The Underground Detective: A Novel of Chicago Streets

by Thomas Laird

  So we’ll see. Maybe she’ll let me know which way she’ll jump, when graduation from Sacred Heart happens, in a few months.

  I have a report waiting on my desk when I get to work on Halloween morning. Lila is already in her cubicle, next to mine, reading her copy.

  She walks into my tiny office and waves the folder at me. She looks fresh and very pretty, and I again wish there was a chance for me with her. But facts are facts, and I try to resign myself.

  “I’m driving,” she informs me.

  We arrive at Lake Michigan in ten minutes. The scene isn’t far from our Loop headquarters. The techs have been out here for a few hours since the body was discovered about one A.M. by an insomniac stroller. He sighted the corpse about twenty yards from the sidewalk he was walking. His dog, a border collie, had sniffed the stiff out before the pedestrian saw the dark hump shape out on the sand.

  It’s fully light at 8:12 A.M. The techs have laid their yellow tape on the beach because there was nothing to hang their markers onto.

  The ME has already left. The crime scene people and their photographer are about to depart. All that remains are Lila and I and the remains.

  It’s a black female, somewhere between twenty and thirty, I guess, at first appraisal. The ME will be far more specific about her age.

  This time the body hasn’t been mutilated. Not a mark on her—except for the black and blue bruises around her throat. She was strangled, a tech informed us as he left the beach. Her eyes are wide opened to the point of bugging out. Her tongue lolls out of the left side of her mouth. I’m thinking this guy did her slowly, after he duct taped her hands beneath her as she lay on her back.

  The water is only twenty yards behind us. It’s gray and cold looking. The sky is blue and serene, but it’s chilly here, by the Lake. There is a pier about one hundred yards from us, off to our left.

  “I’ll be back,” I tell Lila. There is one uniform left on the scene, waiting for us to finish.

  I don’t know why I have to walk out onto that pier, but I have a feeling.

  “Danny?” Lila calls at my back. But I’m striding purposefully toward that pile of concrete, so she figures I need a moment alone and she doesn’t call my name again.

  I reach the pier, and then I walk slowly out to the end of it. It juts out into the water about 200 feet. I look over the edge, and I see the second body floating face down.

  I trot back to Lila, and she stands up straight as she replaces the vinyl over the dead girl.

  “Call the ME and the crime scene people. Tell them to come back. They missed one.”

  Lila stares at me, and then she grabs her portable and makes the calls.

  “He likes twin killings,” I tell her on the ride back.

  It took another three hours for them to fish victim number two out of the drink, and then we were on scene with the body for another ninety minutes. We haven’t even had time for breakfast, and it’s way past lunch. We’re headed to an Italian joint in the Loop to combine two meals into one.

  Casper’s has the red and white checkered tablecloths and the blue and green Christmas lights that are for all seasons. We order pizza because that’s what Lila says she’s hungry for.

  We sit in the dimly lit, unpopulated bistro. They’re way past lunch rush and way before the dinner bell strikes. We’re alone, with a waitress and a bartender and that’s all.

  “How’s the girl?”

  “Ask her. How the hell should I know?”

  “Same old.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t get mad, Danny. I’m just trying to be polite.”

  “I know you are. Sorry.”

  “So?”

  “She seems to want to get the hell out of school. She hasn’t blown off classes lately, and I already told you I don’t sniff any funny smells on her.”

  “So it’s looking better?” she smiles.

  “Can’t tell, with her. I told you, she still isn’t eating. She’s like a sack of parakeet feathers.”

  “She going to counseling?”

  “She’s talking to a counselor at school. That’s really all I know. And I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

  I look at her short hair and her perfect, un-made-up face and I want to plant one right on her full, un-colored lips. They do have a color, though. They are a very pale pink, which makes them even more irresistible. But I resist, anyway.

  “It’s all right. Maybe Kelly’s just growing up, coming out of it.”

  “She’s not alone in this thing. I know I have responsibility.”

  “You might be beating yourself up a little too much and too often, Danny. Even the best families have kids go nuts on them.”

  The waiter arrives with our soft drinks. Can’t have beer until the shift is over. Department policy and our own policy. We never cheat on that rule. Then I don’t drink very often as it is. Lila likes to have a pitcher after work before a day off, so I’ll join her to be sociable. But I’m just not a juicer. Genetics or whatever the reason really is.

  “How’s your love life?” I grin at her.

  “Getting even, are we?”

  “No. Just interested, is all.”

  “I have no love life. I have a job. About like you. You never date, do you.”

  I give her my best hard stare, which makes her smile even more broadly. Her teeth are a bit crooked, in spots, but they are very white in spite of their unevenness, and with those delectable, pale pink lips, I have to divert my eyes to the pop mug on the table in front of me.

  “I have dated. Once in a while.”

  “You have to take care of that prostate, Bud.”

  Lila is very worried about my prostate. She warns me about cancer there, all the time.

  “I can always take things into my own hands,” I grin back at her.

  “You’re not the type for self-abuse, partner,” she laughs.

  “And how do you know?” I laugh back.

  “Because you’re too goddamned good-looking of an Irishman, that’s why.”

  “Do I turn you on?”

  The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  “Sorry.”

  “About what?” she grins. “We’re just screwing around, here, right?”

  “Of course.”

  I try to look as sincere as I can for her. The last thing I want to do is lose Lila. She’s the only semblance of a friend I’ve got. I don’t hang around with other cops because it’s boring. They always want to talk police talk. It gets old. I’ve been to cop bars and I’ve hung with brother officers. You have to play some politics to get a detective’s shield. I’m not that dumb; I know how it works and it did. Once I got into Homicide, I quit socializing for the sake of the job. Efficiency is what counts in this division of police work. We may have our politicians and our crooks in the department, and we do, but Homicide is a bit different from the rest of our corps. Dead bodies don’t have agendas. They’re just dead fucking bodies. We have to find out who caused them all that distress. Which is why I like where I work.

  “You’re a really half-assed liar, Danny. But I love you for it.”

  I want to ask her if she has any interest in me at all, but I can’t say it. I can’t put that kind of tension between us, even if the tension comes from my direction only.

  “I wasn’t lying. You have grievously hurt my feelings,” I tell her with a lame grin on my lips.

  “I don’t want to lose you as my best friend, Danny.”

  “Why would you lose me?” I continue, with a full smile, now.

  “I have this feeling that you might just disappear on me at any given moment.”

  Her face goes serious. Her lips are shut. I look at the faint rosy hue on them.

  “I’m not going to take off on you or on anyone. People pull that shit with me all the time, but I don’t have rabbit in these legs. Trust me.”

  “But you think I won’t be there, eventually. Right?”

  “Come on, Lila—“

  �
��I’m serious. You think I’m going to didi on you, sooner or later.”

  Didi is Vietnamese for “leave.” She dropped bombs on them. I killed them from the ground. Neither of us likes to talk about the War, so I never bring it up. It’s a decade’s old news, anyway.

  “Don’t you?”

  I look at her pretty eyes and equally pretty face and I wish everything had been designed differently. Her. Me. The world. My daughter. Mary. Everything.

  But it’s no use. I don’t have an answer for her.

  4

  Angela Carter was twenty and Khala Gibbons was twenty-one. Angela was the dead woman on the beach and Khala was the floater. Both had been strangled, the Medical Examiner told us, both had been throttled manually. In other words, he used his hands.

  There is no semen, no prints. There is evidence that he hurt them both sexually before killing them because there were splinters of wood lodged in each of their vaginas. The doctor thinks he might have used a broom handle, or something similar. The splinters won’t offer much in the way of evidence because I think this guy’s smart enough to use latex or some kind of glove.

  Lila is especially disturbed about the fragments of wood. She’s already angry about the deaths of these four women, but the rape is something sensitive to her, naturally. We don’t always encounter the sexual angle in the killings we investigate, so that part of the case is a hot spot for Lila.

  We go back to Old Town as a starting point. We’ve gone to the addresses listed for the two new victims, but no one at those listings knows either girl. They were both probably out on the street for a few years, by now. They were homeless and parentless, like the first two.

  We find a pair of prostitutes on Manley Road in Old Town standing outside the Apex Theatre. The Apex is an “adult” movie house. Lila walks up to them and shows them the photos of the two newest homicides. They both nod and tell us that they’ve seen them in the neighborhood, but neither of the hookers knows anything about them personally. They were just two more girls on the street, the short, chubby prostie explains. She’s white and her tall thin partner is Hispanic. They don’t seem to offer more than a confirmation that they were from around here, as the first murdered pair was.

  We decide, after another hour of touring Old Town fruitlessly, to talk to Vice.

  Al Parker is the man we contact. He’s a tall, bulky black man who played professional football before he tore up his left knee. The knee kept him out of the military, so he decided to hitch up with the police. He’s been highly decorated, and he’s the bane of pimps in this Area called Old Town. He’s famous for making procurers seek a different line of endeavor.

  He takes us for a ride to Carlton Boulevard. We park on the street next to a fire hydrant.

  “If the Fire Department gets a call here, I’ll move,” he smiles at Lila, sitting in the front seat next to him. I’m in the back.

  “His name is Maurice Devereaux. He claims he’s from the Big Sleazy, New Orleans, but he’s a piece of shit from the west side. I knew him slightly when I was coming up, on the west side. We both went to Dunbar High School. Maurice was a fair fly back on the football team at Dunbar with me. But that motherfucker turned left, somewhere.”

  Lila smiles charmingly at Al. I think I feel jealous. Then she turns to me and sticks out her tongue. I can’t help but laugh.

  “He ought to be making the rounds of his girls any time, now,” Parker turns and says directly to me. I’m thinking he’s thinking there’s something going on between Lila and me. There are numerous other cops who probably have the same suspicion.

  “Fuck ’em,” Lila has pronounced on that very subject.

  “It’s hard to keep all his players straight. I’m sorry I couldn’t make any of those four girls for you. But the faces keep changing about every ten days around here.”

  He’s sitting sideways so he can look at both of us, now. We indeed showed him the pictures of all four women, and I knew as I watched him look them over that he never saw our victims before. These Vice guys tend to have very long memories of their “clients.”

  It takes another thirty-five minutes before Maurice Devereaux comes sauntering along. The saunter is pimp, all the way, but he doesn’t dress the part. There’s no Superfly in his apparel. He wears jeans and a leather flight jacket. Except for the strut, he’s just another brother from the hood.

  Al gets out of our ride and braces him in mid-strut. He takes him by the arm and guides him to our vehicle. Lila gets out of the passenger’s side and joins me in the back seat.

  Maurice looks like an athlete. He looks like an African warrior—tall, graceful and lean. He’s a very handsome young man. He and Al are only in their mid-thirties. Al looks like he’s suffered the wounds of sports, but there isn’t a mark on the pimp’s face.

  “What’s this all about?” he smiles back at Lila. Lila doesn’t return the teeth.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, stupid. You know the fuckin’ drill.”

  He doesn’t look over at our driver. He just settles back into his passenger’s seat.

  “Put your seatbelt on, fuckhead,” Al smiles at him. “Don’t want no harm comin’ your way.”

  We stop at the Lake. I think Al chose this spot to make Maurice uncomfortable because the breeze off the Lake is very cold, the way the northeast hawk always feels.

  “Why can’t we go somewhere inside?” Devereaux complains as the four of us sit on a bench facing the water. Lila and I both have our collars turned up. If the Vice detective wanted uncomfortable, he’s got a complete success. My partner and I are both shivering within seconds.

  Al shows him the photos.

  “Don’t lie. I know they were yours. You lie to me and you know what happens.”

  “Yeah. I got a good memory.”

  He rattles off all four of the victims’ names. Apparently he’s learned not to bullshit Detective Parker.

  “They were the ones got found, right?” Devereaux asks.

  “They were the ones got found. Yes.”

  Maurice sits on the far left, and then it’s Parker, me and finally Lila. We’re both so goddamned cold, we just want this interview over with. If we have to, we’ll take this procurer downtown to our own floor and question him.

  “So?” Al asks.

  “So nothing, Lieutenant. I’m telling you true. I ain’t seen these bitches since they got topped. Ain’t seen them a week or so before they got tapped. Honest, man. True. They weren’t big earners. Not one of them was worth lookin’ at. I wouldn’t stick my own dick in none of them.”

  Lila gets up and walks away from us.

  Parker slaps Devereaux on the back of his head, and the pimp’s noggin flies forward.

  “What I do?” he moans.

  “You embarrassed the lady, and I take it personal,” Parker grins at him.

  “I’m sorry, Lady. I mean ma’am.”

  His shout stops Lila in her tracks. She turns and walks back toward us.

  “Apologize,” Al instructs Maurice.

  “I’m sorry, Lady.”

  “Detective, asshole,” Parker commands.

  “I’m sorry, Detective, ma’am. Ain’t meant no disrespect.”

  “Good boy….Detective? Any questions for him?”

  Lila stops in front of Maurice.

  “You ever been ass fucked?” she queries Devereaux.

  “What the fuck—“

  Lila pops him in the throat, and he grabs at his Adam’s apple and goes to the ground.

  “You having trouble breathing?”

  I’m watching all this as if I’m not part of it. I’ve learned to let her go when she wants to.

  Maurice gags for another few moments, but then he gets back up as if he’s going to throw down on her. Lila pops him in the same spot, and down he goes again, clutching his neck.

  “Don’t get up for a minute, Maurice. Just nod if you know anything we can use to find the guy we’re looking for. You know anybody who likes doing threesomes? Sandwiches?”

>   He looks up at her from his knees.

  “I swear…to…God…I don’t. I don’t know…no one…like that. Not with these…girls.”

  “You’re not going to tell me how ugly they were again, are you, Maurice?”

  Al is smiling with pleasure at my partner, now. He’s got his arms thrown back over the top of the bench as if he’s enjoying a summer’s day at the beach. I’m so cold I’ve lost sensation from the waist down.

  “No…I mean, no ma’am.”

  She helps him up to his feet, and it’s pretty certain this interview’s over.

  I drop Lila off at her apartment complex.

  “You want to come in?” she asks me.

  “For a minute, sure. I have to check on—“

  “Just for a minute, then.”

  She lives on the third floor of a high rise not far from the Loop. I’m wondering how she can afford the rent even with a roomie.

  We take the elevator to the third floor, we disembark, and then she unlocks apartment 307. This is the upper crust neighborhood, and I’m soaking it all in. In all the months we’ve worked together, this is the first time she’s ever invited me inside. I’ve dropped her off before, but I never made it this far. I figured she didn’t want me encountering her roommate.

  “You want something to drink?” she asks.

  “A diet pop would be good.”

  She goes to the fridge in her spacious kitchen. This place is more like a suite than an apartment.

  “It’s a two bedroom. But just one bath, which can be a pain in the ass when she’s home.”

  Her roomie’s name is Margaret. She’s a flight attendant with United Airlines. I’ve never seen her, but Lila has only mentioned that God spent way too much time with Margaret. I take that as a compliment, from Lila.

  There is a large living room with a three seat sectional couch, a love seat, a recliner with a floor lamp next to it—the lampshade is a tiffany thing. She snapped it on when we came in, and you can see all the reds and greens and browns. For a lampshade made of glass, it almost looks like artwork. Lila and Margaret have expensive tastes. I shop at places that end in “mart.”