“Reza, huh? Calling out the big guns again.”
“Sure. He is number-one lawyer. Maybe we gonna sue this guy, huh?”
“It’s the American way, guys. May the best man win.”
It was still raining when he got home, and it appeared that the rain would last till the end of time, but there was mail waiting, one piece of mail. It was a letter in a tiny envelope, and two-thirds of it seemed to be covered by postage, odd postage of queens and alien vistas, and he tore the envelope apart like a dog falling on raw meat. Inside he found a short note on beige paper.
Dear Paul,
I hope you get this before I come home. I’m having a wonderful time, at least during the day. You’d love the castles, you’d love the pubs, you’d talk to old English guys on all the corners. At night I don’t have such a good time. I feel like I’m the only person in the world.
I believe this means I’m in love. We must talk.
See you soon.
Love, S.
He stared at it for a moment and then found himself taking a quick, stealthy sniff at the stationery, seeking a trace of her perfume. He thought he could just make it out, faintly, like background music.
She says she’s in love, he told himself.
The rain never did let up for the rest of that day. It ran off the awnings in sheets, came out of gutters in little waterspouts, collected in deep wide puddles. The first windfall of leaves had already blocked the sewers so that sidestreets all over the North Side turned into wading ponds. Whelan went out once for groceries, soaked his clothes and his shoes and didn’t mind at all. Several times he caught himself in the act of humming.
In bed that night, he listened to a jazz program in which a disc jockey interviewed a woman who’d been a vocalist with the Dorseys and Artie Shaw and Tex Beneke. He tried to concentrate on the little anecdotes that the woman told about the great times with the big horn players, but he found himself remembering Dutch Sturdevant’s account of the man watching the office. There was something about Dutch’s story that bothered him, something that stuck out like a frayed end. But if he was right, that man wouldn’t be watching anything anymore: that man was on a gurney in the morgue.
The singer was talking about being caught in the rain with an avuncular bandleader who gallantly took off his coat to protect her. He decided to go to sleep. As he drifted off, he was thinking about that last anecdote, about the bandleader and the young singer being caught in the rain in Omaha.
Fourteen
On Sunday he woke up with the conviction that the world was once more a fine place. His good humor was tempered by a darker image that had crept into his mind just as sleep stole in, Dutch Sturdevant’s image of a man in an overcoat watching his office.
He’s not watching anyone anymore, he told himself, but he wasn’t sold.
He had breakfast at the Subway Donut Shop—eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon and toast. He sat in the window and wiped the steam from the glass with the sleeve of his shirt. He paged idly through the Sun-Times, half-noticing the news stories until the paper caught his attention for the second time in as many days. This time, it told him that the dead man from the lakefront had been identified.
He had to read it twice to verify what he was seeing. The paper told him that the man was Raymond Dudek, aged sixty. No address was given.
“No,” he said aloud. “No, it’s not Ray Dudek.”
He returned to his house and made a fast call. After three rings, Walter Meehan intoned “Hello” into the phone.
“Good morning, Mr. Meehan.”
“Paul Whelan? Three times in one week I get to talk to Paul Whelan. Oh, what a good boy am I!”
“The pleasure is mine, Walter, but I’m sorry to be calling on a Sunday.”
“It’s fine, Paul. I’m retired, all my days feel like Sundays. What can I do for you?”
“A man was found shot to death down at the lakefront on Friday night. According to the paper, he has now been identified as Raymond Dudek.”
Whelan waited through Walter’s long, judicious pause. “And coming just after the death of a boyhood friend of the other Raymond Dudek, you aren’t willing to accept coincidence as an explanation—fate having a little fun with you.”
“No. Tell me, Walter, was there any question about the identity of that dead sailor in Riverview?”
“None. Someone from his family identified him, an uncle or cousin or someone like that. I never heard any question about the boy’s identity. The funeral was open casket, so there was no doubt at all. It wouldn’t attract much notice now, but it was a fairly big story then, Paul. Someone would have said something if the man in the casket hadn’t been who we thought he was.”
Whelan was silent for a moment. “What would Walter Meehan, homicide detective of the old Chicago Police Department, do about this?”
“I don’t know. He would be puzzled, as he was almost every time he investigated a murder. He was a stubborn, singularly untalented man, so he would ask questions, over and over, of the same people and write down what he learned and sit staring at it in his room. Until he got something. Nowadays, Paul, you have another problem.”
“What’s that?”
He could almost see Walter deliberating, choosing the perfect word. “A terrible randomness that we didn’t have. In my day, if we found a body, we knew there was a killer somewhere in the vicinity. But you don’t know that. Your dead men on the lakefront might be the victims of total strangers, people passing through in stolen cars, madmen. Your killer might be heading west on the interstate.”
“Yes. But I’m pretty sure this one isn’t random, it’s got roots that go way down. And I don’t think my guy is leaving town.”
Walter took a long, deep breath. “Then there are only the two possibilities: that you have talked to the killer already, or that you’ll probably talk to him eventually. Am I making your situation more confusing?”
“No. You’re saying what I already thought. I just wanted to be able to rule out the possibility that the man back there outside Aladdin’s Castle was a ringer. Thank you, Walter.”
“Good luck, Paul.”
He spent the afternoon doing exactly what Walter Meehan had said—jotting down what he knew and staring at it, looking for patterns and finding none.
Whelan shaded his eyes and peered in through the dirty window. Inside the Alley Cat, time appeared to have come to a halt. A drunk was sleeping in the window, the same drunk who always seemed to be sleeping there. At the far end, the bartender was wearing the same rumpled white shirt he always wore and sitting on a stool, craning his head back up to stare at the TV. The picture on the set was so faint that the barman could have been watching a blank screen. Detective Albert Bauman was sitting in the exact center of the long, dark bar and staring straight ahead of him. Spread out before him were all his toys: a half-empty shot glass, a bottle of Beck’s, a tin ashtray piled high with the bent ends of Bauman’s vile little cigars and emitting a little column of dark smoke.
No one turned when Whelan entered the bar.
Maybe they’re all dead, he thought.
He pulled out a stool next to Bauman and slid onto it. He tossed a ten on the bar and lit a cigarette, then looked at Bauman.
“Living in that fast lane again, huh, Albert?”
“Hey, sometimes it gets exciting: a guy died in here once.”
“Last time I was here, there was a fight in progress and a guy on the floor. I think it was that guy in the window.”
“Gibby. Yeah, he don’t even drink much, he just has a couple and he passes out for the hell of it.” He turned and called to the bartender. “Hey, Ralph. When you get off your break, we got a thirsty guy here.”
Ralph appeared startled, and he tripped climbing down from the stool.
“He’ll have what I’m having, Ralph.” He turned to Whelan. “Gotta make it simple for old Ralph. He gets a little exercised now and then.” Bauman waited as Ralph filled both shot glasses and set up a Beck’s in front of Whelan.
“Take it outta here,” Bauman said, indicating his money on the bar. When Ralph had taken a couple of bills, Bauman saluted Whelan with his shot. “Salud.”
“Slainte,” Whelan said, and drank half the shot off.
“Enough exchanging pleasantries. You’re here to bug me about that stuff you asked for.”
“If you’ve got anything for me.”
Bauman gave him a long sleepy look, then recited, “Your guy Joseph Colleran died as the result of injuries in a hit-and-run.”
Whelan looked at him for a second and then nodded slowly.
“You knew that already? And you had me spinnin’ my—”
“No, I didn’t know it. I just suspected it.”
Bauman picked up his beer, took a long pull, and set it down again. “This guy Hoegstra, he’s a hood—small-time hood, but genuine. He did time in Statesville, twice. You want his sheet?”
“No. The times, if you’ve got ’em.”
“Come on, Whelan.”
“Nineteen forty-six. I need to know if he was on the street or inside in 1946.”
“We sent him away in ‘49. Again in ’55.”
“Thanks. Well, one good turn deserves another. Got something for you. About Raymond Dudek.”
Bauman’s eyes narrowed and he said nothing.
“By the way, I think you had the name when we talked yesterday.”
“So what? What do you want to give me about Raymond Dudek?”
“The scoop. The skinny. That he was a boyhood friend of Michael Minogue and of the guy I’ve been looking for, Joseph Colleran. Oh, and that he’s been dead for about forty years. How’s that for starters?”
Bauman gave him an unblinking stare, and Whelan thought that this was probably how Bauman looked just before he decked somebody.
“Talk to me,” Bauman said, and it wasn’t a request.
“The body of Raymond Dudek was found on a hot summer night in Riverview, in June of 1946.” Something changed in Bauman’s eyes, but he waited. “He had been stabbed to death in an apparent robbery attempt. They found the body behind Aladdin’s Castle.”
“Who says?”
“Just about everybody who knew him. And one of the investigating officers.”
Bauman lit up a little cigar and raised his eyebrows.
“Walter Meehan,” Whelan said.
Bauman looked at his cigar. “The great Walter Meehan. When he was still a uniform.”
“He was a sergeant at the time.”
Bauman blew acrid smoke into the air. “Could be two guys with the same name. Probably half a million Dudeks in Warsaw. Probably half a million Polacks along Milwaukee Avenue named Dudek.”
“Right. Ray Dudek was a boyhood friend of Michael Minogue, and now you find this corpse—what, five hundred yards from where Michael Minogue was killed, and it’s supposed to be coincidence?”
Bauman studied his cigar ash and waited.
“What identification did the body have?” Whelan asked.
“Same kind a lot of these old guys have. Lot of ’em that served in World War Two, they still carry their discharge papers. That’s what this guy had on him. His discharge papers.”
“Nothing else?”
“ID you mean? Nah, that’s it.”
“Autopsy?”
“Autopsy? Whaddya think, they’re miracle workers?”
“I think it’s a homicide that might be connected to another open case, and I think the ME got the body Friday night. Unless a cruise ship sank and flooded the morgue with dead people, I think there’s been an autopsy.”
“What do you care, Whelan? No, don’t answer. You’ll tell me about your case for the old lady and her lost brother. Okay, we got an autopsy and it told me what I knew already: the guy’s dead.”
“Cause of death?”
“Like I told you yesterday. Gunshot at close range. One shot.”
“What kind of gun?”
Bauman gave him a sardonic smile. “Artillery. We got us a serious shooter here, Whelan, wanted to make sure: used a forty-five automatic.”
Whelan thought of what Gerry Costello had said. He took a sip of his beer and said casually, “Was there anything in the report?”
“You got an idea who this is, don’t you?”
“No, actually I was hoping you could tell me.”
Bauman watched him for a moment, then shrugged. “Hey, look at the bright side: we can eliminate Raymond Dudek, one way or the other.”
“And not much else. What else did the autopsy say about this guy?”
“Nothing that would help with what you’re doing. Nothing recent. Looked like he’d got himself shot up once. One leg was kinda, I don’t know, twisted. Had a buncha scars. Old war wound, I guess. ‘Consistent with shrapnel,’ is how this guy in the ME’s office puts it. He’s got a poetic streak, this guy. So, this do anything for you?”
“No.”
“So you saw Walter. How’s he doing?”
“He’s great. He likes being retired.”
“Good. He was the best I ever saw.”
“Helped me out a lot when I was trying to get started,” Whelan said.
Bauman gave him an odd smile. Two strange pupils, Whelan thought, from one great teacher.
They made small talk over another round of drinks and Whelan got up to leave.
“What’s your hurry, Snoopy?”
“I just stopped for a quick one, Bauman. Another time we can do old war stories all night. We’ll have one of our little adventures where I take you to a restaurant and we have a few pops and you get me into a brawl or some other form of street entertainment.”
“Hey, that happened once. Wasn’t my fault.”
“I gotta go.”
Bauman nodded and then added, “So Walter’s okay?”
“As far as I can tell. And he asked about you.”
“He did, huh?”
“Yeah. I think he liked you.”
“To know me is to love me, Whelan,” Bauman said, and Whelan left.
He sat for a moment in his car and thought about the autopsy information and what it told him about the dead man. He thought about why the dead man would be carrying Ray Dudek’s discharge papers, and he soon realized there was only one possible reason.
And I don’t think this guy was homeless, Bauman. I’ve got his name, his history, I think I even know where he lived.
Fritz Pollard’s truck was parked up against the weathered siding of the building, and Whelan could see one light from somewhere behind the shop. He drove by and parked halfway up the block, then made his way back to Pollard’s storefront.
Whelan walked behind the truck and peered into the side windows of the building but could see nothing. The light seemed to be coming from a hall. Coming around to the front, he saw that the storefront was also empty. He shot an uneasy look at the warped planks of the wood fence but saw no sign of the Hound from Hell. He paused a moment, then gave the heavy door a shove.
Just inside the door, he stood motionless for several seconds to let his eyes adjust to the dark. The shop smelled of fire, old fire, burnt paper perhaps, and the air inside was close. There was another odor present, masked by the burning smell, and he couldn’t quite place it.
A narrow door opened onto a long hall behind the shop and Whelan stared into it for a moment. It was here that the single light shone. He crossed the room in silence and stood listening at the doorway. There was no sound but the creaking of the old frame building fighting the wind. He stepped into the narrow hall, smelling the pungent odor of damp, ancient plaster and rotting wood, and the burnt smell became stronger. The other smell was heavy now, calling attention to itself, and it slowly dawned on him what it was.
A door at the far end probably led to the back or basement. Four rooms seemed to line the hall, and the doors to all four were open, but Whelan knew the odors were coming from the one nearest. He paused at the doorway and felt inside for the light switch, then flicked it on. A faint plume of smoke from a
small table told him where the burning smell had come from: a lighted cigarette had fallen out of an ashtray and set fire to the edges of a small spiral notebook, and the fire had blackened one corner of the book before burning itself out.
The table was set up close to a single bed, and a man sat on the floor with his back against the bed, still clothed, his head tilted to one side. He was dead, and the blood that soaked his hair and clothing and the bedclothes was the source of the other smell that Whelan had noticed.
Whelan studied the mess on the bedsheets, the blanket that sagged down to the floor, the blood that showed what had happened. Fritz Pollard had been shot while lying on the bed, shot perhaps from the doorway, and the shooter wasn’t much good at it because the shot had gotten Pollard in the right side of the chest, and he’d sat up and the shooter had probably come in and squeezed off at least three more rounds. One had caught Pollard just below the throat and another had hit him in the side of the head, and there was one in the wall just above the headboard.
Fritz Pollard had slid off the bed onto the floor and bled everywhere, especially from the throat wound. It looked as though he’d gotten up and fallen again. His bloody handprint was on the bedclothes. On the edge of the door was a partial handprint, smeared on the old paint.
Whelan went into the room, holding his breath against the blood smell, and knelt down close to Fritz Pollard. He felt the cold skin for a pulse but knew he was just going through the motions. Then he looked at the bullet holes. They were big holes, .45-caliber holes, each with its own exit hole on the other side. He stood and looked around the room. No drawers pulled hastily from their runners, no rifled papers. On the top of Fritz Pollard’s crudely painted dresser lay a small pile of cash and some keys.
He stepped out of the room to suck in less tainted air and calm his raging stomach. When he felt better, he stood at the door to the next room till he was certain he was alone. Then he found a light switch and entered and found what he’d come for. Like Fritz Pollard’s room, this room was a bedroom, a sparely furnished room where one man had slept. His outlines could still be seen on the dirty and wrinkled bedsheets. The ashtray beside this bed was as full as the one beside Fritz’s, and an empty beer bottle stood beside it. The room smelled of dirty cotton and cigarette smoke and sweat—a far cry from the terrible odors of the other room. Whelan looked around the room for something to identify the man who had slept here but didn’t really expect to find anything.
The Riverview Murders Page 21