Dead Egotistical Morons

by Mark Richard Zubro

  When they got back to the area around the body, Fenwick asked Sanchez, “Who found him?”

  Sanchez nodded toward a man sitting in the back of the crime-lab van. “Guy’s name is Alfred Hazelow. Says he was getting in his nightly run.”

  Fenwick and Turner hurried through the cold. Warmth emanated from the van. At least they’d be out of the wind. They squeezed inside with Hazelow. He was dressed in a yellow Gore-Tex bodysuit, thick boots, heavy gloves, a knit cap under the hood. A heavy scarf and skier’s face mask sat on his lap. He’d look like a bloated blow-up doll if he came trotting down the street toward someone. He was drinking coffee. Hazelow looked to be in his mid-to-late teens.

  Turner and Fenwick introduced themselves.

  “Was it really one of the guys from Boys4u?” Hazelow asked.

  “Yeah,” Fenwick said.

  “I’ve never seen a dead body before. I’ve never even been to a funeral. I didn’t get close or touch it or anything, but it was still creepy. I thought at first I should try and rescue him, you know, crawl out on the ice, but he wasn’t moving or anything.”

  “You might have fallen through the ice,” Turner said. “You could easily have drowned yourself.”

  “Wow.” He sipped some coffee and repeated, “Wow. Poor guy. What a terrible way to die. Freezing to death. Like the people in the water at the end of the movie Titanic.”

  “You knew who it was?” Turner asked.

  “I wasn’t sure about that, but I recognized the logo. I tried to get one of their sweatshirts. For my girlfriend,” he said a bit too quickly. “The girls love anything that’s connected to these guys.”

  “The water’s edge is pretty far from the sidewalk,” Fenwick said. “How’d you happen to see him?”

  “You’ve got to be alert out here. I run every night about this time. Gives me a chance to think and get out of the house. I live with my mom in a condo up at Buckingham Place. I like to exercise at night. It’s quieter. That’s why I wear yellow. So drivers can see me. I watch everything. Always have been observant. I’m going to be a NASA scientist if I can. If you’re going to do science, you’ve got to observe.”

  Both Turner and Fenwick wished there was a “just the facts” pill they could give to peripheral witnesses. The detectives hesitated to stop anyone. The majority of killers know their victims and can’t hold back from talking about the horror they’ve perpetrated. Eventually, Hazelow got to the point. “The light from the stars and the rising moon shone off the water. There was a blank spot a foot past the ice that wasn’t shining. That struck me as odd. There are no boats in the harbor. Haven’t been for months. Then I saw a glint that looked out of place. Later I realized it was the gold of his wristwatch or maybe a ring with a bright stone catching a beam of streetlight. I trotted over. I couldn’t believe it was a dead body.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went back to the Drive. I flagged a cab down. He called it in.”

  “Did you see or hear anything suspicious?”

  “Nope. Sorry. I was just running. Can I begin heading back now? My mom might start to worry.”

  They made sure they had his name and address, and he left.

  Back at the body Fenwick asked, “Any notion of how long he’s been in the water?”

  The ME said, “Won’t know until I look inside. Cause of death probably won’t have anything to do with how long he was in the water.” He turned the body over. There was a black hole in the back of the young man’s head. “I don’t think he drowned or froze to death.”

  “Execution style,” Turner said. “Just like Stendar.”

  Fenwick said, “Who the hell starts executing the members of a boy band?”

  “Anyone with a taste in music?” an evidence tech opined.

  The ME said, “I can’t tell from this if he was shot and fell into the water immediately, or if he was shot much earlier and then dumped into the water. I can give you that later. Most likely the water washed away any blood.”

  “What time did his watch stop?” Turner asked. He bent down to the frozen corpse. The smashed watch face could tell him nothing.

  “Did the killer do that or did he break it when he got pushed or fell or dumped into the water?” Turner asked. “Or why didn’t the killer just take it?”

  “Might have forgotten about it,” Fenwick said. “The gunshot was it for sure?”

  “Most likely. Unless he fell in the water immediately after being shot and his body functions didn’t shut down until he swallowed too much water. Or he got pushed into the water and somebody used him for target practice, or he was taking a refreshing dip in the lake and got shot by a random killer out for a casual stroll who happened to…”

  “I get the drift,” Fenwick said.

  The ME said, “I’ll be able to give you an approximation on the time when he was attacked.”

  The wind whistled around their heads as Turner and Fenwick hustled back to their car. They crossed at the light between Balbo and Jackson. Turner thought it was the most annoying traffic light in the city. It did little more than help cause major traffic headaches. The light had been placed there for the convenience of pedestrians who couldn’t take the exhausting walk of a half block to the major intersections to the north and south.

  15

  In the lobby of the Hotel Chicago they found Jonathan Zawicki and Sherri Haupmin. The young woman’s screeching echoed through the elegant lobby. Factotums surrounded Zawicki. As the detectives approached, Haupmin’s mega-decibel shrieking headed off the high end of the human hearing spectrum. “You never cared for these guys! You just wanted to screw them!”

  “Do make as many wild accusations as you like, young lady,” Zawicki said. “You will be sued for slander for the words you just uttered.”

  “Utter your ass,” Haupmin said. “Roger Stendar told me all about you. It’s your fault that he’s dead. If you didn’t actually pull the trigger, you were an indirect cause.”

  “Kindly take notes,” Zawicki said to one of the men in the crowd around him.

  One of the hotel employees from behind the registration desk arrived. He said, “Could we take this to a private room?”

  Zawicki snapped, “I’m not going anywhere with this creature.”

  “Please, sir.”

  Zawicki glared.

  Haupmin was not out of rage yet. “You don’t have to go anywhere with me. I’m going to stick to your butt closer than a thong until you tell me all that I want to know. I’m going to get what’s coming to me.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Zawicki said.

  Haupmin narrowed her eyes at him. She seemed to have caught the more universal implications of what he’d said.

  Turner and Fenwick stepped forward.

  Zawicki said, “Arrest this woman. She’s making a public nuisance of herself. She’s not allowing me to quietly go to my room.”

  “So go,” Fenwick said. “If she commits a crime, we’ll arrest her.”

  “The Chicago police are going to be so sorry you hassled me,” Zawicki said.

  Fenwick said, “I get that from gang-bangers at least once a week, but here I still am, able to parade my Chicago cop, donut-filled ass in front of the public.”

  Zawicki said, “I want nothing to do with any of you.” He began to turn away. Haupmin jumped in front of him and drew in a deep breath. Turner presumed this was for another oration. Two of the guards around Zawicki moved to block Haupmin.

  Turner said, “I have news.”

  The little assemblage turned to him.

  “What?” Zawicki asked.

  “Jason Devane is dead.”

  Haupmin’s inarticulate moan rapidly rose to incoherent keening, then spilled to bellowed, barely recognizable words. “Someone’s trying to kill the whole band! What a loss to the world! They were…”

  “Oh, shut up,” Zawicki said.

  For once Turner agreed with the evil villain of the piece.

  “What do you intend to do about it
?” Zawicki demanded.

  “I was thinking about investigating,” Fenwick said. He turned to Turner. “What about you, Paul? You think we should investigate this one?”

  Zawicki snarled, “How dare you treat this frivolously?”

  “I may or may not be frivolous,” Fenwick said, “but you, sir, are reacting strangely to another one of your band members being dead. No curiosity about what happened. No concern for the boy. No thought for the parents. The lack of one of those is odd. The absence of all of them is suspicious.”

  “I did not kill these boys. They were making me rich.”

  Through a cascade of tears, Haupmin piped up. “You cheap fuck. You’d do anything to harm these boys.”

  Zawicki turned on her. “Since you first put syllables together not that long ago, have any two consecutive ones of them made sense? And has any one of them been produced at less than the decibel level which you are using now?”

  Turner hated the guy, but as put-down comments went, he appreciated its thoroughness and depth. Two beat cops walked into the lobby, spotted their group, and came over.

  The younger one said, “We got a complaint.”

  Fenwick said, “We are the complaint, you twit. We’re from Area Ten.”

  “Oh.”

  Fenwick nodded at Haupmin. “Take that young woman and escort her to the opposite end of the lobby and keep her there.” They ushered the squawking woman away.

  “We need to talk to everyone again,” Turner said.

  “They’re asleep,” Zawicki snapped.

  “Not for long,” Fenwick said. “And we’ll need to know your movements for the past twenty-four hours.”

  “You’ll need to speak to my lawyers. I have nothing to say to you.” And he walked away. The speed with which Fenwick inserted himself between Zawicki and the elevators, belied the detective’s huge bulk.

  Fenwick said, “This is a murder investigation in the city of Chicago. We are not underlings.”

  “You’re going to be out of a job.”

  “Until then, we’re going to talk to your people.”

  “You may try anything you wish with them. They’ve been warned. I know better. I am not under arrest, so go away.” He took out a card. “Here’s my lawyer’s name and address.”

  “You have a local lawyer?” Fenwick asked. “You knew you’d need someone so you checked ahead?”

  Zawicki stepped around Fenwick and proceeded to the elevator.

  They woke up Ethel Hinkmeyer who promised to assemble everyone as quickly as she could. Pastern and Hinkmeyer were the first ones down. Neither looked like they’d had much sleep.

  Hinkmeyer said, “We’ve been ordered not to talk to you by Mr. Zawicki.”

  “Did his lawyers tell you that?” Turner asked.

  “No,” Hinkmeyer said. “He did. He said I’d lose my job. I’m sorry. That makes no sense. One of these boys is dead. We’ve got to find the killer. I’m willing to help any way I can.”

  “Me, too,” Pastern said. “What’s going on?”

  Turner gave them the news about Jason Devane.

  Hinkmeyer put her fist to her chin and started to cry. Pastern swore. “What the hell is going on?”

  Danny Galyak, Ivan Pappas, their personal assistants, and several other members of the band’s entourage joined them.

  Turner gave them the news. They all looked stricken. “We need to talk to all of you again.”

  “How can we talk at a moment like this?” asked one of the assistants.

  “It’s the second murder,” Turner said. “All of these boys could be in danger.”

  Galyak said, “Zawicki told us not to talk to you anymore. That’s stupid. Now two of us are dead.” Any remaining trace of his youthful bravado from the first time they’d met was gone. “I think something is wrong. Really, really wrong.”

  The hotel let the detectives use a conference room just off the lobby. They interviewed Galyak and Pappas first.

  “What is it that you think is really, really wrong?” Turner asked.

  Galyak licked his thin lips. “I’m really scared. That’s two people. Roger getting killed was bad, terrible. It was so hard to believe at first. Now, it’s starting to sink in. But Jason. Everybody liked Jason. He was so quiet. He never hurt anybody.” Galyak started to cry. Ivan put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Tears were running down his cheeks as well. The detectives waited for them to compose themselves.

  “Are we really in danger?” Pappas asked.

  “We have to assume so,” Turner said.

  “But who? Why? What did we do?” Pappas asked.

  “It’s hard to tell what sets people off,” Turner said.

  Galyak said, “We’re rich and famous. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to us.”

  Turner forbore pointing out that everybody has problems.

  Pappas said, “There’s gotta be something we can do to stop it.”

  Turner said, “Until we find the killer, we want you to stay in the same hotel room. We’ll have one of our officers on duty. If you want some of your security inside or outside the room with you, that’ll be fine, but we want our people there.”

  “Okay.”

  Turner said, “Danny, you mentioned that everybody liked Jason. Did that mean there were some who didn’t like Roger?”

  “No. I guess not. It’s just Roger pushed us all hard. We needed it a lot of times. I guess I meant that Jason was a good guy, easy to talk to. If you wanted a buddy, he was the one we all went to.”

  They both claimed to have been in their rooms catching up on sleep. They knew nothing else. The two young men left.

  Turner and Fenwick talked to all the people in the immediate entourage. Some were forthcoming. Some had obviously been convinced to keep silent by Zawicki’s warning. None of them clammed up completely. None of them revealed anything helpful.

  When the detectives were finally alone in the room after all the interviews, Turner said, “Donut-filled ass? What did that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I just liked the sound of it.”

  “I gotta get that down in my ‘Sayings of Chairman Fenwick’ collection before I forget it. Zawicki didn’t look impressed.”

  “Somebody mentioned the Second Coming early tonight. I don’t think anything short of that would impress Mr. Zawicki and even then, he’d have to have been specially invited and know how it was going to make him some money. Why the hell doesn’t that guy ever look sad that these guys are dead? He’s cold. He’s hard. He makes a great evil presence, but I don’t get it. Nearly half of this hugely successful moneymaking band is dead, and he’s not bothered?”

  “I think he’s bothered,” Turner said, “just not the way we think he should be.”

  Fenwick said, “We haven’t had a great villain in a while. All we need is some gritty streets to add to the mix, and we could become a classic act.”

  “Don’t forget ethnic diversity,” Turner said. “Grit and diversity get your picture in the paper and positive reviews.”

  “Why don’t the killers we know provide that?” Fenwick asked. “It’s their fault we’re not richer and more famous.”

  “Doesn’t ‘more famous’ imply that we were at least a little bit famous to begin with?” Turner asked. “I think I missed the ‘little bit famous’ phase of this relationship.”

  “That’s so like you,” Fenwick said.

  “Leaving fame and fortune behind for the moment,” Turner said, “it is very possible that Zawicki is frightened as well. He’s used to power and having people respond the way he wishes. That’s not happening here. People are dying outside of his control.”

  “Unless he’s the killer,” Fenwick said.

  “We’ll have to talk to him with his lawyers. Why the big hang-up about telling us where he was, unless he is the killer?”

  “He’d make a great suspect,” Fenwick said. “The villain being the killer. What could be better? What could be more dramatic? Truly evil villains whet my appetite.
”

  “You ever know of one of our cases working out that neatly?” Turner asked.

  “No.”

  “And is there something on this planet that doesn’t whet your appetite?”

  “If there is, I haven’t discovered it yet.”

  Turner picked up his cell phone. “I should call the hospital where Dexter Clendenen is. He should have protection as well.”

  He found the hospital’s number in his notes and called. When he identified himself, the purpose of his call, and asked to speak with the nurse on the floor, the operator said, “But Mr. Clendenen is no longer in this hospital.”

  “What hospital is he in?”

  “I’ll have to transfer you to the nursing supervisor.”

  After identifying himself sufficiently so that she would not think he was a crazed fan who got lucky in locating a member of the band, he said, “Dexter Clendenen is gone?”

  “Yes. He left with Mr. Jonathan Zawicki late this evening.”

  “Did Clendenen’s parents arrive?”

  “They hadn’t by the time he left. Mr. Clendenen is over twenty-one. We were not required to wait for his parents to arrive.”

  “I understand,” Turner said. He hung up and told Fenwick, who said, “Son of a bitch. I’m going to that asshole’s room now, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

  Turner and Fenwick marched to the front desk. The head of hotel security accompanied them to Zawicki’s room. Fenwick insisted on doing the honors of being the one to bang on the door until someone answered.

  A heavily built man in a sport coat and dress pants answered almost immediately. “Mr. Zawicki doesn’t want to see you.”