I waited for a lull and said, “Gentlemen, may I interrupt a moment?”
Two of the men glanced at me. The other two tipped their heads back and drained their glasses. After a refill from the one full pitcher, the group ignored me and returned to stories of their gloried past.
I slid my chair close. They reacted as if strangers often joined them as they got plastered at two o’clock in the afternoon.
“Hey, guys, I’m looking for Detectives Calvo and Baker.”
At that, they all glanced up. A Latino-looking cop in a brown polyester sport coat that probably fit him in 1980 said, “So are we,” provoking a collective roar of laughter.
“Guys, please. I just have a couple questions about a murder investigation.”
Another cop with closely cropped gray hair and wearing an orange “Illini” sport coat stood and said, “I’m Calvo.” Then another stood and said, “No, I’m Calvo.” Then the same routine took place for Baker and the four stomachs jiggled with joy.
I tried not to be disgusted by watching veteran cops straight out of an old TV sitcom howling like fools in a dive bar. While I waited for calm, the violent aspect of my genetic profile leaned over the table and swept away the glass mugs and half-full pitchers, transporting the mess either across the room or into someone’s lap. The Latino cop lunged at me. A sidestep and shove—barely a nudge—sent him to the filthy tile floor. The other three stared at the scene, looking confused. Philly and the girls watched impassively.
“Listen, assholes, you’re all fat and shit-faced, which means I’m in charge. I need to ask Calvo and Baker a few questions. If one or both of them are present, squeal for me.”
“The one on the floor is Calvo,” orange jacket said. Then the same man said, “I’m Baker.”
Calvo struggled to his knees and managed to push himself up to a chair. The seam on the back of his jacket had opened up. I almost felt sorry for the slob.
“Hey, tough guy,” one of them said, “one day we’ll see how tough you really are.”
“I’m not tough. I’m sober. How about Calvo and Baker join me at that table over there?”
“How about you go fuck yourself,” Calvo said.
“I didn’t come here to piss you off. I just need some info.” I walked over to the bar and held up a fifty-dollar bill. “Here’s fifty bucks for the bartender. It’s a prepayment. Fifty bucks’ worth of booze in exchange for ten minutes with Calvo and Baker.” I put the fifty on the counter. Philly glanced at it, then looked back at me.
I walked to a table on the other side of the room. My four friends stayed put. They looked exhausted.
“C’mon, Ray,” Baker said. “Let’s see what the little shit wants.”
My two new buddies wobbled over to the table. It amazed me how booze turned a middle-aged face into a puffy, bloated mug after just a few hours of drinking. They looked like bulldogs with receding hairlines. I tried to picture them twenty years younger and failed. I said to Calvo, “I’m going to pay for a new jacket and the cleaning bill for the slacks.”
“Go to hell.”
I looked at Baker. He seemed the more sensible of the two. “Gordon Baxter,” I said. “A well-known scofflaw. Did you interview him regarding the Gelashvili murder?”
Baker’s vacant expression suggested they hadn’t bothered. Then he said, “Who told you about Baxter?”
“Rich Jones, the parking officer you spoke with.”
Calvo jumped in. “It’s none of your goddamn business. And we told them meter maids to keep their mouths shut.”
“Baxter’s under surveillance,” Baker said. “We don’t want his name circulating. He might disappear before—” The two dicks glanced at each other. “Before we want him to.”
I waited a few beats to let the awkwardness fester. “Before you want him to what? Is this about the Gelashvili murder or something else?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Calvo said. “This is police business. You got no say in it, so fuck off.”
I decided to drop Jimmy’s name. “Kalijero tells me you both got retirement in your sights. Couple months or so?”
Calvo grinned. “Hey! You must be Landau! Jimmy puts your old man away and you become his little bitch?”
“Just stay away from Baxter,” Baker said. “If he takes off, you’re going to piss off a lot of people. That’s all you need to know.”
“Yeah? Do those people I will piss off also spend their days getting wasted in sleazy watering holes while they’re supposed to be conducting surveillance?”
Icy stares. Then Calvo said, “I gotta hand it to you, Landau, you crack one case and that’s enough to get a reputation as a smart-ass punk. How many murder investigations you think you can survive being a cocky little shit? And don’t bet on Kalijero being your pal too much longer. He put his papers in before we did. Any day now he’ll be running some greasy spoon in Greek Town.”
Not wanting to wear out my welcome, I thanked my new friends for their hospitality and bid them farewell. I walked back to my car with two competing thoughts: linking a dead immigrant to a multimedia corporation just became more complicated, and it hurt to find out secondhand that Jimmy had put in for retirement. I needed a place to sit, eat, and reflect. Tamar had mentioned she worked at the Georgian bakery around Devon and California.
15
I found the Kutaisi Georgian Bakery in a thriving multicultural paradise of skin tones, creeds, and ethnicities. Equally diverse were the delicious smells emanating from the bakery’s brick-domed oven as it produced the breads and pastries so well known to District 24 of the Chicago Police Department. Apart from a line of booths along the back wall, rows of square oak-laminate tables filled the eating area. Four police officers occupied one of the booths, clearly enjoying a variety of flaky pastry treats. A guy in a burnt orange leather jacket with a shaved head sat by himself at the end booth. The words “skinhead” and “neo-Nazi” came to mind. Not wanting to be presumptuous, I settled for “gangster.” Not far from the cops, a couple of drunks lay passed out over a table. I perused the offerings displayed under the counter, settled on a triangular delicacy, then sat at a table next to the bakery’s enormous storefront windows that ran parallel to Devon Avenue. A sweet honey-walnut flavor filled my world as I stared into the street’s craziness and tried to make sense of the preceding days.
In my mind, the cliché stood front and center, close enough for me to smell its foul breath: evil corporate devil committed murder to cover his ass. The simplest scenario—Gelashvili gave Konigson one too many parking tickets—was also the stupidest. Or maybe Konigson’s chauffeur got too many tickets. Even stupider. The expanse of unattached dots between Gelashvili’s world and Konigson’s required more connections before I could move beyond the realm of idiotic speculation. Moments like these begged the attention of “Frownie Consciousness,” an intruding voice I attributed to the old man when personal doubt hoisted its monstrous face. Focus on the dots in your immediate vicinity, the voice said, and instantly I saw Baxter the scofflaw—aka my closest dot.
I sat upright and breathed deeply while twisting my neck and shoulders back and forth. After several rotations, a silky black ponytail caught my attention. She stood in front of the oven, apparently inspecting the dial thermometer. When she turned, I saw enough of her face to confirm Tamar’s identity.
I walked to the end of the counter and watched her push a rolling rack stacked with trays of dough back and forth from the prep room to the oven. The back room had one large open entryway through which I could see other workers bent over tables, kneading, glazing, or icing. While I observed the labors of pastry fabrication, an immense figure appeared in the entryway, filling most of the space—if not blotting out the sun. He was bald with a bushy black unibrow over matching black eyes and a bulbous hook of a nose. The face of nightmares, I thought, a kind of beast-like man who materialized in your bedroom doorway and stared at you with an evil eye known to transform children into stone.
When our eyes me
t, I instinctively turned my back and leaned against the counter, but not before the man’s body language had already revealed his intention of approaching me. Moments later I heard, “May I help you with something, sir?” That this kind, gentle articulation could come forth from such an intimidating figure was almost cartoonish in its absurdity. I was about to respond when I caught a glimpse of Tamar emerging from the doorway, which prompted a lateral move out of the man’s shadow. I waved. She smiled broadly, walked over while wiping her hands on the bottom half of her apron, and said, “What’re you doing here?” Her white V-neck T-shirt revealed a sheen of perspiration running down her lovely neck to the cleavage of her adorable breasts. The warmth of her expression released a swarm of butterflies throughout my abdomen and I forgot all about the demon who had retreated back into the prep room.
“I was hungry,” I said. She giggled. “Gordon Baxter. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“Only if Jack had mentioned him. Another officer told me Baxter was a well-known scofflaw whose car had been towed more than once. He was known for his abusive language and threats. And he lives in your neighborhood.”
“So he’s a suspect?”
“Seems like he should be, but a lot of things aren’t what they seem.”
Tamar nodded. “That’s quite a profound statement.”
“By the way, there’s a couple of guys passed out at a table near those cops.”
Tamar shrugged. “Yeah, we get a lot of those. Drink a lot somewhere, come here and load up on pastries, pass out. As long as they don’t cause trouble, the boss doesn’t care.”
I nodded as if her explanation made sense, then said, “I’ll let you get back to work.”
Again Tamar held me in her gaze for an extended moment before saying goodbye. The conclusion to my visit would’ve been perfect had I not sighted the bald demon once again filling up the entryway to the prep room, his scowl scary enough to cause DNA to mutate.
—
Men took care of Dad. “Associates,” I think they were called. They shopped for him, cooked his food, cleaned his apartment, and basically made sure he was comfortable. These benefits were not the result of regularly paid insurance premiums, but of credits acquired over decades of loyalty to various individuals and organizations operating as a de facto syndicate. Keeping his mouth shut for sixteen years in a medium security prison was the equivalent of buying an expensive long-term disability plan.
Dad rarely left his apartment in a six-flat on Pine Grove and Waveland, which is why I didn’t bother calling. Through the door’s oval glass, I watched him hobble toward me. He employed his cane carefully, keeping his gaze to the floor. Not until he opened the door did Dad lift his head and offer me a fleeting smile. His blue eyes still gave off a spark of youthful vitality that betrayed a body slowly succumbing to prostate cancer. I bent down and kissed him on the cheek. Dad turned then motioned for me to follow.
“Why don’t you have one of those guys live here?” I said. “Let them answer the door.”
Dad lowered himself to the couch and sat upright with both hands resting on the cane handle. “Because I can still wipe my own ass, that’s why. When I can’t, then it’s time to go. So what’s new?”
I sat in a chair opposite the couch and got right to the point. “I’ve taken another murder case.”
Dad had no immediate reaction other than to purse and un-purse his lips, something he always did when contemplating. “Well, what are you going to do?” he finally said.
“If I thought you’d never ask me again, maybe I’d keep it to myself. But I’m not going to lie to you.”
Dad appeared okay with my answer. “Hey, what I don’t know won’t hurt me. Just go about your business. No point in worrying.”
I waited for more. “That’s it? You’re going to let me off that easy?”
“You got any friends besides your father and another old man at death’s door?”
So much for letting me off easy. “What’s the difference?”
“What about that girl? Susie, wasn’t it? You sounded kind of happy about her.”
“I was happy about her but…we wanted different things. It’s complicated—and she had to go back to Connecticut, to help take care of her parents.”
“Hey, what about Peggy?”
I thought I was hearing things. “What about her? That was high school, for chrissake!”
He looked confused, as if he wasn’t sure where he was. Then his face softened. “That’s right,” he said. “What’s the matter with me?” Dad looked at his watch. “Well, I want to watch my show now.” He positioned himself at the end of the couch cushion then slowly rose to his feet, gripping the cane handle to steady himself. I watched his painstaking journey down the hall. After he disappeared into his bedroom, I let myself out.
16
I sat in my recliner with a cat on my lap. We stared at each other as I dialed the phone. She blinked. “I love you, too,” I said, and as if on cue, she dug her rear claws into my thigh and leaped off. Love is complicated.
A young female voice answered: “Johnny Bail Bonds. How may I direct your call?”
“Jules for Johnny.”
Stringed instruments, then, “Mr. Landau! The bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus investigatorius!”
Johnny “Bail Bonds” Duggan liked playing with words. He found me after liberating a pile of business cards from a fish bowl on a restaurant cashier’s counter, thus depriving someone of a free lunch. Johnny credited me with saving his marriage by verifying Sheila really met her friends every week for “girl chat” and that “Shawn” was also a woman’s name. Having Johnny insanely grateful had two serious advantages: Sheila worked in the police crime lab and her brother was a cop.
“I need a background check and this time I’m paying for the service.”
“You ain’t paying for nothing. Not at Johnny Bail Bonds.”
“C’mon, John, I can afford to pay, I don’t need—”
Stringed instruments with harpsichord. Vivaldi, I thought. He came back on. “Every time you say you’re gonna pay, you go on hold a little longer. So what’ll it be?”
Johnny was pure blue-collar Chicago Irish. Favors were sacred and never forgotten. Arguing was pointless. “Gordon Baxter, North Side.”
“Give me an hour.” Johnny hung up.
I leaned the recliner all the way back, which for me was equivalent to swallowing a Valium. Palmer the aristocrat, inveterate newspaper man, slapped by the realpolitik of corporate media. I needed an insight into Baxter, something to suggest a logical connection, something to close the gaps between all those damn dots. I drifted off picturing four men standing in a room. A faceless head on a body wearing a suit represented Konigson. I wanted him to tell me something, even if he didn’t have a head. Konigson raised his arm and pointed. I heard a shrill ringing. Konigson pointed again and I opened my eyes. My cell phone spoke.
“It’s Johnny. Your boy Baxter has anger issues.”
“Tell me.”
“Four misdemeanor assaults on parking officers.”
“What time frame?”
“All within the year. Before that, nothing.”
“What’s he driving?”
“Two thousand and three blue Buick LeSabre.” Johnny read off seven numbers for the plate.
“Give me an address and your job is done.”
“Twenty-four fifteen West Farragut, Apartment G6.”
I repeated the address and Johnny confirmed Baxter lived in the same building as Gelashvili.
—
From across the street of Baxter’s Farragut Avenue apartment building I failed to see any sign of the police surveillance Baker and Calvo had mentioned. Real surveillance would’ve been all over my ass by now. I called the bakery and asked Tamar if she knew anyone who lived on the ground floor.
“I see people in the laundry room down there. But unless they were my neighbors, I couldn’t say for sure what floor they lived
on. Why do you ask?”
“I’ll tell you more later. Gotta go.” It felt good having a solid reason to call her again.
I judged an apartment building’s character by how it treated its ground floor. Apart from a slightly musty odor, the freshly painted hallway, the well-vacuumed carpet, and the brightly lit laundry room spoke well of the building’s management.
Outside the door to apartment G6, I heard random notes produced one at a time from an electronic keyboard as if a child were poking the keys with one finger. I knocked. The music continued. I knocked again. Still the music played. I was about to put a closed fist to the door when it slowly opened to reveal a tall, thin man in his forties wearing purple jeans and a white T-shirt. He hadn’t shaved in days. Wavy black hair reached below his ears. His studio apartment was messy, like a teenager’s bedroom. The white walls were bare. Across the room, a digital piano continued playing the music, or whatever it was.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Baxter?”
“Yes, I am Gordon Baxter.”
“My name is Jules Landau. I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired to investigate the murder of your upstairs neighbor, Mr. Gelashvili. May I ask you a few questions?”
Baxter’s only reaction was to lean against the door frame and stare. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Sure. C’mon in.”
Baxter sat on the pile of clothes that covered his bed. He offered me the only chair in his studio apartment—the one at the keyboard.
“There’s a button at the far left of the console. Push it if the music bothers you. I’m a composer.” Baxter spoke like someone bored out of his skull. I let the invisible child play.
“You were aware that Jack Gelashvili, who lived in this building, was murdered about a block away?”
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