The Chicago Way mk-1

by Michael Harvey

  CHAPTER 11

  We sat under the El tracks on Webster at an ancient DePaul bar called Kelly’s. I had a can of Bud and a burger. Nicole had a Diet Coke.

  “What made you take this gig?” I said.

  “The task force?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about.”

  “I know, but the other stuff will wait. Talk to me about this.”

  I tried to hold Nicole’s gaze, but she broke off. I took a sip of beer and waited.

  “I went back again,” she said. “Just last week.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? It’s where we grew up.”

  “You don’t want to forget, do you?”

  “What I want doesn’t really matter. Some things just don’t go away. Probably be the last thing I think of when I pass over. First thing I remember on the other side. And that’s all right. I’ve learned to live with it. Learned how to grow strong from it. You should, too.”

  “I’m good,” I said. “You know that. I just worry about a scene like tonight.”

  Nicole smiled and held out her hand. I took it.

  “Michael, you’re always good. Always fine. At least that’s the part we all get to see. Sometimes, though, I wonder.”

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t move very much.

  “The SWAT team’s a good thing for me,” she continued. “Lets me do something.”

  “The empowerment thing?”

  “Yeah, the empowerment thing.”

  My friend looked empowered, almost too much so.

  “You sure?” I said.

  “Yes. Besides, it gets too rough, I got you around.”

  “Whether you like it or not.”

  “Absolutely. But let me ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  Nicole lifted her glass and talked around the side.

  “How exactly you going to save this poor black girl if you’re sitting in a prison cell?”

  “I guess it’s time for my story.”

  “It is.”

  And so I told her. About Gibbons and Elaine Remington, the print and Diane Lindsay.

  “You sleeping with her?”

  “No.”

  Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “Matter of time. I know Diane. She does some work at the Rape Volunteer Association.”

  “And?”

  “You’re in over your head.”

  “Never stopped me before.”

  “Really? When was the last time you slept with a woman?”

  I shrugged. Nicole cut right to it.

  “I’m going to guess there’s been no one since Annie. And that’s been…”

  She counted on her fingertips and looked toward the ceiling.

  “…over a year.”

  There had actually been plenty of women since Annie, but it was all playacting, dipping a toe in the water. I had a feeling Diane Lindsay would take me to the deep end and that, as my friend hammered home, might be a problem.

  “Simple fact of life, Michael. What’s done is done. You gotta move on. Hard as it is, everyone else already has.”

  “Let’s try one thing at a time,” I said. “Right now, she’s a journalist and I’m a potential story. As in ‘murder suspect’ sort of story.”

  Nicole sat back, dragged a straw idly through her drink, and looked into its caramel-colored depths. I took another sip of beer and studied the nearest EXIT sign. Sometimes friendship can be hard. Especially with me on the other side. After a while Nicole shrugged and let it go.

  “Have you talked to Bennett?”

  “Yeah. He says to just lay low. Whole thing will blow over.”

  “Bennett is usually right,” Nicole said.

  “True. By the way, he asked for you.”

  “Bennett’s a sweet guy.”

  “Yeah. And still a little obsessed.”

  “I told you we talked. Straightened that all out. Long time ago.”

  “The boy is only human, Nicole. Just another face in the fawning crowd.”

  “Whatever. Now get yourself another beer and give me the dirt on Diane Lindsay.”

  I didn’t have any dirt, or anything else to offer, on our local news celeb. So I made up a few things, which seemed to make Nicole happy and, of course, is the American way.

  CHAPTER 12

  I left Kelly’s at a little after ten p.m. and parked on Addison, just around the corner from my flat. I needed a smoke, shrugged into the night, and walked north along Southport Avenue. A half block from the Music Box Theatre, I brushed shoulders with the past. Annie was walking out of the old-time movie house and she was with someone, a tall, probably good-looking someone. He leaned over to speak at a crosswalk. She laughed into his chest, slipping a hand around his waist in a way I preferred not to remember.

  The light changed and the couple approached, arms now linked, strides matching perfectly. A friend once told me that was a sure sign a couple was having sex. I leaned back, into the shadows of a convenient Chicago alley. They floated past. I caught a glimpse of her hair, maybe a cheekbone washed over in the pale reflection of neon. Then they were gone.

  I moved into the slipstream and followed for another block or five. Her scent was there. Or maybe it was just me. Anyway, I followed, feeling more than I wanted. Nicole was dead-on. It shouldn’t be that way. But it was.

  After a while, I had my fix and dropped off the pace. Nearby, an Irish bar named Cullen’s beckoned. I wandered in and ordered a pint. Then five more.

  Four hours later, they announced last call. A half hour after that, a more than nice waitress offered me a lift home. I took it. We made time for a bit in her car, but she had to get up early. I said okay, went inside, and fixed a cup of tea. I thought about taking a look at the report on Gibbons’ homicide but knew I was drunk. Instead, I watched late-night Chicago flow past my window. After a while, I finished my tea and lay down, promising myself to fall asleep before the memories arrived.

  CHAPTER 13

  The next morning was Chicago cool, a slippery slope in late fall that could quickly deteriorate to cold, freezing cold, arctic cold, and why-the-fuck-would-anyone-live-here cold.

  I made myself a cup of coffee and listened as the weather banged against my windows. Then I did what most runners do. Ignored the elements, got my running stuff on, and headed to the lakefront. A mile later, I felt loose and warm. The wind was steady and in my face. I kept my head down and plowed through. At four miles, I turned away from the lake, felt the breezes shift at my back, and let them chase me home. When I was done, I sat on my stoop as the sweat dried and the endorphins flowed. I’d be a little sore later on, but it was worth it. And would be worth it again. Tomorrow.

  After the run, I showered, dressed, and found my car on the street. I headed west, through a light dusting of local traffic and into a dowager of a Chicago neighborhood near Humboldt Park. I parked in front of a Ukrainian church with a Madonna icon that used to cry but now just looks at you. Still, the people come. Still, the people leave money.

  I got out of my car and stretched my eyes down the street. To my left a row of graystones marched into the distance. To my right a car parked at an angle to the curb. Two figures sat in the front seat. One drummed his fingers along the dashboard. A bass line growled from a pair of speakers in the back. I stepped close to a two-flat to read its number and stepped back. A stone gargoyle, face rubbed and smooth with age, smiled from its rooftop perch.

  Halfway down the block I found the address I was looking for. In the last months of his life, John Gibbons had taken a room here. At least that’s what he’d told me. Like the rest of the street, it wasn’t much. For a man in the supposed prime of life, it was even less. For me, it was a place to start.

  I walked across a shabby lawn to an even shabbier porch. As I walked, I felt, then heard something. A scattering of Kibbles ’n Bits crunched underfoot. I should have taken it as an omen. I didn’t.

  The door cracked open a couple of
inches, then maybe four more. The pointed face of a woman peeked across the threshold.

  “Hello there,” I said.

  The woman shifted and pale light washed over us both. Her face carried a bit more oval that I’d first thought, with high cheekbones and deep shadows underneath. The hair was thin, diluted by time and a lack of sun. Thick glasses sealed up small brown eyes pinpricked with black. They crawled over me and then beyond.

  I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me and was about to speak again when the woman gave forth with a noise, somewhere between a squeak, a grunt, and a snicker. Then I heard the shifting of feet inside.

  “I’m a friend of John’s,” I said. “John Gibbons, that is.”

  I moved one foot onto the threshold, just inside the doorjamb. The heavy maple door crushed my big toe.

  “Keep your foot back there,” she said through the now-closed portal.

  I hopped lightly and pretended it didn’t hurt.

  “You caught my foot there, Ms…”

  I looked at the mailbox name above GIBBONS.

  “Ms. Mulberry.”

  I swore I heard a cackle although I’d be hard pressed to say I knew exactly what a cackle sounded like.

  “Serves you right there, Mr. John Gibbons’ friend. What do you want?”

  “Nothing, Ms. Mulberry. Just some back rent I know John was owing. I wanted to make up the difference…”

  The big door suddenly swung open, and an interior light clicked on. Through the screen I could see a woman, ageless in the worst way possible. Maybe sixty, maybe eighty, she was too dusty and out of focus to get a handle on. Perched on each shoulder was a calico cat, entwined around her legs four or five others. Kittens and cats lounged on the stairs behind her. Some of them wore miniature ice bags strapped to their little cat heads. Mulberry must have caught me staring.

  “They have migraines. From the heat, you know.”

  “But it’s October.”

  She flashed me a look, magnified by the Harry Caray glasses.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  I was inside the house now, inside a sitting room stuffed with felines and their respective droppings. I managed to get a handkerchief close to my face and found a spot on the sofa. To my left was a small alcove. Inside it, a desk littered with cuttings from newspapers, plates of half-eaten food, and an ashtray filled to overflowing. On the wall was a bulletin board with Post-it notes and index cards skewered with thumbtacks. Mulberry pulled a ledger out of a gray filing cabinet she kept next to the desk and laid it flat between us. The entries were handwritten in ballpoint, and immaculate. The landlady admired her handiwork for a moment, then looked up.

  “Bring a check?” she said.

  Her eyes fastened on my hand as I reached inside a coat pocket.

  “Actually, Ms. Mulberry, I have something better than that.” I flashed my investigator’s license.

  “I’m here because John Gibbons is dead.”

  The ledger flew shut. She glanced at the name on the license, then threw the look back my way.

  “The police have already been here. Been and gone, Mr. Kelly. I wish you’d go, too.”

  Little cat faces gleamed at me from various corners of the room. Something drifted by my ankles, but I didn’t jump.

  “I need your help, Ms. Mulberry.”

  “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Her smile revealed a set of teeth that were better left undisturbed.

  “Yes, he was, ma’am.”

  “The police didn’t tell me that. But I knew all the same. Just like Law amp; Order. Was it brutal?”

  “Shot in the stomach and left to die down at Navy Pier. That’s no picnic.”

  Now the landlady leaned forward and touched my arm.

  “Was he in the lake? They’re supposed to be blue when they’re pulled from the lake.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, his body was found just past the pier.”

  Her eyes had widened and glowed a warm copper. An angora moved to the couch and settled close by her cheek. The other cats drifted away.

  “This is Oskar. Spelled with a k. He’s my alter ego.” I nodded and looked from purring angora to fruitcake landlady. “I put Sun-In in Oskar’s hair. Now it matches mine.” I had to admit the resemblance was uncanny. “You want to go upstairs and see John’s room?” I nodded again, and she pointed to a set of darkened stairs.

  CHAPTER 14

  I went up the stairs, down a brown hall, and into an even browner room. A bed with gray sheets tilted in one corner. A torn shade covered the only window. A slice of sunlight backed through it and onto an opposite wall.

  I turned to find Mulberry at my shoulder. Her angora wrapped itself around my ankle.

  “Can you give me a little room?” I said.

  The landlady took a half step back. I guess she called that room. Her nose flared a bit as she spoke.

  “The police went through the drawers.”

  She pointed to a crooked dresser that sat by the window.

  “They didn’t take anything, though. I told them if they did, I’d make them sign. Want to see the form? I typed it up with a Gateway computer.”

  I drifted toward the dresser and opened a few drawers. Nothing much. A couple of pairs of pants, some shirts.

  “No wallet here or nothing, Ms. Mulberry?”

  “No. He only had the one suit he was wearing. A simple man.”

  I nodded.

  “Nice enough man,” she said. As if I didn’t believe her.

  “Any other personal stuff?” I said. “Papers, books, that sort of thing?”

  Mulberry held her chin with one hand and shook her head. Then she picked up the angora and began to stroke it. The cat looked at me and I found it difficult to look away.

  “She asked about that, too,” Mulberry said.

  “The detective?” I said.

  “Not the detective. The woman that called later.”

  “What woman would that be?”

  “The one on television. You know. The bitch with the red hair.”

  “On Channel 6?”

  “That’s the one. She came yesterday afternoon and looked through this stuff. Just like you.”

  “Just like me, huh?”

  “Yep. She didn’t get anything either. Told me not to talk to anyone else.”

  I sat down on the bed.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  The angora hissed and Mulberry arched her back. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  “Don’t swear in front of Oskar. He doesn’t like it from strangers.”

  The old woman laid out Gibbons’ clothes, put what looked like a shaving kit on top of them, and got the whole thing ready to bundle into a bag. My old partner had died alone and already found his hole in the ground. The rest of his life was here, in a dirty brown room and a Dominick’s shopping bag.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  Mulberry spoke softly and kept one eye closed. The other loomed large through the thick corrective lens.

  “What’s not so bad?” I said.

  “Dying alone. Once you lose your choices, it’s not so bad.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. You should leave it be now and go.”

  I shrugged, took a twenty out of my clip, and dropped it on the bed. For Kibbles ’n Bits, I told the woman. I told her if she ran across any of Gibbons’ personal papers or books to call me.

  “What about the police?” she said.

  I dropped her another twenty.

  “What about the redhead?”

  Two more twenties.

  “Give the bitch nothing,” I said.

  Mulberry smiled. Bubbles of green saliva kicked up between her front teeth. I left the house quickly, promising myself to brush and floss. Regularly and with determination.

  CHAPTER 15

  I returned to my office and sat in the quiet of midmorning, waiting for the new women in my life to fall into place.

  The landlady was lying to me. W
hy, I had no idea.

  My paying client liked to threaten me with guns and wanted me to solve a murder for which I was already a suspect.

  Then there was the third female, one who sometimes bought me drinks and was undoubtedly using me to get herself a story. All of which was all right if there was even a remote possibility she would sleep with me. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  I sighed and put my feet up. A paperback copy of The Odyssey sat on a corner of my desk, right next to a bucket of nine-millimeter slugs. I opened it up and read about Odysseus, who was bewitched by Circe and spent a year on her island, not to mention in her bed. Didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world, except when Circe tried to turn Odysseus into a pig. Life can be a tricky thing. Especially where women were involved.

  I put down Homer and picked up the here and now. I needed an education, quick and dirty, about an old rape that might be spawning fresh murder. And I thought I knew just where to get it.

  CHAPTER 16

  Cook County’s evidence warehouse sits at the corner of Twenty-third and Rockwell on the city’s South Side. A pile of red and white bricks, surrounded by barbed wire and flat, vacant pavement, the warehouse holds the bones of Chicago’s crimes. Eight stories high and chock-full.

  Ray Goshen was six feet two and had to run around in the shower to get wet. His shoulders were as wide as my fist, and his neck didn’t support his head, which tended to tilt to the left- although sometimes, when he got angry, I swore it tilted right. Whichever way he tilted, I always felt myself looking sideways at Ray and never really able to get a handle on what he was saying. Not that the head should matter. Tilted or not, the words all come out the same. Or so one would think. Anyway, in the world of Chicago evidence, Ray Goshen held the keys to the kingdom. He met me at the door, head leaning right and, true to form, not a happy man.

  “What you doing down here, Kelly?”

  “Hey, Ray, nice to see you, too.”

  “Last time you were here was not a good thing.”