The Underground Detective: A Novel of Chicago Streets

by Thomas Laird

  The only place we didn’t check was that garage. So I’m going back now to have a look. And I didn’t invite Lila to come with me because I don’t want her anywhere near that place in DesPlaines.

  This time I arrive in full daylight, about 12:19 P.M. I show the State Policeman out front my badge, and he smiles and waves me on through to the backyard. I walk directly to the garage, and I enter through a side entrance that is unlocked. It’s not locked because the garage is barren. There is nothing, not even a newspaper.

  There is, however, a small pool of oil on top of the cement on the left hand stall side. I touch it. I’m no expert, but I think it may be fresh.

  If he’s been parking a vehicle in that garage, it’s a stolen car, of course. Nothing with wheels was left available for him to drive once he was tossed into Elgin. His father, as I say, is not a resource for him, and the Lieutenant Governor has extra security guards watching him twenty-four-seven in Springfield. I doubt that Franklin wants to wander out of his comfort zone.

  So I drive over to the DesPlaines PD and talk with a Lieutenant Gunnerson. He looks as Scandinavian as his last name sounds. He’s a light brown-headed giant—he’s got to top six feet five. His hands are like huge paws. His right covers my own hand when he shakes with me.

  I ask him if he can FAX me any reports of stolen cars in his town over the last month. He says he’d be happy to, and he tells me he’s hoping we collar Franklin yesterday. I smile and thank him for his cooperation.

  How’d he get back to this area without transport? I’m guessing he hitchhiked or he walked. People who allow strangers into their cars on highways aren’t the brightest bulbs in the batch. You really don’t know who the hell you’re picking up on the road, and I hope I don’t offend all those Jack Kerouac On the Road fanatics, but there’s a good reason hitching is illegal in Illinois. Me, I’d rather walk. It’s much safer.

  Has he been cooping in that garage or inside the house? He always seems to be several paces ahead of me, just when I think I know where he’s lighted. Maybe he’s psychic. Maybe he’s clairvoyant or whatever.

  Lila’s experience has me thinking spook. The only spooks I used to know were CIA operatives in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. They were very human spooks, even though many of them were stone killers. But then, who am I to talk? The only difference that I can see is that I did my trigger time in uniform, straight up. The CIA fellows were chameleons, they blended into the background as well as white guys could, even though not all of them were Caucasians.

  I’ve got a ghost and Franklin and the Aryan Nation working on me all at the same time, not to mention I’m still in conversation with Dr. Fernandez about my fractured previous relationship with Mary, my ex. I’ve got a wedding coming up at Christmastime, and I’ve got a rehabilitated daughter going to school sixty miles away from me where I can’t keep an eye on her.

  I don’t think Kelly’s location was listed in my personnel file, but Toliver has had some success finding out other things before, so who knows if he knows where my kid is.

  I call Kelly late that same afternoon. She has a phone in her dorm room, and luckily I catch her there.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Just checking in. I want to come see you this weekend.”

  “Can we make it the next weekend, Dad? I’ve got three tests, next week.”

  “Oh yeah, no problem. Is it okay if I call you, though?”

  She goes quiet for a moment.

  “Are you worried about me, Dad?”

  “Always.”

  “You don’t have to be. I’m fine.”

  “How’s Matt?”

  “He’s great…. Dad, c’mon. What is it?”

  “Nothing, I just—“

  “It’s Toliver again. Right?”

  “Yeah. You haven’t been getting any strange calls, have you?”

  “No. Nothing. Really.”

  “You know what he looks like, right?”

  “His picture’s been on TV and in the papers so many times, Dad, that it would be impossible not to recognize that creep.”

  “I called the DeKalb police and told them about you, and they said they’d try and keep a lookout for Toliver. They’ve got his photos, too.”

  “You really need to quit worrying about me so much.”

  “Not likely. You been eating?”

  “I gained three pounds.”

  “Good, you could use ten more.”

  “You want me to get fat?” she laughs.

  “I want you to live forever and laugh like hell every single day, Kelly.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “You there?”

  “I’m here. I wish you wouldn’t get sentimental on me, though.”

  “I know how tough you are. You’re my girl. I got a lot of unused sentiment for you that I never used before, and I’m damn well gonna spread it thick as glue on you.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. Really.”

  “I don’t want to hold you up, so I’ll call you on the weekend. Okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Talk to you soon.”

  We end the call.

  In early September, I notice that my pants are getting tighter. I don’t see any swelling in my face when I look in the mirror as I’m shaving. Lila wants me to grow a mustache, but I’m trying to put her off. She says the mustache would give my face “definition.” I think it would give me more hair and a chance at seconds for anything I eat or drink, but she doesn’t appreciate my attempt at humor.

  But she does agree that I’m putting some poundage on, so we decide to run in the mornings together since we’re both working days. We get out of the house at 5:00 A.M. so that we can both clean up and eat breakfast before we go on shift. Lila is very big about breakfast, and she tells me because I skip it so often it could be a contributing factor to the weight gain. She wants me to eat only three meals, no junk food, and she doesn’t want either of us to eat later than six at night. She says if we stop at six, it gives our metabolism a shot at burning calories. So I go along with her. All I’ve got to lose is tonnage.

  We do a route down our block and we keep going four more blocks in that direction. Then we take a right and do four more blocks, and then a right again and four more blocks and then another right and then home. I think it’s about a mile and a quarter. Lila is starting us out slow. I’m wearing my sweat pants and a sweatshirt and my old White Sox baseball cap. She’s wearing running pants and a tank top that makes me want to pick her up and drag her back to the bedroom, but I refrain and we continue running.

  I get to see the neighborhood this way, even though it’s dark when we begin our route through the southwest side neighborhood. The homes are mostly brick and mostly bungalows and ranches. Most of the yards are much smaller than mine, but just about everyone has a dog inside a fence, and we get a lot of these mutts yapping as we pass by, out on the sidewalk.

  I enjoy the jog. It’s a jog, Lila explains, because we’re both hitting middle age, and neither of us needs shin splints or stress fractures. I tell her I never had anything like that, but she says she’s taking precautions.

  I have the feeling, occasionally, that somebody’s watching us when we run. I know it’s probably paranoia or overreaction to Toliver being on the loose, but I get that clammy feeling that he’s observing us, somehow. Franklin is hardly omniscient and omnipresent, but I still have the hair stand up on my neck as we run the route, and I still have to jerk looks over my shoulder, from time to time, to make sure someone’s not coming up behind me.

  Fernandez is concerned about my fears that Franklin is lurking about, watching for an opportunity to strike. She spends more time on this early September late afternoon talking about my unfounded fears than she does about the breakup of my first marriage.

  Which is all right by me because I don’t look forward to talking about Mary. Long gone Mary.

  “How
’s it going with Lila?” I ask.

  Fernandez smiles.

  “You know I can’t talk about that with you,” she says.

  “I’ll get it from Lila, then.”

  “Knock yourself out, Danny.”

  I smile back at the knockout Latina shrink.

  “I’m really worried about her.”

  “I know you are, Detective.”

  She’s wearing a bright red lipstick for the first time since I began seeing her here. Her fingernails are painted the same scarlet shade of red.

  “I didn’t see anything. By the time I got up there, all I saw was Lila. Christ, I thought she might be in shock.”

  “Danny, I can’t talk about what Lila and I discuss. You know that.”

  “Well hell, I was there, too.”

  “Were you disappointed you didn’t see anything?”

  “I’m pissed I let her go up those stairs without me. It could’ve just as well been Franklin Toliver up there, with a weapon.”

  “But he wasn’t there, was he.”

  “No. I didn’t see a goddam thing.”

  She rocks in her leather chair gently. She never lets her gaze stray from mine.

  “You religious, Danny?”

  “I’m a Catholic.”

  “I used to be. Not anymore. But I still think of myself as spiritual. And I think there’s more in heaven and earth—You ever read Hamlet?”

  “In high school, I think.”

  “There’s more going on than any of us can comprehend, and when something comes along we don’t understand, the only way we can explain it is to call it supernatural. There’s an explanation for what Lila thinks she saw, but it’s probably not supernatural.”

  “So what would you call it? Tremors? Subterranean gasses? What?”

  “I don’t pretend to know. But without getting too specific, Lila really did see something that disturbed her deeply, so don’t blow it off.”

  “Not happening, Doctor. You don’t blow Lila off.”

  She watches me for a moment, and then her face softens.

  “Franklin Toliver has become an obsession.”

  “He’s been one for a long time.”

  “And we talked about how destructive he can be, just be being out there.”

  “I plan to alter that situation as soon as possible.”

  She grins.

  “I know. I have confidence you’ll do just that. Do you have confidence in yourself, Danny?”

  I look over her shoulder and out at the lakeshore. It’s a brilliant, clear, crystalline September day. Franklin Toliver has no right to occupy me or anyone else on such a day. I wasted enough days being afraid, in the jungle. But those days are with me still, because of him. And because of the things I did, a decade ago.

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?” I ask her.

  I call Kelly on the weekend, on Sunday in the early afternoon. As promised, she’s there, in her dorm room, studying Biology. I’m beginning to believe she’ll be a medical doctor some day soon. I just want to be there when she gets that degree and goes into practice. I want to be her first patient. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my life, except Lila.

  Lila and I have increased our running regimen. We’ve got it up to around two miles, and the jogging has been replaced by a quicker pace. Lila has us both stretch before we begin our pre-dawn run. The running has left my pants a bit less tight, and she’s bought a scale, so we both check our weights on Saturday mornings. My weight is at 183, just five pounds over my Ranger weight. Lila is very pleased with my conditioning, and hers, too, so far.

  But I still have that chilled breeze creeping up the back of my neck as we take off down the street in the dark before the morning, occasionally. It still won’t leave me.

  The third week in September marks the end of summer, and you can feel the change coming on. The humidity lessens, and the air becomes crisp and cool at night, especially. The sky turns a deeper blue, this time of the year, and there is less of a white haze, the way there was back in July and August. The days seem to flee behind us, and Franklin Toliver is still out there, somewhere between DesPlaines and the city. Somewhere out there, still.

  44

  The Captain and I interceded on behalf of Susan Parkley, the girl who works in Personnel, and since I personally told her Supervisor, Janelle Frampton, that Susan was coerced by a member of a hate group to hand out my information, Frampton decided to suspend Parkley for three days without pay and then Susan would be fully reinstated. I tried to get her Supervisor to dump the suspension, but Frampton said there had to be some discipline because Ms. Parkley could’ve reported the threat to her boss. So I shut up and let well enough alone. At least Susan got her job back. One less victim for Franklin Toliver.

  When I went back to the church with Kelly, all those months ago, I asked the priest there to help me secure an annulment. Since Father Bob is a canonical lawyer, he’s been working on it for me all this time, and now, in early October, the annulment comes through. If I hadn’t annulled Mary, I couldn’t marry Lila in the church. You can’t divorce and remarry in Catholicism unless you’re widowed or annulled or never married in the first place.

  So now we can have the church wedding. It’s finally official.

  We have to go through the rigors of pre-wedding instructions. Lila and I have to take a test to see if we’re compatible. It won’t cancel the wedding if we don’t pass, but we’re supposed to see if there are areas we need to work on before we walk the aisle.

  I match up with her pretty well, because, frankly, I’m not real honest with some of my answers. I try to answer the way I think Lila would, and luckily, I do pretty well at putting myself in her place. The results show we’re pretty much inside the same mindset.

  We’re required to go to confession now, and once right before the wedding. The last time I confessed, I told the priest I wanted to murder Franklin Toliver.

  Today, though, I confess to Father Bob. His full name is Father Robert Dowling, but everyone calls him Father Bob. He’s just over seventy, I was told, and he’s been at our church for thirty years, first as Associate Pastor and more recently, for the last fifteen years, as Pastor.

  I’m in the traditional confessional with him, but he knows damn well who he’s talking to, regardless of the black screen between us.

  “Father, forgive me for I have sinned.”

  He asks me about the last time I confessed, and I tell him, but I don’t mention the part about murdering Franklin. One time with that story was enough. I’ve gotten over it. As I say, I’m not an executioner, even though the Lieutenant Governor would have me become one. On the other hand, if I catch up with Franklin, and it’s him or me….

  “I’ve taken the name of the Lord in vain, several times.”

  “Yes.”

  “Lila and I have been living in sin for a few months.”

  “Tell me something I haven’t already heard.”

  “Lila told you that?” I laugh.

  “The confessional is confidential, my son.”

  “Anyway, I love her.”

  “That doesn’t excuse you for living in sin, as you call it.”

  “Yeah, Father, I know.”

  “Who am I to turn back the clock and expect that men like you will keep it in their pants?”

  “Father!”

  “Okay, go on.”

  I try to stop laughing before I continue.

  “Sex outside the sacrament of marriage is nothing to laugh about. I was being sarcastic, so you’ll have to forgive me.”

  “I know you were being sarcastic, Father.”

  “God forgives everything, right? Get on with it.”

  “You in a hurry, Father?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have a dinner engagement at seven.”

  “I’ll try to move it along, then.”

  “Only kidding, Daniel.”

  “Were you the neighborhood wiseguy, Father?”

  “We’re not here to go over ancient history, Da
niel.”

  I hesitate, and suddenly I just have to ask him.

  “Do you really believe in ghosts?” I ask the priest.

  “Of course. It’s integral to the faith.”

  “No, no. I mean other than Jesus coming back from the dead.”

  “What do you mean? Like haunted house ghosts? Edgar Allan Poe? That kind of ghost?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been watching The Exorcist, haven’t you,” he jokes.

  “No. Lila thinks…. Lila thinks she saw a dead woman—I mean she thinks she saw the ghost or the spirit of someone who committed suicide, not long ago.”

  “Lila doesn’t seem like the flighty type.”

  “She sure as shit isn’t…. Sorry.”

  “Go on. What about this apparition or whatever?”

  “We were investigating the whereabouts of Franklin Toliver—You know, the man who killed those six prostitutes and then escaped from Elgin.”

  “Yes, unfortunately I’ve read about him.”

  “We were in the family home, looking for Toliver, and while I was in the basement I heard Lila scream, and when I got to her she was nearly in shock. And now she’s seeing the Department psychiatrist. So am I, seeing the shrink I mean.”

  “And your concern is?”

  “I know this isn’t really my confession. I just wanted to know if you think Lila might really have seen Mrs. Toliver. The story is that some State policemen saw her, too, at that house. But that’s really just hearsay.”

  “Do you think they saw her, too?”

  “I think they saw something. And I know Lila doesn’t lie.”

  “Lazarus came back from the dead. We believe in eternal life. I myself have never seen someone come back from the dead, but I have faith that we really are reborn, Daniel. No, I don’t think it’s over when it’s over, or even when the fat lady in the opera finally sings. But how about you?”