by Clark Howard
“All right then.” Sitting in a club chair facing the couch, Gloria leaned forward, forearms on her knees, and Kiley became aware that her breasts shifted buoyantly with the movement. “Look, try to understand. I’ve got thirteen years invested in the department. I worked damned hard to get my sergeant stripes—in spite of what the Irish, Italian, and Polish cops think; Puerto Ricans and blacks do have to pass the exam. I’ve got a kid to finish raising, and hope to God I can get her to go to college instead of getting knocked up in some Latin Prince club room or in the backseat of some gas station attendant’s sound-wired car. I’ve saving to buy a little house someplace so I won’t have to pay rent forever.” Her eyes hardened. “You’re asking me to put a lot at risk, Joe. And for a dead man who wasn’t even my man.”
Joe stared at her for a long, steady moment, then slowly nodded his head. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “Right all the way. This isn’t your fight. You weren’t responsible for Nick being killed, I was.”
“You are not responsible for Nick being killed,” Gloria insisted. “You’re crazy if you start punishing yourself for that.”
“I’m responsible enough to want to nail whoever did it.”
“Every cop in the department feels that way, Joe. Nick was a cop, one of us, part of us. Whoever killed him killed a little bit of all of us. But there’s no personal blame involved.”
“There’s blame when you feel blame.” Kiley rose and took the notebook from Gloria’s hand. “I appreciate what you’re saying. You may even be right, in theory. But I know how I feel—and how I feel is guilty. And I know in my heart and in my mind that the feeling will never go away unless I make things at least partly right by seeing to it that whoever pulled the trigger doesn’t get away with it.”
“Do you think it was Tony Touhy?” Gloria asked, rising to face him.
“I think he had to be involved,” Joe reasoned. “It was him that Nick followed. And it stands to reason that Nick must have caught him with his knuckles bruised; I mean, Touhy had to have a reason to off Nick. Maybe Nick was afraid the punk would get away from us, so he tried to bust him for the Ronnie Lynn killing without waiting for me to get there. And maybe one of Touhy’s friends interfered.” He tapped Nick’s notebook. “Maybe the driver of one of these cars interfered.”
“You make it hard not to help,” Gloria Mendez said.
“I don’t mean to,” Kiley told her, and meant it. “I realized something a minute ago, when you were talking about your job: I don’t think Nick would want you involved either. Not any deeper than you already are.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “He was sorry he came to me in the first place. He told me so.”
“When?” Kiley asked, surprised.
“The night he was killed. He called me about eight o’clock, from the stakeout. Same phone he was using to check with you. We talked for almost an hour. Even made plans to see each other again, just for lunch sometime. We were going to try to be friends, you know; just friends, without going to bed together. Anyway, Nick apologized for putting me in the position he had with the Tony Touhy file. And he took full blame for it: He said it was his idea, that he hadn’t even told you about me until the day you two came down to the Shop. Was that true?”
Kiley nodded. “True.”
“Well, see, then,” she pointed out, “that right there should convince you that he was as eager to clear the killing of that girl as you were. He wasn’t just following the lead of his senior team partner; if he had been, he never would’ve mentioned me as a way of helping the plan along. So you can stop blaming yourself so much.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Kiley acknowledged. “But I still want to be in on taking down whoever killed him.”
“Know something?” Gloria said, reaching out and taking back the notebook. “So do I.”
When she offered her hand to Kiley, he hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said, her tone unequivocal.
Joe Kiley took her hand. He felt like he had a partner again.
Nine
The next morning, Kiley reported for work on the B-and-A squad and was taken around by Captain Madzak to meet the other day watch personnel. They all knew, without the details, about Joe having lost his partner, so their greetings were deferential, without the usual jiving and joking that would normally have been directed at a new man. “Nice to meet you, Kiley. Sorry about your partner,” was about the extent of most of the introductions. Joe was given the desk that he had used briefly the night before, that Lee Tumac, the duty cop in B-and-A, had said would probably be his anyway.
“Draw your desk supplies from the squad secretary,” Captain Madzak told him. “Spend an hour or so getting settled, then you can beat it for the day. But,” he pointed an emphasizing finger, “I want something on my bus bomber, understood?”
“Understood, Captain,” Kiley assured him. “You’ll get it.”
Kiley got his desk supplies from a heavyset black woman named Aldena, who brooked no nonsense about what he was receiving. “This stuff I’m giving you got to last ninety days,” she warned. “This squad is on a tight supplies budget and I stick to it like glue. Don’t go taking ballpoints and calendars and stuff home, then come expecting me to give you more, ’cause I won’t do it. I made the captain go out and buy his own paper clips last week, that’s how tight I am. You reading me, Detective?”
“Loud and clear,” Kiley said. He had seen dozens of squad secretaries over the years; sooner or later, they all thought they ran the squad. Some of them, due in part to their civil service status, could be extremely difficult. But they were invaluable to most commanders, and for the cops in “their” squad, they would break almost any rule—except their own. “Here, take these back,” Kiley handed her a box of six ballpoints. “These are medium points; I use fine points.”
“I don’t requisition no special items,” she told him, shaking her head emphatically.
“No problem, I buy my own,” Kiley said. Aldena smiled.
“You I like already,” she told him.
Kiley returned to his new desk and was putting everything away when his phone rang. Gloria, he thought. She was going to trace the license plate numbers Nick had taken down behind the Shamrock Club and call him with the restricted information. But when he answered, it was Captain Madzak.
“Joe, step into my office, will you?”
Kiley went in and the captain had him sit.
“I just got a call from Deputy Chief Les Ward. The sister of some homicide vic is in the building from out of town somewhere; her name,” he glanced at a scratch pad, “is Alma Lynn.”
“Yeah, Bianco and I handled the GA workup on a Ronnie Lynn, two nights before Nick was killed. It was turned over to Homicide.”
Madzak nodded. “The Homicide officers handling the case are both down at Stateville today interviewing a con involved in another case they’re on. The chief’s office wants you to handle the vic’s sister, since you’re the only one around with any firsthand details.”
“Yeah, sure,” Joe agreed at once. He sensed a possible source of information about Tony Touhy, but kept the interest out of his expression.
“Escort her to the morgue for the formal ID, then to Property for the vic’s things. Answer whatever questions you can for her except those pertaining to the progress of the investigation; tell her that’s classified. When you’re finished, type up an FR for the chief and send it through me. Clear?”
“Yessir, clear.” An FR was a Field Report that did not involve a crime.
“A secretary from the Public Affairs office is bringing the sister down right now. Check out a car from the motor pool.”
Kiley returned to his desk and quickly dialed Gloria Mendez’s extension upstairs. “Central Records, Sergeant Mendez,” she answered.
“Gloria, Joe. Listen, I’m going to be out of the office for a few hours, so don’t call me. I’ll get back to you later, okay?”
“Sure. I haven’t h
ad a chance to do it anyway. They found three little kids hanged in a basement over around 92 nd and Prairie this morning, and everything else is shut down while we run suspect parameters on that situation.”
Kiley saw two women enter the B-and-A reception area and go up to Aldena’s desk. “Okay, I’ve got to go. Call you later.” Hanging up, he put on his coat, carried his hat, and walked toward the front of the squad room. As he got closer to the two women, his mouth dropped open in surprise. One of them had a trim figure, red hair, freckles—
“Detective Kiley?” said the woman with a police ID clipped to her dress. “This is Ms. Alma Lynn. Ms. Lynn, Detective Joseph Kiley. You’ve received Deputy Chief Ward’s message, Detective?”
“Uh , yes—yes, I have—” Kiley was trying to overcome his surprise.
“My sister and I were identical twins,” Alma Lynn said. “I’m sorry; I should have asked someone to alert you.”
“It’s all right,” Kiley regained his composure. “I just wasn’t prepared—”
“Of course not—”
“I’ll leave Ms. Lynn in your care, Detective,” said the woman from Public Affairs.
“Sure, fine. Ms. Lynn, if you’ll come with me, I’ll get a car and we can drive out to Steiner Center.”
“Steiner Center?”
“The county pathology and forensics center, Ms. Lynn. The morgue.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
Driving up Roosevelt Road, Alma Lynn said from the passenger seat, “I really am sorry I shocked you like that.”
“Forget it,” said Kiley. He pulled a brief, reassuring smile for her. “Where are you from, Ms. Lynn?”
“Ripley, Indiana. It’s about three hours south, just across the line.” The line was a ruler-straight boundary that divided Illinois and Indiana for nearly two hundred miles. “A very small town,” Alma Lynn added needlessly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did your sister get from Ripley, Indiana, to the West Side of Chicago?”
Alma Lynn smiled bleakly. “She was bored. Ripley isn’t a very exciting place. Some of the high school kids I teach refer to it as a ‘one Coke machine’ town.”
“What do you teach?” Kiley purposely kept it conversational, working her slowly.
“Typing and girls’ PE.” She sighed almost inaudibly. Kiley wondered if it was for her sister, or because she too was bored with Ripley, Indiana. “Anyway,” Alma continued, “Ronnie decided to try her luck up here. She wanted to get into broadcasting or advertising or—you know, something glamorous.”
“I understand.” Kiley understood, all right. Ronnie Lynn had been a pilgrim coming to Mecca. A young woman looking for the kind of life they show on television, then ending up dancing naked for a bunch of spades; later—or even before—maybe shooting dope; still later, maybe peddling pussy to pull the habit. Sure, Kiley understood; he’d seen dozens of them. “When was the last time you talked to your sister?” he asked, turning on Ashland Avenue and approaching the edge of the vast Cook County Hospital complex.
“Apparently just a few hours before she was killed,” Alma said. “She called me about four-thirty—she knows I get home about four.”
“Could you tell me what her frame of mind was? What kind of mood she was in? Whether she seemed worried?”
“Very good mood,” the sister told him. “The first good mood she’d been in for a while. She’d broken up with a boyfriend a couple of weeks earlier, and a few phone calls before that one she had sounded depressed and all. But this time she seemed to have gotten used to the split and was dealing with it in a positive way. In fact, she was going to see her ex-boyfriend that night and return a ring he had given her.”
“Yes, we knew about that,” Kiley said. “What was the ex-boyfriend’s name, do you know?”
“Tony something. I don’t think Ronnie ever told me his last name.”
Kiley silently cursed his luck at this latest dead end on Tony Touhy’s last name. A connection through the dead woman’s sister might have been enough for Dietrick and Meadows to get a warrant and pick the punk up on suspicion. Nail him for Ronnie Lynn, maybe nail him for Nick too. But no tie-in, no warrant.
Kiley pulled into a visitor space at the morgue and had Alma Lynn accompany him inside. Alma, he noticed as he held the door open, then followed her in, was slightly heavier than the dead Ronnie had appeared: upper arms a little rounder, a cup size larger in the bust, more defined buttocks. But her body was well toned, firm; from teaching PE, he supposed; Ronnie had probably been in equally as good shape from her go-go dancing, which was really nothing more than aerobics set to a jazzy beat, with some vulgar moves added. Odd, he thought, considering the divergent paths their lives apparently had taken, how they had remained so close in physical condition.
After checking in with an attendant and filling out the required form, Kiley and Alma Lynn were taken below street level by elevator and led into a large room with what looked like long, stacked rows of file drawers. The smell of formaldehyde wafted in the cool air; their footsteps were silent on the rubber-tiled floor.
“Let’s see,” the attendant said, scanning the rows as he walked, “Lynn, number three-two-nine—Lynn, three-twenty-nine—here we go—”
Kiley put a light grip on Alma Lynn’s elbow, saying, “Just a quick look—”
The attendant pulled out drawer number 329 and turned back the light-gauge plastic cover, revealing Ronnie Lynn’s battered face and breasts, her flesh an ugly black-and-blue cast created by her brutal death, compounded by the temperature of the morgue slab.
Alma Lynn’s knees buckled slightly; she put one knuckle between her teeth to keep from crying out as she looked down on what was left of the sister with whom she had shared a womb. Kiley tightened his grip to steady her, saying, “Just nod that it’s her, that’s all you have to do.”
But Alma said, “Yes—it’s my—sister—”
“Okay.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her away, back out of the room of death, to the elevator in the hall.
Upstairs, Alma completed more forms that swore to her identification of the corpse, permitted the morgue to turn over to Alma the pathetic items—red bikini top and bottom with tassels, terry-cloth robe, scuffed terry-cloth sandals, ankle bracelet—taken from the dead woman, and made arrangements to have the body released to a funeral home in Ripley, Indiana.
When they got back out to the car, Alma opened the morgue box—much smaller than the one Nick Bianco’s things had been delivered in—and delicately fingered the bikini bottom. “Not much to it, is there?” she asked, almost rhetorically. She looked at the morgue inventory list. “No ring. I guess she had given it back to that Tony, whoever he was.”
“Ms. Lynn, do you have your sister’s personal effects,” Kiley asked, “from where she lived?”
“I’m picking those up this afternoon,” Alma replied. “The police went through them but I understand they didn’t take anything. Ronnie just had a room in a cheap little hotel; the management packed her things and is holding them. I think I have to pay some back rent—” Alma Lynn suddenly put a hand on Kiley’s arm. “Detective Kiley, I have something I must confide in someone—it’s something I have to find out about but it’s not an easy subject to bring up—”
“The photographs?” Kiley asked.
“You have them?” Alma snatched her hand away from his arm as if it had been burned.
“No. I just know about them. Look, would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
“I’d really like to talk about those photographs—”
“So would I. But not in the car like this. Come on—”
They got out of the car and Kiley took her across the street to St. Luke’s Hospital. There was a large cafeteria there, used mainly by medical staff, but open to visitors as well. Kiley had Alma go to a table for two in a near corner while he went through a counter line and got their coffee. At the table, Kiley leaned forward on his forearms and kept his voice low.
“Loo
k, Ms. Lynn, I’m going to be honest with you about this case, even though I could get in a lot of trouble for doing it. The police department is very touchy about cops discussing evidence and the progress of a criminal investigation with civilians; but I have a personal interest in this case, and maybe we can help each other.”
“May I ask what your personal interest is?” Alma Lynn stiffened perceptibly. “Did you know my sister?”
“No, it was nothing like that; the first time I ever laid eyes on your sister was in that alley. My interest is that I had a partner that I had worked with for eight years, who was like a kid brother to me, and he was shot dead two days after your sister was killed. He and I were looking for your sister’s killer on our own time. I think it’s possible that the same person either killed both of them, or is responsible for the killings.”
“Oh. I see,” Alma said, unstiffening, relaxing. “I’m sorry if I sounded curt. But I have very bitter feelings about the people in this city whom Ronnie knew. Everyone she ever spoke about since she came here sounded to me as if they were using her in some way, taking advantage of her. I can’t tell you how many times I cried after talking to her on the phone—” From her purse, Alma took a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. “It’s a bad place, this city—”
Kiley let the remark pass. He loved Chicago, every filthy gutter of it, every stinking alley, every spewing smokestack, every grating noise; it was in his blood, his city blood, and in his being. But he was not there to defend Chicago to this small-town Indiana schoolteacher who had just looked at her dead twin sister on a morgue slab. Before Kiley realized it, Alma Lynn was lightly touching his arm again, across the table.
“I’m sorry about your partner, Mr. Kiley; I didn’t know. You must be feeling as miserable as I am right now. What can I do to help?”
“Let’s talk about the photographs. What I know about them, I picked up from one of the other dancers at the 4-Star. I gather they were pornographic in nature, and that your sister wanted them back because of that. What do you know about them?”
