The Underground Detective: A Novel of Chicago Streets

by Thomas Laird

  Justin Grant, my partner of these few months, died on the way to St. Helen’s Hospital in the Loop. I took the ride with him, but he was never conscious. He barely had a pulse when they put him on board the ambulance. He never spoke. He never opened his eyes. The shot that killed my partner blasted right through his heart. Gillespie turned out to be a marksman. It’ll only took him one bullet to kill Franklin. If this were the war, that would equal maximum efficiency.

  I should be grieving for Justin, but all I feel is numb. It happened so fast that I suppose it hasn’t really registered, at the moment. But I dealt with death for two tours in Vietnam. Guys went down around me, and I had to swallow the grief because we had to survive—I had to go on. There was no community in death. The man on the ground was gone. You had to leave him to death and keep going or soon you’d join him. It really was a simple matter of survival.

  This is not Vietnam and it’s not a war. This is The World. My partner has been murdered and Marvin Gillespie will be executed by the State of Illinois for killing a policeman. I should feel differently. All deaths are not equal. This is The World!, I keep telling myself. This is not some fucking rainforest, and I should feel grief, I should feel loss.

  Justin and I were almost friends. We never had time to get all the way there. I should be struggling with my emotions, feeling the stings of tears in my eyes.

  But there is nothing. Nihil. Nada. Just a vast suction. Just a vacuum. Nothing and nothing and nothing.

  I sat at the hospital for two hours after the ER doctor confirmed that Justin really was gone. The ER physician wanted to take a look at me because he told me I might be in shock or ready to enter into it. I convinced him I was all right. I lied effectively to him, and he let me be. So I sat in the waiting room alone until dawn was just a rumor off to the east, out the window and behind the plate glass that I sat in front of.

  I’m able to talk to Marvin Gillespie the next afternoon, with the permission of his surgeon and attending physician, Dr. Phillips.

  The Captain sent Sergeant Granger to be with me. When I went into Headquarters the following morning, he gave me the lecture that there would be an investigation into the shootings. I’d be talked to by the Internal Affairs people, which is SOP after all discharges of our weapons in the line of duty.

  Granger is an old hand. He’s an outrageously handsome man. He’d be a duplicate of Paul Newman, the actor—if Granger had a helluva lot more hair. He’s divorced, I understand, and quite the lady killer, mop or no mop. More importantly, he’s here to make sure I’m all right and that I don’t throw any more slugs into Gillespie. The Captain suggested someone else talk to this wounded member of the Aryan Nation, but I apparently convinced him that I was the right interrogator and that it was all business, nothing personal.

  He sent Granger anyway, just in case.

  Gillespie is covered with tubes, but I’m amazed at how good his color is. He looks too damned good.

  He has just the faintest of sneers on his lips as we enter the private room. There are two uniforms on the door. Granger has his eyes trained onto me. I can feel them piercing my back.

  Dr. Eunice Phillips waits for us, next to Gillespie’s bed.

  “You only have five minutes, and I mean five minutes,” she tells us. Then she leaves the room, and Marvin’s sneer leaves his face.

  “Doctor?” he whines as she leaves. But Phillips keeps on going.

  “I’m glad you can talk, Marvin. This won’t take even the five minutes. You’ve got this one shot. If you cooperate, maybe they won’t execute you, but since you killed a cop, who knows?

  “You can locate Franklin Toliver for us and maybe catch a break from the judge for your help in clearing up six homicides, or you can pull the trigger on yourself if you don’t help us. Because if you stand mute, you piece of shit motherfucker, it’s a death sentence for absolutely goddam sure. You read me, asshole?”

  There’s no defiant leer coming from Gillespie now. He was shocked that Dr. Phillips left him to us, it appears.

  “Where is Franklin Toliver?” I ask him.

  He looks at Granger with an appeal on his visage. Granger looks out the window behind his hospital bed and refuses to engage with Gillespie.

  “Last time. Last chance,” I tell Marvin.

  “Where is Franklin Toliver?”

  30

  I get off the desk one week later. Before that happened, my release after Internal Affairs cleared the shoot, I attended Justin Grant’s funeral. His entire family showed, and the family included over one hundred members. His mother and father and two brothers and three sisters survive him. There were dozens of other relatives in attendance, also. The Chicago Police Department does put on an impressive ceremony. There were a few hundred brother cops there, too, and the bagpipers played “Amazing Grace,” and the color guard sent up several volleys in Justin Grant’s memory.

  I guess I’m still in a state of numbness. I went to Dr. Fernandez the day before the funeral, and she told me I was probably suffering from delayed shock. She said it would hit me hard some time soon. She also reminded me about Vietnam and the delayed stress syndrome, which I haven’t experienced to date. The doc told me that just because I hadn’t gone through it didn’t mean I wouldn’t, eventually.

  Then there’s the part about feeling guilty that Justin got it and I didn’t. There is always natural relief when you survive and other people don’t, but there is a tendency to blame yourself for the other guy’s death. I could’ve waited for backup. But we’d still be the ones standing in front of the door Marvin Gillespie was hiding behind. Maybe all those extra troops might have dissuaded Gillespie from bearing down on us, but there’s no way of knowing.

  The Department has declared it a righteous shoot—my plugging the Aryan Nation asshole.

  And Justin’s still dead, and replaying it over and over won’t change the outcome, and it will not relieve my guilt: My partner was shot and killed.

  That makes one Wounded in Action and one Killed in Action, as far as partnering with me goes. I’ll be the guy everyone shies away from, now. I don’t blame them. What happened to Justin is every cop’s spouse’s nightmare.

  We were all in dress blues for the funeral. The sky was cloudy when it began, and only when everyone in attendance was ready to disperse and depart, it began to snow.

  Gillespie told Granger and me that Franklin Toliver only lived in one spot for a few days, and then he moved on. He said that Franklin was becoming a little frazzled by his gypsy-like existence, and he said that Toliver even talked about killing himself. Marvin said he was mostly annoyed that there was all this commotion about the killings of “six nigger sluts.” He said he’d like to do six more, but that the heat was too high. Toliver claimed he was waiting until he became a cold case or until the police thought he’d been killed or died from natural causes.

  Marvin told Granger and me that Franklin was obsessed with Jack the Ripper, but he didn’t enjoy using a knife all that much, not like the famous Brit murderer enjoyed slicing his victims. He said he preferred strangulation because it was slower, and then he said you were able to watch the process of death at your leisure. Stabbing proved too traumatic to his first victims, Marvin said. Toliver wanted to spend some time with them in their last agonies.

  I remember I was thinking, while I was listening to Gillespie, the great pleasure it would give me to wrap all those tubes around Marvin’s throat and to watch his wattage dim in front of my eyes.

  There was no forwarding address. He swore that Toliver never told him where he was going next.

  But there was one piece of information that widened my eyes a bit. Marvin talked about the Aryan Nation’s walk in Marquette Park, which was coming up on Washington’s Birthday, February 22nd. Gillespie swore that Toliver told him he’d be there for the walk, that he wouldn’t miss it even if every fucking cop in the city were there.

  I believed Marvin Gillespie, but it seemed to be a boast, on Toliver’s part, because lots of po
licemen would be there to keep the peace. You could always expect protesters from the Holocaust Movement, a Jewish survivor organization, to have a heavy presence wherever the Aryan Nation appeared in public. There would be words between the two groups, and frequently it got worse than merely words. People got arrested from both sides, and it was a busy day in whichever Area the Aryans darkened with their presence.

  Washington’s Birthday is still a few weeks away, and I can’t wait for that date to continue going after Franklin. I’ve stopped blaming myself for Justin’s death, at least for now, because I was there, I saw the man who pulled the trigger. And I know why we were at that third floor apartment in the first place. It was to find Franklin Toliver. He’s the man who started all these gears in motion, killing six prostitutes, six human beings, for better or worse, and starting this whole series of tragedies. It was Franklin who began all this, but I’ll be the one who ends it.

  I’ve decided to kill him, if I can.

  I still keep tabs on Swanson and on Bill O’Connor. Nothing new turns up. The magic act of getting inside the building to slice open Sharon O’Connor is still unsolved and no closer to resolution than it was the moment we arrived on scene to view her body dangling from the ceiling. No one’s talking, Swanson foremost in the mutes associated with this murder.

  Big Bill goes on with his syndicated empire, the TV show and the glossy, slick magazine, BO. He hasn’t missed a beat. There is still no real evidence that there were marital difficulties from either party, and I can establish no new leads into the private love life of Sharon O’Connor. There is of course someone who knows what the story is in this homicide, and if there’s one person, it’s likely there are others who know who Sharon O’Connor saw last before she wound up at the business end of a rope.

  I’m going to lean again on Swanson because he’s most vulnerable. I know it sounds unjust and unfair, but O’Connor has too many fine attorneys to shield him from me and my questions. If I don’t have a warrant or a reasonable excuse, I can’t haul him down here again. He’d claim harassment, and he’d be correct in his claim. My hands are tied with big Bill, unless someone comes forth with an interesting story.

  And no one has. Yet.

  Lila sticks her head in my doorway.

  “Busy?” she asks.

  “No. Come on in.”

  Her face is flush with healthy color. The transformation is remarkable. She’s been revitalized, damn near reborn.

  “You’re looking really good,” I tell her.

  “Wish I could say the same for you, Danny.”

  “Thanks for your input,” I smile.

  She sits down opposite me and looks right at me.

  “How’s life with Detective Anderson?”

  She hesitates. She looks out the window behind me, and then she shifts her gaze quickly back at me.

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay?” I smile.

  “He doesn’t much like being partnered with a woman, but he tolerates it.”

  “I’m betting you could kick his ass in a duke out.”

  She grins.

  “I don’t hit fellow coppers.”

  “That’s a fine attitude, Lila.”

  Her hair is shorn close, once again. Her lips are unblemished with artificial color. She’s a natural, and she always will be, and it’s why I’m nuts about her and always will be, too.

  “I was saying. You look bad, Danny. You look gray.”

  “I got to take care of two jobs with only these two hands.”

  “You should take time off. I mean, after losing Justin the way you did. That’s gotta be difficult.”

  “It is. But I’ve lost people before.”

  I watch her eyes, and they turn sad and morose.

  “Yeah, I know. I deserved that.”

  “Not your fault, Lila.”

  She looks at me carefully.

  “You still seeing the shrink?”

  “Yeah. She’s a babe, too.”

  “Is she doing you any good?”

  “Someone to talk to, I guess.”

  Her eyes meet my desk, briefly.

  “Maybe you need to take leave. They usually offer extra vacation after something like this.”

  “I almost lost you. Remember? Oh yeah, I forgot. I did lose you, didn’t I.”

  She rises.

  “You really ought to take some time off, Danny. You look tired. You look more than tired, and it scares me. And you have to stay healthy for Kelly, you know?”

  “Kelly’s tough. She survived all those years without me. She can stand on her own.”

  She glares at me angrily. Her cheeks are crimson. I’ve never seen this kind of fine anger on her, before.

  “Nobody’s that tough, Danny. Not you and not me. She needs you now, especially now when you’re finally getting things right about each other. You going to throw that away chasing this asshole and all those other assholes? Are they really worth losing your kid a second time? She’s all you’ve got. You better get your head out of your ass.”

  Lila turns and bolts out of my cubicle.

  I haven’t been to confession since I was at Trinity High School, back on the southside. I’ve sloughed off going to mass after Christmas, and I told myself it was because I was busy with my caseload. I’m sure it has something to do with what happened to Justin Grant, however. Violence usually helps to shake anyone’s faith.

  The first man I killed happened my third week in combat. It was during a firefight near Quang Tri, I think it was, some obscure hamlet in the boonies. We were on a search and destroy mission, and I was deep into the bush waiting for a VC patrol that we knew had been operating out of Quang Tri.

  He stepped out of the underbrush into a small clearing, and he became a clean target with a quarter moon’s light illuminating the area. I was waiting for him and his platoon, and they showed up as expected, and I gave him a single tap to the forehead from my starlight-scoped rifle, and I sent the back of his skull into the underbrush behind him, and he jerked back like a rag doll on a string.

  There was no drama. There was no theatrical tension or storyline. I simply blew his brains out, his platoon retreated back into the jungle, and that was the extent of the night’s encounter in Quang Tri.

  I have a number of other war stories that I will share with no one, not even a priest. It was the war, and I have to endure the memories.

  But I’m here to talk to Fr. Mark, anyway. It’s almost Lent, so I’m supposed to go to confession anyway. It’s a Saturday evening, and Washington’s Birthday is only several days away, and we haven’t heard anything new on Toliver’s whereabouts, and the surveillance with Jennifer O’Brien has proved fruitless, so far.

  If he doesn’t show as promised at the rally, we’re in the shit. At least I am. And I know that Franklin knows we’ve talked to Marvin Gillespie. He’s aware that Marvin has likely tried to use him as leverage to avoid the hangman. I still have the gut instinct that Franklin will try to fox all of us and show up. I’m betting he’ll come in disguise.

  Unless he really has a death wish. In which case I hope I’m the cop standing close enough to put one shot, one tap, into his brain pan.

  I take my turn in the old-fashioned confession booth. We’re separated by a screen, and you can only faintly make out the outline of the priest’s face, on the other side.

  “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

  He asks me the last time I went to confession, and I start doing a tap dance. I can’t remember when it was, and then I tell him about going at Trinity, a thousand years ago. He laughs gently and tells me to go on.

  I tell him I feel bad about the way I talked to Lila the last time we were in my office together. I tell him I should not have blamed her for pulling back from me, that she had every right to decide that I wasn’t right for her. I tell the priest that I don’t blame her for not loving me, that I’m extremely difficult to love. Case in point being my daughter Kelly. I explain how distant and detached I used to be to her,
and he replies that it seems I’m trying to fix that problem if I’m here telling him all about it. I explain that things are better with my daughter now, and he tells me I’m doing all that I can if I’m trying to put our relationship back the way it should be.

  “I’m a police officer.”

  “I know,” Fr. Mark says. “I’ve seen your picture in the paper.”

  He must have excellent vision through this screen separating us.

  “I’m hunting the man who killed six prostitutes. As well as a few other murderers, too.”

  “I understand.”

  “I want to kill the man who murdered those women.”

  “That’s not your job, is it.”

  “No, Father, it’s not my job, but my partner was killed during the investigation of this guy.”

  “So you blame Franklin Toliver—isn’t that his name?—for the death of your fellow policeman.”

  “I blame myself, too.”

  “Because you’re alive and he’s dead.”

  “Yes. And I know I shouldn’t think that way.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, was it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “The other man pulled the trigger, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  “Killing Toliver won’t bring your partner back, and you already knew that.”

  “I know.”

  “You have a daughter. She needs you. Why would you jeopardize both your lives for a murderer?”

  “I was trained to kill my enemies, Father.”

  “The war is over.”

  “I know.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you know.”

  “I’m not a murderer. I was a soldier, then.”

  “You’re a policeman now. And you’re someone’s father. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t throw your life away, Detective Mangan.”

  “I know you’re right, Father.”

  “Damn right I’m right. Say ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers and ten Glory Be’s and stop acting like a jackass, Danny.”