The Death of Blue Mountain Cat

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “Mejor.” Viernes looked at Thinnes. “He says he understands.”

  “Tell him who I am and what I do,” Thinnes said. “Tell him I’m investigating a murder.” He listened while Viernes translated and Ocampo responded. Thinnes had studied Spanish in high school, but all he remembered was a few commonly used phrases—¿que pasa? or gracias—and the profanity he’d learned on his dad’s construction sites. Viernes was using some of that. He was also using the familiar form of his verbs—treating Ocampo like a child or a dog. It was part of the old good-guy, bad-guy routine, although Thinnes was usually the bad guy when questioning Hispanics. Viernes started shouting. Thinnes recognized ¡Pobre putito!

  “Viernes, ask him where he was November sixth last year.”

  Viernes translated.

  “Con amigos,” Ocampo said.

  “They have names?” Thinnes spoke directly to Ocampo.

  “No recuerdo.”

  “Your bad luck. Tell him we’re talking murder one, here.” Thinnes held the .25 they’d taken from Mark Leon in front of Ocampo’s face. The heavily engraved, nickel-plated, .25 caliber Browning, a Baby Browning, was not a gun he’d be likely to forget. The semiautomatic held one in the chamber and five in the clip. It had only taken one to kill John Buck. “This look familiar?”

  Ocampo wiped his face with his sleeve. “No.”

  Viernes laughed. “The iceman’s melting.”

  “This is a collector’s item,” Thinnes told Viernes. “They stopped making these. I’m surprised you’d part with it,” he said to Ocampo. He handed the gun to Viernes. “It was used for a hit. Someone put it to the head of a poor, drunk son of a bitch and blew him away.” He looked pointedly at Ocampo.

  Ocampo said, “So?”

  “The guy we got this from said you sold it to him.”

  “Huh!”

  “He’s got an alibi for last November sixth. Have you?”

  “I want to talk to a lawyer.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Columbo told them. “Ocampo gives us a name and testifies if we need him. We let him plead to a single weapons count, simple battery, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  “Cops, one; bad guys, two,” Oster said sourly.

  “He wasn’t caught on the premises,” Columbo said. “His name’s not on the lease. And his girlfriend isn’t going to testify against him.”

  “So what’s the name?” Thinnes said.

  “Elvis Hale.”

  Sixty-Three

  District Three, on the South Side, had a lot in common with District Nineteen on the North. Both contained extremes of wealth and poverty. Headquarters was located at 71st and Cottage Grove, an aging white fortress of a building with its few street-facing windows set high up in the walls. Thinnes pulled through the lot north of the POLICE ONLY entrance and parked among the employees’ cars, west of the building. A bumper sticker on one of the cars jumped out at them: WE COME FROM DIFFERENT WORLDS—MINE HAS SOAP AND TOOTHPASTE. Oster shook his head and said, “Yeah.” They went in through the police entrance, and Thinnes led the way down a hall that ended in the front lobby at a square counter.

  The district commander was educated and had an excellent rep for handling personnel. It showed. However wild the neighborhood, the interior of the building was clean and calm, with freshly painted walls and polished floors—no fingerprints or gum wrappers anywhere. The officers on duty were fresh and polished too.

  “Detective Thinnes?” the sergeant asked as Thinnes approached the desk. Thinnes couldn’t remember having met him before.

  Oster started to ask, “How…?” but looked around and trailed off. Theirs were the only white faces in the room.

  “Yes,” Thinnes told the sergeant. He had a sudden flash of understanding of how Swann must feel sometimes, walking in the door at Nineteen. He didn’t think he was racist, but he was suddenly acutely aware that his and Oster’s were the only white faces in sight. It was something he never thought about at Western and Belmont, where the personnel roster was also integrated but was more noticeably white, and where the human division was into cops or not-cops.

  The sergeant smiled. “Officer Madison’s waiting for you in the tac office.” He pointed back the way they’d come. “Down the hall, on the right.”

  The door of the tactical office was open, and Madison was sitting inside the room on one of the desks, sipping coffee from a Dunkin Donuts cup. Black, five eleven, 190 pounds, with a medium complexion and a neat afro. He was wearing old Levi’s, new Nikes, and a Bulls jacket. He had his ID on a chain around his neck, in compliance with the posted regulation: IDS WILL BE DISPLAYED BY ALL PERSONNEL WEARING STREET CLOTHES WHILE IN THE BUILDING.

  Madison said, “You’re Thinnes.”

  Thinnes nodded.

  Madison finished his coffee, crumpled the cup, and lobbed it into the wastebasket beneath a neatly printed sign: THERE’S NO REASON FOR IT. IT’S JUST POLICE POLICY. “Let’s go get your boy.”

  They followed him into another office that had its own interview room and a holding tank with a small window in the door. A second tac officer—black, male, five eight, 160 pounds—was sitting behind the desk with his legs stretched out beneath it and his fingers laced together behind his head. He was dressed as a laborer and had his ID stuck to his shirt pocket with an alligator clip.

  “My partner, Harold Leroi,” Madison said.

  Oster peered through the window in the holding cell door, looked back at Thinnes, then pointed into the cell. “Hey, see that? The Enquirer’s right. Elvis isn’t dead.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Leroi said.

  “So, what’s the story on this guy?”

  “We respond to a complaint of a male Cauc hanging around the U of C campus, acting suspicious,” Madison said. “And we spot him just over the line, here in Three.”

  “Naturally,” Leroi added, “we ask ourselves, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’”

  “So we stop him and do a Terry, and we find a gun.”

  “And we turn out his pockets and find the keys to a big truck. This guy doesn’t look like he can afford the beater he’s driving.”

  “So we search his car and find some very interesting dinner-ware in the trunk.” Madison lifted a cardboard box from the floor onto the desk and flipped open the top. Inside was a pottery bowl almost exactly like the ones Thinnes found in Teresa Moreno’s apartment, like the Anasazi bowl Bisti used in his fatal installation. “Mr. Hale claims he bought this down on Maxwell Street,” Madison continued. “And he was going to try’n sell it to some professor over at the U. He conveniently forgot the guy’s name.”

  “Probably Matthew Dennison,” Thinnes said.

  “This some kind of black-market thing?” Leroi asked.

  Oster said, “We’re still working on that. We’ve gotten several different versions, so far.”

  Leroi nodded. “Well, he told us his name was Oliver North, but then we ran his prints…”

  “We’d like to arraign him first thing in the A.M.,” Madison said. “Of course murder one beats unlawful use any day…”

  They didn’t try the Mutt-and-Jeff routine on Hale. It would have been a waste of a performance. He’d seen it before. And they didn’t want a hassle over whether they’d read him his Miranda rights.

  Thinnes was pretty sure they had a good circumstantial case, even without Poke Salad Annie’s ID. It would be up to the state’s attorney to sober her up and make her appear credible on the witness stand.

  “We don’t give a shit why he did it,” Thinnes told Oster before they joined Hale in the interview room. “So long as he’s willing to admit he did it.”

  In the room, Oster said, “Why’d you do it, Elvis? We know you did it. We got a witness.”

  A witness that will never stand up in court, Thinnes thought, but we’re not telling you that.

  “Don’t try that witness shit on me. The old asshole’s dead. Who’s your witness, his dog?”

  “Don’t you wish. No, we go
t a human witness.”

  “Who’d the old asshole be?” Thinnes said.

  “I ain’t saying anything more.”

  “You just said enough to hang yourself, Mr. Hale. Your best bet is to come clean and try to cut yourself a deal.”

  “Someone named your name,” Oster added. “How else would we connect you up?”

  “Prove it!”

  “We will. In court.” He let Hale think about that for a minute.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Fine,” Oster said.

  “Elvis’s lawyer just showed up,” Oster told Thinnes, later. “They’re conferring.”

  Oster and Thinnes, Swann, Viernes, Ryan, and Ferris had just polished off a pizza and were washing it down with coffee. Just then, Columbo walked in.

  “What’s five hundred lawyers in the bottom of the lake?” Ferris asked, loudly enough for the assistant state’s attorney to hear.

  “Jesus!” Viernes said. He pronounced it HAY-SOOZ. “What’d a lawyer ever do to you?”

  “I’ll tell you some day when we got more time.”

  “Sorry, Columbo,” Swann said.

  “Oh, Columbo’s not insulted,” Ferris said. “He’d be the first to admit state’s attorneys are all wannabe cops or apprentice politicians.”

  “I have a theory about lawyer bashing,” Columbo told them.

  “Jealousy?” Thinnes asked.

  “Yup. Those who can, do; those who can’t, criticize.”

  “Yeah, Ferris is a great critic.”

  “You know, Ferris,” Viernes said, “when you retire—assuming you’re not shot first—they’re gonna throw a party and everyone’s gonna come.”

  “To make sure he’s really leaving,” Thinnes told Columbo.

  “Yeah,” Viernes added. “And if he dies with his boots on, even Thinnes won’t be able to solve it—”

  Ryan finished for him. “Too many people with a motive and a weapon.”

  Sixty-Four

  Lauren Bisti was depressed. Thinnes recognized the symptoms. He could even still remember—barely—what they felt like. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

  “Depressed. My doctor wants me to take Prozac, but it’s normal to feel bad when you’ve lost someone.” She smiled; it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember.”

  “Thinnes, I got six calls this week from people in high places,” Rossi said, “wanting to know when we’re gonna solve this Downtown Indian murder.”

  Only six? Thinnes thought.

  “The commander wants to know. The chief wants to know, and so do I.”

  “You read my reports. What more do you want me to do?”

  “Find the fuckin’ killer!”

  Half an hour later, the sergeant handed Thinnes a handful of telephone-message slips. “Thinnes,” he said, “I got good news for you and some bad news.”

  Thinnes glanced toward Rossi’s office. “I could use some good news.”

  “The good news is, they matched the shell casing found at your Uptown Indian scene with the gun District Three took off Elvis Hale.”

  “That’s nice. What’s the bad news?”

  “Hale’s escaped.”

  Thinnes shook his head. “How’d that happen?”

  “He took some other prisoner’s court call and got let out on an I-bond. Just walked away.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  Thinnes hung up the phone and sighed and told Oster, “Wingate’s secretary says her boss is out of town—indefinitely. And Kent’s lawyer—I’m sorry, attorney—is gonna sue me for everything I’ve got if I don’t stop harassing his clients.”

  Oster laughed and hitched a thumb toward an interview room. “Maybe we should start calling ’em harassment rooms.”

  “Kent and Wingate are in cahoots, but good luck proving it.”

  “Kent and Wingate,” Oster repeated thoughtfully. “There’s a match made in heaven.”

  “Where?”

  “You know what I mean—Kent’s got the product. Wingate the buyers.”

  “The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is, does Wingate know what they’re really peddling?”

  Sixty-Five

  Caleb stopped at the Margolis Gallery to give Anita the cymbidium he’d gotten her for Christmas. It wasn’t as unique or expensive as Bisti’s painting, but he knew it would please her. “Carlos said you could bring it back and exchange it for something else when it stops blooming,” he told her.

  “I’ll let him board it for me until it blooms again, but I won’t give it up. It’s lovely.”

  “What are you doing Christmas Eve?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask me out.”

  “Would you join me for dinner?”

  “I’d be delighted. By the way, I came across the name of someone else who sells dubious artifacts, if you’re still interested…”

  “I want something for Christmas,” Caleb told the man. “Maybe something Anasazi. I’m willing to pay a premium.”

  “I haven’t got anything right now.”

  “I’d be willing to pay a broker’s fee if you could give me a name.”

  “All I have is an address.”

  “That’s a start.”

  The address was a Gold Coast high-rise. It was late in the evening by the time Caleb got there. The doorman was just turning a shabbily dressed man away from the door. He greeted Caleb quite differently.

  Since he didn’t know who he was looking for, Caleb tried the absentminded-professor routine. “A friend of a friend’s,” he said vaguely. “I’m so stupid. I left home without the name. And there’s no one home I can call to ask.” He waved his hands as if to conjure up the name. “Native American art, pots and—”

  “You must mean Mr. Wingate.”

  “That’s him. Is he home, by any chance?”

  “No. Sorry. Maybe you ought to phone first next time.”

  Caleb nodded as if he found the advice profound. “I’ll do that, of course. Thank you.”

  When he got into his car, he phoned Thinnes’s pager.

  The vagrant Caleb had noticed when he arrived was still loitering near the entrance to the building’s parking garage, where the doorman couldn’t see him. There was enough light for Caleb to notice something familiar about him, so he looked more closely as he got in the Jaguar. The man looked just like Elvis Presley!

  Caleb realized he had to be the Elvis Thinnes was looking for—Elvis Hale—and Hale apparently realized, simultaneously, that he’d been noticed.

  He stepped closer until he stood just forward of Caleb’s door and said, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Then he reached under his coat and drew out a gun. It was a loaded revolver. He pointed the weapon at Caleb’s head. “Park it.”

  Caleb put the gearshift in neutral and set the parking brake.

  “Open the door!”

  He did.

  “Now get out—”

  Again, Caleb complied. Hale kept him covered as he stepped closer to the car. He glanced at the interior before getting in. “What the hell—?” He pointed to the gearshift lever with the gun. “That a manual?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Very likely.

  “You’re gonna be my chauffeur,” Hale continued. “I never drove one of these. Get in and unlock the other door.” He kept the gun on Caleb while he walked around and got in the passenger’s seat.

  Caleb sat very still. If Thinnes was right, Hale was already a killer. Caleb was struck by how much the young man resembled the late singer at the rock star’s zenith. What a total waste.

  Hale kept the gun pointed at him, but below the level of the windows. Caleb could only hope they’d pass an observant truck driver, who’d notice and call the police. At Hale’s urging, he started the engine. Then the phone rang.

  Hale jumped. “What the hell’s that?”

  “My phone.”

  “Don’t answer it.”

  After several more ri
ngs it occurred to Caleb to say, “That’s probably a friend I’m supposed to meet for dinner. If I don’t answer and don’t show up, he’ll call the police.”

  “They won’t find you, will they?”

  “They might. I have one of those homing devices in the car—to locate it if it’s stolen.”

  “Where?”

  “How would I know?” When Hale looked as if he were getting angry, Caleb added, “Do I look like someone who works on his own car?”

  Moot question. The ringing stopped. Hale stared at the phone thoughtfully. When it rang again he said, “Answer it.”

  Caleb picked it up and said, “Hello.”

  “What’s up?” Thinnes’s voice.

  “I can’t make dinner tonight, after all. Something’s come up.”

  “That so?” Thinnes said. There was caution in his voice as he played along. “Why’s that?”

  “An old friend just showed up. Remember the guy who gave Rob the dog?”

  “You’re kinda breaking up. You using a speakerphone?”

  “No.”

  “Elvis Hale?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You got one of those antitheft locators in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s enough,” Hale said. “Hang up.”

  Thinnes must have heard. “Say ciao when I get to the brand.” He rattled off the major car-security suppliers. When he got to the right one, Caleb said, “Ciao.”

  “Okay,” Hale said, “Let’s get outta here.”

  “Where?”

  “Just…head for the Drive.”

  It took some calling around to find someone who knew the unpublished number, but eventually Caleb got through to Wingate. Hale took the phone and told him, “We need to talk.”

  Wingate’s anger must have caused him to elevate his voice; Caleb could hear him say, “What do you want?”

  “Money. I need to get outta town. It’ll cost me plenty to start someplace else.”

  Wingate lowered his voice, and Caleb could only hear Hale’s side of the conversation. “How ’bout your job site? Call your watchdog and tell him to get lost. Bring lots. And don’t call the cops, cause I’ll cut a deal with ’em, if I have to. I’m lookin’ at murder one here.”