The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  The guy in front gets out and leaves the door open. I hear the rattle of a chain and the creak of a gate. The car pulls ahead and he jumps back in. The sound of the engine changes like we're driving through a long tunnel. The car stops again.

  "Let me get out first," the guy with his foot in my face says. "Then you come out of the car, Flannery. Keep your hands at your sides. Keep your eyes in front of you. I don't want you should try to look at our faces. You understand that?"

  He takes his foot off my neck and steps out of the car. For a wild minute I think I can maybe rise up, give the driver a clout alongside the ear, jump over into the front seat, shove him out the door, and take the hell off. It gives me a minute of joy, then I manage to uncramp myself and crawl out of the car, practically falling on my head.

  We're in the middle of a junkyard. It's like the way the world will look when tomorrow catches up with us and we drown in garbage. It's mostly the smashed bodies of cars, some wrecks of the road, some old bones tossed away. They're piled up like monuments. I take a step and turn my head a little because I don't know what else to do and I'm very frightened. I get a look at Connie in the light of the moon.

  Whatever's left in his glass hits me in the face. He smashes the glass on the bricks. One of them comes around from my blind side and slams a punch into my gut, which makes me get sick on the ground. Some of it splashes on Connie's shoe.

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," he says, and he stoops down and wipes the toe of his shoe with the bar napkin with which he was holding the glass.

  I'm on my knees watching him do it like it's the most interesting thing I seen all week.

  Something slams into the back of my neck, under the ear. I don't remember going down.

  When I come to, the car is gone and I'm cramped up on the filthy ground, hunched over my knees, my legs pushed out like a frog, keeping me from falling over even though I was knocked out. I stick a hand under my coat and feel my ribs. They ain't busted. I run a hand over my face. My nose and teeth ain't broken. I'm just stiff from kneeling there. I reach out for the dirty napkin which Connie has thrown away after wiping his shoe.

  All they wanted to do was give me a scare. All they wanted to do was tell me that enough was enough and if I . . .

  A Doberman as big as a pony comes charging down one of the alleys between the walls of rusting steel and iron. There's enough light from the moon that I can see his red eyes and the way his fangs shine.

  I stagger up to my feet. It hurts like hell to move so quick, but I know it's going to hurt a hell of a lot more if I don't find some high ground and that animal gets his teeth into me. I scramble and scrap my way up a pile of rusted cars. Glass from their busted windows tears my clothes and cuts my hands and knees. It feels like every time I climb two feet, something gives way and I slip back one. The dog is leaping at me, not like a dumb animal bouncing up and down without gathering itself, but like somebody with a plan. The jumps is timed to give him the best shot at my foot or leg every time one comes close enough for him to maybe catch hold.

  Once he gets my pants cuff, and when I drag my leg up, I drag him along with me. He lets go and plants his four paws on a flat place. He can make my throat with one try if he wants. I'm laying belly down against the scrap metal, afraid to move in case I slide right down to the ground again, afraid not to be cause if I don't the dog will have me for supper.

  I kick out just as he leaps and catch him in the chest. He bounces off and goes falling to the ground all in a scramble, tangled up in some upholstery and headliner webbing. But the contact is enough to send me sliding off the hill, too. I get my feet under me and hit the ground running. I head toward the gate. When I look back over my shoulder, the Doberman's got hisself together again and is coming after me. The thing that scares me most is that he don't make a sound. He's a fighter who don't waste his breath on threats.

  There's a donkey engine that runs a crane standing in the aisle between mountains of cars, close to the chain-link fence which has got razor wire coiled along the top. I jump into the cab and kick the engine over. It catches and roars. The dog leaps at me in the cab and I kick him again under the jaw so he goes tumbling back, hitting the ground rolling like a wrestler and coming back at me right away. But at least I got time to throw the lever to swing the crane and get out of the cab and up the boom. Spotlights start popping on all over the yard. I make like a monkey and I'm at the top of the boom when the crane slams into the fence.

  I go over and run down the dark, wet street toward the black shapes of big warehouses while the dog bites the steel mesh and yells at me, begging me to come back and fight like a man.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When I stop running, I start to shake. When I stop shaking, I look for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off my face. I find the dirty napkin in my pocket. I must have shoved it in there without knowing I was doing it when the Doberman came at me. I open it up and see that it's from a club which I know over to the Loop. I remember that there's a dancer who works there who's got size forties up front. I don't know that her name is Hester, but I'm willing to bet on it.

  I'm presentable if not clean by the time I get to the Jambo Club. There's pictures of several of the attractions outside. One of them is Hester Prime. I don't know if that's supposed to be a takeoff on the name of the woman who wore the scarlet letter in the book of the same name, which is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, or if it has to do with meat packing and grading. In Chicago it means probably the second.

  The bouncer at the door gives me the eye and says, "Are you drunk and have you made a mess of yourself?"

  "I'm not drunk. Smell my breath," I says. "I was mugged. I'm so upset I would maybe like a drink at your bar before I go home."

  All the time I'm looking over his shoulder so I shouldn't come face to face with Connie. I'm worried that I won't even know it if I come face to face with the other two.

  The bouncer steps aside and I'm able to get to the bar, which is off to one side at the back of the club, without showing myself. The floor show is going on, and a line of girls is high-kicking and singing in shrill voices like peahens about "happy days are here again." Chicago can't get over Prohibition. When the citizens of Chicago go out to have fun, all the women want to be flappers and all the men want to be gangsters. It's like after Capone everything is downhill. The club ain't all that crowded, but it's crowded enough. I order a rye and ginger ale, which I'm not going to drink, and start searching the crowd table by table, looking for two guys what look dandy. I figure the driver is just a driver and not one of the boys when it comes to fun and frolic.

  There is plenty of types, but I don't see Connie. Maybe they decide to go home and call it a night after feeding the dog.

  Then I see this blonde in a dressing gown, which tells me she's a performer sitting with a customer before she goes on. There's only the two of them at the table. The man she's sitting with looks like one of them water rats which comes up from the lake, slick and sure of hisself, his little mustache twitching every time he thinks of what he'd like to do with them things the woman is practically resting on the table.

  The dancers high-kick one last time and go shuffling off to Buffalo off the floor. The barker comes out and says that Hester Prime will now take off her clothes, which is what she does best. The blonde bounces up off the chair and makes for the door, which gives her the chance to take off the dressing gown and come out ready to strip. It's very old-fashioned.

  I lean over sideways and says to the bartender, "Is that Hester's brother from Philadelphia she's sitting with?"

  "That's Choo-Choo Torello."

  "What's a Choo-Choo Torello?"

  "He throws people under trains," the bartender says.

  "Who does he do this service for?" I says.

  The bartender walks away in case I want to know more about Choo-Choo Torello.

  Choo-Choo is watching Hester and I think maybe she'll drown him in all that white body or choke him to death with the powder she fans herself wit
h before the night is over. I also think he won't mind a bit.

  When Hester shows every inch she can show and struts off the floor in a blue spot, Choo-Choo gets up and hurries over toward the men's room, stopping along the way to pay the waiter so he shouldn't waste a minute getting out of there with Hester.

  When he comes through the door and steps into the first stall, I'm in the second one. I peek through the spyhole which somebody had drilled in the partition, and see him take off his suit jacket and hang it on the hook. Then he drops his trousers.

  "Hey, Choo-Choo," I whisper.

  He don't turn a hair.

  "Listen, faggot," he says, "you get your eye away from that hole or I'm going to poke it out with a knife."

  "Hey, Choo-Choo," I says, "you only think you're tough. I'm going to tell . . ."

  He starts to reach for the gun which he's got tucked in a holster under his arm pit.

  ". . . your boss you like boys."

  "You asshole," he says, "DiBella knows better than that."

  I step out of my stall just as he's pulling out the gun and getting up from the stool. I slam the door to his stall back as hard as I can while he's in a bare-assed crouch, one hand with a gun and the other pulling up his shorts. He falls down between the toilet and the wall. He don't even get to see me before I walk out the door.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I told you something about politics in Chicago, now I'll tell you a little about what is called high society. There's not a hell of a lot of "old money" around here; it's all been made two, at most three, generations ago by people like Cornelius Vanderbilt, who ran a garbage scow; Swift, who got his start peddling raw meat from a pushcart; and Marshall Field, who owned a dry-goods store.

  Chicago's got a social register. I'm told that actors and actresses are welcome, but people of the Jewish faith are not unless they marry somebody already in the register.

  There are exclusive clubs like the Chicago Club and the Casino Club, and a lot of charity doings for things like the Lyric Opera, the University of Chicago, the Junior League, St. Luke's Medical Center, and the Brookfield Zoo. Everybody appreciates these good works.

  High society would like to claim some political power in the city, but the truth is that the people down to City Hall don't really give a rat's ass about what these rich people have to say or what they would like to see knocked down or built up. They like their campaign contributions, but there's even something all cockeyed about that, since these rich businessmen register Republican but contribute to the Democratic machine to buy what favors they hope to buy.

  Society women give a lot of parties and are probably useful in that way, bringing Democrats together with Republicans and Liberals, the corporation heads with the union bosses, the real-estate tycoons with the clergy, the art patrons with the sports buffs, and the mob leaders with the bankers.

  Jennifer "Poppsie" Hanneman was born into a family what ran a hot-dog stand in the Tenth ward which was frequented by a lot of the steel workers. She performed in some chorus lines on the Loop and performed on her back in a nice little flat she bought herself on the lakefront. She married into the big Hanneman cold-cut fortune in the person of Barney "Knockwurst"—which nobody called him to his face—Hanneman, who was twice her age. So she was a widow not long after the wedding. She's very good at giving parties.

  Poppsie lives in a Lakeview Avenue duplex over looking the park. I'm lucky in the lobby because the old guard on duty is Danny Maroon, who's been on nights at the building for twenty years and has a memory for names and faces I should be so lucky to possess.

  He remembers me right away, even though it's been five years since I used to come visiting and stay the night . . . but that's another story.

  "It's you, is it, Mr. Flannery?"

  "It's me."

  "Are you back?"

  "Just to have a drink," I says. "Dinner should be over by now, don't you think?"

  "You wasn't invited?"

  "Just for something after," I says, lying with a look which my mother—God rest her soul—used to say would fool the devil.

  "Enjoy yourself, Mr. Flannery," he says.

  "You, too, Mr. Maroon," I says.

  I take the elevator up to the top floor. It opens up into a hall bigger than my flat with nothing in it but a painting at one end, a mirror at the other, and a little table, which has got a silver tray on it, next to the door facing the elevator.

  Poppsie's butler opens up. He's not the butler I once knew. He gives me a quick once-over. His eyes is like mice peeking into my pockets. I don't pass the test. He does the eyebrow thing. I think maybe everybody in the world learns to look down their noses except me.

  "I've come to call on Mrs. Hanneman," I says.

  "Madam is giving a dinner party," he says.

  "I ain't hungry," I says, "and won't stay. But I want a word with Jennifer-"

  "I'm afraid-"

  "Jenny will want to know I'm here. Go whisper in Poppsie's ear that James Flannery is here or I'll make a mess on the rug."

  He turns his back on me and stalks down the corridor toward the room from which there is coming a lot of conversation and a lot of light. I'm right behind him. The rugs is so thick he can't hear me and he ain't street-smart enough to feel me at his back.

  When he stops in the doorway of the dining room, which looks like the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles like I seen in that picture about Wilson on the late-late show, I go right on past him.

  Poppsie looks at me. One second I think she's going to laugh and the next she's going to cry and the next she's going to get mad and tell every man in the room to get up from their dinner and break my teeth.

  She's got about thirty people sitting around the long table which is covered with enough china and silver to set me and Mary up in a house in the suburbs with two cars in the garage. The women are in long dresses and most of the men are wearing dinner jackets. They're going to some opening at the Art Institute after this little supper. I found that out when I chased down the man I want to see with a few phone calls.

  A few of the people I know, like Wilson Frost, the black ward leader of the Thirty-fourth over to the South Side; my old friend George Lurgan from the Fourteenth; and Jerry Kilian from the First, which has the Loop for a heart. I also know Joe Medill, the columnist from the Trib and Barry Locker from Channel Two.

  Most of the people are looking at me, with my bloody hands and my dirty suit, like I'm some kind of freak or some kook entertainer like them birthday greeters who come around and dance or sing you a song. The women got these nice little smiles pasted on their faces like they're hoping Poppsie ain't gone too far this time and rung in a male stripper or something. A couple of the men are sliding back their chairs because they see the butler is in some distress that I got by him and are about to throw me out even if it means getting their cuffs dirty.

  Only two is really hard-eyeing me. One is Smith Jarwolski, the police superintendent who's wearing his dress uniform, and the other is Carmine DiBella, who's rumored to be the top man in the syndicate. Nobody knows for sure because the new-style mobsters keep a very low profile and can be mistaken for a banker or broker very easy.

  For some reason, as nervous as I am, it's interesting to me to see the difference in the way these two men make threatening faces at me. Jarwolski has thrown out his chest and pushed his head forward, with his hands clenched on the table like he's ready to punch. He makes a face like a baboon, showing me some teeth and a corrugated forehead. DiBella's hands are still on the tablecloth, almost as fine and white as the Irish linen, and it's only his eyes that tell me I should leave before I'm dead.

  Before anybody can do anything, Poppsie stands up and flutters her hands like she's very upset to see a friend in such a state. Like I'm a crazy patient and she's a visiting nurse.

  "Bring Mr. Flannery a chair, Carpenter," she says to the butler, who does a quick change with his face. One minute he's outraged with me, the next he's very concerned about my well-be
ing.

  "Whatever has happened to you, James?" Poppsie says in that voice she puts on which sounds like a flute, not the least bit anxious that maybe I'm there about to do something which will give the secret away that I've been in this penthouse and in her bed on more than one occasion. She looks like a flower, but she's as tough as a weed.

  "No, thanks, Mrs. Hanneman," I says. "I'm not staying long."

  "You must have a drink," she says. "Will a whiskey do?"

  She throws a glance at Carpenter, who takes a step toward the cut-glass decanters on the sideboard.

  "No, thanks, I don't drink spirits," I says, which I don't, except maybe a beer on a hot day at a picnic. I admire how she done that. With one little remark she establishes the fact—for anyone who cares to look the scene over later on—that she knows the ruffian who crashes into her party, but knows him only in the most casual way. Like she met me at a Democratic fund-raiser where she sat with the precinct workers and shared corned beef and cabbage or a rubber chicken.

  "I'm sorry I come busting into your party this way, Mrs. Hanneman, but I can't think of no other way to keep myself from getting very badly hurt, maybe killed," I says.

  She gives a little gasp, which is also an act because Poppsie wouldn't let out a yell if she saw somebody cut up with a chainsaw. Then I see that maybe I'm all wrong about that. There's a mist in her eyes and I realize that she wasn't lying when she told me that there was no future together for two people, one who'd climbed out of the mud puddle and the other who,was still in it making pies, but that she cared for me too much to have me for a toy.

  "If your life's being threatened, Mr. Flannery, bring it to the attention of the police in the right way," Jarwolski says.

  "Well, Superintendent Jarwolski," I says, "I think it's best that I bring it to the attention of the man who ordered me thrown to the dogs."