Windy City Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  Was this just some nut who had wandered in off the street? “Okay, Izzy. What is it you want to find the truth about?”

  The little man strolled around the room, looking my almost bare white walls up and down as if searching for imperfections. He stopped to examine my framed credentials and said, “You heard about that code enforcement officer who was murdered?”

  I searched my memory. “I don’t remember a cop being killed. When was this?”

  “Parking officer,” Izzy said.

  I’d never heard of a parking officer being killed. Had it happened in Chicago it would have been big news, if only to satisfy the grouchy multitudes who would revel in the murder of someone who wrote parking tickets. Even the most timid Chicagoan was only too happy to provide a scorching indictment of city parking policies. “You stumped me again, Izzy. When did this happen?”

  “A week ago. His name was Jack Gelashvili. Viciously beaten to death near Foster and Western.”

  “They got meters in that neighborhood?”

  “The meters are innocent; he lived there.”

  “So he wasn’t killed on the job?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “No, but it explains why I didn’t hear about it. You knew the victim?”

  “No. But I want you to find his killer.”

  I suppressed my instinct to see providential significance in Izzy’s offer of murder investigation number two, on the heels of my conversation with Frownie. “Why? There are hundreds of murders each year. What’s this guy to you?”

  Izzy sighed loudly. “It’s sad that I need a reason to care about a fellow human being slaughtered practically in his front yard. But if you must know, I also live in the neighborhood, with my three-year-old twins. Noah and Carolin. They saw a crowd and an ambulance and police cars. They sensed something bad had happened and it touched their hearts. They’ll never be the same—I can tell. So you see, it’s my front yard, too, where an innocent man’s blood was spilled.”

  “How innocent was he?”

  Izzy shook his head in disgust. “Blaming the victim now? He was asking for it? I was there when they took his body away. You should’ve seen this young woman, a family member I assume, screaming, crying, beseeching over and over, ‘Why?’ And you ask only about his innocence?”

  “I just wondered if you knew something about the guy. Who were his friends? What was he into? That kind of thing. And how did you find out about me, anyway?”

  “The Partisan.”

  Izzy referred to Ellis Knight’s article detailing how I’d solved Snooky’s murder while exposing rampant police and city hall corruption. The lengthy, purple-prosed feature received both praise and criticism for the writer’s use of omniscient narration to reveal the alleged thoughts and motivations of all major characters. It’s the substance that matters! Knight kept saying over and over throughout Snooky’s investigation, maniacally laughing through his giddy twenty-something demeanor. The article gave me an undeserved reputation as a murder investigator, but I saw an increase in finding birth parents and cheating spouses that allowed me to afford a small office on the top floor of a converted vintage four-flat in Old Town. The owner had successfully resisted the forces of change since its 1927 construction, leaving in place the magical qualities of musty air, scratched tiles, poor lighting, and neglected wood finish. The indifference cheered me up for some reason.

  “I really don’t have a lot of experience—”

  “That case gave you momentum, Landau. Exploiting momentum is what drives men like you to find answers. Not everybody has this genius.”

  Genius? I understood neither the logic nor the premise of this statement. “It’s been two months. How much momentum could be left?”

  “The potential is what matters. And I sense you’re a man with nothing to lose.”

  Was he implying recklessness? “Ellis Knight’s article was more creative writing than facts. Maybe it’s Knight who has the momentum—whatever that means. No offense, Izzy, but I really have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Izzy walked to the room’s only window and stared out over North Avenue. “My apologies,” he said. “The Boston Marathon bombing affected me deeply—the randomness of its victims in particular. That neighborhood was home to many. But that case was solved. Now there’s a murder on the block where I live. I need to know why a life was extinguished so close to where my children, my neighbors, and I lay our heads to sleep.”

  “Okay, I get it. A corpse shows up on your doorstep. What did the police say?”

  “Zilch. Nobody knows nothing. It’s as if bodies showing up in this neighborhood should be viewed as the new normal.”

  “Bodies show up everywhere in every city. Usually, it’s only relatives or close friends of the victim who seek out a PI.”

  Izzy reached into his breast pocket and took out an envelope. “There are fifty hundred-dollar bills in this envelope,” he said and dropped it on my desk. “There will be fifty more when you’ve found the killer. Is that enough to care more about this murder than my motivation for hiring you?”

  I peeked inside the envelope. The nuance of Ben Franklin’s smile had two hundred years of capitalistic influence behind it. What chance did I have against such momentum?

  3

  “Yeah?”

  Police detective Jimmy Kalijero answered his cell phone as if expecting a timeshare solicitation. Many years ago he ran the sting that nabbed my father for illegal gambling. On my dorm wall at college, I had the framed Chicago Sun-Times article with the photo of Kalijero smiling proudly as he led a row of cuffed suspects to jail. That Dad was careless enough to get caught pissed me off, but I had to admit I felt a kind of deviant prestige for having a jailbird father.

  “Yeah, right, Kalijero, you don’t recognize my number or my voice.”

  No response, then, “Oh, of course, it’s Landau calling. How completely logical because he calls me all the time because we’re such good pals.”

  It had been two months since we last worked together, but I was still pretty sure we had spoken a few times since then. “I deserve the guilt trip, Jimmy. I promise to call more often.”

  “What do you want, Landau? And no, I still can’t accept a son of the Chicago Landau family as a legitimate private investigator.”

  Kalijero referred to my family history, starting with Great-Granddad, who made his fortune among his immigrant brethren of pushcart peddlers working the open-air market of Chicago’s Maxwell Street. From this miserable residue, Great-Granddad guaranteed a dependable stream of extorted money and earned the monikers of iron-fisted boss, political dictator, chieftain—and scoundrel. In addition to ward committeeman, he also held offices with fancifully arcane titles such as city collector and city sealer of weights and measures. Some of my relatives called him the smartest man they ever knew and pointed to his chauffeur-driven limousine on a municipal salary as proof. Others pointed to the same thing and damned him as a gangster. Regardless, those who knew of him understood why Great-Granddad’s scandals inspired passion sixty or more years after the man died penniless in my father’s childhood bed.

  “Jack Gelashvili ring a bell?” I asked Kalijero.

  “Why should it?”

  “Murdered last week near his home in Budlong Woods.”

  “So why should I know about this murder out of six hundred or more stiffs we find each year?”

  “Gelashvili was a parking officer.”

  “Gee, what do you think the motive was?”

  “Cold, Jimmy. He worked for the police department, asshole. How about showing a little respect for those that do the cops’ shit work? Would you like to spend your days writing parking tickets? By the way, he was off duty when they bashed his head in.”

  I thought I detected a conciliatory grunt.

  “You got me, Landau. I should’ve known about this guy. They probably had a special ceremony for him, but I haven’t been paying attention like I used to. I’m very nearly burnt out. I f
igure about fifteen thousand people have been murdered during my career.”

  “You’re still relatively young for a Greek god. You got your pension locked up; why don’t you do something else with your life?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do—and I don’t need advice from you. How’s Frownie doing?”

  “I’ve never seen him so carefree,” I said. “He stays in bed most of the day, but his spirits are high and his mind is razor sharp. He’s fighting to the end like it’s a game. ‘I’m not my body,’ he told me the other day. ‘Who needs a goddamn body anyway? I’m just a spark bouncing around my brain.’ ”

  Kalijero chuckled and said, “Sure sounds like he’s losing it to me.”

  His comment angered me for its small-mindedness. I wanted to like Kalijero, but that would require ignoring his unenlightened condition.

  “How about finding out for me who’s on the Gelashvili case?” I asked. “See if I can chat with them a little bit.”

  Kalijero sighed. “You think I can just snap my fingers and the whole goddamn department falls at my feet? I’m one of your contacts, is that it? Your man in the CPD…?”

  Geez, what nerve had I hit? I let Kalijero rant awhile longer until I found a break and jumped in. “You sure are a surly son of a bitch, Jimmy. And it’s a damn shame you hate your life so much that you feel the need to shit all over someone who just wants to help find a little justice for some poor bastard who got wasted…”

  It was my turn to rave, which I did with gusto, reaching deep into that angry bag of frustration we all carry around with us for such occasions. At what point the call dropped, I had no way of knowing.

  4

  At home the next morning, I ate breakfast and fired up my new laptop to search the Republic archives for Gelashvili. The article I discovered was barely long enough to warrant a byline. “Forty-five-year-old Jack Gelashvili of 2415 West Farragut Avenue, found dead from blunt force trauma near his home. Robbery motive inconclusive, although his apartment was ransacked. No one is in custody and Foster area detectives are investigating.” Unmarried, living with his cousin and mother, Gelashvili, according to neighbors quoted in the article, had a pleasant personality and was an all-around terrific guy. No mention of what he did for a living. A glorified obituary, really.

  The reporter’s name was Peter Ross. I called the Republic, then endured ten minutes of being transferred around different offices before someone figured out that Ross was a stringer and the Gelashvili article had been his first with the Republic. With great reluctance, I called Ellis Knight, my Partisan contact and an affluent white kid who had acquired an annoying fondness for ghetto slang.

  Knight answered with, “Another exclusive exposé? You got a one-eight-seven? Already, already, already!”

  “Calm the hell down. Why don’t you give Ritalin a try?”

  “Why else would you call me? We gonna memorize Bible verses together?”

  “Do you know a freelance reporter named Peter Ross?”

  “Yeah, I know Ross. What do you want with him?”

  “I want to ask him a few questions about an article he wrote.”

  “What article?”

  “How can I get in touch with him?”

  “What article?”

  “Try to stay calm. A guy got murdered and I’m looking into it.”

  As if a dog could ignore a piece of raw meat. Knight exploded into the freaky, uncontrollable behavior that was his trademark, first begging for the story then saying I owed him for helping my career. It might be funny if it wasn’t true. On and on he went until I hung up.

  As if on cue, the phone rang seconds later.

  “Can you keep a goddamn grip on yourself?” I barked at Ellis. “Do you want to give it a try?”

  “Don’t give me any orders, Landau,” Kalijero’s gravelly voice said. “I didn’t have to call you back. In fact, I don’t ever have to talk to you.”

  “Sorry, Jimmy, I thought you were someone else. You want to yell at me some more?”

  “Baker and Calvo.”

  “Baker and Calvo?”

  “The two detectives assigned to the Gelashvili case. They’re both a couple months from full pension benefits for a career of half-assed police work. That means they can do shit all day and it don’t matter. It says a lot that these two clowns got the case.”

  “Meaning it’s low priority.”

  “More like it’s no priority. And there was no special ceremony or acknowledgment for Gelashvili. It’s like the guy didn’t exist.”

  “Why’d you call me back?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not as if I want to be your drinking buddy. But that guy, he deserved better. I mean, he worked for the cops. Someone should try to find out…” Kalijero groped for words.

  “What? Just say it.”

  “The way they killed the guy. They turned his head into a pulp—somebody’s way of sending out a sick message.”

  “Whose way?”

  “That kind of memo usually comes from organized crime. Gangs, Mafia.”

  “That’s one memo you’ll be glad not to get.”

  Kalijero hung up on me for the second time in two days.

  5

  Leaning against the butcher block island, I re-counted the money Izzy had given me, fully aware that a black and white cat sauntered back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, lashing her tail and meowing every four or five steps. About the time I reached the thirtieth C-note, my ankle erupted in pain. Punim was hungry.

  I dropped a pile of livers, kidneys, hearts, and gizzards into her bowl and then prepared a sandwich of raw tofu on rye with sliced tomatoes, fake mayo, and toasted ground sesame seeds. I ate and once again confirmed I had fifty portraits of Ben Franklin in my possession. The phone rang.

  “I know how to get in touch with Ross,” Knight said.

  “So you’re gonna help me?”

  “Only if you promise me exclusive rights to the story behind the murder.”

  “There might not be a story behind the murder. What’s Ross’s number?”

  “I want it in writing—that only I get the story. I’ve got the papers at Mocha Mouse for you to sign.”

  Had I not already come to terms with this bizarre character—assistance from him would require tolerance, acceptance, and surrender—I might have allowed my anger to ruin what had been a perfectly good morning.

  —

  Investigating a murder meant wearing a shoulder harness again. I holstered my .40-caliber and headed to a coffee shop named for a saxophone-playing rodent. Knight himself, in his black horn-rimmed glasses and dark wiry hair piled high, seemed an appropriate caricature for a diner with a Buddy Holly theme. Probably the strangest kid I ever met. A privileged white boy dreaming of the “hood,” oblivious to how idiotic his unconvincing ghetto slang sounded. His toothy grin annoyed me the most. I knew he’d be at his usual table, the one in the back surrounded by ten chairs, nine of which were empty. Knight fantasized of one day leading an Algonquin Round Table of tabloid journalists. He had a long way to go.

  “Good to see you again, Jules.” Knight fidgeted with a sheet of paper.

  I took a seat three chairs away. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Knight pushed the paper at me. “I should’ve told you to bring a lawyer. I’ll give you a couple of days if you need advice.”

  I noticed “Gelashvili” was mentioned in the first paragraph. “You saw Ross’s article?”

  “I called Peter. A parking officer hunted down; brain scrambled; fifty-eight bucks in his wallet? Credit cards untouched? Apartment ransacked? And you’re going to tell me there’s not a story there? Even the meth heads, whores, and drunks hate those parking Nazis.”

  I read through the agreement, three paragraphs stating in no uncertain terms that in exchange for unfettered access to Peter Ross, I would reveal any and all information regarding the murder of Gelashvili to Ellis Knight and only to Ellis Knight. What bullshit.

  “Just in case yo
u’re getting ideas, Ross won’t talk to you until I tell him you’ve signed.”

  “Yeah? And if you get the big story, you gonna share a byline with him?”

  Knight stared at me a moment. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Okay, Ellis.” I scratched my name out on the designated line. “You own me. Now give me his number. And he better be cool, or I’ll shove this agreement down your throat and let you void it out your ass.”

  I slid the document back to Knight, and he dug out a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s his number,” he said and handed it over to me. I grabbed it and walked out.

  6

  On the phone, he sounded older than I’d expected; when we met up in person, he looked about mid-fifties. “Peter Ross?” I asked. He sat on a bench at the park near Diversey Harbor.

  “That’s me,” he said through whatever he was chewing.

  He was skinny and well tanned in a brown, worn-out, leathery kind of way. His face reflected a lifetime of missed deadlines and spiked stories. Every few seconds he turned his head and spit out sunflower seed shells. Gross. I sat at the other end of the bench. “So what do you know about Gelashvili’s murder?”

  Ross finished the seed he was working on and ejected it. “Well, I know the cops weren’t eager to figure it out. Considering Gelashvili was one of their own, I thought that was really crummy.”

  “I gotta believe your original article was a lot longer than what got published.”

  “Hell, yes, it was. I had a whole feature on his family. Georgian immigrants. A real powerful, tragic human interest story. The death of the American dream. But the Republic hacked it down to an impotent piece of shit.”

  I waited for Ross to expand on the emasculation of his piece, but he offered only more violent evacuations of black shells.

  “What did the city editor say about it?” I asked.

  Ross spit in disgust and faced me for the first time. “That useless bastard? He’s got his nut sack hiding so far up, he has to spend all his money on a stud service for his wife. At first, he was psyched up, thought we had a real scoop. And then bang! Somebody says ‘boo’ and he shits himself. I asked him what was going on and all he can say is he got a call from the big boss, Konigson.”