The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Page 9

  "Come to my place, James. Come right away," she says.

  "What is it, Mary?" I says, with my heart in my throat.

  "I'm not hurt. I'm safe. There's nothing to tell you that you won't see for yourself. Please, please come as soon as you can."

  FIFTEEN

  I got a portable red flasher with a magnetic base which I put on the roof when I want to drive like I usually don't drive. I got a siren under the hood which I don't use except maybe three times a year. I get to Mary's flat in three minutes and run up the stairs. The door is off the latch and open a crack. I'm ready to give her hell, I'm so scared. She shouldn't leave the door off the latch no matter what's inside. There's more than one crazy running around.

  I push open the door. A woman is laying on the floor in the middle of the throw rug. She's got hair almost the color of Mary's and is built similar. She's wearing a white nurse's uniform which is red with blood all over the front. Her head is turned away from me, and one arm is thrown up with the hand curled the way a baby's hand curls when it's asleep.

  Mary's sitting sideways on the daybed with her legs pulled up under her. She's hugging herself and staring out the window. She don't blink.

  "Mary," I says.

  She looks at me and for a second I never see anybody so scared. Then her face crumples up like a wet paper towel and the tears start coming down her cheeks like twin rivers.

  I make a circle around the dead woman and take Mary in my arms. I feel such a rage in me for whoever done this thing that I feel like a big balloon in my chest is ready to bust and my eyelids is on fire. She cries out like an Arab, high wails like a dog or a human in terrible pain. It rises and falls like sirens going by. People from the other flats start gathering in the doorway, dressed like people are dressed when home in the evening, some in sweaters, some in shirt sleeves, some in their bathrobes. Why do I even register all that while my woman is screaming her heart out?

  I catch the eye of a tall man with the face of an undertaker, long like a hound or a horse.

  "Use the phone in your flat and get the police over here," I says.

  He nods and turns away. All the rest just stand there staring. Mary stops wailing and settles into a moan for a very short time, then stops altogether.

  "Why did I do that?" she says, her voice like gravel.

  "It was grief," I says.

  "I hardly knew her."

  "Grief for a person. Grief for yourself. You don't want to think it, but that could've been you."

  I don't want to scare her, that's not the reason I tell her like that. I want to let her know that the woman who rented her flat got killed by mistake. That it wasn't a random stranger killing, some mad man or cokehead out on a spree.

  "That was meant to be you," I says.

  I tell her because intentional homicide we can do something about, stranger killing is like a bolt out of the blue. How do you catch lightning? How do you know when it's going to strike again?

  She stares at me and nods, her mouth getting steady. She's got hold of herself and then some.

  "What does it mean?" she says.

  "What else can it figure?" I says. "I was warned off the bombing. Twice I was warned off the bombing. Somebody sees me with you. I'm still asking questions. What do they know we got a personal arrangement? Maybe they think I'll get you to remember something you saw but forgot you saw, or heard but forgot you heard. Maybe it's just you saw the guy with the badge."

  "I don't know anything I don't know I know," she says, which is a foolish thing to say in a way.

  "They see me at the morgue. They see me talking to Pescaro in the delicatessen. They see me trying to identify that Ciccone. They think I won't listen. They think I won't leave it alone, and they think they should stop you before I give you a face to look at."

  Pescaro comes in with O'Shea and Rourke. He sees Mary standing next to me and his mouth twitches like he's smiling in relief.

  There's uniforms all over the place. The medical examiner himself arrives and stoops by the body.

  The neighbors are shooed back to their flats.

  "Keep yourselves handy," Pescaro tells them. "An officer or a detective is going to come by sometime tonight and ask a few questions."

  "I got to get up in the morning for work," the man with the face like a horse complains. "I got to get my sleep."

  "Be grateful," O'Shea says, "that woman ain't going to go to work ever again. She's going to sleep forever."

  "Please," Rourke says, "we solicit your cooperation. We'll make it as quick and easy as possible."

  Pescaro gives the body another look and comes over to Mary and me. "I thought it was your lady when we got the call," he says.

  "It could've been."

  "Goddamn you and your Irish curiosity," Pescaro says.

  "Goddamn clout and cover-ups," I says.

  "You complaining? You're part of it."

  He's right. I got nothing to say, but I think it's cruel how things that usually work can go bust, how good things can go bad. I get a funny feeling that, young as I am, the world's changed on me while I wasn't looking.

  "I am glad you're all right," Pescaro says to Mary.

  "Now, will you look into who done this?" I says, a little too sharp.

  "Watch yourself, Flannery," he says.

  "Because whoever done this, done the bombing," I says.

  "We don't know that."

  "I think we would have known it if we had the chance to match this bullet with the one that killed Helen Caplet, except that bullet is missing."

  "Goddammit, Flannery, stay out of this from now on." His eyes flicker to Mary. "It ain't only your ass."

  I take Mary's arm at the elbow and steer her through the crowd of cops, who are doing their best to act like they really want to get evidence on whoever did what is laying on the floor, a young woman dead.

  Rourke is leaning against the door-jamb, halfway out in the hall.

  "Thank you, Rourke," I says.

  "Sure, you're welcome," he says, looking vague and surprised.

  "I mean really thank you."

  "What for?"

  "For telling me about the bullet which they found in Helen Caplet."

  "You're thanking the wrong person," he says.

  "So you don't want my marker?"

  "Not for nothing."

  My old man looks ten years older sitting at the kitchen table in my flat. Mike's been in plenty of fights in his life, but he ain't never had someone actually commit mayhem on hisself or somebody near and dear. Every now and then, while we talk, he reaches over and squeezes Mary's hand. Tears come up and threaten to spill over, but he fights them back.

  He says "sonofabitch," then begs her pardon. He says "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," then crosses himself. "Pretty soon, maybe already, whoever done this shooting finds out that Mary Ellen Dunne ain't dead," he says.

  "You want I should hang Mary's underwear out on the line along with my shorts so everybody should know we're living together?" I says, snapping at him.

  He looks wounded but forgiving, like an old cat what you've kicked off the rug in front of the stove for no reason.

  "I mean, if she's living with me and they're worried she's got something to tell, well, then, there's all the more chances for her to remember . . . all the more reason for them to come after her again."

  "You do an interview for the paper," Mike says. "You're the party captain in the precinct where these bad things has happened," he says. "We get Delvin to sponsor it. You tell one and all that you're sorry and mad for what some misguided person done at the clinic, which was wrong, though they may have thought it was right, and you'll pray for their soul. You've talked to the people at the clinic, the doctors and nurses, and you've talked to the protesters marching outside. You're convinced that nobody knows nothing."

  I stare at my old man, not believing what I'm hearing. He's asking me to beg whoever killed Helen Caplet and Mrs. Klutzman and the nurse who was in Mary's apartment—which might have ea
sily been Mary herself—to leave us alone.

  "You go on the television, six-o'clock news, and say the same thing, making sure that everybody understands that nobody knows nothing."

  "Like hell," I says. "You want me to roll over for some people what would kill pregnant girls and old ladies and put a bullet in a nurse?"

  "You say that you're a precinct captain worried about his neighborhood and his people, but you ain't a cop, so you'll leave the police work to the cops. You know that, if this somebody is still in the city to be caught, the cops'll catch him."

  I lean forward over the oilcloth on the table so far my chin is almost on it, so I'll be sure my old man hears what I got to say since I'm so mad there's a plug in my throat which could choke me. The smell of the oilcloth reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd lean my chin on the table while my mother—God bless her and keep her—trimmed the crust off a pie.

  "I was going to let this thing drop. I was going to turn my back on this whore who was going to have a baby scraped out of her belly and an old lady who wanted to hold her hand while they done it, because my Chinaman and another warlord who had an interest asked me to. Before they even see I'm going on about other business, whoever does it goes after a nurse they only think maybe can point the finger. Or, worse, they go after her because they find out she means the world to me and they want to teach me a lesson up front—"

  "Hey, Jimmy," my old man says.

  "Take a deep breath," Mary says.

  "Pescaro called me Delvin's dog. We had some conversation about dogs ourselves, Pop. I said I wasn't a dog. I was wrong. I'm a dog. I'm a junkyard dog. And they're going to find out that I'm as mean as a junkyard dog."

  "Shame on you," my old man says. "Shame on me for having a son who'd think Mike Flannery would want a son of his to tuck his tail between his legs and run after somebody's tried to hurt his near and dear."

  "You're just after telling me—"

  "I tell you to make your public announcements and maybe keep whoever it is running around like a mad dog cooled out a day or two while we go find out what we can find out."

  "Ah, Pop, I'm such a fool, such a fool," I says, and puts my head down on the oilcloth.

  Mary puts her hand on my head and it feels like my mother's hand.

  SIXTEEN

  So I go on television and say my piece. And I talk to the reporters in Delvin's office, while he stands in the corner and grins, and say it again. I hope that it does the job. I hope whoever it is thought they was killing Mary thinks I'm scared blue.

  After the interview with the ladies and gentlemen of the press, I invite Jackie Boyle for coffee when nobody's looking or on the eary. He's a columnist for the Sun-Times, not as hot as Kupcinet or Royko, so he's more amenable to doing favor for favor.

  I take a handful of change from my pocket and run them from hand to hand. There is mostly nickels.

  "Hinting for a handout?" Boyle says.

  I take a nickel and put it on the table between us.

  "I'm a poor man, but I'm a man who pays in advance."

  "If that ain't a nickel, what is it?" he says.

  "My marker."

  He puts his finger on the nickel and pulls it toward him maybe six inches, which means he ain't making no commitment.

  "I want you should check the sheriff's list of whoever holds a part-time deputy's gun and a badge."

  "So you was blowing smoke," he says.

  I put another nickel on the table. His finger hovers over it but don't touch it.

  "Keep it to yourself. I don't want anybody to know. That's why I don't check the list myself."

  His finger don't move. We're staring into each other's eyes.

  "Somebody thought they was killing a woman who's everything to me," I says.

  His finger falls down on the nickel and he pulls it in like before.

  "You know how many goddamned names is probably on such a list?"

  "I think I'm only looking for a badge-holder from Velletri's Twenty-fifth and the number on the badge is three, maybe four, digits with a two in the middle."

  "Jesus Christ," he says, and flicks the two nickels back at me. "You're talking about the mob, the members of which could be carrying more tin than all the detectives on the force put together."

  "Don't kid me. They don't even bother. Why should they? They don't need no tin. But there are those who are mob-connected or politically connected who like to belly up to the bar in the policemen's saloons. Who like to chase the calls just like the fire buffs who answer every alarm."

  I put a quarter on the table in the middle of the two nickels. I'm giving him plenty of credit with me. He knows what a precinct captain connected like I'm connected can do for a man who writes a column. Still he hesitates.

  "You got any idea who you're looking for?" he says.

  "Not a clue. I'm just collecting pieces. I'm just looking for one and one and one and one, I should maybe make at least two."

  I put another quarter down. He scoops the change up.

  "I'll pay for the coffees," he says.

  "Ain't it lucky this place only charges thirty cents a cup?" I says.

  "So, I'll leave the tip," he says, and drops another fifteen cents on the table.

  My old man comes back to my flat from doing some errands for me and throws down a list on which I've written the names of everybody I can think of who might have had knowledge of the bullet in Helen Caplet, and who might have thought to do me the favor by calling me and giving me the information.

  "I done like you told me," he says. "I sound out Benedetto and Jackson and all these others. Nobody cops even when I say that you're ready to owe the one who done you the favor. Who doesn't want a free marker? I even do the number on Pescaro. At first he looks at me like I'm getting senile, then he tries to make something of it, but I double-talk him and slip out of it."

  The phone rings. I wonder does a phone ring a certain way when it's got important things to deliver.

  "Helen Caplet is not Helen Caplet," the same whispery voice says. "Her prints made her, but the cops won't tell you that. She's Helen Brickhouse and she used to live over to Cicero. Three-five-nine Mercer Street, top floor."

  I write it down on the oilcloth.

  "What do you want?" I says. "Nobody does nothing for nothing."

  "Figure it out," he says, and hangs up.

  "Who's doing us these favors?" my old man asks.

  "Maybe they ain't doing us any favors. Maybe they're doing themselves a favor," I says.

  SEVENTEEN

  There are parts of Chicago that are very tough, going all the way back to the days when Capone and his mob ruled until Dever pushed him out of the city into Cicero, where, even today, anything goes. My own Twenty-seventh, with Skid Row in the middle, is no convent, but Cicero makes it look like a girl's school at least. It's Mafia, and no bones about it. Nobody can fart—you should excuse my French—in Cicero, the family don't hear it and smell it. This family is not the same thing as you mean when you talk about your family or even what I mean when I talk about my family.

  I find the three-story frame house on Mercer Street with no trouble. It's a neighborhood which is respectable, but poor, filled with Polish and Irish who made the move out of Chicago to what looked like greener pastures two generations ago, then ran out of steam.

  The lock on the two doors downstairs don't work, so I don't have to use the buzzer. I'm able to walk up the stairs and knock on the door.

  A man in his underwear shirt and suspenders, with a beer belly hanging out, comes to the door with a newspaper in one hand. He looks at me and says, "Yeah?"

  "Mr. Brickhouse?"

  "Yeah?" he says.

  "My name's Jimmy Flannery," I says, "and I come to talk to you about your daughter, Helen."

  "I ain't got no daughter," he says.

  Down at the end of the dark hall behind him a worn-out woman stands in the light from the kitchen. She's wearing a wraparound house dress and wiping her hands on a dish towel. />
  "Please, Marty," she says, like a prayer.

  He leans back like he wants to get a better look at me, then unfolds the paper and takes a look.

  "You're this guy?" he says.

  "That's me."

  "A celebrity's come to call, Flo," he says. "Well, come on in. You're letting in a draft."

  I follow him down the hall, and I step back twenty-five years in time. It's just like the flat I grew up in when I was little until we moved into a house. The bathroom's the first on the left. There's a closed door to the second bedroom on the right. Then, one side of the hall, there's a dining room and a parlor through a doorway on the right. The sliding doors to the parlor is closed so there won't be so much house to heat. I guess the dining-room door to the second bedroom will be closed, too, unless they got other kids besides Helen. On the left is the doorway into the kitchen with old scrub tubs and a kitchen table and chairs in the middle. There's oilcloth on the table. Next to the refrigerator is the door to the main bedroom, which is also closed.

  "Sit down," Flo says to me, blushing, as shy as a bride. As tired out and faded as she is, I can still see why Helen was so pretty under the hardness and paint. These flats is filled with women you could match with any woman on the television shows except for the way the cards fell. "You want coffee . . ." she says.

  "My pleasure," I says.

  ". . . and a piece of coffee cake? It ain't homemade but it was fresh from the bakery this morning."

  I take a bite of the cake and a swallow of the coffee. It's the hospitality of the house and it ain't right to start talking about what I come to talk about until it's out of the way. It's hard for Brickhouse to sit there letting me have the coffee and cake because he's afraid I come with bad news. He don't know how bad.

  "So, all right," he says.

  "A girl named Helen Caplet was . . ."

  "Oh, no!" Flo says, and gasps like she's drowning.

  ". . . killed in an explosion in a clinic over to Sperry Avenue in my precinct, which is in the Twenty-seventh ward."

  After the word "killed," Flo sits there staring at me as though I'm a man who just put an ice pick through her heart and she can't understand why I would do such a thing.