The Chicago Way (7 page)

“I’m here because John Gibbons is dead.”

The ledger flew shut. She glanced at the name on the license, then threw the look back my way.

“The police have already been here. Been and gone, Mr. Kelly. I wish you’d go, too.”

Little cat faces gleamed at me from various corners of the room. Something drifted by my ankles, but I didn’t jump.

“I need your help, Ms. Mulberry.”

“He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Her smile revealed a set of teeth that were better left undisturbed.

“Yes, he was, ma’am.”

“The police didn’t tell me that. But I knew all the same. Just like Law amp; Order. Was it brutal?”

“Shot in the stomach and left to die down at Navy Pier. That’s no picnic.”

Now the landlady leaned forward and touched my arm.

“Was he in the lake? They’re supposed to be blue when they’re pulled from the lake.”

I shook my head.

“No, his body was found just past the pier.”

Her eyes had widened and glowed a warm copper. An angora moved to the couch and settled close by her cheek. The other cats drifted away.

“This is Oskar. Spelled with a k. He’s my alter ego.” I nodded and looked from purring angora to fruitcake landlady. “I put Sun-In in Oskar’s hair. Now it matches mine.” I had to admit the resemblance was uncanny. “You want to go upstairs and see John’s room?” I nodded again, and she pointed to a set of darkened stairs.

I went up the stairs, down a brown hall, and into an even browner room. A bed with gray sheets tilted in one corner. A torn shade covered the only window. A slice of sunlight backed through it and onto an opposite wall.

I turned to find Mulberry at my shoulder. Her angora wrapped itself around my ankle.

“Can you give me a little room?” I said.

The landlady took a half step back. I guess she called that room. Her nose flared a bit as she spoke.

“The police went through the drawers.”

She pointed to a crooked dresser that sat by the window.

“They didn’t take anything, though. I told them if they did, I’d make them sign. Want to see the form? I typed it up with a Gateway computer.”

I drifted toward the dresser and opened a few drawers. Nothing much. A couple of pairs of pants, some shirts.

“No wallet here or nothing, Ms. Mulberry?”

“No. He only had the one suit he was wearing. A simple man.”

I nodded.

“Nice enough man,” she said. As if I didn’t believe her.

“Any other personal stuff?” I said. “Papers, books, that sort of thing?”

Mulberry held her chin with one hand and shook her head. Then she picked up the angora and began to stroke it. The cat looked at me and I found it difficult to look away.

“She asked about that, too,” Mulberry said.

“The detective?” I said.

“Not the detective. The woman that called later.”

“What woman would that be?”

“The one on television. You know. The bitch with the red hair.”

“On Channel 6?”

“That’s the one. She came yesterday afternoon and looked through this stuff. Just like you.”

“Just like me, huh?”

“Yep. She didn’t get anything either. Told me not to talk to anyone else.”

I sat down on the bed.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

The angora hissed and Mulberry arched her back. Or maybe it was the other way around.

“Don’t swear in front of Oskar. He doesn’t like it from strangers.”

The old woman laid out Gibbons’ clothes, put what looked like a shaving kit on top of them, and got the whole thing ready to bundle into a bag. My old partner had died alone and already found his hole in the ground. The rest of his life was here, in a dirty brown room and a Dominick’s shopping bag.

“It’s not so bad.”

Mulberry spoke softly and kept one eye closed. The other loomed large through the thick corrective lens.

“What’s not so bad?” I said.

“Dying alone. Once you lose your choices, it’s not so bad.”

“You think so?”

“I do. You should leave it be now and go.”

I shrugged, took a twenty out of my clip, and dropped it on the bed. For Kibbles ’n Bits, I told the woman. I told her if she ran across any of Gibbons’ personal papers or books to call me.

“What about the police?” she said.

I dropped her another twenty.

“What about the redhead?”

Two more twenties.

“Give the bitch nothing,” I said.

Mulberry smiled. Bubbles of green saliva kicked up between her front teeth. I left the house quickly, promising myself to brush and floss. Regularly and with determination.

I returned to my office and sat in the quiet of midmorning, waiting for the new women in my life to fall into place.

The landlady was lying to me. Why, I had no idea.

My paying client liked to threaten me with guns and wanted me to solve a murder for which I was already a suspect.

Then there was the third female, one who sometimes bought me drinks and was undoubtedly using me to get herself a story. All of which was all right if there was even a remote possibility she would sleep with me. At least, that’s what I told myself.

I sighed and put my feet up. A paperback copy of The Odyssey sat on a corner of my desk, right next to a bucket of nine-millimeter slugs. I opened it up and read about Odysseus, who was bewitched by Circe and spent a year on her island, not to mention in her bed. Didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world, except when Circe tried to turn Odysseus into a pig. Life can be a tricky thing. Especially where women were involved.

I put down Homer and picked up the here and now. I needed an education, quick and dirty, about an old rape that might be spawning fresh murder. And I thought I knew just where to get it.

C ook County’s evidence warehouse sits at the corner of Twenty-third and Rockwell on the city’s South Side. A pile of red and white bricks, surrounded by barbed wire and flat, vacant pavement, the warehouse holds the bones of Chicago’s crimes. Eight stories high and chock-full.

Ray Goshen was six feet two and had to run around in the shower to get wet. His shoulders were as wide as my fist, and his neck didn’t support his head, which tended to tilt to the left- although sometimes, when he got angry, I swore it tilted right. Whichever way he tilted, I always felt myself looking sideways at Ray and never really able to get a handle on what he was saying. Not that the head should matter. Tilted or not, the words all come out the same. Or so one would think. Anyway, in the world of Chicago evidence, Ray Goshen held the keys to the kingdom. He met me at the door, head leaning right and, true to form, not a happy man.

“What you doing down here, Kelly?”

“Hey, Ray, nice to see you, too.”

“Last time you were here was not a good thing.”

Last time I was here was almost a year ago. I’d gotten a tip on some home movies a killer named Alan Lake had covertly made from his jail cell in Stateville prison. He and his buddies smoking some weed and just having a hell of a good time. A client asked me if I couldn’t track the tapes down. Goshen let me take a look through some of the evidence in the warehouse, and I found Lake’s wallet. In it was a phone number. Twenty-three years later and it still worked. Someone still answered. She was Alan Lake’s half sister. She had a copy of the tape in question and was more than willing to barter. A few dollars later, I had the tapes. A week after that, my client put them on the ten o’clock news. I didn’t know about that part of the bargain. If I had, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. It did to Ray.

“They traced it back here, you know,” Goshen said.

I knew that but pretended I didn’t.

“Asked all kinds of questions. Nearly lost my job.”

I knew that, too. Fact is, I’d watched the whole thing. From a distance. Fortunately, my client had a conscience, at least when pushed. They all tended to when pushed. She made a call and Ray Goshen kept his job. Otherwise, my client would have lost hers. That’s what I told her, anyway. Goshen had just chalked it up to his good luck, which was fair enough.

“You owe me nothing, Ray. I know that.”

“Fucking Kelly. This is about Gibbons, right?”

I nodded. Goshen knew Gibbons, worked the evidence locker at Gibbons’ old district.

“I didn’t kill him, Ray.”

“No shit, Kelly. That doesn’t mean you won’t go to jail for it.”

“Not likely.”

Ray gave me a look like he half didn’t believe me. I half didn’t believe myself. Still, Goshen could never resist playing God with his evidence. Besides, he loved the gore. I knew that and counted on it.

“What do you want?” he said.

“It’s an old file,” I said. “Maybe it ties in. Probably not.”

“You got a case number?”

“No. I got the name of the victim and a date.”

I shoved a piece of paper in front of Goshen, who clicked his flashlight on it and then tilted the beam up.

“Rape or murder?”

Goshen’s smile was missing a few parts. Coupled with the flashlight it was like talking to a human jack-o’-lantern. One with a broken neck. Still, he was the man with the keys. Keeper of the kingdom.

“Rape,” I said.

Goshen scratched his private parts and started to laugh.

“How old was she?”

“Nineteen, twenty, maybe.”

That tickled him even further.

“Come on.”

We walked through the first floor, past rows of shelving stretching thirty feet to the ceiling, jammed with the various and sundry. Knives and pliers, machetes and cudgels. Two-by-fours and bedposts, metal shanks and flex cuffs. Toilet-seat covers, window frames, lengths of rope, twine, piano wire, and bedsheets. The tools of murder, rape, and plain old mayhem, some of them sealed in plastic, some jammed into cardboard boxes, others just lying about with a tag and a piece of illegible scrawl attached thereto.

Goshen turned a corner and found his way to a small office. I could see the light inside. Beside the office was a black metal door. Goshen fished out a key and fit it into the door’s lock.

“Bit of history in here, Kelly.”

Goshen opened the door and clicked on a light. The room looked like it used to be a supply closet. Now it was filled up with brown boxes on one side and a row of wooden shelves on the other. I took a step inside and sneezed. Everything was covered in dust.

“See the boxes,” Goshen said.

I did.

“See the shelves.”

I did.

“This is Grime. Not all of it, mind you. We have three other rooms for that boy. But this is some good stuff.”

Goshen pulled out a stack of Girl Scout magazines once owned by John William Grime, Chicago’s very own street mime and serial killer. They looked like normal magazines, except all the Girl Scouts were naked.

“Found cartons of this stuff inside his house. Sick fuck.”

The warehouse man fingered one of the magazines, put it back down and picked up a plastic evidence bag. Inside it was a girl’s school ring.

“See this? Suzanne Carson’s ring. They found this in the attic. You remember Carson?”

I remembered Carson. Anyone who knew anything about Chicago crime would. She was Grime’s last victim. The Girl Next Door. The case that led police to the house on Hutchinson and the fifteen bodies buried underneath. Through the plastic evidence bag, Goshen played his hands across the ring.

“You come in here a lot, Ray?”

For a moment there was a touch of hunger about his lips and eyes. Then Goshen subsided and dropped Suzanne’s ring.

“My job is to keep this stuff straight. Let’s go.”

We locked up Grime’s broom closet and walked next door. Goshen’s office was small and jammed with more boxes of evidence. In one corner was a shipping cart full of handguns and rifles.

“They’re getting melted next week,” Goshen said. As if the guns needed an explanation. Which they didn’t.

The office walls were covered with a brand of grit only true despair can create. The only decoration was a pinup calendar from August 1983. The girl on the calendar looked like she was about thirteen, and she was naked. Not coquettishly naked. Disturbingly naked.

“You like her?” Goshen said. He was behind me now, chin nearly on my shoulder.

“She’s a little young, Ray.”

He shrugged, moved back around the desk, and sat down.

“Have a seat.”

From a drawer, Goshen produced an enormous green book with a red binding. He opened it and began to turn the pages, slowly and with care.

“Your girl. How old did you say she was?”

“About twenty.”

“Raped, you say?”

“I did.”

Goshen stopped turning pages.

“Did she fight?”

“Is she in the book, Ray?”

Goshen looked at me like I should be happy I wasn’t stuffed underneath Grime’s house and left there for a good while.

“How the fuck do I know? Let me take a look.”

He returned to the ledger.

“You get a lot of people coming in here?” I said.

“Sure,” Goshen said. “People like police officers. You know, the guys who actually belong here.”

I snuck a look at the pages as Goshen turned. The entries were all handwritten. The first page I saw was dated January 1, 1934. Goshen stopped turning again.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Fucking ancient. But you know what? Handwriting makes people think about what they put in. And besides, it’s pretty damn hard to disguise your scrawl, in case you ever tried. So we say, fuck the computers. Let everyone write it all out. We just keep adding pages to the ledger. And there it is.”

Goshen was flipping pages now. Each was large and took two hands to turn.

“Is this the only copy?” I said.