“Things,” the widow said. “Things I don’t need. I came from nothing. There was work from dawn to dusk. If the sun stayed up, you could work from dusk to dawn and still not catch up. Cows to milk, pigs to slaughter, chickens to feed. Dust so thick you could spend a week clearing it out of the house, and it would reappear two days later, thicker than before. I told him all I want was a couple of kids, a boy for him and a girl for me. Nothing in the bank. Nothing on my back. If I wanted more, I would have married a different man. He didn’t believe me.”
She turned to go, thought for a moment, and looked back into the hall of womanhood dedicated to her by her husband.
“Dickie loved Jerry Moore more than he loved me. This, Miss Grenadine ... this is your dossier.” Her voice broke with a sob. “Everything else was just for show. As if things could replace what he didn’t have in his heart.” She shut off the light switch and let darkness gobble up the riches.
“There’s something else that needs clearing up,” I said.
She turned to look at me but didn’t really see me. Her eyes were hollow.
“Where were you the night of the murder?” I asked. “Where were you really?”
Her lips parted. She was about to speak, but better judgment prevailed and she snapped her mouth shut.
“Were you with Jack Harmon?” I asked.
The corners of her lips curled, but it wasn’t from amusement. She was relieved the truth was finally out.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.
Chapter 27
I DROVE TO a three-storey building on Jackson Boulevard. Only the street number marked the main entryway. Two first-floor offices led to either side, one belonging to a dentist and the other to an accountant. Muffled voices emanated from within each. I climbed the stairway and arrived breathless on the topmost floor. The click of my heels resounded along a lengthy corridor. After passing a succession of doors lettered with business names, I located an office tucked beside the back stairwell. Richard C. Starr, Esq, Private Investigator, Bonded and Licensed was painted on the frosted glass panel.
I tried the door. It was locked. I knocked. No one answered. I rummaged in my shoulder bag and came up with a picklock and a small flathead screwdriver. After inserting the pick into the keyhole, I lifted the pins while applying pressure with the screwdriver. Nearly imperceptible clicks sounded as each pin fell into place. Seconds later, the knob turned. I let myself inside.
The single-room office was sparse, stuffy, and stale. Alternating black and white linoleum tiles inlaid the floor like a chessboard. Dust covered the drawn blinds. Scant sunlight filtered through the slats. An ink blotter, calendar, and phone adorned a functional desk. A swivel chair and two mismatched armchairs more closely resembled junkyard surplus than office furniture. I searched through a short stack of files piled in the inbox and found nothing worthy of investigation. The top page of a legal pad was covered with doodles, initials, phone numbers, and details of prior appointments. I ripped away the page below, folded it into fourths, and tucked it into my purse.
In anticipation of being joined by others, a single filing cabinet occupied the center of one stark wall. After making quick work of the lock, I rifled through drawer after drawer and file after file of mundane private-eye cases. Traffic tickets, infidelity, shoplifting, embezzlement, burglary, personal injury, and the like. The tabs were penned with initials and the inside flaps notated with dates and cryptic notes. Eight-by-ten photos proliferated, those too only identified with dates, initials, and Starr’s secretive shorthand.
It was disappointing. I half-expected to find a file thick with incriminating evidence against at least one of the prime suspects of the green-eyed dick case. A smoking gun. The proof of guilt. The pall of suspicion. A firsthand account from a person of interest. Secondhand hearsay. Someone who knew someone else who overheard a conversation. If he possessed any such proof, he hid it well. Starr was an extremely careful man, more guarded than he let on.
I had worked my way down to the bottom drawer, squatting like a monk in meditation. With an unexpected joggle, the files flipped forward en masse. The weight broke the compressor catch, the spring gave way, and the mechanism ratcheted all the way to the back where it jammed. On hands and knees, I pushed the files forward, unstuck the compressor, squeezed the spring mechanism, and locked the files back into their vertical positions. Then I noticed what tripped the compressor. Way in the back, lying flat on the drawer bed, sat an expandable file folder much thicker than the rest.
Using both hands, I hefted the unwieldy folder, set it on my lap, and shuffled through the contents. Notes, credentials, newspaper clippings, photographic copies, notarized documents, and photos taken through a zoom lens made up the contents, everything meticulously arranged in date order. Here and there, Starr had made notations, sometimes penciling in a brief comment, other times putting down a question mark, an arrow, or a single letter. The case involved a bank heist that occurred three years ago. A bank teller had been killed in the shootout. The robbers got away. The crime was never solved.
The investigation was important to Starr but not to me. I returned the file to its home and let the weight of the drawer pull itself shut. As I watched it slide back into position, I noticed a folder marked with the initials ‘JG’. I quickly yanked the drawer back open. The file was a bulky one. The deeper I dug, the quicker my breath became. With a skipping heartbeat, I transferred the folder to the desk and fanned the contents across the blotter. Starr’s handwriting filled yellow lined paper with voluminous notes containing dates, times, meetings, appointments, and more initials. The photographs were many, the men recognizable more often than not, but the women not so much. The shots were taken from far away and usually in the dead of night. The women were fetching, well off, sophisticated, and alluring. Every frame contained my father. Unaware someone was watching him, he didn’t smile into the camera, pose, tuck in his shirt, straighten his tie, comb his hair, or hide his passion, boredom, glee, or naked anger. My hands trembled as I held up one eight-by-ten after another. I recognized myself in one of them, just a blurry profile in the background, watching my father as if he were a stranger.
The second hand of the wall clock ticked out the seconds, the seconds became minutes, and the minutes turned into a quarter-hour. I could have used a full hour to digest everything and still needed more time. I didn’t remember breathing in oxygen, just blowing out the heat of anger. A primitive warning—the delayed ‘tock’ on the other side of a ‘tick’—clicked in my brain. Another second went by and a plaintive voice pierced the quiet. “Satisfied?” The overhead light ignited. With his fedora squared over a wary eye, Starr lowered his hand from the switch to the toothpick between his lips.
I piled the documents into a jumbled stack and thrust them forward. “You’ve been following me from the beginning.”
“No,” he said smoothly.
“To the Harmon House and everywhere else.”
“I wasn’t following you.”
“You’ve been turning up like a bad penny.”
He wagged his head with deliberate, precise motions. “Coincidence.”
“Coincidence only happens in novels.” I still held out the evidence of his transgression, but what I really wanted to do was slap him across his pugnacious face.
His eyes lowered to the photos. “Those don’t have anything to do with you.”
“John Grenadine is my father!”
“I know.”
His calm indifference riled me almost as much as the contents of the file. “You wormed your way into my bed only to get to my father.”
His lips parted as if to speak, to defend himself, to explain, but he sealed them tight.
“Stop acting so goddamned remote!”
His impassive expression remained.
“Jesus!” I wailed. “Less than twelve hours ago, you and me ... we were ... I was ... you said―”
“What I feel for you has nothing to do with any of this.” His voice
was more plaintive now and steeped with apology.
“You’ve been trying to seduce me all along,” I said, nodding, convinced he’d played me for a patsy.
“I’ll admit to that.”
“Just to get information from me.”
“But not that.” He delivered the words with deliberate coolness.
“Who hired you, Starr?”
As though he were preparing for a fight, he set his feet apart and squared his shoulders. “I can’t tell you.”
“The mayor? Kirk? Are you in cahoots with Pennyroyal?” I flung the photos and everything else up into the air. The papers floated back down, settling like flotsam. I reset the strap of my purse and marched toward the door. We faced each other for a moment, each defiant. He reached for my hand. I wrenched it away, considered my options, and used the same hand to slap him across the face. The force threw his head up at an angle. He held it there and absorbed the sting. Methodically bringing his head back around, he fixed his eyes on me and held his ground. Seconds flew past. He reached around, gathered a hank of my hair into a ponytail, and urged my head back. He kissed me. The kiss was gentle. Then crushing. And finally, ravenous. I was a cold fish. He lifted his mouth away. Sighed. Released my hair. And grudgingly stepped aside.
I brushed past him and slammed the door.
Chapter 28
AT THE BUS stop on Maxwell Street, a blind one-legged beggar worked the passengers. “Spare a dime? A thin dime? For a veteran? Down on his luck?”
Just to get rid of him, old ladies threw coins into his tin cup, which he emptied regularly into a booster bag tucked under a winter overcoat. The season didn’t matter. Hot or cold, his state of dress never altered. Expert at picking pockets, Digby Tate was collecting more than dimes and nickels. He sold off the driver’s licenses to a class-A forger on Jackson Boulevard and the leather to a vendor on Maxwell Street.
“Spare a dime?” he said, thrusting out his cup and pretending not to recognize me.
Digby slept nights in an SRO and trekked to different street corners every morning, rotating each location like a wheel of fortune. His standard disguise required sunglasses and a red-tipped cane, though sometimes he brought along crutches or a violin. He accumulated enough change to live in a lakeshore manor but spent every nickel on booze, broads, and gambling. Since anyone who chose to beg for a living must be crazy, he’d been hauled to the nuthouse several times but always managed to talk his way back to civilized society. He wasn’t insane, just a shell-shocked G.I. who came home from Iwo Jima a different man.
I dropped a Liberty dollar into his cup and walked on.
Because nobody ever noticed a beggar down on his luck, Digby Tate gathered more intelligence than a telephone operator listening in on the party line. He’d sell information to the highest bidders, sometimes for a good meal or a suit of clothing, but more often for a crisp C-Note. A few times a year, I treated him to a home-cooked meal and a bottle of wine. He used my tub and bubble bath, and sometimes I gave him a change of clothes. Roughly my father’s size, he’d been dressing like a jailhouse lawyer for the past six months.
After Mommy ran away with her polo player and before I started school at an exclusive prep academy on Chicago’s north side, Daddy took me down to Maxwell Street every Sunday morning and introduced me to the lingo. From dawn until dusk, the open-air market throbbed with the yammering cries of vendors hawking their wares and the wrangling complaints of customers jewing down prices. They dubbed me Princess back then, the grizzled men and wrinkled women who earned their livings one long day and one thin dime at a time, even if it meant babysitting John Grenadine’s coddled daughter. While Daddy made the rounds, they’d prop me like a bauble on their handcarts or sit me on orange crates stacked three high. Fishmongers, peddlers, and storekeepers gathered round, making over my pretty pink dress, pinching my chubby cheeks, and calling me shayna maidela.
Even then, I was a smart cookie. Right off, I saw how those wiry gents and portly ladies—some smelling of whiskey and tobacco, and others of body odor and cheap perfume—acted around my father. Even at four or five, it didn’t take long to figure out what was what and which side of the bread the butter was spread on. Daddy had a way about him: a swagger, a cocky tilt of the head, a glint in his eye, and a smart mouth that spewed out cavalier remarks, casual comments, honeyed flattery, and well-told lies with equal ease. The women admired him, desired him, and wanted to take him into their beds, even if it amounted to a single night and a sloppy goodbye kiss. The men knew better. They feared him. Even while sweet-talking his pampered daughter, they kept a sharp lookout for John Grenadine’s return. Sometimes they tossed around sly jokes and easy praise of the very man they feared, laughing nervously from the backs of their sandpapery throats and warning me never to tell. I never did.
Over the years, Maxwell Street became my playground, better than a swing set or a trip to the beach. Before memorizing the multiplication tables, I learned how to balance a day’s receipts and charm the last dollar out of unsuspecting marks. Even now, I can dicker with the best. If anyone at the office wants to make it up with the wife, I can take him down to Maxwell Street and send him home with a priceless handwoven carpet, out just a sawbuck or two.
My unconventional tutelage came with a heavy price. By the time I turned six, I figured out two inescapable facts. Santa Claus was made up. And Daddy was a crook.
I entered a diner on Taylor Street. The short-order cook prepared a juicy sirloin burger with all the trimmings for less than three bucks. Because it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, only a few booths were occupied and the lunch counter was largely empty. The owner’s wife showed me to a booth near the kitchen, away from the soda fountain and against the back wall. I had a clear view of the front entrance. The upholstery was worn, the table rocked, the walls were grease-stained, and the light fixture was dusty, but somehow the grimy ambiance made the food taste better.
The waitress set the table for two. I ordered fries and Budweiser to go along with the burgers. When the beers came, I skated both mugs to the other side of the booth and nursed a tall glass of ice water. Digby wandered in, sunglasses tucked away and coat hooked over an arm. Underneath he wore a clean white shirt. The shirt was new. The trousers were Daddy’s. He was walking on two healthy legs. I asked him once how he managed to hop around on one foot without anybody catching on. He said it was a trade secret.
Alerted by his shabby getup and unshaven face, the proprietress was ready to call for reinforcements, but Digby gestured in my direction and palmed a fin into the woman’s grubby hand. Still skeptical, she drew a wide circle around him as if he smelled like a garbage dump. He didn’t. I knew him to be a fastidious bather and persnickety when it came to personal hygiene. Once a week, a Chinese laundress cleaned a suitcase of Digby’s street clothes free of charge. He had a way with women.
“Mind switching places?” From his preferred vantage point, Digby bored his eyes into every corner while his fingers tapped out a rhythm on the tabletop.
During the war, he witnessed his unit tortured by the Japs as one by one they were taken into a cave whole and taken out in bits and pieces. Eventually, a patrol routed out the enemy and found Digby in the cave, hanging from his arms. He didn’t remember how he got there, or if he did, didn’t want to talk about it. Ever since, he harbored an aversion to dark, small spaces and never looked anybody straight in the eye.
“You heard Dick Byrnes was found in a compromising position?”
He nodded, his eyes still roving. “Chatter’s about nothing else.”
Our meals arrived. He drowned his in ketchup and banqueted on the burger two-fisted, grease dripping down the sides of his hands. After he finished half the fries and half the burger, he took a breather and wiped his fingers on a series of paper napkins. Hoisting one of the mugs, he poised it near his lips and drank in the hops with his eyes before the liquid reached his palate. He drained the beer, smacked the mug onto the table, and wagged a finger tow
ard my plate. I wasn’t hungry but just to be polite, I cut my sandwich in two, removed the onions, arranged the lettuce and tomato slices, and chewed a dainty bite. He let out a single honk of approval and sat back.
He nudged his head. I twisted around and picked out two men sitting at opposite ends of the lunch counter, one feasting on steak and eggs and the other nibbling a turkey club. Two women came in and occupied a booth. Digby wasn’t interested in them; he was concentrating on the men. “Feel like a Cherry Coke?” I didn’t but nodded. He signaled the waitress and ordered two.
Ten, fifteen minutes went by. Hungrier than I thought, I polished off half the burger. Digby cleaned his plate. I slid my leftovers to his side of the table. Without hesitation, he dug in. The men at the lunch counter paid for their meals in dimes and quarters, and left two minutes apart. They were bums just like my bum, probably snitches just like my snitch, eager to pick up choice morsels of information alongside a satisfying meal. But since Digby Tate was the master of bums, there was no point in sticking around for an earful of dead air.
“Bum a cigarette?” Digby asked. I told him to keep the pack. He flicked the tip of a match with his thumbnail and lit up.
“You up to snuff on O’Hare?”
“Long story,” he said.
“Got nothing but time,” I said, and settled back.
“Back in ’42, the Feds bought a thousand acres surrounding Orchard Place Airfield and put up a factory. The largest U.S. troop and cargo airplane—the Douglas C-54—was built there.”
“I was in play clothes at the time.”
His eyes teased. “And way ahead of your playmates.”
“I didn’t throw tea parties.”
The waitress cleared away the dishes. Digby waited until she was out of earshot before going on. “After V-J Day, the government had a white elephant on their hands. Meanwhile, City Council saw a bright future for commercial aviation and decided a second major airport would be just the ticket.”
The Green-Eyed Dick Page 19
