door of a downtown office building and a replay of James W. Barlow Jr. being gurneyed out to an ambulance.
WGN runs a grainy security-camera tape of a male (me) exiting the lobby, then a female in a keffiyeh. Her time stamp exit is fourteen minutes after mine. The voice-over reports that CPD has no ID on either of us, saying that the security desk was unmanned, the guard on duty MIA investigating another incident.
WGN cuts back to the anchor speaking to the camera with a better mic: “Sources inside the Chicago Police Department have confirmed to WGN that ‘due to attorney James Barlow’s extensive involvement with “questionable” city contracts and high-profile murder cases, CPD’s Organized Crime Unit is leading the investigation.’”
My elbows drop onto Lisa’s retro Formica table. Lisa Reins isn’t home because I paid her $300 not to be; wasn’t fair to risk her being beaten to death if Loef Brummel finds me. I pull the pint of Beneagles I bought on the way here, unscrew the cap, and swallow a mouthful. The whiskey shivers me all over. Dave. Dave. Dave. Dead. In Haiti. Suicide.
Dave and suicide. Never happen.
Me, killing someone, again. Never happen. Would’ve bet my life that it couldn’t. And I no doubt have. One hand palms my face, the other sets the pint on top of Astor Argyle, next to my cell phone. Wish I still had a gun.
Why? Gonna kill somebody else?
Exhale. No. But I still wish I had a gun.
When I got off the ‘L,’ the $600 Beretta—sans barrel—went into an Evanston storm drain. I bought underwear, socks, Top-Siders, a madras jacket, and light cotton pants at Wally Reid’s on Sherman Avenue, then threw my “lucky” seersucker suit and shoes in a Salvation Army drop box the Northwestern students use for their commitment to social change. The gun barrel went to a commercial welder I use who melted the barrel into a ball. The ball went into a dumpster. My car, I recovered an hour ago, paying a local Hardscrabble kid $100 to drive it three blocks. I told him it was an “angry husband thing.” CPD will already have my plate number but at least I have the car.
Jon Eig, I can do nothing about, other than the three calls I attempted from pay phones. If he’s alive, staying silent forever is probably his best bet by a million miles. He sounded like a guy who’d know that. My phone rings for the twentieth time. “Unknown Caller” displays on the screen for the twentieth time. This time I answer.
A harsh Irish voice says, “Dave Grossfeld’s dead? In Haiti?”
“Who’s this?”
“Your fuckin’ ma. Is he, or isn’t he?”
“I heard Dave’s dead in Haiti, but I don’t know it.”
“And you know who has the money he owes, or his ‘fish’?”
“No to both.”
The unfamiliar voice says, “You made enemies today. Explain the niggers.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” I look at my phone. Over the phone? Nobody must go to prison in Belfast via a phone tap.
The voice says, “Maybe somebody saves you and your hockey gimps if we know what’s goin’ on, where the ‘fish’ are, who the niggers are. We might can keep the gimps off the bridge and the price on you low enough in the ghetto that nobody who’s worth a shit chases it. But we gotta know everything.”
“On the phone, you gotta know everything? How dumb are you Micks? Have your boss find me in an hour. I might know something about Dave by then. Whatever else you’re talking about has nothing to do with me.”
“Hour’s a long time for a guy with your problems.”
“Threaten somebody who wants to listen; I have stuff to do.”
“Them fuckin’ kids of yours don’t swim so good. A minute be a long time in the water for them.”
Heat burns on my neck. “Let me explain something, asshole. One Flyer gets grabbed or hurt, I walk into the Federal Building, take a reporter with me. When that story breaks, every mother in Canaryville hunts your boss like a pack of rabid dogs.”
“Where you gonna meet us in an hour?”
“Right. Great talking to you—”
“Guys are coming for Dave’s trucks. Where’s the keys and titles.”
I picture Dave’s office the last time I was there. “They leave the keys in the trucks. No idea on the titles.” I button off while the Belfast import is still talking, then frown at my phone. Like the Irish mob can reach into the ghetto to “keep the price on me low.” If the dead blacks were GDs or P Stones, the price on me is fifty cents, the cost of a bullet.
My phone rings again, vibrating like a bug against the Astor Argyle frame, “Unknown Caller” on the screen. I glare at the phone. Both hands palm my face; I gotta do something about the Flyers. The phone rings again. I stare at Lisa’s kitchen walls, then Lisa’s windows, then Astor Argyle . . .
The screen reads: “Rugby Gurl.”
I grab it. “Hello?”
“Bill?”
Woman’s voice.
“Who’s this?”
“We met at Nick & Nora’s.”
I stand too fast and knock over the chair. “Not me. Never been there.”
“Nor have I. So, Bill, you went to Rum Cay and Cuba looking for me. How come?” The accent is satin-smooth American, and maybe Scottish. The rest of the voice is glossy foldout with a touch of three-card monte.
I glance at the kitchen’s back door. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Anne and I want to chat. She sends her best.”
I flash on the white woman in the combat stance. “Susie Devereux’s dead in the Camagüey Breaks. Who are you, really?”
“I think you know better. Call your friend Jon. Ask him who got him away. Then call Anne. Here’s her number.” The voice gives me an 876 number in Jamaica. “I’m in the neighborhood. We best get together, tonight, after—”
The connection quits.
Eig’s alive; glad I didn’t get him killed. I take a long pull on the Beneagles, then call Coach Ken, then Patty Prom-Night, neither of whom answer. The message I leave Patty is cryptic but clear enough: “Will explain later. Make your Flyers pickup tomorrow an all-day daytrip. Call the cops and tell them where you’re going. And if they ask, you haven’t heard from me.”
I hang up. My phone lands next to the pint of Beneagles and AA’s win picture. I dig out my pen knife and pry open the back of the frame. Tucked behind the shot of Argyle are two eight-by-ten photographs.
Photo no. 1 is two emotionless men standing at a desk, one of them infamous—Al Capone. The photo is dated in white ink with: “Sportsman’s Park 1931,” the same year Jon said Al was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to federal prison. The other man is . . . no idea.
I use Lisa’s kitchen-table computer to Google: “Images Capone Sportsman’s Park 1931.”
Google fills the screen with old photos.
Wow. The top row has faces that match both men, even their hats. The second figure in my eight-by-ten is none other than Eddie O’Hare. I read what I can make out in a photographed article. It agrees with Jon that Eddie O’Hare snitched A
l into Alcatraz. Unknown to Al, his partner-lawyer had become a federal informant for “altruistic reasons.”
Uh-huh. Like lawyers could spell altruistic.
Photo no. 2 has no date. It’s a close-up of a desktop at its corner. Atop the desk are two bottles of Barbancourt Rhum. Both bottles sit on a handwritten poem too small to read. The desk is the same in both photos.
Also pressed inside the frame is one ragged sheet of heavy linen stationery—six incomplete lines are arranged in the same pattern as the lines from the poem in the photo:
Unlike the poem in the photo, the stationery poem is missing the remainder of its text. I squeeze my eyes shut, then open, then try to decipher the poem.
Back to Google. I type: “Cacos.”
Cacos were the peasant revolutionaries who fought against the US occupation of Haiti during WWI, and after.
I type: “Bracero.”
A bracero is a sugarcane cutter . . . in several countries, including Haiti.
Cacos and braceros. Two groups of people from Haiti.
Where Dave died ten hours ago. Where “the Gryphon” is.
My stomach votes, demands more Beneagles.
The long pull on the bottle burns my throat. I lay the two photos side by side next to the poem that came with them. Part of the Eddie O’Hare article I just read says he liked handicapping, poetry, and puzzles—not unlike me. That he made his own crosswords and that they appeared weekly in the Chicago American.
And like most every regular patron of Sportsman’s knows, part of Eddie’s Sportsman’s history is that “an unknown assailant” shot him dead in 1939 after he left his racetrack office.
I Google for ten minutes, finally find a snapshot of a 1939 article I can read. It says Eddie had a poem in his pocket when he was killed, a poem about time, but there’s no poem for me to read.
Back to the poem. “Tick tock” is the first line of this stationery poem. “Tick tock” is a time reference—similar to the theme of the poem that was found in O’Hare’s pocket. “EJO” separates the verses. Likely Eddie O’Hare’s initials.
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