by Julie Hyzy
Kenny had been outside the bank the day of the robbery, Joyce told me. It wasn’t a Gang of Five like the papers claimed. It was a Gang of Six. Heath had passed Kenny the bag of cash and Kenny took off. Heath also said that he got a message once, while he was in jail, that Kenny was waiting and that they’d share the take when Heath finally got out.
But when he did get out and he looked for his old friend, he discovered that Kenny had disappeared. And so had the cash.
The name didn’t ring a bell with me. Joyce hadn’t seen the clip and hadn’t thought to ask Heath for a description of Kenny Peterson. Before I’d boarded my plane, I contacted an affiliate station in California. They promised they’d check old yearbooks and driver’s license records for me. Back then Illinois hadn’t required pictures on our licenses. I didn’t know if California had, either. I might be totally out of luck.
I made it into my office early the next morning, before most of the other staff arrived. The dark sky of a summer thunderstorm kept everything in shadow, making it feel even earlier than it was. I popped a tape of the feature story into my office VCR and watched, making notes of those appearing in it. I’d interviewed every one of these folks and knew each one by name.
I left an identical message, with maids or machines, for every of the twenty-seven participants. Knowing how angry these families were with one another gave me enough reason to hope they wouldn’t contact each other to compare notes.
“Hello, this is Alex St. James from Midwest Focus TV Newsmagazine, following up. I just wanted to let you know that when Heath Steinberg contacted me, he gave me the whole story. About the bank. And if Kenny Peterson wants his side to get a fair shake, he should talk with me.” I assessed the raging thunderstorm out my window. “I’ll be at Billy Goat’s tavern tonight. At nine o’clock. Meet me there.”
I’d picked Billy Goat’s, a restaurant on Lower Michigan that had been immortalized by the late John Belushi on Saturday Night Live, for a few reasons: it was close; it was noisy and populated; and I could duck out through the parking entrance of my building and walk the whole way underground, thereby avoiding the rain. It was one of my favorite places in the city. I’d been there a hundred times. Their cheeseburgers were to die for.
By my fifth call, I thought I started to sound too polished from all the repetition, so I started dropping a few hesitations into the message and I lowered my voice to a deeper pitch, suggesting concern. Let each of them think I singled them out specifically.
I called George, and grinned when he answered the phone with his brusque, “Detective Lulinksi.”
“Remember that story we were talking about? The one featuring the brave and dashing detective who keeps our city safe?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. Real skeptical.
“Well, I might just be ready to work on that one.”
“What’s the catch?”
“You get to pop for the burgers.”
I brought Jordan up-to-date, telling her to let all my calls through without screening them first. She shot me a smile and a thumbs-up. I sat back and waited for the phone to ring.
An hour-and-a-half later, the return calls began.
“Thanks for calling me back so promptly, Mrs. Bennett,” I said, grabbing a pen to take notes. I remembered her. Tall, take-charge, polished blonde. She didn’t understand why I’d called. “You’re sure?” I asked, just for my own clarification. “Heath Steinberg,” I said. “From the 1970s. And Kenny Peterson?”
“Yes,” she said in a voice that strained for patience. “I understood the words of the message. I do believe, however, that you must have me confused with someone else, since I don’t recognize either gentleman’s name.”
“Have you checked with your husband? Perhaps he knows—”
“Of course I checked with him,” she said with a sniff. “That’s why I’m calling. So you’ll have no need to follow-up.”
“Gotcha. Thanks.”
My phone rang the rest of the day, all the calls being a near repeat of Mrs. Bennett’s though most were decidedly less polite. By the time six o’clock rolled around, I’d started to lose confidence in my plan. I leaned back in my chair, staring out at the city, enjoying the blurred lights as their colors ran with the pounding rain against the window. And I wondered if I should pack it in for the day.
And then, Mrs. Prendergast called.
“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised when I picked up the phone on the first ring. “Ms. St. James.” The hesitant stutter in her words made my ears perk up. Everyone else who’d called so far had had a faint trace of irritation in their tone. “This is Marybeth Prendergast. I…that is… you left a message for me?”
“About Heath Steinberg?”
“Yes.” She laughed the word. Sounded very nervous. “I haven’t heard that name in years.”
I was confused. I’d expected a man. “You knew him.”
“Yes,” she said again, this time stringing the word out into two syllables.
A couple of silent beats ticked in my brain as I digested this. “Did you know Kenny Peterson?” I couldn’t imagine how this tied together. Joyce claimed Heath saw Kenny in the feature. She hadn’t said anything about a woman.
“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.” Marybeth Prendergast gave another nervous laugh. “I think it might be a good idea if we got together, Ms. St. James. I’ll meet you tonight, like your message suggested. It’ll be good to be in a neutral location. I’d rather my husband not find out.”
Ah, the plot thickens, I thought. “Do you know where Billy Goat’s is?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
If Michigan Avenue was Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, then Lower Michigan was its alternate universe, its evil twin.
At eight-forty-five I set out to walk the short distance, hearing my own footsteps over the patter of the rain above, and fighting the prickly feeling that I shouldn’t have been so quick to head over to meet Marybeth Prendergast by myself. George would be there, of course, but I’d been adamant about arriving alone. Right about now I would have appreciated his company.
I quickened my pace, passing huge stacks of powdered cement bags, lumber, and piles of iron beams that lined the perimeter of the area. The streets were under construction and, though it wasn’t admitted publicly, to encourage the homeless folk who inhabited Lower Wacker and Lower Michigan to find other digs.
Up ahead, where the leftover brightness of the street above wasn’t strong enough to pierce the darkness, pale pink sodium vapor lights did their best to brighten up the shadows. Piles of construction materials loomed in bulky shapes ahead. In the distance a woman shuffled by, wearing a long overcoat and a stocking cap, pushing a metal shopping cart with one wheel that wiggled and squeaked.
I was almost halfway across the bridge spanning the Chicago River, watching the rain hit the dark water below in little staccato bursts, when I heard her voice.
“Alex?”
I jumped.
Marybeth Prendergast approached me from the other side of the bridge, her manner tentative. I glanced at my watch. It was still several minutes before nine. And yet, she was walking toward me in a direction that took her away from Billy Goat’s. I wondered if she’d gotten the meeting time wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she began as she reached me. Her red hair looked almost maroon in the scant light. “I started thinking about it and I really just don’t want to talk about Heath in a crowded environment.” Her eyes narrowed. “That okay?”
The wind kicked a cool breeze over us, bringing with it a soft spray of musty rain. I shrugged. “Sure. But, don’t you want to go somewhere where we can sit down?”
“No.” She stepped over a pile of two-by-fours, leaning against the railing to stare west over the water. “I think it’s better if we keep this brief, anyway.” Turning to me, she asked. “What did Heath tell you about me and Kenny?”
Managing over the pile of lumber, I leaned my left elbow on the railing, too. I hesitated telling her that Hea
th hadn’t even mentioned Kenny Peterson to me at all. I hedged, and went with a half-truth. “Heath came to see me, but didn’t give me much to go on. I wound up talking to his girlfriend, Joyce. She’s the one who told me the whole story. But she didn’t mention you.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Heath saw Kenny Peterson in the hazing video,” I said. “And came up here to find him. According to Joyce, Kenny got away with the seventy-thousand dollars. Is that right?”
She nodded.
There was movement near the Wacker Drive end of the bridge. The sound of scuffling. I hoped we wouldn’t encounter rats.
“That’s why you didn’t want me to contact your husband, isn’t it?”
She looked at me with more surprise than I would have expected.
“You married Kenny Peterson,” I said.
She gave a short laugh. “No.”
“You didn’t?” I thought I’d had it all figured out.
“How did you know to call me?” she asked. “If Heath didn’t mention me to you, then it had to be—” she stopped herself. “Where’s Heath now?” she asked.
I didn’t get the chance to answer; the look on my face must have done it for me. “Did something happen to him?” she asked.
I took a breath before replying. “He was killed.”
Her face transformed from barely contained frustration to immediate shock. Her voice was a whisper. “How?”
As I told her, she gripped my hand, and I wondered at her quiet cry of alarm.
She tugged at me. “Let’s go. Now.”
“But—”
A voice came out of the dark depths where the bridge ended, from behind a tall pile of cement bags. “Too late.”
A man emerged from the shadows. And other than the three of us, there was not a single soul around. The traffic sounds above suddenly sounded very distant.
“I was curious about how much you knew,” he said to me. “And the saddest part of this is, you really had nothing, did you?”
My mind tried to make sense of this scenario.
“Jim,” Marybeth’s voice cracked again. She moved toward him.
“Shut up,” he said.
Jim Greco was close enough now that his face was no longer in shadow. Worse, he pointed a gun at me. A small silver one. Just like the caliber Detective Lulinski had described to me of the one that had killed Heath. “What do you know, and who did you tell?” he asked.
I wanted to say that I knew nothing, because all of my suppositions had just gone poof, but fear held my words in check.
“If one shot to the head took down a whale like Heath Steinberg, just think about how quick it’ll work on a little thing like you,” he said with a grin.
There was a shuffling noise behind him. His eyes shifted at the sound. “You can’t kill me,” I said, fighting the tremble in my voice. My mind screamed to get away, and to figure it all out later, but he blocked the path to Billy Goat’s, and behind me stretched blocks of nothingness. Sprinting to the bar and hoping to alert George was out of the question. I’d be facedown with a hole in my back before I could take three steps. “How long do you think it’ll take for the police to piece it all together? Two shooting victims within a two-block radius, within a matter of days?”
“They won’t find you right away,” he said, lifting his chin to indicate the black, choppy water below. “Now. I need to know. Who else did you tell and what do they know?”
A bit of sweat had gathered over Greco’s upper lip, and he licked at it. I noticed his breathing was rapid and he raised the gun. Marybeth said, “Jim,” in a soft voice and grabbed his arm.
The gun fired, the small barrel exploding with a flash of light. The round tore chips from the cement at my feet and the noise deafened me. I could see Greco and Marybeth shouting, but I couldn’t make out their words.
Acting on instinct alone, I reached down and curled my fingers around a yard-length two-by-four. In a smooth move I came up swinging, knocking Greco to his knees. He tried to raise the gun, but I smacked the wood against his arm and sent him sprawling.
Marybeth took off, leaving me. I tried to grab for Greco’s gun, but he hadn’t let go. My two-by-four clattered to the ground, even as I wrestled for control of the weapon. I was younger, and I hadn’t just been beaten with a board, but Greco was a big man, and had me by a hundred pounds, easily.
I could feel myself losing the battle. My only chance now was to run. I kicked him in the groin and sprinted off toward Billy Goat’s. I hadn’t gone five steps when I heard a shot. And then another. I turned and saw Greco crumple, one knee bending as though in genuflection as he fell forward, and onto his face. A familiar voice yelled to me to get down.
“George,” I said, in a joyful half-cry.
“Get behind cover,” he said. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
I ducked behind the five foot stack, and found Marybeth cowered there already. She grabbed my arm with both hands. “Please,” she said. “Help me.”
“I still don’t understand,” I said. I peeked around the corner and saw George examining Greco’s prone form. He spoke into his radio and then shouted to me.
“You okay, Alex? You’re not hit?”
“I’m fine,” I shouted back.
“Then hang tight. I want to get my guys over here to secure the area.”
“Got it.”
I lowered myself to the ground, just beginning to appreciate the danger I’d encountered. I looked up at Marybeth. “Jim Greco is Kenny Peterson.”
She nodded.
“And after the robbery, you came to Chicago with him?”
She peered around the corner to check on George, then took a deep breath. “I was going to wait for Heath. I told him I would. When…” her voice faltered, “when Heath got sentenced, I sent him a message. I told him we’d wait till he got out.”
She peered around the corner again. “And I had every intention to. But Kenny had other plans. He told me he was going to disappear and take all the money.” She took a deep breath. “So I went along. I thought it was the only way to keep an eye on him. And the cash. Kenny’s my brother. He changed his name and invested it all. He’s so smart. He made a lot of money. A whole lot. By the time we got to Chicago in the mid-80s, we were set.” She shrugged. “Then…” She bit her lip. “I met Roger Prendergast.”
It was starting to make sense, in a crazy sort of way.
“Heath got out of prison more than seven years ago,” I said.
“I know.” The tears welled up again. “I wanted to go to him. But by then I had a good life. I became the very sort of capitalist I’d despised when I was a kid. And now these people think I’m one of them. High class. And by then, too…” her voice barely made out the words. “I had my daughter.” I was reminded of Lisa Prendergast, her face battered, her spirit broken from the vicious hazing attack. Marybeth’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I was young, too young, when it all happened. I know better now. I wanted to make things right with Heath, but if I had, what would have happened to Lisa?”
I didn’t have an answer.
Sirens shrieked, echoing through the underground area, blue Mars lights flashing across the walls, a half-block before the cars themselves were visible.
Marybeth grabbed my arm again. “I have to go. Please,” she said. “Keep me out of it. I know you can. Lisa’s been through so much already. She can’t lose me to prison. Not now.”
We locked eyes for a moment. And then she was gone.
Heath was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t the biggest story of my career. But it was a doozy. We hustled to get the pieces in place and came up with a feature that took the number one ratings spot for two consecutive weeks. My contacts in California sent me high school yearbook pictures of Kenny Peterson, and Jim Greco’s boyish face stared up at me from the copies. Bass was thrilled with the coverage, and the exclusive story I’d managed to bring home. George Lulinski got his fifteen minutes of fame, and somehow Marybeth Prenderga
st’s name never got mentioned.
I shuffled through the photocopies of the Polaroids of Heath’s murder, focusing on the close-ups. I could just make out the lettering on his homemade tattoo. “Sanctimony,” it said, with a tiny broken heart beneath it. For half a moment, I considered sending it to Marybeth.
Too cruel. With a sigh, I ripped up the photo and threw it away.
The Gang of Five from 1974 was suddenly now the Gang of Six. They captured the headlines long enough to give our station a boost and give me the confidence to talk Bass into my taking a few days off. Not only that, but they provided the media around the country lots of opportunity to speculate on how a fugitive could elude the authorities for so long. The stuff of which ratings-grabbers are made.
Heath’s mother had told me that it was a Gang of Seven, and that they were gone. In a way, she was right. All the members of the Gang of Six were dead, leaving their silent seventh member to bear the burden of the truth. Though untouched by scandal, she was certainly hadn’t escaped unscathed.
Criminal Intent
An Alex St. James short story
Bass watched me from across his desk. Behind him, the picture window overlooking Chicago’s Michigan Avenue framed winter’s dismal brightness as the afternoon faded to gray. He sat forward in his chair making its black leather squeak, which forced me to lean in closer to hear the message coming from our hotline’s digital recorder. He rewound and we listened twice more.
The woman’s words were whispered, but discernible. “You need to look into Jimmy Slattery’s death again.” Breathy and halting, she continued, “That other station got it all wrong. Patel has secrets.”
Bass grinned. “Well? What do you think?”
I tugged at my skirt, buying myself a moment to consider my response. “Ahh…” I said. “That’s it?”
A red flush raced up Bass’s neck, the smile dropped, and his face took on its usual scowl. “Yes, Alex. That’s it,” he said, sarcasm laced with staccato emphasis.