The Riverview Murders

by Michael Raleigh

  Riordan read from the card. “Uh, St. Joseph’s. Guess that figures. More Irishmen there than County Galway. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s all I needed. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Riordan chuckled. “I have, huh? If you say so.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Uh…” He could hear Riordan scrambling for something to keep him on the phone.

  “What do you want to know, Mr. Riordan?”

  “This has something to do with Mike, right?”

  “It might. If I find out anything. I’ll call.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Whelan thought about calling Bauman and decided he wasn’t ready to complicate his day. Instead, he picked up the phone book and in seconds had learned that there was a North Side man listed as J. Hoegstra. The address given was 2624 W. Belmont. Just below was another listing—same address and phone number but the name here was Hoegstra’s Lucky Strike.

  Sounds like a gin mill to me, Whelan thought.

  The tavern was still there, just across the river and a short stroll to Area Six. The cops probably answered calls at this one on foot. It was a tavern whose days were numbered. A world-weary and much-abused black Cadillac was parked directly in front: a great dark aircraft carrier of a car. a car from the days when it had been a sign of status if your car guzzled gas, a car with fins that suggested an imminent takeoff or perhaps just a designer who drank.

  Whelan pulled up behind the Caddy and got out. He paused for a moment to study the old car: rust was having its way with the door panels and the heavy body sagged toward the driver’s side, as though the shocks and suspension had given in to the weight of the driver.

  The building was a companion piece to the car: a soul mate in brick, it belonged on the same block as the sagging wreck where Fritz Pollard made his living. Whelan looked at the cracks in the masonry, the tapepatched windows, the crumbling wooden stairs leading to the upper floor. A quick glance at the dirt-clouded windows showed that there was no apartment above. If this was Hoegstra’s address, he lived in back of the tavern. The sign hanging over the saloon door merely promised Budweiser, but the windows were painted with a pair of dice, a poker hand and the legend LUCKY’S.

  “I’ll bet,” Whelan said.

  He pushed his way in and found himself in a cave. What little light there was came from the unpainted tops of the front windows and from the blue lights at each end of the bar mirror. Even without the light, Whelan could see all the signs of rigor mortis setting in on this place. It probably cost the owner as much to pay off the building inspectors and other licensing authorities as it would have to fix the place.

  Two men were watching him. The bartender, a little stoop-shouldered man in a wrinkled white shirt, straightened up from washing glasses to squint at Whelan through the gloaming. The second man sat at the far end of the bar. He was taller, quite a bit taller, from what Whelan could make out, and he looked like a man with a buck: coat and tie, white shirt, and a razor slice of a mustache, of a type that had only been worn by guys in black-and-white movies. Whelan nodded at the bartender.

  “Not open yet,” the bartender said.

  “I’m here to see this gentleman.” Whelan kept his eyes on the bartender but saw the other man stiffen slightly.

  Whelan moved to the far end as the tall man studied him. Up close, Whelan saw a man gone to seed but clinging doggedly to the old-fashioned trappings of prosperity. His dark hair was shot with gray and his face was seamed and jowly. He’d had a rough night, a long, old-time bar owner’s night, and the purplish circles under his eyes were probably more or less permanent features of his face. There was a faint edginess to him, as though his existence was a long series of little tremors, an unending battle with the shakes. His skin was sallow, cheeks mottled by dark clusters of burst capillaries. The man’s stare dared Whelan to start a conversation, and Whelan decided on the aggressive approach.

  “You’re Mr. Hoegstra,” Whelan said.

  “So what,” the man challenged. He stared unblinking at Whelan and took a sip from what looked to be a scotch and soda. He set down his glass with an unsteady hand.

  “So you’re the person I’ve come to see.”

  “About what? You a salesman, or what?”

  Whelan leaned on the bar. “No, I’m a private detective and I’ve been looking for a man named Joseph Colleran.”

  The other man squinted slightly as though trying to place a familiar but dusty name but said nothing. “Name don’t ring a bell. So now what?”

  “Now I’ve learned that he’s dead.”

  “I’m supposed to know this guy? He drink here?”

  “No. And maybe you don’t know him. But now I’m interested in learning the how and why of it all and I’ve turned up a number of names of people he knew and that I believe you knew as well. At least in the old days.”

  “What old days?”

  “The ones around here.”

  The man started shaking his head and Whelan kept going.

  “When Riverview was up there at the corner of Belmont and Western and there was a saloon over on Clybourn called Yancey’s, and a guy looking for a game could find one, and find you there, too.” Hoegstra gave him a sharp look. “Those old days,” Whelan said.

  “That was fucking a hundred years ago. Don’t bother me with this shit.”

  “But you’re Joe Hoegstra and you hung out at Yancey’s.”

  “Maybe I did. So what? That against some fucking law I don’t know about?”

  “You ran a game there.”

  “Who’d you get that from?”

  “A couple people who had occasion to know you in the course of their law-enforcement careers.”

  Hoegstra stared at him with his yellowed, bloodless eyes and sipped at his drink. “Get your ass—”

  Whelan held up a hand. “But I don’t want to talk about anything you did in those days, Mr. Hoegstra. I want to run these names by you. Joseph Colleran—”

  “I tolja I don’t know anybody by that—”

  “Ray Dudek, Michael Minogue, Fritz Pollard—”

  Hoegstra clambered off his stool and leaned forward, a clenched fist on the bar, and Whelan never took his eyes off the man’s face as he dropped the last name.

  “Chick Landis.”

  “You lousy asshole.”

  “Take it easy, you don’t look so good. What can you tell me about Chick Landis.”

  “He’s a piece of shit. He ain’t worth my spit.”

  “I got the impression he was a sort of business hotshot.”

  “So he’s a smart thief, so what?”

  “I need to know about Landis. Or about you and Landis, or you and any of the others I just mentioned—I’m not fussy. Give me something I can take back to my client and maybe I won’t have to bother you anymore.”

  “This is all a thousand years ago, I got nothing to do with any of ’em anymore. I don’t even know most of these people.”

  “You know Landis. And I think you knew the people he knew. I think you did business. And I think you know about another guy—Ray Dudek.”

  A wild unfocused look came into Hoegstra’s eyes. “Yeah, I know Landis. And let me tell you something about him: there’s one guy with more sense than you got. He wouldn’t let his ass get caught in my saloon, not unless he had a gun, that slimy bastard.”

  “Still have a hard-on about that little misunderstanding after the card game, huh?”

  Hoegstra blinked. His long gaunt body seemed to unfold and he craned his neck forward until Whelan could smell his tavern breath. For a second he glared at Whelan, wetting his lips. Then he nodded. “I owe people for a lot of shit. And I got a long memory. I’ll bury ’em all, all those bastards that screwed me. And Landis, I’ll see him in the fucking sewer where he belongs.”

  “Well, I paid Landis a visit the other day. And right now I’d have to say he’s doing just fine.” Whelan pretended to assess the dark little saloon. “He thinks all you guys from t
he old days are just small-time. That’s what he said—‘small-time.’”

  Hoegstra leaned on his bar, fist clenched. He had big bony hands and the marks of knuckles broken in violence more than once. “You think he’s big shit, huh? Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. Talk’s fucking cheap, mister. I do things my way, and before I’m through, I’ll have him by the balls, him and all them other ones. And you, too, if you’re one of them.”

  “Can’t hang that one on me, sir. I wasn’t even born when they jumped you.”

  “Get outta my saloon before I bust your ass.”

  “I’ve got all kinds of old men threatening me these days and frankly, sir, it’s beginning to piss me off.” He nodded to the bartender and left.

  He took a last look at the cadaverous tavern building and decided it suited the dead-eyed man in the dark coat who ran it.

  Landis was wearing a blue suit this time, an almost perfect match to the one his son was wearing. Father-and-son outfits, Whelan thought. Cute.

  The streetwise office manager looked at him over her half-glasses and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Mr. Whelan, isn’t it?”

  “It is. I just need to ask him a quick question.”

  “One moment.” She hit a com-line button and announced Whelan. A moment later, she looked up at him. “He says he’s busy.”

  “Me, too. I’m very busy. He wouldn’t believe how busy I am,” Whelan said as he pushed past her into Landis’s office.

  Landis frowned and half-rose from his seat. “Hey, what the hell! This is an office, what the hell do you call this—”

  Whelan closed the door behind him. “Quit shouting. This should take two minutes, maybe less.” A quick glance through the glass wall told Whelan that the kid in the fine blue suit was shooting concerned looks in the direction of his father’s office. Whelan shook his head quickly and waved the kid away.

  “I just talked to an old acquaintance of yours—Joe Hoegstra.”

  “I knew you weren’t looking for nobody when you came here. You’re here to bust my balls, I knew it…”

  “I’m not interested in you or Hoegstra. I don’t care if he’s having your baby. I’m here to find out things to help me locate another man. But there are holes and you’ve caused some of them. Tell me about you and Hoegstra.”

  “He’s nothing to me. That bullshit was all forty, forty-five years ago.”

  “You had a problem, the two of you.”

  “That’s right. But it’s all in the past. I’m a grown man. I’m a businessman. Hoegstra, he was a common street punk. He was a low-class hood. I don’t even know what that old shit is doing now.”

  “Thinking about you, for one. Your trouble with Hoegstra, that’s what sent you guys packing into the big war. But tell me this: is that why Ray Dudek had to be killed? Because of what you guys did with Hoegstra?”

  “Dudek got robbed. Somebody robbed him and they stuck ’im.”

  “What if he wasn’t robbed?”

  “Then I don’t know a thing about it.”

  Whelan shook his head. “I think you know something about it. You were there.”

  He watched Landis’s face go from confidence to confusion, and he waited.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know you were there.”

  “Who told you that crock of shit?”

  “A police officer who would know. They questioned you. I think you were even a suspect, Chick.”

  Whelan allowed himself to enjoy the new look on Landis’s face, the one that said he was impressed.

  “You were there that night when Dudek was killed. When we talked the first time, I didn’t know that. I showed you that old picture; you didn’t even mention Ray Dudek.”

  “So I missed him, so what? There’s about two dozen people in that shot.”

  “No. You named every single person in the picture except Ray Dudek.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that you know a lot about the night Ray Dudek was killed and you don’t want anybody to know. And I think you ought to tell somebody.”

  “And I think you oughta go back to whoever you been talking to. Get the hell out of my office.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Yeah, you are. Excuse me.” Landis hit the com line and then said, “Send Ronny in.” He was staring at Whelan with a little half smile on his face when the office door opened and the younger Landis entered, pocket handkerchief and all.

  “Ron? This is Mr. Whelan. He needs to be shown the door, and make sure he don’t come back. I’m too busy for this shit.”

  “Okay, Dad.” The kid gave Whelan a belligerent smile and indicated the open door with a nod. “Out.”

  The younger Landis was a big boy, wide in the shoulders and obviously fond of weights and muscle-building apparatus.

  “All right,” Whelan said.

  As he slid past the younger man, he felt a hard shove in the small of his back and he started to plunge out into the hall. Whelan grabbed a desk to stop himself from falling and turned to face the kid. Young Landis came at him, flushed and smiling and having a fine time.

  “Don’t put hands on me again, friend.”

  “Out!” the kid said, and took two quick steps toward Whelan. He grabbed Whelan by the back of his arm and half-pushed, half-carried him toward the door. Whelan tried to tug his arm loose and heard the seam of his jacket giving way.

  He put a hard shoulder into the other man and when Landis lurched to one side, Whelan grabbed Landis’s tie with both hands and yanked hard. The kid was attempting to right himself and Whelan moved behind him, still tugging on the tie as he wrapped it around the kid’s throat. Landis’s face was red and he swung his big fist at the air around him as he fought to loosen the stricture around his throat. He half-turned and began whacking at Whelan’s hand. Whelan gave a final hard pull and then let go suddenly, throwing a quick forearm into the back of the kid’s head for good measure. Landis fell back onto a desk, slid down the side and onto the floor, where he sputtered and fought his tie and collar for air.

  Whelan looked at him. “Free advice. Champ: don’t pick fights with strangers, but if you’re determined to be an asshole, never, ever pick a fight when you’re wearing a tie.”

  Chick Landis stormed out of his office. “Hey, what the hell! You punk, get your ass out of my office.”

  Whelan pointed at young Landis, who was getting to his feet. “Your trained monkey put his hands on me. There was a brief scuffle.”

  The elder Landis took a step in Whelan’s direction.

  “Oh, come on, Landis. How messy do you guys want to make this? I’m leaving—I’m just not leaving with your kid’s oily hands on my jacket.” Whelan pretended to study his sleeve. “What is that, acne medication?” He shrugged, turned and made for the door.

  “We’re gonna call the cops.”

  “Somehow, I doubt it,” Whelan said without looking back.

  In his car, he gave Landis Realty a final glance and told himself he’d be back. An idea was beginning to form, and there was a special place in it for Chick Landis.

  At five he found himself at a window table in Best Steak House at the corner of Wilson and Broadway, a Greek-run diner that boasted cheap prices and the world’s smallest bar. The diner ordered his food cafeteria-style and took his tray to a table. The owner, a dapper man with an Errol Flynn mustache, dispensed mixed drinks and pitchers of beer from his tiny bar off to one side. Whelan sipped at a cup of coffee and watched the other patrons: three construction workers sharing a couple of pitchers and an American Indian family eating chicken.

  He scanned the pages of the Sun-Times, from time to time glancing out the window at the passersby.

  I need a break. I need mail. I need something to cheer me up.

  He looked at the pullout section of the Friday paper and put it aside, then suddenly picked it up again. The cover story of the entertainment section was “Chicago’s Ethnic Heritage”; the pullout contain
ed stories on ethnic festivals, parades, shops, neighborhoods, and, of course, eateries.

  Quickly, he paged through the section, ripping several pages in his haste, and then, in the center, he found what he was looking for, a story with the byline of Kermit Noyes.

  “Oh boy,” Whelan said.

  The story ran for two and a half columns below a grainy picture of Gus and Rashid, both grinning maniacally behind the counter of the House of Zeus and looking like Persian ax murderers. According to the story accompanying the photo, Gus and Rashid had, in the opinion of the reviewer, much in common with ax murderers. The story bore the title “Fear and Loathing at the House of Zeus” and opened with the most memorable first line of journalism Whelan had come across since Grantland Rice’s famed line about Notre Dame football: “Out of the gray November sky, the four horsemen rode again…”

  This one began “The vomiting has subsided, but the tube is still in my left arm.”

  Whelan scanned the review quickly and began laughing, once or twice looking up, embarrassed, to find the other customers staring at him. When they realized he was laughing at the newspaper, they decided it was all right. He went back to the beginning and started over.

  The vomiting has subsided, but the tube is still in my left arm. My fever has gone down and the shakes that were in some ways the worst of it have calmed down. Two days of diarrhea have left me weak and seven pounds lighter, and my stomach aches when I breathe deeply. My appetite has left me, and when it returns—if it returns—I have no doubt I will develop a deep craving for white bread and steamed rice, lukewarm tea and saltines. They say I might be able to eat solid food again by next week. Then again, I might not.

  I have eaten in a restaurant so bizarre that I thought I was being put on, a place where the gyros wears an iridescent purple sheen, where the souvlaki smells like a hooked rug after a long rain, where the spinach and cheese pie has the consistency of window caulking, where the lettuce looks like the leavings of the first frost, where the hamburger goes from a dark gray as it is slapped, still teeming with microscopic life, onto the grill to a dark green color when “cooked,” if I may use so misleading a term. I have eaten in a “Greek” restaurant in Uptown run by a pair of Iranian song-and-dance men without the faintest notion of cleanliness, freshness, or sanitation.