Sorry Now?

by Mark Richard Zubro

  “Okay,” Turner gave a resigned sigh.

  “You know Jay Kendall, the columnist?”

  Turner grunted a yes. Jay Kendall wrote a syndicated column, based in Chicago. A couple of years ago he had achieved the coup of a lifetime when both the Sun-Times and the Tribune started carrying his column.

  “You know he owns all those racehorses in Kentucky?”

  Turner tapped a pencil on his desk. “Somebody cut off a horse’s head and put it in his bed so he’d see it when he woke up. I saw The Godfather twice, Ian. So he crossed somebody in the gambling world or the mob.”

  Ian resumed as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “He attacks gays in his column in a mean-spirited, vicious way. He held a news conference this afternoon. He’s prided himself all these years on always telling his readers the truth. Remember the series he did on legislators in Springfield, and their amorous involvements while in our beloved state capitol?”

  “Yeah, he refused to name names for some reason. Supposedly his source took him to an expensive bordello. Some madam gave him hot inside information.”

  “You got it. Only he claimed he was saving the names for the next election.”

  “So.”

  “It was all a setup, all fake.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. He called the news conference to apologize. He’s furious. He’s determined to find out who set him up.”

  “Any idea who did it?” Turner asked.

  “I’ve got my suspicions.”

  “The international gay conspiracy? Even if it was, as far as I can tell, whoever set him up didn’t do anything illegal. If they actually gave him names, that could be some problem, I suppose. I just think it’s funny. Somebody finally made a fool of him after he’s done that all these years to other people. He had lots of people who hated him.”

  “Yeah. Half the cops in the state for a start. He opposed giving cops raises unless the crime rate went down. The guy has criticized almost everybody from the governor on down to homeless bums on the street. Not that the governor couldn’t use getting his butt chewed out once in a while, but you know what I mean.”

  “How’d he find out it was a setup?”

  “They sent him a note explaining the whole operation. They didn’t sign it, but they did end it ‘Sorry now, aren’t you?’”

  Off the phone, Turner filled Fenwick in. “What I don’t get is the”Sorry now’ shit. Okay, if it’s revenge, but why not say who you are so the victim knows why they’re suffering.” Turner shook his head.”They’ve got to be coincidences, but more important, these other things aren’t murders.”

  Fenwick thought a minute. “If any more happen, we can follow them up, but I wouldn’t put much stock in them.”

  Turner called the medical examiner’s office. They put him through to the M.E. in charge of Wilmer’s autopsy. He’d talked to Gerald Miller numerous times, but they’d never met. Miller’s high, tinny voice led Turner to picture a grossly overweight man in his late fifties, pale and effeminate. In actuality Miller was five foot three and twenty-eight years old, and weighed 130 pounds.

  Turner asked about Wilmer’s autopsy. They hadn’t gotten to it yet. Miller asked, “He’s more than just a bum off the street?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. When you do the autopsy, could you check for anything suspicious?”

  “Come on, Paul, I can check for years for suspicious stuff. We always check for something suspicious. How long you been doing this? I need something a little more specific.”

  Feeling slightly stupid, Turner thought a minute. “Start with blows to the head. If he hit his head as he fell, I guess it wouldn’t prove anything, but check it out. Then maybe any kinds of poisons—and, oh yeah, as many blood tests as you can.”

  “You got it,” Miller said, and hung up.

  Turner sipped some coffee . , saw the commander striding across the office area. The Chicago Police Department was probably unique in having the office of commander. It came about because of a scandal in the police department in the 1960s. The new police commissioner wanted reform, but the entrenched captains, then the rulers of the police districts, were nearly untouchable. At the time the police districts’ boundaries matched those of the political wards. Politicians and cops, it was suspected but rarely proved, lived in a snugly symbiotic relationship unreceptive to alterations in their all-too-often lucrative practices. The new commissioner simply put a new person in command of the district and placed the formerly autonomous captains in sets of two, three, or four in redrawn districts. Now they had someone to report to who was directly connected to the commissioner’s office instead of a politician.

  The commander, a tall black man, sat on the corner of Fenwick’s desk nearest the coffee machine. Turner liked the guy. He spent a lot of his time boosting the egos of men and women who usually met only the dregs of society at their worst. Cops face burnout, discouragement at the monumentality of their task, and awareness of the inherent futility of their jobs. They can’t eradicate crime and stupidity, but spend eight hours every day trying to do just that. The commander worked as many hours as the detectives, kept out of their way, and respected their professionalism.

  In his soft raspy voice he asked about their progress in the Mucklewrath case. Turner explained what they’d done and what their conclusions were so far.

  The commander nodded carefully at the end and said, “You’re doing fine, but we’ve got all this bullshit from the press, politicians, and preachers. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.” He wished them luck and strode out.

  “We do have a motive though,” Turner said. “Whoever it is wanted Mucklewrath to be sorry that his daughter is dead. Who would want him to suffer that much?”

  Fenwick asked, “Who has he hurt who would think the murder of his daughter is equal to the suffering they’ve had?”

  They shrugged their shoulders. Neither had an answer to the other’s question.

  They spent much of the afternoon checking the reports on the callbacks the beat cops had made to people not home on their first canvass. Turner and Fenwick followed up on a few of them who still hadn’t been home. They came up with a total of nothing. They spent the latter part of the afternoon and the early evening filling in forms.

  By eight they looked at hours more work. Turner, jacket off, tie loosened, shirt unbuttoned, and three cans of diet soda empty on his desk, stood and stretched. “I can’t believe this shit,” he opined unhappily.

  The light on his phone for the internal extension blinked. He eased it out of its cradle and rested it on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Somebody to see you, Paul,” said the desk sergeant from downstairs.

  “This person got a name?” Turner rubbed his eyes with his left hand.

  Silence a moment. “A press guy. Want me to get rid of him? Says his name is Ian something.”

  “I’ll see him.” But at the moment Turner didn’t want to go to a party.

  Ian had visited the squad room a few times before. He nodded to Fenwick.

  Turner said, “I don’t have time for a party tonight.”

  “I have news, but yes you do.”

  Turner plunked himself onto his swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. Ian sat in the suspect chair. Fenwick placed his elbows on his desk and leaned closer.

  Ian addressed the two men. “We got another one.”

  Turner sat up a little straighter.

  Ian held up a picture. The two cops squinted at the 8½-x-11 piece of paper.

  Turner said, “It’s some naked guy in bed with a woman. This is news?”

  “Not a very good picture,” Fenwick said. “It’ll never sell as pornography. She’s too ugly and he’s too old.”

  “You don’t know who he is?” Ian demanded.

  The cops stared harder at the picture, then looked up at Ian and shook their heads. Turner said, “But you’re going to tell us, aren’t you?”

  “Every paper in town got this a little ove
r an hour ago along with an anonymous note. This is Ted Saimont, auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago. It doesn’t say who she is. Besides rebuking the bishop for his transgressions against humanity, it ends with the words ‘Sorry now, aren’t you?’ No one at the chancery officer, including the bishop, has been available for comment.”

  Turner said, “Who would do this?”

  Ian said, “Everybody. The guy led the campaign to close down abortion clinics. He made himself a general pain in the ass to every liberal cause. He got in trouble with the pope because of his push to have the Catholic mass done in Latin again.”

  “This doesn’t help,” Fenwick said.

  “If it’s a conspiracy—” Ian began.

  “Which I don’t buy,” Turner said.

  Ian went on imperturbably, “If it’s a conspiracy, these people have ways of finding out and operating on a fairly sophisticated level. They could do murder.”

  Turner read the note attached to the picture. “It says this is what he gets for hurting the innocent. I’d like to know a little more about this.”

  “Good luck getting through the church stonewall.”

  “Anybody going to print the pictures or story?”

  “I doubt it,” Ian said. “It’s embarrassing and amusing, but it arrived anonymously. Even we at the Gay Tribune have journalistic standards. We aren’t some sensationalist tabloid.”

  Turner said, “I’ll try and talk to the columnist Jay Kendall and to this bishop tomorrow. I still don’t buy this conspiracy crap.”

  “Double fuck,” Fenwick said. “Let’s go home and start fresh in the morning.”

  Outside, Turner and Hume leaned against Paul’s car. Ian said, “I finally got to hear the famous Fenwick say ‘double fuck.’ I think that in itself makes this trip worthwhile.”

  Turner opened his car door.

  Hume said, “This bishop gave antigay speeches all over the country.”

  Turner said, “I promised I’d look into it.”

  “You have to come to the party.”

  “Are you nuts? I’ve got to work tomorrow. The paper on this case stretches from here to Peoria. Give it a rest.”

  “The good doctor, George Manfred, will be there.”

  Turner stopped himself getting in the car. “That’s dirty pool.”

  “I know he’d love to see you.”

  “Who says?”

  “I just know.”

  “I’ve got to get home to my kids.”

  “I took the liberty of renewing my acquaintance with Mrs. Talucci before I stopped over. She has the situation well in hand. She said for you to go and have a good time.”

  Ian, the tall, vaguely aristocratic WASP, and the relentlessly ethnic Mrs. Talucci had gotten on famously from the first time they’d met.

  “I’m going to check on the boys,” Turner said.

  “I took a cab over knowing you’d be reasonable, so you can drive.”

  “I’m not staying late, and if you don’t have a ride, you can walk home.”

  “Agreed.”

  Paul found Brian at Mrs. Talucci’s kitchen table studying for his advanced physics final exam. His son glanced up long enough to greet his dad and say, “Hi, Ian,” before quickly returning to his papers.

  They discovered Jeff and a friend playing Nintendo in Mrs. Talucci’s living room. She’d bought the set for Jeff two years ago. Paul watched for a few minutes as his son zapped various animated bad guys. At a break in the action he gave him a hug. Mrs. Talucci came down from upstairs to tell him to go and have a good time.

  Gill Garret, a friend of Ian’s, threw a party once a year for his own birthday. He lived in the top-floor apartment of a three-story brick building on Belmont Avenue a block west of Broadway. Tonight balloons crammed the apartment from front door to back. Turner noticed that most of the balloons contained words or phrases that had nothing to do with birthdays. Gill might have gone to a party caterer’s and purchased ten of every kind they had.

  Turner had met Garret several times before and liked him. After hellos, Ian remarked, “I love the balloons, but some of them don’t seem to match the occasion.”

  Garret, a tall broad-shouldered man who worked in a steel mill, said, “I know. I thought it would be a kick to buy all of them. So I did. Don’t you love it?”

  Garret’s lover, one Neil Orkofsky, whirled by with a tray of drinks in his hand and said, “It looks like shit, but it’s better than last year.”

  Ian explained to Turner as they grabbed drinks and moved to a corner of the front room near the front door and next to a grand piano. “Last year’s party he decided on a jungle motif with real plants and real rain. It took three days to clean the mess.”

  “I don’t see the good doctor,” Turner said.

  “He’ll be here. Gill promised me.”

  “You told him?”

  “Paul, we’re all interested in the cause of true love.”

  Turner guessed at least forty people must have been crowded into the apartment. Many greeted Ian with profuse enthusiasm. Ian introduced them to Paul, who caught most of their names. More than a few cast appreciative glances over the cop’s body. He’d worn faded jeans and a black T-shirt. With his five o’clock shadow he could have been a model for one of the more rugged men’s colognes.

  Turner sipped Budweiser from a can and wished he hadn’t come. Ten minutes later he crushed his tin beer can, dropped it in a trash basket next to the piano, and prepared to leave. At the moment Ian’s audience consisted of two extremely young and incredibly attractive men. He remembered their names as Rusty and Ernie. Briefly Turner wondered if they were over the age of jailbait, but discovered a second or two later that he didn’t care. He waited for a pause in their conversation to say good night to Ian.

  The two men Ian was talking to had dark short-cropped hair, wore tight jeans and gym shoes with no socks, and carried their shirts stuffed into the back pocket of their jeans. Rusty’s vaguely red hair accounted for the unimaginative nickname his classmates must have stuck him with in second grade. He sported a bruise above his left eye and spoke in a whine: “So the trick smacked me right in the bar. I told him if he wanted that kind of action, he’d have to pay more. The asshole didn’t want to pay. I knew I shouldn’t have started up with a drunk. Then that bull of a bartender, you know, the one with the droopy mustache and the mirrored earrings, down at the Womb?”

  Paul didn’t know or care.

  The young man’s voice rose several octaves. “The stupid shit called the cops. He didn’t even tell us. It’s not as if we haven’t thrown some business his way. Well, the cops showed up, and they were just brutal. They demanded to know what we were up to. We told them we were there for a drink.”

  The other spoke up. “They couldn’t prove anything. They were just being mean. They shoved us outside and made us put our hands against the car and everything.”

  The first said, “I wouldn’t have minded being patted down, but they were two of the ugliest straight males I have ever seen. Fat asses from sitting in cop cars and devouring doughnuts. Why couldn’t they leave us alone?”

  At the end of the question Turner surprised himself by saying, “Maybe they didn’t leave you alone because you were doing something illegal. If you hadn’t been selling yourself, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”

  “Well, who’s Mr. High and Mighty?” Rusty said.

  Ian began, “Paul—”

  Ernie interrupted him. “He’s a cop. I can always spot them. I thought so when I walked in, but I can’t resist a sexy ass in tight jeans. That almost got me busted two months ago.” Abruptly his tone changed. “What are you doing at this party?”

  Rusty turned on Paul and asked, “You a closet case come to check the opposition? Ian, how could you bring someone like this to Gill’s party?”

  “He’s a friend, and there’s no need to mouth off, Rusty,” Ian said.

  Ernie jumped in. “All cops are homophobic bastards.” He spoke loud enough
that they began to draw a crowd.

  One thing cops tried to be careful about was who they socialized with, because of just such situations. At too many parties somebody with a grudge against a cop took the opportunity to complain about the transgressions of those who gave them tickets, or didn’t respond quickly enough, or who had been brutal to a friend, or who had harassed the particular minority they might be a member of. Cops were so careful about being seen off-duty that they told rookies at the police academy never to drive to work in their uniforms. If you did, you were an open invitation to any nut, angry at any cop, who might take it out on you.

  Rusty planted himself in front of Turner and jammed his finger into the cop’s chest.

  Ian tried to insert his body between them, but the muscular little whore shoved him out of the way, knocking off Ian’s slouch fedora in the process. Turner didn’t want to hurt the guy, wanted no trouble at all. He cursed Ian inwardly. Rusty began shouting, emphasizing the loudest words with continued jabs at Turner’s chest.

  At just that moment the door swung open and a commanding voice said, “What the hell is this?”

  George Manfred strode into the room. Paul noticed that Rusty immediately stopped and looked sheepish. He remembered Ian’s comment Saturday night about Manfred’s reputation and ability to calm situations instantly. George gave Paul a friendly smile, then turned a withering stare on Rusty. “You’re drunk. Go home. Where’s Gill?”

  Their host emerged from the back of the crowd. “I was in the john. What’s happening? Hi, George, glad you could make it.”

  George said, “Rusty and Ernie need to be somewhere else in this universe.”

  To Paul’s surprise the two hustlers complied quickly and meekly.

  Minutes later, a new beer in hand, Paul, Ian, and George talked quietly in a corner.

  “How did you do that?” Turner asked.

  “They know me,” the doctor said simply.

  “George can’t tell you, but I can,” Ian said. “Six months ago Rusty had a bad scare about AIDS. He thought he had one of the opportunistic infections. Turned out to be an ordinary case of pneumonia.”