The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  The woman had hair as dark and curly, so long it fell down her back. She wore a tight-fitting knit dress that ended high on her thighs.

  “Chief Rawlings,” said Poe, “this is my executive secretary, Miss Bellini, and Mr. Mann, who manages my casino. Guys, Chief Rawlings wants to know if Chris Curland was here Friday night before last. A girl who used to work for him was murdered, and there may be some connection. Right, Chief?”

  Zany nodded.

  “He was here,” said Mann, without changing his expression. “We had a big crowd in that night, but I remember. He was here. Took a couple thou away from the roulette tables.”

  “I saw him, too,” said the woman. Her eyes were locked hard on Zany’s. There was nothing at all furtive about her, about either of them. “He had too much to drink. I was worried about his driving home.”

  There was something familiar about her—the voice, the build. Maybe it was the type.

  “You work here at the casino?” Zany asked. “On Friday nights?”

  “I work wherever Mr. Poe wants me to. I have an apartment here, in the hotel. I come out a lot on weekends.”

  Poe smiled, spreading his hands. “So there you are, Chief. You want to talk to anyone else? The night shift people’ll be here in a couple of hours. I’m sure I can find someone who might have seen him.”

  “Does anyone remember when Mr. Curland left?”

  “Maybe midnight,” said the woman. “He said he had a date.”

  “Isn’t that kinda late for a date?”

  “Not for that guy.”

  “Anyone else, Chief Rawlings?” Poe said. “I can check with valet parking. They could probably tell you exactly when he left.”

  “I guess that’s not necessary,” Zany said. He knew he’d just be wasting his time.

  “You want to hang around awhile anyway? Shoot some craps? Can I treat you to a drink? Cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’d better get back to Grand Pier. For some reason, we’re having a lot of trouble with lawbreakers this summer. Had an armed robbery the other day.”

  “No place is safe anymore. I’m thinking of increasing the security around here. But look, come on down whenever you want. Bring the wife and spend a weekend. I’ll get you a suite. My treat. We’ve got a great beach.”

  Zany got up without responding. As Poe led him to the door, he dropped another question. “Curland has a brother, Matthias Curland. He wasn’t around here that night, was he?”

  The Bellini woman shook her head.

  “I only met the guy the following Sunday,” Poe said. “He’s been away. In Europe. He’s an artist like his brother, only not so good.”

  “I’ve seen his work,” Zany said. “Thanks for your time.”

  “That’s all I needed you for, Bobby,” Poe said after Rawlings left.

  “I need to talk to you,” Mann said.

  “We talked this morning.”

  “No, we didn’t. I picked up my phone and listened to you talk. Now I’ve got something to say.”

  He sat down on a chair, leaning back, arms spread out. He might have been a dog pissing on another mutt’s scent, he was so defiant about it. Poe went over to his glass-top table, making Mann turn sideways to look at him.

  “So talk, Bobby,” he said. “I’m always happy to hear what you have to say.”

  Mango was over by the window, staring at the lake. She didn’t like the look in the casino manager’s eyes. Mann glanced at her, then shifted farther in his chair to face Poe.

  “I just heard from the investors again.”

  “You mean your friends in Atlantic City.”

  “I work for you, Mr. Poe, not them. If I was working for them, I wouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “Tell me what, that they don’t like the drop in the handle—the unofficial handle? This they have communicated to me, Bobby. Twice this week. I told them what I told you. The IRS is on my ass—sniffing around last year’s records. They sent me a letter. I showed it to you. I sent your friends in Atlantic City a fax.”

  “The IRS has already looked at those records. They came up clean. Just like we figured. Anyway, the letter’s from the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

  “Same thing. What do you want me to do, tell them to go fuck themselves? We’ve got to fly straight and level for a while. I’ve got too much going for me now to risk it all getting hauled into tax court on a skim.”

  “The investors don’t buy the letter, Mr. Poe. You got a lot of friends in interesting places. They think you got a friend with the feds. They think you’re wringing the handle to get more money for your real estate deals. They asked me to check it out. Instead, I’m coming to you. You tell me what I should say to them.”

  “Tell them I’m not going to take a penny out of here that I’m not entitled to as dividends from shares. Tell them everything’s going into the bottom line—the P and L, only more profit and less loss. All I’m trying to do is run a clean shop for a while, like it says to do in our casino license.”

  Mann glowered at him, then sighed in exasperation.

  “You see all the receipts, Bobby, all the records. I’m not hiding anything. Check it out, just like they asked you to do.”

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that you’ve got a problem with them, Mr. Poe.”

  “I’ll take care of it—the way I do all my problems. You just stick to your job and stop worrying.” He gave Mann a smile that better belonged on someone doing a late-night television commercial.

  Mann stood up, in a hurry now to leave. “I said my say, Mr. Poe. I expect you’ll be hearing from them no matter what.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks.”

  The door closed silently.

  “Goddamn gunsel,” said Mango.

  “You know what a gunsel is, Mango? It’s Yiddish for prick.”

  “I know. That’s him. Class A prick. You should never have agreed to take him on, Peter. You should have gotten your start-up money here.”

  “Do you know how much of the handle those Chicago guys wanted? It would have been like a juice loan.”

  “They wouldn’t be giving you such a big hassle over this. They wouldn’t stuff a bastard like Bobby down your throat. They’re businessmen, like you.”

  “Right. I met one of their lawyers once. Big-time LaSalle Street guy who got hooked into them when he needed a little juice to feed the ponies he liked to watch stroll around the track at Hawthorne. He showed me his watch. A Rolex bigger than my Piaget. On the back, it was inscribed: ‘To Bob from Sam, so that when they find you in a trunk they’ll know I was your friend.’”

  “Did they find him in a trunk?”

  “No, he died of a heart attack—probably from looking at that watch too much.”

  “I think you ought to consider a switch in investors, Peter. It’s not too late to go with the locals.”

  “That kind of affiliation wouldn’t do much for my social standing here, babe. Not to speak of our Better Business Bureau rating. And Bobby’s Atlantic City pals would have guys with baseball bats out here in an hour if they heard I was even thinking of such a thing. We shouldn’t be talking about this in here.”

  “If it was a done deal, they wouldn’t dream of messing with you. They’re not big enough to take on the outfit in Chicago.”

  “I always appreciate your advice, Mango, but sometimes I wish you’d think about it a little longer.”

  “I’m just trying to help.” She started to leave.

  “Hold on, Mango,” Poe said. “You and I have some other business to discuss.”

  She froze. She had been expecting this all day, of course, but he hadn’t said a word about it, despite several opportunities to talk to her in private.

  “Let’s go out on the balcony,” he said.

  They went down to the end, away from the windows of Poe’s office. Poe leaned against the railing and she did the same, standing very close to him, her perfume scenting the breeze.

  “The boys were just supposed to make a d
rop in that hooker’s apartment,” Poe said. “The money and the business card, then phone the tip. Those were my orders. She was found with her throat cut.”

  “I talked to them. They said she walked in on them.”

  “I don’t buy that. I told you they were to wait until she was turning a trick somewhere and then go make the drop. All very simple. That’s how I laid it out.”

  “Things go wrong, Peter. She walked in.”

  “You told them to wait till she came back, didn’t you? It was a setup. Another fucking murder.”

  She put her arm around his shoulders. He didn’t pull away, a good sign. “It was necessary, Peter. It ties up all the loose ends. They’ll close the case now and you and I can stop worrying. You didn’t think it through enough. She might have turned up some John to testify he was with her the night O’Rourke got it. She might have been in the Chicago Avenue lockup that night. You didn’t check any of that out.”

  “I’m a busy man.”

  “Yes, you sure are, which is why you shouldn’t be worrying about little details like this.”

  “Little details? I’m told she bled over half the rug.”

  “It had to happen, Peter. I took care of it, the way Bill Yeats and I take care of dozens of things you want done or need done every day.”

  “Murder, Mango. I’m listed in fucking Fortune magazine and I’ve got Jacqueline the Ripper for an executive secretary.”

  “Does it really bother you that much, what happened? A couple of dead people?”

  “O’Rourke, yes. The hooker, I don’t know. If I’d seen her body it probably would bother the hell out of me.”

  “People get murdered in Chicago every day. You don’t give a shit. Nobody does, unless it’s a little kid or something. So who cares about some crooked old Mick pol who was about to kick anyway, or a bleached blond working girl who probably rolled Johns every night?”

  “They were alive, babe. That’s all anybody’s got.”

  She took in a deep breath, letting go of his hand.

  “You killed somebody once,” she said. “You told me. In the Philippines.”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. “I was a kid in the navy. It was overseas, it was in a fight, and I didn’t mean to do it.”

  “You got away with it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I was lucky.”

  “You still losing sleep over it?”

  “No. I didn’t even know the guy. He was some slicki boy who pulled a knife.”

  “Well, don’t lose any sleep over this.”

  Zany went to his office very early the next morning so he could get some paperwork done before a breakfast meeting with District Attorney Moran. He wasn’t halfway through his first cup of coffee when his wife Judy came in, closing the door rather decisively behind her. Her souvenir shop was the first place in town to get the morning Chicago papers, and she had a copy of the Tribune folded under her arm.

  She laid it out on his desk in front of him. A large front-page headline announced the discovery of a dead prostitute believed by police to be responsible for the murder of Park District President O’Rourke.

  “This is the homicide victim you went over there to try to identify?”

  “Yes.”

  Judy ran her finger, extended accusingly, down the long column of the story, coming to rest on a paragraph near the end. It stated that personal property belonging to Grand Pier, Michigan, Police Chief Zane Rawlings had been recovered from the dead woman’s apartment. It quoted police as saying the property had been stolen from his hotel room earlier in the week.

  Judy stepped back, her arms folded.

  “This is true?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  “Just as it says. They found my stuff. I told you about it night before last.”

  “You didn’t say anything about any prostitute.”

  Zany stared at the newspaper page, blinking rapidly. “I can’t figure out how the Trib got a hold of this. Frank Baldessari wouldn’t have told them. None of the guys would.”

  “Every reporter has his sources. You used to be somebody’s source.”

  “This is a leak. Very deliberate. I’m wondering who’s got it in for me.”

  “What about the blond lady?”

  Zany brought his thoughts back to present realities. “The blond lady. I never saw her before.” He pushed back his chair to look more directly at his wife’s face. “I had no hooker in my hotel room. I spent what little expense money I had on a couple of bad meals and some beers. I was burgled, plain and simple, and the painting they took is still missing.”

  His wife dropped her arms to her sides. “We’ve been married a long time, Zane. If we’ve got a problem here, we can work it out. I just need to know where we stand.”

  “We stand just fine, honey. The only problem we have is that someone is trying to put the screws to me. And they’ve been doing it ever since I started to work on this Jill Langley case.”

  “All right, I believe you,” Judy said. “It’s just that you look kind of guilty. Well, not guilty, but nervous.”

  “That’s because I am nervous.”

  When he’d been a very young man working on a dynamite crew at that strip mine in Wyoming he hadn’t been all that nervous because he learned the trade from an experienced old miner who wanted to get a lot older. He knew that if he did all the right things very slowly and carefully, nothing bad would happen. Even when making busts with the Chicago P.D. he’d been calm enough because he followed procedures very carefully, took no chances, and always knew what to expect when he went to a suspect’s door because he expected the worst.

  Now he had no idea what was going to happen to him next.

  “In fact,” he said, “I’m a little scared.”

  CHAPTER 7

  One of the windows of Matthias’s bedroom in the Schiller Street house looked west over rooftops and the low skyline of Old Town. If Poe used the obelisk design for his Cabrini Green project, its piercing needle would dominate this view. If Poe decided on the sail configuration to go with the tower, as Matthias allowed himself to hope, the view would contain little else. To fully see the sky, Matthias would have to go to the window. A small price for him to pay, perhaps, but he was fond of lying in his bed, contemplating the western horizon, especially at sunset.

  He was doing so now. It was early evening, with the sun bright but low, filling the window with a glare of light. Sally was standing with her back to it, her naked body in sharp silhouette. Matthias squinted to see her more clearly, wondering why she wasn’t returning to him. She had gotten up to go to the bathroom and been gone some time. Upon reentering the bedroom, she’d gone to the window.

  She turned slightly, the sunlight catching the curves of her breasts. Her body was much the same as it had been when she was in her twenties. Slender and firm, but very womanly. He had never done a painting of her undressed. It would have been inappropriate, unseemly, when they were young. Her mother might have found out, and caused even more trouble for him than she had. Not much of a bohemian, Sally’s mother.

  He had done nudes of many of the women he had slept with, almost a courting ritual, though it was usually the women who suggested it. A sublimated form of the sex act, he supposed. Modigliani, Picasso, Goya—they had all painted their mistresses in the nude. Renaissance artists had included such women in their religious paintings—except those like Michelangelo, who favored boys, or Veronese, who didn’t seem to know what a woman’s naked form looked like. Veronese women were built like halfbacks.

  “I start work for Peter Poe next week,” Sally said.

  “I seem already to have done that.”

  He was still employed merely as a sailing instructor. Poe had yet to say a single further word about the building project.

  “I feel funny about it,” Sally said.

  “Because we’ll both have the same master?”

  “Because it’s … I don’t know, b
ecause it’s a serious job, as if I were becoming a career woman. I never thought of myself like that. The job at the shop, it’s always been just a temporary thing, a way to get by.”

  “The Poe position isn’t all that serious, is it? Arranging parties?”

  “The title is director of special events. I’ll have a staff of three. He wants to throw a big ball—raise funds for the Holocaust Museum they’re talking about building. I’ve never worked on anything like that.”

  Sally’s mother had been a notorious anti-Semite. Was Sally?

  “Jewish people? That bothers you?”

  He couldn’t quite make out her face in the glare of sunlight, but he sensed the remark displeased her.

  “It’s not that,” she said. “Chicago’s changed. Jewish women, black women, Catholics. They’re on boards and committees now. They’re part of society. I think it’s fine.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m not sure how I’ll be accepted now. I feel like I’ve lost my place in the city, like I’ve become part of Poe’s big machine. People will treat me like one of his little minions.”

  “Then don’t take it. To thine own self be true, Sally.”

  “I don’t have much choice, I don’t think I could survive one more day in that shop, being nice to all those obnoxious people.” She turned back toward him, folding her arms. “I’ll be working with Mrs. Poe on that fashion show—quite a lot, I gather. Do you like her?”

  He sat up. “She’s all right. Rather too good for him, probably. Quite the lady. And very knowledgeable about art.”

  “Her father was a factory worker.”

  “A foreman, actually. And yours was a wallpaper salesman.”

  “In the beginning.” She seemed to stiffen. This conversation was off course.

  “What I mean to say is that such things aren’t supposed to matter,” he said.

  “I guess they don’t, anymore. She likes you. I saw her at a luncheon the other day. She asked about you.”