The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Page 12

  I look at DiBella, and his mouth twitches a little like he's amused, but I think it's because he's in a rage with me.

  "Is that an accurate statement of fact, or is it just a colorful means of expression?" he says.

  "It's what happened to me an hour ago. Three men, two of which I got the names of, Angie and Connie . . ."

  "Those are the names of women," he says.

  ". . . which are Italian, and which work for you, Mr. DiBella, throw me into the back of a car, drive me to a junkyard, punch me in the stomach, and leave me to make the acquaintance of a dog which is as mean as any dog I've ever seen."

  "But you were meaner?" DiBella says.

  "Just faster. And I hope I'm also smarter, Mr. DiBella. Which is why I don't go to the police, but come here to tell you in public that I don't appreciate you siccing your dogs—them with two legs or four—onto me, and I want you should stop."

  "Shall we all stop, Mr. Flannery?" he says as cool as ice, which don't mean he admits having had done what was done, but sounds like he means he's trying to calm down a crazy man and get him the hell out of Poppsie's so they can have their dessert.

  "No, Mr. DiBella, I won't stop. How big can this favor be that you're doing for somebody? Can something which isn't a profit to you be so important that three people should die? It's easy to think you can do anything you want with a snap of the fingers like you was the godfather. I get to thinking like that when somebody wants I should have a shade tree cut down because it's spoiling the view or get the water turned on because the toilet won't flush. I'm not coming at you, Mr. DiBella. I'm coming at the man who did the killing."

  The flesh around the corners of his mouth and the sides of his nose is so white it's like it's dead of the frost.

  "It sounds like you're threatening me, Flannery," he says in a soft voice. "It sounds like you're threatening me in front of my friends. Are you insulting my honor? Should I stand for your insults?"

  "I'm just taking out an insurance policy, is all," I says. "If I'm right about what I say, these people are witnesses and maybe you won't do anything to hurt me because they'll know you done it. If I'm wrong about what I say, so you shrug it off because you're a very powerful man and . . ."

  When I hesitate he bites it off. "And what are you, Mr. Flannery?"

  "A junkyard dog," I says.

  "I'll see you to the door," Poppsie says, letting everyone know that she's a mountain of good manners even in the face of such a lout as me. Also she wants to make sure I go out the door.

  I let her turn me with just a wave of her hand like the junkyard dog what just growled and showed his teeth is nothing but a puppy in her hands. She waves Carpenter off and he stays put, so we're at the front door alone for a minute.

  "My god, Jimmy, I hope that works," she whispers, touching my filthy sleeve with her clean, soft hand.

  "The only other way was for me to go off with my tail between my legs," I says.

  "Are you sure you're not pestering the animals without reason?" she says.

  "I'm running blind," I says. I take out the picture of the guy who was in Atlantic City with Helen Brickhouse. "This is all I got."

  "Danny Tartaglia," she says.

  "You know this man?"

  "Danny Tartaglia is DiBella's son-in-law."

  TWENTY-THREE

  Who doesn't know the joke about the guy who says to the girl, "Would you do it for twenty bucks?" and she says, "How dare you? What kind of a girl do you think I am?" and he says, "Would you do it for a million?" and she goes, "Well . . ." and he says, "Now we know what kind of girl you are, all we got to do is establish a price"?

  Everybody laughs at that one, because they think it's true, because street savvy says that everybody wears a tag. Everybody can be bought. There's enough truth in it to make you cynical. Sometimes it looks like everybody in the world is on the take. I suppose the average person, you and me, if we was starving or if our kids was going without shoes or medicine, would sell whatever it is we call Honor for a quarter. It's only a step or two before you roll over for a million, or a thousand, or twenty bucks, for a new car or a house or a seat in the front row.

  When we roll over, we say we're only human. But we want everybody else to be a saint. We want somebody else to be Jesus Christ and hang on the cross for us so at least we can convince ourselves that there's goodness in us somewhere.

  I'm not thinking this when Ray Carrigan, the Democratic party chairman, sends for me. I'm thinking how I'm going to turn him down and still come out with my job and my skin.

  After he shakes my hand, he says, "Sit down, Jim. We don't get to talk very much, but I know your father since we was young men together and I know you since you was a little kid with your finger up your nose."

  I'm supposed to laugh at that, so I laugh at that. There are customs like bowing to the queen of England and kissing the Pope's ring which you do even if you're not a great believer.

  "Sit down, Jim," he says, "and pick out a cigar."

  I don't smoke, but I take a cigar because it's polite and because I will give it to my old man.

  "Just because we don't have a chance to talk very much," he says, "it don't mean I don't keep my eye on the son of Mike Flannery. I ask your leader, Delvin, what sort you are, and he tells me you're the best precinct captain he's got, who can even get Republicans to vote the straight Democratic ticket because you're so sweet-natured and good to one and all."

  "Ah," I says, because I don't know how to shovel it as fast as he does and I decide not to try.

  "Other ward leaders got a good word for you, too. Even Vito Velletri, who hasn't many good words to say about an Irishman, has good words to say about you. What's all this leading up to, Jimmy?"

  I open my mouth and . . .

  "Well, you might ask," he says. "It leads up to the simple fact that the party's got plans for you. It wants you should run for the state legislature from your district in the next election." He sits there grinning at me, waiting for me to kiss his foot.

  I got to tell you something else about Chicago politics. A seat in the state legislature or even the Congress is nothing but stepping-stones to the job of city alderman. It's also a way of burying a pest out to Springfield. I think somebody wants me bought, paid for, and shipped out of town. Someday maybe when I want to get back in, I could find the door to Chicago shut in my face.

  "We want you should go over to the capital for a few weeks. Look the place over. Meet a few people . . ."

  "No, thank you, Mr. Carrigan," I says.

  "Find out where the keys and locks is."

  If the cigar dropped out of his mouth I wouldn't have been surprised.

  "I don't hear you right, do I?" he says.

  I've just found the woman who's going to be my wife," I says.

  "Take her with you."

  "She works over to Passavant as a nurse and I don't think she'd give that up so easy."

  "If she's going to be your wife, she does what she has to do for her husband's career."

  "I don't think it works that way anymore, Mr. Carrigan. Women got minds of their own, even when they're wives."

  "Not good Irish girls."

  "Well, yes, I think Irish girls, but that don't matter anyway because my lady is raised Jewish."

  "That could be a mistake."

  "She's a Democrat."

  "Even so."

  Poppsie Hanneman sits across from me in Shelley's Bar and Grill eating a beef dip and drinking a beer like she ain't one of the number-one society party-givers in Chicago.

  "Do you still think of me?" she says, looking up through the curly bangs on her forehead like she used to do when she wanted me to love her.

  "I thought of you practically every day up until last week," I says.

  "Oh? What happened then?"

  "I met a woman."

  "Not a girl?"

  "Oh, she's a girl, too."

  "You're not going to tell me you've fallen ill of love, are you, Jimmy?" she says, teasin
g me on the square.

  "I feel fine," I says.

  She considers my face for a minute. "Of course you do. I can see that. What's her name?"

  "Mary Ellen."

  She puts down the sandwich.

  "What's the matter, don't you like the sandwich?" I says.

  "I'm afraid it's going to give me heartburn," she says. "What can I do for you?" she says, making like she's as bright as a penny.

  "I want you should tell me about this Danny Tartaglia. I could ask elsewhere, but if you can tell me about him, I'd rather get it here."

  "What I know is just beauty-parlor gossip. I don't know anything about his place in the syndicate—if he has one—or his power—if he has any—or his future—if he has one of those. I know what I hear about his marriage and about his love life."

  "That's what I want to get from you," I says.

  "Danny Tartaglia is not Chicago family. I understand that he was brought in from Philadelphia for some business reason about eight years ago. I think he's an attorney, but I wouldn't swear to that."

  "It don't matter," I says.

  "Doesn't, Jimmy, doesn't," she says almost absentmindedly, and I remember one of the reasons I let go of her so easy. I don't mind being corrected—I got nothing against improving myself—but it's the way she does it, offhand, like she's telling her lap dog to sit. When she does it like that, I know she thinks small of me and maybe doesn't love me like she said she did.

  "You can see how good-looking . . ."

  "I think Tartaglia looks like a weasel . . ."

  ". . . he is from the picture you carry."

  ". . . but what do I know?"

  "So I suppose it came as no surprise when Theresa DiBella, Carmine's only daughter, his baby, his princess . . ."

  "His pudding," I says to myself.

  ". . . the apple of his eye, falls in love with Danny Tartaglia."

  "Which is all right by DiBella?"

  "It's never all right when a man's daughter falls in love with another man. Don't you know that?"

  "Yes. All right."

  "He hates it, but he also wants his little girl to be married to a proper man, an Italian, a Catholic, an educated man with a profession that can be useful to DiBella's own business interests. A man who can, serve him, but is not a criminal like himself."

  "He blesses the marriage?"

  "Oh, yes. He gives the biggest wedding you ever saw. Don't you remember?"

  "I wasn't invited."

  "It was in all the papers. It was on television."

  "I don't . . ."

  "I remember . . ."

  ". . . read the papers much. I don't—"

  ". . . you don't watch television. You're an anachronism, Jimmy," she says, and then she adds, "That means—"

  "I know what it means, Poppsie. Give me a break."

  "Theresa gets pregnant almost right away. That's good. They have a daughter. Not quite so good, but so far as DiBella's concerned, Tartaglia isn't so much the husband of his daughter anymore, but the father of his grandchild."

  "That's the way it is. DiBella don't have to like Tartaglia to want to make it nice for his family. What does he do for Tartaglia?"

  "The usual, I suppose. I told you his business is his business. I've heard DiBella threw some legitimate legal stuff Tartaglia's way and set him up with Velletri to handle some insurance claims. It's the bedroom stuff I've heard about."

  "Which is what usually breaks these wise guys in half."

  "Theresa has another daughter and then a son. The head of the family can now rest assured that his seed will go on. But Tartaglia apparently loses interest. He's seen in the Loop when he should be, home by the fire. He pretends that he's entertaining prospects. It's supposed to look like the girls are for the clients' entertainment, not his."

  "Who believes that?"

  "Not many. He also has a respectable friend he uses as a beard."

  "How respectable?"

  "Another attorney with political ambitions and connections to Judge Ogilvie of the appellate court."

  "Which is Vito Velletri's judge."

  "Don't the stew get thick?" Poppsie said, grinning, and for a second there the girl who fought her way up out of the Tenth ward, which is where the steel mills is, doing what a lot of girls do to get a start doing— what Helen Brickhouse did, only doing it better—is sitting at the table with me, and not some society lady who married well.

  "So, it's this connection to DiBella which makes this friend of Judge Ogilvie do the favor for Tartaglia and make like it's him who's hustling the girls and Tartaglia's just tagging along?"

  "It's also the friend that tells DiBella the truth when he thinks it's time for him to know."

  "When is that?"

  "When just about everybody already knows it," Poppsie says.

  "So he convinces hisself he's not selling Tartaglia out."

  "And he tells DiBella that he'll be happy to pass the word to Tartaglia that he should cease and desist . . . to stop dishonoring DiBella's daughter and grand children, and the family DiBella."

  "And when DiBella thinks everything's covered and Tartaglia's been told, Tartaglia just gets better and sneakier about cheating on Theresa."

  "He moves his action to whorehouses, especially in the Twenty-fifth."

  "And how goddamned dumb can a man get to start messing around all over again, after he's been warned, in his father-in-law's own ward?"

  "Hey"—Poppsie smiles—"that ain't the way it goes. What the hell does DiBella care if his son-in-law likes to play with naughty girls? You think he hasn't done it, too? Wives are for keeping house, cooking spaghetti sauce, and making babies. Whores are for giving pleasure and doing tricks which a man's wife shouldn't even know how to do. Maybe DiBella even likes Tartaglia better, now that the damned fool is being discreet about where he has his playmates. My God, Flannery, you is one of . . ."

  "Are."

  ". . . God's innocents. You see what you've done to me? I'm supposed to be the good influence on you. Ten minutes with you and I'm talking as though I never left the Tenth."

  "You'll get all your graces and manners back the minute you cross the avenue," I says. "Who's this attorney who's Tartaglia's good friend?"

  "No," she says.

  "All this you tell me you didn't get from sitting around under the dryer."

  "That's why I'm not telling you the name."

  I lean forward and put both of my hands over her hands. I always liked her hands. They're the part about her which has changed the least since she climbed up into the tower. They're as big as mine, but white and soft. Her nails are long, but not too long, and they're painted pink.

  There were nights, when we was together, when she'd paint them red so they looked like they was dipped in blood. She'd paint her mouth just as red and put spots of rouge high up on her cheeks. She'd lay on the eye shadow and mascara and dress fancy in black and red underwear—"Just so I don't forget"—and they was good nights, because she was so real.

  "Don't say it," she says.

  "Say what?"

  "For old times' sake."

  "Okay, I won't say it."

  "Favor for favor?" she says after a minute, because I don't let her hands go and she knows I'm not giving up.

  "You know it."

  "If your Mary ever asks you if you ever cared much about another woman, will you lie and say there was only one, and will you think of me?"

  "I won't be lying," I says.

  "Tartaglia's friend is Walter Streeter."

  "And he's a friend of yours."

  "He was until I found out he was in love with Theresa Tartaglia," she says.

  "Ain't the stew getting thick?" I says, and grin at her.

  I start to pull my hands back, but now she's the one who won't let go.

  "When are you going to open your eyes, Jimmy?"

  "You got to explain that," I says.

  "You say you know what an anachronism is?"

  "Something that's out of its
right time."

  "You're an anachronism, Jimmy. The days of big city machine politics are over."

  "That's what they thought when Byrne took over, but she opened her arms and gave the ward leaders the big hug."

  "I don't think this mayor is hugging many of the bosses."

  "He ain't breaking their canes either."

  "But he will. He will. He'll pick them off one by one when it suits him. There's no place for you anymore."

  "He'll just put his own men in their chairs and I ain't big enough to be replaced."

  "This city can't be run on patronage anymore, Jimmy."

  "They may call it something else, but it won't change. It'll always be favor for favor. I'll deliver my precinct on election day like always," I says.

  I know I'm sounding stubborn. I know I'm even sounding a little angry, because deep inside I know that Poppsie's probably right. New power brokers are reinventing the game, rewriting the rules, and I won't be a player if nobody gives me a copy. And if she's right, if nobody picks me, where's that going to leave me? I wouldn't know how to live without doing favors. It's what I do.

  She lets go my hands. "Jimmy, take care," she says. "You say you're not big enough to be replaced. Well, maybe you're not big enough to be missed."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  "What's the nature of your problem, Mr. Flannery?" Walter Streeter says.

  He's about thirty-five and long-faced with curly dark hair coming to a widow's peak. His mouth and cheeks look like he expects to be eighteen for the rest of his life, but he's got the fleshy nose of an older man and his eyes are about one hundred and three years old.

  We're sitting at the famous old grill over on State Street which is used as a second office by half the lawyers and judges in the city. The lunches are very expensive, but I'm even ready to spring for that so I can have him where he's comfortable. When you're going to ask somebody for something they won't want to give you, it's smarter to get them comfortable.

  "You ever try the kidneys and sausages in this place?" I says. "There's nothing like them."

  "Mr. Flannery, I agreed to meet you without having my clerk do a preliminary interview because you came recommended by your reputation as a precinct captain in the Twenty-seventh ward."