Dark Blonde (13 page)

I slept in late the next morning. The sun poured in my front windows and the birds acted like winter wasn’t happening. I called Rick to say I’d poke around downtown some more. He was on his way to talk to the other Scout leader and then to the office. He told me that Gail had been dead about ten hours before we’d arrived, and that the cause of death was strangulation by hanging, not decapitation. Someday I’ll have to read up on how they determine such things after a head’s chopped off.

I’d half expected a call from Julia and thought of trying to reach her, but knew it was for the wrong reasons. There was more to the woman under the surface, things she hadn’t told me, but there was also that subterranean lava flow. I wished Molly’d come back from playing aunt. When she was around every day the temptation of a sensuous dark blonde would be child’s play. Well, okay, Angel, so you’re an optimist, maybe not child’s play, exactly.

I pushed Julia out of my mind, not wanting to struggle on the beginning of a clear windless day. It might be the last until spring.

After three coffees and a stale maple bar, I locked up the bungalow and drove to the Loop. I kept a sharp eye out for the Pontiac that’d tailed us from Gail’s. Whoever those guys were, they were Whipple’s goons and they’d likely be back. I parked the Buick in an all-day garage on Roosevelt Street and picked up Chicago’s
American
, a sister paper to the
Tribune
and one of the McCormick syndicate rags. The messages were the same but the writing was a bit more polished and easier to swallow. The articles might as well have been put out by the Whipple campaign. So much for balanced reporting.

There was no tearful withdrawal yet by Whipple. I’d give Brockway another day to bring about Whipple’s graceful exit. After that, things would get messier.

Too much money makes for bad newspapers. Why the guy who made his fortune mechanizing the farm belt should want to own a newspaper goes beyond explanation. But, money corrupts, no matter how it’s made. At least that Marshall Field The Umpteenth guy had put the
Sun-Times
on a strictly paying basis. The
Times
backed Gateswood; it was quite a war of words between the two news dynasties. At least there was still competition of a sort.

In any big town, cabbies are among the best barometers of man-on-the-street opinion. Only barbers approach the same level of distilled public consciousness. I try to use both sources whenever a case calls for it. Or when I need a haircut and a ride.

I walked up Michigan to the first taxi stand and got in Eddie Hamilton’s famous Checker No. 5000.

“Take me on a tour, Eddie, give me some more of your encyclopedic knowledge about the Windy City. I read yesterday that New York’s actually windier, and 17 other cities, too.”

Eddie was a little guy with a perpetual saintly expression. He rarely frowned or yelled or drove aggressively like most hacks, always completely polite, treating each customer like the King of England. He might have passed for another Eddie — Cantor — with those thick eyebrows and warm round eyes and wide smile. He steered his Checker with a light and nimble hand. Kup had written Eddie up on a column after discovering that Eddie freely offered his passengers coffee, cigarettes, newspapers and other comforts while he cheerfully spieled the sights of Chicago. Kup admired initiative and Eddie had it in spades. People responded to Eddie and finding his cab available was pure luck.

“Yeah, I read that too. But Hawk still blows off the Lake in the winter, don’t it? It’s D’Angelo, right? Private investigator. On a case? What kind of tour would you like today?”

“I shortened it to Angel after Dad was gunned down in a Newark alley. But you can call me D’Angelo if you want, Eddie. I’d like Mike even better.”

“Right you are, Mike. If you want another paper’s view of today’s world, there are three back there. The afternoon paper’s aren’t on the street yet.”

“No thanks. I feel soiled having skimmed the
American
already. And I’ve had my coffee too, thanks. What’s this fold down tray with the drawer under it back here?”

Eddie slid into an opening in traffic and glided north on Michigan.

“How about a scenic drive up the lake a ways? I could point out some famous landmarks. That’s my new shoeshine tray and stand. Got black, oxblood and clear for your brogues. Might be worth a touchup.”

“You’re amazing. New York hacks could learn a thing from you. Why don’t you go there and open a public relations firm to retrain rude cab drivers? You’d have a huge market.”

Eddie was as gentle as a dowager singing hymns. Even his laugh was soft and knowing. He took every obstacle or cut-off in traffic in stride and never swore or used his horn unless the guy in front craned up at buildings 30 seconds after the light turned green, and then only a light tap of the tooter.

“Might have to take out the shoe shine stuff, though. A bigshot attorney cracked his head on the tray when a bus jerked into my lane last week. I had to stomp the brakes. The suit wasn’t too happy about it. He put up a fuss to the point where I waived the fee. Said my coffee was too strong too.”

“Like Lincoln said, Eddie, you can’t please any attorneys any of the time.”

Eddie’s laugh was like happy carrier pigeons cooing.

Heavy traffic until we got past the Lincoln Park Zoo. I lit one of the Pall Malls in Eddie’s rack but it didn’t have the same taste as my Luckies so I stubbed it out and lit one of my own.

“Here’s the big boy of our parks, named after old Abe,” he said gesturing off to his right. 1,000 acres of woods, playground, three yacht harbors, two bathing beaches complete with bathing beauties, golf course and athletic fields. The zoo, of course, if you prefer animal zoo to the people zoo on the Loop. And if you like history, there’s the Chicago Historical we just passed.”

“Not interested in a scenic tour as much as I am in your take of the political mess. Don’t worry. I won’t quote you.”

Eddie pulled into the park, stopped under some shade trees and killed the engine. An ancient couple, well bundled up, crossed on a path in front of us. The old guy waved. He wore a flat cap and tweed topcoat with collar turned up spreading wispy white hair over it. The wrinkled woman with cherry cheeks smiled and nodded forward. Eddie waved back. He swung around to face me.

“They walk up from downtown and back every day, those two lovebirds. 55 years married. Can you imagine?” he said. “Good stretch of the legs. Now, what is it you’d like to know, Mister Mike?”

“Still getting acquainted with the town. Grew up in Newark, worked on the New York force for a couple years after Korea, then went private after Dad was killed. My first big case brought me west and a young woman’s kept me here. So if my questions seem a bit slow and off the wall, consider me an outsider. Although my woman’s good friends with Kup.”

The mention of the columnist who’d made Eddie a household word and the most sought after downtown cabbie brought light into his eyes. He beamed as if a light shaft had opened from heaven right on to his cab meter, running up the fare.

“Don’t be bashful,” he said giving me a wink. “That doubles the fare. Shoot.”

“What’s the scuttlebutt on the senatorial race. How dirty is Whipple, how clean is Gateswood?”

Eddie looked out to the green park’s horizon. He tapped his fingers lightly on his steering wheel, like he was warming up for a violin solo. He gave it to me straight: “Whipple wriggled out of that police mess two years ago, and everybody knows he stinks from it, but a lot of the blue collar boys don’t care and are working hard to make people forget all about it. His mouthpiece, can’t recall his name, pulled some hijinx to get him in the clear. Wasn’t even questioned much. But everyone knows he was on the take from those jobs.”

“Didn’t O.W. clean up that ring? Prosecute the leaders?”

“They never get all the dirt in a thing like that. It just seeps back into the cracks. Some of it seeps all the way into LaSalle Street, if you ask me. But the unions are behind him mostly, Teamsters and the ones who do the heavy lifting in Springfield. It’s pretty much of a dead heat since Gateswood dropped out of the debate. People say he’s running scared. That body at his place — not a wholesome connection to the syndicate powers that be. Not as squeaky clean as everyone thought. Most people have stopped caring much who wins now. The people lose either way, if you catch my drift.”

“Yeah. Is Henry seen as mixed up in the murder? He was in Washington, you know. On the floor of the House when the girl was killed.”

“Can’t say. Some might think the wife’s mixed up with the sort the sister hung with. That’s the rumor, one of a hundred swirling about. She’s an ex-beauty queen you know, but ambitious for power. Henry’s always been unassuming; the odd couple they’re called. I don’t trust a babe who’d marry for position. Marriage for the wrong reasons stinks. She wants the power behind the throne, if you catch. Hear the afternoon paper’s going to call for Henry to pull out of the race. A good man but over his element and pushed by the missus. That’s the word, and I can’t say it ain’t so. No offense.”

“None taken. I asked the question and appreciate the straight answer. Kermit Brockway is Whipple’s mouthpiece. That the guy you can’t recall?”

“Same. Yeah, Kermit. What sorta name is Kermit? Sounds like something you’d name a frog, if you catch. Wakefield was the guy who coughed the fare on me, argued the tap to his head was worth my license.”

“They play poker together on the twenty-first floor of the London Guarantee, Kermit and this guy. And Kermit was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s boys. Not a frog.”

“Well he sure played a small pair out on me. If I ever see that lug again I’ll keep driving.”

On the way back to Roosevelt Street and my car, Eddie talked about George Pullman, the guy who built railroad cars back when, how he hired 600 men with 6,000 jacks to raise whole blocks of Loop buildings four feet above the swampy muck, to provide solid footings for the building of sidewalks — without stopping business in any of the buildings. Eddie liked that story, said it was one that newcomers should hear about, just to understand how big thinking made the town. “Make no little plans,” Eddie quoted Daniel H. Burnham, the architect who planned the city’s fabulous parks and boulevard system.

I gave Eddie my card and a ten-spot and told him to keep the change for his trouble and that I’d like to buy him a drink at Sam’s sometime if he ever dropped a fare near my office. Eddie Hamilton — a hack with style and initiative — a good man to know.

Yeah, Chicago’s quite a place. Dad once called Chicago a 225-square mile steel and concrete lump on the prairie. It was the way native New Yorkers looked down their nose at any competition. But New York has no place to grow but up. Someday Chicago will be a 400-mile city, all the way from Milwaukee to Detroit. In Chicago everything’s done in a big way. And though I was officially off the Gorovoy case, I was about to find myself in a big vise over it.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the Cicero branch library, sniffing out the political careers of the two senatorial candidates, now beating skulls over the vacated senate office. With the help of a matronly librarian with a hair bun, I was able to review old clips of Julia’s beauty pageant, her engagement and marriage to Henry Gateswood, and all the gossip written on the two since. I also found news articles chronicling the criminal career and death of Christy French. He’d been nabbed embezzling Teamster pension funds but passed the buck to Dave Beck. In hearings he took the Fifth, and was wrist-tapped by the committee for his “nefarious background.”

Brockway had bragged of his partner representing French a few years back. He hadn’t said what the rap was or which partner. The articles didn’t list French’s attorney, just the firm. Maybe Brockway himself had been French’s counsel. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been deceived by a slick mouthpiece.

One photo of Gail, French, and the Whipple’s at Fritzel’s Restaurant, all cheesey-faced at the camera, was an interesting find — good enough to have old Hair-bun photocopy. I wondered how thick Whipple and French had been. That sort of social picture might mean a lot. I’d have to look into connections between French and Whipple.

I made notes from the page two account of Frenchy’s death in a fire up in Waukegan. A shooting had been reported at a little farmhouse the day before the fire, but Waukegan police had found no one at home when they checked. The fire gutted the old frame house the next day just after dawn. By the time firemen reached the place, the roof had collapsed. They found French in the corner of the cellar. Identified through dental records.

I gathered my things together and stretched out stiff muscles from hunching over old newspapers all day. I thanked the librarian who’d been such help and showed her the article on French’s court case. I needed to know the man’s legal counsel, I said, and the article didn’t list it. She took my number and promised to call the big library downtown to see if someone could look it up for me.

The old gal had been attractive once, and there was still a faded image of that earlier time, but maybe working in all those musty books hadn’t helped. She was doing pretty good fitting the stereotype. I took a hard look at her walking away. Her figure had filled a bit here and there, but her hair was still solid ebony and for her age she wasn’t doing badly. When I left I complimented her on her perfume, even though I couldn’t detect any, and suggested even librarians might benefit from a touch of rouge and a more relaxed hairstyle. She was checking a compact and pulling the pin out of her bun with a warm expression on her face when I went through the doors. Why should a dame push in her chips before she’s old?

I’d parked on the street in front of the library, the only car on the block. Now a garbage truck idled in front of my Buick, it’s tailpipe inches from the car’s grille. Even closer behind — a shiny white Pontiac. Two guys the size of Rhode Island in the front seat of the Pontiac waited to test my driving skills. Ugly bozos without necks. Whipple’s goons.

The barge behind the wheel jerked a thumb back over his shoulder and said, “Get in.”

I slid my hat back over my forehead and gave the car the once over. Someone liked polishing the thing more than sex. “Sorry, I didn’t call Guido’s taxi.”

The guy on the passenger side lurched out. The driver backed the Pontiac up to let the guy walk behind my Buick. About my height but a good fifty pounds heavier. But it wasn’t his size that convinced me to get in the back seat. It was the gun peeking from his suit jacket pocket.

It was broad daylight; shots fired would bring people inside the library to the windows. A school bus idled at the stoplight. I didn’t want thirty kids to be the backdrop for gunplay, and even if I could pull my weapon and get off a shot, the thug wouldn’t miss this close.

“If you put it that way,” I said, “I’m convinced.”

I got in back and the guy with the stiff pocket patted me down and fished out my .45. I thought about Rick’s .25 he always carried strapped to his ankle inside his boot, and wished I’d taken his advice to do the same.

We drove north into the Oak Park neighborhood up near Columbus Park. The two no-necks weren’t conversationalists. They seemed not to hear my questions about where we were headed and who we might see. They didn’t even answer my question about the weather or who was buried in Grant’s tomb, which I think irritated them because they didn’t know. Outside of a single “clam up!” I didn’t get a grunt out of these two. Dad hadn’t warned me but I had a funny pressure in my gut.

The Pontiac pulled in a long driveway behind a giant Tudor residence. The beefsteaks got out and used my arms for handles, persuading me in direct sales fashion to descend a flight of stairs at the rear of the house, through a dark hallway and into a windowless neon-lit room barely big enough to gesture in. I was shoved into a flimsy deck chair next to a card table. The reptile thug left and the uglier one stumbled around me like he was searching for a snag on my jacket that he might yank to unravel my nerves.

“Here’s for that Grant’s tomb gag,” he growled, and jabbed a short hard fist into the side of my neck. Fire screamed from my scalp to my feet. The force of the blow tipped the chair. I didn’t have time to brace for the blow.

He went out of the room and the lock clicked. A hot roaring train rushed through my ear and exploded into a hot mountain of pain on my neck. It was swelling fast. I worked my head in circles and rubbed the growing lump but had little feeling down my side except the train in my head, which bounced around a painful hardball that sent bolts of hell down my jaw. Every tooth in my head was having a nervous breakdown. Luckily, the blow was on the opposite side from my scar. Strangely, the scar hadn’t even tickled. Guess Dad’s early warning system wasn’t foolproof — or, maybe it had played itself out and I was growing more sane.

An hour limped by like a sick dog on three legs. My headache was white-hot tungsten and a second chin on my neck held nasty goblins with branding irons. I paced the room, which wasn’t much different than walking with one foot nailed to the floor. My head tumbled that slow rolling tumble the Sons of the Pioneers sing about, but a leaden, sodden tumbleweed, unworthy of song. I pressed my good ear to the door and listened for several minutes. Nothing but ringing in my bad ear. No sound overhead or outside the house.

I thought about tearing a leg off the card table and using it for a club, when a door closed somewhere upstairs and squeaky sole leather came down the hall. Thumping like heavy boots followed squeaks down into the basement. A key tickled the lock. The door opened a couple inches. Jacob Whipple peeked in cautiously like he was checking a cake baking. He eyed me all relaxed in his plush accommodations and pushed the door open all the way. He stepped in with the no-neck Pontiac driver, who’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. I figured I’d soon find out if he could hit harder than his smaller sidekick.