The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel

by James Michael Ullman

  Two Bonella children, a boy and a girl, were home, and after lunch Jon played Monopoly with them. Jon won, of course. From the children he learned Bonella was a self-made man of wealth and influence who owned a real estate business, an insurance agency, and pieces of many other things. In fact, the girl told Jon haughtily, the Bonellas could afford a much better house, but their father had to stay in the neighborhood for political reasons. He was a power in the ward, and his insurance business depended on his remaining one. Jon saw nothing wrong with Bonella’s house, though. It was comfortable, with more than enough room for all, and the children seemed to like it too. Jon felt genuinely sorry when Bonella told him it was time to go.

  “You,” Bonella observed as they neared Elvira’s, “play a mean game of Monopoly. Like for keeps. Most kids your age can’t even figure out the rules.”

  “I’m good,” Jon conceded matter-of-factly, “at making money. Even in games.”

  “Is that what you want? To get rich?”

  “Real rich. Richer even than my father.”

  “Ambition’s fine. But you figured out yet how you’ll get rich?”

  “It’s easy. You show other people how to get money, and then you get money too. My father said that.”

  “Did he, now. That’s right. But there’s more to it than he told you. Your father’s way, see…” Bonella groped for the proper words.

  “Are you,” Jon asked, anxious to change the subject, “gonna buy my father’s house?”

  “I wasn’t looking for myself. Just for investors. They’re thinking of putting an apartment building there.”

  “Tell ’em,” Jon advised, “not to buy.”

  “Why?”

  “My father thought of that once. It won’t work. The subsoil’s no good.”

  A moment later, Bonella parked his car in front of Elvira’s house.

  With sudden dread, a feeling that the world was closing in, Jon stared at the familiar bungalow. The time of reckoning had come. Maybe Elvira would be nicer with Howard gone, but Jon didn’t think so. The pleasant little interlude with the Bonellas was over. Again, he was back in the here and now.

  “Well, thanks,” Jon said glumly, “for the pizza and all.” He got out. Bonella got out too.

  “That’s okay,” Jon added hastily. “The light’s on. Someone’s home…”

  “I know. And I’d like to meet this bitch of an aunt of yours.”

  Elvira patted Jon’s head. Outwardly she seemed reasonably sober, but she reeked of bourbon. “You poor dear.” She looked at Bonella. “It was so nice of you to give him a hot lunch. I can’t imagine what he was thinking, saying nobody was home. I suppose he told you other stories about how he’s mistreated and, believe me, that isn’t so.”

  “He didn’t say a word about that,” Bonella lied. The lie surprised Jon. It surprised Elvira, too. While she sought an answer, Bonella edged past her to peer into the living room. It was in chaos. The TV was on, and Elvira’s bottle-and-glass rested on the coffee table.

  “That kid,” Bonella said, looking back at Jon, “is kind of unusual.”

  “Yes.” Elvira pulled Jon to her. “But it’s understandable. He’s had a terrible time adjusting. You know who his father is. Jon was used to luxury, and we try to make up for it with love, but he doesn’t seem to respond.” She twisted Jon’s arm, just enough to let him know he’d better keep quiet. “It’s too bad my husband isn’t here to thank you too. I expect him any minute. Confidentially, Mr. Bonella, Jon’s done this before, disappeared all day, and until now we never knew where he went. Poor child, I guess he sneaks into his father’s old house to pretend things are the way they used to be.”

  “Sure.” Bonella winked at Jon. Then he looked coldly at Elvira. “Jon, take care of yourself,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “We’re friends now, so I wanna hear all about how you’re getting on. One day soon I’ll pick you up after school, take you to my office and teach you about real estate. And introduce you to people who’ll do you a lot of good if you have legal problems. People like lawyers. And judges. Very important judges.”

  Bonella went away.

  Elvira said, “You little bastard. How could you! Bringing that terrible man here without a word of warning…”

  She pushed him down the hall. “Go to your room. This time…”

  Briefly, she summarized what she’d do this time. It was a lot worse than what she’d done last time.

  Jon hiked down the hall, while Elvira went to the living room for a stiff jolt, mumbling about the ingratitude of them all. But Jon didn’t go straight to his room. He stopped at the big bedroom first. There, he opened Howard’s top dresser drawer. Sure enough, a revolver was in it, just as Howard had said.

  Full of rage and despair, Jon carried it to his own room. He switched the key from the outside to the inside, locking Elvira out.

  Then he sat on the floor, elbows propped against his knees, holding the gun in both hands, waiting. Molloy had told him once that was how cowboys sometimes made long shots, to minimize recoil and increase accuracy. Jon was on his own now. Bonella couldn’t help him; Uncle Howard wouldn’t be back. The man with the knife was somewhere outside, and more immediately Elvira was inside. Enough was enough. Jon didn’t care what happened any more. He wasn’t going to let Elvira do those things to him…

  She came in a few minutes. Enraged at finding the door locked, she pounded.

  “Open this, you hear? Open this!”

  “Go away!” Jon screamed.

  “Open the door this minute!”

  “I got a gun! Leave me alone, or I’ll shoot it!”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’ll show you!”

  Cock it, Howard had said. Jon did that. Then he shut his eyes and pulled the trigger.

  BOOK TWO: THE MAN

  CHAPTER 5

  Very early one morning in August, 1965, a reporter walked into the lobby of an old office building on Randolph Street in Chicago’s Loop. The cigar stand was still shuttered. An elevator operator rose wearily from a chair, put his newspaper aside, and took the reporter to the fourth floor, where he got out and strolled down a green-walled corridor.

  The offices he passed were dark, but ahead two photographers lounged near an open door, smoking and talking. More voices drifted from beyond the door, and as the reporter neared the lettering on it became visible: Chakorian Enterprises. A line in smaller type added:

  REAL ESTATE—INVESTMENTS.

  Inside were more newsmen, some standing, some perched on folding chairs. The office was small. A window, covered by a Venetian blind, looked out on an unbroken expanse of brick. There was one desk in the office, and an amiable-looking young man garbed in a one-button powder blue suit sat behind it.

  The reporter walked to the desk and said, “Hi. I’m Ames, the Telegram.” The young man rose. “I’m Jon Chakorian. That’s J-o-n, remember. Be sure you spell it right.”

  They shook hands. Jon was about five-ten, with broad shoulders, a thick chest and a narrow waist. His face was lean, with an olive cast and a pronounced cleft in the chin. His nose, unlike Rudy’s, was straight, but like Rudy he had thick black hair and bushy brows.

  “You mind,” Ames asked, pulling a notebook from his pocket and sitting on the edge of the desk, “if I ask a few questions? Background stuff? I didn’t have time to study the clips.”

  Jon sat back down. “Shoot.”

  “This has been going on for how long now?”

  “Since August 15, 1950. My eleventh birthday. My first birthday after my father disappeared.”

  “Where were you living then?”

  “Here in Chicago, with a family named Bonella. Michael J. Bonella. He’s in real estate. I was his foster child, a ward of the court.”

  “You grew up in the city?”

  “Yes. I went to college on a f
ootball scholarship, but don’t blow that out of proportion. In college, I was never more than second string. After college I worked a while for Bonella, served a hitch in the Army and then came back to start my own business.”

  “But the reason we’re here today—it happened in the service, too?”

  “Oh, yes. Even in Viet Nam. It might arrive late, but it always arrived.”

  “Just what is this business you have now—Chakorian Enterprises?”

  “So far, mostly real estate. We run a very successful property on North Wells. It’s called Levee Court. A few shops and a restaurant where a jazz combo plays at night.”

  “What else?”

  “Other projects are in the works, but I’m not free to discuss them yet. Excuse me…”

  Two plainclothesmen had walked in. They introduced themselves and lined up behind Jon, one at each side.

  Since Ames had all the information he wanted, Jon chatted with the detectives. Shaping up as another hot day, isn’t it? Too bad this building doesn’t have air conditioning. How’s Captain Novak? When it gets here, may I touch it or would you rather open it yourselves? Not that it’ll make any difference, you guys never learned a thing from the others…

  There was one more arrival, a trim, dapper, red-headed young man with a bland, squarish face. All he said was “Fogarty, from Venus.” Then he leaned against the wall, waiting. He’d been sent as an observer by Train, who was still security chief for the Venus Corporation and the Lord Lumber Company.

  “Wouldn’t it be a joke on us,” one of the detectives drawled, “if nothing happened?”

  “That,” a reporter said, “would be an even better story.”

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Jon said, “I’d prefer that story myself…”

  In the hall, a photographer called, “Here he is!” Conversation died away. Cameras were unlimbered. In the hall, heavy footsteps sounded. A few steps, then a halt. A few more steps, another halt…

  Finally, a mailman peered in at them. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Jon said. “You may be delayed a few minutes. These men will want to take your picture, re-enacting this. I’m Chakorian. You have mail for me?”

  “Yeah.” The mailman hesitated. Then he walked in and held out some envelopes. Strobe lights flickered. “Here.”

  More lights flashed as Jon sorted through the envelopes. The fourth was the one he sought. Airmail, it had been addressed by typewriter. There was no return address. The stamps were French, and it was postmarked Paris.

  Jon shoved the other envelopes aside and put that one in front of him.

  Carefully, he snipped off one end with scissors. Then he held the envelope up by the edges and squeezed.

  Two one-thousand-dollar bills fluttered out.

  “Of course,” one of the detectives said, “the money is yours. But before anyone handles those bills, we’d like to examine ’em, just as we will the envelope. We’ll give you a receipt.”

  “Sure.”

  Jon stared at the bills, as the photographers took more pictures.

  A reporter asked, “Jon, how much longer you think it’ll go on?”

  “I can’t imagine.” Jon leaned back. “But this makes fifteen years. For fifteen years, someone’s mailed me two thousand dollars on my birthday. No card. No message. Just money, always in an envelope postmarked from a different spot on the globe. A total of thirty thousand dollars so far. And I’ll do with this money what I’ve done with all the rest. It goes to charity. Until I know where it’s coming from, I want no part of it.”

  At noon, Jon hiked over the new Dearborn Street Bridge on his way to a restaurant at Dearborn and Hubbard, where Mike Bonella waited. As always, the press conference that followed the arrival of the money had conjured up disturbing memories of the old days. And as he walked along, it occurred to Jon that he might have grown into a very different sort of man if Bonella hadn’t found him cowering in the brownstone that afternoon years ago…

  The shot Jon had taken in Elvira’s house that evening had been a milestone in his boyhood, a point from which things began to get better instead of worse. The recoil had knocked him to the floor. The bullet flew into the ceiling, showering him with plaster, and the explosion sent Elvira to the phone to call the police. A squad car came and took Jon to the comparative safety of the Juvenile Home.

  Later, there’d been a hearing. Bonella and Uncle Howard both showed up for it. Jon never learned what the judge told Elvira. She’d stalked out of his chambers without a word, very angry, after which the judge informed Jon that he’d been made a ward of the court.

  A few weeks later Jon was assigned to a foster home, and the foster parents turned out to be the Bonellas. Mike had pulled a lot of strings to arrange that, but since his home and character met the requirements nobody objected. For all practical purposes, Jon became a member of the Bonella family, the baby brother, and while it lasted it had been a good life.

  Of course that was over now. The family had broken up. Bonella’s wife died while Jon was overseas. His children had homes of their own, and Jon lived in an apartment on North Wells. Bonella himself was semiretired.

  He’d given one son the real estate business, the other the insurance business. Jon and the Bonella children had tried to talk him into moving from the old house on the West Side, where he lived alone now, to an apartment nearer his Loop office, but Bonella would have none of that. It had been his father’s house, he’d been born in it, and dammit, he’d die in it.

  As Jon slipped into the restaurant booth across from him, Bonella looked up and asked, “Well?”

  Mike had aged a lot in fifteen years. His jowl sagged and his paunch was larger, but his dark eyes were still alert. His suit was the latest narrow-lapel style, and the knot of his tie hugged tight against his collar.

  “It came from Paris this time.” Jon smiled. “And you know something? It still kills me, giving that money to charity. That first year, I never should have let you talk me into it.”

  “I didn’t talk you into a thing. You made your own decision then, just as you’re making it now.”

  “Yeah. But you stacked the cards against an eleven-year-old, didn’t you? All that guff about how it’s wrong to take money without knowing who’s giving it or why. How even if my father sent it, we didn’t need it, let’s give it to some orphans not so well off as me. Where’d you hear those lines? A soap opera?”

  “Maybe they’re corny, but except for that first year, I didn’t see you shedding tears when we gave the dough away. Many reporters show up?”

  “More than I’d hoped.” The bantering tone left Jon’s voice. “I told ’em the usual. I don’t know if my father’s alive or not. I’ve had no word from him since he disappeared. And I wished whoever sent the money would either stop sending it or identify himself.”

  “I still think you’re making a mistake,” Bonella said, “being so friendly with those guys. Staging a damn press conference.”

  “You want me to chase the reporters away? Slam the door in their faces, like you’d do when I was a kid?”

  “The publicity hurts. It makes people even more afraid to do business with you than they would be anyhow.”

  “True. But being rude to reporters won’t make facts disappear. One fact is someone sends me money. Maybe it’s my father. Maybe it’s an automatic trust fund he set up before he disappeared, the way some people think. Or maybe someone else sends it. But if I’m not open with the reporters, the stories would hurt more. People would think I had something to hide.”

  “And you don’t?” Bonella said it cordially. He’d made several such cryptic remarks since Jon got out of the Army…

  During lunch, they discussed trivialities. Finally Mike pushed his coffee back and lit a cigar. From the absent way he puffed on it, Jon knew he was about to talk business.

&nbs
p; “How,” Mike drawled, “is Chakorian Enterprises doing?”

  “You know the answer. So far it isn’t even off the ground.”

  “Still no investors for the shopping center?”

  “Nobody’s the least interested.”

  “I hate to see you knocking your brains out. If there was anything Howard and I could do…”

  “Don’t worry, Mike. I’m learning.” Thoughtfully, Jon stirred his coffee. “It looked so easy, when I got out of college. You and Howard put up the money for Levee Court and it went over big. I figured that was all it would take. That when I got out of the Army, all I’d have to do would be point to Levee Court and say, ‘See? There’s proof I’m a reputable developer, and my investors get a fair deal.’ By implication saying, ‘There’s proof I’m not a crook like my father, and I won’t cheat you.’ But I didn’t impress anyone, did I? They’re still afraid of me. They know you and Howard put up that money as a favor. So I’ll just have to work harder.”

  “Favor, hell. It looked like a good deal or we wouldn’t have invested a cent. We haven’t regretted it, either.” Bonella put his cigar down and folded his hands. “But can I give it to you bluntly? You won’t get sore, if I tell you what I think you’re up against?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. Your shopping center requires a lot more money than Howard and I can afford to commit. For that, you’ll need investors with maybe two-three hundred thousand, after which you’ll have to ask a bank, savings and loan or insurance company for another million on a mortgage. All told, you want people to trust you with the handling of over a million bucks.”

  “It’s a solid proposition.”

  “I know it. So does Howard. Confidentially, we’ve gone to a lot of guys and pleaded with ’em to back you. I told ’em that despite your youth, you got a feeling for creative real estate like nobody I’ve seen before, but nobody’ll even discuss it. Nobody wants to get mixed up with another Chakorian. A few of ’em think that because your father was a crook, you’re a crook too. And the others remember the stories about the mystery money that arrives on your birthday. They don’t wanna be associated with anyone who gets that kind of publicity. They’re also afraid your old man might turn up alive one day, making headlines again and raising a stink that would ruin any project involving you.”