The Keepers

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  “My aunt’s a hard woman to say no to,” Kippy replied. “Anyway, between Becca and my aunt, I should be able to parlay a sit-down with Mayor Weeks. He’ll probably think I’ve got some sexism beef—rampant harassment throughout the department or something like that.”

  “He’s going to wish it were something like that when you tell him what you’re really there for,” Wabiszewski said. “Sadly, the meeting will only last another half second after you inform him that our evidence stems from a golden retriever.”

  Kippy shrugged. “I’ll start with Mace and Vira at Washington Park, but I’ll fudge a little. I’ll make it sound like you two were a lot closer to Superintendent Callum and his chauffeur, maybe just a few yards away when they pulled into the lot. I don’t know—within sniffing distance—and Vira caught some kind of scent off Callum’s driver that, we believe, tied him to the Peter Feist murder scene that Vira had just discovered a few minutes earlier. You get threatened on the spot by Gerald Callum himself, and then, at Feist’s funeral, you get a bag full of veiled threats from Callum’s chauffeur who suddenly knows everything about you. Highly suspicious, red flags fly up the mast. Then I’ll segue into David Siskin’s murder, you know, and talk about the chauffeur’s pointed cowboy boots and of possibly comparing both Feist’s and Siskin’s autopsies for similar wounds.”

  “And about the superintendent’s change-up in investigators.”

  “What change-up?” I asked.

  Wabiszewski said, “The Peter Feist murder investigation naturally falls to Jim Hartwick, a homicide investigator out of the Second District who’s got a clearance rate higher than Dick Tracy. But Superintendent Callum yanks Detective Hartwick off the case and assigns it to some pencil pusher—Callum’s pencil pusher—under the guise of his office taking direct control of the investigation.”

  “So Callum can deep-six the case?”

  “To manipulate it is more likely.”

  “The mayor wasn’t too happy with Callum in their conversation in the restroom,” I said. “I think Weeks is pissed at the lack of progress in the investigation.”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath—I don’t see the superintendent arresting himself anytime soon,” Wabiszewski replied. “No doubt in a week or two, one of the usual suspects will get hauled in—probably some half-assed thief with a long list of priors or a mid-level drug dealer. He’ll be dead, of course. After a shootout with Callum’s men, of course … since dead men tell no tales. And they’ll find some bullshit evidence to feed the press, of course, something from Feist—a notebook or journal or, hell, I don’t know, a lock of his hair—hidden in a box of steaks in the dead guy’s freezer.”

  “Case closed,” said Kippy.

  I thought for a second. “But what if you strike out?”

  “What?”

  “What if Mayor Weeks listens, but then laughs in your face and tells you to hit the road?”

  “Then we’ll have to take it to the feds ourselves, but I’m praying Weeks doesn’t laugh in my face because I want him to be the one bringing in the FBI.”

  “And what do we know about the FBI in Chicago?”

  “The SAC—special agent in charge—of the Chicago Division is Len Squires. From everything I hear, Squires is a straight shooter, a boy scout,” Kippy said and glanced at her notebook. “Another plus is he’s an outsider who’s only been in Chicago for one year. Before that he was the SAC of the New Orleans Division. Another huge bonus is Squires previously served in a supervisory special agent position in the Public Corruption Unit of the Criminal Investigative Division, which means Squires has personally worked investigations involving law enforcement corruption. So, if we get Mayor Carter Weeks, and Weeks brings in SAC Len Squires, Superintendent Callum’s in a box and our job is done. We sit back and watch the inevitable take place.”

  “And if the dam breaks,” Wabiszewski added, “maybe other businessmen who’ve been extorted—forced into these silent partnerships with Frank Cappelli—will step forward and all of this Outfit crap will get washed away for good.”

  A glimmer of light appeared at the end of the tunnel. Our back-of-the-napkin conspiring might pay dividends after all, but then a thought occurred to me. “This is going to take some time, and I’m not thinking Man-mountain has a great deal of patience,” I said. “I really don’t want to move to Alaska, but Hulk knows where I live.”

  “Okay already, you big baby,” Wabiszewski said. “You can stay with me in the interim, but you buy your own food and you clean up all the dog crap immediately. Seriously. I don’t want to see it and, if I step in any piles, you’re getting pistol-whipped.”

  I nodded my agreement. “You got cable?”

  CHAPTER 25

  Kippy entered Beatrix—the River North location—at 7:30 a.m. sharp, as she’d been instructed to do per her aunt in last night’s phone call. Although she wasn’t on duty, Kippy wore her uniform, hoping it might tip the scales in any suspension of disbelief on the mayor’s part. Beatrix was a favorite dining spot of Mayor Weeks, Kippy’s aunt had informed her. He loved their quinoa cakes—whatever the hell those were. Kippy’s aunt had first chatted with Becca Drake and came back to Kippy with three conditions: be there at 7:30, don’t make the mayor wait; you’ve got five minutes with the man; and, foremost, don’t be a flake.

  Kippy mentally rehearsed the message she intended to deliver to Mayor Weeks and figured she’d at least be able to live up to the first two terms.

  Kippy looked at the line for coffee and then she scanned the room. A flurry of motion at a back booth caught her eye and she recognized Becca Drake waving her over. Kippy crossed the restaurant as Drake stood, slung a Louis Vuitton handbag over a shoulder of her dark wool blazer, and grabbed her coffee-to-go cup with a free hand—Drake’s mane of red hair flowed perfectly in an invisible breeze.

  “Hi, Becca.”

  “Good to see you again, Kip,” Drake said and air-kissed a cheek. “I don’t think you need an introduction.”

  “Good morning, Mayor Weeks,” Kippy said while standing at attention.

  “Have a seat, Officer Gimm,” Weeks said, motioning to the seat across from him.

  “Thank you, sir.” Kippy slid into the booth.

  “Okay, kiddo, you’ve got five minutes,” Drake said, looking Kippy in the eye. “And remember, don’t be a flake.”

  And with that, Becca Drake made her exit, undoubtedly off to conquer new worlds.

  “You should have the chai latte with a pinch of cayenne, if you’re not yet awake,” Weeks said.

  “I’m good.”

  Kippy noted how the mayor was more than halfway through his breakfast, finishing what looked like an interesting take on poached eggs with a few bites of pancakes littered about his plate. She realized his offer of coffee and the fact that he was concluding his meal was another indication that their meeting would be short and sweet. Kippy glanced about the restaurant and spotted a gentleman in a blue sport jacket sipping a cup of joe several tables away—out of earshot—and staring their way. She pegged him as being with Mayor Weeks, some part of his security detail.

  “You sure?” Weeks asked. “Best in the city.”

  Kippy nodded.

  “I’ve nothing but good to say about your aunt, and I certainly wouldn’t have won without Becca.”

  “Becca’s a genius.”

  “That she is,” Weeks replied. “She told me you volunteered as well, canvassed for me.”

  “I did.”

  “How many doors got slammed in your face?”

  Kippy smiled. “More than one.”

  “Becca said this meeting was all hush-hush … and I hate hush-hush.” Mayor Weeks poked at a poached egg with his fork, and then looked up at her. “What exactly did you want to see me about, Officer Gimm?”

  Kippy had memorized her talking points and, considering the clock was already ticking on her allotted five minutes, she dove right in. “We need to talk about Peter Feist.”

  CHAPTER 26

 
“Where the hell are you guys?”

  “What?” I said into my cell phone.

  “You two are late. I called Kippy, but she’s not picking up,” Wabiszewski replied. “I’m at the guard’s desk in the lobby, standing here with my dick in my hand.”

  “Kippy’s probably in her car with the phone in drive mode, and you’d better zip up Little Wabs before you meet with the mayor,” I said. “I got a call from the man himself an hour ago. It blew me away—the freaking mayor of Chicago calling me up. He said he wants to have a few minutes alone with each of us.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he wants to look us in the eye and feel us out. Gauge us, I guess, see how we come across. Mayor Weeks is taking a hell of a leap of faith bringing in the feds and, like Kippy keeps saying, we can’t be flakes. He wants to make sure we’re on the up-and-up before we meet with Special Agent Squires.”

  “When the hell do you show up?”

  “In half an hour. I’m at Daley Plaza sucking down a Coke and killing time with Vira.” I sat alone on a park bench. I had poured some of the soda pop over my fingertips and was letting Vira lick them clean.

  Chicago City Hall is an eleven-story leviathan on North LaSalle and sits imposingly next to the Richard J. Daley and James R. Thompson Centers. As well as housing the Office of the Mayor, City Hall is also home to the offices of the City Clerk and City Treasurer, a hodgepodge of city departments, aldermen of the city’s various wards, with the City Council Chambers anchoring the building’s west side, and assorted offices of Cook County anchoring the east.

  “Ah shit,” Wabs said. “I didn’t know it was going to be a fucking job interview. I was hoping to sit back and chew gum—let Kippy do all the talking. I’ve got nothing to add that she’s not already told the guy. Come early, dude.”

  “Weeks sounded like a good guy on the phone,” I said. “I’ll be there soon enough, Wabs. And remember, don’t let him know you’re a flake.”

  Sue, Bill, the girls, and I had been living the life of Riley in Officer Dave Wabiszewski’s surprisingly tidy townhome in Albany Park for the past five days. I’d planned my getaway to Wabiszewski’s as though the kids and I were breaking out of East Germany at the height of the Cold War. I’d parked the pickup in the yard on the far side of my trailer—making it difficult for any prying eyes, real or imagined—and chucked a couple bags of dog food and a duffel full of clothes and shower gear into the cargo bed before returning the F-150 to its natural perch in my driveway.

  That took all of five minutes.

  Then, hours later and under the cover of darkness, I slipped the dogs into the cab of the pickup. All but Sue appeared elated at our new adventure; however, my German shepherd shuffled out of my trailer home at a slow gait and sporting a sneer—no doubt angered at the breach in our nightly protocol. I took a right on the road leading into downtown Lansing before flipping my lights on.

  That took all of four minutes.

  I darted in and out of parking lots and alleyways as I worked my way toward the highway. Then I cruised to Albany Park—changing lanes, increasing and decreasing speeds at random, veering off the freeway and then back on—as though I were Burt Reynolds or the cast of The Fast and the Furious. I wish I really knew what I was doing or could tell if I’d been followed, but the headlights behind me all looked the same. I figured if anyone was truly tailing me, I’d have at least served to piss them off.

  That took all of seventy minutes.

  Fortunately, Officer Wabiszewski had just gotten home after his shift and I didn’t bother sharing with him the depth of my madness lest he get the wrong idea.

  At Wabiszewski’s townhome I scored the guest room—shared it with my convalescing German shepherd—while Vira, Delta Dawn, Maggie May, and Bill got to romp about the unfinished basement. So far Wabiszewski hadn’t stepped in any piles of waste, I hadn’t been pistol-whipped, and no neighbors had complained about the dogs. Wabiszewski and I bonded over cheap beer, cheaper tacos, and watching mixed martial arts on TV. Somewhere along the line, I started calling him “Wabs” and he hadn’t batted an eye or taken undue umbrage.

  All good cheer and male bonding aside, it’d been five days full of apprehension and lost sleep. I placed the odds at fifty-fifty that Man-mountain had caught Wabiszewski’s plate number off his Dodge Charger as we pulled away from Holy Name Cathedral. If so, that would mean they now knew about Wabs—that he was a cop—and that the female I’d opened the Charger door for was his cop-partner, Kippy Gimm. Of course, all of that was likely a moot point; since they’d done their homework on me, they’d damn sure know about my cop friends—the same cop friends that had recently solved the Jonny Whiting murder case and brought Eddie Clare to justice.

  Yes, Kippy and Wabs were police officers, but what about Gerald Callum? Christ, he was Chicago’s police superintendent—the top of the freaking totem pole, miles above them. So, with Dirty Cop Callum and Man-mountain well aware the three of us had been hip-deep in unraveling Jonny Whiting’s death, what exactly would that amount to from their point of view?

  Would we be dismissed as paper tigers? As some kind of half-assed tomato can—you know, the crappy, over-the-hill boxer they drag out to pad the record of an up-and-comer?

  Or would it put a scare into them? Would it force them into taking action?

  Ultimately, what really caused me to toss and turn these past several nights was the question: Were the three of us perceived as an immediate threat?

  We’d not come at them … yet … certainly not in the manner Peter Feist had come after them. And, hopefully, that would give them pause, at least a long enough pause for when we did come after them because by then, per Kippy’s plan, we’d come at them in full force with the cavalry—the Mayor’s Office, the FBI, and the media—on our side.

  So when Kippy had returned from her meeting with Mayor Weeks full of smiles and excitement, thoughts of rental igloos and Barrow, Alaska, began to fade away. Her five-minute get-together with the mayor had stretched into nearly an hour. The mayor took in what she had to say, turned various lighter shades of pale, and began whispering back in response. Evidently, he had a dozen questions about cadaver dogs and their special abilities, which Kippy parried as best she could without any references to séances or Ouija boards. He recalled an odd look flash through Superintendent Callum’s eyes when I walked into the restroom at the Cathedral. He also found it strange that Callum had switched up investigators in the Peter Feist murder case.

  And the mayor had shared with Kippy the personal observation that he trusted Police Superintendent Gerald Callum about as far as he could physically throw the man.

  Mayor Weeks had asked for a second meeting with Kippy the very next morning—same time, same table at Beatrix—where Weeks informed her that his going near or requesting the two autopsies would tip his cards and clue in Superintendent Callum that someone was on to him; instead, the mayor wanted Kippy, Wabs, me, and Vira to attend a meeting in his office with Special Agent in Charge Len Squires. The Office of the Mayor takes up City Hall’s fifth floor. We were to tell no one, and there’d be no record of the meeting for Superintendent Callum or any of his people to stumble across. Our names would be added to the visitor list in the main lobby as attendees for a retirement party of some geezer in the City Clerk’s office. The mayor would dismiss his immediate staff for a lengthy lunch and personally meet us at the elevator and usher us into his private office to avoid anybody hovering about the main reception area.

  Mayor Weeks felt that SAC Squires brought four things to the table. First, he could get authorization of surveillance, electronic and otherwise, of Superintendent Callum and the same for the superintendent’s chauffeur. Second, Squires could swoop in and compare both autopsy reports using the Bureau’s own medical examiner. Third, Squires could protect yours truly and our gang from any head twists, kick marks from steel-tipped cowboy boots, or puncture wounds. And, finally, Squires could hit Callum like gangbusters if and when more solid evidence turne
d up. Those items were off the top of his head, Weeks had told Kippy, and that it would be of great interest for us to hear what other goodies Agent Squires could bring to the party.

  The mayor also told Kippy that—even though David Siskin’s death sent a terrifying and cartel-like message—with the FBI and his office involved, perhaps other investors having their arms bent by the powers that be might be willing to step forward.

  We were moving ahead at lightning speed.

  I’d been so energized and relieved to hear this great news that I once again trampled our just-friends covenant—much like I’d done in my trailer home after Mickie’s visit—and bounced up from Wabs’s sofa and gave Kippy a hug.

  It lasted all of a second … but she didn’t pull away or reach for her Taser.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Officer Wabiszewski?” Mayor Weeks said as the elevator doors chimed open.

  Wabs nodded, stepped into the atrium, and shook the outstretched hand of the city’s chief executive. “It’s an honor to meet you in person, sir.”

  “Wish it could be under other circumstances,” Weeks replied, motioning for Wabiszewski to follow him down a hallway. “Any other circumstances, I’d have to say. Was it all good at the lobby desk?”

  Wabs pointed at the visitor badge clipped to the front of his shirt. “Some city planner is retiring this week. Guess I’ve known him for years. Party’s on the eighth floor. Maybe I’ll stop in for cake on the way out.”

  “I hope you’re not insulted I’m bringing you in the back way,” Weeks said, “but I don’t want to parade you past our main reception. Trying to avoid any prying eyes. I had my personal staff take a hike, go grab a bite to eat for a few hours.” Weeks shrugged. “I’m sure they think I’m having an affair, which, compared to this insanity—I wish I were.”

  Wabiszewski smiled.

  “Based on how it goes with Special Agent Squires, we may migrate over to his field office on Roosevelt.” The mayor shook his head. “I should have planned this powwow there to begin with, but all this has been ad hoc and by the seat of my pants.”