The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Page 10

  "So what is this Helen Caplet to do with us?" Brickhouse says.

  "They match her prints. She's your daughter, Helen Brickhouse."

  Brickhouse stares at me, too, but he don't blink. The rims of his eyes are turning red, and mottled color is spreading over his heavy neck and chin. He's about fifty-five and I'm afraid he might be going to have a heart attack.

  "What kind of a clinic?" he says in a voice which is tied with a cord.

  "A clinic where girls which has got themselves in trouble can get help."

  "I told you what she was, Flo. I told you," he says, but he don't look at his wife. "You wouldn't believe me when I told you what she was and why I didn't want her back in this house."

  "My God, Marty, not what she was, what she might of become."

  Women see the difference that men often don't. Helen was her little girl, with shiny hair and rosy cheeks and a baby's innocence, and always would be, no matter what else the grown-up Helen ever might have become. For Brickhouse, all Helen gave him for his hopes was a paper bag full of busted dreams and shame.

  "She was a whore, Flo," Brickhouse says. Then the tears start pouring out of his eyes. I never see such a thing. His face don't move, he still don't blink, and the water just rolls down his red cheeks like a flood, catching and sparkling in the stubble on his chin. He don't make a sound. It's one of the most terrible things I ever see.

  "My God, my little baby, Helen. My little Pudding," he says. He gets up. "I want to thank you for coming and telling us," he says like he's minding his manners. "Where is she?"

  "Over to county morgue."

  "Can I get her?"

  "Anytime you want."

  He leaves the kitchen and goes down the hall. I hear a door open and dose.

  "He'll lay on her bed and hug her rag doll," Flo says. "He don't think I know what he does. Is your coffee hot?"

  "It's hot."

  "Sure it is. Why wouldn't it be? I just now poured it, didn't I? I feel awful. There's something in my chest that feels like it's going to choke me."

  "You want I should call a doctor?"

  "Oh, no, people like us don't call a doctor for things like this. It's easier to die, anyway, ain't it?"

  "Mrs. Brickhouse," I says, "I want you should help me if you can."

  "How?"

  "I wonder if Helen ever told you she met a man . . ."

  "How could she tell me anything? Her father forbid her ever to step foot in this house . . ."

  ". . . and made a special friend?"

  ". . . or even meet me on the street or in a coffee shop."

  "Did she tell you she met a man who she fell in love with?"

  "Can't you hear me what I'm telling you?"

  "Mrs. Brickhouse, mothers and daughters has been talking to each other, no matter what the old man says, for a thousand years."

  "All right. What could it matter now, anyway? Helen called me on the phone sometimes when she knew her father wouldn't be home. We'd meet and have a piece of a pie and a coffee somewheres."

  "Was there a man?"

  "Yes, she said there was. This man wanted Helen to stop doing what she was doing."

  "That's how he met her?"

  "I don't know. He was married, she said, but he wanted to set her up. He couldn't do it right away, but he was ready to leave his wife. That would've made her father hit the roof, too. He don't go to church, but he believes in the faith. He don't believe in a daughter running around with a married man."

  "Was this married man making promises?"

  "I told Helen not to believe him. I told her men always make promises they don't mean to keep."

  "But she kept seeing him?"

  "What was wrong with that? She was seeing different men all the time anyway, wasn't she?"

  "He sets her up in a flat? He pays the bills?"

  "Oh, no. But, with this one, she says they go out to the lakefront and go sailing and take bicycle rides in Grant Park. At least with him it ain't like she's doing it just for the money."

  She looks at me as if to say what damned difference did it make what you did it for? It's all buying and selling, one way or another.

  Then her expression gets soft and she says, "Once last summer he took her on a long weekend to Atlantic City. He bought her a long summer dress and a hat. They had cold drinks with gin and pineapple juice. She didn't like the taste much. But it must have been grand."

  "What month did they go?"

  "June."

  "You know the week?"

  "The first one."

  "You're sure."

  "Pretty nearly sure. Helen's birthday was on the third and she said he took her to Atlantic City like it was a present."

  "She bring back any pictures?"

  At first I don't think she's going to admit it. She's already telling me more than she wants to tell a stranger. But who else has she got to show the pictures of her baby in her summer dress? She gets up and goes into her bedroom and comes back with three snapshots wrapped in a napkin.

  It's a souvenir napkin from the Hotel Beau Rivage in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a daughter's gift to a mother who'd never have a chance to wear a summer dress and stroll along the boardwalk in a resort city on the sea.

  She tosses a glance at the hallway, afraid that maybe her husband will come creeping up on us while she's showing me pictures she ain't supposed to have. She lays them out one by one.

  They're pictures taken from far back so all the dress will show, but I can see the girl in the picture is the girl who was Helen Caplet. The man with her is smiling with a lot of very white teeth. He's got an Italian face which is very dark or he's got a tan and he's got slicked-back black hair. I think I know him from somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it. Then I remember what Mary said about the guy in the corridor. He does look like Valentino.

  They look happy. I can see the front of the hotel in the background with its name above the entrance in pink letters.

  "Can I have one of these?" I asks.

  Flo hesitates for a second, then she says, "Does it matter which?"

  I says, "No."

  She sorts the three pictures out on the table, shoving them around like she's working the shell game. Then she pushes one toward me. I put it in my pocket.

  "Thanks for this, and the coffee and cake."

  "Why do you want the picture?" Flo says.

  "I think this man could have been responsible for the explosion which hurt your Helen," I says.

  "I hope you do it to him, Flo says. She sees me to the door. "Mr. Flannery?" Flo says. "You got kids?"

  "No. I ain't even married yet."

  "Don't have kids. They'll break your heart."

  EIGHTEEN

  I have the half of the picture with Helen's boyfriend blown up to a three-by-four. It's grainy, but at least you can see the shape of the eyes and mouth a little better.

  The first ones I show it to is my father and Mary. "That's the man who showed me the badge in the corridor of the clinic."

  "Would you say that was him if you was under oath?" I says.

  She hesitates a tick. "Maybe not," she says. "A person's raised not wanting to accuse anyone, not get into trouble, so that's a very difficult question to answer."

  "Think about it."

  "So, if it was a lineup, I'd probably say yes. If it was a trial, and life and death, I'm not so sure."

  "It doesn't matter right this minute. Whatever you have to say wouldn't be enough anyway. Not even for an arrest. But I think I got my fingers on the end of the string which is going to unravel the whole ball."

  Delvin holds the blowup between his thumb and finger.

  "I ask you to mind your business. You don't mind your business," he says. "Why is that? Don't you like your job?"

  "With all respect, this is the guy who killed a young pregnant whore, an old lady, and an innocent party who was a nurse."

  "You got eyewitnesses to these allegations?"

  "I got reasonable suspicions."


  "The cops share these reasonable suspicions of yours?"

  "The cops have a desire to do what they're told to do. This is a desire they share with a lot of other people," I says, which ain't very smart, since Delvin don't have to be smart hisself to know exactly what I'm getting at.

  "If you was a cop, I'd tell you where you could stick your reasonable suspicion, but you ain't a cop," he says. "You're a buttinsky, a guy who sticks his nose in places he shouldn't stick his nose. A guy who doesn't listen to them who has his best interests at heart. To them who's done him favors and who's asking a little favor in return."

  "I'm asking you, Mr. Delvin, who asked you to tell me to stop poking around?"

  "Which you don't do," he shouts, getting red in the face.

  "Which I was going to do, but which I'm not going to do now because the nurse who this somebody murdered could've been my lady."

  "Oh," he says like I stepped on his toe and he was saying ouch. He's got nothing to say to a man who's telling him this is something so personal political loyalty don't even figure into it anymore.

  "So?" I says.

  He hands the picture back to me. "I don't know this guy. When I'm asked to tell you—ask you—to forget about the bombing over to the abortion clinic on Sperry, I figure it's because there are people who might not agree with such a violent way of making a protest, but who do not want the perpetrator—who did not mean to hurt anyone, just a building—to go to jail for having fumble fingers."

  "You don't ask anything else?"

  "If that's a sneaky way of passing judgment on the favor I done, you better say it straight out."

  "No," I says, shaking my head. "I'm just feeling mean."

  "I give you that. I'll also give you . . ."

  "Give me the name of the man who asked the favor."

  ". . . a piece of advice. Before, I asked you forget about this thing. Now I got to beg you to walk away. It's going to get . . ."

  "I don't need the name. I know it's Vito Velletri."

  ". . . very bloody for you, I think, if you don't. I'm giving you this advice because I love you like my own son."

  The biggest con is the one that goes, "I'm telling you this because I love you." It's just the same as the one that goes, "This is going to hurt me more than it will you."

  Another thing you learn, if you learn anything, is that very few people know, about how hard you're trying to be yourself—and they don't want to know about it if being yourself interferes with them being theirselves.

  I didn't have to ask Delvin who asked him to do the cover-up, to give the word to Pescaro to ease off the clinic bombing, to tell me I should mind my business. I already know it's Delvin's fellow warlord Velletri. I asked him so he could get hisself untangled from the mess his favor helped to cause. To clean his shoes. To let him know I'm getting to the bottom of this particular cesspool any way I can, no matter how long it takes, no matter who tries to stop me.

  I give him a chance to be a mensch—a Yiddish word which means a stand-up guy—but he don't take it. Delvin is getting old and soft.

  I'm not going to give Velletri the same chance, because he's not my Chinaman, and all I'll get from him is orders to back off otherwise he will break my arms and legs.

  NINETEEN

  The laying out of Helen Bernadette Catherine Brickhouse in McCardle's Funeral Home is nothing like the laying out of Mrs. Rose Sonia Klutzman in her living room.

  Helen has got on a dress that would suit a child getting graduated from high school, a pink thing of layered chiffon that makes me sad for her. Here she grew up with all them lies about how to cop a happy future, a husband, kids, and a split-level over to Park Ridge—even if it is a Republican suburb. But all the kid's got to do is look at where she is, what she come from, and what are the odds of getting somewhere else, to know she's got to do more than pass her civics class and take a bath once a day if she hopes to get out of a life like her mother's life. Which to her is as dingy as dishwater. Which to her is no better than being dead.

  Maybe she traded lies for wrong ideas. But, for a while there, when some customer convinced her she was more than just a whore to him, when she let herself get pregnant, before she was told to get rid of the baby or else—maybe it wasn't even a threat, maybe it was just a payoff, some cash, and a promise of later—she must have figured her game plan was working.

  Now they had her back in school, looking like their idea of a virgin, and it was like she'd never hoped, never tried, never even lived a woman's life. Flo Brickhouse is sitting in the first row, dressed in her best and wearing her hat. Some old female relatives and neighbors, wearing black as though the century had never bothered turning, is clustered around her. Some of these old crows was probably the same ones what pecked out Helen's eyes with their sharp tongues. That made Flo's life a misery with their whispers.

  I go, over to Flo Brickhouse and make my condolences.

  "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Brickhouse," I says. "I never knew your Helen, but I see what a pretty girl she was and I know she had a sweet soul."

  The old ladies in black is eyeing me like they will bust if Flo don't tell them who this stranger is coming in to a family wake like this. They're wondering am I somebody from Helen's other, terrible, sinful life.

  "Thank you, Mr. Flannery. It's good of you to come to pay your respects when you're under no obligation."

  "The misfortune which befell her," I says, "happened in my precinct, and that's enough. Mary Ellen Dunne, the nurse who was in the building when it happened, wanted to come, but she's on shift at Passavant."

  "Thank her for the intention."

  "She'll make a point to come to the service if it's anywhere near possible."

  "Saint Jude's, the little church on—"

  "I know where it is."

  "Two o'clock day after tomorrow."

  "We'll be there. I'll just go say a prayer now, will I? There's people waiting to give you their strength."

  I go up to the coffin and kneel down on the little stool. I look into Helen's face. The mortician's paint and powder makes her look even harder than when she was laying in the morgue like a busted doll.

  "You take care," I says, because I'm not very good at praying.

  I see Marty Brickhouse come from the hall and stand in the doorway with his hands folded in front of his belly. He's wearing his good suit and it makes him look out of place. I know he's just come upstairs from the basement where there's a room where the men hang out to smoke and pass a bottle.

  I cross myself and go over to give him my sympathy. He stares at me like he's going to fight with me. I don't know why. Whatever, whoever, reminds him of what his Pudding was before she died is somebody to punish, I suppose. Then he relaxes and it looks for a minute like he's going to cry again. I don't think I can stand that so I says, "Is there a drink on the premises?"

  "Oh, sure," he says, like I've reminded him about his manners. There's ancient custom about things like this. The way it goes, he'd have to offer hospitality to the devil. "Come downstairs with me."

  In the room there's half a dozen guys look just like Brickhouse sitting and standing around smoking. They got hands like my father, heavy and scarred, yellow with nicotine, and very unhappy when they got nothing to do. Brickhouse gets a bottle from the potted palm. I only wet my lips because I hate the stuff. I think maybe we'll talk, though about what and why I don't know, but instead we just sit there staring at the potted palm.

  In a little while I go upstairs and stand in the doorway looking at everybody who comes in. I hang around until they close the place up, waiting for a certain somebody to show.

  Delvin comes to pay his respects and so does Vito Velletri, but I don't see nobody who looks like Valentino.

  TWENTY

  I left the car at home in case Mary needs it, so I take the El back to my precinct. I got six blocks to walk through the empty streets. I tuck my house keys between my fingers in case some mugger should come at me I can cut his cheek. I step
along calm and easy watching my shadow in front of me every time I put another street lamp behind me. I watch the alleys and look for motion behind the windows of parked cars. Even so I don't see where they come from.

  I'm on the floor in the back of a car with somebody's shoe on my neck before I know what hits me. It's a black shoe, well-polished and with a pointy toe. A dancer's shoe. A gonif's shoe. A shoe which be longs to a man who knows how to damage a man's ribs with a kick.

  There's two other guys in front, the driver and another guy who's annoyed that they was called away out of some warm nightclub to do somebody a service at this time of night.

  "I don't like this, Connie," this one says. "I was doing great with Hester. I never see such tits—"

  "Shut up," Connie says.

  "We was going back to her place when the call come."

  "I don't tell you again."

  We drive for a while. I try to count one hundred and one, one hundred and two. If I can count the seconds and if I can estimate how fast we're going, then I can figure how many miles we've traveled. Then, when I get loose, I'll draw a circle of that diameter around the spot where they picked me up. Someplace inside that circle will be the place where they're taking me. I will find it later on and track these bastards down and see that what they do to me is done to them.

  Except they got to travel in a straight line, and except I find it very hard to keep on counting with somebody's foot grating on my cheek, and except I'm afraid that maybe I'll be in no condition to do nothing to nobody because I'll be dead.

  Every once in a while I hear ice cubes rattle in a glass when Connie takes a swallow of the drink which he was probably drinking when they was called away to do this job on me. I'm so thirsty I could lick a wet stone.

  The tires rattle over old cobbles and railroad tracks, so I know we're in a section of the city which is empty after dark.

  The car stops somewhere not too far from the main railroad yard. I can hear them making up the freight trains, which sometimes is three hundred cars long, the couplings smashing iron to iron like I remember when I was a kid.