Murder in the Charlestown Bricks: A Dermot Sparhawk Crime Novel

by Tom MacDonald

  “Did he get any offers?”

  “A full scholarship to Villanova,” he said.

  “He must have been damn good if he got a ride to Villanova.”

  “Good enough to play as a freshman.” Murphy picked up the ball. “Gage didn’t like college much. It wasn’t the academics — he’s a smart kid — it was the culture, the money, the rich kids, the fancy clothes. Gage wears T-shirts and shorts. He only lasted a year, but he passed all his courses. Too bad, he could have been a great high school coach.”

  “And then he went away.”

  “For a felony, so teaching and coaching are out.”

  Gage Lauria, the name came back to me. He was all everything when I was a boy. Murphy asked me if I wanted to see anything else and I said no. He locked the door and we went down to the bar. When we got there he took my arm.

  “It’s not easy running a rooming house,” he said. “It wears on you after a while. But I keep my place neat and bug-free. The rents are low and I’ve never evicted a man. I just wish I had the means to make the rooms nicer.”

  “I grew up in the projects eating government cheese,” I said. “If I have a roof over my head, I’m happy.”

  “Let me know if you ever need a room,” he joked.

  “You never know.” I then asked him, “Does Gage have a cell phone?”

  “I don’t think so. I assumed he used the payphone at the end of the hall.”

  I thanked Murphy and left the Aces & Eights, leaving behind the stench of booze and the pain of defeat. Only I didn’t leave it behind. I took it with me. The aura of liquor clung to me like 90-proof glue, filling my nostrils and consuming my mind. I suddenly missed the drinking days, the alluring debauchery of a whiskey spree, the excuses, the lapses, the fuck-ups. The losing side of life didn’t repulse me, but rather enticed me.

  I was in trouble.

  The fresh air didn’t help. The craving for alcohol intensified. I could feel the booze warming my gullet and easing my worries and infecting my soul. One drink couldn’t hurt. What harm could a single beer do? The desire became an obsession, and the obsession became a con. I told myself I had a right to drink, that I wasn’t that bad when I drank. In fact I was pretty damned sociable when I had a buzz on.

  But I was that bad.

  Social drinkers don’t end up bound by restraints in hospital beds. They don’t get banned from barrooms, fitted for straitjackets, prescribed Antabuse, rushed to emergency rooms. And they sure don’t think One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer should be the National Anthem. I dug out my cell phone and found a four-o’clock meeting in East Boston on Liverpool Street called the Fab Four.

  I drove to Eastie straightaway, snaking through the Ted Williams Tunnel and Maverick Square. I parked on Liverpool Street and hustled in. The speaker, an old Pisano from Orient Heights wearing a felt fedora, talked about the flaw of perfectionism, a character defect common to many alcoholics. He talked about how perfectionism leads to procrastination, and how procrastination leads to paralysis, and nothing gets done. He finished his story saying, “When I was panhandling on Dover Street, bloody, smelly, and drunk, nobody looked at me and said, ‘There stands a perfectionist.’”

  The meeting worked, I didn’t drink.

  24

  Chicago, Illinois, the City of the Broad Shoulders, home to Roger Ebert, Buddy Guy, Michael Jordan, and my father’s hero, Dick Butkus. I was going to need help in Chicago, and I was going to need it from someone plugged in, so I called Kenny Bowen. Kenny and I had worked together on a case a couple of years ago, a case that netted me a fortune in reward money.

  Kenny and I would meet at a South End jazz club called Greenburg’s Nightspot, the coolest club in the Hub, and that’s where were meeting tonight. I wanted to invite Cheyenne Starr along, because the place is so hip, but I didn’t want to insult her by asking her at the last minute. Still, I knew she’d love it.

  At eight o’clock I got in my car to meet Kenny at Greenburg’s, and as soon as I started the engine my cellphone rang. It was Cheyenne. She asked me what I was doing and I told her about my meeting with Kenny Bowen, giving her the Cliffs Notes version of the history between us. Her voice filled with energy.

  “I’d love to join you if that’s okay.” She hesitated. “Is it okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay.” Yes! “How soon can you be ready?”

  “I’m ready now,” she said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  She was waiting on the sidewalk when I pulled up, and we drove from Somerville to the South End. I said, “I’m glad you called. Greenburg’s Nightspot is tremendous. The jazz pianist is tops.” I inhaled deeply as we drove in trifling traffic. “Last night was special.”

  “For me, too.”

  “I’m glad you said that.” I parked on Columbus Avenue at Southampton Street. “Very glad.”

  The South End is quiet on this block, where it overlaps with Lower Roxbury. If you listen closely you can hear the sodium street lamps purring on the poles and the pneumatic bus doors whooshing open. Cheyenne broke my thoughts when she said, “Ester Diaz is glad to be out of her apartment, but she is still scared. She changed cellphones, because she’s afraid he might track her down using GPS.”

  “She was smart to change cell phones.”

  “She is terrified. He has some nasty friends.”

  “Don’t worry, Cheyenne.” I took her hand. “Al Barese will handle everything. Ester is safe inside Hotel Abruzzi.”

  “I know she’s safe there. There’s one more problem. The apartment is in Ester’s name. She wants to break the lease but she’s afraid of what he’ll do to her if she does.”

  “We’ll get Ester out of this jam. I’ll think of something.”

  “Thanks, Dermot. I really like Ester.”

  We went into Greenburg’s. The place hadn’t changed since my last visit. The décor was still Art Nouveau, the lighting was still pale blue, and Zack Sanders, the African American pianist, was still wearing a black tuxedo with satin lapels and tapping out jazz on his Steinway grand. Tonight he was accompanied by a tenor saxophonist, who was also African American and also in a black tux.

  Kenny Bowen was sitting at a table near the piano. I escorted Cheyenne across the room and introduced her to him, and Kenny, ever the gentleman, stood to greet her. Ruth Greenburg, the club’s owner, came to say hello. I introduced Ruth to Cheyenne, and although it wasn’t Ruth’s custom, she took our order. We asked for coffee, and Ruth went to the bar.

  “Dermot, it’s been too long. How are you doing?”

  “Plugging away.”

  We shook hands like lost brothers. Kenny is a Lakota-Cherokee Indian and a big man, as in Olympic shot-putter big. To enhance his imposing presence, he sports a shaved head, which sits atop his tree-trunk neck like a totem. He is an Ivy League graduate and a Rhodes Scholar. That is to say, Kenny can outsmart you as well as outmuscle you.

  “How’s the consulting business?” I asked.

  “Busy,” he said. “Still investigating questionable insurance claims, still thwarting crooks, still making sure my clients aren’t getting bilked by frauds.”

  “And the recovery part?” I asked.

  “Nothing as big as the case we worked on.”

  Kenny’s biggest clients are insurance companies, who hire him to recover stolen items that are insured by the company. That’s when we first met. We worked together to recover $100,000 bills that were stolen from a money show in Boston. That’s when I hit the jackpot, working with him in recovery. Kenny made out equally on the deal.

  “So,” Kenny said, cutting out the small talk, “bring me up to date.”

  I told him about Gertrude Murray and Victor Diaz. I told him about Skeeter Gruskowski and Gage Lauria, two men with no money who left for Chicago in a Corvette. I recounted Skeeter’s Foxwood story, a tale that sounded absurd to me. When I fini
shed, Kenny asked me what I wanted from him.

  “I am almost certain that Skeeter killed Gert Murray for her coin collection,” I said. “If he didn’t murder her, I think he knows who did. I’m going after him, and I’m going to need help tracking him down.”

  “I see.” Kenny pushed aside his drink. “I’d be glad to help you, but shouldn’t the police be handling this? They can track down Gruskowski and Lauria much faster than I can.”

  Ruth Greenburg delivered the coffee and left the table.

  “The police aren’t interested in Gruskowski and Lauria,” I said. “The police have their man, Victor Diaz. They are convinced that Diaz and his accomplice murdered Gert Murray. As far as the police are concerned, the job is done.”

  “So the police don’t know about Skeeter and Gage.”

  “They know about Skeeter because he called 911 the night Gert got murdered, but they don’t see him as a suspect.”

  “He called 911, interesting.” Kenny sat back. “That’s a nice piece of misdirection on his part if he’s involved in the killing.”

  Kenny caught the eye of a cocktail waitress and tapped his empty glass with a fingernail the size of a guitar pick. She went to the bar.

  “I need help finding Skeeter and Gage,” I said. “They went to Chicago, and that’s where I’ll start looking.”

  Kenny swirled the melting ice cubes on the bottom of his glass. “So, you think Skeeter could be the killer.” He paused and stopped swirling. “Look, Dermot, I’d like to help you, but sometimes you can be reckless.”

  “I’m not reckless. What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, man. The last case we worked on, you flew to Belfast to confront the IRA.”

  “Hey, I helped you get the insurance money. You didn’t complain then.” I was feeling embarrassed that he said this in front of Cheyenne.

  “That’s not the point, Dermot. You could have been killed. You were a wildcard over there. If O’Byrne hadn’t befriended you, McGrew would have murdered you. You must know that.” The waitress delivered Kenny’s drink, an amber blend topped with a cherry, probably a Rob Roy or a Manhattan, or perhaps a bourbon Manhattan, a drink my father favored, not that I’m obsessed with booze. She placed it on a napkin and gave Kenny’s arm a squeeze. He sipped it and said, “I like you, Dermot, and I don’t want to see you get hurt — or worse.”

  I was taken aback by Kenny’s comments. Reckless? Wildcard? Cheyenne was looking down at the table. I calmed myself by listening to Zack Sanders on the piano playing A Kiss is Just a Kiss. The saxophonist blew a solo, producing a windy sound, soft and smooth and sometimes discordant. My defensive nature got the better of me, and I said, “I am not reckless, Kenny. I might be impulsive, and maybe a little soft at times, but I’m not reckless.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.” He stirred his drink a couple of times. “Are we okay?”

  “We’re fine.” I thought about my conversation with Skeeter Gruskowski. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t think Skeeter was a killer when I met him.”

  “Then why are you chasing him?” Kenny asked.

  “Because he’s on the run. Because he knows something. I think he robbed her, and I don’t think he’s coming back. I need to find out what he knows.”

  Cheyenne finally looked at me and said, “So you think Skeeter stole Gertrude’s coin collection. That makes sense.”

  I told Kenny about Gertrude’s coin collection, a sixty-year amassment of silver, and I ventured, “According to Murphy, Gage’s boss, Skeeter took ten thousand to Foxwoods and gambled it into six hundred grand. I bet the initial ten came from Gert’s coin collection.”

  “Now that’s an interesting take,” Kenny admitted. “I can look into Foxwoods. I know a woman there who can tell me about the recent winners.”

  “Skeeter has a new Corvette convertible.”

  “I can help with that, too,” Kenny said.

  “Wow!” Cheyenne said. “This is exciting, but can we take a short break? I need to use the lady’s room. I don’t want to miss anything.”

  Cheyenne walked behind the bar and disappeared to the restrooms. Zack Sanders introduced his next selection, saying, “Washboard Blues by Hoagy Carmichael.” The saxophonist began with a slow riff, as Zack worked the keys.

  “She’s beautiful,” Kenny said. “Smart, too.”

  “I know, but what I don’t know is what she’s doing with me.” The waitress refilled our coffee cups. “I need your help on another matter.” I told him about Ester Diaz’s drug-dealing boyfriend and his posse. I told Kenny that the boyfriend terrorizes Ester, holding her hostage in her own apartment, and that Ester was staying in a hotel, scared to death he’ll find her there. I asked, “Do you still have friends in the DEA?”

  “I have associates everywhere,” Kenny said. “Give me his name and address.”

  Cheyenne came back to the table.

  Kenny said to me, “Anything else about Skeeter Gruskowski?”

  “He has a bad heart,” I said.

  “Why is he going to Chicago?”

  “I think Chicago is only the beginning. Skeeter and Gage had Route 66 brochures. I think they’re taking a road trip across America.”

  “Give me second,” Cheyenne said, working her cell phone. “Route 66 is 2,500 miles long. Most of it has been replaced by major highways. That’s quite the road trip.”

  “I know it is, and Skeeter paid his rent ahead two months,” I said. “If he comes back at all, it will be too late for Victor Diaz. In two months Victor will be convicted and sentenced. I need to track Skeeter down now.”

  “Did you tell Kenny about Juan Rico?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Who’s Juan Rico?” Kenny asked.

  “Diaz’s accomplice in the break-in,” I said. “We talked to him.”

  “Did it help?” Kenny asked.

  “Yes, it helped. I believed him when he said they found Gert dead when they broke in,” I said. I told Kenny about the bloody footprint. “Both Diaz and Rico have small feet.”

  “What about Skeeter?” Kenney asked.

  “He’s a big man.”

  “You have to look at him more seriously for the murder, Dermot. Skeeter might have a bad heart, but he might be the killer.” Kenny stood from the table, leaving most of his drink in the glass. Obviously, he had no issue with alcohol. A lush would have gulped it down. “I’ll get started on my end. It was a pleasure to meet you, Cheyenne.” He kissed her hand.

  “You as well, Kenny,” she said with a smile.

  Kenny Bowen left Greenburg’s Nightspot, whispering something to the waitress on the way out. Cheyenne and I stayed for another hour and listened to music.

  25

  The next day Harraseeket Kid drove me to the airport, taking the Callahan Tunnel. In the tunnel my cellphone rang. I figured it for a dead zone, but apparently not. It was Kenny Bowen.

  “That was fast,” I said.

  “Gruskowski opened a bank account and deposited $100,000. He bought four prepaid Master Cards and put fifty thousand on each. He also bought $60,000 in traveler’s checks. This guy has money, Dermot.”

  “Nobody uses traveler’s checks anymore.”

  “Gruskowski does,” Kenny said. “I tracked down the Corvette. He paid $70,000 cash for it. When you add it up — the bank account, the prepaid cards, the traveler’s checks, the car — he laid out $430,000 in one day.”

  “He’s loaded.”

  “I’m starting to think your Foxwoods story holds merit. It is just possible that Skeeter cashed in the coins and got lucky on a longshot bet.”

  “I was thinking about the coins last night,” when I wasn’t thinking of Cheyenne, “and something came to me. If he sold the coins to a dealer, he might have had as much as a hundred thousand to bet.”

  “I’ll check the coin dealers in the area.”


  “You work fast, Kenny, and I’m grateful as hell for that.”

  “The domestic stuff is easy. It’s the international stuff that’s tough. One more thing, Craig Gruskowski is staying at the Horton-Marlowe Hotel, which is located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. The place is first-class, I’ve stayed there myself.”

  “The Horton-Marlowe, got it,” I said.

  “Keep in mind that you might be chasing a murderer. People have killed for less reason than half a million bucks.”

  It was 11:00 PM when the plane landed at O’Hare Airport. I grabbed my carry-on, flagged a taxi, and drove to the Horton-Marlowe. The hotel was everything Kenny said it would be, a topnotch venue with all the frills you’d expect: oaken walls, gild-framed paintings, thickly carpeted lobbies and stairwells. I went to the front desk. With the carpeting muffling my footfalls, I felt like an authentic gumshoe.

  As the clerk processed me in, I palmed him two hundred dollars and asked him about Craig Gruskowski. It was like swiping a credit card. He scribbled a number on my receipt and said, “His room number, but Mr. Gruskowski is out at the moment.”

  “Any idea where he might be?”

  “The Blackhawks game,” he answered. “The concierge procured two tickets for him and his buddy, premium seats, behind the Blackhawks bench.”

  “What did his buddy look like?”

  “Younger, taller, probably Italian, in good shape. He walked like an athlete.”

  “That’s quite a description,” I said. “Were you a cop?”

  He turned away and answered the phone. I rode the elevator to the tenth floor and went to my room. Exhausted from the flight and cab ride, I turned on the TV, reclined on the soft bed, and fell sound asleep. I never checked Skeeter’s room.

  26

  Skeeter Gruskowski came out of the United Center on West Madison Street and said to Gage Lauria, “What a town! I’m home, Gage. Chicago has the biggest Polish population of any city in the world, bigger than Warsaw, bigger than Krakow. Did you know that?”