Death in Uptown

by Michael Raleigh

  “Which is what I was doing.”

  Bauman gestured at Whelan’s face with the cigar. “Yeah, and I’m real impressed by the results you got.”

  “Is that right? Well, I got a name to go with the guy you’re looking for.”

  Bauman stared at him for a moment and Whelan was amazed at how quickly hostility replaced self-assurance in the face.

  “Come on, Bauman, ease up, huh? You’re gonna have a stroke in my house and they’ll think I killed you. Go have a cardiac somewhere else, okay? I’m in this one. He was my friend and I want to find the person who killed him, and more than that, I want to know why he had to die. And you can’t keep me out.”

  Bauman leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. His face was red, his eyes wide, and a vein was standing out just below the hairline. “You listen to me. If I want you out of this. I’ll get you out. Whether you want to or not. You might have an accident”

  “Sure, Dempsey.”

  “Hey, look what a wino did to your face.”

  “What makes you think you’re as good as he is? Besides, I’d have to scream ‘police brutality’ and we’d both be out of action.”

  He watched Bauman smother his anger. His jaw worked and his breathing was audible. A walking explosion, a land mine in a loud jacket.

  “And anyway, Bauman, you don’t have a partner. At least, not one you can count on.”

  Bauman looked away and expelled his breath. “Aw, Rooney’s all right.”

  “You told me he was an old lady. Your exact words. And I asked around about both of you. He’s looking for a soft place to land.”

  “Aw, you know how some of ’em get. He’s afraid something’s gonna happen his last week as a cop. I suppose, I was in his shoes, I’d be wantin’ out like he is. He’s got his wife to come home to and they got grandchildren now, little ones, and they got a place in Wisconsin, talking about moving there. Me, I got time, oceans of it.” He looked around Whelan’s living room.

  “You got a nice place, though. You like it?”

  “I like it a lot but I don’t like staying in it much. It’s too big for one person, so I’m not here much.”

  “It’s clean. You keep it clean. My joint, it’s got—whaddya call ’em, the gray things you get under furniture?”

  “Dust balls? Dust monsters?”

  “That’s it, dust monsters. I got ’em three feet long. I’m just there to sleep.” Bauman looked around again.

  “I know some facts about you, Bauman, but I can’t quite put them all together. You told me you spend some time up here, you know some of these people. You knew Shinny, you said. Why is that?”

  “I already told you—”

  “No, I don’t mean about this case, I mean in general. You hang around the streets a lot, you said you know the people. Why is that? Are you from around here originally?”

  Bauman shifted in the chair. He moved his shoulders as though his jacket were too tight. “You a drinker, Whelan?”

  “I like a cold beer now and then, particularly after I’ve just had the shit kicked out of me. Why? You thirsty from all this talking?”

  “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “Fine with me.” Whelan changed shirts and dabbed at his face one final time with the washcloth and Bauman drove them over to the Alley Cat, a lounge on Broadway not far from Whelan’s office. Bauman parked his car in the bus stop.

  Whelan ordered a Beck’s dark and Bauman ordered a draft and a double shot of Walker’s Deluxe. He sighed as his drinks were put in front of him. Whelan looked at the shot and beer.

  “You take your drinking seriously, huh?”

  Bauman sipped his whiskey. “Looks that way, right? You said I needed a hobby. This is my hobby.” Whelan laughed and Bauman shook his head. “No shit, Whelan. I’m serious. This is what I do when I’m not…” He inclined his head to indicate the street. “I don’t go out much. I really don’t pay much attention to sports. I watch a fight now and then but that’s about it.”

  “I had you pegged for a football man.”

  “I hate football. I couldn’t play when I was in high school, so I wouldn’t watch it.”

  “How come you couldn’t play?”

  “Practice started in July. I had a summer job every year and I couldn’t quit till Labor Day.” He looked around the bar. “So this is what I do with my time. Lot of guys, they drink ’cause they got nothing better to do with their time. I’m one of ’em. But I like taverns, I really do. Some of ’em, they’re beautiful.” He sipped at his whiskey and took a swig of beer. “So what about you, Whelan? You ever married, or like that?”

  “No.”

  “Got a woman?”

  “Thought I did but she’s leaving.”

  “Leaving to go where?”

  “Wisconsin.”

  “Everybody’s goin’ to Wisconsin. Why’s she leavin’? She, ah, tryin’ to find herself?” Bauman smiled and made a face.

  “No. She’s not an airhead, Bauman. She was married once and it was a bad one, and now she’s not the most trusting or patient woman in the world. Besides, she’s got a kid.” Bauman nodded as if this explained a move anywhere. Then he frowned.

  “Jesus, you’re having a run of luck, huh? Your friend winds up dead, your broad is leaving, and you get the shit beat out of you. Tomorrow’s got to be a better day, huh?” He laughed hoarsely and shook his head.

  “God, I hope so. I’m thinking of staying inside all day.” He sipped his beer and watched Bauman.

  “How about you? You ever get married?”

  The detective shook his head curtly. “I had this…this one I was seein’. But…” He made a little wave in the air. He looked away and Whelan read his body language.

  “It happens. They say there’s more out there, though.”

  Bauman drank his beer and belched. “ ’Scuse me. Yeah, they’re out there. I just think I’m getting a little—what do they call it? Long in the tooth. Yeah, I’m getting a little long in the tooth to be ‘dating,’ you know?”

  “I never liked it much myself.”

  Bauman looked past Whelan’s shoulder out the window and grinned. “Lookit this one.” An old man wearing a heavy jacket and wool cap despite the heat was rooting through the trash can on the corner a few feet from Bauman’s car.

  “Watch. He’s gonna find dinner now. See?” The old man pulled out a fast-food bag, lifted the half sandwich inside, sniffed at it and wrapped it. “He’s gonna put it in his pocket and save it for later, eat it in privacy.” Bauman smiled and winked at Whelan. Whelan watched the old man tuck the sandwich in a coat pocket and search in the garbage for more food. “See? I like him. Name’s…uh, Bennie. That’s it, Bennie. He’s about a thousand years old.”

  Whelan watched Bauman and smiled. He shook his head slowly. “Why do you know his name, Bauman? Why do you know his habits?”

  A wariness came into Bauman’s face. “I just do. So what?”

  “But how?”

  “You know how it is, you spend some time out there, you get to know things. You know some of these guys yourself. What’re you making a big deal out of it for?”

  “I don’t know if I know them the way you do. And I still can’t figure out why.”

  “I like ’em.” He looked at Whelan challengingly. “I do, I like ’em. I talk to ’em, they’re okay. They beat the fuck out of each other sometimes but they’re okay. A lot of ’em, it ain’t their fault they’re out here. And they all got a story, every one of ’em.”

  “Just bums to most people.”

  Some of the red returned to Bauman’s face and Whelan found that he was enjoying himself.

  “They’re not just bums. And fuck ‘most people’ anyway, all right? I know these guys. I’ll tell you something, Whelan, some of ’em are better people than your asshole business types that make their living screwin’ people.”

  “Calm down and drink your drink.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Why are you get
ting so worked up?”

  “I didn’t like what you said, okay?”

  “Just wanted to see how you’d react. Now I see.”

  Bauman studied him for a moment. “When I was a kid, it was just me and my brother and my ma. We didn’t have shit. My brother and me, we had jobs, one job after another from the time we were nine or ten. My old man died when I was maybe five. Anyhow, he had a brother. My uncle Ray. I can’t tell you much about my old man because I was too young to know much but I can tell you about Ray. He was the nicest, most generous guy I ever knew. He was good as gold to us. He lived in Milwaukee and came in to see us every month or so. I didn’t know it at the time but he was comin’ in to look in on us, give my ma a few bucks, make sure we were all right. Didn’t have no wife or family of his own, just a job. I’m tellin’ you, Whelan, his visits just lit up our fuckin’ lives, my brother Joe and me, just lit up our lives. He brought us stuff, toys, candy, model ships, and he took us places, he took us to ballgames and the movies and museums and out for pizza and Chinese food or whatever. And at night when I was in bed I just kept wishing he’d marry my ma and become, you know, my father. And he’d just go back to Milwaukee and do what he did. And what he did was work. That’s all he had, his job. And this.” Bauman nodded toward his whiskey.

  “You gotta try and picture this man, Whelan. He wasn’t real smart and he got through maybe eighth grade. He was kinda short and he was, you know, kind of a homely guy. And he just didn’t have any kind of social life. Drank like a fish. I didn’t know about it at the time but he really had a problem. Eventually, sometime when I was in my teens, he hit bottom. Started to get sick, lost one job after another, went on disability, lost that, lived on part-time jobs for a while, wound up on the streets. My ma went up there once to look after him, then she went up there after he lost his place, to try and find him, but she couldn’t. Not that he woulda wanted her to find him. Anyhow, he died in the County Hospital at the age of fifty-two. And I look at these guys around here, these guys that stink like the alley and have pimples and shit all over their faces, and I see him, I know he was like this. So I try and spend a few minutes shootin’ the breeze with ’em.” He looked at Whelan, shrugged awkwardly and then looked away. He leaned almost imperceptibly away from Whelan and finished his whiskey, then took a deep drink of his beer. When he looked at Whelan again, his eyes were hostile.

  “So…you said you had a name for this guy I want. Gimme it.”

  “Ask me nice.” Whelan signaled the bartender and ordered another round. The bartender brought the drinks, stared for a second at Whelan’s face, then took his money.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Whelan. I want this guy’s name.”

  “Don’t be so hostile or I’ll make you beat it out of me.”

  Bauman stared for a moment and then gave a short bitter bark of a laugh. “Jesus, I dunno who’s worse to work with, you or Rooney.”

  “Rooney. ’Cause I’ll stay with this till it’s finished. And way down deep inside, I don’t care which one of us figures the thing out.”

  Bauman looked at him for a moment and then nodded slowly. “You’re a slick one. Does everybody just get diarrhea of the mouth around you, or what?”

  “I’m a good listener. I listen to everybody. They talk and I go with it. All my life people have been using me as a sounding board.”

  Bauman looked down at his drinks. “I guess so. Okay, Whelan, just give me the name. I’ll buy you a drink.”.

  “I don’t need any more drinks. You bought me one already. You can buy me lunch some time. Billy the Kid.”

  “What’s that? A hot dog stand or something?”

  “That’s the name you want. Billy the Kid. Tall, skinny redhead, young guy with long hair. Twenty years old, maybe, good with his hands, short fuse. And probably not our killer anyway.”

  Bauman gave him an irritated look. “I don’t need you to figure stuff out for me. I already told you, I don’t think this was street people. Billy the Kid,” he repeated. “Okay, Whelan. I owe you a lunch.”

  Two young women came in and sat at the bar, close to the door. They were in their twenties, both brunettes, both attractive, slender and tanned, and wearing loose white blouses to show off tanned arms. Whelan looked at them and at Bauman. The detective studied the two women, shook his head and lit one of his little cigars.

  “The scenery here is beautiful,” Whelan said.

  “Yeah,” Bauman said, looking back at the women.

  “Should we buy them a drink?”

  Bauman gave him an incredulous look. “What, are you crazy? I got nothing to say to them. Maybe you do—till they get a look at your new face—but I’m…shit, I’m old enough to be their father. They’d go home and tell their friends about the fat old guy in the funny clothes that hit on ’em.” He puffed at his cigar and stared at the bar mirror. “They wouldn’t want nothing to do with me.”

  Whelan laughed. “Thanks for the pep talk, Bauman. I feel a lot more confident. I think I’ll be taking off. I’ve had a busy day.”

  Bauman laughed noiselessly. “You wanna ride?”

  “Nah, I’ll walk.”

  “Bad neighborhood,” Bauman said, grinning.

  “I’ll have to chance it. How long are you going to stay?”

  Bauman looked down at the bar. “Who knows? I might close the joint.”

  “See you around.” Whelan left the bar. The air outside seemed close and gritty. He took one last look in through the window. Bauman was staring down at the cigar he held in his big hand. There was no one on either side of him for ten feet, and Whelan had the impression that Bauman didn’t even notice.

  Eight

  He awoke at a quarter to seven after dreaming that he’d fallen down an immense staircase. He hurt in many places: ribs, nose, jaw, the side of his head and his ear. The news from the mirror was no better: everything was discolored or swollen. He looked like a fighter in desperate need of retirement. He took two aspirin and made coffee and wheat toast. The toast hurt his mouth. It was at least eighty in his apartment, and he turned on the radio in time to hear the disk jockey predict that it was going to be “another hot one, folks.”

  To pamper himself a little he drove to work. Warm air seeped out of the vents when he turned on the air conditioning.

  You are a fine car, he told the Jet. He parked outside a narrow storefront at the corner of Montrose and Broadway. A homemade variety of lettering proclaimed the storefront to be THE WAY MISSION. Just below the name, a small brochure, listing services and prayer meetings, was taped to the window. There was a tiny air conditioner above the door, whirring away with the sound of overstressed belts and unlubricated metal. He opened the door and was pleasantly surprised: the little relic worked and he was in cool air for the first time that day.

  Don Ewald was sitting at the desk inside the storefront, poring over a Chicago Street Guide with the same young man Whelan had seen the previous day. Taller and with lighter coloring, he cut his sandy hair the same way and facially he could have been produced from Ewald’s genetic material. Same tailor, too: specializing in plain blue shirts and dark slacks. Ewald looked up when he heard the door, smiled and got to his feet quickly. He looked at Whelan, poked the other young man, and said, “Hello, Mr. Whelan.” To his companion he said, “Mr. Whelan is a private eye.” Whelan winced.

  “Mr. Whelan, this is my friend and colleague, Tom Waters.” Whelan shook hands with Tom Waters. He looked at the nameplate on the desk that read REVEREND CHARLES ROBERTS. Roberts and Waters—at least Ewald was slightly Germanic, but he had a suspicion that such gloriously Wasp names were commonplace in the Way movement. These names were now fashionable, with Messrs Meese and Watt and Deaver and Baker and Bush. You had to lop a couple of syllables off your name if you wanted to get anywhere in government, that was clear, and if your name ended with an “A” or an “O” you were dead in the water.

  Tom Waters gave Whelan an uncomfortably intense stare to go with his meat-grinder handshake. Whelan
noted the razorlike creases in his shirt and the perfectly combed and parted hair, and knew Waters was one of those people who chewed each mouthful twenty-one times.

  “Really a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Whelan. Don was telling me about his conversation with you. You’re looking for a couple of men on the run down here.”

  “Well, not exactly. They’re not really on the run in your, ah, John Dillinger sense. They just seem to have gone underground and I’m trying to get some information from them, basically. They might be avoiding me…”

  Waters was no longer listening. Whelan could have launched into filthy Army songs or pornographic poetry and Waters wouldn’t have noticed. He looked at Ewald and saw the same look: they were both studying his facial injuries with a kind of awe.

  “What happened…were you in a fight, Mr. Whelan?” Don Ewald spoke for both of them and Waters nodded.

  Whelan sighed, knowing he’d be giving variations of his explanation for the next couple of days. “I went poking around somewhere I shouldn’t have. The guy I ran into didn’t like it. Take a lesson, guys.”

  “Good gosh,” Tom Waters said, clearly stretching his street vocabulary to the limit. He shook his head. “You’re looking for an Indian and a short white man, right?”

  “Well…yeah. A fellow with mixed blood named Hector and the other guy’s name is Sharkey. And I’m looking for a couple of other people too. For one thing. I’m looking for a younger guy, white, red hair, tall and skinny. Goes by the name of Billy the Kid.”

  Waters shook his head and Don Ewald blinked, screwed his eyebrows into a bunch and demonstrated intense mental activity. Waters seemed about to say something but stopped with his month opened and frowned, which made him look addled. A couple of streetwise guys in Uptown.

  Ewald’s face returned to something like its basic shape and he looked at Whelan disappointedly.

  “I just don’t know anybody like that, Mr. Whelan.”

  “Neither do I, sir,” Tom added.

  “Well, don’t feel bad. I haven’t run across him either. But if you see anybody like that, give me a jingle.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a couple of business cards, handing one to each of them. They looked at the cards admiringly, smiled at each other and nodded simultaneously. They grinned at him: an adventure. The Katzenjammer Kids Meet a Detective.