Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  Flynn pushed suddenly away from the bar and pulled his pistol.

  “Okay, clear the goddamn bar. Everyone out. Police.”

  He stared down the line of drinkers.

  “This joint is closing early. Everyone out now.”

  The drinkers stared.

  “Police, you goddamn rummies. Get the fuck out of this joint. We’re closing up early. Come on, come on, move it, move it—” His voice seemed to break the spell. The customers awoke from their afternoon stupor and began moving toward the door. Krause started for the telephone in the middle of the bar.

  “Who you calling, Krause?”

  “I’m calling the cops, you goddamn crazy man.”

  “I am the cops, asshole,” said Flynn. The last patrons stumbled out into the rainy half-light of the afternoon.

  “You bastard, you bastard,” Krause screamed. His face went purple, and his eyes seemed to bulge.

  “You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice, you son of a bitch. Play with me, you little shit, you little Kraut bastard, you’ll eat turd pie before I get done with you.”

  “You drove my customers out,” Krause yelled.

  “Get your fucking raincoat, you heinie son of a bitch.”

  Suddenly it was over. Krause went to the back bar and took down a bottle of J&B Scotch and brought it to Flynn. He poured the light Scotch in the glass.

  Flynn put the pistol back on his belt and closed his suit coat. He picked up the glass and smelled it. “Water,” he said.

  Krause splashed water on the Scotch and waited.

  Flynn sipped the drink.

  “Let me see the picture.”

  Flynn passed across the picture of Norman Frank, front view and profile.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who did he have trouble with?”

  “Guy named Shorty.”

  Flynn waited.

  “Shorty. Always comes in here.” The voice of the bartender sounded dull and drained. “Shorty what, I don’t know. But Shorty. He don’t work too steady, but he comes in here, two, three times a week. A hillbilly like Norman What’s-his-name. I guess they’re both from the same burg or something. Small world, huh?”

  Flynn put down the drink and shoved the remaining coins across the bar. Krause didn’t move.

  They waited for a moment.

  “I’ll bet you find Shorty over at Top’s now. Always goes over there in the afternoon. He’ll be there for sure. Shorty. Little short guy with a moustache, one of those real thin moustaches like William Powell wears in the late late show. Looks like William Powell, in fact, if he was short. Hey. Maybe he was.”

  “Where’s Shorty flop?”

  “He did flop ’round the corner at the Red Lion, but I don’t think he’s been there awhile. I dunno where. But go over by Top’s. You’ll find him there. Specially on a crummy day like this. Jesus Christ, look at this joint. You drove all my customers out.”

  One week after her murder the body of Maj Kirsten was placed in a metal shipping coffin. Her father, Gunnar Kirsten, of Malmö, had asked that the body be shipped back to Sweden. All the tests had been completed at the morgue, and there was no longer a reason to keep the remains.

  The papers were all signed and delivered with the body to the Simplon Funeral Home on East Ohio Street. There it was embalmed, packed into a coffin, and transported to O’Hare Airport. At eight P.M. it was placed aboard the SAS flight to Copenhagen.

  The story of the body’s departure was movingly recounted by a columnist for Chicago Today, and there were other stories of the crime and of the arrest and jailing of her accused killer, Norman Frank. But the community outrage was satisfied by the arrest, and the story held the front page of the four papers for only three days.

  Ten days after Norman Frank’s arrest a story appeared in the Tribune on page twenty-four reporting that he had petitioned the court for reduced bail because he had been beaten by fellow inmates in the jail. In fact, Norman Frank had been beaten when he attempted to resist the sexual advances of a powerful inmate named Thurgood who had the run of the fourth tier. Frank’s objection to his rape had been futile in any case and the story in the Tribune only lasted one edition. Five days later another story buried even further in the paper said that Norman Frank had been indicted on all charges by the June grand jury and that he had appeared pale and nervous at his formal arraignment in felony court later that day. A third request for a lower bond was denied.

  After that the story disappeared from the public consciousness.

  But the search for evidence continued even though the sense of urgency that had first surrounded the case was gone. Jack Donovan, chief of the criminal division, asked Mario DeVito to handle the preparations for trial. Norman Frank had pleaded not guilty at his arraignment.

  At first DeVito called Lieutenant Matthew Schmidt of Area One Homicide at least once a week on the case. Later he only talked with Sergeant Flynn. But there was nothing new. Shorty was gone, seemingly disappeared, and so was Norman Frank’s gear, including the bayonet. No one could shed further light on its whereabouts.

  Nearly four weeks after the murder a certified public accountant went to Area One Homicide and was interviewed by Investigator Sid Margolies. He had dated Maj Kirsten the night before her death and had been afraid to come forward. He made a statement and signed it. It added nothing to what they knew about her last day.

  In July Norman Frank was moved to the jail infirmary after a second beating while imprisoned on the fourth tier of the jail. Jack Donovan called the superintendent of Corrections after a private plea from Norman Frank’s public defender. Donovan told the superintendent that he did not want Norman Frank to die before trial. For his own protection Frank was to be isolated in a deadlock cell after he was returned to jail. Donovan then called the sheriff of Cook County who had charge over the jail and repeated that Norman Frank had been raped twice by inmates in the jail and that the superintendent of corrections made vague promises about his safety. The sheriff made a remark about Norman Frank getting what he gave the Swedish woman. Finally the sheriff said he would telephone the superintendent and explain the seriousness of the matter.

  Naturally the family of Norman Frank had been notified of his incarceration and indictment on charges of rape and murder. The family—in the person of his uncle, Alvin Frank—said Norman Frank had always been trash and no one would have expected more of him.

  The brief report on the alleged attack of Angela Falicci in Grant Park on the afternoon after Maj Kirsten’s murder was written and filed with the First District. A copy of the report was routinely circulated to the vice squad.

  On the morning of July 18, when the temperature had again risen to ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit, Mr. and Mrs. Omar Dalrymple of Duluth, Minnesota, decided to take the Wendella lake cruise from the foot of Michigan Avenue.

  The Wendella craft was docked in the Chicago River, and the green sluggish water slapped at the hull as the Dalrymples and the others got aboard.

  Omar Dalrymple, fifty-seven, was a pharmacist attending the Midwest convention of the American Pharmaceutical Association. He and Mrs. Dalrymple had decided—with a certain spirit of mischief usually foreign to their natures—to skip attendance at the annual breakfast installation held in the grand ballroom of the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Instead they decided to take the boat tour which their friends assured them was a treat. Omar Dalrymple had been to Chicago only once before in his life, after he was mustered out of the navy at Great Lakes in 1946.

  “We’ll just treat ourselves this time,” he said to his wife, and that was why they were the first ones aboard the Wendella that morning and why they chose the airy front seats in the prow.

  And that was why Omar Dalrymple was the first man to see the body in the river.

  Omar Dalrymple looked over the side and saw the white bloated remains and said, “My God.” When his wife leaned over to look at the sight, he said, “Look away, Martha. There’s a body in the river.”

  Of course,
Mrs. Dalrymple turned to look at it more thoroughly.

  The skin on the hands was gone so that the bones were visible. Because the corpse was facedown in the water, Mrs. Dalrymple did not feel as sick as she thought she would. They stared for a moment, and then Omar Dalrymple made his way to the middle of the boat where a thick-necked sailor stood taking tickets. The sailor thought the man wanted his money back.

  “Captain, there’s a body in the river.”

  The sailor, Peter Stephenowicz, went to the side of the boat with the frail-looking pharmacist and stared down at the bundle of rags and swollen skin bobbing in the gentle river current. It looked like the body was snagged on a piling on the north side of the river.

  “I better call the cops,” he said to no one. But Mrs. Dalrymple nodded and then turned to stare at the body. Other passengers joined them at the rail.

  Stephenowicz jumped off the boat with a light step that did not seem suitable for his thick body. He pumped a dime into the pay telephone on the bright dock.

  “There’s a body in the river right at Michigan Avenue,” he said.

  Now, it is a peculiarity of the Chicago police districts and area commands that the river divides them. On the north side of the river begins the East Chicago Avenue police district and Area Six Homicide; on the south side begins the First (Loop) police district and Area One Homicide. So the police dispatcher on the phone asked Stephenowicz: “Which side of the river is it in?”

  “Right in the river,” said the sailor.

  “If it’s on the north side, I call one district, and if it’s on the south side, I call another,” the police dispatcher explained. It was absurd, of course, but the young patrolman had been impressed by a superior who once told him the hoary story about the man who jumped into the river from the Michigan Avenue Bridge. When his body surfaced, it floated toward the First District side but the police there, who did not want to handle the matter, got a long pole and pushed the body to the other side of the river.

  “It’s on the north side of the river,” the sailor said at last. “I think it’s snagged on a piling.”

  “Can I have your name, sir.”

  “Fuck no.” The sailor hung up and walked to the ticket shed and told them what had happened. The captain came down the steps and decided the boat could pull out without disturbing the corpse in the water.

  Several people wanted their money back, but most of the rest wanted to go for their lake cruise.

  As the ship pulled away, the police from the Eighteenth District arrived at the pier, but, since the fire department boat was near the scene, neither police district actually pulled the body from the water. It was taken to the morgue.

  There was a further oddity: the firemen on the boat, as they wrapped the wet body in a rubber body bag, discovered something tangled in the clothing. It was a knife, and apparently it had been stuck into the body and never dislodged sufficiently to float away from it.

  It was an army bayonet.

  Four days after the discovery of the body in the river a teletype message from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington identified the body from a thumbprint sent to the FBI by the Cook County coroner’s office. The dead man was Albert C. Rogers, thirty-nine, born in Red Earth, Alabama. He had been in the army for two years and had received an honorable discharge.

  The coroner in turn routinely sent the identification to the Area Six Homicide unit on the North Side, which was handling the case. Three days later a detective in Area Six alerted—by interpolice mail—the other five homicide units. The police now knew Albert C. Rogers’s name but nothing else—they did not know where he had been murdered, or why, or by whom.

  Matthew Schmidt entered Michael Reese Hospital on Saturday morning for tests. There was a lingering inflammation of the bronchial tubes leading to his right lung. His only lung.

  On Monday Norman Frank—who had finally been placed in protective deadlock but was therefore not allowed to move outside his locked cell—was due to appear in felony court. His lawyer was seeking a continuance of the case.

  4

  On Saturday morning Jack Donovan appeared at the home of his father-in-law, Arthur O’Connor.

  For a moment he stood on the concrete stoop and looked around him at the neat block of brick houses on Ninety-fourth Street in the southwest suburb of Oak Lawn. He rang the bell. Every house was alike, for they had all been built in the same year right after World War II, yet each house had individual touches. This house had green aluminum shutters, that one had a statue of the Virgin Mary on the front lawn, and another had blue roofing tile. Arthur O’Connor’s house was the largest on the block (by dint of two additions), but it was the only one that bore no sign of identity.

  It was his visiting day, and Jack Donovan made the long trip to the South Side almost from duty.

  Except for his daughter.

  His son, Brian, was fifteen and incomprehensible. Jack Donovan did not like him very much now. But Kathleen, his daughter, was thirteen, and in her way she seemed to like his company. He thought he was very fond of her. And though Jack Donovan did not enjoy the implied formality of these visits, there was not much he could do about that—not without making an even worse mess than there already was.

  Arthur O’Connor opened the aluminum outer door. He was nearly eighty and still carried the suspicious look of an Irish farmer. Which was what his own father had been.

  “Hello, Jack. You’re early.”

  Jack Donovan only nodded and followed his father-in-law into the house. He realized he was tensing; usually Rita did not wait around for him on visiting day but sometimes she did, and this uncertainty always cast gloom over the anticipation of the visit.

  There was plastic sheeting on the white sofa and a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the oak sideboard in the hall. Last Easter’s palms were behind the crucifix on the wall, and next to the cross was a picture of Rita O’Connor, taken when she was eighteen. Rita smiled in the picture. Sometimes, while he waited for the children to come down, Jack Donovan would look at the picture and try to find the madness in the smile.

  “Where’s Rita?”

  He sat down without asking permission. His father-in-law remained standing. “She had to go shopping.”

  The mahogany German clock ticked loudly on the soft beige wall.

  “Where’s Kathleen?”

  “I said you were early.”

  He fell silent. His father-in-law shuffled to the kitchen at the back of the house. When he returned, he carried a can of Schlitz beer. Jack Donovan did not like the brand, but he accepted the can and took a sip. It was shortly before eleven o’clock, and his father-in-law watched him like a bemused cat.

  They had gotten married sixteen years ago, after Jack Donovan got out of the army and took the police-department examination. There was no doubt that Jack Donovan would become a policeman or that he would marry Rita O’Connor. Life did not admit doubts. All their lives they had lived two blocks from each other—Jack and his parents on Peoria Street and the O’Connors on Carpenter—and they had been in the same grades at Visitation Grammar School.

  When high school came, the O’Connors moved to Oak Lawn to escape the black tide of the ghetto that was gradually encircling the Irish-Catholic neighborhood where they had grown up. Arthur O’Connor was a cop, a watch commander, and a well-off man as a result. There was always plenty of money for the watch commander from the district bagman, and if that was corruption, then it was also a way of life.

  Jack Donovan’s father worked for the rapid-transit lines. After high school Jack had gone to college for three years and then let himself be drafted into the army. He was bored with college and with living at home and with his father.

  He went to Korea for thirteen months during his tour of duty. He wrote to Rita O’Connor, and when he came home on leave, they dated every night. On their last night together she let him make love to her.

  Then, after Commander O’Connor used his clout to get Jack Donovan a good start o
n the police ladder, they got married. Sixteen years ago.

  Jack Donovan put down the can of beer on the coaster next to the chair.

  O’Connor said, “I see your name was in the paper so I cut it out and gave it to Rita Kathleen.” His father-in-law always used both of Rita’s names.

  “Oh.”

  His stomach hurt again. He wondered if there was something wrong with him. He did not want to go to a doctor. He thought of Matthew Schmidt in his room at Michael Reese Hospital.

  “I saw your father yesterday.”

  Jack Donovan sipped his beer. There was nothing to say. He rarely saw his mother or father. They were old, of course, and they were living in Ireland in their memories now, young lovers again in County Clare before taking the boat to America. He did not like to intrude on them. They sometimes thought he was a stranger. His sister had suggested putting them in a home, but Donovan had dissuaded her. They still lived in the city, in an apartment in the Beverly area. He called them every week and did not like to think he did it to see if they were still alive.

  “Your father says to me, he says you don’t come by.”

  There was nothing to say.

  “He wanted to ride so I give him a ride and he comes by and visited with Brian John.”

  The old man watched him. Jack Donovan thought he must have been a hard cop in his time. “The two of them got on famous. They went off and had a chat, they did. But your mother don’t look well.”

  The old man got up and shuffled around the room, arranging elaborate ashtrays. Jack Donovan did not smoke and neither did the old man, but Rita had always smoked, from grammar school days. She would cough in the night and when she woke up. Her breath tasted stale in the morning when they made love. He had bought her a lighter on one of her birthdays. Or Christmas. A silver lighter.

  “Ah, he’s quite the one for the basketball.”

  “My father?”

  “Ach. Of course not. Your son, Brian.”