“Pearl Harbor, you mean?”
“No, Mrs. O’Mara. Something happened in your group, among those young guys in the picture. Something happened and they all joined the armed forces, and from what I’ve found out, they were happy to. Michael Minogue talked about it to some of his friends. He gave them the impression that he was glad to get into the army. I think something happened in 1941, and soon after that your brother and every one of his friends was in the service.”
“Everybody was in the service—it was a war.”
“I understand. But I think your young men were in a little more of a hurry to get into the fight than other people. They were in trouble, Mrs. O’Mara. I need to know what kind.”
She sat motionless and expressionless, her rigid pose announcing her unwillingness to cooperate.
“I don’t mean to pry, but you hired me to do this, to ask questions…”
“Well. I didn’t know you’d be asking these questions.”
“I ask all kinds of questions, Mrs. O’Mara, of everyone. And I keep at it till I get something. It’s not a scientific method but it works. Was your brother in trouble back then, Mrs. O’Mara?”
“Some of them that he hung around with, they were in trouble. Not Joe. He wouldn’t do anything like that.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Anything that would get him into trouble,” she snapped, and her eyes dared him to try and get more out of her.
“Fine. His friends were in trouble and he was…just a bystander?”
Her shoulders seemed to soften a little. “I think Joe was worried for a while. He thought he was in trouble, but it was mostly his friends, Mike Minogue and Fritz, and Chick Landis. And whatever they did, they all had to get out quick and they did. And poor Joe, he just went along with ’em. He was a good friend, Joe was. Loyal to his friends.”
“What did they do, Mrs. O’Mara?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. It had something to do with money. I think somebody took some money.” By the time she got to the end of it, her voice was barely audible.
“Whose money?”
“Well. I’m sure I don’t know.”
He sighed. “Yes, ma’am. And all these young guys, they all left town at about the same time?”
“All the ones that were old enough, the grown ones. The young ones, I don’t think knew anything about it. Casey Pollard and Ray Dudek—they were just…they were younger than the others.”
“And then what?”
“Oh, we heard things—you know how it is. We heard this and that, we heard somebody was looking for them…”
“The police, you mean?”
“I most certainly do not.” She impaled him for a moment on her gaze and went on. “We heard someone was after them because of…this money.” She sighed. “People do crazy things about money.”
“But you don’t think Joe had anything to do with whatever it was.”
“I just said I didn’t.”
“What about”—Tread softly here, Whelan. “The other boys in the group, they all knew what was going on. Am I right?”
“I don’t think Tommy Friesl knew much about it,” she said almost before the question was out. “Tommy didn’t have anything to do with any of these shenanigans, especially if they had to do with that Chick Landis. Tommy didn’t like Chick. I don’t know if anybody did, really.”
“So why was he part of the group?”
“He knew people. And he always had money. And liquor. Even when none of us was old enough to drink, Chick had liquor. He was carrying a flask when he was fifteen years old, Mr. Whelan.” She punctuated this information with a sharp nod, clearly sending Mr. Chick Landis to hell on the next flight, at least in her mind’s eye. “Tommy never liked him. In one of his letters, he told me Chick caused the whole thing.”
“But he didn’t tell you what it was?” Whelan asked, hoping he was hiding his exasperation.
“No. He just said that Landis was the cause of all the, you know, the trouble.”
The trouble. To Whelan’s grandmother, “the Trouble” had meant something more significant, the Easter Rising and the Irish civil war, the Black and Tans. God only knew what it meant to Mrs. O’Mara.
“And then, you know, the letters stopped coming and he was gone. I wrote him all through the war, sometimes I wrote him a letter every day, all through the war. And then he was gone. France, they buried him in. He’s buried in France.”
She said the last four words very softly, not fully resigned to it yet after all these years. He found himself wondering how long she’d had to wait for O’Mara to come along and take her mind off her young soldier.
“I’m really sorry to be digging around like this.”
“Oh, no, it’s all right. You’re just doing your job, like you said.” She composed her features and sipped at her tea, and Whelan could see the visible effort of will involved. Once more he reminded himself to take her a little more seriously.
“I know it must seem strange, my asking about all these things that may or may not have anything to do with Joe, but I have to do it. Trying to find someone who hasn’t been seen in many years is a tall order. I have to look at everything, no matter how odd it may seem, even to me.”
“I understand,” she said, but there was grave doubt in her voice.
“I was wondering if there was someone else that he was close to back then, somebody other than the guys in that picture. Someone he might have gotten in touch with—friends, acquaintances, distant relatives.”
“Nobody.”
“How about a girl?”
“Oh, Joe wasn’t really much of a ladies’ man. Not like some of the other boys—Michael Minogue and Tommy Moran, they were the best-looking boys. Ray Dudek was very handsome, but he…he was younger. The only girl Joe ever went out with back then was Betty Henke, and that never amounted to anything.”
He remembered Landis naming the three young women in the photo, including the young Maggie Colleran.
“A friend of yours?”
“Oh sure. We were in school together. She married a Swede.”
“Is she still…” He caught himself about to say “alive,” and switched to “in town?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Whelan. I haven’t seen or heard from her in…oh, it must be twenty years. We used to go out together to parties and the movies, things like that. I remember we had a party on VJ-day, all of us, over at Johnny Van Horn’s on Roscoe. That was a big hall with a bar and a dance floor and—”
“I remember it. My parents took me to a couple of family parties there. A wedding, too, one time.”
“You grew up around here?”
“When I was very small, we lived about four blocks from here. On Clybourn.”
Mrs. O’Mara blinked slowly and seemed to look at him with new interest. “Anyhow, she was at that party. She got engaged a few months after that. She was a very nice girl, Betty, but Joe wasn’t interested in getting married just then and Betty wanted a family. So she married this fellow. He was a Swede, I think. Maybe a Norwegian. I get them all confused.”
“I think it confuses them, too. So you’re not in touch with her.”
“No, but you can look her up in the book. Torgeson, her name is now. Her husband had some kind of strange name like Larry. It wasn’t Larry, though.”
“Lars?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed irritated. “Maybe that was it. Lars. The names people give their children.”
“I think it’s common over there.”
“I never heard of any Lars in the Bible.”
“The Swedes don’t care. And what about the rest of them, Mrs. O’Mara—what happened to the boys when they came back?”
“Well, nothing. I never heard any more about the trouble, whatever it was. The ones that came back, most of them settled down, went back to work. That’s when they were going to start their business, Joe and Mike Minogue. But it never happened.”
“Do you know why?”
�
��Oh, a lot of things. See, they wanted to open a tavern. There’s good money to be made in a tavern. But you need a liquor license for that, and they couldn’t get one, at least not here.”
“Did he say why? I assume he had enough money.”
Mrs. O’Mara gave him a look that meant, You are a mooncalf, and then said, “You had to know somebody to get one, Mr. Whelan. That part never changes. You have to know somebody. And you have to know people to pass all the inspections. Joe knew a few people but there were other tavern owners around the neighborhood that didn’t want any competition. They would have made it hard for a couple of boys starting a new one. So they just did this and that for a while, and saved their money. Then they just left town.”
“It’s still that way to some extent, Mrs. O’Mara, and the number of liquor licenses is strictly limited. Now somebody has to give one up for a new place to get one.”
Something was missing: more than likely, she was leaving something out, whether intentionally or because it was painful to her. He sipped at his tea and waited for a moment, conscious of Mrs. O’ Mara watching him.
“Mrs. O’Mara,” he began, pretending to study the delicate floral pattern in her china, “I don’t know for sure, but if it was my dream to open a tavern and I’d just come back from years in the service, I think it would take a little more to start me thinking about leaving town. And if you proved to me that I just flat out couldn’t open a tavern, for whatever reason”—now he met her eyes—“I’d find another kind of business to open. I wouldn’t leave town over that. I think the thing that drove these kids into the army in 1941 is the same thing that eventually drove your brother and Michael Minogue out of town for good.”
“No.” She stared at him for a moment. “That was all finished, that trouble. And Joe didn’t want to open another business, he wanted to be a saloon owner. It was what he’d always wanted, a tavern, his own tavern.” Her face reddened and she stiffened slightly in the big chair. There was nothing else in her face to indicate her change in mood, but he’d gotten to her.
“He was a young man; he was a bachelor with a dollar in his pocket and he could go where he pleased. He had no wife—I already told you he didn’t have any girlfriends, not really. He tried to start seeing Betty Henke again, but she was already seeing this”—she waved a hand irritably—“this Norwegian, and I think that’s when he realized he had to get serious about settling down or she was gonna marry this other boy. And he wasn’t interested in marrying her. And then that terrible…thing happened to Ray Dudek. It was a bad time for all of us.”
It looked to Whelan as though she would go on, but she was slightly out of breath, and she stopped suddenly and picked up her tea. She did not look at him as she sipped at it.
“Mrs. O’Mara, I’m just trying to make certain that whatever these young guys did back then didn’t continue to dog your brother.” She set down her tea and said nothing. “And Ray Dudek is the man who was killed, you told me.”
She nodded and seemed reluctant to add anything, then simply said, “In a holdup.” He gave her a long silence and she filled it. “They stabbed him for his wallet. They didn’t have to kill him, not for the few dollars he had. Just back from overseas, he wasn’t even out of the service yet. He was in his white uniform. In Riverview, it happened, Mr. Whelan. The poor boy went to Riverview in his uniform and somebody killed him for his wallet. People are crazy, Mr. Whelan.”
“Did the police ever charge anyone?”
“No. They never caught them. Everybody said it was kids. Some of the boys said maybe it was a fight.”
“A fight?”
“Ray was always fighting. He had a terrible temper and he was pretty tough, he came from a very tough home. Not a good home at all. Joe thought Ray just got into a fight and the ones that killed him just took his wallet because it was there.”
Whelan sat back onto the fat sofa and let it play in his mind: he could see it happening. A quick-tempered guy, good with his hands, running into somebody that said something about the uniform, maybe. Words exchanged, a couple of quick punches thrown, and the other guy pulls out a knife when he realizes he’s picked one with the wrong sailor. He shook his head.
“What a place for a murder—Riverview.”
“We used to go there at least once a week before the war, a bunch of us girls. Like a big party, it was. We would meet there and go on the rides. The big roller coasters and the Ferris wheel and the tunnel of love—only they called it the Mill on the Floss. We loved the rides. Do you remember Riverview, Mr. Whelan?”
“Sure. Actually, I’m haunted by it. I’ve never come across another place like it.”
“It was a grand place. Like a dreamworld, it was. The rides and the sideshow and the little monkeys that drove those tiny cars. And sometimes we’d try to get a beer in the beer garden but they wouldn’t always serve us. Even when we didn’t have money, we’d go. You could always afford to get into Riverview, it only cost a nickel then.”
Whelan was about to make a light remark when the change in her tone stopped him cold.
“I never went there after that. I don’t think any of us did. They found him behind Aladdin’s Castle. June of 1946, it was. The end of June. It was a Thursday, all the rides were two cents or five cents.” Mrs. O’Mara looked past Whelan and her eyes lost their focus. “I never went there after that,” she repeated, and this time she shuddered.
“And soon after that, your brother left town with Michael Minogue.”
“Yes.”
“Was your brother very close to Ray Dudek?”
“The younger ones all liked Joe, Mr. Whelan. He was kind of a big brother to them, he took them places and bought them things, taught them how to play ball, things like that. He liked Ray Dudek. They weren’t close, but I know he was upset about Ray’s killing. He said he’d always worried that Ray Dudek would have trouble in life.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“Oh, just his temper, like I said. And Ray took chances and lived wild. He was a great one for taking chances. He said taking chances made life interesting.”
“He told you that?”
“He told Joe. We didn’t—he was younger. I didn’t have much to say to Ray. He was a nice boy, though.”
Whelan couldn’t see any other angles to push. He set down his cup and saucer and got to his feet.
“You’re leaving already, Mr. Whelan?”
He wanted to laugh. A moment ago, the old lady had probably been thinking of tossing him out on his ear for impugning her brother, and now she didn’t want to lose his company. No, he thought, not his company—any company.
“I have to, but I’ll probably stop by again as questions occur to me. For the moment, you’re my only real source of information on Joe. I will be trying to look up a couple of the people from the old days, though.”
“Good God, you found some of them?”
“Yes. Chick Landis, and I’ve got an address—”
Mrs. O’Mara wrinkled her nose at the mention of Landis. “And what did he say? Landis?”
“Not much. I’m afraid. And I’ve got an address for a Herb Gaynor, though I don’t know if it’s the right one.”
“Herb Gaynor,” she repeated. She blinked at Whelan. “I thought he was dead,” she said in a flat voice.
“Might not be the right one, like I said. But I’ll get back to you if I turn up anything.”
“Thank you, Mr. Whelan. And I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”
“Don’t thank me till I’ve done something. And thanks for the tea.”
“Oh, that. Well, you’re welcome to it. Anytime.”
She showed him to the door and waited outside till he pulled out, and it occurred to him that she wanted a better look at his car.
He sighed. Maybe she’ll think it’s the automotive equivalent of sensible shoes.
Whelan hit the horn and she waved again and he drove away. He was almost relieved to be out of her little window into the past, and now
he understood what it was that bothered him even as it fascinated him. It was his past as well, and the places, the street names and the events were the ones he could still hear his family talking about at dinners and parties thirty years ago. His grandparents had lived in the projects a stone’s throw from Mrs. O’Mara’s front stairs, his aunts and uncles on both sides had lived around here. He thought of his mother’s fat, rain-warped photo album somewhere on a shelf in a closet of his home. The album was stuffed with hundreds of old black-and-whites relating the youth of his parents and their circle. He made a mental note to look for the beach picture of his parents and their friends. The beach in the picture might even have been North Avenue Beach.
It suddenly struck him like a blow that there was actually a chance that some of his relatives, perhaps his parents, had known some of the people in Mrs. O’Mara’s photo, although Whelan’s own photo predated Mrs. O’Mara’s by a few years.
At the first light, Whelan lit a cigarette. At times, he was obsessed with the past, and Mrs. O’Mara’s photograph fascinated him, as did the harsh fates awaiting so many of the people in it. In two days of carrying the picture around, he had succeeded only in generating more questions. He knew he was going to have trouble letting go of this one till he’d learned what had caused the whole bunch to scatter.
Now, as he drove up Damen, he forced himself to concentrate on what he’d learned from his morning’s work. He wondered what the old woman had made of his conversation with Chick Landis. Whelan was certain she would have noticed the same thing that Whelan had, not what Landis had said but what he’d carefully omitted.
Whelan could see Landis looking at the photograph, he heard the nervous pause after Joe Colleran’s name, and he could hear Landis ticking off the names, all the names but one. All but the most dramatic of them all, the one murdered as a young man. Landis hadn’t mentioned Ray Dudek.
Eight
On his way back from Mrs. O’Mara’s, he stopped at Man-Jo-Vin’s for a late lunch and ordered what he considered the house special, a greasy double cheeseburger and onion rings. The cheeseburger passed all the various tests for a great cheeseburger: it dripped grease and melted cheese, and pieces of relish and onion dropped onto his napkin from it. You could somehow taste the grill and most of the two thousand–odd things that had been cooked on its much-scraped surface.
The Riverview Murders Page 10