The Black Cage

by Jack Fredrickson

  Rigg found an Internet picture of Glet.

  ‘Nah,’ the woman said.

  He put his phone away. ‘Can you remember exactly when the girls were here?’

  ‘Gus!’ she shouted to the bald-headed man behind the grill window. ‘When did you tell those cops the girls was here?’

  ‘January 6,’ he yelled back.

  ‘January 6,’ she repeated, as if Rigg was deaf.

  Gus came out from behind the grill window. ‘I remember, because the exhaust fan blew out later that day and I had to pay a repairman two hundred damn dollars. The girls was here January 6, five-thirty or six in the morning.’ He pointed to one of the four booths along the wall. ‘Sat right there, girls on one side, men on the other.’

  ‘Had you ever seen the men before?’

  ‘One was that dipshit, Richie Fernandez. The dark-skinned guy, I never seen.’

  ‘African-American?’

  ‘No, just a dark-skinned white guy. Tasmanian, maybe.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a Tasmanian,’ Rigg said.

  ‘Me neither, but they’re different, I heard,’ Gus said.

  ‘You’re sure it was the Graves girls?’

  ‘Their pictures been in the papers and on TV a hundred times,’ Gus said.

  ‘Recognized them right away,’ his wife added.

  ‘You know this Richie Fernandez?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘Washes dishes here sometimes when he needs extra for wine,’ Gus said.

  ‘He’s got another job?’

  ‘Runs a machine, swing shift, somewhere. Fill-in, cash work. He don’t do regular; says he’s got a weak heart. Weak tongue is what he’s got, for the grape. Sometimes he’s there mornings, sometimes afternoons, sometimes nights. Mostly, he’s not there at all.’

  ‘Tell me about the morning they came in.’

  Lucille spoke. ‘They came in, eyes all messed up, wanting coffee. Like I said, I recognized the girls right off, and thought, oh, Jesus, Richie, you’re stepping in it for sure this time. The older girl, that Beatrice, looked sick or doped up. The younger one, Priscilla, was just plain drunk. They finished their coffee, none of them saying nothing, and then the four of them went out the door. Then that Beatrice came back, saying, “They’re trying to put me in a cab, and I won’t go.” She sat in the same booth and put her head in her arms. The other one, the younger drunk girl, came in and tried to roust Beatrice. I asked her, that Priscilla, “Why don’t you just leave her alone?” And she says, “This is my sister.” The two men come back, Richie and the dark one, and walked that Beatrice out of the restaurant, holding her up by her arms.’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘No,’ Gus said. ‘The four of them came back again, about ten-thirty that same morning, only this time they was paired up. That Beatrice sat next to Richie, Priscilla with the other one, only having coffee. I wanted nothing to do with any girls the cops was looking for. I told them to leave. Richie the big shot left a fin for the coffees, like five bucks covered tax and tip, and that was the last I seen of him until he came back the next day, or maybe the day after, this time by himself. “What did you do with the girls?” I asked him, since I didn’t see nothing in the papers about them being found. “Nothing,” Richie says. I told him, “You better turn those girls loose and tell them to go home. The police is looking for them. Their pictures are in the newspapers and on television. They’re underage, and it will be your neck if they catch you with them.” Richie said nothing to that, just hung his head and walked out into the street.’

  ‘At the time you say the girls were here, there’d been nothing in the papers about a reward?’ Rigg asked.

  Gus shook his head too quickly. No reward meant there’d been no point in calling the cops when they’d first encountered the girls.

  ‘So, why’d you finally call?’ Rigg asked.

  Gus looked at the cab outside the greasy window. ‘It was right.’

  It was baloney. The cook and his wife had gotten the jitters, perhaps from Enrice telling them there’d be trouble if it became known they knew about Fernandez and the girls and hadn’t reported it.

  ‘Do you know where Richie lives?’ Rigg asked.

  ‘No place special. Flops. He moves around,’ Gus said.

  Rigg started for the door, and then stopped. ‘This is an all-night place?’ he asked Lucille.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘Depending.’

  Depending on what crawled in with cash, Rigg supposed. He went outside. ‘You picked up the girls here?’ he asked Enrice, sliding into the back seat.

  ‘Them and the two clowns they was with, about six-thirty in the morning.’ Enrice started the engine.

  ‘The girls had to be muscled into your cab?’

  ‘I only remember the four of them jamming in the back seat, then the one girl jumping out to go back in the diner, then the other going in after her.’

  ‘Like one of them was trying to get away?’

  ‘Nothing like that. They was just under the weather. The one jumped out, came back without a peep.’

  ‘Cops never talked to you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Where’d you drop them?’

  Enrice grinned into the mirror as best he could, being so shy of teeth. ‘Cost you another twenty.’

  ‘Cost you your cab medallion if I tell the cops you’ve been chauffeuring underage girls for immoral purposes – girls that later got found dead.’

  Enrice’s grin disappeared, and he pulled away from the curb.

  The Kellington Arms was less than a mile away, six stories of bricks missing so much mortar it looked as though one good wind would drop it to rubble. The buzzing red neon sign above the door had gaps, too, flashing only, The Kell, into its gin-drunk world.

  ‘I’m giving you only ten minutes here, too,’ Enrice said, cutting the engine. ‘This ain’t the fanciest neighborhood.’

  ‘Remember that medallion,’ Rigg said, getting out.

  Something glistened in a small melted patch on the unshoveled walk. It was fresh, and it was urine. Rigg stepped around it and went into a scuffed linoleum lobby, big enough for only two pushed-together armless wood chairs. ‘Richie Fernandez,’ he said to the bristle-headed, bearded man behind the marble counter. A speck of pink was stuck to the side of the man’s beard. Gum or a speck of cupcake.

  ‘Nope,’ the man said.

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘His room number.’

  ‘Mr Fernandez ain’t in,’ the desk clerk said, but he’d arched his eyebrows, anticipating.

  ‘I’m an old friend. I want to drop off some flowers.’

  The desk clerk didn’t bat an eye at Rigg’s empty hands. ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten.’ That late in the evening, it might have been enough for a night’s stay in the flop.

  The desk clerk presented his palm for the grease.

  ‘Two-oh-two,’ the clerk said, once his fingers had closed around the bill.

  ‘I’ll need the key.’

  ‘It’s unlocked.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Up the stairs, to the right.’

  Rigg hustled up the stairs, avoiding a patch on the frayed carpet that had been dampened like the sidewalk. Room 202 was to the right and unlocked, as the desk clerk had said.

  And it had been trashed.

  The room stunk of whiskey and cheap perfume. The stained mattress had been pulled off its frame and leaned against a wall. A tattered tan canvas shaving kit was tipped on top of the bureau, scattering a can of Barbasol shaving cream, a disposable razor, a toothbrush and a tube of Colgate that was down to its last squeeze. The three drawers below had been emptied hurriedly, spilling a half-dozen pairs of patterned boxers, three yellowed sleeveless undershirts and some loose black socks, most dangling threads at the heels, on to the stained brown rug. A pair of blue work pants and two long-sleeved blue work shirts had been jerked off their hangers and lay on the closet floor, a few feet away.

&
nbsp; A picture of the American flag hung in an unpainted frame on the wall, next to a thumb-tacked photo of a blonde wearing only work boots and a smile.

  He went downstairs. ‘The room’s been tossed,’ he said to the desk clerk.

  The man nodded. ‘Two coppers hauled Richie’s ass away last week.’

  Likely it was Lehman and a deputy, come directly from the diner, who’d tossed Richie’s room. No doubt the night desk man and some of the other denizens of the Kell had taken their own turns around the room after the cops left, looking for anything of value. It was forage, the way of the world in a flop when someone got hauled away by the police.

  ‘Did the cops give you names?’

  ‘I don’t brace badges for names. They flashed tin, I pointed them up the stairs.’ He paused, draping his open palm like a wet rag on the counter, except his fingers were twitching. ‘Maybe I recognized one of them from the papers.’

  Rigg took out his phone, summoned up the photo of Lehman to be sure.

  The night clerk shrugged.

  Rigg fanned open his billfold, exposing the last of it. Two singles.

  The clerk’s fingertips danced on the marble counter, impatient. Rigg passed over the two bucks.

  ‘It was himself,’ the clerk said, tapping Rigg’s phone with a filthy forefinger.

  ‘The other one, same age as the sheriff?’ Rigg asked.

  The clerk nodded. ‘They both went up. There was a ruckus. They came down with only Richie, fifteen minutes later. They had him cuffed.’

  ‘What do you mean, “only” Richie?’

  ‘Richie was alone by then. He has broads up there sometimes, sometimes him alone, sometimes with another guy. Damned near break the floor with their …’ He paused. ‘Well, you know, some of our residents are still able. Cops wanted to know about any young girls Richie might have brought around. Told them I didn’t know about any broads being young.’

  ‘You didn’t recognize the girls from the news?’

  ‘The cops was yelling at Richie about some two girls. They braced me, too, on their way down. I told them we don’t allow no underage – no, sir. This is a moral place,’ he finished, with a straight face.

  A horn tapped twice outside. Rocco Enrice was getting nervous.

  ‘Where’d they take Fernandez?’

  The desk clerk cocked his head as though he was inspecting a dullard. ‘What’s it matter?’

  EIGHT

  Rigg started calling around for Jerome Glet at seven-thirty.

  It was another morning that had come too early, after a night that had ended too late, staying up thinking of a cabbie, a diner and a flop.

  And then the cage came at five o’clock.

  It never varied – just a wall of thick bars, like prison bars, but thicker and flatter, too close together for him to reach the slender arms that beckoned to him in the mist just beyond. Judith’s arms, though he could never see her hands, her wedding ring.

  Her beckoning was clear. Her killer had never been caught. She wanted him to find who’d shot her; she wanted justice. But, in Chicago, that was impossible. Fewer than a third of the city’s murderous shooters were ever identified. And her killing had been unintended – a shot fired by a punk firing at someone else, or maybe just up in the air, in anger at the world. Almost certainly, the shooter never knew his bullet had found Judith’s neck.

  The cage brought his only dream of Judith, though he went to sleep every night praying she’d come to him – young, dark-haired, beautiful – to touch, to kiss, to whisper or laugh or murmur or yell or anything at all. But, in the interminable months since she was killed, only her pale, slender arms came, unreachable beyond flat, black bars.

  Glet’s cell phone gave him only voicemail. He called the sheriff’s headquarters, but was told Deputy Glet was not expected in for some time. He called the Dead House, thinking Glet might have drifted over there, but the woman who answered the main number said it was too early for anyone important to be in, except the dead, ha ha.

  He gave up on Glet, decided to look for Richie Fernandez directly. The Cook County Jail had no normal hours, since booking killers and cons, pervs and peepers was a twenty-four-hour-a-day proposition. It was where Lehman would have brought Fernandez. Rigg knew plenty of people to call there, from when he reported real news.

  He asked first for Lehman, but, no surprise, was told the sheriff was not there. Then, those who didn’t hang up when they recognized his voice gave him the same three responses: ‘You working crime again, Rigg?’ and, ‘Nope, ain’t seen Lehman,’ and, ‘Never heard of Richie Fernandez.’

  Several times, there were additional responses. ‘You still banging that Henderson woman, Rigg?’ two asked. And four others stayed on the line long enough to express their delight at having heard he’d been bounced from reporting crime and out to the Pink. They remembered the drubbings he’d given law enforcement at their failure to solve the Stemec Henderson killings.

  But one, a night officer just getting off his shift, was polite.

  ‘I heard the sheriff personally made an arrest in the Graves case,’ Rigg said.

  ‘What?’ The officer’s surprise sounded genuine.

  ‘A guy, Richie Fernandez. Lehman himself made the grab.’

  ‘You got a bum tip. Klaus Lanz was the only real arrest, the only booking, and he was released. Lanz is a bobble-head, damaged upstairs,’ the night man said.

  Rigg supposed that word might have gone out to keep mum, for whatever reason, about the Fernandez bust, but he doubted the lid on the arrest could have been kept on for a whole week.

  And something else nagged. Lehman knew the value of good publicity. He’d trumpeted his grab of Lanz. A personal bust of a solid prospect in the Graves case would have been golden publicity. He should have made sure news of Richie Fernandez’s arrest got out.

  But he hadn’t.

  Rigg called the sheriff’s office again. The same secretary he’d spoken to earlier said the sheriff was still out.

  ‘Out to me, or out to everyone?’ Rigg asked.

  She hung up.

  He took a chance. He called back one of Lehman’s senior deputies who’d hung up on him just moments earlier.

  ‘Lehman’s gone underground – why?’ Rigg said fast, before the man could hang up on him again.

  ‘Where the hell did you hear that?’

  ‘Everywhere. Lehman’s gone underground.’

  ‘No attribution on this, Rigg?’ the cop whispered, lowering his voice.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Rigg said.

  The cop laughed, loud, and hung up.

  The Dead House was on the south side of Chicago, in a block just past a tattoo parlor, a bar and a hock shop. During the worst of Stemec Henderson, Rigg had gone there so often to pester Medical Examiner McGarry for updates that driving there became an unthinking routine.

  This day, like those days, he drove the distances and took the turns like he was on rails. But, after he parked at the curb, his hand froze on the car door handle. Images from inside the building across the street came flashing back in a staccato-like slide show: the frantic echoing footfalls of the families pounding down the beige-tiled corridor; the steel doors banging open; the dank chill and gloom of the morgue; the almost gentle sagging of Anthony Henderson Senior, collapsing over the beaten body of his youngest son, Anthony Junior.

  He pulled hard on the door handle, pushed out and hurried across the street.

  The same receptionist sat at the rounded, black laminate desk. Her name was Jane, and her skin and her hair were the same beige as the glazed tiles lining the floor and the walls of the hallway, as if the colors of her life had been leeched away by the dead being refrigerated down the hall.

  ‘Long time no see, Milo,’ she said in a monotone voice. The morgue leeched away inflection, too.

  ‘Happier stuff, now. School boards, pet parades, zoning battles.’

  She nodded. Like everyone on his old beat, she knew he’d been bounced from the Bastion.
r />   ‘I’m looking for Glet,’ he said.

  ‘Here?’ She shook her head. ‘He hasn’t been by.’

  ‘Is McGarry in?’

  ‘Him, neither.’

  ‘I’ll go up and talk to Doris, then.’ Doris was the medical examiner’s secretary.

  ‘No press, Milo.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Never had the press been shut out of the morgue by McGarry.

  ‘Ask McGarry at the next press brief.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘Days, weeks, months. Who knows?’

  Or never, Rigg thought. Everybody seemed to be going clam. Except maybe the CIB’s most favorite young man. ‘How about Corky Feldott?’

  ‘Cornelius Feldott,’ she corrected, with just the barest twitch of a smile. ‘Our assistant M.E. thinks “Corky” lacks respect.’

  ‘How about him, whatever his name is?’

  She gave him an exaggerated sigh, pushed a phone button and cupped her free hand around the mouthpiece to make sure no unauthorized word escaped. A moment later, she waved a liver-spotted hand toward the tiled stairwell.

  Doris was at her desk. Like Jane, downstairs, she was another grim veteran of the cold halls of the dead. He gave her a smile, which she didn’t return. She remembered the thrashing he gave McGarry.

  Feldott’s office door was open, and Feldott himself adorned the threshold, smiling. Primed for success, he wore natty, chalk-striped charcoal suit pants, a white shirt that likely had never seen a wrinkle, and, in an attempt to show he was as common and careless about color as most men, a loosely-tied, inch-wide purple necktie, which most common men would never wear.

  ‘Mr Rigg,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Cornelius,’ Rigg said, holding out his own.

  Feldott smiled more broadly. ‘I see you’ve been given the word about my appellation.’

  ‘“Cornelius” does have a certain gravitas.’

  Still smiling, Cornelius gestured Rigg inside and they sat at a desk arranged neatly with four small stacks of Manila folders and a yellow legal pad. A laptop computer was on the back credenza, below an antique-looking drawing of Northwestern University.

  ‘How can I help?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘What’s being learned about the Graves case?’