Turner and Fenwick identified themselves.
Ashcroft said, “Are we going to be able to get our personal items from inside?”
Turner watched her carefully in the late spring afternoon. The air was cool and a light breeze blew off the lake. Pathetic dribs of water leaked from the remnants of a few snowdrifts. Ashcroft had red-rimmed eyes and a worried expression. Turner said, “Why don’t we go inside and talk?”
They sat near the front window at a table crammed with papers, boxes, and equipment. Fenwick shoved several phones and piles of papers out of the way.
Turner asked, “Who’s Frank Ricken?”
Ashcroft drew her hand to her throat, her eyes widened. “Was he here?”
“He was the only one here when we arrived,” Turner said.
“He’s not supposed to be here. He got fired last week.”
She told them about the internal bickering that went on in the ward office. One faction after another pushed one cause after the other. Giles supported all of them, but each faction lobbied for more and more of his time. A tear rolled down her cheek. “He genuinely tried to help people. He was always torn, trying to do so much. He always said there wasn’t enough time to help all those who needed it.”
“Why was Ricken fired?” Turner asked.
“Frank always tried too hard. His cause was saving the wetlands. Not a big issue in this ward. He’d get furious if we didn’t care as much as he wanted us to. Gideon helped as much as he could, but Frank was never satisfied.” The alderman had a huge meeting every Saturday with representatives of all the different causes, trying to get them to work together or form coalitions. “Frank took up more and more time at the meetings. He became more and more strident.”
“Do all the people from the causes get jobs in the ward office?” Turner asked.
“No, it was the other way around. If you worked for the alderman, you were encouraged to get involved in a cause.”
“Did Graham ever fight with Giles publicly?” Turner asked.
“At the last meeting he threatened all of us. Told us we’d be sorry for not listening to him. Maybe this is what he meant.”
She retrieved Ricken’s address for them. They asked about other possible conflicts.
Ashcroft said, “Each cause had its advocates, but they all wanted something from the alderman. He could do them good. They wouldn’t want to hurt him.”
“How about personality conflicts in the office?” Turner asked.
She shook her head. “Everybody was too busy. Working here was like the old days in the sixties. We all cared. Dedicated people who wanted to make the world a better place to be.” She plucked a Kleenex from a box on the windowsill and dabbed at her eyes. “We accomplished a lot, and Gideon Giles was the reason. The causes will miss him, but I’ll miss him more. He was a good, kind man. So much compassion.”
“Can you tell us anything about his home life?” Turner asked.
“His wife has a career of her own. She’s a commodities trader down on LaSalle Street. High-powered financial position. I’ve met her numerous times. Seemed to love Gideon. Was always supportive of his causes and his work, as he was of hers.”
“Kids?” Fenwick asked.
“No children. They had their careers.”
They asked about the movements of the people in the office between noon and one-thirty.
She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and thought. Finally she said, “On weekdays, it’s pretty slow here. Weekends the place hums. Today we just had the regulars. Me, Audry the receptionist, and Hank, the legislative assistant.”
“Where were they around noon?” Fenwick asked.
“We locked up the office and scattered. I had errands to run. I’m not sure where Audry and Hank went. It’s Wednesday, so Hank probably went to pick up the weekly printing.”
“Weekly printing?” Fenwick asked.
She pointed to the mounds of brochures around the room. “We do a large volume business with several local printers. Wednesday is the normal pickup day.”
She gave them Audry and Hank’s full names and addresses. Fenwick rummaged through the campaign literature while Turner talked to two uniformed cops and Ashcroft about securing the office for the night. Turner finished and walked over to Fenwick. His partner held up two fistfuls of brochures. “Look at these,” he said. “Got to be hundreds of them.”
Turner glanced at them. “Bring one of each along,” he said. “We can go over them later.” He doubted if the printed ramblings would do anything but waste time.
They left the campaign office at seven, and returned to Area Ten headquarters. At their desks they pulled out blank forms: Case Report, Major Crime Worksheet, Daily Major Incident Log, Supplementary Report. They began the tedious process of documenting everything they’d done that day.
The district commander stopped by at nine-thirty. He asked them how it was going. They told him. The commander shook his head. “I’ve got to have results on this. Get those interviews done on the campaign people and the family first thing tomorrow. The pressure is more pervasive than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve got calls from the superintendent, a number of aldermen, and every other two-bit politician in the city. That doesn’t count the press. Individually they’re ignorable, but collectively it’s tougher to stand up to them. This case is tough. One of the biggest murders in years in this town.” He sighed. “Do what you can, but don’t stay here forever tonight. You’ve got lives to live.”
Fenwick and Turner left at midnight, having put a decent-sized dent in the paperwork, but with a great deal left to do.
THREE
Turner took Harrison to Halsted and then up to Taylor, past the darkened University of Illinois at Chicago campus. He saw Mrs. Talucci through her kitchen window. She looked up, saw him, got up, walked to the window, and threw up the sash. The evening was pleasantly cool.
“You’re up late,” Paul said.
“Can’t sleep,” she said. “Old muscles start to ache.” When she learned he hadn’t had supper, she insisted he come in and have a bite. He sat at her modern butcher-block table. Mrs. Talucci handed him containers of food from the refrigerator. A trade paperback with the title Applied Quantum Mechanics lay open on the table.
Paul asked, “You going back for another degree?”
Casting about for something to do after her husband died, Mrs. Talucci had begun taking courses at the nearby University of Illinois campus. In the past twenty years she’d graduated from three different universities, accumulating one bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. The degree in philosophy had been from the University of Chicago.
She shoved the book aside. “I thought it might put me to sleep,” she said. “I didn’t understand much of the first chapter and that was just an introduction. I know enough math to count my change. That’s just fine with me.”
Fifteen minutes later Paul sipped steaming homemade vegetable soup and ate Italian sausage smothered in thick red tomato sauce, covered with Parmesan and mozzarella cheese, all between slabs of bread baked that afternoon by Mrs. Talucci.
She drank some decaffeinated coffee to keep him company. “You got the case with the alderman,” she said.
He nodded.
“When you called and said you didn’t know what time you’d be home, I guessed. Only one case on the news today that takes that kind of attention. They always give you the toughest ones, the political ones.”
“It’s a job,” Paul said.
She patted his hand. “And you’re the best, but the reward for the best shouldn’t always be more work. They’ve got other cops at that station.”
He said, “Did you know this guy, Giles?”
“Never had a class from him. Heard about him. Saw him on television. Didn’t know him.”
“Any University gossip?”
She thought a minute. “Not that I remember.”
“How about Sorenson, the head of the department.”
“That pompous jerk is a suspect?�
� Mrs. Tallucci asked.
Paul shrugged. “As much as anybody at the moment.”
“He taught a seminar on Philosophical Positivism in Nineteenth-century British Novels. Worst course I ever had. We all knew more than he did. Couldn’t define positivism. Couldn’t cite passages in George Eliot. An absolute fool. I would have dropped the course, but I needed it for my degree.”
Paul finished his dinner and walked home.
A cloudy Thursday morning, spring forgotten, a sharp wind blowing off Lake Michigan. Paul threw on a bulky knit sweater. His turn to cook breakfast.
Brian came in and plunked his baseball uniform, cap, and glove on the table.
“Not on the table.” Paul’s directive was almost as automatic as was Brian’s retrieval of his gear and placing it on a chair. Paul wondered why his teenager couldn’t make the connection of uniform not on table on the first try.
Jeff swung into the kitchen, took Brian’s debris off the chair, and tossed it on the step stool. Jeff sat in the now vacant chair.
A few minutes later around a homemade waffle Brian said, “Coach thinks a few scouts from college teams and maybe even the major leagues will be around to watch us in a few weeks.”
“You gonna be a star?” Jeff asked.
“I’m already a star,” Brian said. “I want to be a pro.”
“How does the coach know?” Paul asked.
“He says he’s got contacts,” Brian said.
Paul was proud of the athletic ability of his son, but he didn’t want the teenager living in a fantasy world of professional possibilities. He knew Brian was good and would like his son to go as far as he could, but he wanted him to get a good education.
Jeff said, “I’m in the third round of the chess championship at school next week.”
“How’d you get so good at chess?” Brian asked.
“Mrs. Talucci showed me a few tricks. Then I borrowed a computer chess game from a friend. I can get to level five out of nineteen.”
“I’d like to see a game,” Paul said.
“It’s during school, Dad. If I get to the championship then it’s after school.”
“I’ll come too,” Brian said.
Paul assumed he’d be late because of the new case so before they left, he and his sons checked and rearranged schedules.
The cops in Area Ten spent roll call with the usual routine: important cases from the shifts before, directives from police headquarters at Eleventh and State, appointments for the day.
“Gideon Giles is top priority,” Sergeant Poindexter said. “Any help Turner and Fenwick need, they get.”
“I’ve got court at two this afternoon at Twenty-sixth and California,” Turner said.
Poindexter frowned at him.
Turner said, “I don’t go, I get written up. I ruin six months of work.” If you failed to show up in court on a case you worked on, you could be in serious trouble. Being in court twice in one week wasn’t at all unusual.
“You’ll have to work even later,” Poindexter informed him.
Turner nodded. He’d expected a long day.
Poindexter cornered Turner at the end of roll call. “The commander wants results. You and Fenwick have got to produce.”
Yes, he and Fenwick always got the tough cases, but Turner barely had time to worry about the anomaly that those who worked the hardest got rewarded with more work and seldom more pay.
Randy Carruthers bustled up to Turner in the middle of the squad room. “Heard you guys were hip-deep in politics,” the fresh-faced younger detective said.
Randy wore clothes whose tightness indicated recently gained weight. Frequently he carried at least one catalogue from a law school. He talked most often about taking law courses, so he could “get out of this hellhole and get a real job.” Turner wished him all the luck in the world. He occasionally thought of secretly writing to every law school in the state for catalogues and giving them to Carruthers. On the other hand, as of yet, Paul had seen no evidence of law or any type of classes taken or passed. He ignored Carruthers and headed for his desk.
Carruthers peppered Fenwick with questions until Turner’s partner growled at the young man, who then slunk away. Fenwick dumped his bulk at his desk, which abutted head-to-head with Turner’s. They made their plans for the day.
First they needed to hunt for Frank Ricken, the campaign manager. The address they had, led them to a condo in Dearborn Village, just south of the Loop. Fenwick’s racing progress left a wake of screeching tires and honking horns.
On the way Fenwick talked about his latest money-making scheme. He’d been reading the Wall Street Journal and had decided he could now make a million on the stock market. Buck always seemed to have one plan or another for making huge amounts of money very quickly. Madge would let him concoct elaborate scenarios for these castles in the air and then put her foot down.
After all these years, Turner listened with only half an ear, but at one point in their drive over, Turner made the mistake of saying, “Don’t people with years of training sometimes lose a lot of money in the market?”
“I won’t lose. I’ve got a system.” The mercifully short drive gave Fenwick barely enough time to get into the basics of his plan.
Dearborn Park was an upscale area of condos and town homes anchored on the north end by the old Dearborn Station and Printer’s Row section of the Loop. Old railroad right-of-ways bordered most of the land to the west and south.
They stood outside the door in the chill wind. Fenwick pounded on the bell, banged on the door, and shouted Ricken’s name.
One curious neighbor stuck a head out.
Turner caught Fenwick’s arm to forestall another assault on the door.
“We can come back later with a warrant,” Turner said.
They walked two doors down to the neighbor who’d stuck her head out. They identified themselves, and she invited them in. A gargantuan brown ceramic ashtray and a huge poster of Chicago’s skyline dominated the room they sat in. A woman in her early thirties, she said, “I can’t talk long. I’ve got to get to my office.”
Turner noted the briefcase next to the front door. He asked her to tell them as much as she could about Frank Ricken.
“Causes,” she said. “Lots of causes. Ricken thought he could get free legal advice from my husband. Ricken would saunter over any time he felt like it and assume we’d drop everything to listen to him. Guy had a hell of a nerve.”
“He bug the other neighbors?” Turner asked.
“He always wanted donations. Most everybody was used to him. He’d back off if you sounded at all put out. He’d come to summer cookouts. Hung around with some of the other committed types.”
Turner took down their names.
Fenwick asked, “You think he’d kill somebody?”
She stared at him. “Did he kill somebody?”
Fenwick said, “Right now we just want to talk to him.”
The woman had no idea where Ricken might be. Knew he worked for Alderman Giles. Turner thanked her for the information. They left.
They knocked on the doors of the neighbors on both sides, across from, and behind Ricken. Nobody home. Lot of young working people in the area. They’d have to come back.
As they crossed the street behind the condo complex, Fenwick nudged Turner’s arm and pointed. “Look at the stupid shit coming out of the garbage. He fell into that stack of black plastic bags.”
Turner looked at the man flailing at the mounds of trash he’d fallen into. Turner began to run toward the man. He shouted over his shoulder, “It’s Ricken!”
Fenwick began to lumber after him. Ricken had also heard the shout. After a few more seconds of stumbling about, he got to his feet and dashed down the street.
They ran up State Street. Past the Pacific Garden Mission and Jones Commercial High School, where Ricken took a sharp left. Before he turned the corner, Turner glanced back. Fenwick was a block behind and rapidly falling further behind.
The chas
e continued down Harrison, two blocks west to Dearborn and back south again. The few pedestrians out on the streets at this time of the day glanced at him oddly, but didn’t interfere. Turner kept Ricken in sight. He didn’t have enough breath to shout for Ricken to stop, and only cops in the movies pulled out guns and had enough time to stop, aim, and shoot a fleeing suspect at a hundred paces. Shooting while running at top speed only made sense if you were shooting at a target the size of an elephant holding still. Plus Turner and the department frowned on shooting unarmed civilians in the back. Turner did try holding his radio to his mouth and calling in their situation, all while running full tilt.
Turner was in good shape, but Ricken was no slouch at speed. Turner saw him streak into Dearborn Station. Built in the heyday of the railroad barons in Chicago, the red brick station sat athwart Dearborn Street. The entire structure had recently been rehabilitated and now had a mini mall running down its center. The old clock tower on top of the building rose four stories above the pavement.
Turner paused inside the doorway, took a couple deep breaths, and called in his position and request for assistance.
Most of the shops were still closed at that hour, but bright lights gleamed halfway down the mall in a deli on the left. Turner hurried to the counter. A man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail was scrubbing the glass in the deli case.
“A man just run in here?” Turner asked.
The guy stared at him. Turner ripped out his ID, shoved it in the guy’s face, and repeated his question.
“Nobody running. I think somebody walked in a few minutes ago.”
“Where’d he go?”
The guy thought a second. Turner barely restrained his impatience. Finally the man pointed toward the stairs to the tower.
Political Poison Page 5
