City Blood

by Clark Howard

  “You’re not just going to drop out of our lives, are you, the girls and mine?” Stella asked, beginning to weep. “Please don’t do that—”

  “Do you think Frank will allow it to be any other way?” Kiley asked bluntly.

  “Frank’s a reasonable man. He knows you’ve been a friend—”

  “You’re kidding yourself, Stella,” he cut in, using without being aware of it the same tone he used with suspects. “Frank is a lowlife prick who’s going to make your life miserable. And there’s no way I’ll be able to be your friend or help you in any way after you marry him. He’ll be your husband, Stella. He’ll be in charge of you, the girls, this house, your insurance money—everything.” Kiley stared at her for a moment, and now it was he who had pity in his expression for her. “I feel sorry for you, Stella,” he said in a much softer tone, “because you don’t realize what you’re doing.” Turning from her, he left the house and strode rapidly out to his car.

  As he drove back into the city, Kiley could not help thinking that his miserable luck was running true to form. Of all the times for something like this to take place, it had to happen on a night that he badly needed to be stress-free and untroubled.

  The night before he might have to kill Fraz Lamont.

  Twenty-Two

  The next day, just at noon, Kiley guided his car to the curb on Division Street in the heart of one of the city’s most heavily populated, most crime-ridden, and most dangerous black communities. He knew as he parked that a dozen pairs of eyes were already watching him from fixed, unfriendly black faces. It was extremely rare to see a lone white person of any age or sex in this area. Policemen, of any color but especially white or Hispanic, usually traveled along D-Street, as it was called, in teams of three rather than the normal two. Even the lowest white hookers did not venture onto D-Street. It was the tightest members-only street in Chicago—and the membership card was color.

  Getting out of the car, Kiley locked it as three black adolescents, one of them wearing purple-and-black Disciple colors, watched him from in front of a take-out chicken wings shop where they were loitering. Before walking away from his car, Kiley went over to them and spoke to the one wearing colors.

  “I’m on my way in to see Fraz Lamont,” he said matter-of-factly. “When I come out, if I find my car fucked up, I’m going back in and tell Fraz that one of his Disciples is responsible for it. And I’m going to give him a description of you. I’m very good at descriptions because I’m a cop. So if my car gets fucked up, you get fucked up.” He gave them a tight smile. “Have a nice day.”

  When traffic along Division thinned enough, Kiley walked across it to what had once been an area movie theater of the long defunct Balaban-and-Katz chain. With their flagship Chicago Theater, an ornate Loop palace offering films and top stage shows, and its sister giant across the street, the State-Lake, the chain had upper-class movie houses all over the city, and before the advent of television was considered the prime source of reasonably priced family entertainment in Chicago. As television expanded and moviegoing decreased, B&K had gradually shifted its concentration to its larger first-run theaters, and closed its smaller houses. One of those closed was the Cortez Theater. It was now owned by, and the main headquarters of, Fraz Lamont and the feared Disciples street gang.

  The old theater’s box office was still in place, a cell-like structure, shaded by the marquee, standing back off the sidewalk on a chipped and faded tile foyer. An unsmiling young black man, wearing Disciple colors, sat in the booth, eyeing Kiley cautiously through the surrounding glass window as he approached. Kiley held Nick’s badge up for him to see.

  “Tell Fraz Lamont that Detective Joseph Kiley is here to see him.”

  The young man looked incredulous. “Yo, man, are you serious?” he asked disdainfully. “President Fraz don’t talk to no motherfucking white po-lice.”

  “That’s not for you to decide,” Kiley said. “All you are is a fucking lookout.” Kiley bobbed his chin at a telephone in the ticket booth. “Stop trying to be important, and don’t pretend you’re smart enough to make decisions. Just pick up the fucking phone and tell somebody I’m on my way in.”

  Kiley walked past the booth toward the door to the lobby.

  “Hey, sucker, you can’t go in there—!” the young man in the booth shouted. But he did not come out of the booth and try to stop Kiley, and when Kiley glanced back he saw the lookout quickly grab up the phone.

  There were three sets of four doors leading into the lobby, glass doors that were now painted black, with brass handles corroded green from the grip of many hands. Kiley tried six doors before finding one unlocked. As he stepped through it onto badly worn carpet with a barely discernible Aztec design, he found the wide lobby deserted and dead looking, its poster windows empty, an old candy counter dusty and deserted, an outdated water fountain rusted over. A happy place that had died, Kiley thought. Then become occupied by snakes.

  Four of those snakes were suddenly rushing toward him, as if he might be a substantial and immediate threat to them. They were a blur of purple and black as they rushed him. Kiley froze and held up both hands, palms out, the badge in one of them.

  “I’ve got business with Fraz!” he announced loudly. “Better tell him I’m here—!”

  In an instant the four Disciples had surrounded him, one on each side, holding him by his upper arms, one behind him with fingers gripping the back of his neck, the fourth man, flat-nosed with a block forehead, right in Kiley’s face. Kiley had to steel himself not to knee the latter hard in the balls to back him off.

  “Motherfucker, who the fuck are you?” the man in his face asked angrily. Saliva hit Kiley’s chin when the man spoke, and Kiley had to steel himself even more.

  “I’m a cop and I’ve got important business with Fraz—”

  “President Fraz, motherfucker!” the man said angrily. He snatched the badge case from Kiley’s hand and cursorily examined it. “Doughboy, what the fuck is the matter with you?” he demanded. “You can’t just walk in here like this is the public fucking library! You askin’ to disappear off the face of the fucking earth!”

  “I’m asking,” Kiley replied, “to see Fraz Lamont—”

  “President Fraz Lamont, motherfucker!”

  “President Fraz Lamont,” Kiley complied. Anything to get past this retarded cocksucker, he thought.

  “President Fraz don’t talk to no fucking cops, man—”

  “Why don’t you just ask President Fraz if he’s not a little curious why one white cop would walk in here all alone?” Kiley said. “See if he thinks maybe I’ve got something important to say.”

  “What kind of shit you talking, motherfucker?” the man in Kiley’s face demanded.

  “I’ll tell President Fraz all about it. Nobody else.”

  “President Fraz ain’t talking to you, man!”

  “Okay,” Kiley said, “then I’ll leave. Whatever happens to him can be your responsibility. Tell these assholes to let go of me—”

  “They are Disciples!”

  “Whatever,” Kiley said with an edge, the patience he girded himself with now ebbing, instinctive anger beginning to ooze through him. He did not like to be touched, and he certainly did not like the black man’s breath and saliva in his face. A thought flashed through his mind: when they released him, drawing both his guns and opening up on them, killing all four, then wasting the guy in the ticket booth as he ran to his car, maybe even throwing a few rounds at the dudes on the street; then getting the hell out of the neighborhood as fast as he could. Going right to the Shop and making a report. Saying he went there investigating Nick’s killing—wouldn’t the brass fucking love that—and the Disciples tried to hold him against his will, kidnap him. Even if he went to trial, he’d be acquitted. No jury would send him over for killing street scum like the Disciples, not even an all-black jury.

  “Tell your Disciples to let me go and I’ll leave,” Kiley acquiesced. “Whatever happens to President Fraz
will be on your head,” he emphasized.

  “What the fuck’s all the racket out here?” a new voice entered the fray. A black man of medium height but with a weightlifter’s upper body, came across the lobby, walking very erect, expression stern, hair roped in dreadlocks. He wore sharply creased black slacks and a purple silk shirt, the sleeves rolled up over melon-sized biceps. “Who the fuck is this honky?” he demanded.

  “He a cop, Regent Lennox,” Kiley’s interrogator told him. “He say he got to see President Fraz. The motherfucker crazy.”

  The newcomer nudged Kiley’s interrogator aside. “Let me handle this, Otis.” He did not get as close to Kiley, and his manner was far less aggressive. “My name is Lennox; I am one of President Fraz’s administrative regents. Why do you want to see President Fraz?”

  “I have something to tell President Fraz,” Kiley replied. “Something he will definitely want to know.”

  “Something that is in his interest?” Regent Lennox asked. “Something that might help him in some way?”

  “Yes.”

  Regent Lennox smiled slyly. “Then why do you want to tell him? Why would a white policeman want to help the president of the Disciples?” “In exchange for something,” Kiley replied “Something I want President Fraz to tell me.”

  “Which is?”

  Kiley shook his head. “This has to be between President Fraz and me. If he wants to tell you, that’s his business.”

  Regent Lennox pursed his lips and thought about it for a moment. Then he nodded at the three men restraining Kiley. “Turn him loose.” To Kiley, “Sit over there and wait,” he indicated an old velvet couch left over from the lobby’s better days. To Otis, Regent Lennox said, “You and your men stay with him.”

  “I want my badge back,” Kiley said. At a nod from Lennox, Otis handed Kiley the badge case. Kiley stepped over to sit where he had been told, and Regent Lennox left the lobby.

  “Jive-ass honky motherfucker,” Otis muttered to his men.

  As Kiley waited, he reflected on why he was there. It was no longer to pave the way toward any kind of relationship with Stella Bianco, that much seemed obvious to him. Stella had totaled him on that plan the previous evening. He still could not get over the absurdity of her decision to marry Frank Bianco. Apparently—and this was the only thing that made any sense to him—she had no idea of what a total, complete, absolute, and utter world-class nothing the son of a bitch was. Frank Bianco was consummately different from the way Nick had been; he was low-class, crude, uncouth, vulgar. Kiley had never been in a poolroom, hung out on a street corner, participated in a back-room card or dice game, or done anything else of that nature before he became a policeman, that there hadn’t been some guy exactly like Frank Bianco somewhere on the fringes.

  Even though things seemed to be over as far as a future with Stella, however, Kiley was still going ahead with his plan for extracting revenge for Nick’s killing. Stella aside, the department aside, his own entire future aside, he was going to get Nick’s killer—to that he was committed. And now, he had even greater motivation for doing it, because now there was the death of Gloria Mendez to add to his reasoning. Gloria had been murdered, of that he had no doubt; he just didn’t know why, or how it was connected to Nick’s killing. There were so many loose ends, Fraz Lamont being one of them—

  Kiley looked up as Regent Lennox strode back into the lobby.

  “President Fraz will see you—what did you say your name was?”

  “Detective Joseph Kiley.”

  “All right, Detective Kiley. Are you strapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give your gun to Otis—”

  Otis stepped forward, scowling, hateful. Kiley handed over his service revolver, then without being told bent down and got his backup revolver.

  “Two-gun honky motherfucker,” Otis muttered.

  “Pat him down,” Regent Lennox said.

  Otis gave the guns to another Disciple and Kiley raised his arms for the search. As Otis ran his hands over Kiley’s back and sides, Kiley said, “Don’t forget to feel my dick and balls. I want you to enjoy yourself—”

  “You motherfucker—!” Otis growled, grabbing Kiley’s coat lapels.

  “Just pat him down, goddamn it!” Regent Lennox ordered. “President Fraz is waiting on him!”

  Surlily, Otis resumed his search, stooping to run his hands up and down Kiley’s legs, making sure he stayed well away from the genital area. Finally he said to Lennox, “The motherfucker’s clean.”

  “All right, come with me,” Lennox said, gesturing to Kiley.

  Regent Lennox led Kiley from the lobby into what had once been the seating area of the old movie house. The floor, Kiley saw, which had originally been inclined to accommodate theater seats, had been overlaid with a new wooden surface which was level all the way to the front. Along both walls were desks, chairs, cabinets, cots, with perhaps two dozen purple-and-black-clad young men, and even a sprinkling of young black women, working at some task or loitering about. Although the movie screen was no longer there, the stage was still in place, with several steps leading up to it on each side. On the stage, a wall had been constructed to separate the auditorium from the backstage area. On that wall were photographs of Disciple members, headlines cut from Sun-Times and Tribune stories about the gang, and posters of printed slogans pertaining to other gangs: VICE LORDS SUCK! LATIN PRINCES BEWARE! Cobras Kiss Whitey’s Ass!—and some praising their own: FRAZ is the MAN! Disciples Rule! BIG-D IS IT!

  A door led behind the wall and when Kiley stepped through it he realized at once that he was no longer on wooden flooring but now on plush carpeting. He was in a reception room of sorts: there were two plush brocaded couches of African design, as well as several matching club chairs, all arranged around three walls which faced an inner set of double doors. On each side of those doors stood an oversize Disciple wearing an oversize handgun in a black shoulder holster strapped over the purple silk shirt. Besides the door sentries, there were half a dozen other Disciples in the room, all dressed in some combination of the colors, all apparently waiting for an audience with President Frazier Leroy Lamont, founder and undisputed leader of the organization, and—if the Street Gangs Intelligence Unit was to be believed—cold-blooded killer of at least seventeen people.

  As Regent Lennox strode toward the doors, each of the sentries reached out to open them for him, and he led Kiley past the guards’ threatening looks and the surprised scowls of the waiting Disciples, into an inner room that was as wide as the old theater and half as deep: a room decorated in purple and black but somehow not as dark as one might imagine because interspersed in those colors were African tribal patterns in white, yellow, orange, ocher, and lime. One end of the room was furnished as an office, the other as a bedroom; between them was a conference area with seating for a dozen, and in back of that a gleaming kitchen alcove with a bar. On a part of one wall were framed enlargements of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, and others that Kiley recognized, as well as photographs of George Jackson, Paul Robeson, Jack Johnson, and many more whose faces he did not know. Directly in front of the photograph wall, at a conference table on which was stacked several ledgers, sat the thirty-year-old black man who ruled more than two thousand dedicated followers, and through them tens of thousands of others in the Cabrini Green housing project and its surrounding area.

  Fraz Lamont was a color that had once been called “high yellow,” later referred to as café au lait. In his facial makeup were none of the Negroid features once characteristically attributed to his race: no wide, flat nose, no big lips, no nappy hair. Fraz was an exemplar of the upscale late twentieth-century black man who wished he were white: straight nose, thin line of lip, processed hair; he was black, but not really that color. A precise enunciator of words, Fraz did not feel it necessary to lace his language with “motherfucker” when addressing males, “bitch” when talking to women. Unknown to most of his followers, as well as the public, he had spent some thir
ty thousand dollars having his teeth straightened, replaced where necessary, and porcelain covered by a white orthodontist, which accounted for a brilliant smile responsible for the recruitment of most of the young female Disciples. A man who could, had he so chosen, have had a harem of women at his disposal, Fraz Lamont was faithful to and kept only one, who lived on a suburban country estate with the couple’s three daughters and infant son. The woman was white, the children mulatto.

  When Fraz Lamont looked up from one of the ledgers which was open on the table before him, he did not display for Joe Kiley his trademark smile. Instead, he studied him briefly as Regent Lennox said, “His name is Joseph Kiley, President.”

  “What’s your assignment?” Fraz asked without preliminary.

  “Bomb-and-Arson Squad,” Kiley said.

  Amused eyes looked at Lennox. “We haven’t bombed or burned anything lately, have we, Regent?”

  “Not lately, President,” replied Lennox.

  “I don’t see where we really have anything to talk about, Mr. Kiley.”

  “I think we do,” said Kiley. “I think we can talk about the murder of Detective Nick Bianco behind the Shamrock Club down on Lawrence Avenue.”

  The expression of the Disciples leader did not recast in any way, but his eyes shifted to Lennox. “Did you check our visitor for a wire, Regent?”

  “He was, uh—patted down—”

  “But was he checked for a wire?” An edge of irritation surfaced.

  “I’m not wired,” Kiley said. He removed his suit coat and draped it over a chair, then held his arms up. “Go on, check it out,” he said to both of them. “I’ll strip down for you if you want me to.”

  A quick examination of Kiley’s upper body under his shirt by Lennox revealed no wires above the waist, where a mini-microphone would have had to be for clear voice reception.