by Clark Howard
“Have you considered living with your Aunt Lena or some other relative?” Kiley asked.
“No, because I know what that would be like,” she replied, shaking her head adamantly. “They’d just try to boss me around. It wouldn’t work out, believe me.”
“The Police League could probably help you find a good foster home with people that would be happy to have you live with them for a few years—”
“No, I don’t think so, Detective.” Meralda abruptly rose, so Kiley did also. “I better stay with my own, you know?” She glanced over at the door where the handsome young Mundo was now standing, waiting for her. She held out her hand. “Good-bye, Joe Kiley. Thanks for finding out about my Mama.”
Kiley nodded. “Take care of yourself. If you ever need me for anything, you can just call—”
“Call the Shop,” she finished it for him. “Yeah, I know. But I’ll be okay. Good-bye.”
On the way back to his car, Kiley felt very sad for Meralda Mendez and all the days and nights of her young life that she would now have to endure before she became the woman her mother had been.
If she ever did.
It was almost dark when Kiley arrived back at his apartment. The positive mood he had when he left the Shop that afternoon, based on how well things seemed to be turning out, had been neutralized to some extent by his meeting with Meralda and the premonition it had given him regarding her future. He had a foreshadowing of anxiety about the girl, as well as a nagging notion, not fully formed, that there should be something that he could do to help her. He realized that it was probably his guilt about Gloria that was generating the feeling, but that did not diminish it at all; whatever the basis, the thought was there: Surely he could find a way to give her some kind of moral support, at least for a few years. He made up his mind to concentrate on finding a way.
When he got into his apartment, the red light on his answering machine was flashing. Still remembering Nick’s last call, he sat down on the couch and retrieved the message at once. He heard Stella’s familiar voice.
“Hi, Joe, it’s Stella. I guess you’re out.” A slight pause. “Or maybe you’re not picking up because you’re mad at me.” Her voice broke a little. “Honest to God, Joe, I’m so confused about things, I don’t know what to do. Jennie doesn’t like Frank, practically won’t have anything to do with him since I told her and Tessie that I’d be marrying him.” She laughed briefly, without mirth. “Jennie says she’s going to wait until she grows up and then she’s going to marry you. Tessie thinks Frank is okay, but you know her: She’s easily bribed, which Frank does regularly. I haven’t made the commitment yet, haven’t told Frank or Uncle Gino that I would. I’m just having a bad time with everything, Joe.” She began crying softly. “I want Nick back. I know that’ll never be, and Father Balducci says it isn’t even healthy, but I can’t help it—I want my Nicky back—”
Blinking away tears of his own, Kiley stopped the tape and rested his head back against the couch. Jesus Christ, forgive me, he thought, not even sure from whom he was asking forgiveness: Stella or God, or both. Stella, for Nick? God, for Nick and Gloria and Scarp and the Touhys and—
Shaking his head, he thought: No. There was too much blood on his hands to ask forgiveness from God for himself. He would burn in hell for what he had done in that cemetery, and in his heart he knew he deserved it. But if only he could help Stella—and help the girls—and help Meralda—
Sitting forward again, he turned Stella’s message back on. When the crying stopped, she said, “I don’t mean to hang any of this on you, Joe. I just don’t have anybody to talk to about things. I know you must be pretty upset with me; I’ve never seen your face the way it was when you left the other night. And I don’t blame you. It was so stupid of me not to realize how you felt. So the reason I’m calling is to tell you I’m sorry, Joey. I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose for the world. Please give me a call so we can talk. I’ll be home all Sunday night. ’Bye, Joe.”
A double beep sounded, telling Kiley that she had hung up and that there were no other messages. As the machine automatically reset itself, Kiley stared into space and his mind began racing. Stella needed someone, very badly. Her girls needed someone. Meralda needed someone. And he needed someone.
The solution to everyone’s problem suddenly seemed so clear to him. So easy. So simple.
But his mind, even though racing, was still a cop’s mind, still rooted in reality. Maybe it was too simple. Would Stella understand it? Would Meralda? Would anyone?
Yet he could not dissuade the logic of it from his thoughts. The need was there, in all of them, and the resolution of it seemed to be there also, in all of them as well. The picture it presented was too magnetic to ignore. Stella and Joe, Jennie and Tessie, and Meralda, living together as a family—in Nick’s house. Nick would approve. Gloria would approve. Kiley had no doubt about either.
What Kiley found so intriguing, and so compelling, was that he might be able to make it happen.
He strode into the bedroom, stripping off coat, tie, and shirt as he went. At the bathroom sink he ran hot water and lathered his face. He had shaved some twelve hours earlier, for his meeting at the Shop, but for what he had in mind now, he wanted to be fresh all over again. As he pulled the safety razor across his face, he studied himself in the mirror. There was a new kind of determination in his eyes, a determination unlike that which had been displayed in recent weeks. It was no longer a grim, unsmiling tenacity such as had motivated him to find and punish Nick’s killer; now it was more a purposeful, dedicated desire to accomplish something that was beneficial, contributory; something good, for a change. He was not deluding himself for a moment that any of it would relieve him of the grave sins now staining his soul, but if it would help those for whom he cared, those for whom he felt responsible, then at least he could go to hell with that part of his conscience cleansed.
When he was cleanshaven, Kiley got into the shower and scrubbed himself under a spray of steaming water, beginning to feel very good now, very positive again, very much assured and unequivocal, as the old Joe Kiley had been before the nightmare after Ronnie Lynn’s death had begun. Out of the shower, briskly toweling down, he found himself actually humming—a nameless little Irish melody that now and again he had heard his mother croon. At his closet he reached for one of his gray suits, still in a dry cleaner’s bag, but his hand stopped before he lifted the hanger. His eyes swept over to a line of hanging clothes that had once been Nick’s, the clothes that Stella had insisted he take. He had worn only one article, a sport coat, when he drove down to give Alma Lynn her dead sister’s photographs. Now he moved his hand over and shifted through the clothes to a navy blue tweed coat with medium blue slacks on the same hanger. Without debating it, he removed the clothes, picked out a tab collar white shirt and a blue checked tie, and got dressed. With the socks he had taken off, he buffed his plain-toe black shoes a little, promising himself that he would buy some new, more stylish shoes the very next day. He would start paying more attention to his appearance, he silently vowed.
In front of the mirror, he was satisfied with what he saw. He looked pretty damned good in Nick’s clothes, and never mind where Nick had bought them. Thinking briefly about calling Stella before he drove out, he decided not to. He would surprise her. If it hadn’t been Sunday night with all the florists closed, he would have bought her some flowers. Or maybe not. She had only said she wanted to talk. He knew she would be pleased to see him wearing Nick’s clothes. Hopefully, that would put her in a receptive frame of mind. He hoped so. She simply had to listen to reason tonight.
On his way out of the building, Kiley ran into his landlady, Mrs. Levine.
“My, don’t you look spiffy,” she said with raised eyebrows. A smallish, gray-haired woman, slightly stooped with osteoporosis, she was replacing a bulb in the first-floor hallway. “Got a heavy date, looks like. I hope it’s nothing serious, so you won’t move away and leave me alone and unprotected.”
&n
bsp; Kiley paused and kissed her on the forehead. “If I move, I’ll find a meaner cop to replace me.”
Crossing the sidewalk to his car, Kiley could only shake his head wryly. There would probably always be something, he thought, to make him feel guilty. It was the curse of being Irish.
Half smiling to himself, he slid behind the wheel, closed the door, and turned on the ignition.
The front end of the Buick exploded before his eyes, just as Fred Scarp’s casket had done.
Thirty-One
From his wicker rocking chair on the front porch, Kiley could see the postman every morning as he came around the corner on Elm Street and stopped at the first mailbox next to the curb. The postman drove a little delivery van with the steering wheel on the right side so that he could pull up next to the mailboxes and deliver the mail without having to get out. Kiley was sitting in his rocker, waiting, every morning when the mail came. The postman, a friendly, weather-beaten man named Vernon, always brought Kiley’s mail up to the porch for him because he knew Kiley still had difficulty walking.
“’Morning, Joe,” Vernon said on this particular day, coming up the three steps to the porch.
“’Morning, Verne.”
“Going to be another scorcher today, looks like.”
“Looks like,” Kiley agreed. He took the mail Vernon handed him.
“Wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the humidity being up,” Vernon analyzed. “Humidity’s what does it.”
“Want a cold drink, Verne?” Kiley asked.
“No, thanks anyway,” Vernon said. “Just make me sweat more. Coming to the Legion game tonight?
“Maybe,” Kiley said.
“Jimmy Burns is pitching,” Vernon reminded. “Boy’s got the best arm I’ve seen in ten years.”
“Got a fast ball, that’s for sure,” agreed Kiley.
“Well, take care,” Vernon went down the steps waving, and Kiley watched him continue on his route.
The mail wasn’t much: electric bill, sale circular from a shoe store up on the square, national teachers association newsletter, and his Chicago paper. He had a mail subscription to the Sun-Times; it was always day-old news when he got it, but it helped him keep up with things back in the city. Setting the other mail aside, on a wicker table where he had a glass of cold limeade, he opened the paper and began scanning the article headlines. On page four, he found one that seized his attention:
LOVAT IN PLEA BARGAIN
Kiley’s eyes skimmed through it to get the gist of the story; then, shaking his head slightly in disgust, he went back to the beginning and read it carefully. Gordon Lovat, former high-ranking officer in the Chicago Police Department, had negotiated through his attorneys a plea bargain arrangement with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office with respect to several long-standing criminal charges for which he had been indicted more than a year earlier. Originally Lovat had been implicated in the separate murders of two Chicago police officers, in addition to being charged with state and federal racketeering violations. Through a preliminary hearing and numerous pre-trial motions, it had been determined that available evidence, including testimony by Disciples gang president Frazier Lamont, could not support a case against Lovat for the murder of Sergeant Gloria Mendez, and could only support a charge of accessory before the fact in the murder of Detective Nick Bianco. In the Mendez case, Lovat’s admission to an officer wearing a recording device had been ruled inadmissible after his lawyers successfully argued that he had been entrapped.
The racketeering charges Lovat faced could be proved, with Fraz Lamont’s testimony—but cooperation between the state’s attorney and the gang leader was dwindling as Fraz continued to be kept locked up because his Disciples had failed to come forth with money for his bail. Lamont was incensed that Gordon Lovat, accused of far more serious crimes than Fraz himself, had been free on one million dollars bail since his preliminary hearing one week after his arrest. Lamont wanted to be released on his own recognizance so that he could return to the Disciples and resume control. The state’s attorney refused. Animosity began to swell between the prosecutors and Fraz Lamont’s lawyer.
The plea bargain that Kiley was now reading about was that Gordon Lovat would plead guilty to accessory before the fact to voluntary manslaughter in the Bianco case; that the Mendez case would be dropped; and that the racketeering charges also would be dropped if Lovat testified against Fraz Lamont on Lamont’s racketeering charges. With an added charge of racketeering committed to enhance street gang activities, Fraz Lamont could face twenty-five years in prison. Gordon Lovat, on the other hand, would receive a twelve-to-eighteen-year sentence, and probably be paroled after eight.
Kiley shook his head again. Eight fucking years for the lives of two good cops. Resting his head back, he closed his eyes for a moment. I probably should have killed him. Kiley could not keep the thought from his mind. He realized that Lovat would have died a martyr that way—but look what giving him to the system had done. Ten, fifteen years from now, Lovat would be free to play with his grandchildren while living quite well on the income from all the businesses his dirty money had financed for his family. While Jennie and Tessie would have grown up without their father, and with a scuzz like Frank Bianco for a stepfather; and Meralda Mendez would have—
No, Kiley ordered, he would not allow himself to even think about Meralda Mendez. God only knew what had become of her in the year since he last saw her. Being a part of the Latin Princes gang, she could have become common property for gangbangs; or she might have taken up with a particular member, like that handsome kid Mundo, and had a baby of her own; or she might even have been turned out to trick for the gang to produce income. Merely imagining the possible straits Meralda Mendez could be in was almost nauseating to Kiley.
Rising from the rocker, Kiley used a cane to balance himself and slowly made his way inside. He put the mail on a table in the foyer, and continued on into what Alma had once told him was originally a sun room when her father had built the house. Now it was furnished as a small bedroom with a recliner, television, and a dresser for his things. During the first several months he had lived there, after being released from the convalescent home, he had spent most of his time in the little room, sleeping alone, resting, doing his physical therapy routines. Now, he used the bed only to nap in the afternoons, usually making a slow but beneficial climb of the stairs, with Alma’s help, to the big bedroom upstairs at night. But he still considered the little converted sun room to be his room, and retreated to it frequently during the day when he was alone.
At his dresser, Kiley retrieved a manila envelope from one of the drawers, along with a pair of scissors. In the dresser mirror he caught a glimpse of himself, but did not pause to study his face as he had done during the first months of his recuperation. The left side of his face, including the ear and most of his hair, had been burned in the explosion, and for a long time he had looked pretty hideous: a split-faced man with a normal appearance on one side, badly disfigured on the other. Plastic surgery and a nicely rebuilt ear had substantially reduced the damage, and now the left side of his face resembled, if anything, a wax museum figure. Alma said the difference wasn’t even noticeable except in certain light. His answer to that was, “Yeah, natural and artificial.” But his appearance no longer bothered him much, and people in the little town had long since stopped staring at him.
Sitting down in his recliner, he used the scissors to slowly and carefully cut out the news item about Gordon Lovat’s plea bargain. Putting the rest of the paper next to his bed to read later, he opened the envelope and removed several dozen other clippings. For a moment, he idly sifted through them, eyes scanning the headline of each. One of the earlier ones read:
CLUES SOUGHT IN COP BOMBING
That story, which had run several days after Kiley’s car had exploded, stated that the Bomb-and-Arson squad of the police department had no significant clues in the bombing. Detective Kiley, who was on temporary attached duty in B-and-
A, had worked only one bomb case, that of a man convicted of gross public vandalism, and the department had been unable as of then to connect that man with the crime. Harold Paul Winston could have done it; his sentence of one-to-three years had been stayed for thirty days to allow him to get his personal affairs in order before reporting to prison, and he had been free on one hundred thousand dollars bond, which had been posted by his stepfather—but Winston had an alibi for the ninety-minute window of opportunity during which the explosive device had been magnetically attached to the underside of the generator on Kiley’s engine. The alibi was a ticket stub to a Loop movie theater; Winston had bought the ticket and mingled with the mixed crowd of people going in and coming out of the lobby. No one remembered seeing him leave—and he was able to recite in great detail what the feature, Best Friends, was about.
B-and-A had also looked into the possibility that the explosion of Kiley’s car was somehow connected to the highly publicized cemetery bombing that had occurred in a nearby county the day before Kiley’s bombing, but that possibility was ruled out since Detective Kiley was not involved in police matters related to organized crime. In addition, Detective Kiley had no known personal enemies who might have set the explosive.
Looking at that clipping now, Kiley grunted softly. No known personal enemies—right. That is, if Uncle Gino and his scumbag son, all of his scumbag sons-in-law, and all of his scumbag nephews were discounted. And organized crime? Who knew what previous orders were out on him from Phil Touhy? If Touhy and Lovat thought it necessary to kill Gloria, why not him also? As for Hal, well, the old movie ticket alibi was practically foolproof if done right. And Kiley knew that Hal did things right; just look at the quality of his bombs.
Putting that clipping aside, Kiley picked up another:
JANITOR SENTENCED
Wallace Simpson, 31, had been given an eight-to-fifteen-year sentence on a guilty plea to voluntary manslaughter in the beating death of go-go dancer Veronica Lynn, 28. A plea bargain with the state’s attorney had stipulated to the court that the defendant had been provoked by the victim and acted in a temporarily enraged manner brought on by that provocation. Simpson had no previous criminal record, which was also a strong mitigating factor. A pre-sentencing probation report had given a favorable prognosis for the defendant’s rehabilitation, and recommended incarceration in a minimum security institution where he could receive educational and psychological therapeutic support. His first parole hearing would be in three years.
