by Clark Howard
As Kiley and Bianco went back toward the men waiting at the club’s back door, the detectives saw there were only four there now instead of five. “Didn’t you tell them to stay put?” Nick asked.
“I told them,” Kiley said tightly. Glancing at his spiral notebook, he walked up to Max Getman, the club owner. “Where’s the other guy, the guy named Laver?”
“I sent him inside to do something for me,” Getman replied blandly, looking away with an attitude of “so what?”
Kiley and Bianco exchanged glances. “Step over to the car with me,” Nick said to Max Getman. “You other three,” he told Wally the janitor and the two customers, “stay right here.” As Nick led Getman to the car, Kiley went in the back door of the club to find Laver.
At the car, Nick said, “My partner told all of you to stay put. Why’d you send that guy inside?”
Getman gave Bianco a dubious look. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Detective Bianco. B-i-a-n-c-o—”
“Well, look Bianco, you ain’t dealing with a street punk here, okay. I mean, I know my rights, okay. Now maybe I sent my manager in to check if everything’s all right in the club, okay. If that’s something you and your partner are gonna start harassing me about, maybe I should be calling my lawyer.”
Nick smiled a perfect, glowing smile that he had been using to charm, and disarm, people since he was fourteen. “No need to call your lawyer, sir,” he said smoothly. “It was certainly not our intent to harass you, and I’m very sorry if we gave you that impression.” He put a forefinger on his temple, the way he’d seen Peter Falk do as Columbo. “Excuse me, what was your name again, sir?”
“Max Getman. G-e-t-m-a-n. I’m part owner of the club there.”
“Well, Mr. Getman, sir, I’m sorry if my partner or I created any misunderstanding. We’d very much like your cooperation in this matter.”
“I never mind cooperating with the police,” Getman declared self-righteously, “as long as I get treated with respect, okay. I ain’t no street punk and I don’t want to be treated like one, okay.”
“I understand, sir.” Bianco poised to write in his notebook. “Could you tell me how long Miss Lynn had been a dancer in your club?”
Inside the rear section of the 4-Star, it only took Joe Kiley a minute to find an open door into a small office, where Ed Laver was sitting at a desk with a phone to one ear, dialing a number he has reading from a Rolodex in front of his. Joe moved quickly through the door and up to the desk. “Who you calling, Laver?”
The club manager immediately put the receiver down and reached to close the Rolodex, but Kiley was too quick for him. The detective put a finger in the way to keep the file open.
“Hey, man, what the hell is this?” Laver snapped.
“That’s what I’d like to know, man,” Kiley mocked. He snatched the top card from the Rolodex and read the name aloud. “Phil Touhy.” His eyebrows shot up. “Is this the same Phil Touhy who runs all the rackets on the North Side?”
“What if it is?” Laver replied smugly.
“Why are you in such a big hurry to call him?” Kiley asked, his icy light blue eyes locking onto Laver’s brown ones. “He have something to do with that dead woman out there?”
“Mr. Touhy is part owner of the club,” Laver said. “Max thought he ought to know about what happened tonight.”
“What did happen tonight?”
“About Wally the janitor finding one of the dancers dead in the alley.”
Kiley’s lips pursed in thought for a moment as his eyes stayed riveted on Ed Laver. He noticed the black man had begun to sweat across his upper lip, which was a good sign to Kiley; he liked it when people he was intimidating began to sweat. Tossing the Rolodex card onto the desk, Kiley said, “You can call Touhy later. Right now, I want you to show me where the dead woman kept her personal belongings. She have a locker or something?”
“There’s a dressing room that all the dancers share.”
“Let’s take a look.” As Laver was coming around the desk, Kiley asked, “What was her name again?”
“Ronnie Lynn.”
“Ronnie short for Veronica?”
“How the fuck should I know, man?” Laver said. There was no rancor in his voice, just the implication that it was a fact simply not worth knowing. Kiley’s eyes hardened on Laver as the black man led him out of the office.
Kiley followed Laver past a curtain opening to the stage out front. Go-go music was playing over speakers somewhere out there, and because the curtain was partly open, Kiley could see a young white girl, who looked no more than sixteen, gyrating to the beat of the music, topless, her halter lying on the side of the stage floor, her thumb hooked enticingly in the Velcro breakaway at each side of her abbreviated bottom.
Laver opened a door without knocking and led Kiley into a dingy little dressing room. Two young women, one black, one Asian, were sitting at small tables with mirrors hung behind them, makeshift vanities, both women with sad expressions, one with tears in her eyes. The black woman wore a robe, similar to the one the dead woman had on; the Asian sat topless, a towel draped around her shoulders not quite reaching her small, dark-nippled breasts. Both were smoking. They looked apprehensively at Laver and Kiley as the two men came in. Glancing around, Kiley saw a variety of clothing, some for dancing, some for street wear, hanging from hooks on the walls. A disarray of makeup was spread on the tables, along with cigarettes, ashtrays, junk food, carryout cups; from one table, popcorn had spilled from a package onto the floor, been stepped on, and left there.
“Okay,” Kiley said to Laver, “you can go make your call while I talk to these ladies.” Laver frowned and gave the suggestion of hesitating. “Go on,” Kiley told him evenly. “Then wait back outside like I told you to do in the first place.” His words were clearly an order, to which Laver responded with a hard, mean look, then nevertheless obeyed.
Kiley closed the door behind him and went over to the women. “Sorry to bother you right now, ladies, but I need to find out a few things about Ronnie—”
When Joe Kiley stepped out the rear door thirty minutes later, he saw squad cars with red lights flashing blocking each end of the alley, a police photographer shooting pictures with a detachable strobe he kept holding at different angles, and a deputy coroner just getting out of one of the plain panel trucks that served as hearses for the county morgue. But no homicide investigators yet, the lazy pricks, Kiley thought; the longer it took them to get there, the more work they knew he and Bianco would have done for them. Kiley saw that Laver, the club manager, was now where he should be, with the other witnesses, which was lucky for Laver, the way Kiley was beginning to feel about him. Kiley went over to the unmarked car where Nick was still questioning Max Getman. Nick raised his eyebrows inquiringly as Joe approached. Joe bobbed his chin at Getman.
“He sent his boy inside to make a phone call to his partner in the club. Phil Touhy.”
“Phil Touhy, the boss of the North Side?” Nick asked in surprise.
“That’s the one.”
Bianco smiled at Getman. “You didn’t mention that Phil Touhy was your partner. Or that you sent your boy in to call him.”
“Why should I?” Getman said with an elaborate shrug. “It’s none of your business, and it’s got nothing to do with the dead broad.”
Turning back to his partner, Nick said with mock gravity, “Mr. Getman is not a street punk, Joe.”
“He’s not?”
“No, he’s not. Also, Mr. Getman knows his rights, Joe.”
“He does?’
“Yes, he does. And guess what else?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Mr. Getman has a lawyer he can call if we harass him.”
“No shit!” Joe feigned utter surprise.
Max Getman gave both of them scathing looks and said, “Oh, no. No, no. I don’t have to take this shit from no fucking cops.” He stalked away as fast as a man with a big belly can stalk. His boy, Ed Laver,
broke ranks and followed him inside.
“You hurt his feelings,” Kiley told Nick.
“I’d like to hurt his fat balls, if he’s got any,” Nick said abrasively. “Somebody kills one of his dancers, beats the poor fucking broad to death, looks like, and all this son of a bitch is concerned about is whether he gets treated politely. Fuck him. What’d you find out inside?”
“I’m not sure,” Kiley said, putting a hand on his partner’s shoulder and guiding him toward the back of the car, farther away from everyone now at the scene. Out of hearing, lowering his voice anyway, Joe said, “One of the other dancers inside, Asian girl named Amy, told me that about an hour before Wally the janitor came out with the trash and found her body, the vic got a call on the pay phone backstage. Wally answered it and knocked on the dressing room door to call her to the phone. She came out, talked a couple minutes to whoever had called, then went back in the dressing room and told this Amy that it was a boyfriend she’d just broken up with, he was going to meet her in the alley out here in half an hour. She told Amy that he wanted back an expensive ring he gave her, and she’d agreed to give it to him in exchange for some Polaroids they took with an automatic camera of themselves fucking and sucking. The vic got Amy to dance part of her gig for her, and in half an hour came out here to the alley. Another half an hour and Wally found her dead.”
“We know who the boyfriend is?” Bianco asked.
“Only his first name. Tony.”
Joe fell silent and watched Nick’s face. The brilliant Italian smile was gone now, Nick’s handsomely sculpted features absorbed with concentration. When Nick’s mind was riveted in thought like that, it reminded Joe of a face on a coin or on one of the big statues at the Art Institute. Joe unwrapped a stick of Dentyne and put it in his mouth. He had barely chewed a little flavor out of it when Nick’s face lighted up.
“Jesus Christ. Phil Touhy’s got a kid brother named Tony. Punk in his late twenties about. Been in traffic court half a dozen times for speeding around in sports cars. You think it could’ve been him?”
“Could be. Let’s see if there’s a link.” Kiley walked to the front of the car. “Hey, Wally! Come over here a minute, will you?”
The little janitor in the bib overalls and sweatshirt hurried over and Kiley led him back to where Bianco stood. Wally was a short, stocky man, at least forty, with an expression that advertised the dullness of his mind, the fact that he swept floors and emptied garbage not because he was stupid, but because his mind was simply slower than most.
“Wally,” Kiley said gently, “when I interviewed the ladies inside, the other dancers, they all said that you were a real good guy; that you went and got sandwiches and coffee for them all the time, and that you always knocked on the dressing room door and never just barged in like Ed Laver does. I thought you’d like to know how much they like you.”
Wally smiled slightly. “That’s nice. I try to treat everybody good, you know. Sure am sorry about Ronnie,” he said, looking sadly over at the body. “She hadn’t been around long but she was a nice lady.”
“Wally, when you answered the phone earlier and it was for Ronnie, did the caller say who it was?”
Wally nodded slowly and sniffed. “Yeah. Said tell her it’s Tony.”
“After my partner and I got here, when you were standing over there with Getman and Laver, did you happen to mention the call to them?”
“Yeah. I said to Mr. Getman, jeez, I couldn’t believe Ronnie was really dead, ’cause I’d just talked to her a little while ago to tell her that her boyfriend Tony was on the phone.”
Kiley and Bianco exchanged quick glances , as if communicating by look. Then Kiley patted Wally on the back and said, “Thanks for talking to us, Wally. There’ll be some other policemen here later and they’ll want to ask you about finding the body. Just tell them exactly what happened. You can go back and wait with the others for now.”
Nodding, Wally shuffled away.
“What do you think?” asked Bianco.
“I think,” Kiley said, “that when Wally mentioned the call from Tony, Max Getman sent his boy Laver in to call Phil Touhy to tell him his kid brother might be involved in a homicide.”
“That part of it makes sense,” Bianco said. “But why would the guy say who was calling? That’s like announcing himself as a suspect.”
“Maybe he didn’t plan to do it; maybe it was an impulse thing: she wouldn’t give him the ring, they got into an argument about something.”
Nick looked around, on the alert for anyone who could overhear them. “The Shop boys aren’t going to be able to put a last name to Tony, are they?”
Kiley shook his head. “Not unless Getman or Laver volunteer that Phil Touhy is a partner in the club—”
“Which they probably won’t do—”
“Especially if the Tony that called is the kid brother.”
Nick reached into Joe’s shirt pocket and took a stick of Dentyne for himself. “So, next question is—”
“Do we give it to the Shop cops—”
“Or keep it for ourselves?” Bianco began chewing the gum furiously. “We don’t have enough for a collar, right?”
“Right. All circumstantial. We need something physical.”
They stared at each other for a moment; then, as if rehearsed, both turned at the same time to look at the deputy coroner, who was on one knee making a preliminary examination of the body before it was taken away. Without a word, the two detectives walked over and stood next to him.
“Hi, Doc,” said Nick. The deputy coroner glanced up at them.
“Messy one, huh, Doc,” said Kiley
“Somebody was pissed off at her, that’s for sure,” said the deputy coroner. He was an angular, balding man, with a toothpick between his lips. Kiley and Bianco knelt with him.
“Was something used on her, Doc?” asked Bianco.
“Can’t tell for sure until we strip the skin off her face and check the bones.”
“Could you just give her a feel, Doc?” Kiley asked. “Off the record?”
The deputy coroner threw him a sour look. “You’ll have an official report in forty-eight hours.”
“We could have this perp in custody by then, Doc. Come on, give us a jump start.”
The deputy coroner sighed heavily and nodded toward the morgue truck. “There’s a container of wet wipes on the seat. Get it for me.”
Bianco hurriedly fetched a blue plastic container and stood holding it while the deputy coroner gently, carefully, put all eight fingers and both thumbs into the pulp that had once been Ronnie Lynn’s face. Closing his eyes, he moved his hands about as delicately as if there might still be life left there to feel pain; lightly as a musician playing the softest of sounds. “No blunt weapon,” he said quietly after a moment, almost as if talking to himself. Kiley and Bianco were mesmerized by him. “Knuckle impressions, very definitely.” Then: “Not much bone trauma. Not brass knuckles; bare knuckles.”
While the detectives were staring in awe, the deputy coroner finished and withdrew his fingers. He held them in place so that any blood or tissue matter would drip and fall back where it had come from. “Well?” he finally had to say to Bianco.
“Oh, sure, Doc, sorry,” Bianco came awake and began handing him wet wipes to clean his hands.
When the deputy coroner finished, he handed Kiley a wad of bloody wipes, moved the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, and belched loudly. “I had a pastrami sandwich a couple hours ago that my digestive system is definitely not pleased with.”
“Doc, whoever did this: bruised knuckles?” asked Kiley.
“Oh, yes.”
“How about with gloves on?”
“What kind of gloves?”
“Driving gloves. Like you see on guys that drive sports cars.”
“Not as severe, but definitely there. All eight fist knuckles. Matter of fact, if the attacker worked on the face and head first, it would have been painful as hell to punch those tits afte
r.” The deputy coroner rubbed his stomach, said, “Christ, I’ve got to get an Alka-Seltzer,” and walked away with his container of wet wipes.
Kiley and Bianco moved around the perimeter of the crime scene, expressions somber. “So what do you think?” Bianco finally asked.
“Could work for us.”
“We’d have to level with Parmetter after,” said Nick. Parmetier, first name Dan, was commander of the GA cops.
“If it worked, he’d cover for us. It’s not like it’s an original idea. GA teams do it all over the city to raise precinct rates for collars.”
“Yeah, they do it,” Nick qualified, “but not on homicides much. Homicides can get sticky. Wonder who the Shop cops will be?”
“You’ll know in a minute,” Kiley said, bobbing his chin at a pair of headlights that had been let through the police line at the mouth of the alley. It was an unmarked car similar to theirs except newer. When it parked, they both squinted to see who got out. Presently a fireplug-shaped white cop who carried himself like a wrestler came out of the shadows, followed by a black officer who wore a turtleneck under his suit coat.
“Dietrick and Meadows,” Kiley said scornfully.
“A dickhead and a spade,” said Nick. “Wonderful.” He looked soberly at his partner. “We go for it ourselves?”
“We go for it ourselves,” Kiley confirmed.
Fireplug came up and said without preliminary greeting, “What have we got on this situation here?”
“Vic was a go-go dancer at the 4-Star named Ronnie Lynn,” Kiley told him. “Doc says she was probably beaten to death. Little guy over there in the bib overalls, name’s Wally something, is the janitor at the club and found her when he came out to empty the trash. Club owner’s name is Getman—”
“Doesn’t like cops or questions,” Nick interjected. “You’ll love him.”
“—and the manager’s name is Ed Laver; he’s a black dude,” Kiley’s eyes flicked to Turtleneck, “who’ll try to scare you to death with nasty looks.”
