Moonchasers & Other Stories

by Ed Gorman

  "Just curious, I guess."

  "My boys didn't have nothing to do with this."

  "So John was a big man in the neighborhood?"

  She looked relieved that I'd changed the subject. "Very big."

  "Feared or respected?"

  "Both. In the ghetto, nobody respects you unless they fear you, too."

  I laughed. "I don't think that applies to just the ghetto."

  "Well, you know what I mean."

  "Sure."

  "He had a big blue Mercedes and he had a reputation for having never been busted and he lived over near Lake Shore in this fabulous condo and when he'd come back to the neighborhood the kids would flock around like some rock star had shown up or something."

  "That's one of the things I don't understand."

  "What's that?"

  "Why he'd come back to the neighborhood. He didn't need to."

  "His ego."

  "How so?"

  "He wasn't an especially strong man, you know. Growing up, he'd had to take a lot of pushing around by other kids in the neighborhood. I don't think he ever got over the thrill of coming back here and kind of rubbing their faces in it."

  She glanced at her wristwatch. "Time's up. I told you. I wouldn't be much help."

  "You see him much?"

  "Not much."

  "He pay you child support?"

  "Not much."

  "With all his money?"

  "With all his money."

  "He sees the kids much?"

  "When it suited him."

  "He have a lot of enemies?"

  She looked at me as if I were hopelessly naive. "You know much about dealing drugs? All you got is enemies."

  "The white woman—you think she killed him because of drugs?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "And you don't care?"

  "I quit caring about him a long time ago."

  "You give me the names of the other witnesses?"

  Again, she hesitated. "I guess you could find out anyway."

  She gave me the names. I wrote them down in my little notebook.

  "What're you lookin' for, mister?" she said.

  I sighed. "I wish I knew, Charlene. I wish I knew."

  iii

  Two blocks after leaving the restaurant, I was joined by a jaunty little black man in a coat of blue vinyl that tried with great and sad difficulty to be leather. It would probably have even settled for being leatherette.

  He was my age and he walked with a slight limp and he knew nothing whatsoever about tailing anybody. It had not taken Charlene long to get to the phone.

  I thought about this as I reached the neighborhood proper, five square blocks where rats crouched in living room corners and where there wasn't enough water pressure to flush a toilet. Given the flow of human traffic, the neighborhood seemed to huddle, as if for warmth and inspiration, around a ma and pa corner grocery store with rusting forty-year-old "PEPSI-COLA . . . in the big bottle!" signs on either side of the door. People came and went bearing groceries bought with food stamps and the quick sad last of paychecks, shuffling shambling stumbling away if they were into hootch or cough syrup or street drugs, moving briskly and soberly if they had some sort of purpose, kids to feed, jobs to get to. In the cold drizzle, the dark faces staring at me held distrust and anger and curiosity; only a few smiled. I wouldn't have smiled at me, either.

  For a time, I stood out on the corner looking at the place, in front of the laundromat that also rented videos, where John Wade had been shot to death and where a woman who had looked not unlike Carla DiMonte had been seen fleeing.

  The jaunty little man in the blue vinyl coat stood maybe thirty yards away, leaning into a doorway and hacking harshly around his cigarette. Twice we made eye contact. I doubted I'd be hiring him in the near future to do any legwork.

  Inside, the grocery store smelled of spices, overripe fruit, and blooded meat.

  A tiny bald black man in a proud white apron stood behind a counter dispatching people with all the efficiency and courtesy of a supply sergeant dispatching recruits. His plastic name badge read Phil Warren. He was one of the people I was looking for.

  One woman was stupid enough to question a certain odor about the bundled hamburger she laid on the counter and the little black man said, "You want to talk about your bill now, Bertha?"

  The woman dropped her gaze. He wrote up her ticket and jammed it into a large manila envelope taped to the wall next to endless rows of cigarettes. In Magic Marker the envelope was labeled Credit.

  When my turn came, I said, "I'd like to ask you some questions about John Wade." I'd waited until the place was empty except for a chunky woman sweeping up in back. The only real noise in the place was the thrumming of cooler motors too old to work efficiently.

  The little man, who looked to be about forty and who wore a snappy red bow tie across the collar of his white shirt, said, "I can tell you exactly two things about John Wade. One is that he's dead; two is that he deserves to be dead."

  "I understand you were an eyewitness?"

  "Yes, I happen to be." He looked at me carefully. "You're not the law, are you?"

  "Not the official law."

  "You couldn't be a friend of his because drug dealers don't have friends."

  "I suspect that's true."

  "So you're trying to find out exactly what?"

  "If you saw this woman kill him."

  "Oh, I saw it all right."

  I described the woman to him.

  "That's her, all right," he said.

  "And you actually saw her shoot him?"

  "I actually saw her shoot him."

  "And then get into a Mercedes-Benz and leave?"

  He nodded. "Umm-hmm. Why would you be interested now? He's been dead some time."

  "A client is interested."

  "Oh," he said. "A client. Must be an interesting business you're in."

  I smiled. "Sometimes."

  For the first time, he smiled, too. "This used to be a nice neighborhood. Oh, I don't mean like your white neighborhoods. But nice. If you lived here, you were reasonably safe." He shook his head. "And there were drugs. I mean, I can't deny that. Why, I can remember after coming back from Korea, all the marijuana I suddenly saw here. But the past ten years, it's different. They'll kill you to get drug money and the pushers are gods and that's maybe the saddest thing of all. How the youngsters look up to the pushers."

  "So John Wade was—"

  "—was just one less pusher to worry about."

  "Exactly."

  I was reaching over to take a book of matches from a small white plastic box that said Free when I saw something familiar written on a notepad next to the black dial telephone.

  "Charlene called you."

  "Pardon me?" he said, suddenly snappy as his bow tie.

  "Your notepad there."

  He saw the problem and grabbed the notepad.

  "You had my name written on it. So, unless you're a psychic, Charlene called ahead about me and told you my name."

  He decided to give up the ruse. "You know how it is in a neighborhood. People take care of each other."

  Just then, from the back, a tall, good-looking woman of perhaps twenty-five came through curtains and walked up to the register.

  She had the kind of coffee-colored beauty that lends itself to genuine grace. She said to Phil Warren, "Here's a list of everything I took, Phil. Just put it on the Friends House account." She glanced at me dismissively and went out the door, toting a large square cardboard box heavy with groceries.

  "Would that be Karen Dooley?"

  "I suppose," he said.

  I nodded. "Thank you." Then I went out the door quickly. She was already halfway down the block by the time I reached her. She walked with her head down to avoid the stinging drizzle.

  "I'd be happy to carry that for you," I said.

  "It's fine just the way it is."

  "My name's Parnell."

  "Hello, Mr. Parnell."

/>   "I take it Charlene has called you about me."

  She surprised me by laughing. "Charlene is very fast on the phone. That's why the local political machine always tries to recruit her at election time. She can call five people in the time it takes others to call two."

  "You work at Friends House?"

  "I'm the director there."

  "And you were an eyewitness to John Wade being murdered?"

  She stopped. Stared at me. "Charlene said you were going to ask me that. What is it you want, Mr. Parnell?"

  "I'm just looking into some things for a client."

  "I see."

  Her beautiful eyes held mine for a long time. Then we were walking again.

  Behind us, the man in the blue vinyl coat was limping along. She said, "These are getting heavy, Mr. Parnell. Maybe I'll take you up on your offer to carry them, after all."

  I felt almost idiotically blessed by her decision to let me help her in some small way.

  The first thing you noticed about Friends House was the new paint job. A two-story frame house with a long front porch and a steep, sloping roof, Friends House looked as if it had been lifted out of a very nice middle-class neighborhood and set down here, in the middle of this bombed-out neighborhood, to serve as a reminder of the lifestyle that awaited those plucky and lucky enough to seize it.

  The new casement windows sported smart black trim, the roof vivid new red tiles, and the new aluminum front door a dignified gray that complemented perfectly the new white paint.

  Inside, the marvels continued; each room I saw a model of middle-class decorum. Nothing fancy, you understand, nothing ostentatious, just plain good furniture, just plain good taste, including a redbrick fireplace with an oak mantle in the living room and country-style decor throughout.

  Here and there along the trim, or in a slightly crooked line of wallpaper, you could see that the refurbishment had not been perfect but it was easy to see that what had probably been a run-down house had been transformed, despite a few flaws, into a real beauty.

  In the kitchen, I set the groceries on a butcher-block table and turned to see two young women watching me.

  "Dora, Janie, this is Mr. Parnell, the man Charlene told us would be coming." She looked at me and smiled. "And Mr. Parnell, we're the three eyewitnesses you wanted to interview. Along with Phil Warren, we're the ones who went to the police." She nodded to a silver coffee urn on the white stove and said, "Would you care for a cup?"

  "I'd appreciate it."

  After the coffee came in a hefty brown mug, the four of us sat at the kitchen table. Steam had collected on one of the kitchen windows and was now dripping down; beyond the pane you could see the hard gray November sky. In the oven a coffee cake was baking, filling the air with sweet smells. I felt warm for the first time in an hour, and pleasantly dulled.

  Dora was a white girl of perhaps twenty. She wore a blue jumper and a white turtleneck sweater and her blond hair was caught back in a leather catch. She said, "Charlene says you wouldn't tell her why you were asking questions, Mr. Parnell."

  I smiled. "Nothing all that mysterious. I'm trying to find out a few things about the woman who shot John Wade."

  "About the woman?" Janie said. She was Dora's black counterpart—almost prim in her starched aqua blouse and V-neck sweater and fitted gray skirt. "About the woman?" she repeated, glancing at Karen.

  Karen said, "I'm afraid we don't know much about the woman, Mr. Parnell."

  From my pocket, I took out the newspaper clipping and read to them the gospel according to the Tribune, from the account of the shooting itself, to the description of the murderess.

  "Is that about the way it happened?" I asked when I'd finished reading.

  "Exactly," Karen Dooley said.

  "She didn't say anything?"

  "Say anything?" Karen asked, obviously the official spokesperson for the three of them.

  "The woman. The killer. She didn't shout anything at Wade?"

  "Not that I heard," Karen said. "Do either of you two girls remember hearing anything?"

  They shook their heads.

  "And then she just got in her car and sped away, right?"

  "Right."

  "The same kind of car as described in the newspaper account, right?"

  "Right."

  "And that's about it?"

  "That's about it."

  "You never saw her previously; you've never seen her since?"

  "Right."

  Dora put her pert nose into the air. "I'd say that coffee cake's about done." She smiled her lopsided smile. "Mrs. Weiderman upstairs will sure be glad to hear about that."

  She got up and went over to the stove, grabbing a wide red oven mitt on the way. "You'll want some of this, Mr. Parnell."

  I looked back at Karen. "So all you saw—"

  "—was exactly what it said we saw. In the paper, I mean." She laughed. "We're kind of frustrating, aren't we? We had the same effect on the police. They went over and over our story but this is about all they could get from us."

  Janie put down her coffee cup and said, "We were scared, Mr. Parnell. I know that people who live outside the neighborhood think that we get used to all the violence but we don't. We get scared just like everybody else."

  Dora opened the oven door. Billows of warm air tumbled toward us bearing the wonderful scent of coffee cake. "The truth is, we don't know what happened, Mr. Parnell, because we were so frightened we tried to duck behind a light pole. I know that sounds pathetic but that's what we did." She grinned. "Three of us behind the same light pole."

  "And anyway," Karen said, "it happened very quickly. It was over in no more than half a minute or so. She just stepped from her car and shot him."

  "And then got back in and drove away," Janie said.

  "And we never saw her again," Dora said.

  "Honest," Karen said.

  The cake cut and cooled slightly, Janie served me a formidable wedge. She also gave me more coffee.

  While I was eating, two very old people came into the kitchen, one with a chrome walker, the other with a cane. Both were men. Karen introduced us. We all nodded. She told them about the cake they'd have in their rooms. They smiled like children. Dora led them away.

  When I was nearly finished, a young man came into the kitchen and stood watching me eat. I tried not to be self-conscious. He was probably Janie's age, of mixed blood, and wore a Bears sweatshirt and jeans. He twitched very badly and in the course of a minute or so, teared up twice, as if overcome by terrible emotion.

  Karen, who had excused herself to go to the bathroom, came back, saw him and said, "Kenny, this is Mr. Parnell."

  Kenny bobbed his head in my direction. He looked both suspicious and exhausted.

  Just then Dora appeared. Karen gave her Kenny's elbow as if she were passing off a baton. "Why don't you go back to your room, Kenny, and Dora will give you some coffee cake?"

  "Jackie Gleason's on," Kenny said. "Pretty soon."

  "I forgot," Karen said tenderly, "how much you like Jackie Gleason."

  "I like Ed Norton more," Kenny said.

  "Good," Karen said and glanced at Dora, who led Kenny away. Karen came back to the table and sat across from me. 'Would you like some more coffee cake, Mr. Parnell?"

  "It's tempting but I think I've had enough." I looked around the kitchen. "You've got a nice place here. What is it—a shelter of some kind?"

  "I guess that's a fair way to put it. Friends House is a place where anybody in the neighborhood can come and stay for awhile when things get too bad on the street. Those two older gentlemen, for instance, they're staying here because the landlord of their apartment house didn't pay the gas bill—and they're too old to freeze. Soon as the gas goes back on, we'll take them back. And Kenny—well, he's trying to kick heroin. Right now, he's very afraid of going to a clinic. His brother died there of some complications with methadone. We had a doctor check Kenny and the doctor said Kenny was fine to stay here for a few days."

&n
bsp; "So no permanent solution but at least a temporary one?"

  "Exactly."

  "How many guest rooms do you have?"

  "With the four new ones in the basement, we've got fourteen. That's nowhere near enough to help everybody in the neighborhood who's hurting very badly but at least it's something."

  "It must be pretty expensive, running a place like this. Does the city contribute?"

  "Yes, the city." She made a clucking noise and glanced down at the slender gold watch on her slender brown wrist. "Oops, I'm sorry, Mr. Parnell. I'm afraid I've got a meeting upstairs. Have we helped you?"

  I stood up. "As much as you could, I guess."

  She put out her hand and we shook.

  "I hope you find whatever you're looking for, Mr. Parnell," she said.

  In less than a minute, I was standing on the sidewalk again. The coffee cake kept me full and warm.

  I decided to find out who was following me and why.

  iv

  We went two blocks. A hard wind came and chafed my cheeks and nose, a mumbling drunken black man bounced off a building and nearly fell into me, a cop ticketed a rusted weary VW that looked as if it had not been moved in weeks, and the man tailing me got all worked up when I took two steps into an alley.

  Pressed against the wall, I waited, making a fist of my gloved hand.

  But he was in no shape to swing on me when he came trotting into the alley, a small man the color of hickory, his chest heaving from a long lifetime of cigarettes.

  He ran right into me and I grabbed him.

  I didn't put him against the wall with any special force but even so he looked afraid. His nose was running in the cold and he hadn't cleaned his eyes so well this morning.

  "Make it easy on yourself," I said. "Who put you onto me?"

  "Tommy," he said between gasps.

  "Who?"

  "Tommy, man."

  "I don't know any Tommy."

  His brown eyes narrowed. "Her son. Charlene's."

  I thought of last night, the late phone call, the young black voice. "Why'd he put you onto me?"

  "Don't know."

  "Bull."

  "Don't, man. Honest. He's jes' a good kid so I tol' him I'd help him."

  "Why didn't he tail me himself?"

  "Aw, I guess 'cause he believes some of mah stories. Been tellin' them stories for years and years, ever since he was a little kid."