The Maxwell Street Blues

by Michael Raleigh

  Great. I just proved I can read.

  “Are you the landlord?”

  “If I was the landlord, the sidewalk would be fixed. Be new back stairs and some glass in that window up there.” She pointed up behind her to a third-floor window covered with plywood.

  The woman studied him with dark, penetrating eyes. She was almost six feet tall and he was betting she hadn’t lost an argument in twenty years. The T-shirt said WE ARE THE ENEMY.

  “My name is Whelan. I’m a private investigator, and I’m attempting to locate a man who I believe lived here sometime in the seventies.” He handed her a card.

  Her eyebrows went up and she seemed to read the card several times.

  “The man’s name is Samuel Burwell. He’s a tall thin man in his late fifties. He’s also gone by the name Sam Terry. I’m trying to find him for a relative.”

  She hesitated and then looked him in the eye. “Well, Mr. Whelan, I can honestly say I never met anyone by either of these names. I only been here for two years. We moved here in 1983.” She was silent for a moment, then handed him back his card. “I’m sorry I can’t be any more help. Maybe you could ask the other folk around here.”

  She stood there holding out his card. A faint but familiar stubbornness came into her face, and Whelan understood what had just happened.

  “Ma’am, it’s never easy to give out information to strangers about your neighbors, especially to people from outside the neighborhood. But you keep the card. If you think of something you can tell me without making yourself feel uncomfortable, call me. I’ve got an answering service, so you can leave a message any time of day.”

  “All right,” she said tonelessly, but he knew he’d probably had his last conversation with her.

  “Mind if I talk to the people upstairs?”

  “That’s your business.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  She nodded and closed the door quickly. Whelan moved up the stairs, thinking of what little she’d told him: she’d “never met anyone by either of these names.” Okay, what did that mean? Maybe that she knew nothing whatsoever about the man, but more likely that she had met Sam Burwell under some other name, or that she had never actually met him but knew who he was. He knew that look: the look of someone about to use semantics to get out of a tight spot, the look of somebody who thinks she’s been wonderfully clever.

  He knocked on the door to the second floor.

  A young woman’s voice said something, and he heard footsteps approaching the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Willis? My name is Paul Whelan. I’m a private investigator looking for a missing man. His name is Sam Burwell, and I was told he used to live here.”

  Nothing. The door remained closed.

  “I could slip my business card under the door, ma’am.”

  The door opened and Whelan found himself eye to eye with a tall, slender woman in her early twenties. She was wearing a nurse’s uniform. She gave him a quick scan, didn’t like what she saw, and held out her hand. “Let me see the card, please.”

  She looked at the card he offered, turned it over, and handed it back to him. “I’m on my way to work.”

  “I just need some information, and I don’t need to take up a lot of your time. Do you know a man named Samuel Burwell or Sam Terry? I was told he lived in this building for a while.” He showed her the picture.

  The young woman took a quick glance at it. “I don’t know him.” She gave him a challenging look.

  “Have you lived here long?”

  “Four years.” A look of irritation crossed her face. She stared at him, and when he said nothing she shook her head. “Mister, I don’t know nobody like that. And I got to get to work.”

  “Thanks for your time,” he said. The door closed before he finished the sentence.

  A few feet from his car, a dog was sniffing at what appeared to be a dead pigeon. It was a scrawny dog, filthy and bony, with matted fur that showed signs of mange. It was also at least part German shepherd and it did not like him.

  The dog growled and then barked sharply, moving several steps toward him. He backed away.

  “Easy. I like dogs.”

  The dog advanced, barking louder, and Whelan walked a little faster. The dog yelped and growled at his departing back, exulting in its first piece of good luck in weeks.

  In Asia they’d eat you, dog.

  He drove on up Douglas Boulevard and skirted Douglas Park, driving slowly and allowing himself a few seconds to look at the old place. In another time Douglas Park had been one of the city’s showpieces, one of a small handful of parks with their own lagoons. In the seventies, the city had pulled off one of its few original notions, creating a beach area near the Douglas Park Lagoon and giving the residents of the neighborhood a tiny lake of their own, complete with sand and lifeguards. Swimming season was over and the lifeguards long gone, but there were still people strolling through the park as though hoping to conjure up a little more summer before returning to reality.

  Reality was a neighborhood with 40 percent unemployment, where rents for unsubsidized housing kept pace with those in the upscale neighborhoods on the North Side, paid to an absentee landlord who might or might not ever get around to putting a nickel for repairs into his buildings and who probably had never heard of the city building code. Subsidized apartments went for 30 percent of the resident’s income, which didn’t sound like much if he was pulling down minimum wage but added up to pretty amazing rent if he went out and found himself a decent paying job.

  Almost everywhere in the neighborhood were vacant lots and decaying buildings, and from almost any angle he could see the dark monolithic structure that had housed Sears, Roebuck and Company before its sudden departure from the West Side. He wondered what the shock waves had been like the day Sears announced it was shutting down and taking its jobs and money somewhere else.

  O. Brown proved to be a harried woman in her forties who was babysitting a number of small children. One of them took the opportunity to bolt for the street while she was talking with Whelan.

  The other address, on South Troy, offered an education, as did South Troy itself. The house was a trim red-brick two-flat on a narrow street of well-kept buildings, lawns and gardens crowded with a dozen kinds of flowers, an island of color and growing things in the midst of depression. There wasn’t the faintest hint of flaking paint or crumbling masonry on the street. It was tidy and gaudy at the same time, cleaner than any street in his own neighborhood, a showpiece. It wasn’t the first well-maintained black street Whelan had seen, but all the others had been in far more affluent neighborhoods.

  The name on the first-floor bell was BROWN. He rang it, then the one above it, and got nothing. Then he went downstairs to the basement—to what enterprising realtors would call a garden apartment—and rang a bell marked WELLS. The bell made a high tinny sound. A moment later, a short black man in his sixties answered the door.

  He nodded to Whelan and Whelan took a shot.

  “I’m looking for O.C.”

  The old man gave him a long look. He started at Whelan’s shoes, lingered for a moment at his vest, and then came to a stop around eye level. There was a slight cast of amusement in his eyes that said, So what?

  Whelan produced his card. “That’s me on the card.”

  The old man held the card out at arm’s length. “Private investigator? I don’t think I ever—”

  “That’s what everybody says. And I’m not really looking for O.C., I want to talk to him about a friend of his. That’s who I’m looking for. A man by the name of Sam.”

  The man looked at him. “Sam who? They lots of Sams.”

  “Sam Burwell.”

  The old man nodded. “I know him. But I’m not in the habit of talking ’bout folk to strangers, y’understand.”

  “Yes, I do. It’s an idea most people have. It’s why I get paid for what I do. Okay, tell you what. I’ll tell you why I’m here, and you decide whether
to tell me anything.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ve been hired by a lawyer to find Sam Burwell on behalf of a family member. The lawyer told me about O.C., and although you haven’t told me anything, I know you know O.C. Brown.”

  “You do, huh?” The old man looked amused.

  “Yes.”

  “Sam Burwell…I haven’t seen Sam in a long time. Long time. Couldn’t tell you anything ’bout him.”

  “But you can tell me where to find O.C. If not, I’ll talk to the landlord.”

  Mr. Wells smiled for the first time.

  Whelan thought a moment and then nodded. “Let me guess: O.C. is the landlord.”

  Mr. Wells nodded. “O.C.’s at work. You can talk to him there. I’m gonna call him and let him know you comin’. He don’t want to talk to you, he won’t.”

  “Fair enough. Where’s work?”

  “The Blue Note.”

  “Sounds like a tavern.”

  “That’s right. Over on Kedzie. O.C. work the bar during the day.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Wells.”

  The old man looked at Whelan’s vest again.

  “You don’t like my vest?”

  “Got a lot of pockets. You fish?”

  “Once in a while. I haven’t fished in a long time, though.”

  “All those pockets, look like it be nice for fishin’.”

  “Good for a lot of things. You can never have too many pockets.”

  The old man nodded, and Whelan gave him a little wave.

  Three

  Day 1, Friday

  The Blue Note was a tiny red-brick cube in the middle of a residential stretch of Kedzie. The wide windows of the old days had been covered up by block glass so that only a pair of small slits allowed a glimpse of the inside, and a gaudy electric beer sign had been jammed into each of them.

  Never look in the window when you can actually go in, Whelan said to himself, and pulled open the door and let the smell hit him. All taverns smelled alike, all of them, whether Mexican places on Ashland or black lounges on the far South Side or Irish gin mills in Canaryville or Indian bars in Uptown; they all smelled the same because they were the same. They served the same functions, offered the same things to very similar people. And in the middle of the afternoon they were all dark, quiet places, and this one on the West Side was no different.

  There was no music on and the back door was open to let in some air. The Blue Note was having a slow afternoon: four men sat at the bar, three of them together and in the middle of an animated conversation, and one by himself at the far end. They were all in their fifties or sixties, all of them smoking, as was the fifth man in the tavern, the bartender. He was of an age with the others, but a little more alert, and he looked up before they did at the sound of the door opening.

  The man had seen trouble enter taverns before, perhaps even the serious kind that lurks in the back of every bartender’s imagination. Whelan nodded and the bartender moved his head forward almost imperceptibly. The other men didn’t stop talking but gave him a sidelong glance—curious but not enough to stare. The bartender watched him without moving.

  Whelan took a seat, two stools away from the nearest patron. The bartender moved over to him and tossed a coaster on the bar.

  “Afternoon,” Whelan said.

  The bartender nodded. “What’ll it be, sir?”

  “That coffee?”

  The bartender looked at the half pot on the burner behind him and smiled.

  “Useta be. Don’ know what it is now.”

  “I’m feeling brave. How about a cup? Black.”

  “All right, sir.”

  The bartender’s eyes lingered on Whelan for a moment. He was very dark and the gray hadn’t taken over his hair completely yet, but the skin around his eyes and mouth was heavily lined. He turned and grabbed the coffeepot and a white ceramic mug. The lip of the mug was chipped. He poured coffee and set the cup down on the coaster.

  Whelan put a five on the bar. The barman said, “Fifty cent,” took his money, and put it into the register without ringing anything up and came back with Whelan’s change. Whelan smiled.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” the bartender asked.

  “Nope. I’m just trying to remember the last time I saw anybody ring anything up in a tavern.”

  “We ring it up, Mr. Reagan gonna get it.”

  “I think he’s got mine already. You O.C. Brown?”

  One of the old men at the bar stiffened slightly, and Whelan looked at them in the bar mirror. He had everybody’s attention now.

  “Who’s asking, sir?”

  Whelan stuck a thumb and finger in a vest pocket and came up with a business card. “Not an IRS man, anyway.”

  “I see that. Private investigator.” He held the card up and looked at his cronies. “This man a private investigator.”

  Whelan heard a general murmur from the audience and then, a little more clearly, one voice saying, “Ask him who he investigating, O.C.”

  O.C. Brown looked at the card again and then at Whelan. “I think the man is investigating O.C. Brown.” He smiled, but there was a slight look of tension in his eyes.

  Whelan took a sip of coffee and felt scar tissue form on the inside of his mouth. “Good God.”

  “Told you it was old.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was dangerous. No, I’m not investigating you. I’m trying to find Sam Burwell.”

  “Ain’t seen him.” The answer was more a memorized response than a statement, and Whelan grinned.

  “A good bartender says that half a million times in the course of a career. How many times have you said that about Sam?”

  The bartender fought a little smile and shrugged. “What you want Sam for?”

  “I don’t. He’s got relatives looking for him. Relatives and a lawyer.”

  The old man pursed his lips and shook his head. “Relatives, huh? Relatives looking for him.”

  Whelan laughed and took another sip of the fearsome coffee. “I love talking to bartenders. That’s how you talk to salesmen, isn’t it?”

  O.C. looked past him and gave the faintest shake of his head. “I never heard about any relatives that might be looking for him.”

  “I’m working for an attorney. You might actually feel more comfortable talking to him.”

  O.C. Brown frowned slightly. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Because he’s black. He doesn’t look like a white cop.”

  “Where’s this man’s office at?”

  “North Side.”

  “He try lookin’ himself?”

  “I believe he gave it a shot, but he’s not a homeboy. This is your New York variety of lawyer. Here.” He dropped Hill’s card on the bar. “You can call him if you want.”

  “I don’t need to talk to no lawyer. I’m not afraid to talk to you. Ain’t seen Sam. Not in a while.”

  “But you are a friend of his.”

  “Yeah. Don’t see him much now.”

  “Does he still set up on Maxwell Street?”

  Brown stared at him. “Far as I know. I don’t go down there no more myself. I’m too old to stand out there all day for a couple dollars.”

  “You used to sell things down there?”

  “Yes, sir. Just one more way to get by. Tryin’ to make a dollar. Sam, he didn’t have much to sell, last I heard.” O.C. looked out the little window. “Some folk down there just be selling junk, just trying to get by. It’s not what it used to be, Maxwell Street.”

  “I remember.”

  “Gonna be gone soon, all of it.” O.C. looked at him for a moment. “What if you can’t find Sam?”

  “I still get paid for my time. And maybe this lawyer hires another private detective and you get to do this dance all over again. The lawyer would be throwing away good money, though.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why is that?” O.C. Brown looked amused.

  “Because I’m good at this.”

  “Lookin’ for folks.”

 
“Yeah. But I think if I can’t find Sam, it’s because Sam isn’t here anymore. That’s what I think.”

  He took another sip of his coffee and set it down without looking. It missed the coaster, and a little bit sloshed onto the bar. The old man quickly produced a bar rag and wiped the spill, then put the cup on the coaster.

  “So this is your bar.”

  “Who said that?”

  “It’s the way you sit there, for one. The way you move behind the bar, like you enjoy it. And the way you pounce on a little spill.”

  O.C. Brown smiled at him. “Little spill, big spill, they all stain the wood. Can’t get wood like this no more. Can’t build a back bar like that no more, either.” He indicated the beautifully carved and varnished bar behind him, a long dark piece of maple with a diamond-shaped mirror in the center.

  “And I saw your house. I stopped by there first.”

  The other man studied him for a while. Suspicion mixed with pride, and pride won a unanimous decision.

  “You been by the house, huh?”

  “Yes. It’s a fine-looking building, and bartenders don’t usually own houses like that. Not here, not anywhere.”

  A satisfied look came into O.C. Brown’s eyes and he seemed to relax.

  Whelan looked at his money on the bar. “Why don’t you buy these gentlemen another cocktail.”

  O.C. nodded. “Hey, you all got a sponsor here.”

  Whelan waited till they all had a drink, saluted them with his cup, took one last sip of its dark, possibly toxic contents, and set it down. O.C. Brown was studying him.

  “This lawyer—what if you find Sam and he don’t want anything to do with this lawyer?”

  “Not my problem. Not my job, either. I’m supposed to find him, that’s all.” He nodded to Brown. “See you around.”

  O.C. held up Whelan’s card. “I see Sam, I’ll give him this, hear?”

  “Fair enough,” Whelan said, and left.

  He headed home and drove past Douglas Park. The park was already beginning to fill up with children. A group of kids clung to a pair of park benches and watched two boys break-dancing to a small boom box. Deeper into the park, a number of football games had gotten started, including one that appeared to be tackle: little boys grabbing other little boys and yanking them down onto the soft grass and piling on. Baseball season had ended less than two weeks earlier. For Whelan, it had ended in shock and ignominy, as the heartbreaking Cubs had managed to turn their best season in forty years into a disaster and found yet another way to teach their dewy-eyed fans to expect the worst. A pair of ground-ball outs by San Diego hitters in the final game of the playoffs had been parlayed by the Cub infield into base hits, and another team had gone on to the World Series instead of the boys from Wrigley. Whelan still replayed the final game of that mordant playoff series in his mind every day.