by Clark Howard
“No, I think you’ve covered it adequately, Captain Lovat,” the lawyer replied. He turned to his client. “Phil?”
The North Side mob boss nodded. Despite his expensive tailoring, Phil Touhy was, Kiley now saw on closer observation, as shanty Irish as Kiley himself. Touhy had the same mousy, thinning hair, the same pale skin that cut so easily under a razor, the same light blue eyes that every lower West Side mick kid had inherited since their great-grandfathers had brought them over from the Old Country following the potato famine. Touhy might be big time North Side now, but he was low-class Kedzie Avenue before—and Joe Kiley recognized it. He managed to pull his gaze off the racketeer only when Gordon Lovat spoke again.
“It is the official position of this department that unless significant new incriminating evidence to the contrary develops, that neither Philip Touhy nor his brother Anthony Touhy is to be considered a suspect in the death of Detective Nick Bianco. That position has been endorsed by Chief of Police John J. Cassidy. In light of that position, Mr. Malcolm has agreed not to file charges of harassment against the department with respect to an unauthorized surveillance of Anthony Touhy, and not to ask for a restraining order prohibiting further investigation, without probable cause, of either Philip Touhy or Anthony Touhy.” Lovat drummed his fingertips silently on the desk top. “Satisfactory, Mr. Malcolm?”
“I believe so, yes,” the attorney said. He touched Phil Touhy’s arm and they both rose. “On behalf of my clients, we want the department to know that we sincerely hope the killer of Detective Bianco is brought to justice as rapidly and efficiently as the murderer of that young dancer. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”
As the lawyer and his mobster client left the office, Kiley realized that Phil Touhy had not spoken a word; all he had done was nod once.
When the door closed and only policemen were left in the office, Lovat said, almost curtly, “That, I hope, is the end of the matter.”
“Gordon, I think the chief and you did a damn fine job of getting the department out of what was becoming a very sticky situation,” said Allan Vander of IA. “I hope we’ve all,” he glanced at Kiley, “learned a lesson from this.”
Kiley met Vander’s eyes directly. “A lesson in what?” he asked. “How to let a cop killer get away?”
“You are out of fucking line, Detective!” stormed Bill Somers, Vander’s deputy.
“And you—all of you—are out of your fucking minds,” Kiley retorted, “if you think Tony Touhy had nothing to do with killing Nick!”
“Detective Kiley,” said Gordon Lovat very evenly, “you were included in this meeting at the suggestion of Chief Cassidy. He thought perhaps it would help you better understand what the department concluded was the best compromise in this situation. Apparently the chief feels you are worth saving as a police officer—something,” he glanced at the others, “my colleagues and I don’t agree with. If I were the chief of police—”
“But you’re not,” Kiley interjected, on the very cusp of outright insubordination.
“No, I’m not,” Lovat agreed coldly, “but if I were, you wouldn’t walk out of this office with a badge in your pocket and a pistol on your belt. But, that personal comment aside, let me make you aware of the fact that my Organized Crime Bureau ran a complete and in-depth check on Tony Touhy for the entire day that led up to Detective Bianco’s killing. You see, Kiley,” the OCB head could not resist a slight smile here, “we do know not only where he lives but also his hangouts, the addresses of his girlfriends, where he drinks, where he gambles, even the location of the laundry that does his underwear. We backtracked him from the time he got up that morning, until the time he got on the plane for Ireland the next morning. We found not a single thing—nothing—in his behavior or activities to indicate that anything at all was going down at the Shamrock Club that night. Nothing in Phil Touhy’s conduct either. No indication from any source in the neighborhood that anything did go down. The club closed shortly after eleven-thirty when the last customer left and no new customers came in. The bartender called Tony Touhy at the time and asked for permission to close. Tony said yes, but not to set the burglar alarm because he intended to drive over later to get his passport. In other words, Kiley, there is no evidence of any kind to indicate that Detective Bianco interrupted Tony Touhy in any illegal activity and tried to arrest him, as you suggested to the chief. And there now is evidence that Touhy was not involved in the killing of that dancer and did not have bruised knuckles, so Bianco wouldn’t have been trying to arrest him for that either, would he? In other words, Kiley, there is absolutely no reason to suspect that there was any confrontation at all between Bianco and Touhy. The only contact we might even remotely surmise is that Bianco could have approached Touhy when he parked at the Shamrock Club, seen that the punk’s knuckles were normal, and—if he had any cop sense at all—backed off. Touhy apparently went into the club, got his passport, and left. What happened to Detective Bianco afterward—well,” Lovat spread his hands, “Homicide will have to determine that.”
“Sorry, but I don’t buy it,” Kiley said, shaking his head emphatically. “On that theory, Nick just let Tony Touhy go on his way, then stood there doing nothing in a dark alley until somebody entirely unconnected to the case came along and blew him away. Bullshit.”
“I’m sure it’ll turn out to be a little more complex than that, Detective,” said Lovat. “What we know is that Bianco was waiting there for you; that it was a dark, practically deserted commercial block; it was almost one o’clock in the morning. Perhaps Bianco was sitting in his car and saw someone he suspected was a burglar go into the alley, followed him, then lost control of the situation. Maybe he saw a drug deal going down. Hell, maybe we’ll find out that some goddamned night watchman shot him by mistake when Bianco was prowling around—”
“Don’t buy any of it,” Kiley still shook his head. “And how the fuck did Phil Touhy and his shyster lawyer know that the stakeout on Tony was unauthorized, tell me that?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Gordon Lovat admitted crisply. “I wish I could. There are bound to be information leaks in a police department this size; somehow Touhy found out what we were dealing with as far as you and Bianco not being on the job that night. Right now it really doesn’t matter how he found out—”
“This whole thing stinks like a Halsted Street sewer,” Kiley said accusingly. “I don’t buy one fucking word of it.”
“I’m sure that doesn’t surprise any of us, Kiley,” said Vander of IA. “You can’t seem to go along with anything that’s right, can you? You only buy into what’s wrong, don’t you? You thought Tony Touhy beat that dancer to death, and you were wrong. You and Bianco withheld information from Homicide, and that was wrong. You went after the collar on your own, against the book, which was wrong. You set up two unauthorized stakeouts, which was wrong. Now, when the department is bending over backward to keep you clean in the situation, you refuse to accept the way the department has decided to partially clear the case, because you don’t want to accept the fact that this punk you’ve been dogging, this Tony Touhy, might be innocent. Tell me something, Kiley: Don’t you have the least little bit of concern that you might be wrong on this too?”
Kiley’s head stopped shaking; his lips parted slightly as if to speak, to rebut, retort. But no words came. Staring at Allan Vander, the realization of all those wrongs suddenly compounded in his mind, came together like amoebas attaching themselves one on another to form a larger body—this one a body of self-doubt, stigma, guilt. He could refute what Gordon Lovat had said; disallow in his own mind the theories accepted and being advanced by the department with respect to Tony Touhy’s culpability. But there was no answer to what Allan Vander had just said; there was no disputing his own responsibility for all the wrongs he had bought into. Bottom line, it was his mistake in arbitrarily accepting a shred of circumstantial evidence and believing from it that Tony Touhy had beaten Ronnie Lynn to death; that had been the foundation of all th
at later turned sour on him. That had been the mistake, ultimately, that killed Nick Bianco. At that moment, under the accusing stares of Lovat, Vander, and Somers, with his vulnerability compounding, his remorse multiplying, Kiley understood for the first time, really understood, how a suspect felt.
Oddly, it was Vander’s deputy, Bill Somers, the lieutenant Kiley suspected of tossing his apartment, who now canceled the terrible quiet in the room and tried to show him a little mercy. “Look, Kiley,” the IA deputy commander reasoned, “we all know how you feel about Tony Touhy. The guy is a scumbag punk, the kind that makes being a cop worthwhile when we’re able to bust him for something and make it stick. Getting him for Bianco’s killing would be a dream bust—but we couldn’t take it all the way. In the end, he’d walk and we’d all look like chumps. Homicide will get Bianco’s killer—one way or another, sooner or later. It just won’t be Tony Touhy. The quicker you accept that fact, resign yourself to it, the quicker you can settle back into being a working cop again.” Somers, who had been speaking very quietly, almost conversationally, now leaned forward, forearms on his knees, seeming to seek an intimacy with the man listening to him. “Don’t you think that would be best for everyone involved, Joe?” He almost sounded friendly. “For everyone to just get on with their lives again?”
Kiley could do nothing for a moment but nod. He had heard every quiet word spoken by Bill Somers, but he was still wrestling with the impact of Allan Vander’s bulls-eye accusation, still trying to control surges of profound regret, intense shame, and somewhere, rebounding off both, a driving need for revenge. That was the feeling his mind most recognized, most quickly accepted; that was the emotion Kiley used to reduce the damage of other emotions.
Revenge on somebody.
Retribution from somebody.
Reprisal for somebody.
Joe knew deep down that Vander and Somers had just run a good cop—bad cop number on him—but they were wasting their act. It wasn’t within them to assuage any of his guilt, any more than they could, in the end, control his actions. But they had been in charge too long to understand that; they were accustomed to obedience, not defiance. Kiley knew what they wanted, and he was capable of performing too—just to get away from them.
“I guess I never thought of it in just that way before, Lieutenant,” he told Somers. “Somehow it makes a lot of sense all of a sudden.”
“Well,” Somers said, more surprised than he wanted to display, “good, Joe. Very good. I’m glad you’re seeing the situation in a different light.” Somers threw a quick glance at each of the captains. “We’re all on the same team here, and we’ve got to pull together, so to speak.”
“Yes, sir,” Kiley agreed. Saying ‘sir’ to a nutless little prick like Somers was not easy—but Kiley had to get out of that office, out of their presence, away from their stifling, self-righteous authority. No matter what he had to say—
“Do you think,” Gordon Lovat asked, “that you can go along with the department on this and not make any waves?”
“I think so, yes, sir.”
Lovat glanced at Vander. The IA man said, “If you felt you needed some time off, Kiley, we might arrange a departmental leave—”
“No, sir,” Joe said, “I think I’m better off keeping busy. Captain Madzak has got me working on a pretty interesting bus vandalism case over at B-and-A. I think I’ll be able to do him some good on it.”
“Well, that’s fine, Kiley,” said Vander, a little reserved, nevertheless wanting to believe him. “You know, if you keep on the straight and narrow after all this, in a few years we can wipe the slate clean and maybe find you a nice desk job in one of the patrol districts, where you can just kick back and wait for your pension. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fine, sir.”
It was the ‘sir’ that finally got them. Coming from Kiley, that was as good as genuflecting and kissing their police academy rings. Since it was Lovat’s office, it was Lovat who dismissed him.
“All right, Detective, you may return to your duties at B-and-A. I hope for all our sakes that this matter, as far as it involves any of us, is closed. Let’s leave it in Homicide, where it belongs.”
“Yes, sir,” Kiley said.
As he left, Kiley wondered if the men in the office really thought that he believed the bullshit about a clean slate. If there was one irrefutable thing he had learned as a Chicago cop, it was that nobody ever forgot anything
Walking down the hall to return to B-and-A, Kiley saw that Phil Touhy and his lawyer were still on the floor, talking quietly outside the men’s room. Ignoring them, Kiley went over the elevator bank, pushed the call button, and stood looking out a window. As he did so, he heard a voice behind him say, “Hey, Kiley—” Joe turned. Phil Touhy was gesturing to him. “I want to talk to you—”
Malcolm, the lawyer, said, “Phil, this isn’t a good idea—”
“Relax,” Touhy said, walking away from him, coming toward Kiley. “Come on, Kiley, give me a minute. Off the record—” Touhy pointed toward a stairwell next to the elevators.
“Phil, I don’t advise this,” Malcolm stressed.
“Just wait there,” his client said. Then to Kiley, “Come on, one mick to another, what d’you say?”
Kiley followed the mobster over to the stairs and Touhy led him down to the landing between floors. They faced each other in a quiet vacuum of stale, trapped air.
“Listen,” Touhy said, “I want you to know that I am genuinely sorry about your partner—no, I mean it, Kiley,” he emphasized when Joe looked away in disgust. “Come on, be reasonable,” Touhy appealed. “A cop killing does nobody any good; I’d be an idiot to have any part of something that stupid. And my brother feels the same way; all my people feel the same way. I’m in the fucking rackets, Kiley: I deal in gambling, prostitution, protection, and turning trucks of hijacked merchandise. Profits from that I put into legitimate businesses: linen supplies for restaurants, airport gift shops, vending machines for cigarettes, gum, candy, rubbers. I mean, think about it, Kiley: What the fuck would I or any of my people want to kill a cop for? Come on.”
“Your brother’s dirty, Touhy.” Joe’s voice was flat and even. “He was involved in my partner’s killing.”
Touhy shook his head tolerantly. “My brother is a little slow, but he’s not dirty—not for this anyway Look, Kiley, if Tony had anything to do with your partner’s death, first thing he would’ve done is run to me for protection—”
“And first thing you would’ve done is get him out of the country, right?” asked Kiley. It was not really a question, and they both knew it.
“Okay, I know how it looks,” Touhy admitted. “But think about this: If Tony was involved, I’d already be trying to find a fall guy to get him off the hook. The gun he used would already be on its way to get planted on some junkie nigger in the projects, and then he’d be set up to take a fall for something, so the gun could be found in his possession, so your ballistics people could match it with the slug that killed your partner. I mean, this would be going on right fucking now, Kiley. But it isn’t. Because I don’t have nothing to cover up here.”
“Where’d you get the information about the stakeouts on your brother being unauthorized?” Kiley asked, knowing he would not be told. Touhy merely shrugged.
“Look, I’ve got a lot of friends, some of them on my side of the fence, some of them on yours. I do favors for people, they remember me. Let me tell you a story, Kiley. Few years back, there was a cop and his wife had a little boy, three years old, had some kind of disease, I don’t know what, needed one of them bone marrow transplants. This guy’s a straight and narrow cop, understand, not on nobody’s pad, living on a patrolman’s salary, a credit to your department. Only thing is, his kid had been sick since the day he was born and the guy had used up the maximum on his medical benefits and there was no money for the bone marrow thing. Not even no money to look for a donor. Fucking bank wouldn’t loan the guy no money; he’s got no collateral. Fucki
ng hospitals won’t do nothing on credit—shit, they’ll let you die in the office filling out admittance forms. I mean, this poor guy is really up against it, Kiley. So somebody comes to me on his behalf, says to me, ‘Philly, this guy and his kid need some help.’ So I make arrangements for the kid and his mother to go to the Mayo Clinic over in Minnesota; I make arrangements for a donor to be found; I pay for everything, no strings attached. And these people aren’t even Irish, Kiley; these people are black.” Touhy paused for effect, stuck his chin out a little, adjusted the knot in his tie. “Today that kid is happy, healthy, and doing good in the third grade.”
