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

  "They got their own lives. Ain't you heard? White slavery went out in the thirties."

  "Who was the woman was with him the day of the bombing?"

  "Mavis Concord. The one you just saw on my lap."

  I turn my head like I'm hoping she's standing in the corner waiting for me to talk to her.

  "She's gone, Flannery, she's long gone."

  Back at the flat we have coffee and cake. Gloria and Mary act like they're already sisters. Chapman and me aren't brothers, but whatever there is to like about another man seems to make the atmosphere good in the kitchen.

  Every once in a while Gloria's hand comes over to Chapman's and she touches him like she wants him to know she's there. Mary touches mine, too, like it's the same.

  I look at Chapman's black face and Gloria's sweet white face and I wonder what the crap is all about. People ain't got enough reasons to kill each other they got to do it for color or language or the way they face God?

  My old man comes barging in just when they're leaving. He shakes Chapman's hand and looks him in the eye, and charms Gloria out of her shoes.

  When the door is closed behind them and Mary is out in the kitchen piling the dishes in the sink, he says, "What are you doing with a nigger in the house?"

  I look at him for a minute like I don't even know him. "Why do you want to say something like that for?"

  "Let me tell you, when I went to fires down to the nigger wards or was sent down in the summer to turn off the hydrants which they turned on . . ."

  ". . .to get some relief from the god-damned heat . . ."

  ". . .so they should get cool," my father finishes, and looks down his nose at me, "which they got a perfect right to do. My supervisor at the time, Willy Hanrahan, who is dead these twenty years—God rest his soul—warns me not to cut myself because them people has got all kinds of venereal disease which can kill me."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," I says, when somebody says something like that to you with a straight face, so you know they mean it, what else can you say?

  "Don't take His name in vain," my old man says.

  "I'm calling on Him to save the bigots," I says.

  "Besides, you come on about how you don't like the blacks and who's your best friend over to the fire house for forty years? Amos Washington, the janitor, is who. And who's the man you spend hours talking with when he's pushing his barrow and collecting junk? Whistlin' Sam is who."

  "Well, they was different—God keep them both— you know? Amos was the best Christian I ever knew and Sam put three children through college collecting trash in a cart. Not a truck. Not a horse and wagon. With a god-damned pushcart, and he had the arthritis so bad he'd sometimes weep right in front of me."

  "Three children through college?" I says.

  "One a lawyer, one a college professor, and one a doctor."

  "Well. Calvin's a doctor," I says.

  "There you go," my old man says, as if that made his case. But what his case was I'd forgotten long before.

  "You know this fireman, Warnowski?" he says, making up to me and giving me no time to think about how he picked my pocket of my argument.

  "I'm talking to your leader, Delvin, this morning. He tells me how you made such a beautiful case for this public servant, who drives his car into the river and kills himself while rushing to answer an alarm be cause he cuts the wheel to avoid a kiddy who runs in front of him, that he passes it on to the commissioner. They're not only going to give Warnowski's widow full-pension benefits, but they're writing up a commendation for Warnowski which the mayor is going to sign, and there's talk of putting Warnowski up for fireman of the year."

  FOURTEEN

  Mary's already gone to work at the hospital by the time I get up. A big black sedan is waiting in front of Pakula's grocery store. Two panthers named Ginger and Finks, one with a pencil mustache, the other without, are lounging on the fenders, front and back. I don't even wait for the invitation. I open the door to the back seat myself and get in.

  "You're fast on your feet, Jimmy," Finks says.

  "Did I give you permission to call me by my first name?" I says.

  "Mr. Flannery," he says, "you got more balls than brains."

  Vito Velletri, the warlord of the Twenty-fifth, works out of an office that looks like the office of an insurance-company president. It's all polished wood, thick carpets, and brass lamps. The curtains at the windows, which block an ugly view, are made of dark-red velvet.

  Velletri himself looks like a Vatican monsignor, small, neat, with a nun's quiet hands and a cardinal's natural air of power. He's born in Sicily sixty years ago, so his accent is smooth at the edges except when he's mad and then he sounds like he's just off the boat. Velletri don't raise his voice above a whisper. Even the mob don't dare to mess him around very much. He's a diplomat. He's a good father to his people.

  Velletri's not a criminal, even though he's accused every election year of favoring the mob. He promised to deliver the Twenty-fifth to Richard Daley, Jr., in the '83 primary, but it goes to the black candidate. Maybe for the first time he wakes up to the facts of life. The blacks, who've been patient and quiet all these years while white men gave jobs to white men in black wards, have been patiently and quietly making babies and taking over blocks with black immigrants from other parts of Chicago and other states. The Twenty-fifth is black, and he finally knows it. That's why Addison. Velletri is making accommodations, though the word is out that he's unhappy. The machine is getting rusty, wearing out, and maybe it's time to get out of the driver's seat before it busts to pieces under him and lands him in the mud.

  But power's a hard drug to kick. The hardest. He still wants to use it while he's got it in his hands. He wants to do favors. He wants to make people owe him even though he'll probably never have reason to ask for his payoff—not with a vote and not with a favor. He likes having Lenten breakfasts with the cardinal and spaghetti dinners with the mob bosses.

  Of course he's got mob connections. Everybody in Chicago politics has got mob connections. Just about everybody in Chicago society has got mob connections. Who would not have mob connections if they're in the money or in the public eye?.

  "Why you coming into my ward without asking my permission, Mr. Flannery?" he says.

  I don't like he should call me Mr. Flannery. My old man knows Velletri a long time. I know Velletri since I'm twenty. Maybe we don't sit down to a private meal together, but we've shared bread and salt at weddings, christenings, and fund-raisers. He should treat me more personal and he's not, so I know that whatever he's about to tell me is serious. Outside the club.

  "Mr. Velletri, a thing happened in my district which a person from this district was involved in."

  "Mr. Ciccone?"

  "Yes, Ciccone, and a pimp that operates upstairs from Ciccone."

  "Mr. Addison?"

  "Yes, Addison, and a girl who turned a few tricks in his establishment from time to time."

  "Miss Caplet?"

  "Yes, that girl who was blown up over to Sperry Avenue."

  "She was the victim," Velletri says. "That's not involved like we mean involved."

  "She's more than involved like we mean involved. She's blown up."

  "This Joe Asbach is a fanatic."

  "The police release him with no warning. He tells me to whistle like he's the cock of the walk."

  "So the police are giving him rope, that's all."

  I give him a shrug. What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Am I to agree with his notion that the police are so clever, so crafty? Am I to say I've been to the morgue and saw the bullet hole in Helen Caplet? Am I to say there ain't no bullet and no autopsy report anymore, and if someone don't keep an eye out, there may not be a Helen Caplet either; that she maybe could get lost, strayed, or stolen, too? Am I to say that someone murdered this girl because she was involved one hell of a lot more than we mean involved?

  "There's no evidence that this Helen Caplet, if this is her name, lived in my ward," Velletr
i says.

  "She worked in your ward from time to time, Mr. Velletri," I says. "I got no other place to start looking for this dead girl's people except here in the Twenty-fifth."

  "I understand that," he says agreeably. "What I don't understand is why you're bothering yourself with a whore who wasn't one of your people."

  "She dies—is murdered—in my precinct."

  "Yes, the honor of your house. I understand that, too. But what do you expect to do about her? Are you a vigilante out to avenge this death? If you are, the revenge doesn't belong to you. It properly belongs to her family. If not to her family, to the law. If not to the law, to me."

  "I'm not looking for revenge," I says. "That's the way feuds begin. I understand favor for favor, but not blood for blood. No, Mr. Velletri, I don't even look for revenge for the old woman who was one of mine and never did no harm. She's an innocent bystander and I'm sorry she's gone, but it's not the dream of my life to bring her killer down. I'd like to see someone called on these killings, because I don't want people thinking they can walk into my precinct and do whatever they want. Besides—"

  "Are we back to Helen Caplet?"

  "I'd like to find her family. If she ain't got a family and if nobody comes forward, I don't want she should be buried in the county field. I'll claim her and see she's buried with rites and a stone to mark the grave."

  "That's generous," Velletri says, "but you leave that to me. You've made a case for this girl. Until—if—we find out she lived somewhere else, I say she lived in this ward. The Twenty-fifth will do what's right. So, that settles all your reasons for making trips into my ward. Not that you won't be welcome otherwise."

  That means I'm supposed to go.

  I'm at the door when he says, "Jimmy, do I have your word that you'll leave this matter to me?"

  I'm thinking that I'm not so sure. He's put me on notice about stirring anything up in the Twenty-fifth. He's got that right, it's his back yard, but somebody did murder in my precinct and I'm still not so sure I can just turn my back on that.

  "Let me think about that, Mr. Velletri," I says.

  Velletri nods his head very slowly at me, like he's blessing me, or like he's deciding which of my legs to break.

  That evening, I tell Mary what happened.

  "So, are you?" she says.

  "Am I what?"

  "Going to do what Velletri asks?" She reads my silence like a page.

  "Aren't you satisfied you've done everything you can?" she says.

  "What do you think?"

  "What do I think? I think that you've done everything you could have done. Helen Caplet will be on a missing-persons flyer or she won't. Either way, someone else has the responsibility."

  "There's Mrs. Klutzman."

  "She's under the ground. You'll tell me stories about her from time to time. I know that you will because the people in the district are your family, your children. That's the best you can do for her."

  "Is it right the people who set the bomb should get off without a word?"

  "No, it's not right. It's not right those people should do violence when all the time they're saying they want to stop violence being done to unborn children. Are they bad people? I don't know. They're wrong, I think, but I don't know if they're bad. If they set a bomb and it went off at the wrong time when there were still people in the clinic, a judge and jury might even wonder what kind of punishment they should offer. Maybe I'd wonder, too."

  I don't tell her the device used to set off the bomb was just an unwinding rubber band, nothing so precise as a clockwork set for an hour when the clinic would be empty. The bomb was set to cover the bullet. A stupid man's notion. The bomber took no care and an old woman who wanted to help a little got killed. Mary could of got killed, too.

  "You're not a cop," Mary says.

  "You're right," I says.

  I look for Pescaro and run him down in a deli over on Powell. He's having a pastrami with warm pickles which they heat for him in the steamer. I never heard of a person, except for Pescaro, ever doing such a thing. It's a very human thing for him to do.

  "Can I sit?" I says.

  "Sure you can sit," he says. "You cap even eat if you want, as long as I don't have to pay."

  "Why did you let Joe Asbach go?"

  "Because we got nothing on him. Not a thing. He's got eyewitnesses he's elsewhere. He's got a lady . . ."

  "A whore."

  ". . . a professional lady who swears she was with him. This professional lady has other friends that swear by her honesty. They say she'll do things like a monkey and swing by her tail, but she won't tell a lie."

  "Who are these friends?"

  "You couldn't get that out of me, even with a subpoena," he says. "Be smart. What evidence you think you can find that will pin a match bomb to this Asbach . . ."

  "Maybe his people . . ."

  ". . . or one of his people?"

  ". . . could be brought in and questioned."

  "We got nothing, I tell you. Let it go at that. That's all the conversation I got for you if it's the only subject you know."

  "Hey, you should forgive me," I says. "Like the cat, the Irish got curiosity. I didn't look you up to ask questions. Velletri talked to me. He said he'd make my concern for the killings his concern. He said he'd see the right thing done." I'm watching Pescaro like a bird with a worm. He doesn't flinch. "I got no interest anymore."

  "So, why did you run me down while I'm eating, then?"

  "To thank you for the favor."

  "I done you a favor?"

  "When I brought you the knife, you took special interest with the clinic on Sperry."

  "I told a car to roll by now and then."

  "I mean the man inside the clinic."

  "I didn't put no man inside."

  "He had a badge."

  "Give me a sawbuck, I'll buy you a badge any costume shop," Pescaro says. "You want a pickle?"

  I make a face.

  "What kind of badge?" he says.

  I just look at him.

  "Hey, private detective," he says, "it could have been a deputy sheriff's badge. It could have been a Mickey Mouse badge."

  When I get back to the flat, Mary is making supper.

  "I been eating in restaurants or out of a can for so long I don't know if my stomach will take home cooking," I said.

  "It'll take this," she says. "I'm going to make you healthy."

  I go up behind her and put my arms around her and stick my nose in her neck. "I think I'll eat you for supper," I says.

  "I'm a late-night snack," she says.

  "Answer me a question?"

  "Sure."

  "I don't want you to think about it. I just want you to make a picture in your head and blurt out what you see."

  "Go ahead."

  "You're in the corridor and this guy who says he's a cop flashes his badge."

  "That's right."

  "What kind of badge?"

  "Sheriff's office," she says straight out, and then looks as though she's surprised herself.

  "Was the badge in anything?"

  "A leather folder like people wear for identification. You know, the kind that folds over so you can slip it into your top pocket with the ID hanging out."

  "What was the badge number?"

  "Two . . . No, the two was in the middle."

  "Of how many numbers?"

  "Something two something. Three numbers, I think."

  I give her a squeeze.

  "Hey, let me think. Maybe I can do better."

  "I don't think so. The way this thing works is, it works the first time or it don't work at all."

  "What's it all about?"

  "I thought the guy you talked to in the corridor was a city cop sent by the captain. He wasn't."

  "He was impersonating?"

  "I don't think so. Pescaro mentioned he could buy a badge for ten bucks, but I think whoever the guy was just used what he already had on him when you bumped into him."

 
After supper Mary says she's going over to her flat in Benjamin Alley and get some more of her things.

  "Why don't we get everything?" I says.

  "Where would we put it?"

  "Some of your furniture could go in storage. The rest could come here. Why waste the rent?"

  "Hold it," she says. "Slow down. We're still just trying this on. And don't bother about the rent. A new nurse at the hospital needed a place. I gave her a sublet until we see . . ."

  "I'll come with you," I says.

  "What for? I could be hours picking up this and that."

  "Who's going to carry anything heavy?"

  "I'm not a titmouse . . ."

  "A what?"

  ". . . and Joan isn't a bird either."

  "No, I'm coming with you," I says. "I don't want you going around alone at night."

  "I've been alone for sometime."

  "You ain't anymore."

  There's a knock on the door while Mary's getting her coat and I'm getting mine. I open up and Pakula stands there with some forms in his hand.

  "I'm sorry to bother," he says, glancing at Mary, but asking no questions and making no comments, not even hello—like she's not even there unless I say so—"but I get these forms from some county tax man. I don't know what they mean or what I'm expected to do. Could you help me?"

  Mary says, "He'll help you . . ."

  "Joseph Pakula."

  ". . . Mr. Pakula."

  "He owns the grocery downstairs," I says.

  "My name is Mary Ellen Dunne, and I suppose I'll see you when I come down to shop."

  "Joe, I don't think . . ." I start to say.

  "James will be happy to help you," Mary says. "That's what he does best."

  She kisses me and Pakula blushes, and she's gone out the door like a breeze.

  "Such a woman," Pakula says with great admiration.

  The forms is the usual mess, asking more than is needed, filling up pages so it shouldn't be easy to make a living. It isn't ten minutes the phone rings. I feel a freeze on the back of my hands and the back of my neck. Irish ghosts are dancing across a grave.

  Mary's voice is pulled tight like a wire.