“Midway is still the world’s busiest airport.”
“But can’t be expanded without displacing thousands of voters. O’Hare can.” He slumped against the seatback and expelled smoke through his nostrils. Digby had been decorated with a Silver Star for bravery. His only visible scar was a permanent disfigurement to the middle finger of his left hand. Guys ribbed him about it nonstop until he stuck the middle finger of his right hand up the rear end of one of the clowns. Nobody poked fun at his war wound ever again. He tamped tobacco from his tongue. “The city took Orchard Field off Uncle Sam’s hands together with another 7,000 acres next door. A couple years later, City Council approved a second acquisition. You’re supposed to ask, ‘Who’d they buy it from?’.”
“Who’d they buy it from?”
“Arezzo. But only after he forced out several farmers between ’46 and ’49.”
I tried not to show my excitement. “Go on.”
He dragged on his cigarette; the tip flamed bright orange. “Kirk brokered the deal, officially on behalf of the city, but unofficially ....” He didn’t finish the sentence.
I finished it for him. “He was working for Arezzo.”
“Made a killing.”
“Interesting choice of words. Was Byrnes nicked because he was onto something?”
“Looks that way.” He doused the cigarette butt into the empty beer mug, lifted the untouched mug, and drained that, too.
I dropped a ten-dollar bill and some change on the check.
As we made our way out, Digby said, “I don’t know if you know, but City Council was planning to hold hearings on organized crime. The day he took office, Moore promised Arezzo he’d put up roadblocks. In exchange, Arezzo guaranteed cooperation with the labor unions. Hizzoner has big plans for civic improvement.”
“Any opinions about Monica Seagraves?”
“She’s been blackballed by every reputable snitch on the street.”
“I hear she’s looking for her kitty cat.”
“The only furry thing she owns is between her legs.”
Chapter 29
AFTER LOOKING OVER a rickety shack off Roosevelt Road, I decided to park around the block.
A TV antenna had been jerry-rigged on the roof. A weatherworn picket fence was collapsing under its own weight. Weeds constituted the better part of the front lawn, and packed dirt comprised the parking pad. My knock on the screen door set off vicious barking from inside and shouting from the owner. Scratching paws and plodding footsteps followed. The barking died down. The man who came to the door was in his fifties but looked older. He smelled like a distillery and needed a shave, a haircut, and a change of clothes. Mostly he needed a blood transfusion to replace the alcohol in his veins. When he got a gander of me, his turgid eyes filled to the brim. It was probably the first time he’d focused on something other than Jack Daniels since waking up this morning, if he woke up at all.
“Nick Testa?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Jane Smith with the Post-News.”
He belched and scratched his crotch. “Why don’t I believe that’s your real name?”
“I get that all the time,” I said, laughing.
He was looking me over, sizing me up, and deciding whether I was friend or foe.
“I’m writing a piece on O’Hare,” I said.
His eyes focused. “Airport or lawyer?”
“Are you the same Nick Testa who owned a piece of property out near Mannheim Road?”
Becoming instantly sober, he scratched his chest through a hole in his T-shirt and belched. “What’s it any of your business?”
“As I said, I’m writing a piece for the Post-News, and I was wondering if we might sit down and have a chat.”
He pushed open the screen door, the springs groaning, and invited me inside with a hand-flopping gesture. We shuffled into the kitchen. He cleared a spot for me at the table. Dishes were stacked everywhere. The sink was a repository for flies. The dog ran rabid around a fenced yard. Nick Testa poured an inch of whiskey into the bottom of a tumbler. As an afterthought, he offered me a drink.
I declined with a polite shake of my head. “I’ve been doing some research down at the Recorder of Deeds, Mr. Testa, and found your signature on several land deeds.”
“How do you know the signature’s genuine?”
“Actually I ... well ... I guess I don’t.”
His mouth swept into a smirk. “You pro’ly think I need someone to clean me up and that you’re just the lady who can scrub the stink away.” He threw his head up and roared. “You don’t have enough cleanser for the job. Nobody does.”
I learned a long time ago that silence is the greatest inducement for truth-telling. Put two people in a room together without the benefit of distractions, add utter quiet, and at least one of them is bound to confess his deepest, darkest secrets. Willingly and eagerly.
He poured another drink into the cracked tumbler. The more he drank, the soberer he became. After considering me through bloodshot eyes, he came to a decision. Maybe he decided he could trust me. Maybe he just didn’t give a damn. Maybe the silence got to him. “Want to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth according to Nick Testa?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
“Ever hear of Joey Arezzo?”
“Who hasn’t.”
“Back, I dunno, seven, eight years ago, he sent over a smooth-talking lawyer and a six-foot German packing a blade. Smooth as honey, the lawyer. Sat down with me across the kitchen table like you are now. Same table, different kitchen. Knew him from the neighborhood. He didn’t remember me. Or made a point not to.”
He drank off the inch of whiskey.
“The property you mentioned? Picked it up for a song. Back then, I was running numbers for Esposito. This jamoke ... forget his name ... doesn’t matter anyway ... owed me a ton, and when he couldn’t cough up, put up a consolation prize. His hand shook when he signed the deed over to me. I was holding a pistol to his head at the time.”
He poured himself another inch of rotgut. Layers of fingerprints smudged the green-tinted glass.
“I decided to hang onto the land. Figured it might be worth something someday. Took out a legit loan at two-and-a-half percent. Told the bank I was putting in improvements. Only improvement I put in was a family of Mexicans. Turned over half the cash to Esposito’s underboss—Arezzo—and told him the deal was square.”
He lit up a cigarette and took his first puff, coughing and hacking into a soiled sleeve.
“So there I was eighteen months later, sitting at a kitchen table, stinking of fear. Figured this was payback time. Didn’t know why they wanted cow land so bad, but I wasn’t enlightened back then like I am now.”
He set down the tumbler and held up his left hand. The tip of his pinkie was missing. “The German only mutilated the one. Didn’t need to take another.”
“And you signed.”
“The handwriting on that deed is as legit as the days are long.”
“And the man who threatened you?”
“Used to run numbers like me. We were eleven, twelve years old when we first met up. Learned our ABCs the hard way. On the streets. I got rousted every other Tuesday, thrown in jail a couple times, sent to the big house once. Him? He’s carrying a rabbit’s foot in his back pocket. Keeps his cuffs clean and his running shoes greased. Makes connections. Moves up the corporate ladder, so to speak. Mind like a steel trap. Girlies dripping off him like diamonds. Gets into a couple of jams but manages to snake his way out. Until one day, luck runs out. Police lieutenant from Bloody Maxwell corners him, pats him down, finds a wad of dough, brings him in. Goon squad does its thing. At first, he won’t squeal. Then he can’t squeal. They dump him in the woods and leave him for dead. He crawls his way out. Winds up in the hospital with broken fingers, broken nose, broken ribs. The docs had to wire his jaw shut. Few months later, the looey is found face up in the Chicago River. Guy’s got guts, a way
of handling himself. Charming but vicious, know what I mean? Next thing you know, he’s driving for Arezzo. Dresses like a banker. Gets arrested one more time. Charges don’t stick. He protects himself the only way he knows how. Goes to night school. Gets a law degree. Passes the bar. I ask him why he wants to stuff his head with all that crap. Tells me he’s got a wife and kid to support and another on the way. By then, Arezzo has taken him under his wing. The Zipper wasn’t much back then. But as he moves up, so does my old pal. Course now, he don’t know me from an asshole.”
He poured himself another drink. Leaned back in his chair. Threw his eyes to the ceiling. Pondered his wasted life. Shook an impotent fist. Realized it would take a second lifetime to get even with everyone who’d done him wrong. Wasn’t worth the bother, especially when he was thirsty.
“The day he took the tip of my finger, I figured out something. An inch at a time can kill a man slow but sure.” He hoisted the tumbler in a toast, emptied the glass, and belched.
“And the name of the man who convinced you to sign over the deeds?” I asked.
“Name of Grenadine. John Grenadine.”
Chapter 30
I DON’T REMEMBER getting into my car. Sitting behind the steering wheel, I listened to traffic drive by. Tall elm trees provided shade. Birds tweeted. The sun shifted. Clouds moved in from the northwest. A storm drove through and wet down the pavement. The sun came out again, making everything humid and sticky.
Starr opened the passenger-side door and climbed inside. A calm profile cloaked his face. When he saw my reddened eyes and the tears streaking down my face, he reached out. I shrugged off his hand and looked away, staring into the dark center of who I was and where I came from: a family steeped in dysfunction and ignominy. Maybe if I didn’t see Starr, he couldn’t see me. But I could still see myself in the glaring light of truth. Lilith always told me I took after Daddy. Stubborn, she’d say. Willful. I never knew what she really meant until now. It probably explained why I adored my father but kept him at arm’s length.
The car hushed into immutable silence, the kind thick with misgivings and regrets. I parted my lips and shut them again. The tick-tick-tick of my watch and the beat-beat-beat of my heart filled the space of a hollow soul. Starr shifted his weight. The upholstery groaned. He settled in for the long haul. He was a patient man.
Finally, I spoke. “You followed me. Why?”
“Saw you at City Hall.”
“In fact, I was in the County Building.”
“Same roof.”
“Different address.”
“Wanted to see what you were up to.”
“My mother warned me about you. Don’t trust the green-eyed dick, she said. She’s a psychic, but you already know that.”
“Maybe she knows me from another life.”
“More likely this one.”
He had the decency to squirm.
“What I told you about Daddy’s chauffeur being Bugs Moran’s getaway man wasn’t entirely true. He was Arezzo’s. His name was Larry Lemon. He and my father both worked for Arezzo. And Nick Testa.” I cocked my head in the direction of the shack where a drunkard was committing suicide one inch at a time.
Starr twirled the fedora between his hands.
“Arezzo took a liking to Daddy. Took him under his wing. Told him he was too smart to get into the business from the belly-side-up. Sent him to law school.” I gazed down at my hands. “I know things no daughter should know about her father. I know things that ...” It was impossible to go on.
Starr gathered me against him. I resisted at first, but he was stronger than I was, and besides, I really didn’t give a damn if he saw me cry. I buried my head in his chest, fists clutched around his neck and salty tears tracking the lapels of his suit.
When everything had been wrung out of me, I said, “Tell me about the Lincoln Bank heist.”
The contours of his face hardened.
I dashed away my tears and sat up. “Did you really think you could keep it from me?”
His head twisted from side to side while his eyes triangulated on my face. In a monotone, he said, “Stay out of it, Iris.”
“Three years ago, on a cold day in January, two masked men entered the Lincoln State Bank.”
“I mean it,” he said.
“The teller who tripped the alarm was a twenty-two-year-old beauty named Francine Berg. She’d been working at the bank for three months. Something went wrong. Terribly wrong. When the police arrived, a full seventeen minutes after the alarm was tripped, five-thousand dollars was missing and poor Francine was dead. The bank robbers made their getaway in a ’49 Chevrolet Master DeLuxe 4-door sedan.”
Starr pinched the inside corners of his eyes. “I don’t want you getting involved.”
“Police Officer Richard Starr was engaged to be married to the beautiful Francine Berg. He came under suspicion. A case was built against him. A strong case, so they said.”
Starr had run out of supplications. He merely shook his head.
“Two days after the incident, his partner Chuck Tripper reported that Starr had called in sick the day of the robbery, yet his name was on the duty roster. Either Tripper was mistaken or the duty roster had been doctored. A witness came forward and fingered Starr as the lookout man. Three weeks later, this same witness was found drowned in his bathtub. It was proven that the single .45-caliber bullet used to kill Francine had been fired from Starr’s service revolver. Later, the ballistics test came under question. Then the revolver got lost in the system. The victim herself was attacked, a character assassination drummed up by an anonymous tipster and perpetuated by the papers. Rumors had it that Francine Berg was Bogart’s baby doll on certain evenings of the week, but the facts were vague and the links weak. From all appearances, she was a good girl from a good Catholic family.”
Starr cleared his throat and stretched his neck as if to get rid of a headache.
“Starr wasn’t formally arrested, but he was brought in for questioning. Detectives grilled him for two solid days, but he stuck by his innocence. The department kept his name out of the papers but suspended him without pay. The story died down. Eight months later, two names surfaced—Al Villareal and Tony di Costa—both the same height, weight, and build as the masked men. Neither had been seen since the day of the heist. As it turned out, John Grenadine represented Tony di Costa on a gambling charge back in ’47, leaving little doubt he was connected to the mob. Villareal had no such connection and a clean record, but he and di Costa grew up in the same neighborhood.”
Starr inhaled a deep breath and slowly let it out. His face was as pale as I’d ever seen it.
“At first his fellow cops couldn’t believe Starr was involved. But eventually they turned on him. Some were convinced he recruited Villareal and di Costa, double-crossed them, and promptly dispatched them to their Maker. Others floated the theory that he was an Officer Friendly, warning Bogart, Accardo, and Arezzo about planned raids so they could get out before the cops arrived. Still others said Starr was only the lowest rung on a corrupt ladder reaching to the highest levels of the Chicago Police Department. Loyalists, however, believed Villareal and di Costa were in the hire of Bogart, and Starr was just the fall guy who wasn’t anywhere near the bank. He became a convenient target only when it was learned his girlfriend was the unlucky victim. It was just a matter of chance. A win at the roulette wheel. A throw of the dice.”
Starr had turned away. Instead of watching me, he was staring blankly out the windshield, a plastic man in a plastic suit who’d had his intestines ripped out of him. We made a pretty pair of sorry slobs.
“The charges were eventually dropped, but Starr was drummed off the force. A year later, he resurfaced and opened a detective agency dealing mostly in infidelity cases and other penny-ante investigations. On the side, he’s been tracking down witnesses and evidence connected to the heist. To date, he hasn’t come up with anything that would incontrovertibly exonerate himself or his deceased bride-to-be. Meanw
hile, Tripper rose in the ranks and became a captain in less than two years. Reportedly, there was a bloody fistfight between the onetime partners, and only the intervention of fellow officers kept them from ripping each other’s throats out.”
Starr had switched his eyesight to the side window. I couldn’t read his face, but I could see the quickened pulse of his carotid artery.
“Then he shows up at one of the more notorious murder scenes in recent history. When accused of being on the mayor’s payroll, he doesn’t deny it, probably because he’s on somebody else’s payroll. The reason he has the unofficial cooperation of Detective Pennyroyal is because he and Pennyroyal came through the police academy together and because he once tackled a bad guy who was about to shoot Pennyroyal in the head.”
He turned back around. He wasn’t looking at me but at the fedora, which he started to twirl once more between his hands.
“Given the evidence, I’ve settled on the theory that Starr is innocent of all charges and his girlfriend, a tragic victim. It’s a shame, too, because a man who’s been through what he’s been through would naturally find it difficult to trust anyone ever again. It goes a long way toward explaining why he can’t stay committed to any one woman. It also explains why he’s a sarcastic son of a bitch with a cocky strut and a swelled head.”
Starr chuckled.
“Probably someone in the department singled him out because he was asking too many embarrassing questions, like why it took so long to send a squad car to the scene.”
The expression on his face changed. He wasn’t guarded anymore. He was a beaten man. Beaten by bad luck and disloyal associates.
“But I do have two questions. Who hired Starr to shadow Richard Byrnes and for what reason? It can’t be the mayor since he wouldn’t want to be associated with a dirty cop. Leaving Kirk, Arezzo, or any number of shady characters. Maybe Pennyroyal himself, acting as a conduit for someone else. But who? Damned if I know.”
Starr raised his head and finally rested his eyes on me. He seemed to be acknowledging me as a friend, though not one in which he could necessarily put his unconditional faith. Given what had happened to him, there was no one in the whole wide world who could fill that bill.
The Green-Eyed Dick Page 20
