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

  Rumor has it that he saw his wife-to-be at the end of a reception hall at a party for Monseigneur Flynn, decided he would marry her, and by the time she walked the length of the floor, had found out her age, place of birth, and blood type. It's his talent.

  "You're interested in parades and demonstrations," he says. "You're interested in a particular demonstration."

  "The one at the abortion clinic over to Sperry."

  "Don't tell me, I'll tell you." He grins, making red lines on the map, probably chopping up a corner of the city for some stadium or public building, displacing hundreds, maybe thousands of people.

  "This Joe Asbach . . . yes, we gave him a permit. How could we do otherwise?"

  "You know just about everything that goes on in the streets, Mr. Dunleavy. Did you know about the knife?"

  "With the ketchup?"

  "And the cat?"

  "Without a head?"

  "So you know about these things."

  "And I don't pull his permit. That's right. I've got no probable cause. This is a free country. This is a free city."

  I think about the cops clubbing citizens in the streets back in 1968.

  "I just wondered if there was anybody else put in a good word for Asbach?"

  "Half the aldermen in the city put in a good word for Asbach. Why shouldn't they? Ain't he on the side of the angels?"

  Captain Pescaro is unconcerned.

  "Are you making an effort over this Asbach?" I says.

  "Hold your water, Flannery," he says. "Every day that fool stays under cover makes the case against him."

  "Has Missing Persons turned anything on the dead girl?"

  "Not a thing. Her description's out. Her finger prints are being circulated. One will get you five she ain't born and bred in Chicago. You got to understand she's not top priority."

  "That's why I'm taking an interest," I says.

  "How big is your interest?"

  "She's a person who was killed in my precinct."

  "A visitor."

  "That don't matter. She was in my house. It has to do with the honor of my house."

  "I can understand that," he says. "This is my mansion, too."

  "You got a picture?"

  He opens up the top drawer of his desk and thumbs open a manila file. He plucks out a forensic photo which they took after they washed her face. He hands it to me and says, "I shouldn't."

  "Is this a big favor or a little one?"

  "It's on the house. Anybody asks you where you got that, it wasn't from me."

  I walk out wondering why, if this unidentified body ain't top priority, Pescaro's got her file in his desk.

  SEVEN

  I go over to Badger Street. There's an empty lot where 208 should be. Two three-story frames are on each side of a lot the neighborhood is using for dumping trash. A rusty bedspring is sticking up curly fingers. A refrigerator is laying on its side with its mouth open like a dead giant. Somebody has balanced ten worn tires in a pile. It looks like modern art. I think if I put a railing around it maybe I can get one of the culture mavens should give me a grant.

  The junk is at least as interesting as the thing Picasso gives the city down at Daley Center Plaza, which nobody can tell what it is with its steely eyes-a bird, a dog, or a Chicago lawyer.

  While I'm looking, this one slides in behind me. I stick my hand on my wallet and take a long step before turning around in case whoever it is means to clout me from behind.

  He looks like a crane, wearing red moss for a sweater, with its nest on its head.

  "I piled them tires," he says.

  "They are beauties."

  "My art is not much appreciated."

  "It takes time."

  "It used to be you could shoot yourself in the leg and get in People and on Face the Nation."

  "Them was the good old days."

  "That guy who wired his balls to the house current and that lady who played the cello with her bare tits hanging out ruined it for everybody."

  "There's always somebody will go too damn far," I says.

  Now that we're agreed on the state of the avant-garde, I show him the picture.

  "That's Helen," he says.

  "You know her?"

  "I met her when she first come to Chicago. I buy her a coffee when she arrives on the Greyhound. I spend a lot of time at the Greyhound."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "The train station is too big and the airport is too far."

  From the way he tells me, I'm supposed to know what that means, so I act like I do. Otherwise he'll no longer look on rile as a soul brother.

  "You wait to get lucky, like with Helen?"

  "Oh, no, I wait for a three-bus crash."

  "You pick Helen up?"

  He looks down at his tatters as though he knows I'm saying I can't understand why a young woman should walk up to a man who looks like a ragbag.

  "These is my work clothes," he says. "When I hang around the Greyhound, I wear my best. This Helen walks up to me thinking I'm a pimp out recruiting. She ain't been the only one."

  "But you ain't a pimp."

  "Well . . ." he says, not wanting to give up the momentary shine the idea of being a ladies' man gives him.

  "If you was a pimp around here, my man, I would know it," I says.

  He laughs, showing big yellow teeth like a horse.

  "You're cop," he says. "You fooled me. Usually I smell them."

  "So did you steer her?" I says.

  "Oh, no, I buy her a coffee and tell her she should go home."

  "But she don't want to."

  "That's right. None of them want to. They think a big city is a palace of wonders. I tell her Chicago ain't nothing like that. But she says she won't leave, and I take her home so she's got a place to sleep for the night without spending what little money she's got."

  "You're a Good Samaritan."

  "I know my bible," he says, "but I don't do charity."

  "You live next door?"

  "No, I live down the block. I look for empty lots. Empty lots is my canvases."

  "How long did she stay?"

  "A week, maybe two."

  "How long ago?"

  "A year and a half. It was spring."

  "And after the week, maybe two?"

  "She got her own place."

  "You know where?"

  He shakes his head and grins like a fool.

  "She says she don't want me to know because I'm a man what is like candy and she's afraid I'll come bother her and take her mind off her purpose."

  "So that's the last you see her?"

  "Oh, no, she comes to me when she wants a taste."

  He's telling me what a sweet man he is, catnip for the ladies. I know they say love is blind, but there should be limits. I know he's really telling me that he and Helen tooted up a little.

  "What's your name, by the way?" I says.

  "Bo Addison," he says.

  "She ever tell you her name?"

  "Said it was Marshall, but it weren't."

  "How do you know?"

  "I saw a name and address on a letter she had in her purse."

  "What was the name?"

  "Caplet."

  "What was the address?"

  "General Delivery."

  Mary Ellen Dunne's flat is small, but like a picture out of a magazine. She's done like they do to pine furniture and streaked it with white, so it shines in the light of the factory lamps overhead, which she's covered with colored scarves. There's a daybed under the louvered windows with a pile of pillows looking like little flower beds on it.

  A table is set with pottery and candles. There's only two wooden chairs.

  There's a chest of drawers she calls a chiffonier against one wall, with a jelly jar on it filled with weeds arranged like cut flowers.

  There's also an old-fashioned picture of a bride and a groom. The man's wearing a top hat, the woman's wearing a veil down her back with a circle of flowers holding it around her head. They'
re dark skinned and dark-eyed.

  "That was taken the day my folks broke the glass under the arbor," she says. "They're Hebes, I guess you can tell."

  "You shouldn't use a word like that," I says. "It's an insult."

  "Not when a Jew says it. It's like a black calling another black a motherfucker."

  She's standing there staring at me, looking for signs. I stare right back. People who give you surprises like that think they can read the truth of your feelings in your eyes. They spring the trap and act like it's no more than they had a right to expect of a bigot if you say ouch.

  "Where'd you get Dunne?" I says.

  "I was married to a man of that name. It lasted a year."

  "Culture shock?"

  "You might say. A drunk driver hit him when he stepped off the curb on his way to work. That was two years ago."

  "Your looks and your name didn't fool my father. He asked me to ask was you Irish."

  "There goes my chance to infiltrate his family," she says.

  "Your mouth is very pretty most of the time," I says. "It's not very pretty when you're being flip."

  "If you expect me to ask you into my bedroom, forget it." She waves a hand at the daybed. "This is it."

  "Are you hungry?" Mary Ellen says.

  I'm too full of the good things we did together in her daybed to answer, but I grunt to let her know I'm not the sort to fall asleep right after. She props herself up and leans over me. Her breasts are like apples. She touches my chest with them. I know she's staring into my face in the nicest way.

  "I was hungry," Mary Ellen says, meaning for loving.

  "Me, too. I was hungry, too," I says, meaning the same.

  "Don't kid me," she says. "You're the kind women make offers."

  I open my eyes. Her face don't know whether to be serious or wise-guy.

  "How come you look like you look?" I says.

  "My mother had three kids with my father. They all died or got killed one way or another. She was forty and he was fifty. He got the mumps and it made him sterile. He couldn't help her have an other. They had a friend . . ."

  "You don't have to tell me," I says. "It's none of my business."

  "Unless what we just did was good-bye," she says, "I want to tell you. I think it's a beautiful story, no matter what anybody else might think. The friend's name was Bannion. My mother and father had a talk. She told me it went on nonstop for twenty hours. They reached an agreement based on needs, wants, and love. My mother and Bannion went to the country for the weekend. Just one weekend. It was the right time of the month. For the next three weeks he stayed near enough for her to call. When she did, he said he had plans to go to Cleveland. They never saw one another again. My father subscribed to the Cleveland newspapers. Just before he died himself, he saw the obituary on Bannion. I lost two fathers in the same year."

  "Your mother?"

  "She lives over in Mount Prospect with my aunt, her sister. They keep a kosher house, but you don't have to worry, I have bacon with my eggs. I'm half Irish. So your father's half right and I'm half lucky."

  "What does that mean?"

  "So maybe I can't be a good Irishman's wife, but maybe I can be his girlfriend," she says, twisting her face like she's kidding.

  She's falling back on funny because it's always painful to expose your heart.

  "That's a beautiful story you tell about your mother, your father, and Bannion," I says, "and, now, can we eat?"

  EIGHT

  "Her name is Helen Caplet," I says, tossing a card on which I wrote her name in front of Pescaro.

  He eyes me, nods, opens the desk drawer, and tossed the card on top of the file.

  The door opens up at my back and one of his detectives sticks his head in. "Excuse, Captain . . ." he says.

  Pescaro starts making a face like he's got indigestion . . .

  ". . . Asbach's hollering to see a lawyer."

  . . . but not in time. The beans is spilled.

  "You were going to keep me informed," I says.

  "Oh, no," he says, "that favor wasn't asked and wasn't given."

  "I would like to speak to the man. I would like to remind him of a conversation we had."

  "Benedetto, you take Flannery to see Asbach. You give him five minutes . . ."

  "It won't even take that long," I says.

  ". . . and you stay in the room with him," Pescaro says.

  "Yes, Captain."

  "When you get done, Flannery, I want you should come back for a minute."

  Benedetto takes me to the interrogation room, where Asbach is sitting looking brave. Asbach looks up at me, then looks at Benedetto. He's trying to figure out the connection. He's trying to figure out how much juice I got.

  I look at Benedetto.

  "I just want to have a private word," I says.

  "You heard the captain."

  "You do everything you're told to do?"

  "Favor for favor?"

  "I know the rules."

  Benedetto starts closing the door. "You want to do damage, do it quiet. I got to have an alibi and I ain't deaf," he says.

  I stand staring down on Asbach. When he doesn't stand up I know I got the power.

  "You know me?" I says.

  "You're the shoeshine boy that goes around making his own business," he says.

  "I don't see how you can be so smart with two people dead. Three, you count the baby you're so hot to protect. Murder to prevent murder, that's a funny way."

  "I didn't lay that bomb," Asbach says. "I was no where around. I have witnesses."

  "It maybe wasn't your hand actually put the bomb, laid the knife, and cut off the cat's head, but your hand was in it. The book the judge is going to throw at you is being printed right now. You think this is Bean Town? You think this is New York? You make a mess in Chicago, you clean it up with your tongue."

  His face crumples up like a piece of tissue paper all of a sudden. "Listen," he says, "I didn't do any of these things. I didn't order them done . . ."

  "You did the knife. You knew all about the knife . . ."

  "Oh, yes, the knife. I did the knife and the ketchup. It was a symbol."

  "It was a threat."

  "It was a sign, for Christ's sake."

  "Don't bring Him into it. You got no right. Don't try to cop a plea with me. You're the guy who said in the New York papers that you don't put down bombers and arsonists."

  "I said I didn't support them."

  "No, you just said, 'What's a little damaged real estate . . . It's like bombing Dachau and not hurting anyone.' "

  He reaches out and grabs my sleeve. I don't jerk away. I let him hold on. I'm going to let him try to persuade me.

  "You did the cat," I says.

  "God as my witness . . ."

  "You going to call on the whole family?"

  ". . . I didn't cut off that cat's head."

  "How come you know about that too? Was it in the papers? Was it printed on a wall?"

  "It could be one of the new members who joined up last week who did it," he says.

  "Give me a name."

  "I haven't got it in my head. You understand? I can't remember the name of every new member who signs up."

  "It's written down?"

  "I'll get the list as soon as I can get to it."

  "All right, I hear you," I says. "Now you can let me go."

  Captain Pescaro is waiting for me in his office.

  "I'm back," I says.

  "I can see," he says. "Don't bother sitting down. This won't take long. You did good getting the girl's name . . ."

  He doesn't ask me how I get it.

  ". . . so now let us officers of the law do what we get paid for. It's all right you should take care of your people; it's not all right you should be a cop."

  "Is that it?" I says.

  "That's all I've got to say. But I'm also asked to tell you that you're wanted for a conversation over to your master's office."

  "What is this 'master' busines
s?"

  "Well, you're Delvin's dog, ain't you?"

  I hear Delvin called "avuncular" once. It sounded like it fit him. Then somebody tells me it means like an uncle. I thought "avuncular" had something to do with elephants.

  It's not so much he's fat. It's more like the way his skin hangs around his collar, the folds of flesh bluish gray from always needing a shave. It's the way his pants bag over his shoes and sag at the crotch. It's the way his eyes are always weeping.

  "You don't touch base with me lately, Jimbo," he says, wiping his eyes with a white hankie.

  "I don't have nothing needs your attention."

  "Everything can use my attention. Everything in your precinct needs your attention, and everything in my ward can use my attention. I don't see you since the last time you run a little errand for me."

  "For which I was grateful to have the chance to do."

  "I know that. Ain't your old man and me been friends for fifty years? Ain't I the guy who took you out of the sewers?"

  I don't mention that he's also the man who put me in the sewers.

  "So, have you got any troubles could use my ear?" he says.

  "I wish I could say there was. You've got this ward running so smooth, you must go crazy sitting around with nothing to do except just listening to it hum."

  He wipes his eyes and they go like from twinkly to mean. Delvin wants to be the only one who spreads the chicken fat. I'm about to fall in the shit, and if I don't watch out, I'll be swimming upstream.

  "A friend of mine got killed," I says.

  "One of our constituents?" he says.

  "A good Democrat who voted the straight ticket."

  "You send flowers?"

  "No."

  "Now, you see, there? You should have sent flowers. You should have sent flowers from me and the party."

  "Mrs. Klutzman was Hebrew Orthodox. There wasn't any flowers."

  "This is the old lady who was blown to pieces?" he says, nodding like the wise old elephant I once thought he was called.