A Picture of Guilt

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  His eyebrows shot up, but he kept chewing.

  “I know he used to work down here.”

  He spat out a clump of black goop, which landed a few inches from my left sneaker. “Haven’t seen him in over a year. Don’t expect to.”

  I stood my ground. “But you knew him, right?”

  He looked me up and down. “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “From the union?”

  “No.”

  “Then I ain’t got nuttin’ to say.”

  He gave me his back and walked away. A few gulls swooped down in parallel arcs above his head, their bellies tinged with the morning sun. I considered groveling, beseeching him with the fact that my livelihood was at stake unless I could clear my name, but after glancing at the unemployed longshoremen still gathered by the warehouse, I reconsidered. I pulled the brim of my cap farther down and started back to the car. As I skirted a second warehouse with peeling paint on its sides, a flicker of movement caught my attention.

  “Got a match?” A burly man with white hair, a bulbous red-veined nose, and skin the color of a dried apple drew a cigarette from behind his ear. The scent of booze clung to him, and there was a suspicious bulge in his pocket. I dug around in my purse and pulled out a frayed matchbook from the Italian Gardens, my favorite neighborhood restaurant.

  He lit the cigarette with pudgy fingers and took in a deep drag. Then he blew it out so contentedly I was tempted to bum one, even though I haven’t smoked in fifteen years. He grinned at me as if he knew what I was thinking, and slipped the matches into his pocket. “You’re that dame I saw on TV.” He studied me. “You stuck up for Johnnie. That took guts.”

  He could keep the matches. He knew Santoro. I tried to suppress my excitement. “It didn’t seem to do much good.”

  “You never know.” He brought the cigarette back up to his lips. “Why you come all the way down here? You ain’t had enough?”

  “I—I have some questions about him.”

  “Yeah.” He spread his arms. “But how you know to come down here?”

  “Oh.” I’d misunderstood his question. “I called the union and asked where my best chance was to find some longshoremen. They said Ceres was the only place hiring today.”

  He nodded, then motioned for me to follow him to the edge of the dock. A barge was tied up a few yards away, its contents hidden under several tarps. Water lapped against the side of the barge. Across the inlet a freighter had tied up, and I heard shouts and saw men bustling to off-load materials. The smell of rotting fish was strong.

  He flicked his ash into the water and took another drag, his belly ballooning in and out. “I’m Sweeney. What is it you wanna know?”

  This was the best offer I’d had in weeks. “I’m not sure how to begin, but, well—tell me how you knew Santoro.”

  Sweeney inhaled. The tip of his cigarette glowed orange. “His daddy and me were buddies.”

  “Santoro’s father is a longshoreman?”

  “Was. He’s passed on now. Died of cancer.”

  So did my mother. “Did he—Johnnie—come from a large family?”

  He took another drag. “Not so big. Four kids, I think. Three girls and Johnnie.”

  “Do they live around here?”

  “Not far.” He flicked his cigarette off the dock. It landed in the water with a tiny hiss. “What is it you want, lady?”

  I sucked in a breath. “Mr. Sweeney, I don’t think Johnnie Santoro killed his girlfriend. But the jury didn’t believe me, and unless I can prove it, I may not ever work again. I’m trying to find any information, any evidence, anything that would help prove he didn’t do it. I figured I’d start by coming down here.”

  He stared at me, sizing me up for another long moment. Then, “In that case, I dunno if I’m gonna be much help.”

  “Why?”

  “I—well, let’s just say I didn’t much like Johnnie.”

  A small boat chugged down the waterway. The barge rocked gently in its wake.

  “Why not?”

  “Johnnie was one of those guys who always wanted something for nothin’. You know what I mean? Thought just because his father worked down here, he was—entitled.” He folded his arms.

  “Did he work regularly as a longshoreman?”

  Sweeney scoffed. “Not much. And when he did, he was always struttin’ around like he owned the place. Mouthing off, too.”

  “About what?”

  “His friends. His deals. How he was gonna score big. Bullshit like that.”

  “Deals? Was Santoro dealing?”

  “Don’t know.” He looked off onto the water.

  I waited.

  He coughed hard, a smoker’s hack, and took out another cigarette. “But seems to me, a couple months before he got busted, I can remember him sayin’ he wouldn’t have to be doing this much longer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You know. Scroungin’ work down here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Said he was working a big deal.”

  “But you never asked about the details.”

  He looked at me under hooded eyes. “Ain’t none of my business, now, was it?”

  “Did he ever mention a guy named Sammy?”

  He dug out the Italian Garden matches, frowning. “Not so’s I remember.”

  He lit another cigarette, waved out the match, and let it drop to the cracked concrete.

  I cleared my throat, phrasing my next question carefully. “Did Johnnie have a union card?”

  “Oh yeah, his daddy made sure of that. That was part of the problem. Charlie couldn’t say no to Johnnie.”

  I paused. “Well, given the way things are down here, you think he might have been mixed up with the wrong people? People who didn’t like the way he behaved, and—”

  “You mean like the people what still control who gets hired and how much of our pension they’re gonna rip off, even though there ain’t no work? Those kind of people who you mean?”

  I nodded.

  He hesitated. “I couldn’t say. All I can say is Charlie and I weren’t never mixed up with that crowd. Those guys’ll bleed you dry.” He sniffed. “Of course, twenty years ago, it didn’t matter. There was plenty of work. You could still make it. But now…it ain’t never been this bad. A boat don’t tie up but maybe once a week. No way you can live on that.”

  He stole a glance at me, then unexpectedly grinned, baring a set of yellow, stained teeth. “Now, I ain’t gonna deny that Charlie and I mighta helped something fall off the back of the boat once or twice. Like the time a bunch of Corvette engines came in on a freighter. Some of ’em ended up in cars all up and down the South Shore. I heard the FBI took to casing the McDonald’s over at Seventy-ninth and Phillips, making all them high school kids lift up their hoods so’s they could check out what was inside their Chevys.” His belly shook with quiet laughter. “But those days are gone. There ain’t nothing left to steal. I mean, who’d want a load of steel coils?”

  “So, it’s not likely Johnnie was—”

  “Like I told you. I keep my head down.”

  “I understand.” I looked out over the waterway. The sun was sewing the surface of the water with tiny bursts of light. “Tell me something, Mr. Sweeney. Has anybody else come down here asking questions about Santoro?”

  “Like who?”

  “Cops, investigators, lawyers. Anyone.”

  “Not so’s I’d notice. But this ain’t the kind of place people come if they don’t have to.”

  “Yeah. Well, thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

  He straightened up. “Like I said, Charlie was my friend.”

  I headed toward the car. Just before I rounded the corner, I turned around. Sweeney was gazing out over the water, as if the docks had stolen his soul, but it wasn’t worth the effort to get it back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As I drove north on the Bishop Ford, a giant pair o
f red lips on a white billboard reminded me of Rhonda Disapio. How her mouth squeezed into a tight, crimson ball against her pale skin. How her lipstick was smeared the day we met. It occurred to me that she’d come north to see me on the same highway. Except she never finished the return trip.

  I tightened my seat belt. The fact was, I probably hadn’t done myself any good at the harbor. Johnnie Santoro sounded like a punk who was mixed up with the wrong people. Not someone I’d care to help. I wondered whether I’d have gotten involved with him in the first place if I’d known.

  The Dan Ryan runs from 95th Street to the Loop. As I approached 95th, I slowed. Calumet Park, the lake, and the boat launch were only a few miles away. I could try to check out Rhonda’s story. I’d never have incontrovertible proof—Mary Jo had died over a year ago—but at least I could see if Rhonda’s version of events was feasible. I wouldn’t even have to get out of the car. I could just drive around.

  I made the turn.

  East of the expressway the neighborhood is largely black until you hit the lake, where it turns Hispanic. The streets off 95th are narrow and lined with row-houses and bungalows, but they’re clean and neat, as if they’re struggling to stay respectable.

  They do parks well in Chicago, and Cal Park was no exception. The 200-acre stretch of land is a tranquil haven, with graceful curves, wide promenades, and lots of trees. I passed a few kids on bikes—they had to be playing hooky—and two women pushing strollers. I rolled down the window. Sun-warmed air swept through the car.

  I swung into a parking lot at the northeast end of the park. Directly in front of me the lake curved around a wide bend. To my left were a few trees, but not enough to obstruct the view. I cut the engine and watched a few gulls march past the car, their tiny heads bobbing back and forth. The sun fired the trees with splashes of copper, red, and gold. A soft breeze skittered the leaves. I climbed out.

  In front of me stretched four narrow wooden piers supported by pilings. Between them were lanes of water wide enough for a boat to navigate. Asphalt backed up to the water’s edge, and two men were dragging their boat from the water to a trailer hitched to the back of their van. A metal breakwater angled around the north end of the boatyard, sheltering it from the worst of the lake’s excesses.

  To my right, an expanse of rocks hugged the shore, bordering a path wide enough for joggers and bicyclists. I walked over, trying to imagine the scene as Rhonda had described it. I hunkered down on the rocks, pretending it was late at night and I had a bottle. I gazed at the pilings, imagining a shadowy boat as it coasted into the launch, hearing the drone of its motor as it slowed. I tried to feel the spark of interest that must have run through Mary Jo and Rhonda when they realized two men were aboard. Though the launch was far enough away that you couldn’t make out faces—I could barely see the men securing their boat to their van now—I could picture the two women giggling, daring each other to make the first move.

  I retraced my steps to the parking lot. A grassy, leaf-strewn area, now stubbly and brown, lay in front of it. To my left, running the length of the lot, was a chain link fence. Behind it was a one-story red building, a Park District facility of some sort, I thought.

  Rhonda had said she’d escaped through a hole in the fence. I walked over and started down its length, jiggling and shaking it as I went. Halfway down, something went slack. I stopped and shook it again. The bottom of the fence had come loose. I leaned over and lifted a section of fencing. Was this where Rhonda slipped through and escaped?

  I replaced the loose section and straightened up. Along the fence line was an accumulation of litter, pushed up against the links where grass had grown through. Discarded coffee cups, beer cans, fast-food wrappers, even a few swatches of material that might have been shirts at one time. A few yards farther down, up against the fence, something glittered. I explored it with my foot. A silver charm bracelet was tangled up in a comb. Bending over, I extricated it from the comb. It had a small silver heart. Probably belonged to some little girl who cried for days when she discovered it was lost.

  I studied the bracelet, looked both ways, then dropped it in my bag. I still struggle to resist things that don’t belong to me, but this time I was rescuing something from oblivion, not shoplifting. That was different, wasn’t it?

  As I headed to the boat launch, the two men with the van, having attached their boat to their trailer, were pulling away. More debris had collected where the breakwater met the shore. Soda bottles. A dented gas can. Shards of glass. I watched all of it disappear under a wave and reappear moments later. Did everyone expect someone else to clean up after them?

  I was about to walk out onto one of the piers when I heard a noise behind me.

  I spun around. A couple of kids on bicycles were closing in on my Volvo. Though it’s over ten years old, it’s not a beater, and I planned on getting another couple of years out of it. I threw my bag over my shoulder and started over. As I did, one of the kids parked his bike and planted himself on the driver’s side. Stretching out his arm, he strolled from the front to the back of the car, running his hand along the side. The other kid watched, laughing.

  “Hey!” I sprinted toward them. “Stop messing with my car!”

  The kid who’d been laughing turned around, his grin fading. The boy who’d been at the car ran to his bike and jumped on. They both pedaled furiously in the opposite direction.

  “Hey you! Stop it right there!” I yelled.

  But I was no match for young male bikers at warp speed. By the time I got to the car, they had turned the corner and were out of sight. Breathless and damp, I stopped at the spot where they’d been. A long, wavy scratch extended from the front end to the rear bumper.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When I got home I called Mark Lefferts, an old friend from high school who owns a body shop in Glenview. We dated for about a month during senior year, one of those relationships that burned hot and furious and then turned to ashes when he decided he liked Angie Sawyer more than me. Angie, a cute blonde and a cheerleader, reportedly had a fondness for the backseats of cars. No wonder he made a career of automotives.

  He could fix the scratch for about twelve hundred dollars, he said. Once I started breathing again, I said I’d learn to like it and hung up. So much for old boyfriends. Although he did have great weed, I recalled. Back in the days when grass cost thirty dollars an ounce, he had sinsemilla before anyone else.

  I wandered into the kitchen. Thinking about grass reminded me of Mary Jo’s statement to Rhonda at the boat launch. Something like “What makes you think I don’t know about dealing?” At the time, I’d thought it was a strange comment. Out of context. But now, I wondered. Is that what this was all about?

  I started wiping the counter with a sponge. Maybe the men in the boat were bringing in drugs from Canada through the Great Lakes. Hell, if the Calumet River was involved, they could have come up the Mississippi. Was it possible Mary Jo wasn’t at the boat launch by chance? What if she was there to intercept the shipment for Santoro? Sweeney hadn’t denied Santoro was into dealing; in fact, when I asked him point blank, he’d kept his mouth shut. And Mary Jo was Santoro’s girlfriend.

  But then, why would she have brought Rhonda Disapio with her? Unless Rhonda was involved, too. No, that didn’t seem right. Maybe Santoro had ordered Mary Jo to intercept the stash, but she refused. Maybe that’s what they were fighting about at the bar. Maybe she didn’t want anything to do with dealing and was trying to make a break for it in his car.

  I wiped the burners on the stove. Or was it the other way around? Maybe she was trying to get more heavily involved. Freeze Santoro out. Nobody ever said Mary Jo was an angel—except her mother. Maybe Mary Jo made off with Santoro’s car, left him stranded, and proceeded to the boat launch herself. But then, after she got there, the deal fell apart. Maybe the men didn’t know her. Or didn’t buy her story. Or thought she was a cop. They panicked. She ran. They killed her.

  Either way, Santoro would have been
caught in the middle. He might not have been at Calumet Park, he might not be guilty of murder, but you wouldn’t call him an innocent.

  I rinsed the sponge in the sink. There was only one problem with my theory. There hadn’t been any talk of drug dealing at the trial. Not a hint. And while I realize it’s probably not a great idea to admit to one crime when you’re on trial for another, I doubted if Brashares had even entertained the possibility. Which was too bad. If he could have established that Mary Jo was acting as Santoro’s go-between, it might have buttressed the tape.

  I squeezed water out of the sponge. I was spinning, formulating theories without proof. Even so, Brashares should know. I called and got his machine.

  “Hi. It’s Ellie Foreman. Something’s come up that I thought I should run by you. It’s about Santoro’s background and what those men might have been doing when Mary Jo was killed. It might give the tape more credibility. Then again, it could be nothing. But I thought I should at least mention it.”

  As I hung up, sun streamed through the window, and the reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves put on a show. All this talk about scams and drugs and murders was making me feel dirty. I went up to take a shower.

  ***

  That weekend Dad and I barbecued on the tiny deck off my kitchen. Figuring it might be the last one for the season, I bought thick steaks and tried not to think how many arteries I was plugging.

  Dad still fires up the coals better than any man I know. And he does it without any props except lighter fluid. Within minutes, he had flames licking the side of the grill. When the coals were edged with a thin border of white, I brought out the meat.

  “You recovered from your experience in court?” He poked the steaks with the tongs.

  I sank into a deck chair. “You know, I think you were right. In a way, I’m kind of sorry I ever got involved.”

  He slid the meat onto the grill. “Didn’t the woman who testified just die in a car accident?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Ellie, I may be old and slow, but most of my cylinders are still firing. It was on TV.”