The Underground Detective: A Novel of Chicago Streets

by Thomas Laird

  “Herman! Sit!” Ellsworth commands, and the German shepherd meekly obeys, at the bottom of the rungs.

  I watch Herman as I pass him, and the dog eyeballs me right back. I have my right hand ready to reach for my weapon in my waistband holster, but the dog whimpers a bit, and I’m beyond him. I assume Herman’s a he.

  Ellsworth turns on the fluorescent overhead lights, and the room is blaringly light. There are swastikas and German flags from World War II and the obligatory poster of the Fuehrer on the wall, as well. It makes my stomach literally turn, but I needed to talk to this asshole.

  He has a desk. There is a chair opposite the desk, so we sit.

  “You know what aiding and abetting mean?” I ask.

  The tree stump remains mute. I’d like to shoot him and rescue his dog.

  “How long you been on probation?” I smile.

  That gets his undivided attention.

  “You been keeping your distance from the kiddies?” I keep smiling.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Remember the stuff about aiding and abetting? That’s what you’d be doing if you didn’t tell me that Franklin Toliver has contacted you and asked for help from you and the Nation.”

  “Toliver has never called here. He wouldn’t. He knows the FBI has our phones tapped.”

  “Isn’t that a bitch. Where’s privacy, anymore? Where are all our civil liberties? Oh! I forgot. You lovers don’t believe in civil liberties. You’re fascists! Shit, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

  The stump is coloring with rage. I wish he would get physical. Maybe all this stress I’ve been discussing with Fernandez would be released if I could kick hell out of this piece of flotsam.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “If you withhold on me, dickhead, I’ll be there behind you wherever you go. Yeah, harassment. But you’ll never be able to prove it. I made my living shadowing the little people far, far away in an old lost war. I’ll make you my personal fucking pincushion, Richard—or do they call you Dick?”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you don’t want to talk to me anymore? I know your probation officer—Tim McCain? He speaks very highly of you. He knows you liked Menard so well that you’d just love to go back for a lifetime visit. Nice prison, Menard. All kinds of interesting dickwads, there. I’ve visited a few, put a few there, myself.

  “I’ll be talking to you, Dick.”

  I rise from my chair, but he stays seated.

  “Tell the dog to behave. I’d much rather put a round in your forehead than in his.”

  He yells out for Herman to stay.

  Then I make the ascent from this primeval cave to the surface.

  The phone calls start two nights later. Lila is the unfortunate recipient.

  “What does he say?” I ask.

  “He doesn’t say anything. I can just hear him breathing lightly.”

  “We have an unlisted phone number. Our address isn’t published, Lila.”

  “I know. But he knows where we are,” she says.

  I ask the FBI to tap my phone at home, and they agree. I ask them how they think he got my number. They respond the only way they can figure it is if someone at CPD is handing out information.

  I walk downstairs to Personnel. The supervisor’s name is Maryann Dempsey. She’s been with us for twenty-two years. We go into her office, and I shut the door behind me.

  “I think someone in your office has given out my phone number, and maybe other personal information about me.”

  She’s heavy, but she has a very pretty face with abundant strawberry blonde hair haloing her head. She looks like a PTA mom.

  “I don’t think that’s very likely, Detective. These are all solid people who work in this office.”

  “Anybody relatively new, in here?”

  “There are two girls who were hired two years and three years ago, respectively.”

  “You do checks on all of them?”

  “Sure,” she replies.

  “I’m not here to assign blame on anyone, Maryann, but you’ve heard of Franklin Toliver?”

  She nods.

  “You’d have to be in Tibet not to have heard of him. We were all shocked when they put him in Elgin, Detective Mangan.”

  This time I nod.

  “He’s been calling my house.”

  “He has?”

  There’s nothing feigned about her reply. She sounds sincerely shocked.

  “Our federal brethren seem to think the only likely place he could’ve gained access to that information is here. So, what color are the two newest employees in here?”

  “They’re both white, but we have a number of Hispanics and African Americans here, too.”

  “Maryann, I’m not with the NAACP. Relax. I just figure it isn’t likely that the Aryan Nation would have a non-white mole working in Personnel. Do you think it’d be likely?”

  She shakes her head.

  “We’re going to see if we can trace any calls from here to the outside. They were probably smart enough not to make any calls from your phones, but maybe we’ll get lucky. The storm troopers and their followers have never been known for their intellects, but they’d make good weasels. I just came here to ask you to keep your eye out, for me. The FBI is going to check any of your outgoing calls for the past few weeks. Please keep all this confidential. Okay?”

  She nods again, and I can see she’s upset. I feel like giving her a hug and buying her some coffee and a doughnut, but I don’t have time.

  Lila picks up the phone. And ten seconds into the call, she pulls out her police whistle and lets loose into the speaker end of the phone. The blast nearly explodes my own eardrums, and then she slams the thing back into its cradle.

  “Jesus, I think you made me deaf,” I tell her.

  “I hope I made Franklin go dumb, I mean really dumb. Or is it deaf?”

  “It’s deaf. Dumb means you can’t speak,” I tell her.

  “Whatever.”

  “I hope it was Franklin, not somebody who didn’t speak up fast enough.”

  We now have our second border collie, Snuffy. He’s six months old, but he’s already granted Sonny the alpha male role that Sonny deserves around our house. The two of them are inseparable, so keeping one inside and one outside isn’t going to work. They’re like twin brothers, although Sonny is twice as old as Snuffy.

  “They’ll make plenty of noise if someone approaches the house,” I tell Lila.

  “I want them both inside at night, okay?”

  “They’d be inside no matter what. You know I don’t let them stay outside after dark. The bugs would walk away with them.”

  We had the security system installed last week. The house is wired, top to bottom. And they put movement sensitive lights in the front and the back of the house. Anybody comes near, a blaze of wattage erupts.

  I brought two shotgun pumps into the house. They’re next to the bed when we go to sleep at night. Lila has her piece on the nightstand, and so do I. Just for good measure, I keep my six-inch switchblade on the nightstand, as well, and I keep the knife in my pocket whenever I go outside. My .38 is always on my waist in its holder.

  So it’s not like we’re unprepared.

  But the phone calls spook Lila, even with her police whistle. They disturb me, also.

  And I’m thinking real hard about granting Raymond Toliver’s request for me to put one right in his son’s noggin, if Franklin will just cooperate.

  41

  The FBI is able to trace the call made to Richard Ellsworth, my buddy, Dick, and the call was made by Susan Parkley. We find out that Parkley has been an employee of the CPD Personnel Division for eighteen months. She has no known connection to the Aryan Nation, but the Feds find out she’s the second cousin of that same Richard, Dick, Ellsworth.

  The FBI guys allow me to bring Parkley in for an interview. I see her alone in the interrogation room down the hall from me, but there are a few witness
es outside, watching and listening through the one-way window/mirror.

  Susan is only twenty-eight years old. Her jacket says she just graduated community college, a two-year program, and that she’s the single mother of a four- year-old son by a now gone south marriage. I start to feel bad for her, until I remember that she put Lila and me in jeopardy with Franklin Toliver and the Aryan Nation.

  We’ve since changed our phone number, but she gave out our address—which we’re not changing.

  I look at her, and she drops her eyes to the table in front of her. I’m sitting directly opposite Susan Parkley.

  “You know you’re going to lose your job,” I tell her.

  She looks up and the tears well in her eyes.

  “Why’d you tell your cousin my information, Susan?”

  She begins to bawl. I hand her the box of tissues next to me. She blows her nose.

  “You know that your cousin gave that information to Franklin Toliver, don’t you? And you know I’m the cop who arrested Toliver. Why would you do it? Did he offer you money?”

  “No. He threatened me. He threatened my son. What could I do?”

  “You could’ve told me, instead, Susan. I would’ve helped you. Now he’s lost your job for you.”

  She sobs quietly.

  “I read how hard you worked to get where you are. And you’re a single parent.”

  “I’m so sorry, Detective. I didn’t mean you any harm, but he said I’d come home one night and Randy, my son, wouldn’t be there, and he said that if I told the police, if I told anyone, he’d kill us both. Do you know what kind of animals these people are?”

  “Yeah, I do. But I have a daughter and someone else I love very much, Susan. This man, Toliver, wants to do us harm, too.”

  “I wish I could change what happened, Detective. I’m so very sorry.”

  “Did Ellsworth mention anything about Toliver when he contacted you?”

  “No. He never said why he wanted your personal information. I told him I’d get fired, and then he threatened to kill me.”

  “Would you testify that he threatened you?”

  “He said he’d kill both of us, Detective.”

  “He can’t hurt you if he’s in jail, Susan. And the Aryan boys have enough heat on them from the FBI because of a slew of civil rights crimes. They won’t want to get into it because Ellsworth was dumb enough to have you call him from Headquarters. Your cousin is too dumb to live, and you can bet the Brotherhood will be happy to get rid of this moron.”

  “Can I get any protection?”

  “If you work with me, I’ll make it happen.”

  She looks at me sadly. She’s a single mother, thirty pounds overweight, and she’s about to become unemployed.

  “I’m so sorry this all happened,” she says.

  “You help me with Ellsworth, and I tell them that you were coerced into handing out the information, maybe we can save your job, Susan. I don’t know. No promises, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  I’m thinking this bastard Toliver and his friends like Richard Ellsworth have already hurt too many innocents. It’s time to contain the body count.

  The dog is in the backyard. Luckily he’s as dumb as his master, and he goes for the pound of ground chuck I throw him over the fence before he gets the chance to start barking at me and waking up Ellsworth. It takes three minutes for Herman to scarf down the chuck, and it takes about twelve more minutes for three of Lila’s sleeping pills, mixed inside the raw meat, to put Herman night-night. He finally slumps down on his side and konks.

  It’s past three in the A.M., the best time for a raid or an ambush. I was fortunate I was upwind when the German shepherd saw me tossing him his sleep-inducing treat. I’m hoping he won’t OD on the sleeping pills, but I’m no vet, and I couldn’t have him disturbing Richard.

  Once the pooch is out like a light and on his back and snoring, I climb the six-foot chain link fence and walk over to Ellsworth’s back door. I take out my pick, and I have his deadbolt opened in under a minute. I learned how to break and enter when I was a Burglary detective, just before I made Homicide. It is of course very illegal to enter anyone’s residence this way, with or without a search warrant.

  The time to play fair has come and departed. Toliver’s fucking with my family, and I include Lila in “family” even though we’re not married yet and won’t be until the week before Christmas. I could go to jail for this, naturally, but Kelly and Lila and I could get killed by Franklin Toliver, on the other hand, so I figure this is well worth the risk. I won’t allow him to threaten my two women. If I could kill enemies in Vietnam, then I can do the same in this country. Again, going by the rulebook has allowed Franklin to go free. The gloves are finally off.

  I walk into the kitchen of Ellsworth’s bungalow. There are dirty dishes in the sink, and the garbage can is over-stacked, and the can stinks of tuna fish.

  I’m wearing my requisite all black, pants and tee shirt. I’ve also got my black running shoes on. It’s a blistering evening in late August, and thankfully he’s got central air conditioning, which was why I was able to approach the dog outside. Even if he had begun to bark, Ellsworth might not have heard him for a while because everything is shut up inside his house, and he’s got his storm windows secured, as well.

  I walk toward the bedroom on the main floor, just outside the kitchen. Actually, there are two bedrooms, here. I can hear Ellsworth snoring in the second bedroom, just down this entry hallway. His door is opened. It would really be nice if he were giving shelter to Franklin, so just in case, I check the first bedroom, the one with the closed door. But there’s no one inside, and the double bed is made and doesn’t appear as if it’s been used, lately.

  I walk toward the opened bedroom where the grunting and huffing and snarling are coming from. I enter, and in the dimness from the nightlight he has plugged in out in the hall, I can see him on his back, sawing lumberjack logs with his laborious breathing and snoring. Occasionally, he stops breathing, and I figure he’s a candidate for a heart attack soon.

  I quietly break out the duct tape I have in my small carryall bag. I’ve got my .38 in its usual waistband holster on my right flank, but I’ve got all my goods in the bag. It unsnaps quietly.

  He has his arms at his sides. I take the duct tape and gently put an edge under the bed frame, and then I drape the tape across his left arm, then his chest, and finally over his right arm and finally onto the frame on the other side of his bed. I drape six stripes of the duct tape across his upper torso and six more across his lower legs. He has cooperated nicely by remaining asleep. He snores, and then he stops breathing, but he doesn’t awaken.

  Plan B was to knock him out with a shot or three to his face if he had awakened, but that would make all this take longer, waiting for him to come back to consciousness. And I prefer having all this bloodless, too, but it was always up to Ellsworth.

  When I strap his mouth shut, he wakes and tries to lunge himself upright in bed, but the duct tape has him secured.

  I let him see it’s me. I want him to know who’s doing this to him.

  “Hello, Richard,” I tell him as he settles his square head back onto his pillow. He knows he’s bound, by now.

  When I take the switchblade out of my back pocket, and when I flip it open, his eyes go wide. He can only just make out the knife because of the dimness of his bedroom, and I haven’t turned the light on at his bedside. No need for light. This is black work.

  But it’s illuminated in here enough for him to see the six-inch blade.

  “You remember me, don’t you, Richard?”

  He blinks. I guess he’s trying code on me.

  “Sure you do. I was the cop who talked to you about Franklin Toliver. And you were the dumb prick who lied to me that Franklin hadn’t contacted you. But I know you’re the swinging dickless who gave Franklin my phone number and my address. And you’re going to tell me where Toliver is…. Blink if you agree.”

  He doesn’t blink.r />
  “You’re telling me you didn’t tell Toliver my information that your cousin gave you?”

  He moves his head from side to side to tell me he’s not saying what I just proposed.

  “So which is it?”

  He finally decides to blink in affirmation.

  “Where is he?”

  I tear the duct tape off his mouth, and he winces in pain.

  “You make any noise, you know, like crying out for help, I’ll cut your throat, Richard. I’ll never lose any sleep over it, either, just because you think I’m a cop and that cops don’t do things like this. And normally we don’t. But you and Franklin are threatening the people I love, and that’s when the law of the fucking jungle comes home to roost.

  “Are you following all this, Richard?”

  “Yes,” he breathes hoarsely.

  “Where’s Toliver?”

  “I don’t know. Honest to—“

  I grab his crotch and squeeze.

  “Think before you lie. You have both your balls, I assume?”

  “Yeah—Yes.”

  “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll cut a hole through your covers here, and I’ll cut open your scrotum. Then, if you still don’t want to tell me…. Well, you do see where all this is headed, right?”

  He nods because he can’t seem to talk. I have the tip of the switchblade resting right over his genitals.

  “Where is he?”

  “I swear to God I—“

  I grab his nuts through the blanket. Then I release as he squeals and I begin to cut a hole around where I figure his manhood must be.

  “Stop! Christ, please! I don’t know!”

  I get the hole torn out, and I can see his boxer shorts, now. I take the knife and I touch the skin inside the flap.

  “No! Please God no! Okay! Okay!”

  “I’m waiting, Richard.”

  “He’s…. He’s at the house. His old man’s—his mother’s house.”

  “In DesPlaines?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d he get back in there? Aren’t there cops watching it?”