Nibbled to Death by Ducks Read online

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  Praise for Edgar Award-Winning Author Robert Campbell

  “Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”

  —— Los Angeles Times

  “Robert Campbell is an awfully good writer.”

  —— Elmore Leonard

  “Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”

  —— New York Times

  Praise for

  Nibbled to Death by Ducks

  “A pure joy. . . .Nibbled to Death by Ducks provides an entertaining look at the workings of Chicago ward politics even as it exposes the cynical greed of the health care industry. . . .Campbell is skillful enough to tickle and chill us at the same time. This is a good one.” —— Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Campbell combines some memorable faces with a moody, atmospheric sense of life in a nursing home. . . .Reading a Flannery caper is always fun. . . .” —— Chicago Tribune

  Praise for

  The Cat’s Meow

  “A mystery series that. . .just keeps getting better.”

  —— Chicago Magazine

  Praise for

  Thinning The Turkey Herd

  “Fast, lean, offbeat entertainment.”

  —— Kirkus Reviews

  “Flannery is Robert Campbell’s most endearing character, a down-to-earth political small-fry who believes in the system despite its faults. . .He’s at his best in Thinning the Turkey Herd. . .a delight—a man who reason's, coaxes,makes end runs, compromises but never gives up until he’s satisfied that he’s got it right.”

  —— The Cincinnati Post

  Praise for Edgar Award Winner

  The Junkyard Dog

  “Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”

  —— New York Times Book Review

  “This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”

  —— ALA Booklist

  “Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”

  —— Publishers Weekly

  Nibbled to Death by Ducks

  Robert Campbell

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1989 Robert Campbell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design © 2015 Ayeshire Publishing

  ONE

  My wife's name is Mary Ellen. I used to call her by both names when we was first living together. Now that we're married I call her Mary.

  My old man's name is Mike.

  Mary's mother is Charlotte and her aunt, Charlotte's sister, is Sada.

  The kid what lives next door is Stanley Recore and the sister and brother what own the grocery store downstairs are Pearl and Joe Pakula.

  Chips Delvin, my Chinaman—which is like what the New York cops call a rabbi—is actually Francis Brendan Delvin. He gave me my start in the Chicago sewers and Democratic politics. His housekeeper is Mrs. Banjo.

  There's a lot you can learn from names and the way people use them.

  For instance, my whole name is James Barnabas Flannery, but only my mother—God rest her soul—and Mary ever call me James. My old man calls me Jim. Most people call me Jimmy. One or two call me Jimbo when they want to give me the curly lip. Nobody has ever called me Barnabas or Barney, and nobody ever will if I got anything to say about it.

  My wife works as a nurse over to Passavant Hospital. It's a very stressful profession. Which is not to say she complains about it very often. It's just that when she gets quieter and quieter and doesn't take too much kidding around I know it's time she should take a break.

  I manage to convince her she ain't indispensable to every one of her patients, and we take off for a week's vacation down to New Orleans, a town which she's never seen and I only been to once for about a day and a half myself.

  I can tell you everything we did down there, but I won't since this ain't a travelogue. I'll just say it rained five out of the seven days, but we had a very good time all the same.

  It's when we get back that we find out things ain't so good since we left.

  The taxi leaves us off downstairs, and we climb the six flights to the third floor with our suitcases. Mike, who's been staying in our place so he can take care of Alfie, my dog, opens the door before I have to use my key.

  "You have a good time?" he asks.

  "It rained a lot," I say.

  "That's the way it is all the time down there in New Orleans."

  "How do you know? You never been," I say, putting down the suitcases and getting a lick from Alfie after he finishes giving the big hello to Mary.

  "Everybody knows it's always raining in New Orleans."

  "We had a good time, Mike," Mary says, giving him a kiss on the cheek and stopping what she figures is going to be an argument over nothing.

  "Anyway, who cares," Mike says. "There's other things more important."

  "Something the matter?"

  "It's Delvin."

  "He ain't dead, is he?" I blurt out, having the feeling that what I expected was going to happen for the last year or so finally happens.

  "No, that much's all right," Mike says.

  "Is he sick again?"

  "I suppose you could say that, though it's none of the ailments that've put him to bed before."

  I notice that my father, like a lot of people when they grow old, is falling into the habit of taking one hell of a long time to deliver a joke, a story, or a piece of news.

  "Well, are you going to tell us or ain't you going to tell us?"

  "You shouldn't be in such a hurry to hear the worst," Mike says.

  "I'm just trying to find out what the worst is."

  "Delvin's suffered a great loss. It knocked him flat."

  "A great loss of what?"

  "Mrs. Banjo. She passed away sudden the day after you left."

  It hits me very hard, what he says.

  "I'll make some tea," Mary says.

  It's not that there was any great affection between Mrs. Banjo and me. At least none that I ever thought about until just this second. I mean she wa
s Delvin's housekeeper for I don't know how many years—ever since his wife died—but every time I appeared on the doorstep she always acted as if she wasn't sure if I was all that welcome, even when I'd been invited. She'd usually scold me for standing in the doorway wiping my feet and letting in the cold air or not wearing my galoshes if it was wet out or sneezing in the hallway if I had a cold. She'd bring in lemonades or hot toddies—depending on the weather—laced with whiskey, knowing that I didn't drink, and Delvin, who shouldn't've had more than one, would have mine as well. After delivering the refreshments she'd go to some other part of the house, and that's the last I'd see of her.

  "You better sit down," Mike says.

  I go into the kitchen and sit down at the table, afraid that I'm going to cry and not knowing why.

  The kettle starts to sing.

  "What took her?" I ask.

  "Heart failure. In her bed during the night," Mike says. "From the look of her, Delvin said, she went very quiet, and he hopes he'll do the same."

  "How old a woman was she?" Mary asks.

  "I don't know," I say.

  Mike sits down on the other side of the table, running his hand over the oilcloth as though taking comfort from it.

  "She was seventy-five if she was a day," he says.

  "How's that?" I say, startled. "She couldn't've been that old. Her hair was black as jet, and she had arms on her like a docker."

  "Oh, she was a sturdy woman sure enough, but the color of her hair came out of a bottle."

  "She's been waked already, has she?" I ask.

  "Waked and blessed and buried," Mike says.

  "You should've sent me word. I could've come home for the funeral."

  "What good would it've done her?"

  "It would've done old Delvin good."

  "You weren't unrepresented, Jim. After all, I was there."

  Mary sets down a cup of tea for each of us and goes back to the stove.

  "He ask about me?" I say.

  "Once or twice," Mike says. "I explained that you were off taking a little vacation."

  "What'd he say to that?"

  Mike acts like he's reluctant to say.

  "Go on, you ain't going to hurt my feelings."

  "Well, he grumped—you know the way he does—and says it ain't surprising you wouldn't be there when he needed you."

  I don't say anything, but I think to myself that's just like old Delvin, taking the chance to give me the needle even though I helped him out of more bad scrapes than I can count. Come to think of it, maybe that's why he takes these little shots at me. Because he figures he's like the grandfather and I'm just a kid compared to him, so it bothers him that I've saved his bacon more than once.

  "But mostly he acts dazed," my father goes on. "Like he's lost most of his fire."

  "Well, he'll stoke it up again, you can bet on that," I say. But I'm not sure I really believe it.

  Mary comes over and sits down at the table with a cup of tea for herself.

  "Do you think it's too late for you to call up Mr. Delvin, James?" she asks.

  I glance up at the kitchen clock. It ain't yet ten.

  I start to stand up, but Mike says, "It wouldn't be too late to call the old man if he was home, but he ain't."

  "Where is he, then?"

  "He's at a facility what closes off incoming calls at nine o'clock."

  "Facility?"

  "For the last three days he's been in a nursing home by the name of the Larkspur over to the Fourteenth Ward."

  "The Fourteenth? He hates the Fourteenth ever since Hilda Moscowitz beat out George Lurgan for alderman. You'd have to drag him out of his house biting and kicking to get him over there."

  "He didn't have any fight left in him," Mike says. "Mrs. Banjo's dying took the last bit of starch out of him. He just about collapsed at the graveside. Wally Dunleavy and this other fella got him into the limousine. The next thing I heard was that Delvin was in this nursing home."

  "I don't believe he'd leave his house without a fight."

  "I was told he went without hardly a murmur," Mike says.

  "Temporary shock," I say. "He was brain-stunned from grief. Any minute now that phone'll ring, and it'll be Delvin asking me how come I ain't over there taking him home like he'd be doing for me if our situations was reversed."

  Well, we sit there until almost midnight, and the phone never rings.

  TWO

  The next morning I look up the address and telephone number of the Larkspur Nursing Home while Mary's getting ready to go to work and Mike's making breakfast.

  "You going over to see Delvin this morning?" Mike asks.

  "As soon as I have a cup of coffee," I say.

  "You want me to come along?"

  "I'd just as soon see him the first time on my own."

  "You could be right. But I want to warn you again, Jim, he's not the man he was."

  "You've been to see him?"

  "Of course I have." He hesitates again, like he did last night, and then he says, "I scarcely recognized him, though."

  "Grief can change a man's looks."

  "What was worse, I don't think he recognized me."

  I decide I don't want to hear any more before I see for myself how Delvin's doing.

  Mary takes the car, so I grab the A train to Sixty-third and Racine. It's about eight blocks to Sherman Park, and then about a mile and a half west to the Larkspur, which is on a street right by Micek Pig Park, practically sitting on the Baltimore and Ohio Central railroad just north of a switching yard.

  For those of you what don't live in Chicago, I could mention that there's these little playground parks all over the city, squares of open space and some grass with a sandbox and a jungle gym and a slide and maybe some telephone poles stuck in the ground for the kiddies to climb around and sit on. There's some swings and, for a minute, I think how nice it'd be to take a swing, but I keep going.

  The nursing home looks pretty good from the outside with the sprinklers going, watering a lawn that ain't too patchy. There's a whole bunch of delphiniums against the latticework around the porch.

  It's a huge old three-story converted mansion, maybe one of the last ones still surviving in the neighborhood, with towers that go up another story topping off both wings.

  It's got broad side yards bordered with privet twenty feet high, all nicely trimmed and shaped. I walk over, dodging the sprinklers, and peek around the back. Once there was nothing but big back yards around here, and this one goes all the way to a stand of trees on the other street. The only other house I passed along the way with a yard this big was another old mansion somebody'd turned into a funeral home.

  In front of the trees there's a couple of stone benches and a little pond. I hear some ducks quacking, so I take the path around the house and have a look.

  The pond ain't natural, though I can't see the pipe for the water coming in or the drain where it's going out. The water's pretty clear, so I know it's moving, or maybe they clean it out every once in a while. Anyway, there's a dozen ducks lying around on the grass or swimming around in the pond enjoying themselves, quacking away like a bunch of people on a picnic. I don't know if the Larkspur stocks the pond with these ducks or if they're city ducks what spotted the pond when they was flying around and decided it was better than any of the big ponds in some of the other parks. It's a very pleasant spot, and I start feeling a little better about Delvin being there.

  I go around to the front and walk up the steps to the porch.

  There's five or six rocking chairs sitting on it, but nobody's in them. People don't sit on porches taking the air the way they used to. Television put the kibosh on that. It's hard for me to understand sometimes why so many people would rather watch faces talking at one another on a nineteen-inch screen than visit with their neighbors or even any strangers passing by, but that's the way things are nowadays.

  When I step inside the reception area I can see this big living room with an enclosed porch off to one side. Ther
e's maybe half a dozen old folks sitting there in these high chairs with wheels, staring at a color television set that has got to be one of them forty-inch projection jobs.

  The place looks very nice and pleasant, what with long lace curtains at the windows and flowered slipcovers on all the chairs and couches.

  There's a big vase full of fresh flowers on a long desk, which is the only thing that reminds you this ain't a private home anymore. That and the old people staring at the television, of course.

  There's nobody sitting behind the desk, but I notice one of them little bells like they got in hotels sitting on it, so I go over and give it a tap. Somebody out on the porch lets out a yelp, and somebody else laughs. I suppose me ringing the bell is more excitement than they've had in a month of Sundays.

  There's a wooden box full of old slippers and shoes next to the door marked "Private," which is next to a door marked "Office." While I'm looking at that I hear somebody yell, "Mama, Mama, they won't let me out!" from somewhere way down the hall. "Bring me a saw so I can make a hole! Mama, Mama, if you get me out, I'll be a good girl forever!"

  It gives me the chills.

  Then whoever it is lets out a scream fit to wake the dead and starts crying, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you're keeping me prisoner against my will. When my husband, Jake, finds out what you're doing to me he'll come kill each and every one of you. You, too, Peter Rabbit. You, too."

  I'm halfway down the hall while she's yelling all this. Whenever I hear somebody yelling for help or sounding like they're in pain, I always go to see if there's anything I can do, though some people accuse me of sticking my nose in where it don't belong and I should learn to mind my own business.

  It seems to me, because people are so worried about sticking their nose in and minding their own business, it's got so a person's not safe on the streets anymore. You could be getting robbed in broad daylight or stabbed to death by a maniac on State Street, and the crowds would just walk on by, keeping their noses straight ahead and their minds on their own business.