Change of Address

by Rick Polad

  I got another look. “No.”

  “She had two apartments?”

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “Then, nothin’. She changed apartments. People move you know.”

  “Where was the new one?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “Maybe I don’t, but I won’t know that till I check it out. That’s how this works. I don’t have a magic ball. I have to follow all the leads I have and her neighbors are a good place to start.” I got the stare. “So?”

  “So what?”

  I took a deep breath. “Where was she murdered?”

  He thought for a few seconds without changing the stare and then spit out an address on Hunter. I wrote that down too.

  “Was Marty there?”

  “No, she was with Maria.”

  “You went there?”

  He let out a long breath. “The place was a dump. It was supposed to be a big secret but I knew about it. I finally got tired of knowing Marty was living there and was going to talk to sis about it.”

  “You found her?”

  “I walked in the door in the morning and there she was.”

  “What did you do?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s got nothin’ to do with you.”

  “Beef. You dragged me into this. I can find out from the police report, but it’d be easier and somehow more meaningful if I get it from you.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I’m not going to get in the way of an open police investigation. I’d just like to know.”

  He sat back down, his shoulders slumped. “I knocked and nobody answered. The door was unlocked so I went in.”

  He paused and looked up at me. I think he was hoping I’d be satisfied with that, but when I didn’t respond he frowned and continued.

  “I went in...” He took a deep breath. “It was a small joint. Just a living room and a kitchen stuck at one end, a small bedroom and a bath. She was lying on her side in the living room. First I thought she had passed out or something. Her back was to me. But when I got closer I saw the pool of blood and the look on her face. It was that blank stare that dead people get, you know like they don’t give a damn about anything anymore, which I guess they don’t.”

  His eyes had glossed over and I knew he was looking at something that wasn’t in the room with us.

  “I saw the same look in Nam. Kids who got it without knowing it was coming didn’t even have time to be afraid.” He blinked and gave me a hard stare. “She got it quick—no warning.” Then his jaw relaxed and the lines around his eyes softened. “I couldn’t stand that look so I reached down and closed her eyes.” He said it like something someone would say in church during the sermon, quietly and reverently.

  “Did the police come up with anything?”

  “Nah. She wasn’t important enough. They got better things to do.”

  “That’s not true, Beef. Everything gets investigated. They just don’t have the people to hit everything as hard. But I guarantee you if they found something it would be followed up.”

  His look said he didn’t believe me. But it was true. Dad had always felt badly about the cases that didn’t get solved and often complained that there wasn’t enough money to hire the personnel he needed. Chicago was a typical big city with all the problems that come with it.

  “Was the place upset any? Did it look like there had been a struggle?”

  He got up again. “Find the father.” He turned and stormed out of my office, leaving the door open behind him and my orders hanging in the air like sides of beef.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly and went over to close the door. Until tonight all I had seen of Beef was a happy-go-lucky guy in a t-shirt and an apron. This side of him was a little unnerving and I had the feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling me. Maybe it was none of my business or maybe I just didn’t know how someone acted when their sister had been murdered. I’d just have to start digging and see what came up. And sometime soon I’d have to have an off-the-record talk with Sergeant Powolski.

  Chapter 5

  I had a fitful night’s sleep, tossing and turning and dreaming about winding roads when I was asleep and wondering why Beef didn’t want me to look for the killer when I wasn’t. It was a little before six. The night had not cooled things off much and I lay in bed with the sheet twisted around my legs and tried to come up with another answer besides the two logical reasons that were written up on the wall in big letters. Either Beef was going to be on my tail waiting for me to find whoever it was and then plug him, or maybe he had killed her himself.

  Statistically, the second made sense. Most people are killed by relatives or someone they know. But then he needed a motive and there didn’t appear to be any. I knew he loved Marty, and, from the way he’d described closing her eyes, I knew he loved his sister too. I pulled my legs out of the sheet. And maybe he was nuts.

  Knowing what I knew of Beef, the first option made more sense. I didn’t buy Beef’s story about coming to terms with his sister’s death. He wasn’t the type. He was the type for revenge. Either way, it bothered me and I considered turning him down. After all, I hadn’t eaten any of the retainer yet.

  But sooner or later Beef would run out of chocolate cake, and someday Marty might ask questions about her daddy and it might help to have the answers. And maybe someday her father would want to know about her too. I kicked off the sheet, swung out of bed, changed my shorts, and poured a glass of orange juice. The humidity had softened whatever finish was on the wood floor and my feet made little thwack thwack noises as I walked across the room.

  Marty got home from camp at noon. I’d have plenty of time to tie up some of the red tape my folks had left behind before I saw her. There were still bank accounts to be closed, insurance forms to be filled out, and a stack of mail I hadn’t even opened yet. Then I’d talk to Marty and see if I could get a better feel for where this road was leading.

  I grabbed a fast-food burger on the way to the bank. The temperature was 97 and they predicted it would hit 100. I liked the heat and tried as much as possible to live without air conditioning. But this was too much, so, on the way back, I stopped and picked up a window unit.

  Back in the car, I turned the air to full blast, flicked on the radio, and pulled out into traffic. The first button was still set to AM 720, WGN, Dad’s favorite station. I had grown up listening to the mostly talk format and I still usually prefer that to music. Late at night they used to play big band music and Dad and I would sit and listen and talk when I got home from dates. Now they had switched to all-night talk except for Saturday nights when Mike Rapchak still played the big bands. He always led off with Girl Talk, Dad’s favorite song. Dad had sent me tapes of the show when I was in the army. It was an anchor to home. Since I’d been back, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to listen.

  Me and this ‘65 Mustang went back to high school days. It was really Dad’s car but he’d rarely used it. I can still remember how excited I was the day I turned sixteen and he handed me my own keys. Then, when I finished college, he signed it over to me for a graduation present and had it repainted my favorite color—just as light blue as they could get, even lighter than a skyblue popsicle. When I went into the army, we drained the fluids and put her up on blocks. Then, when I wrote that I wasn’t going to re-up, Dad had her put back in street condition. She ran as smooth as ever.

  I honked at some kids who were playing at the curb and pulled into a space in front of my building. When I got out and stepped into mother nature’s oven, I remembered why I didn’t like air conditioning. The sudden shock of going from cold to hot and vice versa was like running into a brick wall.

  The three kids who were usually raising hell in the yard were just sitting against the fence looking drained and beat. Score one for the heat. I lugged the unit up the stairs, installed it, and turned it to high. By the time I got home it would be cooled down, my feet wouldn’t stick to the floor
, and I could get a good night’s sleep. After filing the morning’s work on the pile on the desk, I headed for Beef’s apartment above the diner.

  Chapter 6

  I climbed the back stairs and knocked on the screen door. In a few seconds Maria’s smiling face appeared.

  “Hello, Maria,” I said as she opened the door.

  “Hello Mister Spence. Mister Beef tells me you were coming. Martha is waiting for you.” She turned and led the way back to the playroom. As I followed, I admired the neat hair pulled tightly into a bun and streaked with gray and the bright, flowered dress that added to the warmth Maria brought into a room. I would have given about anything to have this happy, roly-poly Spanish woman for a grandmother.

  Marty was sitting in the middle of the toy-covered floor coloring a picture. Next to her was her Raggedy Ann doll. I cleared a spot and sat down but I wasn’t quite sure what to say. How do you interrogate a kid?

  “What are you drawing, Marty?”

  “A house.”

  “Who is going to live in it?”

  “Ann’s mommy and daddy.”

  While she talked she stared at the paper and kept coloring.

  “Isn’t it for Ann, too?”

  She scrunched up her lips and furrowed her brow and, after a few seconds, said, “Sometimes. But sometimes she’ll live somewhere else. And then they’ll all move.”

  “Do you mean like you moved with your Mom?”

  She nodded yes and added, “And we were going to move again, too.”

  I knew something was going on here. I felt like I was wandering down a dark, twisting path—one I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to be on. I wanted to pick her up and hug her and tell her everything was going to be all right. But everything wasn’t all right. This little girl’s mother had been murdered, and she didn’t know who her father was and I had no magic to make her feel better. But she did have Beef and Maria and I knew she would be well taken care of. She also had the shell she had built around herself and she seemed to have transferred her problems to Ann. If I was going to get any answers, I would probably have to break down that shell and, as I looked at that fragile little girl at my feet, I decided that breaking down her shell wasn’t something I was willing to do. For the moment she was nice and safe in there. Maybe at twenty-five or thirty she’d break into it on some therapist’s couch, but that would be up to her. I didn’t want someone breaking into my shell. I tried another path.

  “Marty, last night you said Uncle Ronny gave Ann to you. Was she a present for your birthday?”

  “No he just brought her one day.”

  “Did he bring you any other things?”

  “He brought some coloring books and crayons too.”

  “Was Uncle Ronny related to your mother, like Uncle Beef was your mother’s brother?”

  She thought for a moment and said, “No, he was my friend.”

  “Did your Mommy tell you to call him uncle?”

  “No, he did. He said he was going to be our friend and I should call him Uncle Ronny.”

  “Did Uncle Ronny come a lot?”

  She got an angry look on her face and said, “One day Mommy told him not to come back any more. And he said he’d take me for a ride on a horse.”

  “Did he have his own horse, Marty?”

  She shook her head no. “He said where he worked they had horses and during the day they didn’t use the horses so no one would know.” Finally she looked up and I almost melted in the gaze of those bright green eyes. “Do you think you could get me a ride on a horse? Mommy isn’t here to tell me no.”

  It was all I could do to choke out, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  This was just great. Maybe I should have a new ad made up: P.I. will break down and cry if you get a kid to pull his strings.

  “Do you remember what Uncle Ronny looked like Marty?”

  She shrugged. “He looked nice.”

  “That’s good. What color hair did he have?”

  Another shrug.

  “Was it like mine, or Uncle Beef’s, or Maria’s?”

  She looked up at me and said. “It was your color, but longer. Uncle Ronny let me play with his ponytail.”

  “How big? Was he as big as me?”

  “About like you.”

  I patted the top of her head and smoothed her black hair and told her to be sure to draw a good house for Ann and her family. She said she would.

  I stood up and, as I walked out of the room, she said, “Don’t forget about the horse.”

  I assured her I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. It was my only lead. That is if you didn’t count a guy about my size with brown hair in a ponytail.

  I said good-bye to Maria and walked back to the office thinking about horses. I had spent a good deal of my formative years at Linden racetrack and Skyline Park. They weren’t far from Elizabeth’s second address. It might be a good place to start. But there was a better spot to get info on the track. I decided that tonight I’d pay a visit to the Blue Note Lounge and some of the sweetest jazz in the world. If horses were involved, old Blue Eyes Jackson would know about it.

  Dad had taken me to the Blue Note ever since I was big enough to sit on a stool and had told me that there was so much blues in Mr. Jackson that, once he started playing, his brown eyes would turn blue right while I watched. To this day, I’d swear there were times when they did.

  I had been avoiding the Blue Note and the memories that I knew would roll out when I opened the front door. But I had been avoiding long enough and that would be the perfect place to start facing up to the past and start getting on with the present. I knew Dad would be there in spirit. I also knew that this time Mom wouldn’t be waiting up for us with milk and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

  I figured the next step was to see what the police had on the case. So, after making my way back to the office, which was too cold, I called the station to see if Stosh was free. He wasn’t. I told the desk sergeant to tell Stosh I’d be in Thursday morning and to call if that was a problem. Then I took a nap.

  Chapter 7

  The Blue Note was located on south Stony Island Avenue. It opened at eleven for lunch and there would be music playing until they closed and that was whenever the last person had gone home. During the day, pickup bands provided the entertainment, and they were worth hearing. Then at night, the quartet that had been there for as long as I could remember would take over. As far as I knew they didn’t have a name. Blue Eyes called them the Four Play Blues. It had been awhile before I had figured that out.

  Whatever they were called, they were simply the best in the world and the people who dropped in to play with them proved it. Whatever big name was in town at the downtown clubs ended up at the Blue Note after they were done and joined the quartet on the little raised stage in the corner. I had seen Tony Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Joe Williams, James Moody, and many others. They played the big houses for money and the little one for fun.

  It was nine-thirty when I pulled into the parking lot and gave my five bucks to the boy sitting at the entrance outside of the shack. The kid started to reach for it when a voice came out of the shack.

  “Hey, don’t you be takin’ that man’s money. I slap you from here to Georgia, you take that five spot.” A confused boy pulled away his hand like he had touched a hot stove and dropped back with wide eyes as Jesse shuffled out of the shack.

  “You think I’d forget that baby-blue Mustang? How the hell are ya, Mister Spence?” he asked through a big smile as he leaned down through the passenger window.

  I reached over and shook his hand. “I’m fine, Jesse. And you look great. There’s not one more gray hair since the last time I saw you.”

  “That’s cuz they was all gray last time you saw me. Been that way for twenty years. Stick her back there by the boss. I’ll have the kid move Johnny’s wreck.” He yelled to the kid who moved pretty quickly for as hot as it was.

  It was good to see Jesse again. And it was good to know that some of the good things
don’t change. He was still here doing what he did best and was happy doing it. I remembered what Dad had said when I first met Jesse: “That man is the best poker player you’ll ever meet and he can pick any lock in the city. It’s a good thing he’s on the right side.” He was also one of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.

  I parked and let the heat in full blast as I opened the door. I could feel the beat of the music as soon as I got out of the car.

  I walked in and got a strange look from the girl who took my ten for the cover. I stood at the edge of the foyer and looked the place over. It hadn’t changed a bit. It was probably even the same smoke hanging in the air.

  The quartet, drums, piano, upright bass, and sax, with soft blue light dancing on its tarnished golden finish, was in the middle of Satin Doll and the muffled conversation was in rhythm with the music. As people nearest the door noticed me, they stopped talking and stared at me. As I remembered, Dad and I were usually the only white people in the joint. That hadn’t changed either. Then a voice from behind the bar ended the stares and the crowd went back to complaining about the weather.

  “You gonna just stand there all night or are you gonna get your ten bucks worth and pull up a chair?”

  I smiled and squeezed my way between the tables and over to the bar where Blue Eyes was balancing clean glasses three tiers high on the glass shelf over the liquor bottles. He put his tray down and held out his hand.

  “Spencer Manning. I was about to come lookin’ for you. I heard you were back in town and I was startin’ to think you forgot about us.”

  I took his hand and, by his handshake and the look in his eyes, I knew he was saying he was sorry about my folks.

  “Could never forget, Blue Eyes. Just took a while to...”

  “That’s okay, kid. We all feel the same way. Your dad was one special person. Your mom too.”

  I just nodded. The last chord of Satin Doll hung in the air for a few seconds after the playing stopped and the quartet took a break. The sax player, Lemon Walker, came over to the bar for his shot of Southern Comfort. His hair was all gray now and he walked a little slower and a little more slumped than I remembered. I think these guys were around when the Blues was born. He sat on a stool and then did a double take.