“Not today,” Turner responded.
A uniformed cop slipped up next to them and whispered in Fenwick’s ear. His partner beckoned for Turner to follow.
Once they were outside, Turner asked, “What’s up?”
“Purple Steve is in the station ready for us.”
After their first glance at him, they didn’t have to wonder why he was called Purple Steve. He wore shirts, pants, shoes, and socks in various shades of purple.
“Guy looks like a giant grape,” Turner muttered.
Fenwick said, “I’ll stomp his ass to shit if the double fuck gives us any shit. He’s gonna be one sorry fucker if he’s lying to us.”
They sat at their desks, chairs turned to face Purple Steve, who after some reluctance gave his last name as Smith.
Turner could see Roosevelt and Wilson sitting at their desk ten feet behind Steve Smith. Both wore solemn expressions that came closer to making Turner burst into hysterical laughter than if they’d been making faces and acting silly.
“You work where?”
“At the Leather Strap. You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s a fabulous gay bar on the north side. In the gay part of town. Where you used to harass us.”
Steve Smith must have been in his early twenties. Turner assumed no bar would be stupid enough to employ someone underage to serve drinks, but the guy was slender and baby-faced and looked very young. Turner knew the bar’s reputation in the community, but he’d never been inside. Word was that no matter what its current incarnation—as disco bar, sports palace, or leather dungeon—you could always get drugs or a prostitute.
“I used to dance at the bar, but I gave that up and decided serving drinks had more dignity.”
“Tell us about seeing Goldstein and Douglas.”
“Well, I heard they were such cute boys, but I missed the first news reports and I didn’t see any pictures. Then they had that special about Coach Goldstein on the news last night. It was my day off, so I watched. I saw the home movies of his kid playing some sport. I don’t follow sports much. Silly nonsense getting all sweaty for nothing. When I saw the son and his friend in one part of the clip, I was sure I’d seen them on the dance floor of the bar.”
“When?”
“That night.”
“What time that night?”
“Before the murder.”
“What time that night?” This time Fenwick growled the question.
Smith hesitated. “After eleven.”
Turner suspected the guy was lying. His answer seemed more like a guess than a statement, as if he’d picked a time out of the air and been lucky enough to choose a moment the boys might possibly have been there.
“They were only seventeen. How’d they get in the bar?” Fenwick asked.
“Talk to the doormen. Once they get past them, I figure it’s okay to serve them. They’re supposed to be the ones who check IDs.”
“What did they do there?”
“Dance. It is a dance bar.”
“When did they leave?” Fenwick asked.
“I only saw them the once for a brief minute.”
Purple Steve left to shine in front of the reporters.
They’d have to question every employee of the place. A whole new set of possible witnesses. They trudged up to the fourth floor. They assigned personnel to the task and would plod up to the bar to do some of the questioning themselves later on. Turner asked Blessing for the latest reports and information. They read and filled out more papers, and wrote the daily update on their activities for the commander.
They spent three hours late that afternoon talking to people at the Leather Strap. Not a one had the slightest knowledge of or was willing to admit to seeing Goldstein or Douglas at the bar. They assigned two uniforms to wait out the night, asking all the patrons who came in if they had seen the boys. Turner suspected it would be a slow night at the bar. The blatant presence of cops asking questions wasn’t likely to draw a crowd to a gay establishment.
As soon as they walked back into Area Ten headquarters, the uniform at the desk said, “Commander wants to see you. Half the brass in the city is here. You guys are in trouble.”
They found the commander and the others in the open space in front of the floor-to-ceiling corkboard on the fourth floor. Turner recognized most of the assembled crowd: the assistant deputy superintendent of the entire department, the press relations maven, the director of Research and Development, the commander of the Communications Division, and the deputy superintendent of Technical Services. What most of them were doing here he soon found out.
The brass sat and questioned the commander and the two detectives relentlessly for over an hour. Turner and Fenwick might have excellent reputations in the department, but often you’re only as good as your last case. The reward for good work is frequently the expectation of even more good work. The presumption of perfection on the part of superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the hardest working of detectives.
“Have you followed up every lead?” asked the deputy superintendent of Technical Services. It was the third time in the last ten minutes he’d asked the question.
“Which lead is it that you think we haven’t followed up on sufficiently?” Turner asked. His voice was icily calm but on the correct side of polite to one of the brass.
“Well,” the tubby little man blustered. He glanced at the others around the room. He grabbed at the stack of reports in front of him. “Well.” He rapidly riffled through them. Finally he stuck on one. “What about this?”
Fenwick grabbed it. “This is a report from the western suburbs that says a kid at a fast-food restaurant claims he saw them yesterday morning having breakfast. That’s Sunday. He claims he saw the kids after they were dead! Why in holy fucking hell should we follow up that kind of nonsense?”
“You have to follow up everything.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I don’t have to stand for this.” The tubby little man rose to his feet. “This department’s been under a lot of pressure to solve this crime. It’s your fault it hasn’t been solved.”
Fenwick banged his fist down on the desk. “Our fault! We aren’t the fucking criminals here. How the glory-holy fuck are we supposed to investigate this bullshit? We’ve checked through the remotest possible lead seventeen times. Every person in the task force has been working nearly twenty hours a day. I don’t give a royal-holy fuck how much pressure you’ve been under. I don’t care if the pope and the king of the universe called. We ain’t got shit, and each new lead piles on another avalanche of crap to the blizzard of paperwork we’re already drowning under!” He banged his fist on the table again. “Our fault! If anybody has something constructive to say, I’m willing to listen. Until then….”
Fenwick drew a deep breath.
The room had fallen deathly silent. In the past Fenwick had always stopped just before this kind of explosion, and now he’d done it with half the brass in the city looking on.
The deputy superintendent of Technical Services stepped back several paces from the conference table and openly gaped at Fenwick.
Commander Poindexter said to Turner, “Get him out of here.”
Turner stood up. “Why don’t we step into the office in back?” he asked softly.
Fenwick glared at the assemblage. His florid face had dangerous purplish tinges at numerous points.
“Come on, Buck,” Turner said softly.
The other members of the group remained silent as Turner led Fenwick away. They crossed to the fourth-floor conference room surrounded by the quiet of the members of the task force, all of whom had witnessed an outburst most of them wished they had the nerve to make.
Fenwick entered, sat down on one of the metal folding chairs, propped his elbows on the desk, and rubbed his fingers against his eyes. “Double fuck and triple fuck,” he said quietly.
Turner knew that the highest rating anyone could get in Fenwick’s system was “triple fuck.” Us
ually he reserved this sacred category for inept Bears quarterbacks when they threw game-losing interceptions, or Cubs pitchers who walked in winning runs. The system proceeded through three levels of “shit” to the highest “fuck” category. It was a perfect sign of Fenwick’s fury.
“And don’t tell me I fucked up, Paul. I know I fucked up.” He clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back in the chair, and shut his eyes.
A few minutes later the commander joined them. “Never thought you’d really do that in front of this kind of gathering,” he said.
Fenwick sat up in the chair. “Guy deserved it,” he said.
“That may be so, but he’s a boss. I calmed him down a little before I got in here.”
Turner leaned his back up against the door. He jammed his hands in his pants pockets. The commander perched on the edge of the desk.
“I agree with Buck,” Turner said.
“I’ve never pushed harder on a case,” the commander said. “Everyone has worked too hard. I can try and placate the guy you insulted. Although I’m sure Stuart O’Dell, the guy in charge of Technical Services, is probably on the phone to the Superintendent even as we speak, declaring your evils to that august personage.”
“Screw it,” Fenwick said. “It’s done. We’ve got more important shit to do than worry about any of those assholes.” He sighed. “If the killer walked in right now, I’d kiss him,” he said.
Someone knocked on the door and a second later a uniformed cop stuck his head in the room. “Sorry to interrupt, Commander. The Superintendent is on the phone.”
Turner and Fenwick trudged down to the third floor and sat at their regular desks. The squad room was unnaturally quiet. Turner noticed people avoided looking directly at Fenwick. News traveled fast in the small world of Area Ten headquarters.
Turner rubbed his hands across his face. He felt the strain in every muscle when he moved. The phone on Turner’s desk rang. He cradled it on his shoulder and managed a civil hello.
It was Ian. “Catch you at a bad time?”
“Every time is bad these days. What can I do for you?”
“You sound like you need a break. I can take you to dinner in half an hour. I’ve got information on Purple Steve. I’ll be right down. You’ve got to eat sometime. I don’t care how badly the criminals of Chicago want you.”
Turner called home. Jeff answered. “Ben said he’d take us out to dinner. Are you coming home? He said we’d have to wait for you to decide. I like Ben. Are you coming home? Brian wants permission to go out.”
Paul talked to both of his sons, giving assurances or permission as appropriate or called for. To Ben he said, “I can cancel a dinner I’ve got.”
“Don’t. It’s okay. The boys and I will shift for ourselves. I’m going to take them out to a little Italian place I know. We’ll be fine. Get home when you can.”
Paul thanked him and hung up.
Fenwick chose to stop at home. They tentatively agreed to meet back at the station later that evening.
Ian entertained Turner with newspaper gossip as they drove to Genessee Depot, one of Ian’s favorite eating spots on the north side. They sat in a booth near the window so they could look out. The unhurried atmosphere and the classical music playing softly soothed Turner’s nerves.
The meal passed mostly in silence. Ian recognized that what his friend needed was companionship. When dessert arrived, Ian announced, “The Goldstein and Douglas deaths have no connection to being gay.”
“I agree.”
“Did you talk to Purple Steve?”
“We did. Who is that jerk?”
“He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from either Yale or Harvard. I forget which. Besides working part time at the Leather Strap, he answers the phones at some sleazy hotel on Halsted Street. It’s an establishment that caters to the lost and lonely. A hustler hotel.”
“How nice for him. He was trying to hustle the cops and the media for his fifteen minutes of fame. He’ll be lucky if we don’t run his ass in. Fenwick may simply ram Steve’s head through the nearest wall if he ever sees him again.”
“Probably wouldn’t hurt Steve near enough.”
“Nobody else who works there saw the kids. The bouncer insists he never lets anyone in who’s underage.”
“That may actually be true. Lately the vice division of your department has been hanging around there. They’ve had to be careful. I interviewed Purple Steve.”
“And now you’re best friends?”
“At first he claimed every word he told the cops was true, but I’m a wily old reporter. I dig out little secrets. Seems our buddy Steve Smith has an outstanding prostitution warrant from another jurisdiction.”
“You’re making this up?”
“Nary a word.”
“How did you find out?”
“Sources.”
“So you know something rotten about him?”
“I mentioned it to him. Told him if he didn’t come clean, I would announce that little fact to every media outlet in the city and to every cop I could get my hands on. At that point the truth slipped from his lips. The dumb shit made it all up.”
“If I had the energy, I’d have him arrested. If I see his face on another television station, I will have him arrested. I may anyway.”
“Be my guest.”
“Even if it means breaking a trust and giving up a source?”
“He’s not a source. He’s a poor asshole who screwed up big time. If stupidity is a crime, he’s guilty.”
“He wasted a lot of people’s time today.”
“So. Lock him up.”
“Not at the moment.”
Turner told his friend about the case. He wasn’t worried about giving privileged information to Ian. His friend knew how to keep his mouth shut, and he was an ex-cop. Ian might have insights they’d missed. Turner trusted Ian’s instincts.
“That stuff about crushed testicles is odd,” Ian said. “You know that gay suicide stuff I’ve been working on?”
Turner nodded.
“Remember, I told you about the interview I was going to have with that woman from Spokane, Washington? I mentioned it the night I baby-sat.”
“Yeah, you said you were having breakfast with the coroner or something.”
“Assistant deputy coroner who helped with the autopsy.”
“Right, whatever.”
“I try and track all those kinds of things down. Trouble is, most of the time the family won’t talk, and I wouldn’t want to bother them at such an awful moment. That’s trash journalism. Usually I can’t get the officials to tell me much either.”
“So what did this one tell you?” Turner asked.
“I think I’ve got the start of something. The kid was one of the biggest sports heroes ever to hit town. This was maybe nine years ago. It made the national papers. She was really good to talk to. First time I’ve got an official who dealt with that kind of case to open up to me. She told me that no one could figure out why he’d want to commit suicide and that she was sure this kid didn’t kill himself.”
“No? How’d they figure that out? Wasn’t there a note or something?”
“She told me the cops said there was a lot of depressing poetry the kid wrote. Everybody figured a sports kid who wrote poems had to be gay, but nobody in the press reported that. The woman I talked to found something really strange. She wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone at the time without a release from the family.”
“Did she succumb to your fatal charm in person?”
“No, she quit her job and was going to work someplace else. Denver, I think. I found out she was a lesbian and we knew people each other knew in several activist causes.”
“So what did you learn?”
“The kid had been hanged, but they also found his dick and balls had been crushed as if they’d been pulverized with a baseball bat. The killer did it after he strung him up. It was murder.”
“Did she report that at the time?”
“Her bosses and the family didn’t want to hear about it, but the cops looked into it. They never found a suspect or probable cause or anything. They wrapped it up as a suicide and let it go.”
“You saying this is the same killer?”
“All I know for sure is that it’s not going to help my suicide theory or get me any closer to writing a Pulitzer Prize article on gay suicide, but as a cop, do you believe in coincidences?”
“No, but your killing was nine years ago.”
Ian said, “I don’t believe in coincidences. These have to be connected. Maybe there were others.”
“Other what?”
“Kids who were sports stars killed under unusual circumstances.”
“Who all got their nuts crushed? I wouldn’t want to be the one to bring that theory up to my boss. Although this one is better than the total zero we have now. But your dead guy was in Spokane years ago. This is Chicago, today. That’s a hell of a stretch. Why’d the killer move?”
“Gee, gosh, not to get caught?”
“Sarcasm does not become you. You’re losing it, Ian. A serial killer after star sports kids? Who roams around the country?”
“Serial killers move around. It’s part of the profile.”
“This is a serial killer? I have my doubts.”
“How many cop hours did you waste on Purple Steve?”
“Too many.”
“This has more possibilities than that.”
“Not by much. Does your theory really make sense to you?”
“Nothing about this killing makes sense, but if it was random violence, it was well-planned random violence. You haven’t been able to get any angle on why these two kids would be killed. No one has a motive. Nothing you’ve found in their lives leads to somebody killing them. No one they knew had a motive. You keep coming up with nothing, because there is nothing. This at least would be something.”
“Wouldn’t somebody have noticed if there were an unusual number of deaths of kids who were sports stars?” Turner asked.
“I don’t know,” Ian said, “and neither do you, but if you don’t follow it up, and later it turns out to be true?”
“You’ll never let me hear the end of it.” Turner paused. “It could be true. We are desperate for leads.”
Another Dead Teenager Page 12
