“Why do we always have to be like that?” Franklin asked the air.
“Like what?” Brian wondered.
“Everything’s always about the freaks. Whenever they talk about gays on TV or in the movies it’s always the leather guys or the drag queens or the guys who fuck everything that moves. Some of us are normal, but you’d never know it by the way we’re portrayed.” Franklin clucked as he turned the chicken with a pair of tongues. “It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to expose someone as important as Sugar Pilson to that kind of element.”
“She asked to go,” Brian said. Though I could tell he was a bit cowed.
“I think I need a real drink,” I said and walked back out to the dining room to pour myself a scotch. Brian’s telephone was in the living room. He’d set a comfortable little chair next to the phone stand; after I poured my drink I went and sat down. It was almost eight. Owen Lovejoy, Esquire would probably be at home so I called him there.
While I listened to the phone ring, I said to Terry, “Why don’t you turn that off and do your homework?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?”
“In ten years when you’re a desperate loser who can’t put a roof over his own head I’ll remind you that you didn’t do your homework.”
I don’t know what he said to that because Owen picked up the phone. “Hey, there are a couple things I need to talk to you about,” I said, not bothering with “hello.”
“Okay.” He seemed a little distracted and I wondered if I’d caught him walking in the door.
“First, why was there a trial? Why wasn’t Madeline offered a deal?”
“They wouldn’t do it. I think the ASA is trying to make a name for himself.”
I absorbed that and went on. “I talked to Madeline’s best friend. There’s something going on that she won’t talk about. But I did find out that it’s all connected. The conflict with her parents. The conflict at her practice. This Emily Fante woman. It’s all one thing. You don’t know what it is, do you?”
“No, I don’t. Could it be something that would help us?” There was a little hint of hope in his voice.
“Lana Shepherd doesn’t think so.”
“We need to be sure.”
“Can you explain that to your client? She’s the one who doesn’t want people talking about it.”
“I have explained it to her.”
He sounded a little testy so I said, “Sorry.”
“Madeline is a difficult person. Which I suppose isn’t uncommon among murderers. Is that all you need?”
“I think so.”
“All right. Keep digging around.”
He seemed about to hang up so I quickly said, “Um, you wouldn’t like a little company.” Things had cooled since I’d moved in with Brian. For most of February and March, I could basically just roll over and be fucking, that made me lax about keeping my weekly date with Owen. Since it looked like Brian was now occupied it might not be a bad thing—
“I have company, dear. Thank you for asking, though,” he said and then hung up.
As I put the receiver back in the cradle, I realized the living room was quiet. Terry had turned off the Atari and was doing his homework.
Chapter Six
I did know one reason the task force was hot to get Jimmy. Publicity. For about the last four years the FBI had been running an undercover sting called Operation Greylord. Basically they had a lawyer in their pocket who would bribe judges on tape. Once they got one, they got more, and Cook County judges began to fall like dominos. They’d just gotten their first conviction in March, but Operation Greylord had been in the papers for more than a year. Every agent in every agency was chomping at the bit to make a newsworthy bust. They all wanted to be a modern day Elliot Ness. That was half of what Operation Tea and Crumpets was about. It was also why they’d given it a cute, newspaper-ready name.
The murders they were trying to pin on Jimmy took place in 1972. A low-level member of the Outfit named Shady Perelli and his wife, Josette, were found dead in the trunk of their 1971 Cadillac Eldorado. The car had been parked in front of a Sambo’s in Downer’s Grove for three days. Perelli and his wife were both shot in the back of the head with a small caliber handgun. The murders were professional and there was little in the way of physical evidence. The exact murder scene was never discovered. The murder weapon was never found. There were no witnesses.
Murders of this sort often went unsolved, and when they were solved they were solved by someone in the Outfit turning State’s evidence. So the only thing Operation Tea and Crumpets had going for them was an informant who said Jimmy had ordered the murders and some kind of document that referred to them.
I had just one problem with that.
The most reliable way to solve a murder connected to the Outfit was to look at who benefited. Murders within the Outfit happened when one Outfit guy wanted to take over another Outfit guy’s territory, or when one Outfit guy was afraid another Outfit guy was about to go State’s evidence. The thing about murdering the Perelli’s was that I couldn’t see how Jimmy benefited. As nearly as I could tell from the files, Perelli wasn’t a threat to Jimmy. And I was pretty sure that in 1972 Jimmy wouldn’t have needed to take Perelli’s territory. The fact that Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten much out of the Perilli murders lent credence to the idea the Feds were attempting to pin the wrong murders on him.
Wednesday I was back in my office ready to work on Jimmy’s case. My plan had been to split my days half and half, but that hadn’t actually worked out. I’d spent the whole previous day on Madeline Levine and now owed Jimmy some time. It was seven-thirty in the morning. I’d left late enough that I was able to buy a fancy gourmet coffee at The Coffee & Tea Exchange. I got a large, which managed to stay almost hot on the walk over to my office and, unsurprisingly, tasted a whole lot better than the coffee from White Hen. The morning was overcast and cold. It was one of those days where it’s humid enough that you wonder if it might be drizzling, and you’re not sure until you wind up soaked.
I had a little trouble focusing on Jimmy’s case. For one thing, I was hungover. For another, I was annoyed. Even though he seemed to have just shown up in Brian’s life, Franklin was taking the kind of ownership that reminded me of someone who’d just gotten the keys to a new car. And worse, he wasn’t the friendly sort who wanted to give all his friends rides. No, he was the sort who wanted to keep the car spotless and to himself.
We were just about finished with dinner and I was halfway through my third scotch when I realized he hadn’t asked me a single question. In fact, he’d been doing a bang up job of not talking to me at all. He talked to Brian. I talked to Brian. We didn’t actually talk to each other.
“We should go to the dunes this summer,” Franklin said. I’d heard of them, but never been.
“That sounds like fun,” Brian said.
“What about going back to New York?” I asked. “Are you and Sugar planning another trip?”
“We’re talking about it.”
“New York is a horrible city. Dirty and crime-ridden.” Franklin’s disapproval had the finality of a door closing.
I’d never had a reason to go to New York so I couldn’t defend it. Though I was tempted to anyway. Particularly since you could say the same things about Chicago.
“Franklin works at a law firm in the loop,” Brian said as though that explained something. “He’s a paralegal.”
“I see,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything else.
“Nick works for a law firm, too. He’s an investigator.”
“We have an investigator at our firm. I think he’s an ex-convict,” Franklin said casually. I just smiled at that, though I knew perfectly well the investigator had to be clear of felonies for at least ten years in order to have a license. The point wasn’t that their investigator was an ex-con. The point was Franklin didn’t like me.
Despite the unpleasantness of the conversation, the dinner was actually good. W
hen I finished I went into the living room and hung out on the sofa, which was basically my “room.” Terry had taken his dinner into his bedroom and Hart to Hart was on television. The ridiculousness of the show made me giggle a few times. Franklin and Brian cleaned up and I could tell that Franklin was chafed that I wasn’t doing the dishes. But even in the living room I could hear him bossing Brian around, and that wouldn’t have flown with me so I didn’t feel bad. I fell asleep sometime during the local news.
As I took the last sips of my morning coffee, I tried to focus on Jimmy’s case. The main thing I needed to do was discover who their informant was. From the transcripts I’d read, the informant knew a great deal about Jimmy. He was close to Jimmy. Close enough to steal or copy some kind of datebook or a series of datebooks, or diary, or journal. Of course, I needed to sit down with Jimmy and ask him about that, but it seemed a good idea to make a little progress first. I wanted to study the files I’d put together and read through everything again, but I didn’t think that would yield much. I knew what I needed to do; I just didn’t want to do it. I finished off the coffee, tossed the Styrofoam cup into my trash basket, and pulled my overcoat back on. It was time to go down to the Loop.
Operation Tea and Crumpets was working out of the Federal Building on Dearborn. From the information in the files, I knew that the interviews were taking place in their office on the twenty-third floor. What I wanted to know was who went in and out of the building, but even before I went down, I knew that was going to be difficult. I took the Jackson/Howard down to Jackson, and when I climbed up out of the subway I was right at the Federal building plaza staring at the big red bird by Calder.
The Federal Building was a black monolith by Mies van der Rohe of forty-some floors; across the street was the Courthouse, another van der Rohe building of only thirty floors, though much wider. Just beyond the Calder was a mammoth, one-story Post Office made of the same black metal used in the other two buildings. I was looking for someplace to watch the lobby of the federal building. My options were limited.
I circled the building. Across Jackson was a hundred-year-old, sixteen-story brick building. I eyed it seriously for a few minutes. If I could rent an office on the second floor then I’d be able to watch the entrance to the Federal Building. But that was a big if. Even if an office was available, I had no way of knowing if the landlord would go for something short term. And, if they somehow learned that I was watching the Federal Building in order to keep tabs on a Federal investigation, they might not feel too comfortable. I considered the Post Office for a moment. Like most Post Offices there were long lines most of the day. I could slip from long line to long line, keeping my eye on the Federal Building the whole time. But I figured sooner or later someone would notice me hanging around and ask me to buy some stamps or get out.
Walking into the lobby of the Federal Building I quickly saw that there were even fewer possibilities in there. In fact, there barely was an “in there.” The lobby, enclosed in two-story glass windows, was nothing but a shiny floor, some pillars, and a few elevator banks. The back of the elevator bank was an expanse of tile with the Federal Seal in the middle.
Dozens of people walked across the lobby, on their way to offices upstairs, on their way out of the building. I wondered how many thousands of people walked across the space every day. There was no place to go unnoticed, though. Everyone was visible and anyone standing around for hours would draw attention. On the wall by the elevators was a directory. I studied it for a few minutes. There was no listing for anything on the twenty-third floor. The IRS was on the twenty-fourth, and on the twenty-second the office of Alderman Kenkowski of the Second Ward.
Without thinking too much about it, I got into one of the elevators and pressed 23. The elevator filled and began to rise. The first stop was the twentieth floor. Another elevator ran from the first floor to the nineteenth. The second stop was twenty-three and I got off. Luckily, I got off alone and found myself in a cream-colored space with doors at either end. I walked to my right and looked up and down the bland hallway. Most of the office spaces were just labeled with numbers. There was a law office at the end of the hallway, Clarkson and Peters, which I guessed did a lot of business with the Federal government. Halfway down was a men’s room. I tried the door but it was locked and required a key. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hang out in the restroom all day. Not only would it be suspicious if anyone noticed me but there was no guarantee I’d learn anything.
I walked by the elevator and entered the other hallway. It was virtually indistinguishable from the first. Most of the offices were again unmarked. I tried a couple of the doors, ready to tell anyone inside that I was looking for Clarkson and Peters, but the doors were locked. Near the end of the hallway, I found an office with a plaque that said “British Export Company.” Clever , I thought. Most people wouldn’t think twice about their business name. Even though if there were a real British Export Company they’d be located in England. A company doing similar business in the United States would be called British Import Company.
Letting my hand rest on the doorknob, I tried to think whether to try to open it. It would be interesting to see their setup. If anyone was in there I could say I was looking for the attorney’s office like I’d planned, even though that would make me look like I couldn’t read a plaque on the door. The thing is, worse than looking stupid, I was afraid of being recognized. It wasn’t likely but I might know whoever they had from the CPD. Or, I might be recognized later on…I wasn’t sure I should risk it. I wasn’t even sure I knew what it was I wanted to see. I took my hand off the door and walked back down the hallway to the elevator. Pushing the down button, I stood there waiting.
Then I heard a door open far down the hallway I’d just come from. I pushed the down button again, even though I knew perfectly well the elevator wouldn’t come any faster. Voices grew closer as I waited. I considered running around the corner into the other hallway but that seemed ridiculous. I didn’t even know if the voices coming down the hall were part of the task force. There were other doors they could have come out of. On top of that, if they were from the task force, an elevator mysteriously opening with no one there might raise—
The elevator opened, I stepped into the car. I hit the down button a number of times hoping that the door would close before the voices got there. But it didn’t. Two men in their late thirties got into the car. They were both thick-bodied, kept their hair in crew cuts, and wore inexpensive suits with trench coats draped over their arms. In my experience, they looked like Federal agents. I looked like a bum who’d lost his way.
Quickly, I reached over and hit 22 before the doors closed, by way explanation I said, “Wrong floor. Did you know if you actually come down and complain to your Alderman about potholes they fix them? We got this pothole so deep you can see the cobblestone down underneath it.”
One of them said, “No kidding.”
“It works better to come down. If you just call or write a letter they only fix it half the time. Showing up it’s a hundred percent. Guess they’re afraid you’ll come back.”
The door opened and we were at the twenty-second floor. I got off and looked around as though I was actually trying to find my Alderman’s office. The door closed behind me and I stopped. I decided I needed to wait at least ten minutes before I went down to the lobby. If the agents were at all suspicious they’d wait down there to see how long I took. There was an ashtray on the wall between the elevator banks; I lit up a cigarette and considered my situation. I needed to know who was coming in and out of the task force’s offices. It was the best way to determine who their informant was. But there was no easy way to set up surveillance. There was no hard way that I could see either.
By the time I finished my cigarette I decided to head back to my office and go through the boxes again. There had to be something in there that would lead me to the informant. But even as I rode the elevator down and walked back across the lobby and out to the subway, I began to
wonder if there wasn’t another way to approach this.
I went back over the basics. Shady and Josette Perelli had been murdered, or rather, hit. Murder is a word that implies some level of passion. They were hit. Taken out of existence for purely business reasons. According to Prince Charles, a soldier named Nino “The Nose” Nitti killed the couple on Jimmy’s orders. Nitti died seven years after the Perellis in 1979. He was shanked in a prison shower. He was about to be paroled, early and somewhat suspiciously. What Nitti was in prison for was not mentioned in the files. I had no idea if it was relevant.
The El train’s doors opened and let me out at the Belmont stop. I’d been riding in one of the old green cars with the stiff leather seats. One of the windows didn’t close all the way so it had been a chilly ride. Still, I liked that it had kept me awake and thinking. It seemed like a good idea to find someone who knew The Nose. I sat down on one of the wooden benches that dot the platform. I was trying to decide if I should cross over to the other side of the platform and head back to the library and do some research on The Nose. There had to be newspaper stories about him. His arrests. His death. What I needed were relatives. A wife. Kids. Someone he might have confessed to. They wouldn’t be in the articles necessarily, but his address would. It would give me a place to start. I decided I’d start there in the morning. I didn’t feel like trekking back downtown.
I walked down the wooden stairs into the station, which had to be seventy or eighty years old and looked every day of it. The electric blue paint was thick and heavily chipped. The wooden steps sagged in the middle where foot traffic had worn them down. The ticket taker’s booth, only a bit bigger than a phone booth, was original, but the silver turnstiles were not. In fact, much of the station probably was not. I imagined the wood being replaced over and over again as the weather and millions of feet wore it down. I went through the tall turnstile that led to the street.
Boystown 7: Bloodlines Page 6