Burners - A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa Mystery

by Henry Perez

  “What about getting into trouble? I understand there was some of that, too.”

  I heard him cup the phone with his hand and spell out the name of some coach to another reporter in the room. I was starting to repeat myself when Rossiter turned his attention back my way and apologized for the interruption.

  “When he was much younger, twelve, thirteen, he ran with some bangers on a couple of break-ins, got caught, finally. But I think he learned his lesson. As far as I understand, Tony changed a lot once he got into sports and when he started working with his dad.”

  So maybe this was just what the defense had suggested. A story of a young man, the son of immigrants, turning his life around and starting to make good. Until an arrest for a crime he did not commit landed him in court. Maybe.

  “I just can’t see him doing what they’re saying he did, Alex. But between you and me, in that town, once they’ve turned against you, you’re done. And they’ve certainly turned against Tony Beniquez.”

  I’d wondered about that. Birch Grove wasn’t known for its diversity. As a Hispanic male with a history of problems with the law, Tony Beniquez would’ve made a perfect scapegoat.

  Or could be Tony wasn’t a scapegoat at all, just a young punk who had committed one stupid crime too many. I knew Rossiter wasn’t the sort to put himself out for no reason, so the fact that he was coming to the kid’s defense meant something. Or maybe he was just a bit too close to be objective.

  “Could he still have been running with a bad crowd? Could he have hidden that part of his life from his family? From coaches? Reporters?”

  I heard Rossiter let out a deep sigh.

  “Sure, I guess that might be possible, though it’s unlikely. Everyone has secrets, every place has them, too. And a town like Birch Grove has more than most. So yeah, he could’ve gotten mixed up with some bad characters. But like I said, I’m not buying it.”

  Rossiter sounded like he was growing tired of answering questions, and I knew what that meant. He was about to turn the tables on me.

  Though I was determined to learn all that I could, I didn’t know how much further I wanted to continue this discussion under false pretenses and risk putting a colleague, as well as myself, in a potentially difficult situation. Knowing that Rossiter was a very good reporter, sensing that as such he was about to start asking the questions instead of answering them, and not wanting to involve him in this in case it blew up on me, I thanked him, promised to buy him lunch sometime soon, and abruptly signed off.

  At the library I discovered there had been four arsons in Birch Grove in the last twenty-two months. I also learned Beniquez played on the high school baseball team. I did a quick cross-reference between game dates and when the other arsons were committed, apparently trying to find an alibi for the kid, but didn’t find anything conclusive.

  As with the print shop, the arsonist had used an accelerant in the other three blazes, in each case gasoline. There were no witnesses, and apparently no leads. Besides the shops I already knew about, a toy store off the main drag was also burned down. I jotted down names of vics and then grabbed a local phone book to look up numbers. The first one I got an answering machine. Second one no answer at all. Third was disconnected, but had a forwarding number. Area code 212, which I knew to be New York. I tried that and a man picked up on the second ring.

  “Mr. Steinblum?” I said, squinting at my notes. “My name is Lieutenant Jack Daniels. I’m in Birch Grove and I wanted to—”

  “I want nothing to do with you people,” he said, forcefully interrupting. “Leave me and my family alone!”

  And he hung up.

  Interesting.

  I tried chatting up two librarians on the subject, and while they were open with their knowledge, they didn’t teach me anything new, other than the name of the guy at Jay’s Locksmithe Shoppe. Again I got on my cell.

  “Benedict.”

  “Hey, Herb, it’s me.”

  Detective First Class Herb Benedict was my partner in Homicide.

  “Hi, Jack. I hope you’re enjoying your time away while leaving me with a full workload.”

  I wasn’t.

  “I’ll be back soon, no more than six or seven months. I need you to run a name for me. Vincent Corelli.”

  I spelled it for him, then listened to his keyboard clackety-clack.

  “Got two of them.”

  “This one is in his mid-thirties, Caucasian, prison tats on his arms.”

  “Did a nickel at Joliet. Broke into a house, surprised the sleeping homeowner, beat him up pretty good.”

  “Parole?”

  “No, he’s one hundred percent free. He causing trouble?”

  “I don’t know.” And I didn’t.

  “Speaking of non-sequiturs, any good food in town?”

  “I had a Rueben that was pretty good.”

  “Can you fax me one? I’m starving.”

  I pictured my partner’s ample gut. “I’m pretty sure you’re not starving. And I believe Chicago has a good restaurant or two.”

  “I’m starving, and I’m unmotivated.”

  “Doesn’t that greasy spoon up the street deliver? The one that serves the quadruple cheeseburger with a whole slab of bacon on it?”

  “You mean the Fat Louie Burger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t know? They closed. Fat Louie died last month. Massive heart attack.”

  “I’m shocked.” I actually wasn’t shocked.

  “Needed twelve pallbearers to lift his coffin. Damn shame. I mourned for a week. That man was a genius with bacon. Only burger place nearby is a chain manned by apathetic teenagers. Teenagers should not be allowed to cook cheeseburgers.”

  “Much as this conversation is riveting me, I need to go.”

  “Keep safe, Jack.”

  “I do my best. Thanks, partner.”

  During the walk back to the car, I mulled over what I’d learned, but nothing gelled. Part of me wasn’t sure why I cared. Not only was this not my case, but the case had been solved. Tony Beniquez was caught on the scene. This was pretty much open and shut.

  Still, something nagged at me. Something that made me go off in search of a fast food place.

  For the most part, I tried to eat healthy. But I wasn’t looking for a burger and fries.

  I was looking for who cooked them.

  I pulled into a burger chain, walked into the half-full restaurant, waited in line behind an obese guy in a stained sweat suit, and struck pay dirt with a teenager, his face pitted with acne, working the register. His nametag read RANDY.

  “Is the chicken sandwich good?”

  He stared at me with a face completely devoid of expression. “I dunno. I guess.”

  “I’ll take one, and a bottled water.”

  “Fries?”

  “No thanks. But I do have a question. You know anything about the fires happening in town?”

  His face lit up. “Yeah! It was a kid in my school. Tony Beniquez.”

  “Do you know Tony?”

  “He was in my history class last year.”

  “Does he seem to be the type to start fires like that?”

  “I guess so. I mean, they arrested him, right? He must have done it. He’s been in trouble before. Ran with some gangbangers.”

  I knew about Tony’s past juvee record. I’d pulled it before coming to Birch Grove. One prior arrest for being part of a group that committed a B&E. Though it was unclear in the report what role Tony had played in the actual crime.

  “There anyone else working here who knows Tony?”

  “Nah. But some of my buddies are sitting over there. They know him.” He pointed to a group of teens at one of the rear tables.

  “Uh, your bill is six-eighty-one.”

  I paid, but rather than wait for my food I walked toward the teenagers, trying hard to not look like a cop. It was two guys, two girls. The guys wore baggy jeans and T-shirts three sizes too large. The girls were in mini-skirts that my mother wo
uld have slapped the hell out of me for wearing, and enough make-up for a kabuki troop. When I approached they stopped talking and stared at me with apparent mistrust.

  “Randy said you guys know Tony Beniquez.”

  “You a cop?” one of the guys said.

  “No. I’m a reporter. My name is Alex Chapa. I work for the Chicago Record, and we’re doing a story on the trial.”

  “Are we going to be in the paper?” one of the girls squealed. Then the other one squealed.

  I don’t think, in my entire life, I’ve ever squealed.

  “I can’t make any promises. What’s Tony like?”

  “Dawg was a banger, man. Fool got what was coming.”

  I wasn’t sure why the boy was addressing me as man, but then I didn’t understand why white kids from the burbs tried to dress and talk like black kids from the inner city.

  “So you think he did it?”

  I got general expressions of agreement. The other boy added, “Dude brought a knife to school back in junior high. Got suspended for two weeks. Bad shit, man.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “If I need to speak to any of you again, I’ll be in touch.”

  They nodded like that made sense, even though I hadn’t written down anything or gotten any of their names.

  I went back to the register to grab my sandwich, and on my way out the door one of the girls caught up to me. This close, her heavily made-up face couldn’t mask her youth. She couldn’t be more than sixteen.

  “Hey, Alex, I used to date Tony.”

  “Really?” I said, letting my voice convey my skepticism.

  “It didn’t work out, but he was a sweet dude, you know what I’m saying? Always good to me. Helped his dad out a lot.”

  “So do you think he set fire to that print shop?”

  “No way. Tony would never do that. Not in a billion years.”

  I picked up some General Tso’s chicken and ham fried rice on the way home and treated myself to a fine two-course meal. Three, if you counted the fortune cookie. This one’s message read: You will attend an unusual event and meet some interesting people. Fact is that could describe much of my professional life, assuming the word interesting was used in a liberal way.

  After tossing the leftovers in the fridge and throwing out an old set of Chinese food boxes that had been in there long enough to claim squatter’s rights, I sifted through a mental list of things I could do to keep my mind off the trial and avoid the urge to search for info online.

  I knew I was probably being a little paranoid. But I’d recently read a story of a juror in the southwest who’d been charged with contempt of court after an investigation revealed that she had used her computer to research the background details of her case during the trial. Sure, there are ways to cover your tracks, but I’m only as computer literate as I need to be, and electronic forensics are way beyond my area of expertise.

  A call to my daughter did nothing to smooth out the wrinkles in my night. I left a message after my ex-wife’s recorded voice instructed me to do so, but knew there was zero chance Nikki would ever get to hear it. After debating whether to try again a few minutes later and deciding against it, I figured I’d better find some busy work.

  I’d made it to Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No in the re-alphabetization of my CD collection, and was trying to remember when and why I bought that thing and realizing it probably belonged to Carla, when I heard my neighbor Kevin mowing the lawn. It seemed like Kevin spent a lot of his time cutting his grass, when he wasn’t watering it. I wondered for a moment if he’d be willing to mow mine on one of the three or four days during the week that he didn’t spend mowing his own.

  Then I remembered something else about Kevin. He was a collector. No, not a collector, a saver. He wasn’t one of those hoarders you see on TV, quite the opposite. Kevin’s world was neat and orderly. From his perfectly even grass to his neatly pressed and color coordinated clothing.

  He was also a loyal reader of the Chicago Record. So loyal that he’d once shown me his collection of back issues. Every one, in fact, going back at least three years.

  “You never know when you’re going to need to double-check something in an old story,” he’d explained.

  “But that’s what the Internet is for, Kevin. All of the old stories are archived.”

  “True, but your paper charges a fee for any story that is more than a year old, and I’m not playing that game.”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic. Though when I asked how long it had been since he’d last found a need to “double-check” anything in a three-year-old paper, all I got from Kevin was a cold glare.

  But now I was the one walking over to his house, hoping I hadn’t discouraged him from maintaining his collection. The smell of freshly cut grass invaded my senses as I crossed his yard. I found Kevin in the garage, wiping down his lawnmower.

  “Hey, Kevin, how are things?”

  “Alex, good to see you. You know that stack of logs you’ve had along your side of our fence, the one we share?”

  “You mean the logs that Carla made me keep around for the fireplace we never bothered to light? Sure, I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I think they’ve attracted some nasty critters and I would appreciate it if you would move them, burn them, or just pitch the darn things.”

  “You know what, Kev, that’s a great idea and I will get on it really soon. In the meantime, I need to ask you a favor.”

  I think Kevin got the wrong idea because his first response was to stand up and get into a defensive posture between me and his lawnmower. Like a bear poised to protect its young.

  “I don’t need to borrow your lawnmower, Kevin, I just need to check out some old copies of the Record.”

  He flashed me exaggerated smirk. “Oh really? So you need to ‘double-check’ something?”

  “In a sense, yes, so clearly you were on to something when you started stash—preserving every copy.”

  His smirk turned into a smile and he invited me into the house. I said hi to his quiet, gently attractive wife Rhonda as we walked past the kitchen, and followed Kevin to a den around the back of the house.

  “Which one do you need?” he asked and opened a room-length walk-in closet revealing a dozen stacks of clear plastic containers, each labeled with the year and months.

  “That’s amazing, Kevin.”

  He nodded. “I also keep all of our TV Guides.” He leaned toward me for added emphasis. “All of them.”

  “I don’t have a need for those at the moment, but it’s good just to know they’re here.”

  I started with the week of the Laserquick fire, turning the still crisp pages while Kevin hovered. It had been a busy few days. The President had visited a high school in Wheaton, the Birch Grove police had rounded up a group of alleged gang members who were hanging out at a local ice cream shop, and there was also my story about an appliance plant in Larkin that closed down, leaving more than three hundred employees without a job.

  That explained why I’d missed the story the first time around, and why it never made it above the fold on page three. There were two follow-up stories in the next four days. Much of what was there I already knew, but there were items in each that interested me. In the second story, there was a mention about this being the fourth such fire in Birch Grove in the past sixteen months, just as Jerry Rossiter had told me. In the third story, there was a reference by the police commissioner to the growing gang problem in the area. The commissioner also suggested that there may be a connection between the gang activity and the arsons.

  All three of the stories were written by veteran reporter Jim Chakowski, a mentor and the closest thing I had to a friend at the paper. I thanked Kevin and returned home to call Jim.

  The B&B where I was staying, known as the Weatherby House after the man who built it in 1905, was perfect in every way except for one—the owners were nuts.

  So to get the beautifully decorated bedroom with the huge cast-iron ba
thtub and the ceiling-high stone fireplace, I had to put up with a few minutes of insane prattle every time I encountered one of them.

  They were in their fifties, always smiling and offering pleasantries, and at first encounter you would take them to be charming.

  But the more you talked to them, the more you realized their toolbox was missing most of its screws.

  “Good evening, Miss Daniels.” Greta Hauppdorf greeted me at the front door, opening it before I had a chance to use the key. Like she’d been standing there, waiting for me to show up. She wore a dress straight out of Little House on the Prairie, and her gray hair was done up in a bun. It was probably in a bun when she came out of the womb.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Hauppdorf.”

  “Did you know there were 17,030 murders in the United States last year?”

  “I did not know that,” I said, having to step around her to get inside.

  “I wonder how many of them were asking for it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know. Some folks deserve it. Don’t you think so, Father?”

  She looked to her left, where the tall figure of Arnold Hauppdorf had somehow materialized in the kitchen doorway.

  “I do, Mother. Stupid people, especially. A lot of stupid people in the world.”

  Don’t engage, I told myself. But my mouth was open before I could stop it.

  “So you’re saying that if people were smarter, they would have been able to outsmart their attacker?” I asked.

  “Heavens, no,” Greta said. “We mean they were murdered because they were stupid. Which is a good thing. There are too many stupid people, and they’re having babies faster than the smart people are.”

  “The average IQ of the country is dropping,” Arnold added. “At this rate, by the year 2030, our nation will be twenty-five percent stupider than it is now. Clearly the government needs to take action.”

  “By rounding up all the stupid people and killing them?” I asked.

  Both the Hauppdorfs chuckled.

  “Oh, my dear, nothing that drastic,” said Greta. “We should just ship all the stupid people to some other country.”