by Bill Granger
“Oh,”
“Very good at the game, he is.”
“I’m glad.”
Rita had stopped smoking in the hospital, but she had started again during the time with the lawyers.
Brian had been born a year after their marriage, and then there was the first miscarriage. And then Kathleen was born, and the marriage seemed stable. Jack Donovan started going to night school to take a law degree. Juggling his job, school, and married life was very difficult at first, and he couldn’t talk it over with Rita. And then he often had to leave her alone with the two little babies and her own thoughts. She was pregnant again, for the fourth time in four years. She had wanted it that way. When she had been a little girl—when he had first teased her on the playground in first grade, when he had first loved her—she had said, “I’m gonna have lots of babies when I grow up.”
And then the fourth pregnancy ended in miscarriage, and the doctor warned her about further attempts.
He prescribed the pill and she took it for almost a year, but she finally quit. She said it was a sin against God. Jack Donovan tried to get one of the priests to talk to her, but the only one he reached said that Rita was absolutely right, that taking birth-control pills was against the laws of God.
With her fifth pregnancy she nearly died.
In his guilt Jack Donovan began to withdraw from her. They didn’t speak to each other even as little as they had; something had been altered by her brush with death. Jack Donovan was afraid for Rita, and Rita was afraid for herself. And then she ran away for the first time.
The front door opened, and Jack’s thoughts were jolted back to the present by the sight of his daughter. Kathleen was tall, perhaps too tall for her age. She had awkward legs, which she hid in blue jeans. She was very thin, with a child’s figure, and her lack of development worried her. She had even confided in him about that once.
“Sorry I’m late, Dad,” she said, and he accepted her motherly kiss on his forehead. She went and sat down across from him on the plastic-covered sofa and folded her hands between her knees.
“You’re not late, Kathleen. Your father is early, is all.” Again the hard edge to the voice, the voice still carrying a trace of the West Country accent after nearly a century away from Ireland.
“Where do you want to go?” Jack Donovan asked his daughter.
But the old man interrupted. “Ah, you don’t have to go anywhere. You can visit here, and if it’s me in your way, I can go up to my bedroom.”
He always said the same thing and they always made the same reply.
“No. I’m going to take Kate out for a hamburger. Okay, Kate?”
“Sure,” she said, getting up. She always wanted something to eat. There was no junk food in Arthur O’Connor’s house.
Kathleen had green eyes like her mother and father and dark hair from somewhere in their black Irish past.
“I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,” he said to her. It was one of their little jokes, and the fact that it annoyed Arthur O’Connor made it that much better.
“I’ll see you, Mr. O’Connor,” Jack Donovan said, and he got up and shook hands with the old man. That was part of the ritual, too, like the single can of beer and the offer to go hide in the bedroom.
“Brian’ll be home this afternoon when you come back. I’ll tell him to stay in the house,” said Arthur O’Connor.
“There’s no need,” said Donovan. “If he’s here, I’d like to see him.”
Tiny Preston was showing Sex Slavery again, but no one seemed to notice or care that the theater had shown it just six weeks before.
When he had decided to return it to the distributor in June, he had read that the distributor had been arrested by postal authorities on charges involving unsolicited lewd mailings. So Tiny Preston, after consulting the theater owners, decided to keep Sex Slavery and recycle it.
“Like recycled garbage,” he had laughed.
Now he stood in the back of the theater and watched the dull, familiar scene flickering on the screen. He weighed four hundred twenty pounds, and if every human being has an identifiable odor, Tiny Preston smelled of French fries.
It was late in the afternoon, and Tiny Preston had been annoyed for some time by the man sitting in the back row.
He was a middle-aged man, as they all were, but he sat as though with grim fascination, afraid to move.
He annoyed Tiny Preston because he had purchased his ticket when the theater opened at nine A.M. He had now seen Sex Slavery and the accompanying feature four times. Tiny continued to glare at him for several minutes, but the man seemed lost in a trance. Finally Tiny shrugged and heaved his bulk into the small lobby.
“Fuckin’ guy’s been sittin’ in there since we opened up,” he said to the girl in the ticket booth. Gloria Miska nodded absently. She stared at the street in front of her and the people passing by. She’d be off in five hours, and her right foot hurt.
Tiny Preston looked down at Gloria. She wore slacks, and Tiny Preston let his eyes focus on her thighs and tried to imagine himself between them. He realized that Gloria Miska found him repulsive, but because he employed her, he felt a certain sense of power over her.
“Been here since morning, the prick,” he said.
Still she did not respond.
Tiny Preston felt hungry again and said he was going out. Gloria Miska did not answer.
When he had first given her the job, he had tried to grab her in the office. He had touched her breast. She had said she’d get him killed if he ever did that again, and that had scared him.
Tiny Preston pushed open the glass door to the street and went out into the steamy Saturday afternoon.
If he had waited ten minutes, he would have seen his customer of the morning finally leave the theater. The man had gray hair at the temples and wore a plain gray work shirt. His hair was cut short and his eyebrows were thick and nearly joined above his long, broad nose. He carried a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and looked like a man coming back from a day’s work. He had a slight limp.
Gloria Miska barely glanced at him, but she thought she smelled something strange above the stench of the popcorn machine.
Like gasoline.
By a bizarre coincidence motorcycle office Clarence Delancey found the second body in the park.
It was Monday and Delancey had just spent an enjoyable hour racing his three-wheeler up and down the grassy embankments south of Monroe Street Harbor along the lakefront. He was ostensibly looking for vagrants, winos, and lovers using the early morning park for illegal purposes. Clarence Delancey was the scourge of them all.
His discovery of a wino named Norman Frank sleeping in the park six weeks before had resulted in a departmental recommendation and an unwritten promise of transfer to the day shift on a permanent basis.
There were few winos who sought refuge in the downtown park in daylight, but the job still had its satisfactions. Unlike most policemen assigned to the motorcycle detail, Delancey simply loved it. He would parade on his cycle for the young art students from the Institute who came to the park during the day to sketch. And there were always hippies to roust, especially in the summer.
Delancey was incorruptible. His mission was to drive everyone from the park who did not belong there. And he was very strict in his ideas about who belonged. His three-wheeler was like the horse of a Western cowboy. He might even acknowledge to himself that he felt like a sheriff of the Old West.
And that was why the overweight and faintly comic figure of the policeman could be seen at nine sixteen A.M. on the sidewalk that stretched to the north end of Monroe Street Harbor. He would never be guilty of dereliction of duty. As he cruised slowly down the pedestrian way, he looked from right to left, satisfied at the order on his beat.
Until he saw something.
Something that didn’t belong there. Something under a thick clump of bushes near the roadway.
He stopped the cycle and dismounted. He hitched his belt and placed the butt of
his personal pistol—a .45-caliber Colt automatic—within reach of his gloved hand.
He started up the grassy knoll to the bushes, pushing away a branch that scratched at his face.
She was lying on her back, naked. Her throat had been pierced, and there was dried blood on her neck, her jaw, and her cheek. It appeared that her back had arched sharply in death. One leg seemed unnaturally bent, and there was blood on her sex organ. It appeared that a second wound had torn across her left breast, down through her belly to the genitals, but there was so much blood that he could not be sure.
Delancey stared at the blood and the bits of exposed bone and muscle. He blinked, holding the branch away from his face. Then he turned and retched.
When he called in from the radio on his cycle, he said he thought the woman was about twenty. In fact, she was twenty-two.
5
At the moment motorcycle office Delancey found the body in the park, county jail guards and court bailiffs were moving Norman Frank and nine other prisoners through the gloomy passageway that connects the jail with the Criminal Courts building. All were scheduled to make courtroom appearances that morning and all wore civilian clothes. Three of the prisoners were white and seven were black. Some of the men were scheduled for bond hearings; others were due to begin trial or were seeking continuances. None of them spoke.
The group waited at the elevator and finally began to talk. The guards ignored them.
Other groups of prisoners were also on the move, and some were already in the cages behind the courtrooms of the old building.
The elevator took Norman Frank and the others to the lockup on the fourth floor. Norman Frank’s lockup was already crowded with twenty-two other prisoners. There was a stale smell of sweat and cigarette smoke in the room. Norman Frank sat down and waited.
When the Criminal Courts building was constructed nearly fifty years before, the architect planned a lockup behind each courtroom. The system was considered very modern and secure. The separate facility would mean prisoners would not have to be taken into court along public passages. When a prisoner was due in court, his name was read aloud in the lockup, and the prisoner shuffled out, showing his identifying tag to the guard. He was brought to a separate entrance behind the bench and led into court. When a prisoner was sent back to the jail, he moved again through the secure passage behind the courtroom.
By nine forty-two A.M. there were several dozen men in the lockup on the fourth floor. One of them was Norman Frank, who stood in a corner alone, cupping the glow of a cigarette in the hollow of his right hand. He was even thinner than when he had been arrested six weeks before for the rape and murder of Maj Kirsten in Grant Park.
Sergeant Terrence Flynn handed his identification to the guard in the foyer of the courts building and opened his coat to display his pistol. The guard nodded Flynn through. He crossed the lobby and saw Mario DeVito on the steps leading to the high second floor.
It was a little after ten.
“Hiya, Terry,” said Mario. He had a manila folder under his right arm and started up the steps. To his surprise Flynn puffed up after him.
“Whaddaya want, Terry?”
“I’m in training.”
“I got no time to talk. I’m late for court.”
“You got time for this.” They reached the second floor and paused. Flynn was breathing heavily. He took DeVito’s arm and pulled him aside by the elevator bank.
“You wanna make out?” asked Mario DeVito. He was in a good mood.
“Norman Frank goes to bat today, right?”
“Yeah. We’re going to press for a trial date.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna prosecute our boy.”
“Why not?”
“I just got the word. Remember Delancey?”
“The cop who found Maj Kirsten. Sure. We’ve interviewed him. He’s our star.”
“He was on patrol this morning in Grant Park, and it sounds crazy, but he found another one. About an hour ago.”
Mario smiled. “Another wino? Tell him we already got one.”
“He found another body in the park. Not too far from where they found Maj Kirsten.”
Mario stared at him.
“I don’t know anything yet. They knew I was coming over this morning on the Frank hearing, and they had me call in. Sid Margolies is over in the park, and I gotta go back. White woman. Only this time she didn’t have no clothes on.”
“Why the fuck are you telling me, Terry?”
Flynn looked at him. “Body, white female. In the park. She was cut pretty bad is the way I get it and was probably raped. I got to go back to the scene. Matt’s in the hospital, you know, so I’m running it. At least until Ranallo butts in with his two cents worth.”
“You’re not saying that Norman didn’t do it? The Kirsten murder?” But Mario knew that was exactly what Flynn was implying. “Listen, you can’t leave until you talk to Jack Donovan.”
“Shit, Mario, I ain’t got time for this. I got to get over by the park. I just had to let you know so that you wouldn’t look like shit when the newspaper guys start kicking your door down in an hour or two.”
But Mario wouldn’t let his arm go. “Your partner can handle it for now. You got to talk to Donovan. Shit. Shit and double shit.”
Terry Flynn let himself be led through the double doors of the state’s attorney’s office, past the guard, through the second door, and down the narrow corridor to Donovan’s office.
Mrs. Farrell was behind her desk, but they rushed past her and into Donovan’s open office. DeVito slammed the door and flopped down heavily on the leather couch. Terry Flynn found a chair.
Jack Donovan looked up from the legal pad in front of him. It was covered with numbers. He was making out a work schedule and realizing again that there weren’t enough people. He put down his pencil.
“You know Terry Flynn?” began Mario, gesturing toward the red-faced detective.
“You’re with Matt Schmidt,” Donovan replied.
“Yeah. He’s in the hospital.”
“Jack, they just found another body in Grant Park,” Mario DeVito said.
Donovan stared at him.
“Raped and murdered. Stabbed. Multiple wounds, right?”
Flynn nodded and picked it up. “Same cop that found Norman Frank found this one. White female, about twenty years old. Naked and pretty messy.”
Jack Donovan waited. He picked up his pencil and then put it down again. There was nothing to write.
“Norman Frank goes up to get his trial date this morning,” Mario said.
The pencil, Donovan noted, read EAGLE MIRADO 174. He tried to remember what Maj Kirsten had looked like on the slab in the morgue, her face peaceful and still.
“What should we do now about Norman Frank?” Mario DeVito asked.
“We have a lot of circumstantial evidence.”
“So what?”
Donovan looked at Flynn. “Were you at the scene?”
“Not yet. Margolies is there. I was going over. I wanted to let you know because I knew Norman Frank was going to bat this morning.”
“No clothes?”
“That’s the way they told me when I called Area One. They might have got it garbled. I didn’t talk to Margolies direct. He was at the scene. I was on my way here from home, I didn’t even go into Area One this morning. It was supposed to be my day off.”
“Maj Kirsten was clothed.”
“I was supposed to talk to the public defender about Frank,” Mario said. “He wants to deal.”
“How is Matt?”
Flynn looked at Donovan. “He’s supposed to know something this morning. They ran some tests Saturday and then again this morning.”
“I don’t know if I could go through that,” said Donovan.
“You never know,” said Terry Flynn.
“What do you think we ought to do, Mario?” Donovan asked at last.
“Play it on the square, I suppose, and go to bat.”
; “Yes.” Donovan put the tips of his fingers together and looked first at Flynn and then at Mario. “What do you think, Flynn?”
“I don’t know.”
“Matt Schmidt told me that he was sure Norman Frank killed someone.”
Flynn didn’t look at Donovan. He scratched at a spot on the sleeve of his sport coat. “Matt has been at it a long time,” he said.
“We got some evidence, Jack, circumstantial or not,” Mario said. “We got his goofy statement and we got this bloody shirt and the blood types match. So maybe this new victim wasn’t even connected with Maj Kirsten. There’s the thing about her clothes. It might be coincidence.”
“You mean, both of them being killed in Grant Park? But by different guys?”
“Something like that,” said Mario. “It doesn’t sound so good, does it?”
Donovan shook his head. “Well, Flynn, I’d appreciate a call as soon as you can. We’ll figure out something about Mr. Norman Frank for now, but I’d sure like to hear from you.”
Flynn got up. “Yeah, sure. I’ll call you this afternoon.”
He left the office.
Mario said, “Bud Halligan will crap in his pants.”
“Fuck Halligan,” said Donovan. He was now lining up the pencil at a right angle to the edge of his legal pad.
“What time is it?”
Mario glanced at his wrist; Donovan did not wear a watch. Three minutes to eleven.”
Well, what are we going to do?”
“Play it straight,” said Mario. “It’s not as though Norman Frank isn’t guilty of something.”
“It’d be bad if it turned out he was only trespassing in the park after dark. Two homosexual rapes in the joint is a pretty stiff sentence.”
DeVito shrugged. The two men got up without another word and left the office. “I’m going to the courtroom.” Mrs. Farrell wrote it down.
They took the elevator to the fourth floor and pushed through the crowded hallway. Inside the old courtroom nearly ninety people—lawyers, relatives, criminals, friends of criminals, and cops—milled around. The courtroom smelled very much like the lockup, including the smell of tension and anger and dampness. They could even smell vomit.