“She’s a bitch.”
That was hard to deny but I felt like I shouldn’t let him get away with it anyway. “You should be more respectful at your age.”
He shrugged.
“She feeds you. She takes you shopping and buys you shit. She makes sure you do your homework. And she keeps you out of trouble.”
His eyes narrowed. “Have you been spying on us?”
“No. I just know what she’s like. She’s not that bad.”
“She calls me ‘boy.’ I miss Brian.”
“You miss Brian’s computer game.”
“I like Brian.”
“He’s started dating someone, so maybe you need to give him some space.”
“That Franklin asshole?”
“Again, more respect.” But again he’d hit the nail on the head. “I think Franklin’s going to be around for a while. And if he makes Brian happy, that’s cool. Look, I rented an apartment. You can stay with me some of the time.” After I get set up and put a lock on the bedroom door.”
“How long do I have to stay with Mrs. Harker?”
“Let me talk to Brian. Maybe we’ll start with you coming into the city for weekends and see how it goes.” That earned me a scowl but nothing worse. I ground out my cigarette on the sidewalk and said, “Come on, we need to go in to mass.”
“I’m not even Catholic.”
“Then why were your parents sending you to Catholic school?”
“Because they hate me.”
I shrugged. “That’s why most people send their kids to Catholic school.”
Mass was mass. Being Easter there was a bit more pomp and ceremony. The high school choir came in and sang something with a lot of Glorias. The Homily was given by Father Dewes, who was an older priest I’d met and liked a lot. In fact, he’d been instrumental in our overseeing Terry’s emancipation. His subject was “The Gift of Christ,” in which he talked about what Christ’s story meant to all of us. How it embodied the promise of rebirth after struggle. How God offered us rebirth again and again in our lives. I thought he did a good job, though some of the older parishioners looked displeased. As a priest, Father Dewes would never be a good fit for those who preferred fire and brimstone and condemnation. After mass we were able to chat with him for a moment. He seemed pleased with the way Terry looked, even though the kid was quiet to the point of rudeness. As we walked to the car, I asked him, “You don’t like Father Dewes?”
“He’s all right, I guess.”
I was beginning to realize that was high praise from a teenager.
“Is good priest. You respect,” Mrs. Harker pronounced. And I nearly cringed having said something similar to Terry twice before mass. I wasn’t used to being so in tune with her.
When we got back to the condo, I asked if I could use the phone. I made sure to say that it was for business so Mrs. Harker didn’t have a chance to glower at me. Her phone was in the living room sitting on a special table next to a rocking chair. I went over and dialed Owen’s beeper number. After the prompt, I put in Mrs. Harker’s phone number.
While most of America was having ham with too much pineapple and brown sugar, we had a roast leg of lamb. “Is tradition,” she said as she put it on the table. To my surprise, Terry helped her bring out hard-boiled eggs, sausages, rice, peas with little onions, an amazing loaf of marbled bread, chocolates and fruit.
“Do you need help?” I asked at one point
That earned me a dirty look. “You are guest.”
I thought I was more than a guest, I mean, she did just give me a car. But I decided not to argue the point. Before they sat down she told Terry to get me a beer. He brought out two Czechvars, one for me and one for Mrs. Harker. That was something of a surprise. At Brian’s he barely lifted a finger. At Brian’s he would have tried to have one himself. Something was beginning to dawn on me. She rarely gave me a Czechvar and she rarely drank. When she did it was always some kind of celebration. Sure, it was holiday, but I felt like there was more going on. I’d done something right and Mrs. Harker was thanking me.
The phone rang as we began to fill out plates.
“I’m sure that’s for me,” I said before Mrs. Harker could get up. “I just beeped someone.”
“Beep? What is beep?”
“Terry explain that for me, please. I’ll be two minutes.”
I walked into the living room and picked up the phone.
“You rang?” Owen Lovejoy, Esquire said.
“Are you going to say that every time?”
“Why not? People say hello every time they pick up the phone, don’t they?”
“All right. Yes, I rang. Look, I think I know why Madeline killed her husband.”
“You do?”
“Is there any possibility we can see her?”
“You mean today?”
“Are there visiting hours on Sunday?”
“As her attorney I have expanded access, but let me set it up for tomorrow morning.”
“Do you…” Even though we’d been fucking on and off for more than a year, I still felt like I was being nosey. “Are you seeing someone?”
“Yes, I am.”
That annoyed me a little. People seemed to be pairing up. Like all of Boystown was playing a big game of musical chairs, and all I got was a priest who wouldn’t put out and a mobster who didn’t think he was gay. That part of my life was definitely not going well.
“Congratulations,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
“Thanks. Before we do this though, you’re going to have to give me a hint. Why do you want to see her?”
“Wes Berkson had AIDS. I think Jane Weeks did, too.”
There was silence on the line.
“So Madeline thought they gave it to her and she killed them for it? Is that what you’re thinking?” he guessed.
“Something like that. I’d like to hear what she’s got to say. Maybe I’ve got it completely wrong.”
“All right. Let me see I can make arrangements. I’ll call you back.
Chapter Twenty
I spent another two hours with Mrs. Harker and Terry. Before I left I flipped through her yellow pages and found a place called Mattress World on Touhy near Western. As I drove there in Harker’s Lincoln, I wondered if they’d be open. It was Easter, after all, and a lot of stores were closed. But when I pulled up in front, they were open. So then I wondered if they were Jewish. I knew Jews had Passover to deal with, but I think that, like Easter, moved around. In fact, as I was thinking about it, I remembered a priest saying that the last supper took place as part of Passover. So, Easter had to always fall after Passover. Right?
The store was small. I’d expected a larger place, but Mattress World was one narrow storefront between a cleaners and a pizza place, both of which were closed. The signage in the window promised that I wouldn’t find better prices anywhere else and that “No One Sells 4 Less.” By the time I left the store I figured that other places must have been charging an arm and a leg because I hit my credit card for nearly three hundred dollars. Still, they promised to deliver the mattress on Wednesday morning so I was happy that I only had a few more days of sleeping on the floor.
It would have been nice if they’d sold sheets and bedspreads and pillows, but Mattress World was strictly mattresses. I’d have to go to Marshall Fields or Carson Pirie Scott the next day when I was downtown staking out the Federal Building. In the afternoon I’d take a break and walk over to State Street. Thinking about shopping for new sheets made me feel kind of weird. This wasn’t the kind of thing I did on my own. Making a home. It didn’t feel like me; but then again, it felt good. It was a new beginning and I’d needed it.
I’d thought that Joseph might be a new beginning, as well. But he wasn’t. It hurt a little, but I had to be honest, given the things I’d been through it was barely a scratch. Which led me to the oddest thought. After losing Harker the way I had, after punishing myself for killing the Bughouse Slasher, there weren’t
many things I wouldn’t be able to get through. At least, I hoped that was true.
After picking up a six-pack of Miller and a frozen Celeste pizza at the Jewel, I went home and learned how to use my oven. While it was heating up it emitted a dusty odor that was gone by the time the pizza was finished. I put my Walkman on, turned up the George Benson, sipped my beer, munched my pizza, and watched the light fade away over the lake.
Owen beeped me at eight-thirty the next morning. I was still asleep and had been for a long time. Of course, I didn’t have a phone yet, so I had to get dressed, take the elevator down ten stories, and walk around the corner to the Melrose where they had a payphone next to the men’s room. When I got Owen on the phone, he told me to meet him in front of Division IV of Cook County Jail in a half an hour. It was tight, but I managed to find my car, drive down to 27th Street and Sacramento, hunt for a parking place—enough of a challenge that I actually prayed to Mother Cabrini—and wait for him in front of the barbed wire gates. He was ten minutes late.
Once he got there, we were able to get passed the bureaucracy rather quickly, and before I knew it we were deep inside the red brick building. It was certainly a lot easier than the last time I’d visited someone in the County Jail. A guard led us to a small room with a wooden table and a couple of chairs. It was a nice room, though. Almost as nice as a conference room in an office. Other than the lack of windows and the harsh florescent light above our heads, we could have been anywhere.
After the guard left us, Owen set his briefcase on the table and rolled his eyes. “I must find out who their decorator is. He’s done wonders.”
“I don’t think their goal is to make you want to stay.”
“True. She’s lucky she’s a woman. Conditions on the men’s side are so much worse.”
We sat. Owen took a legal pad out of his briefcase. We waited.
“Why is Madeline here at all. Wouldn’t they grant bail?”
“Bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars. If you use a bondsman they charge ten percent guilty or innocent. Fifty thousand dollars.”
I whistled. “She didn’t have it?”
“She didn’t have that and enough to pay our fee. Our fee on this should run about seventy-five.” Seventy-five thousand dollars for a murder defense. Justice was expensive. I hoped I never needed it.
“Her parents couldn’t help?”
“They are helping. But there are the kids to consider. When you’re in prison they pay you like twenty cents an hour for whatever work you do. Hard to raise kids on that.”
We waited. Owen made a few notes on his pad. I grew bored.
“We took Sugar Pilsen to see Sugar Pills the other night.”
“The drag queen?”
“Yeah. I think they fell deeply in love.”
“So that’s why you’re a little green around the gills?”
“Still?” I’d thought the holiday dinner Mrs. Harker fed me had straightened me out. Apparently that, and all the sleep I’d gotten, hadn’t made much of a dent. Before I could say anything else, the door opened and a guard led Madeline Levine-Berkson into the room. She wore a shapeless gray uniform that looked like medical scrubs. She was thinner than she was in the pictures I’d seen in the newspaper. There she was a little pudgy and scattered looking. Here she was sharp-edged and controlled. Her hair was dark and scraggly, most of the blonde had been cut off.
When the guard shut the door, Owen said, “Hello Madeline, how are you?”
“Better than I should be.”
“This is Nick Nowak. He’s our investigator. He’s been working on your case.”
“Which is over.”
“He’s been helping me look into what people might say if we let them speak for you.”
She looked at me suspiciously. “And?”
“After talking to people I have some questions to ask you,” I said.
“All right.”
“On your husband’s autopsy—”
“Wait. You just said you were talking to people. Why are you reading the autopsy?”
“People told me your husband was a drug addict. I wanted to see if the autopsy bore that out. He had lesions on his ankles and his—”
“People should have kept their mouths shut. I don’t want any—”
“I understand that Madeline,” Owen said. “The thing is. It’s beginning to sound as if we could have mounted a much more successful defense.”
“You thought your husband gave you AIDS,” I said. “Is that why you killed him?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Nothing’s going to happen that you don’t want to happen,” Owen said. “But it’s better if we at least talk about things.”
She seemed to chew her tongue for a moment then said, “I have no idea if he gave me AIDS. I feel fine.”
“Madeline, can you tell us why you killed your husband,” Owen asked, making his voice sincere and soothing.
“And his girlfriend,” I added.
Madeline flashed me a look. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I saw Owen flash me one, too. She took a deep breath and let it out.
“It was the insurance policy. He thought he was doing something good for us. I told him it would backfire, that they’d find out what he died of. I refused to go along with it. Then I found out he’d bought the policies anyway. Forged my signature. I could see what would happen. He was going to die. They’d demand a reason. When they found out, they’d accuse me of fraud and it would all come out. Everyone would know. Even if I got off, no one would go to the dentist whose husband had AIDS. The dentist who might have AIDS. He’d ruined everything.”
But why kill him the way she did? I wondered. Why not try to hide it? Why not make it look liked an accident? The questions began to answer themselves. She didn’t want his illness to be discovered so she couldn’t risk an autopsy without forgone conclusion. The ME needed to see the cause at a glance. Poison would have been too dangerous that way. Hiring someone to kill him had too many risks. Pushing him down the stairs—then it hit me. This had been about the sentencing all along.
“Owen, what’s the sentence for first-degree murder?”
“Twenty years to life.”
I looked Madeline in the eye and said, “You knew that, didn’t you? You made it look like second-degree murder so you’d get a lighter sentence.”
“I was always a fan of Perry Mason ,” she said. I decided not to point out that his clients were always innocent.
Sitting back in my chair, I couldn’t help but be a little impressed. She’d manipulated the whole thing so that she’d get the minimum sentence. Owen didn’t seem as impressed. In fact, he seemed not to notice what had just happened.
“I think the best thing to do is to simply let you make a statement and leave it at that. I’m concerned that someone might mention the drug addiction and then the whole thing begins to unravel. If I’d known all along I could have come up with a better strategy, but at this point…it complicates things.” And then he added dryly, “Besides, you seem to know what you’re doing.”
After I said goodbye to Owen, I drove back to Boystown and found a parking place on Buckingham. Then I walked over to the Melrose again, this time to have breakfast. I was so hungry I was beginning to feel nauseated. I ordered the lumberjack breakfast, which could also have been called the eat-until-you-burst breakfast, a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee. I had both papers and planned to spend the next hour eating and reading. Then I’d head back to my apartment and dress-up like a priest.
The Daily Herald and The Tribune both had articles about something we almost, sort of, kind of, already knew. AIDS was caused by a virus. They’d discovered it and named it. They’d found it in a laboratory and called it HTLV-III. Now it was definite. It wasn’t just rumors or hints being printed in alternative newspapers; it was mainstream so it was real. And more than that, I guess. It wasn’t just some virus, it was now a specific identifiable virus. And if it was something they co
uld indentify, then it might be something they could cure. As I ate my breakfast, I tried not to be too optimistic. It wasn’t something I could contribute to. I wasn’t a scientist. I was just a guy who figured things out. I needed to put the news aside and focus on what I was doing. But it wasn’t easy.
Hope was every bit as contagious as the virus.
By eleven o’clock I was back on the Federal Plaza begging money and staring people up and down. I positioned myself on a different corner than I’d worked on Friday, and settled in for a long afternoon. I still didn’t expect to find Prince Charles this way, but…well just but. I watched as people walked by in all sizes and shapes, all colors, all kinds of beliefs reflected in their dress, some with crosses, some with T-shirts that proclaimed an affinity for Led Zeplin or Ronald Reagan or The A-Team . Blue suits with red ties were practically popular.
My feet were killing me after an hour. The sidewalk and plaza were made out of some kind of crushed granite that had been mixed with concrete. It was hard to stand on for a long time. I wondered if there was someplace nearby that I could go for a pair of insoles or arch supports. The money flowed in faster than it had on the Friday before. Of course, Friday had been Good Friday, and even though it’s not a Federal holiday it was a day that a lot of people took off. Now they’re back and primed to donate by an Easter sermon.
What was I going to do if I saw someone suspicious? I wondered. I should have a plan. I couldn’t exactly throw aside a bucket full of change and run after them. I mean, a priest chasing down a mobster type in the middle of the Loop was almost laughable. I could casually follow someone, but then there was the bucket. No, all I’d be able to do would be observe, make mental notes about appearance and then talk to Jimmy, I suppose. After my phone call with Connors, I doubted he’d let me come down and look at any of the books they had full of known Outfit members. For the second time, I thought I might need one of those super tiny cameras they used in spy movies. Well, I needed one twice a year and that made it hard to justify the cost. That, and the fact that I giggled at the idea of someone chasing after me for the microfilm.
Boystown 7: Bloodlines Page 18