Sinkovich shook his head. “Now you’re just being polite.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
She took another bite. Jimmy took his second as well. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t try to chase it all down with his milk.
“I didn’t expect you to be a chef,” I said to Sinkovich.
“Single guy,” he said. “I gotta do something to keep busy.”
His wife had left him nearly a year ago now. She had taken his only child north, and had sued for full custody. After the divorce was final, she planned to remarry.
All of that broke Sinkovich’s heart, but he wasn’t fighting as hard as he probably should have. He felt beleaguered. His marriage was over, his job was in jeopardy, and his old friends claimed they didn’t recognize him any longer.
“If you keep cooking like this,” Marvella said, “you could start a second career as a restaurateur.”
“Or a first one,” Sinkovich said, his gaze meeting mine. “You don’t know what a can of worms you opened today.”
“Me?” I asked.
Jimmy looked up from his meal. The casserole mound was half gone. He liked it too, although he wasn’t willing to say yet. And Sinkovich’s comment might’ve just put him off his food.
“Simple questions ain’t so simple sometimes,” Sinkovich said to me.
“Is this about Lacey?” Jimmy asked.
Sinkovich nodded. “Yeah. She okay?”
“No.” Jimmy actually sounded bitter. “She’s still in the hospital.”
I looked at Marvella. She was watching all of us. “I talked to Althea again,” I said. “She needs you, even if she doesn’t ask for you.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Marvella said.
Sinkovich was still looking at Jimmy. “I hear from Marvella here that you’re some kinda hero.”
Jimmy shrugged and took such a large swig of milk that it left a mustache. “I just done what Smoke woulda done.”
Sinkovich gave me a sideways glance that didn’t have any approval in it. “Sounds like you mighta saved her life.”
Jimmy seemed alarmed. I thought he had known that, but maybe having a police officer confirm it startled him.
“God knows what would have happened if Jimmy hadn’t been there,” I said.
“Well, you deserve more than kluskyzeekeyvasnakapoosta à la Sinkovich for that. I got cake too, and this one I didn’t make.”
“Really?” Jimmy asked. “Cake?”
“Yeah,” Sinkovich said. “Angel food, but that ain’t no comment on nothing.”
Marvella covered her mouth, stifling a laugh.
“You coulda said that first,” Jimmy said. “I might not’ve been such a jerk about the pizza.”
I grinned at Sinkovich. “Don’t believe him. He has already forgotten that he planned on hating this meal.”
“I can’t pronounce it and it smells like feet. Why would anyone think it was going to be good?” Jimmy asked.
“You gotta respect logic,” Sinkovich said. I wasn’t sure why he was so cheerful, particularly after the day he had planned to have.
“You can tell me what you was gonna tell just Smokey,” Jimmy said. “It’s okay.”
“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “This one’s on me. You did the hard part. Now let me handle the investigation. That’s what you’re here about, right, Jack? The questions I had?”
Sinkovich nodded.
“Didn’t have a lot of time because of the trial, you know. Jim, you ever wanna do a civics paper on the way trials work, you interview me. I’ll tell you all about this thing. It’s nuts.”
“You can’t change the subject,” Jimmy said.
“Yes, we can,” I said. “Why don’t you tell us how the Grimshaws are doing. How’s Keith?”
“Oh, God,” Jimmy said, then he frowned at Sinkovich. “Can I do something?”
“What?” he asked.
“Can I tell you what happened so I can tell Keith I went to the police? He thinks you guys can do something about them hotels and hookers and stuff. He’s just a kid. He don’t know how the world works.”
Sinkovich’s cheeks flushed bright red. “And you do?”
“On this stuff, yeah. Smoke says I know too much. Can I tell him?” Jimmy asked. He looked at me.
“Jimmy’s mother exposed him to things that no child should have seen,” I said to Sinkovich.
“Ah, more of that secret stuff.” Sinkovich served himself a bit more casserole and offered some to Jimmy, who, to my surprise, nodded. “I get it. And I know you’re wiser than your years, kiddo. And yeah, you can tell Keith you talked to the cops. Tell him…tell him we’re doing what we can, okay?”
“And what is that, exactly?” Jimmy asked.
“We investigate first, then we act,” Sinkovich said.
I winced. It was that attitude, which I had also expressed countless times, that had prevented Jimmy from going to me.
“You’re investigating now?” Jimmy asked.
“Yep,” Sinkovich said.
“And that’s what you gotta talk to Smoke about?”
“Yes,” Sinkovich said.
“You guys need me, I know stuff,” Jimmy said.
“Like what?” Marvella asked.
Jimmy polished off his second helping. “I dunno. Just stuff.”
We all looked at him.
He shrugged. “I’m just saying, I can be pretty dang useful sometimes.”
“If we ever doubted that,” Sinkovich said, “you proved otherwise yesterday. Good job, kiddo.”
Jimmy grinned. “Does that mean I get cake?”
“You betcha,” Sinkovich said. “Then you let me and Grimshaw here talk, and you don’t eavesdrop. Promise?”
Jimmy nodded. “Promise,” he said.
TWENTY-FIVE
CAKE, CONVERSATION, and actual laughter. Sinkovich turned what I thought would be a difficult evening into something almost pleasant. If someone had ever asked me if Sinkovich could be a ray of sunshine on a difficult day, I would have laughed in disbelief.
But he had, and Jimmy seemed to forget just how rough the day had been. Marvella promised to help Jimmy with the dishes so they could get it done in time for Medical Center.
Normally, I would have mentioned homework. On this night, I didn’t have the heart.
Sinkovich and I went into my office and closed the door. That room always felt particularly claustrophobic with two people in it, but it was the only truly private room in the apartment.
I sat down behind my desk. Sinkovich sat down across from me. I turned on the desk lamp, and bent it away from us. The overhead light was thin, and the desk lamp helped just a little if I pointed it in the right direction.
“So,” I said, “you investigated the Starlite and there’s something about it you can’t tell me on the phone.”
He laughed. “Ah, hell, Grimshaw. You don’t investigate dumps like that. And besides, maybe I just wanted to see your pretty face and find out what the kid got into.”
“Marvella told you about it,” I said.
“She did. That kid, he’s great, but he’s gonna get hurt. You gotta do something about him. He’s gotta learn fists mean nothing. Brains’re the important thing.”
“I know. I’m not happy about any of this.” I didn’t need a lecture from Sinkovich about Jimmy. “But let’s start with the Starlite.”
Sinkovich leaned back in the chair as if it was actually comfortable, and folded his hands over his stomach, hiding some of that ugly sweater. “I done a drive-by on the way back to the precinct. Lucky for you, court got out about three, so I had some time, which I ain’t had a lot of lately, because of that goddamn circus.”
I let him complain. I wasn’t going to ask about it, because we’d have another half-hour digression.
“You ain’t kidding about that dump being close. Jesus, Grimshaw, what’re you thinking, letting your kid go to that school? You know that’s Stones territory too, right?”
&n
bsp; “Yes,” I said tightly. “Jimmy’s not the only child in that school. There are hundreds.”
Sinkovich leaned his head on the back of the chair and sighed. “I know. Fucking city. I shouldn’t blame you for that school. I know you’re doing what you can. One reason I ain’t fighting Charlene so hard on the custody is she took my kid to Minnesota and not Minneapolis, neither. To one of them smaller towns, where they don’t got gangs and drugs and hookers right next to the school. My kid’ll get a public school education, and it’ll be a good one.”
I picked up a pen and ran it between my fingers. I hadn’t realized that Sinkovich had thought through the custody battle with his son. I had simply assumed that he had decided not to fight, like so many men did. I hadn’t realized he wanted his child out of this part of Chicago.
It made complete sense, considering everything Sinkovich saw every day.
He said, “First thing I done when I got back to the precinct today was check the zoning for that block. It is a school zone, which means no bars close by and shit like that. But I don’t know what you know about zoning in the Great City of Chicago, but lemme tell you that it’s designed not to enforce the laws, but to enforce the Machine’s agenda. If they don’t like the Starlite, they’ll use crap like zoning laws to shut it down.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You think they would shut down the Starlite?” I asked, trying not to sound hopeful.
He held up his right index finger, warning me to be quiet for a moment.
“I think if that sleaze-bag hotel was next to that fancy-pants Catholic school the mayor sends his kids to, then yeah, I think the city’d shut it down in a heartbeat. Have you looked at that damn Catholic school? It’s on the edge of the Black Belt, and the neighborhood is scrubbed fucking clean.”
“I hadn’t looked,” I said.
“Yeah, well, Catholic schools are private and the Archdiocese of Chicago keeps them up. They’re all bragging about the education level and shit.” Sinkovich sat up and peered at me sheepishly. “Me and my lawyer looked at them before we started on this custody thing. It’d cost an arm and a ball to send my kid to private school. I’d love to send the kid there, but even if I didn’t eat and lived on the goddamn street, I couldn’t afford that place.”
He was serious. He had looked at every single way he could afford to send his son to a Catholic school.
“I can’t afford it either,” I said.
“Yeah, but you got Laura and she loves Jim. You might wanna—”
“Tell me about the Starlite.” I’d been having this conversation all day, and I didn’t want to continue it with Sinkovich.
He nodded, realizing I was shutting him down. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, thought, remembered where he was (although I had no idea how, since his conversation had been all over the map), and then he said, “The Starlite’s a longtime operation, been handed from man to man since Prohibition. It was a Black Belt speakeasy and specialized in policy back in the day.”
When I was growing up, policy had been the most popular form of gambling in the black community. It was a three-number lottery system, and the policy sheets or cards or whatever the local system used, were sold for pennies, nickels and dimes, all of which added up to a small fortune.
There were policy operations in Chicago still, but they had decreased in importance, especially since some lottery games had gone mainstream. The Chicago Defender was running what I considered a policy type giveaway, printing the winning numbers in every issue. Jimmy wanted to play because he was convinced he’d win the $500 prize.
So far, I hadn’t let him. I didn’t want him to learn how to gamble.
“So, there are policy games at the Starlite?” I asked.
“Not now,” Sinkovich said. “Policy cleared out about the time Lewis got murdered.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Ah, jeez,” Sinkovich said. “Sometimes it seems like you know more shit about this town than I do, and then I realize you don’t know nothing. Benjamin Lewis, alderman, 24th Ward—that’s Lawndale, West Side, you know?”
“I know.” I had been learning about local politics.
“February, 1963. He’s found in his office, handcuffed to the chair and shot through the head three times. Everybody knows it was the Outfit, ain’t nobody gonna do nothing about it.”
“The Outfit?” I asked.
Sinkovich rolled his eyes. He had more in common with Jimmy than I realized. “You know, the Mob, the Mafia, the Syndicate, you know, like that stupid Puzo book, the whatsis…”
“The Godfather,” I said. It was a bestseller that held no interest for me. “I didn’t know the Chicago mob was called the Outfit.”
All of this time with Laura, knowing her father was connected to the Chicago mob, and I had never heard the phrase “the Outfit.” It actually made me wonder how many references to the organization that I had missed because I didn’t know the slang.
“That’s Chicago’s name for it, because you know us, we always gotta have different names for the same old shit. Anyway, Lewis apparently got too big for his britches and decided after his election he’d take out the white precinct captains and install his guys—”
“Wouldn’t that anger Mayor Daley?” I asked. “He was mayor then, right?”
“Oh, yeah, it did piss him off, and we don’t none of us talk about the mayor and the Outfit, okay?”
“Not even in the privacy of my own apartment?” I asked.
“No,” Sinkovich said with great force. “You want your kid repeating shit we say about that fat slug? You don’t say nothing. I don’t say nothing. It’s dangerous.”
I was a bit surprised at his vehemence. He was afraid of Daley. Or Daley’s Machine. Or both.
“But you’re saying the Outfit killed Lewis.”
“It was a hit, simple as that. Ain’t many groups in this town what do a hit. In addition taking out the precinct captains, this brilliant jiga—sorry, Jesus, sorry.” He blushed.
He would never have caught himself in the past, nor would he have blushed. Still, the fact that he probably used such words when I wasn’t around irritated me.
“You say you’re sorry, and yet that filth still comes out of your mouth,” I snapped.
“I am sorry, but you know that name is what we used to call that clown. It just snuck out from habit. I don’t think like that no more. In fact, I’m talking to you like you’s one of the guys. Because I don’t think of you as, you know—”
“Black,” I said.
“Different from me,” he said at the same time. “Hand to God.”
Even though I shook my head, I believed him. We’d fought about his language before. We would probably fight about it again.
“So, this Lewis,” I said, prompting Sinkovich.
“Well,” he said, looking relieved that we had moved on, “in addition to taking out them captains, he decides he’s gonna rewrite the splits on policy and pocket most of the profits himself. That’s why he got killed, at least that’s what the rumors say, and it’s a pretty good reason when you think about it. What nobody knows is who leaked the information on his changes. I don’t think Daley had something to do with it because he was up for election against Adamowski, who wasn’t no saint neither. Although, everybody knows nothing happens in Daley’s city, especially to one of his pols, without him knowing about it.”
I was trying to follow Sinkovich’s point, and wrap it back to something that mattered to me.
“Whoever was managing the Starlite, then, got out of policy,” I said.
“Well, not quite,” Sinkovich said. “Back in the day, the Starlite was known for escorts, you know, the upscale girls, because it was an upscale place, and if your taste went to—forgive me—chocolate,” and then he did a little bow, deciding, apparently, that he had said something offensive when it was probably the least offensive thing he’d said, “then you’d go down to the Starlite. Clientele was mostly what do you call it now? Black, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“But lotsa big time white guys showed up too, because the girls were choice. After the war, the neighborhood went all to hell, and the girls went from high rent to low rent, and policy was where the money went.”
“You know a lot about this for one hour’s research,” I said.
“Ya think?” He opened his hands in a don’t-blame-me gesture. “I’ll tell you why in a minute. But lemme get the history lesson out first.”
I settled in my chair. “All right.”
“So, Lewis dies. It’s all over the news. The mayoral candidates are squealing about it, the press is eating it for lunch, everyone’s talking about the corrupt mayor, and no one’s looking at the policy wheels, which go right on spinning and the cash goes right into the pocket of the Outfit, like it done since the war.”
“And the Starlite?” I asked.
“Well, here’s where it gets interesting, least I think so. The guy what owned the Starlite, Arnold Garon, he ends up in a ditch, three shots to the head, about the same time as Lewis. Dead as the proverbial doorknob. And he ain’t the only one. Lots of dead club owners around the Black Belt and the West Side, prob’ly the guys what paid Lewis for policy and looked the other way when he pocketed the cash. The Outfit can be pretty unforgiving if you don’t tell them someone’s screwing with them.”
I felt cold. “You’re saying that the Outfit, the mob, owns the Starlite.”
“They don’t own nothing, Grimshaw. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. They let some guy run his own business, and then that guy pays protection or a percentage or gets his supplies from the Outfit, and that’s what we call mobbed up. Sometimes they bring up a guy who’s low rent, ya know? Someone trying to make his bones with the guys upstairs and if he done a good job, then he gets promoted.”
Like Laura’s father. He owned Sturdy Investments outright, but he had gotten his start in Chicago as a mob enforcer—at least, that was what we believed and what the evidence implied. Over the years, he became even more respectable. However, it was his goal to make Laura as respectable as possible. He kept her in the dark about all aspects of his life. She didn’t find out his connection to the mob until her mother died, years later.
Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 15
