The Black Cage

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘They’re taking law enforcement into their own hands. Next step? Hiring private cops.’

  Benten turned to his keyboard, typed Hold until four o’clock, and sent Rigg’s piece down to the Bastion.

  And then Rigg’s cell phone rang.

  Rigg’s headlights swept across the freshly plowed forest-preserve parking lot. It was empty.

  He came to the Robinson Woods one of the three nights he was in from the dunes each week. He’d started right after the boys were discovered, hoping to jog a thought about something everyone had missed – and hoping that focusing on Stemec Henderson later in an evening might help banish the nightmares of Judith beckoning to him from beyond the black cage.

  After the first few visits, when clarity didn’t come and the black cage still did, he began bringing a pint of any drug store’s cheapest whiskey. And, in no time at all, he found himself begging the dark to show him what he could not see.

  He managed to quit the drinking, but still he came, one night in every short week, hoping for a nudge to what he knew, and didn’t know, about the murders of the boys who were found just yards from where he parked. There seemed so little else he could do.

  He shut off the engine and cut his headlamps. Almost instantly, a fist beat hard on the passenger-side window. He jerked forward, banging his knee on the steering column. ‘Jesus, Glet!’

  ‘I hid my car a quarter mile in,’ the sheriff’s most senior deputy said, sliding his bulk on to the passenger seat. ‘I heard you chugging in nice and loud. This Taurus ain’t your regular heap. A ninety?’

  ‘Ninety-one.’ His insurance company had sold the Camry in which Judith was killed to someone who wouldn’t know its history. ‘What’s so urgent, Jerome?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten the boys.’ He pulled out one of his foul cigars and raised it to his mouth.

  ‘Don’t dare to light that rope,’ Rigg said. Already the car stunk from Glet’s clothes and the man’s corruption, rumored though never proved. Like that of his boss, Lehman.

  Glet lowered the unlit cigar amiably enough. ‘Your editor like the advance tip I gave you?’

  ‘He said it belongs at the Bastion,’ Rigg lied. He wasn’t in this yet, he wanted to tell himself. At least not all the way in, like last time.

  ‘Bullshit. People are getting laid off down there, like at the Trib and the Sun-Times. You’re all scrambling to save your jobs. Good tips on the hottest case in town can save your ass.’

  ‘I told you earlier: I’ve got no byline. I’m school boards, now – road improvements, local elections.’

  ‘You can do better than hiding out at the Pink or playing in the sand in the dunes.’

  ‘I just bought a new pail and plastic shovel, for when the beach thaws.’

  ‘And you were just in the neighborhood, back at that bridge.’ Glet turned to lean his foul breath closer. ‘I’m senior man at the sheriff’s. You can’t get deeper inside this Graves case than through me.’

  ‘Find another boy,’ Rigg said, but it was for show.

  ‘You’re the son of a bitch people remember.’

  That might have been true, but only because they remembered more bad than good – his righteous near-hysteria, the shrillness he used to mask the grief he felt over Judith. And they’d remember the photos that drove Rigg – Chicago’s premier crime reporter, with a twice-a-week column of his own – out of the Bastion and into semi-seclusion at the Pink.

  ‘You think Lehman’s going to fumble again, like last time?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘Abbott and Costello – you remember their baseball routine, “Who’s On First?”’

  ‘No.’ Rigg reached to start his engine. Glet was trotting out riddles.

  ‘You got a TV, don’t you?’ Glet said.

  Rigg relaxed his hand around the ignition key. ‘Abbott and Costello were before my time – like, decades.’

  Glet chuckled. ‘Abbott and Costello are talking nonsense about a baseball game, see? Abbott’s asking who’s on base. “Which base?” Costello asks. “Any base,” Abbott says. Costello’s not getting it. Back and forth, back and forth, they’re talking past each other. Neither of them can agree who’s on what base. It’s hilarious.’ He turned to face Rigg. ‘It’s not funny when coppers do it. And, instead of just two comedians, we had all kinds on Stemec Henderson – us at the sheriff’s, of course, but also Chicago cops, locals, forest-preserve rangers, state police, not to mention that putz McGarry. They all talked nonsense to each other, nobody was calling the shots, saying who was on first. And we all got clobbered for that in the press, mostly by you, Milo. This time, nobody wants to play. They’re giving Lehman a pass to do it all on his own. And that’s dangerous, because Lehman’s the most crooked guy in town.’

  ‘What have you got that’s new, Jerome?’

  ‘Remember the guy Lehman picked up – Lanz?’ the deputy said.

  ‘The psychic dreamer who said the Graves girls were being held in the construction near the old Santa Fe Park? Lehman gave him a lie-detector test. He passed. He was let go.’

  ‘He didn’t pass, he didn’t fail,’ Glet said. ‘The results were inconclusive. Lehman was in a panic to show progress in searching for the missing girls. He knew Lanz was a moonbeam, but he was better than nothing. He was showboating to impress you queens, showing that he was doing something.’

  ‘You’re still not telling me anything new, Jerome.’

  ‘It’s desperation time, Milo. He’s got all of us chasing our tails. The latest? I got sent to talk to a goofy broad at a Starbucks who swears both girls were in her place, sipping five-dollar lattes while the whole town is looking for—’

  ‘Damn it, Glet!’

  ‘Moon dancers – cops, witnesses, all of them. Lehman’s petrified. McGarry’s worse, dodging his own shadow.’

  ‘It’s Lehman who’s leading the charge, not the medical examiner.’

  ‘They’re both watching Corky Feldott. Straight up righteous, he’d kill for the CIB. We all got to watch out for him.’ He shifted his bulk on the seat to stare out the windshield. ‘Look, Milo, I know you had a rough time that last go-round, what with your wife, then the killings, then those photos and having to take a leave because of that Mrs—’

  ‘I was only helping sort the leads she was getting in the mail.’ He stopped, realizing he sounded defensive. ‘I got set up with those pictures, Jerome.’

  ‘She’s a fox, ain’t she, Milo? Gorgeous face, boobs like twin torpedoes.’

  ‘Her sons were murdered. Her husband dropped dead viewing one of the bodies.’

  ‘I need you on this. Tell your editor your source will deal only with you.’

  ‘Because you need Mr Integrity to spruce your career?’

  ‘Beatrice might have been penetrated,’ Glet said, staring out into the darkness.

  ‘What the hell, Glet? McGarry’s release said just the opposite. No sexual molestation.’

  ‘And nobody’s going to say nothing about it for the time being, including you. Besides, maybe the results were inconclusive. It’s just something McGarry passed on to Lehman.’

  ‘Who knows this?’

  ‘About Beatrice? The three pathologists, McGarry, Corky Feldott, likely the whole Citizens’ Investigation Bureau, Lehman, me – and now you. And your editor, if you need to use it to get assigned to the story. But, so far, nobody’s leaking. Nobody wants the extra uproar. So, you don’t write it now. It’s for later, if ever.’

  ‘I don’t write it at all; I’m suburban.’ Rigg started his car, but it was just to spur the man along. The deputy’s foul cigar smell was giving him a headache.

  Glet didn’t budge. He lit his cigar fast, blowing noxious smoke at the windshield. ‘I got something maybe you can use tonight, something hush-hush that I wasn’t supposed to come across. A cabbie named Rocco Enrice. Called in a tip. He works Midway Airport from that cab lot south of the terminal.’

  Rigg powered down his window and Glet’s. ‘What’s the deal with him?’

>   ‘Maybe nothing, like I said. It was a name on a piece of paper Lehman’s secretary seemed too quick to cover up.’

  ‘Why not chase him down yourself?’

  ‘I don’t need to be accused of grabbing stuff meant for Lehman. Plus, I got something else working.’

  ‘Something better?’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’ Glet got out and disappeared into the night.

  SIX

  Checking out Glet’s cryptic tip needn’t be more than waltzing his reporter’s nose out for a new whiff of old times. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have the time to waste. He had nothing planned except a sandwich before heading home to a weak Scotch, a new stare at his wall of old file boxes, and whatever sleep he could snatch before the black cage came for him.

  He drove east, but turned south well before Midway Airport and the cab lot beyond it. Pictures of the Graves house had run online and in the papers, and it was easy to recognize. It was in the middle of the block, a narrow two-story frame cottage, three windows up, two windows and the front door down, rectangular and ordinary and no different than its poor neighbors. Every window was lit, that night. He didn’t imagine any of those still surviving in the house – the divorced mother, a daughter in her late teens and two sons younger than the murdered girls – had gotten much sleep since the sisters went missing on December 28, and perhaps for months before that. Another daughter, the family’s firstborn child, had died of illness just the year before.

  He parked across the street. The Brighton Theater was west of there. He’d walk that same route, beginning at the Graves block.

  It was an old Chicago neighborhood, looking as it must have for fifty years. The sidewalks were wide and cracked and fronted a mix of stubbornly surviving retail – a dry cleaner, a shoe and leather repair shop, a small fruit and vegetable peddler, a bicycle shop – all places that Amazon had not yet figured out how to annihilate. All were closed for the evening, but most had left their display-window lights on against crime and maybe against the future. Combined with the brighter street lamps at the corners, there was enough light to make a night-time walk home safe for two girls, even at 11:30 p.m., when the second showing of the movie let out.

  The night the girls disappeared, December 28, had been cold, faint rain turning to faint snow. He moved at the fast pace he thought two shivering, giggling Star Wars fans would have used on such a slushy night. It took less than fifteen minutes, which fit with what Mrs Graves had told police. Her daughters left at 7:15 to attend a 7:30 show. Leaving the theater at 11:30, they should have been home at 11:45 or midnight at the latest.

  Just past Pulaski, the Brighton Theater loomed bright in the night. It was one of the fine old movie houses, built a decade before the Great Depression of the 1930s slammed the lid on grand architectural ornamentation. The bulk of the Brighton was stolid, red-brown brick, but its facade was dominated by a tall, two-story, white terracotta arch, framed by rectangular pillars of more ornate terracotta. A men’s clothier was on the near side. A large furniture store was on the other.

  The marquee looked to be lit with a thousand bulbs, bright enough for the several witnesses who claimed to have seen the Graves girls being approached by at least two carloads of young men as they left the theater. The news reports made the encounters sound ominous, but that could have been overly aggressive newsmongering. It had been a Christmas vacation night for school kids. The approaches could have been the innocent, normal jabberings of cruising teenaged boys.

  He turned around and walked back to his car. The impression he’d formed heading to the theater held on the way back. The sidewalks were wide and the lights were bright. Beatrice and Priscilla Graves should have been safe all the way home.

  He drove to Cicero Avenue, turned past the airport and pulled into the cab lot, four blocks south. Two drivers were leaning against one of the hacks, smoking.

  ‘I’m looking for Rocco Enrice,’ Rigg said.

  ‘I’m just as good, just as cheap and better looking,’ the taller of them said. The other cabbie laughed.

  Rigg offered a laugh, too. ‘Sorry, it’s got to be Rocco this trip.’

  ‘Rocco ain’t here,’ the taller man said. ‘I’ll call dispatch.’ He reached into his cab for his radio handset, spoke into it, listened and said to Rigg, ‘You’re in luck. Rocco’s on his way. He’ll be here in five minutes.’

  Right at five minutes, a cab cruised up and a grizzled, unshaven face leaned to look out of the front passenger window. ‘You looking for Enrice?’ he asked.

  ‘For a little conversation.’ Rigg passed through a ten-dollar bill.

  The driver’s eyes got narrower and he didn’t grab the bill. ‘About what?’

  ‘A tip you phoned in about the Graves girls.’

  ‘You with the sheriff’s?’

  ‘Reporter,’ Rigg said.

  ‘I tipped the sheriff’s, yeah,’ Enrice said, taking the ten. ‘They said they’d look into it, but ain’t nobody been calling me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When did I see them girls, or when did I tip the sheriff?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I saw them girls early this month. I tipped the sheriff’s later.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘Last week. You packing more than the ten, pal?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘Get in.’

  Rigg got in the back seat and they headed out of the lot.

  ‘Where we going?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘Forty more will tell you,’ Enrice said, reaching back with one hand, palm up.

  Fifty total was too much to bet on a lark. Rigg handed forward another ten. ‘Twenty more if you impress me.’

  The ten disappeared into the cabbie’s shirt pocket. ‘I picked up them two sisters, early January.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘From someplace, but the location comes only with the twenty you’re holding back.’

  ‘You recognized their pictures from the newspapers, right?’ Rigg slumped back in the seat. By now, a thousand supposed sightings of the Graves girls must have been reported by people chasing bucks like Enrice. What Rigg couldn’t figure was why Glet had fluttered this one at him.

  ‘They was drunk, the both of them girls.’

  ‘They were twelve and fifteen.’

  ‘Don’t matter; drunk is drunk. They was with two guys.’

  The cabbie kept driving, heading north on Cicero Avenue, and then turned east, then north, and then east again, into the city. ‘You’re gonna be impressed.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘You’re thinking I’m taking you for a ride?’ Enrice, a wit, asked into his rear-view mirror.

  ‘In every sense of the word.’

  ‘People where I picked up them girls will vouch for my story.’

  ‘You’re sure they saw the girls?’

  ‘They called the sheriff’s, too. Plus, somebody where I dropped them girls might vouch, too.’

  ‘All sorts of people are saying they saw the girls.’

  ‘This is straight dope. I drove them girls.’

  They turned on to Madison Street, the old Skid Row. The neighborhood was gentrifying, buildings were being razed. But it was slow-going. Plenty of the decrepitude of the old blocks remained. Street drinkers – some wobbling upright; some sitting, despite the snow on the sidewalks – were braced against the wire-gated pawnshops, gin mills and flops that lined the remnant of Chicago’s sleaziest street. Madison Street was still clinging to its past as a portal to hell.

  Enrice pulled to the curb, turned around and offered a grin, spotted here and there with teeth. ‘Time to part with that double sawbuck.’

  ‘What’s to keep you from pulling away when I get out?’

  ‘You want the whole shebang, right? Beginning with where I picked them up?’

  ‘The twenty comes when your stop checks out.’

  Enrice shrugged and gave it up. He drove up two more blocks and stopped in front of a diner. �
��Gus is behind the grill window. He does the hash. Lucille’s the wife. She waits the tables, collects the cash.’

  The diner had no name, just a narrow door to the right of a grease-clouded window that reminded Rigg of Benten’s nicotine-fogged office window.

  ‘Your twenty buys you exactly ten minutes of me waiting,’ Enrice said, looking straight ahead. ‘If you’re not out by then, I’m gone.’

  Rigg handed up the twenty and got out. ‘I’ll find you if you take off.’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Enrice said.

  SEVEN

  Only one table inside was occupied. Three men, unshaven, sat staring into chipped porcelain mugs of black coffee, not speaking. There were no plates on their table. Homeless men, they were roosting cheap, in from the cold.

  The woman behind the cash register looked up. She was in her sixties, squeezed into a faded pink waitress uniform that looked like it had been tight for years.

  ‘How can I help you for?’ she asked after Rigg didn’t head for a table.

  ‘Lucille?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘I heard you saw those two girls who went missing.’

  The frown lines around her mouth deepened. ‘You from the cops, too?’

  Rigg took out his press card. ‘Reporter. Cops were here?’

  ‘We called. They came by. We told them what we knew.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘Them two girls, the missing ones, was here some weeks back.’

  ‘Do you remember exactly when?’

  ‘Of course. Last week.’

  He’d been asking about the girls, but she’d misunderstood his question, thinking he was asking about the detectives.

  ‘I recognized one of them from TV,’ she said. ‘Sheriff, I think.’

  Rigg pulled out his phone, dialed up an Internet picture of Joe Lehman. ‘Him?’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘And the other guy?’

  ‘Same age.’

  ‘Not a fat guy, bald, smoking a cigar?’ Rigg asked, to rule him out. Glet lied plenty, but steering Rigg to a lead he’d already chased made no sense.

  ‘Fat, not so much. Didn’t say anything. No cigar.’