Tagged for Murder

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘Reaching for a badge,’ he called to the guard who’d moved up, jacket unbuttoned, hardware accessible.

  I hurried back to stand with Raines, to be doubly sure no one got cranky.

  Opening his suit jacket slowly, Raines extracted his ID with two fingers. The guard took a look at it, and then at me, and shrugged. Raines put the ID back and motioned for us to walk up to the Jeep.

  Raines bent to the unzipped passenger curtain. ‘I apologize for the drama, Miss Phelps, but would you mind joining my associate in that obnoxiously large Hummer ahead? We’re having a hell of a time, worrying about how to keep Mr Elstrom here alive.’

  By now, Amanda’s other guard had moved to the driver’s side of the Impala, where Cuthbert was holding out his own badge.

  ‘He goes with Amanda,’ I said, pointing to the guard who’d followed us to the Jeep.

  Raines nodded, but Amanda hesitated.

  I reached in to touch her shoulder. ‘Raines is one of the guys who saved my life,’ I said.

  She nodded, grim-faced, got out and walked alongside her guard up to the passenger’s side of the Hummer. It was yet another glimpse of how wearying her new life had become, being constantly reminded of how her great wealth made her an enticing kidnapping target.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ Raines said, climbing in the Jeep’s passenger side.

  I got behind the steering wheel. ‘Whose is it?’ I asked, motioning to the Hummer.

  ‘Miss Phelps will explain later.’ He shifted on the seat to look at me directly. ‘About your meddling and your muddling …’

  ‘Thanks for keeping me alive,’ I said.

  ‘It’s distracting.’

  ‘How did you know Kopek and Jacks would come for me?’

  ‘We didn’t. We, and others, have been watching Kopek ever since he pulled too many strings to get put in charge of the Central Works investigation. He showed too strong an interest. Night before last, we followed him and Jacks to Rivertown, thinking they were taking another run at what you knew and what you didn’t. But instead of knocking on your door, Kopek dropped Jacks off by that mess of trees you call a park and then drove away. We stuck around to see why Jacks was hiding across from your home. Five minutes later, you came out, got in your car safely and drove away. Jacks stayed in the park. That made no sense; him there and you gone. We made a snap decision and followed you to that hamburger place. You met Kopek. You left. A moment later, he left, and we followed him to your place, but when he turned off Thompson Avenue, he killed his lights as he approached. We hung back, just off Thompson. We heard gunshots. We intervened.’

  I gestured at the Hummer ahead. ‘That person intervened, too, like at Central Works.’

  ‘It didn’t work at Central Works, did it? You got chased away but didn’t stay away.’

  ‘Like the tagger,’ I said. ‘The witness.’

  ‘We only wanted to scare him, whoever he was, and you away. Tell me about the revolver.’

  ‘It’s why Kopek wanted to meet at The Hamburger. He said there was a contract out on me and insisted I take it for protection.’

  ‘You were meant to die with your fingerprints all over that weapon. They’d say you fired first.’

  ‘After that shoot-out in the park, I concluded it was loaded with blanks.’

  ‘A clever precaution, intended for removal after your death. They didn’t want you loading it with your own, more lethal rounds.’

  ‘That gun has history?’

  ‘It was used on Walter Dace and his receptionist. Killing you holding that gun would get you blamed for their murders, while eliminating your bothersome investigation.’

  ‘Why would Kopek and Jacks kill Dace?’

  He looked away, out the open side curtain. ‘The guys beyond Dace—’

  ‘Triple Time?’ I cut in, to be sure.

  He nodded. ‘We think they got worried that Dace lost control of his operation, that the scumbag lawyer, Means, was killed by the scumbag realtor, Sunheim, maybe over money they embezzled. Sunheim, they must have logically concluded, then took off with whatever he stole. Triple Time had already acquired the buildings they needed and thought it best to protect themselves by erasing the rest of the crew. They instructed Kopek and Jacks to kill Dace.’

  ‘And find and kill Sunheim,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, turning back quickly to look at my eyes. ‘They were scum, all of them.’

  ‘Not Dace’s receptionist.’

  ‘In a war, there’s collateral damage.’

  He waited, likely for me to ask about Violet Krumfeld. I didn’t. I didn’t need to hear much more, not truths, not lies.

  ‘Let it go, Mr Elstrom.’ He reached for the door handle.

  ‘The kid,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to know about the kid.’

  He dropped his hand from the door handle and turned around, confused. ‘The kid?’

  ‘The kid, in Austin. Calls himself Mister Shade.’

  ‘Ah, Wurder’s kid,’ he said, nodding. ‘Wurder came up with that one, to get you to go to Austin.’

  ‘Why come at me like that?’

  He offered up a small smile. ‘You didn’t scare, Mr Elstrom. You didn’t scare at Central Works. One of our associates saw you go to Wurder; we saw Wurder go to you—’

  ‘You kept watch on me.’

  ‘You made no secret of working for Sunheim, but we were unsure if you were involved with Means and Dace, too. We know Wurder from the courts. We spend time there, watching judges set killers free. Wurder wasn’t hard to convince after we shot up his front door. The kid was never in danger. You weren’t either, not in Austin.’

  ‘Except from random violence.’

  ‘We’re all in danger from that, because that’s what happens there and here and everywhere. Too many drugs, too many guns, too many kids who can’t shoot straight.’ He stared through the windshield, his face set hard. ‘Why the hell didn’t you leave Sunheim there? Why take him? Only a crazy man would do that.’

  ‘Only a crazy cop would have put him there in the first place.’

  He didn’t answer. He just kept staring out the window.

  ‘Only a crazy cop would take him back,’ I went on. ‘Only a crazy cop would wrap him in plastic in the first place, like a sandwich for later, saving him to be a message when the timing was right.’ I paused, then said, ‘Only a crazy cop would pitch a body onto a railcar.’

  He worked his mouth, angry, but still he kept staring straight ahead. ‘Leave it be,’ he said.

  ‘Leave it be,’ I repeated, but only inside my head, reminding myself I was talking to a cool-thinking killer and ought to shut up. Reminding myself too that only a crazy cop would ignore a drone lying by the side of a street, or a Jeep parked in the wrong place, that only a crazy cop would ignore another crazy man, out to do something crazy himself.

  He opened the door, stepped out, and turned back to the open side curtain. ‘The burned bodies have not been publicly identified. How did you know to send the gun to Cuthbert and me, that we were the survivors?’

  ‘You never pressed me about Violet Krumfeld,’ I said. ‘Kopek and Jacks, they badgered me about her. Not you. That made you for knowing more than you were saying. And it was obvious you knew more about Kopek and Jacks than they knew about you, so that made you for watching them, not them watching you, and that made you for being the last to show up for the gunplay. That made you the survivors.’

  ‘Violet Krumfeld is dead to us all,’ he said, and headed back to his Impala.

  Up ahead, Amanda noticed. She climbed out of the Hummer, but stopped to lean against the door. Her skin was pale. She was shaking.

  Her guard stepped up and held out his hand. She managed a smile and gently brushed it away, and together they walked back to the Jeep. The Hummer pulled away and the black Impala swung out from behind me and followed.

  ‘Amanda?’ I asked, as she climbed in.

  ‘Such nightmarish times,’ she said softly, and held out her hand.


  She was holding a tiny box, wrapped in purple paper and tied with a little purple bow.

  ‘This is for you,’ she said.

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘You’re sure it’s over?’ Amanda asked again, early that evening. We’d sat in my kitchen ever since we got back to the turret, seeking closure that didn’t want to come.

  ‘Raines insisted on it, at least for me,’ I said.

  ‘And Triple Time?’

  ‘Raines is sure it’s over for them, too. They know people are watching for them to reappear. And that makes it better to default on the real estate taxes and let their properties revert to the county than to risk setting up another shop.’

  ‘Nobody will ever know who they are?’

  ‘Anonymous, evil men, likely from Mexico or Central America or Russia or any other place.’

  ‘Others like them will come.’

  ‘If they’re not here already, but Raines and Cuthbert and their friends are watching.’

  ‘You’re conflicted about them.’

  ‘Those two did save my life.’

  ‘Still, cops taking the law into their own hands, no matter how noble their purpose …’

  ‘Are vigilantes,’ I said.

  ‘Executioners,’ she said.

  I nodded. We’d worked it over for hours. ‘For me, for now, it’s done.’

  ‘Except for that,’ she said, giving a nod to the tiny box wrapped in purple paper and tied with a purple bow.

  ‘Except for that,’ I agreed.

  She looked down at her coffee but she was still seeing the person behind the steering wheel of the Hummer. ‘A woman meets her sister at a Starbucks right across from a district police station,’ she said, needing to go over the story yet another time. ‘No place is safer, right? Leaving, the woman heads to her car to drive back to her job. The sister waits for traffic to clear before crossing to the police station, where she’s secretary to evidence technicians. A car full of gang-banging boys – very young teens according to witnesses – speeds up, firing wild at another kid who’s on that same damned sidewalk in front of that same damned Starbucks, despite the police station that’s right across the same damned street.’

  She stopped, dabbed at her eyes with the tissue that had been balled up in her hand for the past hour.

  ‘Amanda …’

  She shook her head. She was going to struggle through the story as many times as necessary, though no sense would ever be made of it. It was a Chicago story and stories like it were told over and over, every day.

  ‘The punks miss the kid on the sidewalk,’ she went on, ‘but the sister catches two bullets in the head, just down the sidewalk from the woman heading to her car, who’s turned to look back at the sounds of gunfire. The woman runs to her sister but the sister is dead. Cops run out from across the street, but the shooting happened so fast, so insanely, that no one has seen much of anything. The car is found. It’s stolen, of course. The intended victim, probably another gangbanger, has run off to die another day. The shooter boys are never caught.

  ‘The woman confronts a couple of detectives at the sister’s funeral – let’s call them Raines and Cuthbert, though she didn’t say – who work vice, not homicide. She’s furious; she wants revenge; she wants to kill the punks that killed her sister. The two detectives say the shooters will never be identified but they mention that some inspector in Streets and Sanitation tipped a cop in traffic about some bulldozing in ruined factory districts – bulldozing that hasn’t led to new construction. How the hell does that get the punk shooters? the woman asks. It doesn’t, the detectives tell her, but nobody buys so many buildings, and bulldozes so much surrounding ground, without making a grand hoopla about a wonderful new condo development or food store or whatever that they’re bringing to an economically depressed area. You’re saying they don’t want attention because they’re setting up to do bad things? she asks them. Drugs, they say, and battles over drugs often make kids shoot from cars. The detectives tell her they’ve been watching the realtor on the property deals but they want to watch him closer. They think he’s susceptible to cheap. They say they’ve got seized money that never got inventoried for an impound locker, usable for living expenses if she’d care to participate in bringing bad people down. The woman approaches Herbie, offering to work for cash, well under minimum wage.’

  ‘Herbie bites,’ I said, ‘because he sees himself being out of the office more, working for Triple Time off the books, and he needs to keep up appearances.’

  ‘The woman goes to work for Herbie but she learns nothing. Herbie’s regular business is slow, yet he’s never around, confirming suspicions that he’s working secretively.’

  ‘And then somebody goes out the window at Central Works,’ I said.

  ‘Which means nothing to her when it first hits the news, because the property isn’t in Herbie’s files, which she’s searched. The next day, though, her cop friends tell her Herbie won’t be returning to work—’

  ‘Implying Herbie was dead?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but she did say they suggested it would be helpful for her to continue, to see who comes around.’

  ‘Which was me, asking about Herbie and the Central Works,’ I said.

  ‘And which she dutifully reported to Raines and Cuthbert, who told her they’d already spotted you at the Central Works.’

  ‘She played me like a harp from the first moment I arrived at Herbie’s office, keeping Cuthbert and Raines informed about what I was asking and, presumably, what I was learning. She’s a tough lady.’

  ‘A committed lady, she wanted me to know, because she wants you to understand.’

  I looked again at the little purple box. ‘Cuthbert and Raines – they’re every bit as artistic as the tagger is,’ I said. ‘They destroyed a cartel’s presence here in Chicago, basically with innuendo.’

  ‘And a couple of murders,’ she said.

  ‘Beginning with Rickey Means. They set it up to make it look like Herbie killed him, then waited a day and killed Herbie, too. But instead of leaving Herbie where he could be found, they hid his body, making it look like Herbie took off after killing Means.’

  ‘Triple Time’s people freaked.’

  ‘But they bought the assumption, because they figured Herbie likely took three hundred thousand of their dollars with him,’ I said.

  ‘Did Cuthbert and Raines know about the money?’

  ‘Herbie might have told them, to bargain to save his own life. Obviously, it didn’t matter. Cuthbert and Raines and their friends aren’t in this for the money.’

  ‘Kopek and Jacks sure found out about the money,’ she said.

  ‘Right after Herbie disappeared. Unbeknownst to Dace, Triple Time had those two cops in their pocket. Since the big boys above Dace thought he’d lost control of his organization, and since they already had their buildings, they ordered Kopek and Jacks to clean up and erase any links back to them. Kill Dace; find the money and kill Herbie.’

  ‘Except Herbie was already dead.’

  ‘Thanks to Raines and Cuthbert. And that’s what convinced me that some of what Raines was telling me in the Jeep was untrue. He made no excuse for knowing that Herbie’s corpse had been left in the Vanderbilt Supply before the building got torched. The likeliest way he would have known that was if he’d put him there himself.’

  ‘I’m still not sure why Herbie hired you.’

  ‘He panicked when he heard a body was found on that boxcar. He knew it was Means, from the description in the news, and was afraid that Dace, on orders from Triple Time, was indeed cleaning house, erasing those links. He must have hoped that by overpaying me to publicly nose around at Central Works, my presence might stop someone from coming after him.’

  She grimaced. ‘That lasted a day?’

  ‘Cuthbert and Raines were not to be deterred.’

  She looked at me then, with arched eyebrows, as if daring me to spin a story. ‘Back to that missing money …?’

  ‘T
o be sure, Kopek and Jacks hunted for it, in the faint hope that Herbie had not taken it. They searched his rented room twice; they tried to get Herbie’s wife to let them look around her house, and when that failed, they returned to search it when she wasn’t home. But, finally, they had to come to the conclusion that Herbie really had taken off with the money, because he simply was nowhere to be found.’

  ‘But then you torched the drug lab, and that same night, Triple Time’s other two buildings went up. And …’

  ‘Herbie made his grand reappearance,’ I said.

  ‘And what did Kopek and Jacks think then?’ she asked, like she didn’t know.

  I shrugged, evading.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said quickly, a frown forming on her lips, ‘they became sure that the man who’d been sniffing around Herbie’s rented room had indeed found the missing three hundred thousand.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I allowed, because there was no alternative.

  ‘So they hatched the plan to kill you while you were holding the gun that killed Dace, and have a solid look inside the turret before reporting the justified shooting.’

  ‘And telling Triple Time they never could find the money.’

  ‘You’re such an idiot.’ She got up to open a window. ‘About that money …’ she said, looking out.

  ‘Can you envision your friend in the Hummer towing that railcar down the spur?’ I asked, to change the subject.

  ‘It’s her Hummer; she’s a wilderness hiker. She’s quite a lady, so soft-spoken and yet so determined. She would have done anything to make the case more interesting to news folks.’

  ‘She’s leaving town?’

  ‘She says she’s done with Chicago.’

  ‘Whatever her real name is, she’s leaving Violet Krumfeld dead and gone, thanks to that phony assault report Cuthbert and Raines made up.’

  Amanda came back to the table, beginning to smile for the first time since the goat ruckus at the clearing. ‘You know, I’ve been wondering about what happened to Herbie’s three hundred thousand—’

  I cut her off. ‘Less the thousand he sent me, don’t forget.’