The three boys stared at the photograph. There were cracks in it and some discoloration but the faces of the two men and a boy on horseback were discernible.
“How come your name is Robinson?” Roy asked.
“I keep Apache name. You can’t have it. Go home now. The sky is in trouble.”
Robinson Geronimo went back inside and closed the door. The boys walked down the stairs, stepping carefully.
When they were back in the alley, Roy said, “In a movie I saw one of the Indians was named No Enemy of Horses, but I don’t remember what tribe he belonged to.”
“Indians back then had better names than us,” said Chuck.
“Yeah, Jimmy Boyle said, “even their horses did.”
Rinky Dink
The wind came hard off the lake. Lights were on in the big houses as Rinky Dink roared by, his Harley nudging the white line between the inner lanes. The party he’d been to in Milwaukee had lasted four days past New Year’s and he was looking forward to telling the gang about it. He knew they’d be at The Torch on Paulina and wanted to get there before midnight, while Bo Crawford and Johnny Kay and the others were still there. Rinky Dink cut in and out of the slowgoing traffic, skidding slightly every so often on an icy patch, but he was too crack a rider to let that bother him, and he was only twenty minutes away.
The woman who hit him with her brand new 1962 Packard Caribbean never looked in her side view mirror, only the rear, and knocked him sideways off the bike into the path of oncoming traffic. His head hit the ground an instant before a Buick ran over his back. Rink wasn’t big, about five-eight or nine and slender, and he had a three inch long scar on his forehead that turned red whenever he laughed or was angry. The accident did not leave a mark on his face, only a bruise on his right temple that would never heal. When she saw him in his coffin Bonnie Hodiak said, “Why he looks cuter now than ever.”
Fifty-five years after Rinky Dink was killed he appeared in Roy’s dreams. Why now? Roy wondered. He had been in his last year of high school then. Rinky Dink, Bonnie Hodiak, Bo Crawford and the rest of that crowd were Roy’s cousin Kip’s friends, all of them several years older than Roy. None of them had ever gone to college, the boys worked as automobile mechanics or at other blue collar jobs, the girls as waitresses or counter clerks in department or dime stores. A few of the girls did a little hooking on the side— “soft” hookers Kip called them, meaning they were independents who worked the local bars whenever they needed extra cash for a new dress or coat or pair of shoes.
Roy was fourteen or fifteen when he began hanging out with Kip’s pals. They interested him because they didn’t live straight lives, kept irregular hours and occasionally committed crimes, usually holdups, thefts of some kind, sometimes got caught and did time. The girls were sexy, they smoked and drank hard liquor even if they were underage, and talked tough. In the places they hung out the bartenders never checked to see how old they were. The beat cops who came in never bothered anybody, just took their payoff, knocked back a shot or two and left quietly.
One of Bo Crawford’s girlfriends, Cindy Purdy, twice gave Roy a blow job in Bo’s car while he was in a bar. Cindy was nineteen then, four years older than Roy. She was a pretty little blonde who’d come up to Chicago from Oklahoma, sipped grain alcohol cut with orange juice from a flask she kept in her purse, and carried a switchblade knife. Cindy disappeared about a year later. Roy asked his cousin what happened to her and Kip said she’d taken off with “a gray hair” who worked in the oil business and was living with him somewhere in Texas, so Roy never saw her again.
Kip told Roy that Rinky Dink used to “run errands,” as Rink called them, for Johnny Kay and a cohort of Johnny’s named Teddy Fitts. Kay would scope out a target, figure the best time of day or night to hit a retail store, usually the day before a bank armored car picked up the week’s receipts, and send in Teddy Fitts to knock it off. After Fitts came out of the place, Rinky Dink, who’d been waiting nearby on his Harley, would swoop in, grab the swag and speed away. Johnny Kay then pulled up in a stolen car he’d changed the plates on, Teddy jumped in, and Johnny drove off in the direction opposite to the one Rinky Dink headed in. This gambit worked well until the bandit trio chose to rob a grocery store in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a sixteen year old bag boy got the drop on Teddy Fitts and drilled him three times with a .22 caliber handgun he carried in a back pocket. When Teddy didn’t come out of the store right away both Rink and Johnny split. Teddy didn’t die until the next day and never said a word to the authorities before he did. After that, Rinky Dink quit the holdup business, telling Johnny Kay, “I had a bad feelin’ in the morning. There was a cold, noisy wind blowin’, what the Apaches call the devil’s breath. We shoulda called it off.”
Rinky Dink worked part time in a salvage yard pulling parts out of wrecked cars and trucks. All he really cared about was his motorcycle, which he had painted bright red and kept in perfect running condition. Cindy Purdy told Roy she had a “ditch deep” crush on Rinky Dink but that he just pushed her away when she went for his fly. Rink hung out with the group but kept quiet most of the time, just grinned and drank beer from the bottle. In Roy’s dream, Rinky Dink was leaning against a parked car at nightfall in front of a bar with an orange neon sign in the window that blinked the name “Armando’s” on and off. He was wearing an unzipped navy blue windbreaker and his caramel-colored pompadour rippled in the breeze. As usual, he was grinning. There was a blonde-haired girl sitting in the front seat of the car on the passenger side. Roy could not see her face but he thought it might have been Cindy Purdy.
Where the Dead Hide
“Look in the bottom drawer of the dresser in the dining room, Roy. The placemats are underneath a burgundy tablecloth.”
Roy’s mother was having a dinner party that night and Roy, who was fourteen, was helping her prepare the table. He knelt down and felt around under the tablecloth and found the placemats, which he took out, as well as a thick piece of paper that was partially stuck to the underside of the placemat on the bottom. He carefully separated the paper from the placemat without tearing it and read what was printed on it.
“Hey, Ma, who is James O’Connor?”
His mother walked from the kitchen into the dining room and said, “Who?”
“I found this document in the bottom of the drawer. It’s a marriage certificate with Nanny’s name on it and a James O’Connor. I didn’t know she’d been married to anyone other than Pops.”
“Let me see it.”
Roy handed her the certificate and stood up. His mother scanned it, then said, “Yes, Roy, she was, for about ten years, from the time I was six until I was sixteen.”
“So she and Pops got divorced.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was important, I guess. O’Connor died when I was in my last year of high school, and Nanny died when you were eight, so I didn’t really see the point. Also, since you and Pops are so close, I didn’t want to say anything that might affect your relationship with him.”
“So you really grew up with this guy O’Connor. He was your stepfather.”
“Oh, I was away most of the time at boarding school, and then in the summer I went to Kansas City to visit my father, who was living there for much of the time Nanny and O’Connor were married.”
“Did you live here then, in this house?”
“No, O’Connor had a house in Norwood Park, about thirty miles west of Chicago. After O’Connor died, my mother sold that house and we moved back into the city.”
“Did Pops own this house?”
“Yes, he still does. Half of it, anyway. I own the other half.”
Roy’s mother rolled up the certificate and said, “I’ll tie a ribbon around this.”
“Why did you keep it?” Roy asked.
His mother looked at him but didn’t say
anything.
“What about Uncle Buck?”
“What about him?”
“Did he live in Norwood Park, too?”
“No, Roy, my brother is twelve years older than I am, he was already pretty much gone by the time Nanny married O’Connor. He was at the University of Alabama for a couple of years before he went into the navy.”
“What about when he came back?”
“He and O’Connor didn’t get along. I’m not sure why, but O’Connor didn’t want Buck around, so he stayed with friends in Chicago. It was easier for him to find jobs in the city.”
“I wonder why Uncle Buck never told me about Nanny being married to O’Connor.”
“It was a difficult time for my brother. O’Connor wouldn’t even let Buck see Nanny at their house. She used to meet him at restaurants and other places in Chicago. I guess it’s painful for him to talk about that time.”
“Did O’Connor like you?”
“He was always polite and nice enough, I suppose. I was just a little girl. As I said, I was off at a Catholic boarding school, so he didn’t have to deal with me very much. My mother took care of me. Besides, O’Connor spent a lot of time with his brothers, they were in the warehouse business in the Chicago area and other cities in the Midwest. He was always busy or going out of town somewhere.”
“Did you call him Dad?”
“No, Mr. O’Connor.”
Roy’s mother walked back into the kitchen. Rain began beating at the windows. Roy went into the livingroom and looked outside. The sky was darkening quickly and rain was hitting the windows harder in the front of the house. He thought about Pops living alone in a hotel in Chicago. Roy’s Uncle Buck had recently moved to Florida and wanted Pops to live down there with him and his wife and daughter. Pops was almost eighty years old, the winters in Chicago were hard on him, so Roy figured it would be better for his grandfather to live somewhere warm. Roy loved Pops more than anyone else in his family. Pops was his best friend and Roy knew he would miss him a lot. James O’Connor didn’t sound like he was such a good guy, especially his not having been kind to Buck, whom Roy loved almost as much as he loved Pops. Roy’s father had been dead for two and a half years now. Maybe, Roy thought, he would go to Florida, too.
Bar Room Butterfly
Roy’s grandfather subscribed to several magazines, among them Time, Field & Stream, Sport, and Reader’s Digest, but the one that interested Roy most was Chicago Crime Monthly. One afternoon Roy came home from school and found his grandfather reading a new issue.
“Hi, Pops. Anything good in there?”
“Hello, boy. Yes, I’ve just started an intriguing story.”
Roy sat down on the floor next to his grandfather’s chair.
“Can you read it to me?”
“How old are you now, Roy?”
“Ten.”
“I don’t know everything that’s in this one yet. I wouldn’t want your mother to get mad at me if there’s something she doesn’t want you to hear.”
“She’s not home. Anyway, I’ve heard everything.”
“You have, huh? All right, but I might have to leave out some gruesome details, if there are any.”
“Those are the best parts, Pops. I won’t tell Mom. Start at the beginning.”
BAR ROOM BUTTERFLY
by Willy V. Reese
Elmer Mooney, a plumber walking to work at seven a.m. last Wednesday morning, noticed a body wedged into a crevice between two apartment buildings on the 1800 block of West Augusta Boulevard in Chicago’s Little Poland neighborhood. He telephoned police as soon as he arrived at Kosztolanski Plumbing and Pipeworks, his place of employment, and told them of his discovery.
The dead body was identified as that of Roland Diamond, thirty-four years old, a well-known Gold Coast art dealer who resided on Goethe Street. He was unmarried and according to acquaintances had a reputation as a playboy who had once been engaged to the society heiress Olivia Demaris Swan.
Detectives learned that Diamond had been seen on the evening prior to the discovery of his corpse in the company of Miss Jewel Cortez, 21, at the bar of the Hotel Madagascar, where Miss Cortez was staying. When questioned, Miss Cortez, who gave her profession as “chanteuse,” a French word for singer, told authorities she had “a couple of cocktails” with Diamond, with whom she said she had only a passing acquaintance, after which, at approximately nine p.m., he accompanied her to her room where he attempted by force to have sex with her.
“He was drunk,” Cortez told police, “I didn’t invite him in, he insisted on walking me to my door. I pushed him out of my room into the hallway but he wouldn’t let go of me. We struggled and he fell down the stairs leading to the landing below. He hit his head on the wall and lay still. I returned to my room, packed my suitcase and left the hotel without speaking to anyone.”
Jewel Cortez confessed that before leaving the hotel she removed Roland Diamond’s car keys from his coat pocket and drove to Detroit in his car, a 1954 Packard Caribbean, where, two days later, she was apprehended while driving the vehicle in that city. Miss Cortez was taken into custody on suspicion of car theft. Upon interrogation by the Detroit police she claimed not to know that Diamond was dead, that he had loaned her his car so that she could visit friends in Detroit, where she had resided before moving to Chicago. Miss Cortez also said she had no idea how his body had wound up in Little Poland. When informed that examination of Diamond’s corpse revealed a bullet wound in his heart, Cortez professed ignorance of the shooting and declared that she had never even handled a gun let alone fired one in her life.
Betty Corley, a resident of the Hotel Madagascar, described Jewel Cortez as “a bar room butterfly.” When asked by Detective Sergeant Gus Argo what she meant by that, Miss Corley said, “You know, she got around,” then added, “Men never know what a spooked woman will do, do they?”
Chicago, May 4, 1955
“What does she mean by ‘spooked’?” Roy asked. “Frightened?”
“Yes, but her point is that women can be unpredictable.”
“Is my mother unpredictable?”
Pops laughed. “Your mother is only thirty-two years old and she’s already been married three times. What do you think?”
Absolution
After Kitty suffered her second stroke within a week, she could not talk, walk or recognize anyone. What she could do was smile, and when she did her face appeared virtually unlined, as it had been when she was in her twenties and her son, Roy, was a little boy. The last coherent sentence she had spoken, following her first stroke, came when Roy visited her in the hospital, and was directed at him: “You were always different,” she said.
Kitty died a few months later at the age of ninety-one. There was no funeral; Roy’s sister, who lived in the same city as their mother, had her cremated the next day. The afternoon Roy had seen her in the hospital, he had brought with him his cousin Peter, whom Kitty had not seen for fifty years. Peter wore a dark blue shirt under a black sportcoat and stood at the foot of her bed while Roy sat on a chair close to her.
“Who is that?” Roy’s mother asked him.
“Our cousin, Peter, Dora’s son. You haven’t seen him in a very long time.”
“Padre Pietro,” she said. “Please tell the sisters I’m sick tonight, that I won’t be coming down to dinner.”
Later, Peter told Roy, “I didn’t expect your mother to recognize me.”
“She thought she was back at boarding school, with the nuns,” said Roy. “You were a priest.”
“Padre Pietro.”
“Better him than one of her ex-husbands.”
“How many were there?”
“Five.”
“How many of them are still alive?”
“Two that I know of. My father died when I was five.”
“She
knew who you were.”
“I could have been anybody.”
“No, she knew.”
That evening at dinner Roy’s sister asked Peter if Kitty had spoken to him.
“Not really, she thought I was a priest.”
“There’ll be a real one there to give her the last rites.”
“She thought she was still a girl at Our Father of Frivolous Forgiveness,” said Roy.
His sister laughed and said, “She never could.”
“Never could what?”
“Forgive herself for not having been a better wife or mother.”
“Padre Pietro forgives her,” said Peter.
Roy and his sister looked at him.
“Absolution is my business,” he said.
After his mother died, Roy reminded Peter of his joke about forgiving Kitty and told him about the time he was seven years old when she went with their neighbor, Mrs. McLaughlin, to St. Tim’s church to commit a novena. Upon her return, Roy had asked her what a novena is.
“A novena is an act of devotion,” his mother explained. “It’s a pledge to honor a specific religious object or figure for nine days by saying prayers, usually to request a favor.”
“Did you go to confession, too?”
“Not today.”
“That’s when you tell a priest about any sins you committed, right?”
“Yes, Roy.”
“Does committing a novena rub out those sins?”
“No, the priest listens to your confession and decides which prayers you should recite and how many times you say them in order to expiate your sins.”
“What does expiate mean?”
“To atone, to make up for having done something you shouldn’t have or regret.”
“What bad things did you tell the priest about the last time you went to confession?”
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