There was a long silence at the other end. She blew out smoke and said, “What? What are you talking about, Mr. Whelan?”
“Rich Vosic’s people trashed my office, lady. They tore up every single piece of furniture, every item in or on my desk, everything on the walls, the shades on the windows. All of it. I came in and my office looked like a hobo camp. They even busted up my phone.”
The same long silence and then a hissing sound, exasperation, and she said, “Shit.” She made a short, tight little syllable out of it and it didn’t sound as though she used it much, but there was sincerity in it, it came from the heart.
“Excuse me?” Whelan said.
“That…moron. He just makes me…” He could almost hear her scraping the edges of her brittle teeth together. “Mr. Whelan, I never intended for any of this to cause you trouble.”
“That was a little naive, if you’ll forgive my saying so. You go rooting around in somebody’s life, you occasionally make someone angry, irrationally angry. And Rich Vosic does fancy himself a tough guy. This is not so out of character. These guys who spend too much time in the gym, they all think they’re Muhammad Ali.”
“I just never expected it to get to this.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I will see that all your expenses are taken care of and that you are compensated appropriately. Mr. Whelan, I have to get back to you. Where are you calling from?”
“I’m at my office.”
“Your office? I thought they…you said they ruined your phone…” She sounded confused.
“They did. I got a new one. I’m speaking to you on it. I just picked it up this morning—it used to be Vosic’s.”
“What?”
“I took it from his office. Don’t be shocked. It was a fair trade—I left them the one they busted up.”
There was a pause and then she laughed. It didn’t come from anywhere deep, but it was a laugh, just the same.
“You really are an unusual man, Mr. Whelan. Aren’t you afraid you’ve made more trouble for yourself?”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ve made more trouble for myself, but I didn’t start it. They would have been a little pissed off at me anyhow, Mrs. Fairs, because I’ve been warned off and I’ve decided to pay absolutely no attention to them. Or you, for that matter—if you’ll forgive my impertinence.”
“I’m not sure I will. What can I do to make you understand that this doesn’t involve you, Mr. Whelan?”
“Not a damn thing, as far as I can see. Because it does involve me. They made it involve me, Mrs. Fairs. They cemented our relationship. Now I’m officially involved. And you did, too, lady. You convinced me that there were two murders here that involved these people, and you and other people convinced me that there is no interest on the part of the police in my particular line of inquiry. So I’m here for the duration.”
“You will cause me no end of irritation, Mr. Whelan.” She paused and he could hear her sucking at the cigarette. Time to push.
“Sorry. I still have too many unanswered questions. And a couple of them are about you.”
“I have no idea what you could possibly need to know about me, Mr. Whelan.”
“I really want to know what you know now. And I want to know about Henley. And I want to know why you’re out socializing with Ronald Vosic while his big brother is acting out movie fantasies about scaring people off.” She said nothing and he was pleased with himself.
“I am finding you to be a very unpleasant man, Mr. Whelan.” She sounded as though she was speaking through clenched teeth.
“I’m not surprised, Mrs. Fairs. All the other men you know seem to be assholes. No wonder you want to think I’m one, too. You have a nice day now, hear?” He held out the phone, and when he could hear the tinny sounds of protest coming from it, he hung up.
He fished out a cigarette and lit it and told himself he’d give a lot to be a fly on her wall right now. When he finished his cigarette he decided to be the next best thing.
He parked in almost exactly the same place and sat on a bench across from Mr. Shakespeare. A few yards away a pair of slender, young women had coated themselves with suntan lotion and little else. They looked to be in their early twenties, light years away from his life. He looked at them and then looked away. He had other opportunities available to him now, and it was up to him to see the value in them. The value in a woman his age, a nice woman who could keep up a decent conversation and liked to laugh and had kind eyes and a sense of humor and a nice figure. And, in all honesty, a woman who was quite a bit more of a find than he had any right to expect.
I’m forty years old and living on the fringe and I meet a nice woman about once every eleven years, he said to himself, and this is my one shot for the 1980s.
Janice Fairs emerged from the Harrison-Stratford Hotel and brought him back to the here and now. A valet dressed like a ringmaster fell all over himself trying to flag down a cab, but she spoke to him with a quick shake of her head and began to walk up Lincoln Park West. Whelan got up and followed her.
He kept east of her, walking along Stockton Drive parallel to her, with one tiny city block between them. There was a good deal of foot traffic on both sides of the street, and on Whelan’s side the park seemed to be overrun with strollers and buggies and large families festooned with balloons. He threaded his way through all the zoo aficionados and tried to keep her in sight. It was hard to stay with her—she had fewer obstacles and she walked with the quick strides of someone on a schedule. Even when she went into a group of people he could pick her out from her stiff posture and speedy progress.
At the corner of Webster and Lincoln Park West, she stopped in front of Mel Markon’s restaurant and looked around. She checked her watch, looked around again, and then fished inside her bag for a cigarette. She lit it and began puffing away in what Whelan thought must be a very uncharacteristic display of public nerves. He sat down on a bench a few yards from the corner and watched her, confident that she wouldn’t notice him here if she was not looking for him.
A Checker cab pulled up in front of Markon’s and the younger Vosic emerged.
Ronald Vosic straightened his beige summer jacket and ran one hand quickly over his hair. He reached for Janice Fairs’s hands but one was cramped around her purse and the other held a cigarette. The look she gave him would have put anyone on notice that this was not a festive occasion.
Vosic said something breezy and got a short, harsh answer back from Janice Fairs. She blew smoke out and squinted up the street and talked without looking at him. He said something to her and she gave him a sudden, irritated glance, then put her face close to his and spoke to him with an urgency that Whelan could almost feel forty yards away.
Vosic took a step back and thrust both hands in his pockets. There was a slump to his shoulders and a subservient tilt to his head now. Whelan smiled. Body language speaks volumes.
Finally he saw Janice Fairs shrug. With a curt nod she indicated the restaurant behind them and went inside through the revolving door without waiting for Ron Vosic. Vosic looked around him as though considering a fast exit, then shook his head and went in after her.
Whelan decided that this couple was worth waiting for. He’d had hopes of catching a ball game, had even toyed with the idea of wandering over to the ballpark and buying a ticket from a scalper, just for the chance to cheer the returning Cubs, the victorious Cubs, the first-place Cubs. His Cubs. He smoked a couple of cigarettes and walked idly up and down the park, and then Janice Fairs and Ronald Vosic emerged from Mel Markon’s. They parted quickly at the corner and Janice Fairs walked on to her hotel while Vosic walked west toward Clark Street. Whelan went back to his car and followed slowly. Vosic hailed a Flash cab at Clark and Dickens, and Whelan tailed it up Clark. He followed the cab until it stopped at the corner of Clark and Fullerton and let Vosic out. Vosic entered the Medinah Restaurant.
Maybe this guy’s got a tapeworm, Whelan thought. He parked in a no-parking zone and
went in after Vosic. He wasn’t in the restaurant or at the small dark bar; he was in a phone booth. Whelan went back out, got into the Jet moments before a squad car pulled up behind him and started writing out tickets, and took off for the office. He expected a phone call. Perhaps lots of phone calls.
“Oh, you’ve got calls, all right. Baby, you’ve been popular.” Shelley laughed into the phone.
“And from whom?”
“You had a call from the Witch of the North again, and you had one from Rich Vosic, and you had another one maybe twenty minutes ago from somebody that doesn’t like you.”
“These days that doesn’t narrow it down much. He leave his name?”
“No. He said to tell you you were sticking your nose in places where it could get busted. And when I told him I was just the answering service he got all embarrassed and started apologizing.” She laughed, a deep, resonant, barroom laugh. “You know what he said then? He said to forget about the message.” She laughed again. “Like I could forget something like that, you know? Oh, Paul Whelan, you are the most interesting client we have.”
Whelan laughed. It had to be Ronald Vosic. Every organization needed a loose cannon, and Ron was Rich’s loose cannon. He thought for a moment—twenty minutes ago he had been watching Ron Vosic pump coins into a pay phone, so he was calling Whelan while Whelan sat perhaps fifteen feet away. He laughed again.
“Here’s a thought for you, Shel. Imagine this guy calling me up with this message and getting Abraham.”
Apparently this notion caught Shelley in her laughing spot. It was almost a minute before she could compose herself.
“I didn’t tell you, baby, Abraham’s wife is gonna have a baby. Abraham’s gonna be a daddy and he’s coming all undone. You think you had trouble talking to him before? Wait till you have a chance to talk to him now. He answered the phone in Hindi one day. Hindi, that’s what they speak there. You believe that? Started talking to this guy in Hindi.” She cackled happily to herself and then made an effort to get it under control.
“Listen, baby, can I ask you something? None of my business, of course, but…are you in deeper than you should be? Maybe this guy was no rocket scientist, but he sounded serious. Maybe you should take it seriously.”
“If it’s who I think it is, it’s not that serious. There’s one guy out there who really is somebody to step wide of, Shel, but if he wanted to talk to me he wouldn’t leave the message with my service, and he probably wouldn’t use the phone. He’d be here now. This other fella is a product of his time—too much TV when he was a kid and now he thinks he’s Wild Bill Hickock. Well…I guess I’m never gonna be the popular guy I wanted to be.”
“Aw, you’re still my hero, Paul.”
“Thanks, Shel. Talk to you later.”
Phone threats from Ron Vosic and personally delivered ones from big brother Rich. I’ve got all these folks coming to look me up, all of them, and the guy they’re really concerned about is big and bald and I haven’t heard from him yet.
Whelan lit up a cigarette and filled the office with blue smoke.
He killed the afternoon watching baseball, enjoying the novelty of the Cubs appearing on the game of the week. The game was in the third inning when he got home and the Cubs were already leading three-zip. Dennis Eckersley was on the mound and it was his day—he was ahead of every hitter, missing the plate only when he felt like it, and the wind was blowing out and Cub hitters were lofting fly balls into it and watching them sail out toward Waveland Avenue. By the seventh inning four Cubs had homered and the Phillies were on their fifth pitcher, and the announcers seemed to think there would be a play-off at Wrigley Field this year.
He had dinner at Filipiniana, a little Filipino restaurant a couple of blocks from Wrigley Field. It was early and he was the only customer, but he knew the owner and her food and the lack of a crowd didn’t worry him. He had lumpiang shanghai, crunchy little eggrolls filled with meat, the deluxe fried rice, which came with a half dozen large shrimp nesting on top, and an order of pansit, the national dish, stir-fried noodles with vegetables and various kinds of meat.
He finished his meal and had a cigarette and put together his game plan for the evening, which was quite simply to seek out some of the many people who seemed to want to talk to him. He left his money on the table, waved to the little Filipino woman, and went out. Bauman was waiting for him.
Bauman leaned against the gray Caprice and picked his teeth. He smiled and indicated the Filipino restaurant with a nod. “This place any good? Yeah, I guess it would be if you go there. You got good taste in restaurants, Whelan. I don’t know shit about Filipino food, though.”
Whelan shrugged. “It’s a little bit of everything—Chinese and Spanish, it’s got a couple different kinds of eggrolls, it’s got noodle dishes like Thai food and stir-fry stuff like Chinese and Korean.” Bauman studied the front of the restaurant with something like longing.
Whelan laughed. “Let me guess, you ate across the street, right?”
Bauman shrugged. The Royal Palace was across the street, a hamburger stand that defied description or categorization—it was big and white and brightly lit and stayed open all night, and the food was a cross between early greasy spoon and White Castle, little skinny fries and hamburgers of various sizes as well as hot dogs and Italian beef and Polish sausage. A visit to the Royal Palace in the middle of the night was a descent into the netherworld, Edward Hopper on PCP, one of Dante’s circles crammed into a whitewashed stone box and dropped onto a Chicago street corner.
Whelan shook his head. “You should have come in and visited, since you went to the trouble of following me.”
“I’m not following nobody. I saw your car around the corner, figured you were inside.”
“I don’t think so. Brown Oldsmobiles don’t exactly scream for attention, and there are a half dozen places I could be in around here.”
Bauman made a show of looking around the corner. “Liquor store, two saloons, two hamburger joints, and one little place run by foreigners; where would you look for Paul Whelan?”
“Good story. You stick to it, Bauman. Now, tell me what you want.”
Bauman spread his arms. “Who says I want somethin’? Like I said, I saw the car, I decided to wait for you. Why, you got something I would want, Whelan?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“If I found something, Bauman, I’d give it to anybody I thought might pay attention to it. Seems to me you’ve got a very short attention span. You’ve got no time for anybody but this mysterious black gentleman.”
Bauman shrugged. “He ain’t any mystery to me, Whelan. I know his name and where he eats and what kinda women he likes and what size shorts he’s wearin’.” Bauman sniffed and took out one of his skinny cigars, wet the end, lit it with a stick match, and shrugged. “Seen him lately?”
“Only the one time. I couldn’t invite him back. He didn’t leave a number where he could be reached.”
“What, you need stuff written down? I thought you were psychic, Whelan. I thought maybe you read tea leaves or something. How do the Irish foretell the future, Whelan? You shake sheep bones in a cup and toss ’em on a table?” Bauman rocked back on his heels, obviously enjoying himself.
“We read the bumps on a potato. It’s not an exact science yet, but we’re simple people.”
“What the hell, if I can’t piss you off, Whelan, what fun are you?” He puffed on the cigar till a gray cloud hovered over him. Whelan studied the mottled face and saw a man going into a tailspin.
“You want to talk, Bauman, we can go someplace and get a cup of coffee.”
Bauman took the cigar out of his mouth and frowned. “I don’t need a cup of coffee. Wouldn’t mind a cocktail, though.”
“What a surprise.”
“Put a lid on it, Snoop.”
“I give money to the bums, Bauman. You gonna be one of them? Okay, maybe you are. Let’s go have a cocktail.”
Bauman was a long time staring. Then he took a la
st pull at the cigar and tossed it. “Let’s go.”
“Where to? One of the saloons around here?”
Bauman looked as if he’d just stepped in something. “Around here? What, are you shitting me? The Cubs just played three hours ago and it’s about eighty-eight, and every gin mill in this neighborhood is filled with drunks in Cubs hats lookin’ for an excuse not to go home.”
“So where are you taking me?”
Bauman gave him a sly smile. “You don’t have no hot social engagements, do you?”
“No. You?”
“Fuck no, I ain’t had one of them in about five years. Come on, we’ll go someplace good.”
“Someplace good” took them completely out of the neighborhood, all the way out to Belmont and Cicero. When Whelan saw the tall black transmitter of the WXRT radio station he knew where they were headed.
“We’re going to the Bucket.”
Bauman nodded and smiled without looking at him. “Figured you’d know the Bucket, Whelan. Guy like you, streetwise guy that likes taverns, you gotta know about the Bucket.”
“The greatest tavern in a city of five thousand taverns.”
Bauman nodded, turned onto Cicero, pulled over across from Joe Danno’s dog-eared little tavern, and parked.
The place looked closed, as always, but Bauman just pulled the door open, yelled out, “Hello, Joe,” and walked in. Whelan followed and waved to the short, white-haired man behind the bar.
Joe Danno looked at Bauman and nodded. “Hey, Al. How they treatin’ you?” He squinted at Whelan through his thick glasses and blinked. He looked from Whelan to Bauman and back to Whelan again. “Hello, Paul. Couple of old cops, eh? I didn’t know you two guys knew each other.”
“It’s not something I tell a lot of people, Joe,” Whelan said. They took seats at the ancient, scarred bar and stared at the hundreds upon hundreds of open liquor bottles that lined the back bar, some of them showing labels of distillers out of business for thirty years. Here at the Bucket they had eternal life.
A Body in Belmont Harbor Page 24
