“Yeah.”
“Go.”
Waz follows me into the office, flips the light switch, and points at the desk. “Have a seat.”
I do and set my hands where he can see them on Dave’s desk blotter. My left hand lands on a phone number that begins with 876, the area code for Jamaica.
Lieutenant Waznooski looks at the desktop between us, the fishing trophies on the credenza, the sports memorabilia on the walls, Dave’s bar, the Flyers jersey. “We got two of Loef Brummel’s crew in a van out front. Know anything about that?”
“Huh? No. Jesus, that’s not good.”
“No, it isn’t, given that Loef lost four guys nine hours ago on Morgan. You saw the TV?”
“I did.”
“Banahan’s partner, Selah Dune—a girl Lieutenant Denny liked a lot—died inside. Looks like at the hands of the blacks. If forensics prove it wasn’t Brummel’s people, Denny and Brummel won’t have to kill each other.” Lieutenant Waznooski stops scanning Dave’s office and focuses on me. “Four black, five white, four of them Irish mob. All dead at a place Banahan owns but doesn’t run. Media thinks it’s a reprisal for his ‘French Connection’ last year. It ain’t.”
I do my best totally confused face.
“The mob guys at Nick & Nora’s were Irish, not Outfit Italians like last year. None of the dead blacks were Nigerians like last year, and none of ’em were local gangbangers who move the Nigerians’ dope.” Waz’s mouth hardens under his stare. “So, we have the goddamn O.K. Corral in Loef-town, but he’s got his guys sitting here? On Grossfeld’s, waiting for a dead man to come home? Don’t think so. And if I was looking for you, this isn’t where I’d go. Yet here they are. Tell me what the fuck’s going on.”
“I don’t know. No idea. None.”
“Susie Devereux shoots Barlow, then comes here looking for you. Why? Loef Brummel’s crew dies 4X and the remainder is here, looking for her, or you, or both. Why? A fifth grader would say you have something everybody wants—what is it?”
I show Waz my palms. “No idea. Honest.”
“Wanna walk out front with me? Let the Canaryville boys know you’re in here? Won’t be good when our cars leave.”
“C’mon, Waz. I didn’t borrow the money. I don’t know Devereux, and maybe it was Barlow who hired the blacks. I build mausoleums and try to race horses, for chrissake. I don’t know, okay? And while we’re talking, I need a favor.”
“From me?”
“Could you step outside and mention to the Canaryville goons that you know one of the Flyers? And that if that kid is the one they throw off the Ashland Avenue bridge, you’re gonna start hanging loan sharks from streetlights.”
Waz looks at the door to North Avenue. “What the fuck is wrong with you? What kind of asshole puts retarded fucking orphans at risk?”
“I didn’t do it. Dave did. Can every-fucking-body try to remember that?”
Waz frowns, looks around, and says: “Gimme something with Grossfeld’s Flyers on it. That chain you hang around your neck.”
“Need to keep that.” I unhook the key ring from my car keys.
Waz hooks the key ring into his, says, “This didn’t happen. Do not move your feet; I mean it,” and walks outside.
Three minutes pass. Waz walks back in, doesn’t comment or return the Flyers key ring, and asks: “Ever been in Nick & Nora’s?”
My fingerprints will be in there, and my car tag on the street. “Yeah, sure, there and Johnny Ga Ga’s are the best dogs in the city.”
“After the shooting, a picture was missing from the wall . . . some kinda dog-racing picture. Nine people died over a dog-racing picture? Ever race dogs, Bill?”
“No.”
“Got something against blacks? Women? Foreigners?”
“No more than you do.”
Waz doesn’t laugh.
One of his guys raps on Dave’s open door and says, “Nobody in the warehouse. There’s thirty lockers with the locks cut, stuff tumbled out like somebody searched ’em.” He hands Waz an old eight-by-ten photograph held by a clothespin. “Found this.”
Waz looks at it, then shows me the Astor Argyle win picture. “Imagine that, a dog-racing picture.”
My stomach sinks. I shrug. My fingerprints will be on it. Lieutenant Banahan will ID the photo as the one missing from Nick & Nora’s, that also has my prints and had my car nearby.
I’ll be leaving town for somewhere, with or without the Barbancourt bottle, if Lieutenant Waznooski doesn’t handcuff me now. I grab for the photo. “Can I see that?”
Waz jerks it away before I can contaminate the evidence. The lantern jaw sets and his eyes narrow. “Look, but don’t touch.”
I refold my hands and lean toward his side of the desk. “No idea. Why would a dog race in 1927 matter?”
“Why would a picture stolen from a mass murder earlier today be here?”
I shrug again. “Don’t know? Susie Devereux?”
“How would she get in?”
“Barlow gave her a key? She searched the lockers?”
“Didn’t say he gave her a key.” Lieutenant Waznooski points at the photo. “Know this black guy? This foreign-looking black guy?”
I squint. “Nope. Never bet on a dog race in my life. Hopefully you haven’t either.”
“Ever hang out with transvestites?”
“Huh?”
“Guys who dress like girls.”
Frown. “I know what a transvestite is. Other than Cognac St. Germaine, the piano player at the Baton Lounge, probably not. But who knows anymore?”
Lieutenant Waznooski nods. “The four black shooters? Two of ’em are women?” He frowns. “Not so much.”
Waz is wrong; I saw them; they were women, just in men’s clothes, dressed as Tontons Macoutes.
“All of ’em had marks high under their left arm, welts, like they’d been branded small. Might be an E with a cross shoved through it. The coroner says—”
Commotion again at the front door. Two of Cosmo Camastro’s sons burst through, yelling: “Fuck you! This ain’t no crime scene! You can’t keep us out. We got papers for the trucks!”
Lieutenant Waznooski steps out of Dave’s office and yells at Cosmo’s sons. One is dumb enough to chest-bump Waz and keep yelling. Waz takes him to the floor. Astor Argyle floats toward me like we were separated at birth. I grab Dave’s Beretta from his desk, then the photo, step around the three-person scrum and out the splintered front door onto a still-congested North Avenue.
Two steps past the nearest fire truck, I’m spotted by Loef’s goons. Luckily, they are out of the van, facedown on the pavement, fully engaged by four unhappy policemen. I hear “Ashland Avenue bridge,” like that’s where these fellows are headed. I reach the street corner, pull the Beretta, and sprint south for my car.
Black or white, anyone in my car gets two in the chest. I’m not going to Haiti . . . or a loan shark’s basement.
Chapter 13
Bill Owens
Sunday, 1:30 a.m.
Eleven miles across the city, I park dark, strip my jacket and shirt, pass out in the Citroën’s back seat with Dave’s 9 mm on my stomach.
Heat and streetlights wake me.
Watch check—three hours. I’m bleary but un-kidnapped and un-arrested. Jolt. Susie should’ve called. I fumble my phone, almost hit redial on “Rugby Gurl.” Wait. I can’t put my cell number inbound on Susie’s phone; not if she gets ID’d as a shooter at Nick & Nora’s. Can’t go home, or anywhere else I’d normally be. Need a plan. I try Anne; no answer. Need a pay phone and coffee.
The pay phone outside Top Notch Burgers on Ninety-Fifth accepts my quarter and gives me a dial tone (shock). I dial Susie; she doesn’t answer. Would she hide at Grossfeld’s? Stay to look for the bottle? Risk the Haitians until daylight? She might; Anne said they believed their on
ly chance was if they found what the Gryphon wanted, lured their version of Dracula into the light, and fought him there. I loved the skin in those Hammer Film / Christopher Lee Dracula movies when I was a kid, but hated the scary parts. And now I’m in one.
Face rub. Predawn vampire glance. I squint at the Astor Argyle photo, the black face that Susie made as a Péralte. There is one call I can make. A long shot that might buy me $190K without having to join Anne and Susie’s trip into the Corazón Santo.
How fitting. I get to bet my life on a dog race.
***
Standing at the front door of a modest but immaculate red-brick bungalow at 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday is Zelda Calhoun, the widowed daughter of Sportsman’s maître d’ Constantine Péralte. Zelda’s terry-cloth robe is wrapped tight from neck to knee. She’s in her bespectacled sixties, can’t be thrilled to host a visitor predawn, but does remember me as a customer and friend of her father’s.
In spite of the hour and my madras jacket, she says, “Come in. Nice to see you again, Mr. Owens.”
“Again, my apologies. It’s just, my editor at the magazine . . .”
“The mementos are in here.” She directs me through the arched foyer and into an odd but pleasant bouquet of citrus fragrances that highlight her living room. The window AC unit isn’t on. “Sportsman’s was my father’s life. Then, eleven days after the auction, he passed unexpectedly. As I recall, you attended the wake and funeral.”
“I did.”
Mrs. Calhoun points to the far corner of her father’s Sportsman’s Park wall of fame that wasn’t here when I last came for the crowded, smoky wake. She walks me within three feet of what might be an antique bottle of Barbancourt Reserve du Domaine Rhum. I turn the bottle. It’s an old bottle, most of the label gone other than the image of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Bonaparte, and her husband, General Charles Leclerc. Barbancourt is honey dark, not quite as dark as Myers’s, but this bottle is ink black.
Mrs. Calhoun asks, “Why such short notice on your story?”
“The internet has changed everything. The magazine agreed to do the feature on Sportsman’s because the city just announced they were scrapping the plans for the mall. My article’s about why Cicero tore down a landmark—where men like your father were stars—in exchange for a vacant lot.”
“Sad.” Mrs. Calhoun excuses herself to feed a calico cat that continues to figure-eight her slippers as they walk toward their kitchen.
The seal on the Barbancourt bottle is waxed ruby red and covers the cork. I use a pen knife to circle-cut the wax, then twist the cork till it pops. Smells like rhum, sweeter than most because Barbancourt is made from cane juice, not cane molasses. When I was last involved as a salesman for Myers’s, Barbancourt owned the rhum market in Haiti, had been there for 250 years, had a castle where we used to drink before everything went to shit.
I slow-pour thickened liquid into a jumbo 2002 Illinois Derby glass. A long sealed-top glass tube clinks into the Derby glass. Oh shit . . . did I just find everyone’s magic bullet?
I set down the Barbancourt bottle, cut the seal on the glass tube, and pull out a tightly rolled piece of linen stationery . . . like what was behind Astor Argyle and the two eight-by-ten photos. This stationery is torn at the top. Astor Argyle’s was torn at the bottom.
Are we part of the same page as the Astor Argyle poem?
I fast-pocket the stationery, pour the rhum back in the bottle, cork it, and snap two photos of the entire wall of fame. In her kitchen, Mrs. Calhoun is brewing coffee on a spotless Formica counter. I make her accept a hundred from the money I found in Dave’s drawer.
“No, please. Make an offering at church today. I loved your dad, always great to me. Please.”
***
In my car, under a dome light I shouldn’t have on, I try matching the ragged edge of the new poem and the AA poem.
Same sheet of paper.
My God, am I talented, or what? No wonder Anne and Susie D. think I’m the man.
I reread the new poem. Two words: Treasure and coordinates go super swell together in every swashbuckler I’ve read or seen. I open my cell phone to Google Earth and type in the poem’s coordinates: 17°57'51.16"N / 76°47'52.62"W.
Google’s spinning Earth appears. A satellite camera stops in the Western Hemisphere, shrinks toward North America, then south into the West Indies, then deeper still into the Caribbean Sea, closing on Haiti. Don’t you fucking dare—the camera or connection stutters, then shrinks past Haiti to the island of Jamaica, down to Kingston, to—
The connection quits. “Charge Battery” flashes on my screen.
Frown. I plug into the cigarette lighter and restart Google Earth. Eddie O’Hare’s eight-decade-old coordinates shrink the world back to Kingston, Jamaica, not Haiti, then into Kingston’s massive harbor, and stop just offshore, east of what looks like a pier covered by a giant gantry crane. No, it’s actually a series of old piers where Ocean Boulevard turns inland just west of downtown. No telling what was, or wasn’t, there in 1914 when the gold was stolen, or in 1931 when Eddie snitched Al, or in 1939 when Eddie was murdered.
My heart adds an extra beat. Could we really be looking at $26 million in gold? A partner’s share of that could, no shit, buy Dave’s debts and me Loef Brummel’s forgiveness. And the best gunfight, self-defense lawyer in Chicago if Waz and CPD decide I’m their villain for Nick & Nora’s. And (insert heroic music here) Grossfeld’s Flyers will not only live on, they’ll have their own tour bus with bathrooms, a radio show, color commentators—
Google Earth quits again. I restart and zero it back in to Kingston.
Part of the larger harbor was there when I worked at Fred L. Myers & Sons in ’84 and ’85, but this section of Kingston Harbour wasn’t like it appears now. Back in the ’80s this spot was a dock for ships, historic ships, three-masters, frigates, colonial/pirate stuff, much of it rotting and aground. That’s what water does to things—rots them, drowns them. Blink. Makes no sense. A Chicago lawyer / poem writer who was crafty enough to survive seven years after betraying Al Capone into Alcatraz wouldn’t hide $26 million in gold on a semi-sunken wooden ship.
I dig out the 876 number that was on Dave’s desk blotter, scroll up my recent call list—same number Susie Devereux gave me to call Anne Bonny.
Makes sense. If a guy had to hunt treasure in the Caribbean, there’d be no better partner than Anne Cormac Bonny. And Dave betrayed her. Stupid on a scale that would insult a box of rocks. Fucking Dave.
And right next to Anne’s number on my phone are all the calls from the Canaryville goon, and below those threats, two calls from Loef himself. I glance Zelda Calhoun’s neighborhood, where I shouldn’t be, where black Haitians wouldn’t be out of place.
Shiver. Time to hit the bricks. With all haste and rapidamente.
***
At sunrise, O’Hare Airport’s curbside drop-off is already crowded. I recon, then, phone to my face, stroll past two Chicago policemen focused on traffic, and into the international terminal.
Inside, I call Lieutenant Waznooski. “Hiya, Waz, hope you didn’t hurt Cosmo’s kid.”
“Where are you?”
“In the car. If you want to continue our conversation, just tell me where.”
“Bring my dog picture back or you’re going to Stateville.”
“Don’t have it, sorry. Like I said, I’m into horses, not the dogs.”
“You got one hour. Get your ass to my office by seven thirty and bring the goddamn picture or I’m going citywide as ‘armed and dangerous.’”
“Jesus, Waz, don’t do that. Your guys tend to shoot those people.”
“Your relatives can sue me.”
“I don’t have relatives.”
“You don’t have an employer either. Barlow’s MIA. Three of his security team are dead.”
I spin a fast 360. First for immedia
te safety, then for my goodbye memories of Chicago.
Waz finishes with: “Seven thirty. And bring me my goddamn picture. Me and my office are the only way you’ll ever read another Racing Form.”
I button off and check the departures board. In spite of weather issues in the Caribbean, there’s a one-stop flight to Kingston that boards in forty minutes. Jamaica is 1,800 miles away from a Canaryville basement and the Chicago police. Unfortunately, Jamaica is in the Corazón Santo, across the street from Haiti, closer than I ever imagined I’d get again in this lifetime.
My phone rings. “Rugby Gurl” lights the screen. I answer, “Hey!”
Susie Devereux says, “You safe?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Didn’t find the bottle; dodged bad guys all night, but think I’m good now. We have to find the bottle, Bill.”
“Barlow’s MIA.”
Silence, then Susie says, “MIA means dead. And the bad guys now know everything Barlow knew about you, me, the bottles, and the photo.”
I 360 again. “CPD’s all over this. Wanna tie me to the shooters at Nick & Nora’s. Called two of them ‘women,’ but ‘not so much.’ That mean something to you?”
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“Running.” Pause. “I found the bottle.”
“What?”
I scan the airport.
Susie shouts: “Goddammit, Bill, I can’t hold my breath forever. Talk to me.”
“Poem in a glass tube inside the bottle.”
“You found it. Jesus, I may faint. Read me the poem.”
I ease backward against the concourse wall. “On a cell phone?”
Silence. “Where are you?”
“Flying to see our friend. Plane leaves in forty minutes. Got you a seat if you can get here.”
“Not in forty minutes, but mos def the next thing smoking. Goddamn, I’m happy. Can you make copies of everything? In case something happens?”
“In case? Shit, if this Gryphon guy scares you and Anne sideways, I make it more like even money.”
“So make copies. Photograph everything with your phone and email me.”
Privateers Page 12
