Sorry Now?

by Mark Richard Zubro

  On the way back to Area Ten headquarters, they stopped by the Twelfth District police station. It was on their way, and Wilmer and many of the homeless lived within the district’s boundaries. They asked to talk to any of the beat cops who knew Ajax, or where he hung out, or who his friends were.

  Immediately after they explained their needs, a gray-haired cop behind the desk said, “I know exactly the guy you want. He’s out for now; let me get him in here for you.” He notified the watch commander and then, using the intercom on the back wall, he called a car into the station.

  Five minutes later Dwight Perez stumped up the stairs. He greeted the detectives, and when they told him what they needed, he said, “No problem. I know all these guys.”

  They walked through the midday heat to the Palace Grill. On the way Dwight gave them far more of his life history than they would ever have cared to know. As they seated themselves on stools at the counter near the back Perez said, “I got this shit detail. I arrest too many people for minor crap. They don’t tell me that, but I figured it out: I got to learn, I got to get myself under control. So, I do the bums. I know everything you need to know. What do you want?”

  “You know an Ajax?” Fenwick asked.

  “Sure. The old guy who died in the fire. Never had a permanent place to stay. Claimed to have been in the navy in World War II. Seemed an okay enough guy. What’s the deal with him? Why you guys interested?”

  “Why didn’t you respond to this morning’s announcement about him?” Fenwick asked.

  “I didn’t hear one. I sat in the back like usual trying to get some paperwork done.”

  “We think he may have been killed because of what he knew in a murder investigation, or what the killer thought he knew.”

  “No shit. Old Ajax? I wouldn’t rely too much on what any of these old guys told you.”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Fenwick said. “We haven’t got much to go on.” He explained about the murders. “We’re trying to trace his movements last night,” Fenwick finished.

  “I didn’t know Wilmer. He didn’t like me. Avoided me. About Ajax, did you try the Mission of Eternal Peace?”

  “Yeah,” Turner said.

  Perez said, “Those guys are a little religious for my taste, but they do a great job with these people.”

  “Where would he go, and why would he leave a place where his meal and bed were set for the night?” Turner asked.

  “He’d leave for money, booze, cigarettes, an argument, almost anything. You can’t tell with these people.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “Hard to tell, but a lot of them have a sort of meeting house of their own, down on Harrison west of Ashland. It’s an old place, kind of wedged between a bunch of old buildings and the expressway. You might try there.”

  He gave them the location. Turner and Fenwick drove over. They knocked on the doors of several buildings they thought were the right ones. No one answered. All of the buildings looked abandoned and totally unused. They walked around to the alley. They could see and hear the rush of traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway just below them. In the alley behind the fourth building, they saw what looked like the clubhouse you tried to put together in your back yard when you were a kid, only worse. The hut seemed held together by shadows and rusty nails.

  A woman, who looked to be at least in her nineties, sat on what would generously be called a front stoop. A cigarette dangled from the left side of her mouth, smoke curling into the morning haze. The torn and shabby sleeves of her dress hung oddly, one ripped off near the shoulder, the other dangling to the elbow. The dress covered her spraddled legs to the ankle.

  They introduced themselves and showed their stars. The ends of her mouth moved up microscopically in what might have been meant to be a smile.

  Turner said, “Ma’am, we’re looking for anybody who knew a gentleman named Ajax.”

  “You looking for a gentleman, you came to the wrong place. You want a bum, you come to the right place.” She puffed placidly on her cigarette. A pack sat by her knee. A mound of butts sat between her bare feet.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Turner said. “I misspoke. Could you help us? We need to speak to anyone who knew him.”

  The microscopic maybe-smile came and went. She said, “I’m here most of the time. He ain’t here now.”

  “No, ma’am. We’re sorry to say, especially if he was a friend of yours, he’s dead.”

  She took a long drag on her cigarette. Her aged spotted hands moved in circles over the folds of her dress. Just before the ash would have dropped in her lap, she flicked the butt toward the street, missing Fenwick by an inch.

  “Wasn’t a bad old guy,” she said. “What got him? Booze, loneliness, or he just get tired of living?”

  “He was murdered last night,” Fenwick said. “We’re trying to trace his movements. If you’re here a lot of the time, maybe you saw him last night.”

  “I may have, but you need to make it worth my while.”

  Turner had never given cash to an informant. In his experience police work didn’t happen that way.

  Fenwick said, “We’ll get you a pack of cigarettes.”

  She spat on the ground at his feet. “Try again, sonny.”

  “A carton, and that’s it,” Fenwick said.

  “I get the carton, I talk.”

  Turner said, “No talk, no cigarettes.”

  The enigmatic smile again. She was sort of an aging Mona Lisa, sitting on an urban dung heap.

  She lit another cigarette, pointed to Turner, and said, “You, I trust.” She took a lung-destroying drag on her cigarette. “Okay, he came in last night all excited. Said he’d finally made it to easy street. Said he had friends now, who’d take care of him. I laughed at him. Everybody around here says the same thing when they score a bottle or get some idiot to hand them a quarter.”

  She dragged on the cigarette, blew a smoke ring.

  “He didn’t say who it was?” Fenwick asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Or where he was going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you remember anything else about what he said?” Turner asked.

  “Only what I told you.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Before the storm. I remember that.” She paused and thought a minute while taking several puffs on her cigarette.

  “Did he say where he was going?” Turner asked.

  “Nope. Don’t think he said. I know I don’t remember. When do I get my cigarettes?”

  “Couple more questions,” Turner said. “Did he have any friends here? Someone that he’d confide in or that he was close to.

  “No friends here,” she said. “No relationships. We barely give each other our names. It’s safe here and anonymous. Some of us have pasts to hide from.”

  After Turner finished a few more questions he said to her, “We’ll be back.”

  He made Fenwick stop at a rundown corner drugstore. They dropped off the cigarettes. Back at their desks in the station Turner said to Fenwick, “I think she liked you. I think she winked at you several times.”

  “That why she threw cigarette butts at me and spat at me?” Fenwick asked.

  “She was showing you her affection and regard.”

  “We got a lot of nothing again from all this running around. We spent money for a carton of cigarettes, and she didn’t know shit. Why couldn’t we have a nice domestic? A little blood on the kitchen floor, the husband or wife with a bloody knife and sobbing their eyes out, waiting for us to get there so they can confess?”

  Fenwick picked up an incoming call, mumbled a few words and hung up. “That was one of Mucklewrath’s people. The good reverend would like to see us.” He turned to Wilson, “Is he still using his kid’s ashes in the act?”

  Wilson said, “Yeah. They line up to get healed, and they have to walk past the urn with the ashes. They’ve got these American flag–draped bins that people throw money in, and I mean green stuff. No
ne of this coin shit. The urn sits on a table with a big American flag draped over it.”

  Fenwick said, “That is such shit.”

  “Let’s go see what he wants,” Turner said.

  Before they left, Turner tried Ian again. No luck.

  The good reverend had left instructions at the hotel for them to meet him at Soldier Field. They maneuvered through traffic to the stadium.

  They found the reverend on the football field near the south end, about ten feet from his daughter’s urn.

  He greeted them with grave solemnity then said, “I have a few problems, gentlemen. I need to leave this city, and your investigation isn’t done. What do you intend to do about it?”

  Turner said, “You’re free to go, if that’s what’s bothering you.

  “I assumed I was. I want the killers found and executed. I see news reports, and police officials make announcements, but I see no action.”

  Both cops said nothing.

  He berated them for about five minutes for cop inefficiency. They took it stolidly.

  Finally, the reverend paused dramatically, drew a deep breath, and leaning one hand on his daughter’s urn said, “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?” Turner said.

  Mucklewrath talked about his empire, his contributions, his university, his followers, his senatorial duties.

  He wound down again and Fenwick asked, “What are you afraid of?”

  Mucklewrath paused, stared dramatically into the distance as if reading God’s pronouncements through the humidity and haze. Finally his gaze returned to earth. Turner watched as the man’s shoulders sagged and the face crumpled nearly to tears. He said, “Son, I’m afraid of losing it all.”

  “Who could make that happen?” Turner asked.

  He dug in his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper. “Someone placed this on the pedestal where I put the urn with my daughter’s ashes. I found it when I arrived this morning.

  Turner took the 8½-by-11 piece of paper and examined it. Fenwick looked over his shoulder.

  The writing said, “Obviously, you aren’t sorry enough.”

  They turned from the note to the reverend.

  He said, “I’ve lost the most precious person in the whole world, but there are others I love deeply. I can’t bear to see any more of them hurt. I can’t let this kind of thing happen.” His silken voice whispered, “Gentlemen, this must stop.”

  “Any of your people around here who could have done this?” Turner asked.

  The reverend shook his head. “They don’t come until three hours before opening. The park district must be around, and the local security.”

  “Could someone in your organization do this?” Turner asked.

  “A few days ago, I thought not. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t know any one specifically. I can’t let anything like what happened to Chistina happen again.”

  “We’ll talk to the men on duty, Reverend,” Turner said.

  The reverend didn’t seem to have an ounce of bombast left. He said, “Please, do anything you can.”

  They found the head of security, who helped them organize questioning of the guards from the day shift. He told them, “I can vouch for the fact that the note was not there when I came on duty or when these people started this morning. I check the entire stadium myself. I walk around every inch of the place. It wasn’t there. I’ve questioned all of my people. Nobody admits anything. You’re welcome to try.”

  They spent an hour and a half questioning the members of the security team. They got the same amount of information as the head of security did: none.

  They took a list of all the employees in the stadium at the time, including a list of those working with the Mucklewrath group.

  Back at the station they ran the names through the computer for quick background checks on all of them. The computer showed nothing.

  Around one Fenwick bashed his hand down on his computer console. “One of the people we talked to at Soldier Field knows the whole operation we’ve been dealing with.” He bashed the computer top again. “One of those double shits lied to us.”

  Fenwick rarely got to the bashing stage. Years ago Turner had seen him put his foot through a TV screen after he’d found two dead kids and a little baby so mutilated by abusive parents it only lived a few hours.

  Turner leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands across his eyes. “We’re driving ourselves nuts with this. We’ve missed something.”

  Fenwick looked up at him. They listened to Carruthers typing madly on a report, probably days if not weeks overdue.

  Turned tried the paper again. They caught Ian just as he got in. He’d been doing interviews all morning for national news shows and setting up appearances, as he put it, on Oprah, Phil, Joan, and Sally. Turner explained what they needed. With some reluctance, Ian agreed. Before leaving, Turner called Brian and Jeff. Everything was quiet with them. Jeff told him Dr. Manfred had stopped by and had promised to stop in again this evening.

  Turner and Fenwick caught a weather report before leaving the station. Severe thunderstorm warnings were in effect for most of northern Illinois, the southern half of Wisconsin, and northwest Indiana. For the moment the humidity held and barely a breath of wind stirred.

  They met Ian at the corner of Clark and Montrose, near the newspaper office. The large reporter climbed into the back of their unmarked car. He wore his slouch fedora even in the car, although the smallest bump caused the crown to hit the roof. Turner gave him full details.

  Ian nodded. “You’re right about talking to FUCK-EM, although I don’t see them as killers. A lot of noise and protest, even a little violence, but not murder.”

  “It’s a start,” Turner said. “One thing, they’ve got a large-enough organization so that they could field enough people to plan and carry out all these crimes.”

  “It might be a little difficult finding them at this hour of the day,” Ian said, “but we can try a few of their usual haunts.” He told them the leader of the group was a Bruce Davidson, a student at the University of Chicago.

  Following Ian’s directions they stopped at various places the FUCK-EM group met or hung around. The third place was a cabaret-bar in the basement of a closed department store at the corner of Lincoln and Belmont. They walked down a narrow flight of stairs to a room kept luridly dark to the point of absurdity.

  Peering around in the dimness, Fenwick asked, “Is this a gay bar?”

  Ian said, “No, it’s mostly straight and very trendy, always jammed at night.”

  After their eyes adjusted, they found Bruce Davidson haranguing several cronies, one of them Rusty the hustler.

  They showed their stars to the bartender, who turned out to be the owner. He offered them drinks. Fenwick and Turner took coffee. Ian accepted a beer.

  The intent group barely looked up even when the three stood above their booth. Rusty sneered at Turner and said, “Who’s the beefy buddy?”

  They showed their stars. Rusty began to get nasty, but the owner said, “Shut the fuck up. I don’t want no trouble in here. I’ll throw him out.”

  “We just want to talk with Bruce for now,” Fenwick said, “but nobody leaves.”

  The owner led the others away.

  After he sat in the booth, Turner discovered a possible reason for the excessive dimness. What Turner, who grew up in the city, would have called jungle rot covered nine tenths of the wall surface. He touched it with a fingertip. A five-inch piece of jagged plaster fell to the floor. He tried to rub the green stain on his fingertip on a napkin from the metal container on the table. No luck. He kept his left side a safe distance from the wall.

  “What’s this all about, Ian?” Bruce asked. He wore a black T-shirt, black 501’s, a necklace made of leather thongs, four earrings going up the side of one ear, and lace up black leather boots. Bruce slumped in his seat against the wall. He was either unaware of or didn’t care about the creeping filth his side rested against. Turner guessed that if he was
over the age of twenty-one, his birthday had been yesterday.

  Ian said, “It’s about all the shit that’s been happening to the straight people.”

  “And about the possibility of Donald Mucklewrath being gay,” Turner added.

  “Why come talk to me?”

  Turner said, “You’re the head of FUCK-EM, and your group has been involved in outing people and in violent protests.”

  “Why should I talk to cops? Last time we had a demonstration you beat up half our members.”

  Ian said, “Half your members had camped out in Buckingham Fountain. Besides your skins getting terminally wrinkled, little old ladies began to be upset when you took to relieving yourselves in the water.”

  Bruce looked sheepish. He still sported prominent zits on his nose. He said, “Well, the planning on that could have been a little better, but the police should have been more gentle dragging us out.”

  Turner didn’t want a full-scale discussion of police tactics.

  Ian said, “Bruce, remember it’s me you’re talking to. The one who knows everybody’s dirty little secrets, including yours. I’ve helped you out of a couple of tight jams.” He didn’t explain to the cops what secrets and jams. Turner wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “You owe me several big ones. I’d appreciate it if you’d answer their questions.”

  Bruce squirmed and gave the cops a wary look, but he nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Turner said, “First tell us about Donald Mucklewrath.”

  “What’s to tell? We heard he was gay, then we got a confirmation.”

  “From Rusty,” Turner said.

  “How’d you know?” Davidson said.

  “A good source.”

  “If Donald is gay, we’re going to make that two-bit bastard and his asshole father pay, but we never had a meeting with him. He never returns our calls.”

  Switching topics, Turner explained why they thought someone in the gay community might be behind the pranks and perhaps the murders.

  “They threatened you? You’re a gay cop? And they know? And you’ve got kids?”

  “Yes,” Turner said.

  “Wow.”

  Turner asked, “Have you heard of any kind of plot like this in the community?”