The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Page 2

  "What would you say if somebody left a knife with red smears all over it in front of your door?" I says.

  "I'd say some careless workman left behind a knife with ketchup on it after cutting his sandwich in half." The smirk on his lips is a beauty. I remembered how my old man used to say, "Which one of us is going to wipe that jam off your kisser?" when I thought I was smarter than him.

  "So you're not going to pretend you don't know?" I says. It sounds weak as water even to my ears.

  "I'm doing the Lord's work and proud of it," he says with his nose tipping up three inches. "Are you a police officer?"

  "I'm not, but see over there? Those are cops in that car."

  I don't know if they are cops in the car or not but two guys are sitting in a gray sedan and I figure, what the hell, I got nothing else to threaten him with.

  "I've got a permit for this demonstration," he says.

  "So what? You're not paying attention. We're back to your shoeshine."

  His eyebrows lift. That always gets me. It's a haughty thing to do, and I wish I could do it. But when I lift my eyebrows I just look like I'm about to belch.

  "You understand," I says, "I step on your shoeshine—a little guy like me—and you at least got to push me off. I fall to the ground yelling assault. The police rush over to save a respected citizen. I'm a respected citizen. They take you to the slammer. They keep you overnight. It's not too bad, but it's long enough for a gentleman like you to catch body lice . . . or something."

  "You're threatening me," he says.

  He's got a very curly lip. I wish I could do that, too.

  "Mr. Asbach, you're quick. You're very quick. You march all you like, but you don't raise your voice to those people in there. You don't call them filthy names like you done elsewhere. And you don't leave bloody threats on their doorstep."

  "Ketchup," he says, as though getting the details straight is very important to us both.

  "No more. Please understand," I says. "Otherwise, I'm going to have to come back and step on your shoeshine."

  THREE

  My father and me have a meal together every Wednesday night over to Dan Blatna's Sold Out saloon in the Thirty-second over to the Northwest Side in Big Ed Lubelski's ward.

  Blatna makes a dish with kielbasa and cabbage that is to die from. Customers come from all over the city and out of town just to make like pigs. I see a sixty-, sixty-five-year-old lady once, wearing an evening dress, a rhinestone tiara, and a chinchilla coat, with her face right down in the dish like she couldn't wait the time it took to lift the-fork from the plate to her mouth. She looked up and caught me looking at her, grinned, and went right back to it.

  The reason my old man and me go there for our feed is that the old man is loyal to the restaurants and saloons of the Fourteenth and I'm loyal to the restaurants and saloons of the Twenty-seventh. This is the way it's done when precinct captains eat out. You go to your own. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

  It's okay to go over to the First for nightlife or a special dinner, but it's good politics to eat in the neighborhood otherwise. But since the old man wants to eat over to his ward and I want to eat in mine, we compromise on Blatna's and the Thirty-second.

  While he's having his first boilermaker, he asks me what's new in my precinct. I tell him how I tap Jack Reddy over to Water and get him to turn on the tap for this family that can't pay the bill. I get the gas and electric turned back on for them, too.

  "I ask the mother afterwards, are they all right, and she says God bless me because they could maybe do without the lights and heat, but it's hell not being able to flush the toilet when you got six kids and a father-in-law- with diarrhea."

  "God bless the mothers," my father says. "Is that a favor you owe Jack Reddy?"

  "Our books are dead even."

  That pleases my father, who likes things to balance, unless you can get the other fellow deeply in your debt.

  I tell him about Joe Asbach, the Right-to-Lifers, and the knife.

  "Fanatics is a pain," he says. "It's like talking to a rock trying to talk to a fanatic. They stare at you with popped-out eyes no matter what you say, then tell you all over again what they just told you which made no sense. You think you scared him into a state of grace?"

  "We'll just have to see. I don't think he scares that easy in the first place, number one. I think maybe some Mick or Polack who loves the Pope . . ."

  "Watch what you say about the Holy Father. There could be Protestants in the joint . . ."

  ". . . and is against what the clinic is doing, makes it easy on this Asbach in the second place, number two. Who cares if there's Protestants in the joint?"

  "We don't want strangers overhearing family business. What we say about the Pope is just between us good Catholics."

  "I'm not a good Catholic," I says. "I ain't made my Easter duties in fifteen years."

  "I ain't made my confession in forty"—my old man grins—"but that's another matter. We know where our hearts is."

  My heart and beliefs is out there in never-never land when it comes to religion, but I don't want to get into that. My old man, like most of his generation, let the women keep the faith, and now that my mother—God rest her soul—is gone, he tells stories of her faithful attendance as if it was him who made the novenas and early Masses.

  "Who gives out permits on demonstrations?" I asks.

  "Streets and Sanitation. That's Wally Dunleavy's mansion."

  "Maybe I'll find out what kind of a permit he gives this Asbach. Maybe he don't give this Asbach a permit with open ends. Maybe Asbach is in violation of code."

  "That ain't much of a lever."

  I give him the empty hands. When you got nothing, a feather looks like a club.

  "By the way," I says to my old man, because he still hangs around different firehouses and knows every thing that goes on with firemen, "what do you know about Warnowski, the fireman who drove his car through the rail into the river?"

  "He drank like a mackerel."

  "Was he loaded when he took the dive in the car?"

  "Are you working a favor on his behalf?"

  "On behalf of his widow, who is not a well woman and cannot live on half-pension. After all, we're looking at maybe twenty-six days before he goes out with his thirty when he takes his unfortunate dip in the river."

  "The man should have floated, alcohol being so much lighter than water and him with his tanks full."

  "Be that as it may, he didn't take no persons with him . . ."

  "He took a twenty-thousand-dollar light pole . . ."

  ". . . and there's a person who says he swerved to avoid killing a cat."

  "The person who says that is another fireman who claims he just happened to be walking along that stretch of road when Warnowski got wet," my old man says, winking at me.

  While we're talking about this and that like this, the old man drinking boilermakers and me drinking seltzer water, and both shoveling in the sausage and slaw, Dan Blatna comes over to say hello and to tell me a fellow named Pakula wants me on the phone.

  "Who is Pakula and what kind of name is that?" my old man asks.

  I tell him it's Jewish South American and it's the grocery boy who has the store downstairs from me.

  "Don't let him sell you anything ain't kosher," my old man says, making for him what is a joke, and I go to find out from Joe Pakula that some sonofabitch has touched off a bomb over to that abortion clinic on Sperry Avenue and my good friend, old lady Klutzman, is in the hospital.

  FOUR

  We get over to Sperry Avenue. There is firemen playing hoses on the storefront clinic, which has it's plate glass window blown out and the side door hanging on its hinges. An ambulance is taking off around the corner and another one is standing by should they find somebody else in the ruins.

  There is three loads of uniforms and two detectives, all of which I know. They say "Hello, Mike" to my old man before they say "Hello, Jimmy" to me. That shows respect for the
older generation.

  I go up and say "Hello, Francis" to Francis O'Shea and "Hello, Murray" to his partner, Murray Rourke. "Is this arson, a gas explosion, or a bombing?" I says.

  "This is none of your business," O'Shea says.

  He's a big man with a face like , a raw side of beef which has got a kidney for a nose. The busted blood vessels in the nose and across his cheeks looks like a precinct map of the city. I never see him when he ain't on the prod. Maybe this is because he's almost always the man sent out to pick up pieces too ugly for other people to pick up. Other precincts call him in to do their dirty work. He is also type-cast as the bad cop for interrogations.

  "A friend of mine was hurt in there," I says.

  "There's one dead, a young girl maybe sixteen . . ."

  "That's not my friend. My friend is an older lady."

  "Mrs. Klutzman," Rourke says. "They took her to Passavant, which has got a trauma center."

  He's O'Shea's opposite; slender, clean-cut and clean-shaven, with a complexion like a choir boy's. I see him question a multiple killer so sweetly that the perpetrator is crying over memories of his mother and Thanksgiving dinner. I also see him stomp a fool which has got fifty pounds on him into a sewer grate.

  "So, that's two," my old man says. "Any more?"

  "Well, that depends on how you look at it," says

  O'Shea, whose six brothers and sisters is priests and nuns. "The girl was carrying."

  "Can we go inside?" I says.

  "Watch you don't fall through the hole in the floor, Flannery. We shouldn't want you should break a leg," O'Shea says.

  "Are you mad at me, Francis?" I says.

  "Just the world."

  "Well, all right. That I can understand."

  Inside it's a mess. Plastic-covered chairs are smoldering and making a plastic stink. There is glass everywhere. Through the door, in the room where they do what they do, is a hole in the floor. A table with chrome-plated stirrups is tipped over the edge like somebody drove it into a ditch. There's blood all over the place. It ain't been so long since it happened, but it's already turning brown, so I find out that Pescaro is exactly right in what he tells me about the appearance of old blood.

  Forensics is already on the scene. I recognize Spidone from the bomb squad. He's picking up pieces of metal with tweezers. I don't have to ask about arson or gas explosions anymore.

  A woman in a white jacket and suede knee-length boots over tight jeans is standing there with her hands over her face, looking through her fingers like a child playing peekaboo. I think maybe she's about to be hysterical. I take her wrists in my hands. We're the same height almost and we're looking at each other eye to eye.

  "Are you all right," I says.

  "I think I'm going to scream," she says. "No matter where I look, there's pain. No matter how I try to help, there's death."

  "Maybe you should get out of this room. If you go sit in what was the waiting room, I'll be out in a minute and take you home in my car."

  "I got to go to the hospital."

  "Where are you hurt?"

  "You don't understand. I'm a nurse at Passavant and I have the next shift."

  "I'm going there, too. So, we'll go together. Just give me a minute."

  She looks at me for what seems like a long time, like she wants to see, can she trust me for a ten block drive. Then she nods and goes out to the waiting area.

  I go back to Rourke and O'Shea.

  "Is there anybody can tell me anything?" I asks O'Shea.

  "Jimmy," he says, "this is a police matter, can't you see? We ain't slow."

  "The old lady is a friend. Let me satisfy myself."

  "We already asked the questions," O'Shea snaps at me.

  "For Christ's sake, O'Shea," Rourke says, telling him to ease up.

  "All right. Question whoever you damned well please. You're already making time with one witness. That shine over there is the other," O'Shea says.

  "You shouldn't use words like that, Francis, it ain't right," I says.

  I go over to talk to the young black man wearing what they call granny glasses. Behind the little round lenses his eyes look like smashed olives, all blurry with pain.

  "You all right?" I says.

  "I'm not wounded, if that's what you mean," he says.

  His eyes flick over to O'Shea, and he makes a face like his stomach just turned on him.

  "Oh," I says, "don't let O'Shea bother you. Was you going to step in front of a truck, Francis would be the first man would throw himself at you to try to save your life."

  "Ah, then it's Saint Francis, is it?"

  "Did you say something clever?"

  "Saint Francis and the animals?"

  "You don't have to explain. I know my calendar of saints."

  "Then you get my meaning?"

  "Sure, and I hope you get mine," I says. "We all got our reasons for what we think we like and don't like. A man tries to save my life, I don't care he don't want me to marry his sister."

  "You're another sonofabitch, aren't you?"

  "No. I just decided sometime ago not to change the world. I do the best I can do . . . like Francis."

  He shrugs his shoulders, and all the starch goes out of him.

  "What the hell," he says, "so do I."

  "You a volunteer here?"

  He nods.

  "You an orderly here?"

  He blows through his nose like he's disgusted with me, but what can you expect from an Irish bigot.

  "I'm the doctor here. At least tonight I was the doctor here."

  "You perform the abortions?"

  "The women don't seem to mind if they want the procedure badly enough."

  "That's not what I meant. How many you do tonight?"

  "Three. The dead girl was going to be the fourth."

  "You already examined her?"

  "Yes."

  "Where was you when the bomb went off?"

  "In the office. I always leave the examining room while Mary Ellen Dunne explains to the patient about the procedure and what she's expected to do after."

  "Mary Ellen Dunne's the nurse with the suede boots?"

  "She works at Passavant . . ."

  "She told me . . ."

  ". . . and works free shifts here just like I do."

  "Why do you leave the examining room while Mary Ellen Dunne explains the procedure?"

  "Women need other women at times like the ones that bring them here. I don't want them to feel as though they're nothing but cattle just passing through under the curette. I don't want their personhood taken away from them."

  "After Mary Ellen Dunne's told them what's what, do you come back to do the operation?"

  "No, there's a small operating room down the hall.

  The aide—Mrs. Klutzman was our aide . . ."

  "She's the main reason why I'm here . . ."

  ". . . gets it ready while Mary Ellen Dunne talks to the patient. When she's done, she takes the patient into the operating room, where the patient undresses from the waist down and gets into the stirrups under a sterile sheet."

  "So you were in your office when the bomb blew?"

  "That's where I was."

  "Just ready to go in and do the procedure?"

  "Waiting for the knock on the door."

  "You have any enemies?" I says.

  His eyes flick over to O'Shea, who's on the eary. "You mean any personal enemies?"

  "That's what I mean."

  "No. But when you're my color in Chicago, you never know."

  "You have to go through the waiting room to get to the office?"

  "No, but I have to pass the doorway to it."

  "How many people were out in the waiting room?"

  "I don't know. I think I remember three. Another girl with an old woman, and a man."

  "Sitting together?"

  "I don't know if they were together. If I remember right, the girl and the old woman were sitting down, and the man was just walking in. I don't know if he
sat down next to them."

  "Old man? Young man?"

  "Oh, I see. It wasn't the grandfather. I don't think it was the girl's boyfriend, either. A skinny white man, youngish, but losing his hair."

  "Thank you for your cooperation," I says.

  "Hey!"

  I stop at the doorway.

  "You didn't ask my name or shake my hand," he says, very sarcastic.

  "I'm sorry," I says. "It wasn't on purpose. I got a head full of troubles and a worried heart."

  FIVE

  I ask O'Shea and Rourke, who is standing with my old man, where the girl and the old man are and where the skinny white man is.

  "Long gone by the time we got here," Rourke says. "I don't know about the man, but the girl's name should be in the file."

  "We're way ahead of you, Flannery," O'Shea says. "Ain't we way ahead of him, Rourke?"

  "It's the next stop," Rourke says. "You want to come along with us? It'll save us all asking the same questions."

  I glance over at Mary Ellen Dunne, who is staring at her hands as though surprised to see them on the ends of her wrists.

  "The precinct captain don't want to do the donkey work," O'Shea says. "He's a public-relations man. He's a vote-getter."

  "I could go with you, O'Shea," my father says.

  "Like hell. Neither one of you is official. I'll maybe stretch a point for Delvin's man, but I ain't taking along a crowd."

  "So, I'll wait in the corner saloon," my old man says, "and when you get done talking to the girl and her grandmother, or whoever, you come by and I'll buy you a beer."

  "Ah, Jesus," O'Shea says disgustedly, "the heavy bribes I get offered me." He walks away, followed by Rourke, who gives Mike the friendly thumbs-up as he follows his partner.

  My old man tells me to go ahead and take the nurse to the hospital. "Ask her is she Irish." No matter what else, my unmarried condition distresses Mike. Even when we go to funerals, he's casing the church looking for a likely.

  Once he practically tucked me into bed with Bridget Monahan, who was promised to Jesus, after the wedding of her sister, Kate. I was a little drunk but she was not, and that saved us both. Bridget became a nun and went away for three years. Then she quit and came back to Chicago, where she took up the study of the law. She's down in City Hall working for the public defender. She has a reputation for being sweet and tough.