1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader (24 page)

The Bird house was in the middle of the block. It had burglar bars on all the windows, a plexiglas screen door, a four-foot chain-link fence and a walkway of cracked concrete. No makeover could make this house any better.

My first pass-by gave me no indication of anyone being home. No doors or windows open for ventilation, no lights on
,
or flicker from a TV set. My second pass, which was much slower than my first, told me the front windows were being blocked by thick curtains or blankets. The lawn of weeds was cropped, no mail h
ung
out of the box, and the throwaway newspapers and advertising flyers were blown against the outside of the fence, not the inside. I wouldn’t put the place in a “pride of ownership” category, but
whoever
lived there cared.

I drove through the alley and immediately wished I had counted which house the Bird house would be, because each garage was a spitting image of the garage next door. I drove back around to the front and parked on the opposite side of the street, one door up.

A kid, about ten, came up to the car, looking inside as if I were a penguin behind the glass at the zoo. “Hey, you a cop?”

“No.”

“Sheriff?”

I rolled down the window. “A sheriff is a cop.”

The kid didn’t care. “Repo man?”

“No.”

“Then what you doin’?”

“Why do I have to be doing something? Couldn’t I just be here enjoying the neighborhood?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’re white.”

He had a point.

“I’m trying to find a guy named Bird.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“He live right there.”

I pull a five dollar bill out of my pocket. “Go up and tell him a guy named Clarence is here to talk to him.”

The kid tries to grab the bill, but I hold it back. “You get paid on completion, not hiring.” I tear the bill and give him half.

“I can’t spend this.”

“I’ll give you the other half after you get Bird.”

The kid runs off, enters the yard, up the six stairs, and rings the bell. As the door opens, I can’t hear what is said, but a man about forty steps out onto the small porch, looks to where the kid points and nods his head.

I get out of the car, lock it, and make my way onto the property. I fork over the other half of the bill to the kid. “Nice doing business with ya.”

The man hasn’t moved from the spot on the porch. “You Clarence?” he asks.

“No,” I say, “I think you are.”

He holds the screen door open and I go inside.

Preston Bird wears a Bulls Three-peat tee-shirt which sports stains from all the major food groups. The neckband sags. There is a small hole on the shirt’s bottom that reveals a soft belly, the result of too many beers during Bulls, Sox, and Bear games. The pair of jeans he wears covers his butt crack, for which I am thankful.

“You a cop?” he asks.

“No.”

“You want a beer then?”

“No thanks.”

The room is dominated by a four-foot
-
wide plasma TV, which is worth more than the accumulated value of the couch, chair, coffee table, side table, so-called art, lamps, and knickknacks. Two black boxers are on the screen, beating the crap out of each other.

“I’ve been referred to you,” I say after he sits down.

“By who?”

“A little guy in a Mercedes who likes ribs.”

“Leon’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, those are good ribs.”

The bell rings, the round ends, but one fighter
sucker punches
the other, jumps on top of his opponent, and wails away.

“Boxin’ getting more like professional wrestling every day.” Preston Bird tells me.

“I hate that.”

We watch as a brawl breaks out in the ring with cornermen, managers, and one fighter’s mother throwing haymakers.

“No women, no kids,” he says, “so if you here about a wife, I can’t help you.”

The guy at ringside dings the bell so fast it sounds like school recess, but does little to stop the melee. Preston punches the sound way down with the remote.

“How’s business?”

“You think I’d be living here if business was good?” He lifts beer cans off the table until he finds one with liquid inside. “Competition is a bitch. You got all these kids out there that’ll pull the trigger for a rock of crack.”

I shake my head to add sympathy to his plight.

“Man, them drugs are destroying our society.”

On the TV the brawlers have run out of gas and reduced to a bunch of tired old folks pushing and shoving each other. The scene switches to a commercial with a skinny lady asking, “Do you have too much body fat?”

“I want you to know,” I say. “I could care less about you.”

He finishes the beer, adds the empty to the others. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means if it isn’t you doing this job, it is going to b
e somebody else getting it done,
so you make little difference to me.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Richard Sherlock.”

“Sherlock?”

Bird reaches over to a side table, opens the drawer, and pulls out a gun. “Hey man, you sure you’re not a cop, ’cause if you are I got to shoot you, clean it up, wrap you up, cart you away, and bury your sorry ass. And right now I don’t feel like doing all that. Sox game comes on in an hour.”

“All you got to do is tell me one thing.”

Bird shakes his head, points the gun at my head.

“Why did you miss Alvin Augustus? You had a clean shot at him
. Y
ou could have made that hit in your sleep.”

“Damn right.”

“So why the hell you miss?”

“Deal was twenty-five hundred in advance and twenty-five on the way out. I show up and the envelope has a grand in and a note that says fifteen hundred after. Bullshit. Nobody cuts Clarence’s price except Clarence.”

“You want to tell me who it was?”

“No.”

“Want to put your gun down?”

Preston lowers his gun, resting it in his lap. “You try to make a deal based on a handshake and this what you get.”

“I hate that, too.” I am trying to get on his good side, if he has one. “Sure would make my life easier if you told me who.”

“Word get around I do that, I got no business.”

“I see your point. I apologize for asking.”

I drop two twenties on the table.

He points the gun back at me. “Sure you don’t want a beer?”

___

Traffic was horrible coming back north into the city, an accident near the interchange. I get off on Congress, wind my way through the Loop and Near North until I’m back on Astor, two doors away from Alvin’s condo. I wait four hours for someone to come in or out. Nothing. What an exciting life I lead.

___

At home, I put it all down on a three-by-five card and place it in the recipe box. The box is filling.

Someone paid Clarence to kill Alvin. There are plenty to choose from: wife Doris, ex-wife Joan, sons Clayton and Brewster, daughter Christina, daughter’s partner Lizzy; and we can’t forget Hefelfinger the accountant, little Millie, couple of hookers, plus all the guys in the pits who Alvin put into the poorhouse. Fun bunch.

In most cases the suspects narrow; this case they multiply.

At two-thirty-two
in the morning,
the phone rings. I wake petrified. “Hello.”

“Guess who just got busted for drugs?”

“Barack Obama?”

“Brewster Augustus,” Norbert says.

“Bet that made his day.”

“It gets better,” Norbert hesitates. “Rohypnol.”

“Little Brewster?”

“Mom’s bailing him out right now,” Norbert says. “I figured you’d want to go down and see for yourself since you live so close.”

“It’s two-thirty, Norbert.”

“It might be fun.”

“Goodnight, Norbert.”

“Goodnight, Sherlock.”

20

The Carlo cover-up

“Do you miss Theresa?”

“S
í
.”

“She misses you, too.”

“
S
í
.”

Hector Elondiso had killed the bugs, replanted the backyard garden, weeded the lawn, and put in a very attractive sandstone walkway between the garage and the backdoor at Theresa’s cousin’s house.

I allowed Tiffany one last question before I stepped in.

“Who do you miss more, your wife or Theresa?”

Hector doesn’t answer.

My turn.

“I love what you did to the Augustus garden.”

“Gracias, se
ñ
or.”

Pleasantries over. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Augustus?”

He shrugs.

“Friday?”

“Yo no sé.”

“Do you remember how he was dressed?”

“No.”

Tiffany jumps in. “Was it a wrinkled suit?”

Hector shrugs again.

Tiffany crunches up a handful of my sport coat. “Wrinkled?”

Third shrug.

“Hector,” I ask, “do you remember anything different about the rock garden that day?”

“No.”

“You like the rocks?”

“
Estupido
.”

“Did you see anyone else in the garden during the week?”

“No.”

I’m sure glad we fought the morning traffic and took the time to drive out to this very nice Hispanic neighborhood on the west side. I get particular enjoyment in the colorful graffiti and gang tagging displayed on almost every garage door and wall, giving it a certain “criminal outdoor museum” vibe.

“Is there anything you want to tell us about Alvin?”

“No.”

I sit down on the step to the small patio in the back of the postage-stamp-sized yard. Tiffany st
ands
with Hector
. B
oth watch me think.

“He isn’t helping
,
is he?” Tiffany says.

“No.”

“Too bad I can’t speak gardener Spanish as well as I speak housekeeper Spanish.”

“Tis a pity.”

I look back to Hector. “Was Mrs. Augustus home Friday night?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“
S
í
.”

“Alvin ever take walks around the property?”

Hector doesn’t understand the question, so Tiffany mimics a walk and uses her finger to draw imaginary circles.

“No.”

“He ever move the rocks around himself?”

This is a much more difficult pantomime for Tiffany, but Hector finally gets it.

“
S
í
.”

“Did he spend a lot of time in the garden?”

“Mas o
menos.”

“Hector,” I say getting to my feet, “you are a man of few words.”

“
S
í
.”

“Come on, Tiffany.”

“Un momento,” Hector says.

“
S
í
?”

“Meester Alvin owe me mucho dinero.”

“Get in line, Hector.”

___

As Tiffany hands her keys to the valet at the Ritz, she warns me, “Unless you want another family, Mr. Sherlock, keep away from those Hispanics. They’re breeders.”

“Are Hispanic Gemini women the most fertile?”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

We meet Brewster and Doris on the twelfth floor
. T
hey are seated at the bar.

“He didn’t do it,” Doris says pointing at my assistant, dispensing with the usual greetings.

“Didn’t do what?”

“I didn’t buy any dope,” Brewster says. “It was planted on me.”

“Planted?” My thought is of Hector adding a few pansies.

“Yeah.”

Brewster has had one too many
,
and it is not even lunch time.

“And how do you suspect the perpetrator performed this bout of chicanery?”