Elimination

by Ed Gorman

  ‘I have a damned good reason to brood.’

  ‘Donna out front tells me that you’ve been brooding ever since you got back from Jess’s this afternoon. She’s very maternal toward me, Donna is, even though she’s three years younger. She said, “Abby, I’m afraid if you go in there you’ll start brooding, too. Whatever it is, it’s serious.” So how could I not come in here?’

  ‘How’d the campaigning go the last couple of hours?’

  ‘When we were at Wilson High School there were fourteen cops because there are so many ways into that place.’

  I pointed to one of the chairs in front of the desk. She was wearing a matching green sweater and skirt. She must have needed a computer to keep track of the hearts she’d broken in high school and college. She had a prim way of sitting. She told me once that her mother had insisted that she take modeling classes even though full-grown Abby was five foot four. The modeling-class nonsense had stayed with her.

  ‘Chief Showalter thinks that the assassination attempt was staged, Abby.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘That the shooter wasn’t really aiming at her.’

  ‘So his shots went wild. That happens all the time. That doesn’t mean it was “staged.” And why would anybody “stage” it?’ But she was bright, very bright, and realized the implication.

  ‘We staged it because we were behind. We staged it to get sympathy.’

  ‘Anybody who tried something like that would get nailed within a day or two.’

  ‘We can’t rule it out.’

  ‘God, are you serious?’ She seemed as shocked by my words as she had been when I’d told her about Showalter’s. ‘There’s no way anybody on our staff—’

  ‘It wouldn’t have to be on our staff. It could be somebody on our staff who hired somebody—’

  ‘You don’t really believe that? You don’t really agree with Showalter?’

  ‘I don’t agree with him and I’d sure as hell never admit to him something like that’s possible. Those shots were so wild—’

  I saw the first hint of doubt in those blue eyes I’d come to know so well. I was seeing in her what I was afraid I’d be seeing in the press very soon. That first instance of doubt, the shots having missed by so much.

  I went back through my story about the mysterious phone caller. I told her Showalter believed it might be a prank.

  But I always drew back from the prank theory. There was enough complicated anguish in her voice to make her real. The terrified wife who wanted to help her husband without getting the police involved. Which made no sense, but that was exactly the point. The panicked spouse whose plan made no sense.

  But why hadn’t she shown up last night? And why hadn’t she at least called later to explain why she hadn’t been able to make it?

  ‘I think she’s real, Dev. No matter what Showalter says.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘So that would eliminate both it being “staged” and anybody in our campaign being involved.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Even her frowns were cute. ‘I just want a nice, simple, straightforward assassination attempt we can ride all the way to a twenty-eight-point win on election day.’

  ‘I take it you’d settle for a two-point win?’

  ‘I’d settle for a point-four win.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  But our spurt of humor vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  ‘I need to find the woman,’ I said.

  ‘And just how do you plan to do that?’

  ‘I know where to start, anyway. A place called the Skylight.’

  ‘This is our secret, this conversation.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I was assuming that my GPS would take me to the Skylight tavern without any trouble. Last night the old man’s ‘GSP’ reference had been funny. Within half an hour from now it would be anything but.

  SIXTEEN

  I’d done some acting in college. A girl I’d been trying to get close to insisted I had ‘the look.’ I never did figure out what that meant exactly.

  I didn’t like acting much – and I was miserable at it – but I did get interested in the plays of Eugene O’Neill. I thought of him as I walked inside the Skylight tavern. The night man had come on at four. It was now four-twenty.

  This was O’Neill turf, the land of lost souls. Every face in the place hinted at a story that would either break your heart or scare the shit out of you or both. Old, young, working class or homeless-looking needed – at a minimum – dentists, barbers and social workers.

  The exceptions were the ex-military ones. Survivors of our many recent wars. The buzz cuts gave them away as well as the injuries: the man who played poker one-handed. The man with the left cheek burned into shallow ruts. The man in the wheelchair. The man with the missing ear and the black eyepatch.

  There was no jukebox, just a TV set mounted upon the wall. It was turned off.

  The customers hadn’t shown much interest in me. The bartender, who was tall, bony and had a blue left eye that wandered, studied me as if I were an unknown species.

  ‘What’ll you have, mister?’

  ‘You have Pepsi?’

  ‘I’ll have to charge you a buck.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  He flipped up a lid below the bar. Both arms bore faded tattoos signifying that he’d been in the U.S. Navy. I guessed he’d served on a ship during Vietnam.

  A radio turned low vibrated with the sounds of a baseball game. No wonder he hadn’t been interested when I’d walked in. This year the playoffs for the World Series were as exciting as any in the last decade.

  He nodded his knobby bald head to the TV set above us. ‘I’d rather watch it but you know how much those bastards want to come out here and fix it? Hell, it ain’t more than ten years old or so.’

  I thought of all the technological developments in the last ten years. If cavemen had had TV sets they would have been identical to the heavy box perched above us. But the kind of money he probably made in a place like this precluded him from most extra expenses. And this particular group of men seemed more interested in their conversations than anything else. I was sure that men in dungeons had talked a lot, too.

  ‘Not much sense in fixin’ it, anyway,’ he said. ‘City council’s all set to tear this place down. We’re one of the few places standin’.’

  He was right about that. The Godzillas of urban renewal had leveled a few square miles of this area. Piles of rubble lay on blocks of empty dirt lots. Between medical facilities, parking lots and mini-malls, land was at a premium in Danton.

  ‘Most of the guys in here grew up in the neighborhood. They come back here ’cause their dads and their granddads came here.’

  He’d turned out, surprisingly, to be a talker.

  And then I saw him. I had to stare to make sure. He stopped and spoke to the men at one of the tables. He must have said something funny. For a man who was right on the verge of being dumped in an old folks’ home, he was a sprightly son of a bitch. Even a bit jaunty.

  He took a stool at the end of the bar. A few more hellos to the regulars talking and paying half-assed attention to the game. His eyes had yet to travel down to where I sat.

  I’d been about to ask the bartender all about a certain female customer of his delivered here by cab the night before last, but now a more interesting possibility had presented itself.

  And he saw me. He was cooler about it than I would have expected. He even started talking to the Hispanic man seated next to him. He kept glancing up. Couldn’t resist. He knew that unless he did something, and fast, he would have to face me. And answer a lot of uncomfortable questions.

  Then, he bolted. No warning.

  He wasn’t as old and infirm as he’d pretended to be last night, but he wasn’t young and there was a stiffness – maybe soreness – in the legs he was pushing much faster than they wanted to be pushed.

  I almost tripped across the threshold
as I ran after him. The sunlight blinded me momentarily as I looked around for him.

  He stood at the same newer Ford he’d been in last night. But his run must have tired him because as he stood trying to unlock his car his entire body heaved with the effort.

  I clamped my hand on his bony shoulder and spun him around. In the daylight the face, for all its wrinkles, was livelier than it had been when he’d been pretending to be nearing dementia. Now the brown gaze was wilier. He glanced at his Ford. I’d already mem-orized the license number.

  ‘How’s your GSP doing?’

  ‘I don’t have to talk to you.’ His faded yellow sports shirt was soaked with sweat; his face gleamed.

  ‘You don’t have to, but you will. And right now.’

  ‘You don’t cut shit with me.’ But he was gasping as he said this.

  ‘I may not. But the police will.’

  The jaws tensed. ‘I ain’t afraid of cops.’

  ‘Good for you. I am.’

  He was looking past my shoulder. Even without turning around I knew that he was looking for a savior.

  I looked back at the busted concrete steps leading into the tavern. He’d got two-for-one saviors, a pair of hefty guys who might be well into middle age but could still bust heads without any difficulty.

  ‘Over here, Billy. This asshole is givin’ me grief.’

  But the other one, in a faded Levi’s long-sleeved shirt, said, ‘Hang on, Frank.’

  ‘Thanks, Sonny.’ Then to me, ‘Now you’ll get it.’

  They kept their arms wide of their torsos the way movies and TV taught us the old gunfighters did. Then they pasted on their best psychopath smiles as they started down the steps. Billy went up on the moment by stumbling into one of the cracks on the concrete steps. He fell against Sonny, who pushed him off as if his buddy was carrying at least cooties, if not leprosy.

  Now that they were on the pavement they squared their shoulders, readjusted their gunfighter stances and walked over to us.

  ‘You givin’ Frank a problem, man?’ This close Billy smelled of cloying beer, cigarettes and sweat. He was ready. His hands were fists. Sizable fists.

  ‘Frank’s an old dude,’ Sonny said. He’d recently run through the place where they sprayed you with Aqua Velva for four or five minutes. ‘Have to be a real chicken-shit motherfucker to pick on an old dude.’ He nodded, not to Frank but to Billy. They’d had this act going since second grade.

  ‘The police would like to talk to him.’

  ‘And you’re the cops, huh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ A Billy-to-Sonny glance. ‘And here I was all ready to bow.’

  Sonny obliged with a chuckle.

  ‘He’s got me confused with somebody else, Billy. That’s why he’s hasslin’ me.’

  ‘Who’s he think you are?’ Sonny said.

  Three enormous dump trucks boomed past. We stood silent like children in awe of all mobile and metal things that big.

  Apparently Billy had had time to figure out a solution to Frank’s dilemma. ‘You wanna get in your car and drive away, Frank?’

  ‘You bet I do. But he won’t let me.’

  ‘This asshole, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Sonny did a little acting. He shook his head as if he’d just been told that I’d set fire to a children’s ward. ‘Well, that kind of bullshit ain’t gonna stand, Frank. You wanna get in your car’n drive away, that’s your business.’

  ‘You fuckin’ right it is.’

  Billy and Sonny had taken several steps closer to me. They had also separated so they could, if necessary, come at me from both sides.

  ‘Frank,’ Sonny said, ‘you get in your car, start it up and go home or wherever you want to go.’

  ‘What if he follows me, Sonny?’

  His smile was a shiv. ‘Oh, he won’t be followin’ you. We’ll see to that.’

  ‘I really appreciate this, boys. You know I’m not in the best of health and then to have some slick bastard like this get on my case—’

  ‘Go, Frank,’ Billy said, ‘and be sure to say hello to Cindy for me.’

  Frank’s wince told me that Billy shouldn’t have used the name ‘Cindy’ – or ‘Frank,’ for that matter. I had the license number and two names. Unless his two friends decided to crack a few of my ribs, I was satisfied with this trip.

  Frank managed to drop his keys as he tried to unlock the Ford. No, he wasn’t as helpless as he’d pretended to be last night, but he was not in good shape. He almost pitched over as he retrieved them.

  The three of us watched him get his car going and drive away.

  ‘So who’re you supposed to be?’ Billy said.

  ‘I work for Congresswoman Bradshaw.’

  ‘That bitch,’ Sonny said. ‘She’s a socialist, for one thing, and she wants to teach little kids a load of bullshit about our country.’

  ‘And she likes fags.’

  ‘So what the hell are you botherin’ old Frank for?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘He can’t say.’ They were doing their road show act again. Bouncing lines off each other and grinning.

  ‘Because he’s important. That’s why he can’t say.’

  ‘He works for Bradshaw. And he admits it.’

  I guess you’d call it a chortle. They traded them back and forth.

  ‘I’m going now.’

  ‘You go when we say so.’

  ‘I’m betting you’ve got some kind of criminal record, asshole,’ I said to Billy. ‘You’re holding me against my will. And I’ve got the kind of lawyer who’d love to put you away for a long time. Both of you.’

  Sonny moved on me. But he was out of shape and a brawler rather than a fighter. He swung so wide at my head that I was able to use his considerable belly to plant my fist so deep I wondered if I’d be able to yank it back out.

  He stumbled, dropped to his knees and started the kind of gagging that meant he’d soon enough be puking.

  Fascinating as the prospect of watching it was, I decided that now would be a good time to leave.

  SEVENTEEN

  I called a friend of mine in the Chicago Police Department. I’d needed him for several different jobs in the past and paid him so well for them that he’d usually oblige me. I gave him Frank’s license plate and asked him if he’d run it for me. Hopefully the computer would yield a viable address.

  I spent half an hour checking out the internals from our other campaigns. A couple of calls were warranted. I always feel that I owe my associates civility and the benefit of the doubt. I only get argumentative when one of them tries to evade responsibility for a mistake, or worse, tries to blame it on someone else. All I want to do is solve the problem, not denigrate somebody. My final call was to Ted.

  ‘I’m still pissed about Showalter this morning, Dev.’

  I decided against upsetting him even more. ‘I’m just checking in to see how Jess is doing.’

  ‘She’s really up for the fundraiser tonight. She even had her hairdresser come out here this afternoon.’

  ‘You didn’t mention anything to her about this “staged” business, did you?’

  ‘Hell, no. That’d be all she needed to hear. She’ll be having nightmares about it the rest of her life. And then some asshole police chief—’

  ‘I’ll do my best to make it tonight, Ted. But there’s a good chance I’ll be busy working.’

  ‘You’re kidding. People always want to meet you, Dev. Especially the important people. They know your track record, so they’re impressed.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Ted. Give my love to Jess. Right now I need to go.’

  ‘I just hope you’re there. You and Jess are the stars.’

  Ted’s flattery was amusing. I’d managed to talk the director into letting Ted wear his black turtleneck and I’d sided with Ted against Showalter. For at least a few more hours I’d be in the Wonderful Guy category.

  I peeked into Abby’s office to see if she’d
join me for a pizza down the street but, like the rest of the staff, she’d gone. Those salmon-colored clouds were in the windows again. I had too many things grinding on me to get my usual dusk depression.

  I’d just gotten back from the john when the phone rang. It was my Chicago P.D. friend. The man was Frank Grimes. Age 71. Retired. 2731 36th Street Southwest, Danton.

  I didn’t have any specific reason to link Grimes and my mystery caller, but the more I thought about last night, the more his sudden appearance out at the dock seemed less and less coincidental. And then he’d tried to run away when he saw me today. I needed to find out a lot more about Frank Grimes.

  The area was mixed race and tumbledown.

  At twenty minutes after seven a sparse number of yellowish street lights revealed the disrepair of the homes and even of the corner gas station and drugstore. The houses and the businesses were tightly packed and busted up both by time and the kind of battering rendered by the teenagers who’d lived here. The music, the clothes and the slang might have changed over the years but the contempt of the young men and women for the debris and rubble of the place had not. They knew it was a shithole; why not make it even more so?

  Grimes’s Ford was parked at the curb. The address it belonged to was typical of the meager houses so prevalent here. A very slanted roof covered a gray stucco one-story home. A long piece of tape covered the crack in the lighted front window. The metal railing on the three front steps leaned so far backward it appeared ready to fall off. A push lawnmower stood in the center of the miniature front lawn. Unlike the other midget lawns nearby, this one was clean of beer cans and scraps of paper.

  The street was busy with open-windowed cars blasting both rap and country music. A number of the cars had the kind of mufflers that rumbled. A pair of very young teenage girls in tight jeans and even tighter sweaters strolled down the sidewalk on my side of the street. They were almost comically conscious of the admiring looks, shouts and horn blasts of the boys cruising past. They were babes all right, but in this neighborhood they wouldn’t be babes for long. Pregnancy, drugs or husbands with mean intent would make them old and sad before they reached twenty.