Killer on Argyle Street

by Michael Raleigh

  Roy folded his arms across his fleshy middle. “Yeah? What you think you can get that they can’t?”

  “They don’t have the time I’ve got, Roy. I’m getting paid, I can sit on this one forever.”

  Roy snorted but broke off eye contact. The vacant-faced lad had moved a respectful distance from Roy and stood watching them. “I ain’t seen Jimmy nor none of them, and that’s the gospel truth.”

  “Got any idea where Jimmy might be?” Roy shook his head. “And Tony?”

  “No, uh-uh. None of ’em.”

  Whelan tossed in a quick shot. “How about Mickey?”

  “Don’t know no Mickey.”

  “Sure? Tall, skinny guy, wears an Army coat?” Roy shook his head but refused to meet Whelan’s eyes. “You knew the other ones, though. Chick and Matt, and what’s-his-name, Rory…” Roy made a faint nod of concession, “…and Whitey.” Something changed in the old mechanic’s attitude, a wariness came into his face.

  “Who?”

  “Whitey.”

  “Naw, him I don’t know.”

  “You knew Lester, right?”

  “That old lyin’ bookie, yeah. Owes me some money.” Roy tried to grin, a good old boy reminiscing, one old scoundrel telling tales about another.

  “Well, I wouldn’t count on collecting. He’s dead now, too.”

  Roy blinked and shuffled his feet. His face had lost color, and now Whelan could see the burst capillaries from a life of hard drinking.

  “That whole bunch, Roy, they’re almost all dead now.” Whelan watched Roy and waited.

  The older man looked at the kid, found no help there and faced Whelan again. “How’d he get killed?”

  “I don’t know how. But I know who. At least, I’ve got a pretty good idea. And I think you do, too. Thanks for your time.” Whelan walked back out toward the office. Over his shoulder he called out, “You’ve got my card, Roy. Give me a call if you think of anything.”

  And good luck with the Oldsmobile, he thought.

  Dark clouds hung over the House of Zeus: the line was long and not moving and the ice machine was down and the crowd looked ready to call for blood, so Whelan took a quick ride over near the ballpark. Things were hopping in Lakeview, and the great whitewashed basin of Wrigley Field was the magnet. The Cubs were trying to shake off the effects of their disastrous East Coast road trip. They were back in the Friendly Confines and talking tough and making dire predictions for the rest of the league and the Wrigley Field faithful were buying the whole routine. Everyone but the sportswriters was apparently willing to overlook the fact that Cub pitchers had been tagged for eleven home runs in eight games. In Philadelphia they’d given up twenty-six runs in a three-day bloodbath and Mike Schmidt had given the entire pitching staff nightmares enough to last a lifetime.

  Now there was a little less vigor to the Cub bluster, though the manager still claimed that his squad was “just missing one or two pieces of the puzzle.” The pilgrims were marching east all through Lakeview, young people carrying their beers and making a show of street drinking, families, old people. The neighborhood would be full of cars with Indiana and Iowa license plates, full of people whose idea of a vacation was to drive into Chicago to see a 13 to 12 game in Wrigley Field. And if there was a game, and the weather was decent, it meant John the Hot Dog Man would be out.

  Whelan found him at Southport and Waveland. His little red three-wheeled cart was parked on the sidewalk and his customers were already lining up. Whelan had five people ahead of him and didn’t mind the wait. When customer number five had walked away gnawing at a Polish, John turned to wipe down his work surface and said “Yes?”

  “I want two thousand hot dogs and one Polish.”

  John turned and smiled. Selling hot dogs was apparently thirsty work: his glasses were slightly steamed and perspiration rolled down his face from beneath his cap.

  “Long time, Paulos. I thought you were dead.”

  “No, just real hungry. Business seems good.”

  “Oh, not bad. What you gonna have?”

  “A hot dog and a Polish, and I need a Dr Pepper.”

  “Everything?”

  “Of course. Peppers, too.” Whelan looked over the little red-and-white car. For almost a generation, John had been the neighborhood hot dog man, pedaling his little cart into the area and appearing at various corners before ballgames, then moving to other locations during the evenings. On a hot summer night you could always find him somewhere on Southport, steam coming from half a dozen little stainless steel bins and people lined up for his dogs. Then one fateful night, a drunk had run him down as he crossed Addison, sending the cart and its contents shooting off in all directions and John to the hospital. John had sued the drunk for his hospital costs and the loss of his beloved cart. The upshot was a new motorized cart, state-of-the-art if there was one for hot dog vendors, and John hadn’t stopped smiling yet. He worked the neighborhood from April to November, then went to Greece for two months. Life was good if you could sell enough hot dogs.

  John slathered mustard onto the dog and the Polish, scooped onions, relish and tomatoes on top, added cucumbers and cucumber salt, then tossed on a couple of sport peppers. Whelan handed him three bucks.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ve always wondered, John—you eat a lot of hot dogs?”

  John curled his lip. “I don’t like ’em. No good for you.”

  He had eaten the hot dog in three bites and was about to assault the Polish when there was a knock, and a premonition told him who it was.

  “Come on in.”

  Bauman stepped in and closed the door behind him. Then he opened it again and peered into the hall. A moment later, he shut it again. He indicated the hall with a nod.

  “This guy, the one that sells novelties, he think he’s some kinda operative? Or do you pay him a buck to watch your door.”

  “He’s just a nervous guy.”

  Bauman started to smile. “Makes you wonder what he’s really selling, don’t it?”

  “Probably better I shouldn’t know.”

  Bauman moved slowly across the room, then dropped his bulk onto the guest chair, and Whelan heard the wood groan. He studied his visitor and decided there was something about Bauman’s mood he didn’t like. Amusement, that was it: Bauman looked amused.

  “Your mood has improved since this morning.”

  Bauman moved his shoulders slightly in a shrug. “So what’s for lunch there, Snoopy?”

  “A Polish.”

  “From where?”

  “The hot dog man on Southport.”

  Bauman leaned forward in interest. “I could eat about five of those.” He sat back and busied himself opening a new pack of the little cigars, and Whelan watched him.

  “So what brings you here when we spoke, oh, less than three hours ago? Got something to tell me about old Les?”

  Bauman cleared his throat with a low rumble. “Leonard George McCarty. Junior.”

  “What’s that? Lester’s real name?”

  “No, not Les. Whitey. That’s your guy Whitey’s real name. Leonard George McCarty, Junior, only like all these great thinkers he’s got other names he’s used.”

  “So you’re already familiar with this gentleman.”

  Bauman nodded. “Oh, yeah, down at Six, we’re all familiar with Leonard George McCarty. He’s another one of these Southern Gentlemen. He’s got what you’d call a colorful sheet. Here and in Nashville, where he had, uh, thriving business interests. Now there’s a lot about this guy Leonard George McCarty that’s, you know, interesting. For one, he and old Jimmy Lee Hayes, they were half brothers.” Bauman paused to play with his little cigar and looked innocently at Whelan. Whelan thought over the various responses possible, and elected to bite into the Polish.

  “Kinfolk, as they say down there. Told you old Jimmy Lee come from a family of hoods.”

  Bauman relaxed and Whelan knew it was time to play audience.

  “So tell me about hi
m.”

  Bauman shrugged. “Near as we can make out, this guy was Jimmy Lee’s mentor, kind of. He was a couple years older than Jimmy, and I guess you could say he’s the guy taught Jimmy Lee how to be a scuzzball. But he was a bad guy and they had to put him in the shitter to contemplate his evil ways. So, here I’m looking for Jimmy Lee Hayes and my good friend Paul Whelan the Sleuth, he’s looking for a runaway, uh, youth, and he comes up with this name. How do you figure that?”

  “You didn’t know he was out?”

  A glimmer came into Bauman’s eyes, as though he’d thought of something amusing. “Who keeps track of these lowlifes?”

  “Would you recognize him?”

  Bauman scratched at his neck and made a little sideways nod. “Well, yeah, I guess I would. This goes back a few years but, yeah, I suppose I’d recognize him if I saw him. Only thing is, I’m not gonna.”

  “Why?”

  The amusement came back in the gray eyes, and the familiar malice was there along with it. “That’s another, you know, interesting thing. ’Cause my guy Leonard George McCarty’s in a Nashville cemetery. Died of a heart attack in prison. He never got out.”

  “When did he die?”

  “What difference does it make? July, I think. Yeah, July.”

  Whelan watched him for a moment and Bauman looked out the office window. “Then who’s this guy?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Bauman muttered, and Whelan watched him.

  The setting sun brought them out. They were gathering in front of the arcade on Belmont and the music clubs, converging on the Dunkin’ Donuts. He parked across from the lot on Clark Street, spread the Sun-Times across the steering column and began paging through it. From time to time he looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the two girls, even hoping that his luck was running and a long-haired boy with a tattoo would show up.

  The darkness was growing and he was about to get out and get himself a cup of coffee when something changed in his field of vision. Something very still had moved.

  Whelan looked up, shot a quick glance in the rearview mirror, then scanned the kids across the street in the parking lot. For a moment he could see nothing unusual, and focused again on the nearest group of kids. Then a gray shape separated itself from a light pole half a block away and Whelan looked up. The dusk blurred his vision at the edges, and this man ahead was a creature of the dusk, a pale figure in a nondescript raincoat, moving slowly away. Whelan squinted to get a look at him.

  The man in the raincoat craned slightly to peer over the traffic on Clark and Whelan followed his gaze to the kids in the parking lot across the street. The man stopped and stood motionless for a moment and then, just as Whelan realized who he was, the man in the raincoat turned, as though spoken to. He seemed to find Whelan immediately and then he was moving away. As he turned, he shot one last glance back at Whelan and even at that distance Whelan would have sworn the man had met his eyes, consciously, a challenge. Then the pale man turned and Whelan saw him hurrying across the parking lot of the Senior Citizens building on the corner.

  Whelan tumbled out of the car and ran after him. At the entrance to the parking lot he stopped and surveyed the cars. No one moved across it, no car pulled out. A few feet away, an elderly man wearing layers of flannel shirts sat on a bench, one knotted hand on the worn handle of a cane.

  “Excuse me, sir. Did you see a man in a raincoat run into the parking lot here?”

  The man squinted at Whelan, looked him up and down before deciding it was all right to speak to him. “Think so. He wasn’t runnin’, though. Just walkin’ fast.”

  “Did you see where he went?”

  The man turned with great difficulty and pointed off into the darkness with his cane. “That alley there.”

  “Thanks.”

  At the mouth of the alley he stood and watched and told himself he’d lost the man already. Then he lit up a cigarette and tried to find the bright side: he told himself that at least on this one night, the man called Whitey would be deprived of his night’s watch over the kids on the corner. Then he remembered the look in the old man’s eyes.

  He knew me, Whelan told himself. He knew me.

  He waited in the darkness at the mouth of the alley and finished his smoke, and had to admit that there was at least a chance that the man who called himself Whitey wasn’t there to watch the kids at all.

  He parked a few doors down from his house and on the far side of the street—the big old apartment buildings that anchored the block at both ends had been rehabbed and were starting to eat up the parking space, and more than once he’d had to park on the next block. He got out of his car and moved diagonally across Malden, thinking about the man in the raincoat, and in his mind’s eye he saw the man staring at him, noted the high cheekbones and the long face, the strange tuft of blondish hair that stood up like a used brush, and he was thinking again about the rooming house when he heard the car behind him.

  He turned and instantly knew he’d turned too late. The driver laid rubber, closing the twenty-yard gap between them in a heartbeat. He had time only to register impressions: big man, slick dark hair, sideburns. The car was easier: he knew the car. He fought the impulse to run and began to spin to his left, and he’d just begun to leave his feet when the dark car reached him. He felt the side of the hood strike his hip, and then the car was by him in a dark rush and he was falling heavily onto the pavement. He rolled backward into a parked car and felt the hard projection of a fender in the small of his back, then rolled over to regain his feet. He staggered and fell back against the parked car, looking down the street after the dark car. At the corner it made a sudden jerky turn, taking the corner with two wheels up on the curb, left another layer of tire on the street and tore off with a screech.

  For several moments he stood motionless, making an inventory of his injuries. His hip ached where the car had struck him, and he could tell he’d made a three-point landing because pain spoke to him from a knee, an elbow and a shoulder. He moved what would move, flexed what would flex, and decided nothing was broken.

  Across the street he saw a shade go up and could make out the stubby form of his neighbor, the dignified, easily offended Mr. Barsano. In a few seconds, Mr. Barsano would be contacting the police and the FBI and perhaps NATO. At the moment NATO seemed like a good idea. Whelan leaned against the parked car and took in deep breaths, not certain that his heart would last the night. When he thought he’d collected himself, he made it across the street and up the sidewalk to his house. The shade was down again in Perry Barsano’s house but Whelan could see a fat finger holding the shade away at one side. He fought the impulse to wave.

  Inside, he crossed the room in darkness and found his easy chair. He lit up a cigarette and took a puff, and reflected on what he knew: he knew the car, of course, a dark Mustang with bad springs. It was the driver that puzzled him: not the neat, wiry form of Bobby Hayes but another type altogether, a different package. This man who had tried to kill him with a car was a big man, much bigger than Bobby Hayes, a big man with black hair, slick black hair, and this was the second time he’d tried to get a piece of Paul Whelan.

  I know you, Whelan told himself. I know you.

  Thirteen

  In the morning, he made coffee, then called the answering service and was surprised to hear Shelley’s voice.

  “What are you doing answering phones on a Saturday?”

  “I switched with the new girl. She had a wedding to go to. So if you call me on Monday, you’ll get Lydia.”

  “Lydia, huh?” He shuddered and Shelley laughed. “I thought you meant that other one, the one that cracks her gum.”

  “Eileen. She quit.”

  Whelan had spoken only twice to Lydia but had managed to learn that she believed she was psychic, that she had lived dozens of lives before, most notably at the court of Catherine the Great, that she believed her first husband had been reincarnated as her pet cockatiel and that she kept the ashes of her late parents in an oleo cup in the
refrigerator.

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “What’s up with you on a Saturday, Mr. Paul Whelan?”

  “I’ve got some things to do and I have a feeling people will be trying to get in touch with me. If they do, tell them I’ll stop in the office sometime late this morning.”

  “Will do.”

  At nine-thirty he drove the few blocks west and south to the apartment building on Marshfield. The black Mustang was nowhere in sight but Whelan rang the bell marked “Hayes” inside the tiny hallway. The other bells bore names in blue plastic but Bobby Hayes’s was handwritten on a piece of white paper, giving it just the transient touch it needed. As Whelan expected, there was no answer.

  Ed and Ronda’s was open, of course, had probably been open for hours. A true shot-and-beer joint was open before the birds sang. Years before, in his days as a beat cop, Whelan had stopped into Kelly’s Pub over by De Paul, looking for a man charged with assault in another bar. It was seven in the morning on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and Whelan and Jerry Kozel had pounded first on the locked door, then gone round by the horseshoe pit to come in the back way. The day bartender wasn’t due till nine and the place was officially closed, but inside Kelly’s they were rocking and rolling. Four off-duty firefighters, a secretary from Daley’s office, two old men from the rooming house up the street, a retired cop from Town Hall, three college kids slumming, the mail carrier and a banker on a bender. Over it all, Willie the porter was presiding, a little West Virginia man with a withered leg. The firemen were watching Rocky and Bullwinkle and the three college kids had the jukebox shaking, and outside the world went about its business, but time had stopped in Kelly’s.

  In keeping with custom, the front door was locked, and Whelan went around to the side and found a way in. Ed and Ronda drew a quieter crowd than Kelly did, in fact several of Ed and Ronda’s customers appeared to have died in the night. A big man in a T-shirt was sprawled over a table off to one side, and a woman at the far end of the bar was nursing a coma. Another woman was behind the bar, a thin woman whom Whelan had seen once before, coming down the back stairs. The woman wasn’t sure she liked Whelan’s looks. She leaned on the bar surface with both hands and let her body language announce the fact that she owned it.