If I’d been there alone, Cavanaugh would probably have sat behind his impressive desk and made steepling gestures at me with his hands. But I wasn’t his only guest, so we sat in comfortable leather chairs around a marble coffee table. With us were Special Agent Holborn and Cavanaugh’s assistant, Leonard Pritts.
Pritts briefed us on the case and concluded, “We’re still back-channeling with O’Connor to work a plea. But the non compos mentis angle is bullshit. We’ll deal some time but we’re not dropping to a lesser charge.”
“Great,” I said. “But somebody from your office has to make clear to the press what my role in this is. O’Connor’s fucking with my reputation.”
“So?” said Pritts.
I turned to a friendlier face. “Agent Holborn, I came to you from the start—”
“And we’ve made it clear that you’re not a suspect,” said Holborn.
“Just barely,” I said. “Look, so far I’ve been quiet but I have a right to defend my reputation and my livelihood.”
Cavanaugh cleared his throat and said, “Do not threaten, Gumshoe.” He said gumshoe the same way as Mrs. Hills. “You will not even dream of speaking to the press about this case, or your career will most certainly be over. And you do not tell us about how we do our jobs.”
I felt like a kid in the principal’s office. “Not my intention,” I said, holding up my hand in apology. “The point that I was so unskillfully trying to make is valid, but my presentation was out of line. I assure you, I have no intention of speaking to the press at this time.”
“Good,” said Cavanaugh. Then, to Pritts, “I’m sure our office can make a statement that will clearly communicate the fact that Mr. Dudgeon is a cooperative witness who aided the investigation from the start and has never been a suspect in this case.”
“Thank you,” I said.
As we left the building, I shook my head at Holborn and said, “Thanks a heap for all the support in there.”
“Maybe you should be less of a smart-ass,” said Holborn and walked away.
The next day, Mr. Gordon Hills went to his wife’s hotel room and beat her to death with a framing hammer. After which he ordered room service and turned on the television and watched Wheel of Fortune until the police arrived. He was pleading temporary insanity, according to his defense attorney, Dermott O’Connor.
Small goddamn world.
I took myself out drinking. Thinking, Was Francine Hills really a battered wife, or did Gordon Hills go mental when he woke up to the fact that she’d tried to hire his murder? Beat her to death with a hammer—that’s pretty mental for a guy who isn’t violent to begin with.
In memory, Francine Hills’ words called out to me: “I’ve learned to accept the private humiliations…I refuse to stage a public performance of my anguish for your benefit…if you’re not man enough to save me from his cruelty…” Shit. He probably did beat her. And the sunglasses. Had she been hiding a bruise that makeup could not completely erase? Had I been too quick to dismiss her affectations as vanity?
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” she’d said.
I changed course and made it home relatively sober. There was a message waiting on my machine.
“Ray Dudgeon. Dermott O’Connor calling. As you may have heard, I’m now representing Gordon Hills and I believe you could be of assistance to his defense. I realize we were on opposite sides of this thing until recently, but I know you’re a grownup and you understand how the game is played. Anyway I think our interests now coincide. Right now I’m sure if you think back, you’ll recall something Mrs. Hills may have said which would indicate that she was concerned about her husband’s psychological condition…”
I stopped the machine and erased the message without listening to the rest.
Yeah, I knew how the game was played.
Here’s another Ray Dudgeon story that takes place between the two novels.
Readers of Big City Bad Blood may remember that when Ray was fired off the case, he enlisted the help of a sleazy gossip columnist named Delwood Crawley. They met at the Old Town Ale House and Crawley agreed to give Ray a couple paragraphs in his column in exchange for an I.O.U.—some investigative work, to be paid at a later date.
After writing the book I often thought back to that scene and wondered: What kind of gossip story would a scumbag like Crawley need Ray’s help with?
Here’s the answer. A sordid little case involving power and privilege and prostitution, social hypocrisy and the fuzzy line that separates the Good Guys from the Bad Guys.
“Bread and Circuses” has never been published, aside from a little homemade chapbook that I gave away at bookstore signings on my first tour.
DELWOOD CRAWLEY IS A two-bit hack. His gossip column, Chicago After Dark, dishes dirt on Chi-Town’s rich and famous. All titillation, all the time. No actual news value. Bread and circuses. Moldy bread and crooked carnies. That’s Delwood Crawley, all over.
And I had become Delwood Crawley’s bitch.
The previous January, I was working on a high profile case and I needed his help. And that’s all it takes with a guy like him. The case wasn’t going well and I’d just been fired and the guy who fired me was an expert at media manipulation. To get my side of the story out I needed a couple of ’graphs in Crawley’s column. He was happy to oblige, in exchange for some detective work. Barter, he called it. So we struck a deal and he did a fine job pimping me in his column and now, on a muggy Thursday in June, it was finally time to pay my debt. Time to get it over with.
The Old Town Ale House is an honest bar that caters mostly to local news scribblers. I chose a table beneath a ceiling fan and drank cold beer and I was still too damn hot. Crawley arrived, sat across from me, and adjusted his bow tie. I signaled Davey, who came out from behind the stick and put a new beer in front of me and a double Johnnie Black in front of Crawley.
“Three ice cubes,” Crawley said, staring at the drink like it had an insect in it. “You know that I take only two.” His English accent was designed to confer a social status higher than that which he’d enjoyed as a young man. The accent was particularly strong today. I’m sure he practices.
“Bust me for it in your column,” said Davey. “I’m sure the world gives a shit.”
“Cheeky bastard.” Crawley sipped his scotch. The extra ice cube didn’t kill him. He pulled a notepad from his briefcase, skimmed some pages, closed the notepad. “Tell me what you know about the Chicagoland Rio De Janeiro Ball.”
“Not a lot. Each year a bunch of rich folks get together for a fancy party, raise a lot of money, and give it to charity. The party’s theme is a Brazilian Carnival. I understand that it can be quite decadent.”
“Quite. Last year the waiters and waitresses were completely naked, their bodies painted gold. As usual, a great amount of alcohol was consumed and…let’s just say a great many guests had gold paint on their own bodies before the evening was over.”
“Fascinating.”
“Naturally I’m invited on the understanding that I never write about what transpires at the ball, only the size of their magnanimousness.” Crawley drew a cigarette from a silver case and set it on fire while I made a mental note to check a dictionary later and find out if magnanimousness is a real word. “The ball is very exclusive. You fill out an application and, if approved, you are granted the privilege of attending. At the cost of $3000 a plate.” He wrinkled his nose like the price carried with it a bad smell, then shrugged, “It’s tax-deductible. Anyway the woman in charge of the ball died last month and their executive board is set to choose a new president. In Chicago society, there is no better position for a wealthy housewife. Consequently, the competition is becoming rather nasty.”
Crawley reached back into his briefcase, produced a single piece of paper, and handed it to me. “Your task is to find out if this is true.” It was a fax addressed to Delwood Crawley at the Chicago Chronicle and written in hand. The cursive script suggested a woman’s hand. Written in
the ‘From’ field was: “A defender of family values.” And the message was simply: “Margarita Chapman used to be a prostitute.”
I said, “Judge Chapman’s wife?”
“The very same. She’s the odds-on favorite to ascend the throne. That is, unless something such as this comes to light.” Crawley took a deep drag on his smoke and now I wanted one.
Judge Chapman sat on the bench of the Circuit Court and I’d appeared before him as witness in connection with a couple of cases. I downed the rest of my beer, thinking Nobody’s business. We’ve all got things we’d like to leave behind us…
“The executive board meets next Monday,” said Crawley, “so I require it in time for Sunday’s paper. Your deadline is eight p.m. Saturday.”
I’d made a deal with Crawley and he’d fulfilled his end. I knew from the get-go that my end would involve something repugnant. But the thought of doing this job did not make me feel like one of the Good Guys.
As we used to say in the schoolyard, a deal’s a deal.
I took the ‘L’ down to Daley Plaza and spent the afternoon looking at government records. I slipped forty bucks to Judy Baker, a pretty face behind the counter in the Cook County Clerk’s Office, and she fetched files for me without making me wait in line with the civilians.
Brian Chapman and Margarita Vasquez were joined in holy matrimony fourteen years earlier. At the time of their wedding, he was 45 and she was 22. It was the first marriage for both and they’d since had two children—Kyle, now 11, and Stephanie, now 8. They lived in Highland Park, an affluent suburb north of the city.
Although the marriage license listed Chicago as Margarita Vasquez’s place of birth, no matching birth certificate existed in the Cook County Clerk’s files.
Ah-ha, I thought. I ripped a sheet from my notebook and wrote, “Name change for an adult. From: ? To: Margarita Vasquez.” I gave the paper to Judy and she ran a search for the two years prior to the wedding date.
And there it was. Eleven months prior to the wedding, the Circuit Court had approved a change-of-name petition to Margarita Vasquez. But the court had ordered the record sealed and I couldn’t access her former name. The presiding judge had been Edward Lens. His name was not familiar to me.
Back in my apartment, I Googled Judge Brian Chapman and learned that he’d studied law at Northwestern. An alumni site featured PDF back-issues of their newsletter and I found a blurb about the Judge’s nuptials. Chapman’s best man was fellow alumnus—and fellow Judge—Ted Lens.
I cracked open a beer and thought it through. Chapman falls in love with a hooker. She’s probably got a record and the judge wants a wife with no skeletons. He calls his buddy Ted Lens and arranges a new legal identity for the woman, and Lens seals the court record to make it a clean break.
It was a pretty safe conjecture that Margarita Chapman, nee Vasquez, had something locked away in the closet of her past. Something that she would prefer didn’t follow into her present. Into her new life of respectability. Maybe she had been a whore. Or a grifter or a petty thief or a junkie or any number of other things.
But whatever it was, it was in the past. And the thought of doing this job made me feel even less like one of the Good Guys.
Thursday afternoon at 3:02, Margarita Chapman’s Land Rover pulled into her driveway and stopped. She unloaded the kids and they crossed the perfectly manicured lawn and disappeared into their three-story Tudor home. I’d been tailing them since morning.
I didn’t really know what I hoped to learn. Maybe I hoped that Margarita Chapman would beat the crap out of her kids or kick the family dog or something—anything—that would make me feel less of a jerk.
But she didn’t. Neither did she feed the hungry nor comfort the afflicted nor balance the federal budget. She just acted like a normal Highland Park mom. She took the kids to day camp and dropped them off with a Don’t forget your lunch. No I love you, or goodbye hugs. Just a slightly hurried mom dropping her kids at day camp. She watched them from the driver’s seat until they were safely inside the building, then drove to Central Avenue. After much trying on and rejecting, she bought a pair of leather sandals at S’agaro for $275, plus tax. She had a manicure at about ten bucks a finger. She then met two other women for lunch at Café Central and they laughed a lot and too loud and said bad things about their men, which made them laugh even louder. They shared a bottle of wine over lunch. I drank my lunch at a nearby table.
Margarita Chapman and her friends kissed the air near each other’s cheeks and bid each other Ciao. Then Margarita collected her kids from day camp. The kids had crafts to show mom. Kyle held a couple of handmade candles on a string and Stephanie, a cardboard house. Mom acted suitably impressed by their obvious and undeniable genius but still made them fasten their seatbelts before take-off, the way I imagine any normal mom would act.
And now the whole normal family was inside their beautiful home, drinking chocolate milk or something. Probably reading the Bible to each other for kicks. Or whatever normal families do. And you, Dudgeon, are one lowlife bastard if you advance this case any further.
A beige Toyota Corolla pulled to the curb and stopped across the street and down the block from the Chapman home. The Toyota’s windows came down and the engine stopped but the driver didn’t get out. Instead, he adjusted his side mirror so he could watch the house without facing it. I was parked a block-and-a-half down, on one of the cross streets.
I pulled around the corner and came to a stop directly behind the Toyota, got out and approached the driver’s window. The man sitting in the car was big in all directions, with curly black hair, a bushy moustache, and a thick head. His meaty paw dangled a wallet just outside the window. The wallet held a badge.
“Sorry, officer,” he squeaked. “I was gonna check in at the station, but I was late ’cause of traffic.” The high-pitched voice was unfortunate on a man of his size. I took the wallet and examined his private detective’s license. His name was Paul Pirelli.
“Chapman the subject of your surveillance?” I asked.
“Aw, come on. You know I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
“Name of your client?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Same answer. Look, I was on the job fifteen years. We can play who-do-you-know and you can call it in and check me out, hey?”
“Not necessary,” I handed his wallet back to him and his expression changed.
“Hey, wait a second. You’re not a cop!”
“Never said I was.”
“You’re just another P.I. You’re that Dudgeon guy.”
“Right.”
“Asshole.”
“You offered, without my asking.” I gestured toward the Chapman house. “Look Pirelli, I’ve already blown your cover, so let’s call it a day, go for a beer and compare notes. I’m buying.”
We drank at the South Loop Club, which is in my general neighborhood and on the way to Paul Pirelli’s place in Bridgeport. A couple of college kids at the next table ate Gyros, and the garlic aroma of Tzatziki reminded me to eat later. Pirelli let me pay for his drinks but he felt the need to tell me that it didn’t make us friends.
“I’m not asking you to wear my ring,” I said. “And whatever you’ve heard about me, half of it is bullshit.”
“Because of you, cops went to prison.”
“A few. Really bad cops.” I figured Paul Pirelli for a guy who had his hand out a lot when he was a cop. A cop who’d take cash to look the other way on small stuff, stuff he could rationalize. But I didn’t figure him for a cop in bed with the Outfit. “Really, really bad cops,” I repeated, holding his gaze. He shrugged.
“Whatever,” he said. “You’re a licensed dick so I’m extending a professional courtesy. I’m just saying, it don’t make us buddies.”
I let it go and steered the conversation to his client, who I suspected was the “defender of family values” from the fax in my pocket. I told him I knew he was working for one of the aspirants to the presidency of the Chicagolan
d Rio De Janeiro Ball and I implied, without saying, that my client was one of the other women who coveted the position. He laughed and shook his head and called them, “crazy rich bitches.”
We danced around the subject for another beer but Pirelli wouldn’t give up any more information and I sure as hell wasn’t about to give him anything. But when he laughed about the crazy rich bitches, he said something about their husbands being too busy making condos and shopping malls to give them what they need at home. I hoped that would be enough to lead me somewhere.
I signaled the waitress for the bill and said to Pirelli, “Be careful what you pass on to your client, Paul. I’m sure you’ve discovered the change-of-name, but you don’t know why that happened. You don’t want to expose your client to a slander lawsuit, so don’t jump to conclusions.”
I hoped it would give him pause, and it did. He frowned at his beer for a long time. Finally a smile invaded his face, like he had the notion he was a step ahead of me. “Ah, the Chapman chick is your client, hey?”
I shrugged and said nothing.
I opened a can of Beefaroni and ate it right out of the can, while watching Mark Prior pitch a gem against the Astros. In the bottom of the seventh, with the Cubs on top 3-1, my phone rang. It was Delwood Crawley, returning a message I’d left earlier.
“What’s all this about insufficient evidence?” he said. “I’m not taking the woman to court. I simply need to know if it’s true, I don’t need proof.”
“You don’t need a libel suit, either.”
“I’m sure you remember our agreement.” Our agreement was that my work had to produce a publishable item in Crawley’s column. If my work produced nothing, then the hours I put in counted nothing against my debt. I’d not been in a strong bargaining position when we made the deal.
“I remember fine,” I said. “Have you got a list of the other top contenders for grande dame of the ball?”
“Indeed I do,” the sound of papers shuffling came through the line.
EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories Page 4