Tagged for Murder

by Jack Fredrickson

  They were wild shots, fired across their bows. There was no way of knowing whether it had been them in that dark car, or Kopek and Jacks, or other cops, or just some innocent passing Impala happening to pull up behind Violet as she left to go back to the city. But my wild shot seemed to nudge Raines just a bit, and he shot Cuthbert a quick glance before he fixed his eyes more resolutely on me.

  ‘Sunheim’s assistant?’ he asked. ‘She was here?’’

  ‘Kopek and Jacks will tell you she delivered a message from the rail carrier that routed the boxcar to Central Works.’

  ‘Why the hell did she have to drive out to tell you that?’ Cuthbert asked.

  ‘Kopek and Jacks will tell you I misplaced my phone.’

  ‘You have no idea where Sunheim is?’ Raines asked.

  ‘Why tail Miss Krumfeld?’ I asked.

  They both shrugged, good shoulders in good suits.

  Raines gave me a card, Cuthbert gave me a scowl, and they left without asking me anything more about Violet Krumfeld, or Herbie’s wife, or Walter Dace, or even baseboards.

  I slumped into my electric-blue LaZBoy at five o’clock and picked up my ancient four-inch television to get dosed by the evening news.

  Breaking News! the screen offered up, as it had been doing relentlessly when introducing each new story, urgent or not. This one, though, cut straight into me.

  The reporter, a twenty-something cutie with nary a line on her face reflecting previous thought, stood in front of the downtown building I’d slunk away from so recently.

  ‘Two victims of an office invasion were discovered this afternoon,’ she began. ‘Chicago police have not released their names, but the victims are believed to be a middle-aged man and his assistant, a young woman in her mid-twenties. They were discovered by a messenger from a parcel delivery service. Police are on the scene, investigating.’

  Walter Dace and his impeccably finger-nailed receptionist had been found.

  I got up and paced and, a few miles later, I got inspired.

  I called Leo. ‘Are you in Rivertown?’

  ‘This business of running a gourmet restaurant is time-consuming. Endora’s working late at the Newberry on a collection that’s set to display next weekend, so I’m using the night to catch up on my regular stuff.’

  ‘I thought Ma and her friends were going to help.’

  ‘That’s for later.’

  ‘With bells on sticks?’

  ‘And goats, don’t forget. And ice cream, should you be so willing to free up my freezer. We’re going to have it all.’

  ‘How about a distraction tonight?’

  ‘What sort?’ he asked.

  ‘A drive-by in your white van, not your noticeable Porsche, to test some new thinking I just came upon.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up?’

  ‘I might be under surveillance by cops in the spit of land.’

  ‘No way of seeing anyone hiding in there,’ he said, of the mess between my street and Thompson Avenue. The lizards that ran Rivertown called it a park, simply because it had trees, but no one ever went in there because half of those trees had fallen, leaving the would-be park a tangle of fallen limbs and branches, all mounded over by years of rotting leaves. It was an excellent place for any cop to hide.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the first block on the other side of Thompson Avenue,’ I said.

  ‘M-E-A-T?’ he asked, ever the wit, spelling it out as another gentle nudge to rid his freezer of my contents.

  ‘No,’ I said. There was nothing funny in his soft prompt. If he knew what I’d parked in his ice cream freezer, he’d see nothing funny in it, either.

  I went out the door in my shirtsleeves, carrying my peacoat and watch cap in a paper bag as though I was taking trash to the garbage can behind the turret. Blocked now by the turret, I slipped on the coat, tugged on the watch cap and ran down the crumbles of the river walk to the broad lawn that fronted city hall. Staying low, I ran back across my street and up through the darkness alongside the spit of land to Thompson Avenue.

  Leo was waiting on the first street past the neon. ‘I need to drive,’ I said, climbing into the passenger’s side. He slipped back between the front seats so we could switch places.

  ‘So, what’s the madness for tonight?’ he said, after I got behind the wheel.

  ‘I need you to tell me what’s going on.’

  THIRTY

  I drove first to the flattened ground that had once been the Central Works.

  ‘Nothing here now except that railcar,’ Leo said of the box shape faint in the moonlight.

  ‘That railcar was full of fixtures.’

  ‘Fixtures?’

  ‘Restaurant stuff, the railroad’s insurance man said. Probably sinks, counters, cabinets, maybe even some plumbing and electrical.’

  ‘All lost when the building blew up,’ he said.

  ‘No. I was in that building beforehand, remember? I saw no fixtures. But I might have seen them being unloaded at another building.’

  ‘That was lucky, getting the stuff out in time,’ he said, and paused. ‘Or are we talking arson that was owner-inflicted here?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps?’ He turned to me. ‘Are the owners filing an insurance claim or not?’

  ‘Just the opposite. The property manager told a fire chief they never insured the building because it was slated for demolition.’

  ‘Then why ship in—?’

  ‘Fixtures for an uninsured building they were going to demolish? More importantly, why didn’t they push it over with the others they bulldozed right after they acquired the property?’

  ‘And the obvious answer is?’ he asked, right on cue.

  ‘They’d originally intended to keep that one building, but didn’t insure it because they didn’t want insurance inspectors dropping by,’ I said.

  ‘But when the building attracted too much attention, following discovery of the corpse, they had it torched?’

  ‘They like their privacy,’ I said.

  He laughed, thinking it was a joke.

  I headed south, intending to give Leo a fast look at the Vanderbilt Supply building and myself a fresh one as well. Abducting Herbie had been lunacy, a cranial short-circuit, and I was going to put him back and then tip the cops anonymously so they could make of him what they could.

  When we got to within a block, I spotted a group of six gangly black teenagers loitering at the edge of the cleared ground, checking out the building like they were contemplating trouble. I switched off the headlamps and pulled to the curb.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’ Leo asked, nervous in the ruined neighborhood.

  ‘I want to see what’s interesting those kids.’

  Leo squinted into the distance. ‘Just kids, hanging in no man’s land.’

  The boys left the tilt of the broken sidewalk and began running toward the black shape of the building. They disappeared into the darkness.

  A muzzle flashed from the darkest part of the grounds; a gun had fired from close to the building. In an instant, the kids came racing out of the gloom and tore down the sidewalk, running like they were fleeing the hounds of hell. I counted all six. None moved as if he were wounded.

  I wheeled us around and sped off in the opposite direction.

  ‘What did we just see?’ Leo shouted, looking behind us as we raced away.

  ‘Confirmation,’ I said as we shot through the next intersection.

  ‘Confirmation of what?’

  ‘Confirmation that there is now a guard.’

  ‘A guard at an empty, derelict building?’

  ‘A guard at a building slated for bigger things. The gunfire was meant to scare those kids away, not kill them.’

  ‘So, no big deal?’

  ‘With me at the Central Works, they used a big-tired off-roader. In Austin, they used gunshots, like we just saw.’ I told him what I’d run into, with Weasel.

  ‘But still, only to scare you off and not to kill?’<
br />
  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘That bastard, Weasel, set you up for that?’

  ‘Using the kid’s disappearance as bait. I want to squeeze the truth out of him, to be sure the kid’s OK, but Weasel’s hiding.’

  ‘You’re crazy. Crazy damn crazy.’ He slumped back in the seat and we drove the rest of the way to the Bureski building in silence.

  ‘Notice how it sits isolated in the middle of what had been a multi-building complex,’ I said as we drove by.

  ‘Bulldozed ground, just like Central Works and the Vanderbilt building. You think there’s a guy nearby with a gun, like at the Vanderbilt Supply building?’

  ‘I think the guys behind Triple Time are being extra-vigilant with their remaining properties.’

  We got to the fourth and last of Triple Time’s buildings twenty minutes later. I’d intended to pass by slowly to show Leo where I’d seen all the truck activity, but headlamps were approaching along the side street, so I sped on by. The headlamps stopped in the intersection we’d just driven through, as though the driver wanted to get a solid look at us.

  I turned at the next street, and headed us back toward Rivertown.

  ‘Googling all four of their locations shows satellite photos, likely taken last summer,’ I said, eyeballing the rearview mirror and trying for a steady voice. ‘Lots of surrounding buildings, lots of trees.’

  ‘OK, so that last building sits alone in the middle of a sizable plot of land, just like the others. And if those Internet photos were taken just last summer, then Triple Time bulldozed all their sites after acquiring them. Doesn’t that simply mean they’re readying their properties for development?’

  ‘Absolutely. In fact, I saw trucks unloading at that last property. The fixtures, I think, that were never unloaded at the Central Works.’

  ‘Fixtures, like sinks and counters, you said. Probably removed from the railcar before the body could be discovered.’

  ‘Fixtures not destined for a restaurant,’ I said, prompting.

  ‘A drug lab,’ he said.

  ‘Their first,’ I said. ‘Four were intended, now down to three with Central Works gone. Lots of guards, lots of equipment, state-of-the-art labs for synthesizing whatever is currently stylish, set in the middle of broad, cleared ground.’

  ‘Like the moats medieval barons used to protect their castles,’ he said, nodding, understanding.

  ‘Easy to spot people coming up, like those kids we just saw getting scared off. Plus, I think each building has been wired to blow, should marauders arrive that can’t be rebuffed. The fire captain at the Central Works said it was no simple arson there. That building was blown to smithereens.’

  ‘To destroy evidence, should things go awry,’ he said.

  ‘And to kill their enemies, of which they would have plenty. And not just cops, but stupid small-gang types from here in Chicago, and smarter, bigger outfits from out of state.’

  ‘Who are these guys?’

  ‘I don’t know, but my guess is they hired Walter Dace, a two-bit property manager, to hire Herbie Sunheim, a two-bit commercial realtor, and Rickey Means, a two-bit lawyer, precisely because they were two-bit players and could be easily controlled.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To acquire real estate parcels without asking questions. Herbie located and contracted the abandoned sites for them. Rickey Means, the lawyer, did the legal stuff to buy the parcels. Dace, the property manager, arranged for the bulldozing and redevelopment.’

  ‘So Means and Herbie got greedy, and thought to snag bigger slices for themselves? That’s why Means got tossed and Herbie’s disappeared?’

  ‘That was my first guess, but now I’m not so sure. Rickey Means bought himself some expensive duds and Herbie leased his troubled wife a Cadillac Escalade, but that might have been the extent of it. They might have been happy with what they were getting.’

  ‘Then why did Herbie hire you to take pictures at the Central Works?’

  ‘Maybe so I’d be seen taking pictures, the day after Means was discovered on top of the railcar.’

  ‘To announce an ace investigator was on the job and had his back?’ He forced a laugh that was all nervousness and no mirth. ‘I don’t know how that helped him. Herbie Sunheim has disappeared.’

  ‘He didn’t run off.’ I told him then what I’d found behind the baseboard in Herbie’s rented room.

  ‘How’d he score that?’

  ‘I don’t think he did score it. I think it was Triple Time cash, to be used for acquiring more properties. Herbie never intended to take off.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘Dead, most likely,’ I said, without adding that, by now, Herbie was likely frozen solid in Leo’s own freezer.

  ‘That leaves the property manager, that guy Dace?’

  ‘Two more have been reported dead.’

  He turned on the seat. ‘Who?’

  ‘Did you catch tonight’s news?’

  ‘Not … those two killed downtown?’

  ‘Walter Dace and his receptionist. I found them before the cops did.’

  ‘Crazy damn crazy,’ he said again.

  ‘Dace’s computers were taken, no doubt along with his files.’

  ‘Triple Time people, covering their tracks?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, either.’

  ‘Were you seen there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two sets of detectives have come by but, so far, nobody’s pressed me about Dace and his receptionist. The cops are keeping a lid on their identities, like Rickey Means.’

  ‘Someone’s cleaning up loose ends, Dek. You’ve got to go to the cops.’

  ‘Remember that car we just saw, approaching along the side street?’

  ‘Yep,’ he managed, his voice rising.

  ‘It was a black Impala, a detective’s car.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  Leo dropped me at the same place he’d picked me up, and I hoofed back across Thompson Avenue and the far edge of the spit of land to the river walk. Only when I got close to the turret did I notice the figure sitting on the bench by the water.

  ‘Elstrom,’ he said, straightening up.

  ‘Detective Jacks.’

  He stood and motioned for us to head up the rise to the street. No surprise, a black Impala was parked at the curb, with Detective Kopek parked inside. Jacks tapped on the window and Kopek got out.

  ‘Fine night for a walk,’ Kopek said.

  ‘Cold, but all nights are fine nights for walks,’ I said.

  ‘Fine night for long walks and short walks,’ he said, making me wonder whether he’d been waiting a long time or whether he’d just arrived, perhaps driving in from a mostly deserted factory district in Chicago.

  ‘All are good,’ I said, waiting now myself.

  ‘Mrs Marge Sunheim,’ he said. ‘Ever wonder if she was involved in her husband’s nefarious activities?’

  ‘Nefarious?’ It was not a word a kolachky-cognizant cop would ordinarily use.

  ‘You know, up to no good?’ he nudged.

  ‘I don’t think she likes being involved with Herbie in anything. She threw him out to go live in a room with a loose baseboard.’

  ‘Got any thoughts about why her house got trashed, or what someone might have been looking for?’

  ‘Her house got trashed?’

  ‘Maybe not trashed, exactly, but it was searched, and not too unobtrusively.’

  ‘Marge Sunheim told Herbie Sunheim’s assistant that you and Jacks stopped by, wanting a look around inside her house. She told you to get a warrant.’

  ‘Someone else stopped by after us, when she wasn’t home. Her house got searched right after you supposedly found nothing in Sunheim’s rented room,’ he said.

  ‘Did she have a funny baseboard, too?’

  ‘Don’t crack wise, Elstrom.’

  ‘Then don’t accuse me of things I know nothing about.’

  ‘Walter Dace,’ he said.

  I played it dumb. ‘
Him I know something about, as I already told you. He’s the property manager for the buyers of the Central Works property.’

  ‘You told us you went to see him,’ Jacks said, then stopped so I could incriminate myself by knowing more than what had been reported in the news.

  ‘I gave him the same report I dummied up to leave at Rickey Means’ answering service. I was trying to maintain the charade that Herbie Sunheim was directing my activities.’

  ‘Walter Dace was found shot to death along with his receptionist,’ Kopek said.

  I presented what I hoped was appropriate shock. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Odd, you showing up where people are later found dead, Elstrom.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Dace, Detective Kopek. I went to see him twice, and only for a couple of minutes each time. He blew me off, protecting the privacy of his building owner.’

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Damn right there’s more,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for Herbie Sunheim and I’m looking alone. Like Rickey Means, he’s linked to the four properties that Dace managed, though what there is to manage is doubtful. Three of the four buildings look vacant and the fourth looks blown up.’

  ‘How do you know about those other properties?’

  ‘Clever investigative work. I went to the county recorder’s office and asked what properties Triple Time Partners owns.’ And then, thinking about the black Impala Leo and I had seen just a short time before, I said, ‘I drove by each one.’

  ‘You know more than that.’

  I met his glare. ‘Hard to keep track of what everybody thinks I know,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Raines and Cuthbert,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ he asked, but there was no confusion on his face.

  ‘Your fellow detectives. They’ve taken to stopping by to question me instead of working more closely with you.’

  ‘Different department,’ Kopek mumbled.

  ‘They did say they were working a different angle,’ I allowed.

  ‘I don’t know what damn angle they got,’ he said. He motioned abruptly to Jacks. They got in their Impala without another word, and drove away.

  I went inside knowing even less than I had just a few hours before.

  I’d cracked one of the slit windows open for fresh air before going to bed. That was enough to wake me when the familiar clattering of a poorly tuned automobile turned onto my street. The car stopped. Two doors opened and closed, as before. It was just past three in the morning.