Windy City Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  The outside door creaked open, then shut. The patter on the steps told me someone lightweight or small was ascending the stairs. I thought of a child who had just mastered stair climbing. A minute later, Izzy came into view.

  “A coincidence?” I said.

  “There is a coffee shop across the street. From there I sit and watch the world. From there I saw you enter the building.”

  Izzy spoke not of a chic café boasting organic fair trade, locally roasted beans in mochas, lattes, and espressos, but a seedy bacon-and-hash joint existing in a time warp from just before the city’s white-flight era. I couldn’t help picturing his nice gray suit splattered with grease.

  “Well, it’s been a couple days,” I said. “Time for an update, I guess.”

  “Does that pain you so? May I remind—”

  “We had this conversation last time…” I rehashed the events since our last dialogue, starting with meeting Tamar and ending with Baxter’s frame-up. As I spoke, Izzy slowly paced the room staring at the floor. His expression, his mannerisms, everything about him seemed contrived.

  “Are you suggesting Baxter’s medication was tampered with on each occasion his car was to be towed? How could this be engineered so precisely?”

  “If one had access to his apartment and if Baxter used some kind of daily pill-dispensing device, it might be quite easy.”

  Izzy thought about it. “Perhaps,” he said. “The tickets issued by this Windy City company. That’s significant, I should think. And what of the newspaper editor?”

  “I left a message fifteen minutes ago.” Izzy took a seat in the club chair in front of my desk and rested his head in his hand. I wondered how someone so young could act so timeworn. “If you don’t mind, Izzy, I’m curious about your background.”

  My words had a restorative effect. “Yes, finally, acting as a detective should. And what took you this long to be so curious?”

  I interpreted the question as rhetorical. “It’s hard for me to see you as an Izzy. Why were you given the name Isadore Himmel?”

  “The given name is a veil of pretense. I chose the name with which you struggle.”

  His failure to elaborate annoyed me. I should be curious, of course. “Why did you choose this name?”

  “It’s a devotional name. A testimonial, if you like.”

  “A testimonial to what?”

  “Himmel was made into ashes by Nazis,” Izzy said. “I arrived at his name from an obscure book of lists that somehow found its way to the library. The lists were of Hitler’s victims from various German towns. I sat in a far corner of the reference floor, my eyes moving past name after name. You could’ve pushed over a bookcase and I would not have flinched, so transfixed I was. I happen to know some German and when my eyes saw the name Himmel, I stopped. You see, Himmel means ‘heaven,’ and I found the irony of this image touching—Himmel having gone up the chimney in the middle of a forest.”

  I waited for the little man to continue, but he offered me nothing more than an antagonizing smirk. Had he not paid me five thousand with the promise of five thousand more, I would have proposed removing his grin at no charge.

  “But what inspired you to—”

  “Forgive me, Landau, you have the right to ask such a question, and for you I will tell quickly my story.” Izzy draped one leg over the other. “One day I went to a Catholic wedding where I was to be an usher. It was there, while standing with the priest and several members of the wedding party, that I heard the priest ask the groom if he had gotten a ‘Jewish deal’ on something he had purchased.” Izzy stopped, unhooked his legs, and slouched on the club chair with his head back. “I was familiar with stereotypes and I knew a disparaging remark when I heard one. And it struck me that if a priest could so deftly embrace such an ancient, unflattering image of a people, then anything was possible. If there was a next time, why shouldn’t I also be included among the victims?”

  Izzy took out a handkerchief and began wiping his eyes. I struggled with a translation of what I just heard. Was this his way of assuaging some kind of guilt over horrible events? Thankfully, my phone rang.

  “Jules, it’s Wilbert Palmer. I’m a short distance from your office…”

  I told Izzy that the editor, Palmer, was on the way. The little man was out the door before I could suggest he leave.

  19

  Maybe it was the lighting, but Palmer looked less burdened than I remembered. And if you stamped his net worth across that shiny billboard of a forehead, I could imagine some women even finding him quite attractive.

  I said, “What brings you to this part of town?”

  “After visiting with you at Mocha Mouse,” Palmer said, “I decided I needed to learn more about the city, explore the nooks and crannies of its many neighborhoods. Working and living downtown offers a restricted view. But I wanted to tell you I received a phone call from a Mr. Ellis Knight. Quite the excitable type. He mentioned you repeatedly. He didn’t seem to want information so much as to remind me of some deal he had made with you.”

  I apologized for Knight’s intrusion and gave Palmer an abbreviated version of the events surrounding my first murder case two months ago. He seemed amused.

  “I admire his passion,” Palmer said of Knight.

  For the second time in an hour, I reiterated the facts. “Somebody from Windy City wrote fraudulent tickets to help frame Baxter,” I said. “What could this have to do with Konigson telling you to spike the Gelashvili story?”

  Palmer blinked a few times and said slowly, “The Republic Media Group used to own Windy City Meters LLC. Konigson sold it to an investment bank a few years ago to lighten the Republic’s debt.”

  “So the company wasn’t profitable? Otherwise, why would he sell it?”

  “I couldn’t say,” he said, meaning he didn’t know.

  I stared at Palmer. “What does this all mean?”

  He returned the stare. “I don’t know.” There. He said it.

  Another one of those moments when something so glaring shrieked for attention yet the significance remained just out of reach. Palmer told me the investment bank Decatur-Staley paid the city a billion dollars for the right to collect meter revenue for seventy-five years and then two months later sold their stake for twelve billion to a group of investors somewhere in the Middle East. My brain glazed over as Palmer utilized his vast tax-loophole knowledge to drag me through the weeds of corporate accounting trickery.

  I interrupted to steer him back to the headless corpse of Jack Gelashvili. Then my phone rang with Kalijero’s number in the display. I answered, saying, “How come I gotta find out from a couple of malingering cops that you put in for retirement?”

  “Don’t tell me I hurt little Jules’s feelings!” Kalijero said. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You are truly one heartless, unfeeling American.”

  “They found a body in a Budlong Woods apartment building. I’ve been asked to check it out. I want you to be the first to know that it’s probably my last case. Feel better? Now, what was that suspect’s name again?”

  —

  Gordon Baxter’s sheet-covered body lay on the gurney as the paramedics pushed it toward the ambulance. In the lobby, a couple of uniformed officers chatted with residents. To add to the squalor, from an open door down the hall, a baby wailed. I spoke to another officer standing outside the door of apartment G6. He repeated my name to Kalijero, who waved me in and pointed to a spot just outside the bathroom, where I was to remain while he talked with a curly-haired man sporting a pencil mustache and holding a large metal ring loaded with keys. I assumed he was the building super. Yellow tape crisscrossed the bathroom doorway. A crime scene investigator collected fibers with a tweezers. Then he spread powder on the desk, chair, and keyboard before turning on an ultraviolet light. Powder had already been applied throughout the bathroom. On the sink sat a plastic pill dispenser with compartments labeled for each day of the week.

  The super walked with an obviou
s limp. I pushed my back against the wall to give him more room. He was barely a foot away as he passed but said nothing despite looking directly into my eyes. Kalijero motioned me over. “When were you last in this apartment?” he said.

  “So Baxter really was under surveillance?”

  “You left your card here, idiot.”

  Oh, yeah. “Yesterday, a couple of hours after I talked to you. First I went to Reilly’s and spoke to Calvo and Baker.”

  “You realize you’re now part of my investigation.”

  I waited for a sign of jest. “Screw you, Jimmy! I told you yesterday I was going to try to find this guy. I can prove he was a legitimate suspect—”

  “Calm the hell down, private dick. I’m just saying if there are other forces at work here, you’ve got to watch where you leave your scent. Think before you go tossing your card around.”

  “Of course you’re right. Now that you mention it, I should’ve anticipated Baxter getting killed.”

  Kalijero scratched his head. “Right now, it looks like he OD’d. We’ll have to wait for the toxicology report.”

  “Of course, and I’m sure it was accidental.”

  “Detective?” The CSI knelt at the head of the bed, holding a pillow in one hand while pointing with the other to some kind of bracelet wrapped around a note.

  Kalijero carefully removed the piece of paper without touching the string beads. He looked the note over and then began reading aloud. “ ‘The voices told me to do it. I couldn’t help it. I tried resisting, but they pushed and pushed until I could take it no longer. They told me someone had to pay. They targeted me so now I should target them. Why not kill the one who lived in my building? That would be the easiest way. But after I killed him, I knew I had to offer my life to balance out the good with the bad.’ ”

  Kalijero put the note down and looked at me. I said, “I don’t know what’s more full of shit, that note or that crying kid’s diaper down the hall. That guy had trouble putting three words together, much less holding a pencil for that long.”

  “Writing is a different brain function,” Kalijero said. “What do you know about that bracelet?”

  I told Kalijero that Baxter’s car had been issued tickets over a ten-mile radius yet the odometer had moved only three miles. The significance evaded him.

  “What do you know about the bracelet?” he repeated.

  I sat on the bed and stared at the wooden beads. My brain flashed back to my first conversation with Tamar when she told me about a bracelet of prayer beads Jack always wore.

  “It’s Jack Gelashvili’s bracelet, here to leave no doubt that Baxter killed Gelashvili. What a crock.”

  Kalijero’s eyes searched my face. “When you come up with something better, let me know.” He started toward the door then stopped short. “And did it ever occur to you that the odometer might be broken?”

  20

  At the bakery, I found Tamar taking a break at one of the customer tables.

  “You just missed the post-lunch, sweet-tooth-madness rush,” she said.

  I took a seat facing the only occupied booth. “I see the twins, Boris and Vlad, are here,” I said, referring to the two gangsters in leather jackets.

  Tamar turned. “I guess so,” she said.

  “You had told me Jack wore a bracelet?”

  “A chotki. It’s like the Eastern Orthodox version of a rosary.”

  “They’re made with wooden beads?”

  “More often they’re made with rope knots. His had wooden beads. Why are you asking?”

  “The creepy laundry room guy that I told you was not a suspect? He was just found dead in his apartment. Under his pillow was a suicide-murder confession note and a bracelet with wooden beads.”

  “So he did kill Jack?”

  I told her about Baxter’s outbursts at parking officers occurring on the same days his medication mysteriously failed. “He didn’t kill anybody.”

  Tamar rested her forehead on the heels of her hands. “Okay. What’s next?”

  “Did you know the parking meters were privatized?”

  “Oh, sure. We paid close attention to that because we weren’t sure how it would affect Jack’s job. But after the transition, nothing seemed to change.”

  “All of Baxter’s tickets were written by officers working for Windy City Meters, which had been owned by the Republic Media Group. A few years ago the Republic Media Group sold the company to an investment bank. Remember that reporter who interviewed you? Did you ever wonder why the published story in the Republic was really just a glorified obit? The CEO of the Republic Media Group, a guy named Konigson, called the city editor and told him to chop it down to a few sentences. He didn’t want to draw attention to your cousin’s murder.”

  I watched Tamar attempt to process my words. “Are you saying this CEO had something to do with Jack’s death?” Tamar let her head fall over the chair’s backrest. We sat in silence. It was a comfortable silence. “Why do people kill?” Tamar asked the ceiling. “For money or love,” she answered and then lifted her head back up. “The only money Jack made was for the city. Many times his salary in parking citations. He gave his life for the city.”

  I said, “And the ungrateful city never thanked you or offered you a flag.” I then asked Tamar to have dinner with me.

  “Not tonight,” she said, and I felt like a jackass. I still didn’t know how to ask a woman out without sounding like an idiot. “I need to finish up in the back and give my neighbor a break from my aunt.”

  Tamar said goodbye and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me alone with my insecurities.

  —

  Relaxing with a can of sugar-free root beer, I pondered rejection but still anticipated Tamar’s voice when the phone rang. Instead, Frownie cloaked me in his rich Chicago inflection. “Julie? Whaddya know, kid?”

  That this familiar voice emerged from the cadaverous bag of bones I had seen two days earlier seemed impossible.

  “Now that I know you’re back on a murder case, I gotta call you. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass, but lyin’ around this bed all day I got nothin’ to do but think.”

  “Frownie, you know you can call me anytime. But I don’t have anything solid. Just a lot of disconnected facts.”

  “Bullshit! There’s always somethin’. You got facts? Then you got somethin’. What about the newspaper editor? Don’t tell me he’s already dead.”

  “Nope. Alive and well.”

  “Tell ’im to get lost. For his own good. Stickin’ his nose in others’ financial dealin’s gets you dead.”

  I told Frownie about Baxter’s frame-up and “suicide” and that Konigson’s Republic Media Group had once owned the company that now controlled the parking meters and employed their own ticketing deputies.

  “All roads lead to money—you know that! Investigation 101. The money that paid the killer, the money to be grabbed by the crime, the people whose money was protected by makin’ someone dead. The people who might get more money because the guy was dead. Make up a story and check it out. Investigate—”

  Frownie dropped the phone. I heard lots of coughing, hacking, and sputtering. Then, like magic, he returned to his old form. “Listen, you got anyone on the inside yet?”

  “I think Kalijero’s on board. You know, he’s developed a real soft spot for you. He wants to know how you’re feeling.”

  “Ain’t that typical? When you’re still young enough to take a chunk outta someone’s ass, guys like that Greek bastard hate you and want you out of the way ’cause they’re the police, the real good guys. Then when you’re old and crippled, they start with the sentimental bullshit. Tell him I remember how much of an asshole he was and that he can go rot in hell.”

  “I thought we all got a little more nostalgic as we got older.”

  Frownie groaned as if in pain. “Ah, hell. I got no use for nostalgia or guys who wallow in it. Waste of time. Just live your damn life and don’t cry over the past.”

 
I wondered how long a strong spirit could keep a body alive. There was nothing left to the guy, just parched skin shrink-wrapped over sinewy muscle fibers. Yet at the top of this fossil, brain neurons fired away as if arrogantly demonstrating their disdain for that useless, shriveled body attached to it. Frownie would never die, regardless of what happened to his body.

  —

  While Punim dined on hearts, livers, and kidneys, I ran down to Tasty Harmony and bought a grilled zucchini, pesto, and portobello sandwich. I kicked back and ate while thinking that all I really needed in life was a Tasty Harmony close by and a comfortable lounge chair. Good food did wonders for my attitude. My thoughts drifted to my conversation with Frownie and then to the two short-timer detectives who had been “assigned” to the Gelashvili murder. Now that their number one suspect had conveniently confessed in a suicide note, I wondered if their retirement party had been scheduled. I wondered what kind of bonus they got for their brilliant non-surveillance.

  I answered the phone, mildly annoyed by the interruption but thrilled to hear Tamar’s voice. “Why don’t I come over tomorrow night and make dinner?” she said.

  In that instant, any residual feelings of stupidity stemming from my date request vanished.

  21

  I’d always heard bars like Reilly’s never really closed, and when I found it open at nine A.M., I thought it was probably true. Inside, a fifty-something woman dressed professionally in a blouse and skirt sat at the bar reading a newspaper under a desk lamp connected to an extension cord. What looked like a glass of tomato juice sat in front of her on a paper napkin. I recognized the geezer sitting at a table staring out the window as the bartender.