Public Murders

by Bill Granger

  She smiled. He was big and beefy and his face was red. She thought he was rather sweet. “I don’t think anyone would be fooled.”

  “Especially when I light up a Lucky,” he said. Which he did at that moment while they waited for the lights to change at Monroe Street. Traffic was moving again.

  “Do you know they originally built this as a pleasant little motoring drive through the park?” she said.

  “They must’ve been perverts,” said Flynn.

  The lights changed and they walked across the broad expressway to the park. When they reached the unmarked car on the grass, it was just after nine o’clock. In ninety minutes the third murder would be committed.

  Tiny Preston was very tired and that made him very hungry. He wondered if it were too early for a cheeseburger; not that it would be unseemly in his eyes to eat a cheeseburger at nine A.M., but he wasn’t sure he could find a place nearby that served them this early. He had arrived at the theater shortly before seven o’clock, which meant he had arisen a little after five A.M. and that was too early for anyone.

  He stood at the back of the ticket booth where Gloria Miska now sat. Usually Gloria didn’t come in until the afternoon, but this was a very different day and, in the spirit of the occasion, Gloria had worn a new dress and new dark nylons. Earrings, too.

  Tiny Preston glanced again around the lobby to see if everything was set. Again his eyes rested on the large poster-picture of Bonni Brighton in the center of the dismal little foyer.

  The picture revealed a blond with bright, even teeth and a long, sensual tongue, which, at the moment the picture was made, was blatantly extended from her mouth. The picture showed a woman with large eyes, and the expression on her face was undoubtedly meant to be sexually appealing. Because the photo was taken with black-and-white film, Tiny Preston could not determine the color of Bonni Brighton’s eyes, but he guessed they were blue.

  He had erected the poster the day before when the picture made its unofficial Midwest premiere. Bonni’s Brass Bed had been preceded by waves of favorable publicity.

  A prominent cinema critic for a New York newspaper had first pronounced the film an appealing, serious work of art, despite the fact that it was essentially a pornographic picture. The same critic had stated that Bonni Brighton played her role as the lesbian prostitute with humor and élan. He also stated that the picture was not pornographic in the usual sense but rather an excellent parody of the pornographic genre and that one scene involving two men and three women engaged in various group sexual activities was particularly devastating in its artistic and social comment.

  Other film critics either agreed or disagreed with the original commentary on the movie but, in all, they unconsciously conspired to make Bonni’s Brass Bed a cause célèbre.

  The film was banned in Milwaukee, and a prominent prosecutor in southern Ohio reportedly was determined to get a grand jury indictment for conspiracy against the makers of the movie. Everyone connected with the movie was properly outraged and delighted with its success. Bonnie Brighton had been asked to pose naked for two men’s magazines and a third combined the pictorial offer with a promise to interview her in the same issue on the role of nudity in art.

  Most delighted of all was Bonni Brighton, now on a nationwide publicity tour on behalf of the movie. She had already appeared on the cover of one newsweekly, and a prominent paperback publisher was committed to bringing out her autobiography. She was twenty-three years old, and at noon she was due to make her Chicago appearance in the theater managed by Tiny Preston.

  Her agent, Maxwell Hampstead of New York, had arranged all the details of the appearance in Chicago, down to the velvet rope line on the sidewalk where it was expected the noon throngs would be contained during Bonni Brighton’s appearance.

  Tiny Preston took his dark darting eyes from the poster and looked at the popcorn stand. Maybe he could have some popcorn to tide him over.

  “Everything looks okay, I guess,” he said. Gloria Miska shrugged.

  “She’s gonna show up around ten thirty because she’s got this interview set up with some newspaper creep who’s gonna write a column about her. I don’t like all this publicity for the house, I tell ya.”

  “It was okay by Mr. Rocca,” Gloria Miska reminded him.

  “Yeah. So it’s his house, so he can do what he wants. But I don’t like it. The creeps don’t like it. Hey, any creeps in there now?” He thumbed toward the door of the theater, which had opened at eight A.M.

  “Some. The usual bunch. I sold fifteen tickets this morning.”

  “I better check ’em out.”

  “Whatever,” said Gloria Miska.

  Tiny entered the theater and stood in the back, beneath the buzzing exit sign, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The usual creeps. Old men and men in raincoats and lonely night workers slumped in their seats, killing time until they had to go home to sleep. The usual morning bunch, in fact. He thought he had seen some of them before.

  He went back into the lobby.

  “I hope there ain’t no trouble.”

  “How’s trouble?” asked Gloria Miska.

  “Ah, you know. Crowds and stuff. I don’t wanna have to have no cops here. No heat.”

  Gloria Miska shrugged.

  Jack Donovan awoke his daughter gently at ten thirty in the morning.

  She sat in bed and looked at him. He had slept on the couch. Lily had gone home but not before making the bed and putting away the liquor bottles.

  “I have to go to work for a little while,” he said.

  She opened her eyes and looked around at his room. She had not been able to go to sleep at first. The bedroom was strange and so bare. But it was his bedroom. And it was cool. She felt comfortable and tired under the covers. She wanted to go back to sleep.

  “What about Mom?”

  “I talked to the police this morning. Brian and Grandpa are home now. They didn’t find her.”

  “Poor Mom,” she said.

  “Brian wants to stay down with Grandpa for now, but it’s okay for you to stay with me awhile. If you want. I have to go downtown now for a little while. We’re working on some special business. But I’ll be home early and if you want to get up later, there’s eggs in the icebox and some tea. I don’t think I have any milk.”

  “That’s okay,” said Kathleen. “I don’t drink milk anymore.”

  He smiled at that.

  “If you go out, there’s a key on the dresser. There’s three locks. Downstairs door and two locks on this door. It’s a pretty safe area, I guess. I see kids on the street. But don’t go too far, will you? There’s a grocery up the street if you need anything. There’s some money.” He put a twenty on the dresser. “You’ll be okay.”

  She reached from under the covers and touched his freckled hand. Poor Dad, she thought. “Are Brian and I going to live with you now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said standing up. He didn’t want to talk to her about it.

  He left her and she went back to sleep.

  They arrived at the theater shortly before ten thirty A.M.

  Bonni Brighton was, on closer examination, a rather ordinary looking woman blessed with even white teeth, a firm chin, and wide eyes. She seemed tired this morning and was chewing gum. Robert Fredericks, a prominent cinema critic with a Chicago paper, was with her. Tiny Preston thought that Bonni Brighton looked pretty flat in the ass department. She wore a blue jersey dress and no underwear.

  The film crew from a local television station arrived just behind them while the star and her entourage stood in the cramped lobby. Two men, without a word, began setting up the camera and sound box. Another man with shiny hair stepped forward and grasped Bonni’s arm.

  “I’m Tom Bruce with Eyewitness News,” he began. “We’d like a few minutes for the early news.”

  “Sure,” Bonni Brighton said laconically, snapping her gum.

  “Maybe we can finish our interview,” said Robert Fredericks to the televi
sion reporter. “I’ve got a first-edition deadline.”

  “You can use the office there,” said Tiny Preston, who, despite his reluctance, was now caught up in the mood of excitement.

  “No,” said Robert Fredericks. He was known as a reporter and critic who liked to create mood in his stories as well as mere fact. “I think it’d be great if we’d finish in the theater, watching Bonni’s picture together. Waddaya say, Bonni?”

  “I don’t care,” she said as though she meant it.

  “Why not let me get my film first?” said Tom Bruce. “We’ve got a murder on the South Side right after this.”

  “I got a deadline,” argued Robert Fredericks, and he grabbed Bonni by her arm and led her toward the door to the theater. Tom Bruce relinquished his grip.

  “How long?” asked Tom Bruce.

  “Gimme ten minutes more,” said Robert Fredericks, who intended to take as much time as he wanted.

  They closed the lobby door, and Bonni Brighton and Robert Fredericks were in the darkness of the theater. On the screen a woman was on her back with her legs spread; she was naked. The set was apparently a sort of bedroom. Between the woman’s legs could barely be seen the face of another woman who was performing a sexual act with her tongue. It was Bonni Brighton.

  “That’s Sandy,” said Bonni Brighton. “She’s okay.”

  They went halfway down the darkened aisle and stumbled into two seats. Bonni took the aisle seat.

  Fredericks flicked on his tape recorder.

  On the screen a man entered the room. He was naked and he said something to one of the women on the bed. She opened her mouth.

  Bonni Brighton leaned back in the theater seat because she was tired. They had gone to Arnie’s Café the night before for a party. She had thought Robert Fredericks was a twerp at the party and in bed but she supposed he was important. Tomorrow she would be in Minneapolis. The chief of police there had threatened to close the theater down, and Bonni had been instructed by Maxwell to try to get arrested.

  Maxwell said her book might sell half a million copies.

  Fredericks touched her leg and began his question: “Do you think that art in film is—”

  The tape recorder clattered to the floor when Bonni Brighton’s right hand suddenly lashed out and struck the machine.

  It was an instinctive gesture, caused by the knife tearing down into the back of her neck, so deep that it severed the main arteries and ripped her vocal cords in one sweeping arc. The knife plunged again into the muscles of her upper back and tore down until it was snagged by a rib. As she arched back into the seat and slowly sank down, blood began to form on her lips. Her mouth was open wide as though she were silently screaming.

  Blood spilled down the front of her jersey dress.

  Her eyes were wide open, and blood streamed from her nose. She did not die for nearly forty seconds as the blood welled into her throat and lungs and drowned her.

  The two knife blows had taken less than a second. It was ten thirty-two A.M.

  Robert Fredericks screamed in that second and heard the noise of the blow and felt the presence in the aisle behind them. Seeking safety, he tumbled onto the floor beneath the theater seat and kept screaming.

  Bonni Brighton was dead. Her body sprawled back in the seat, her knees pressed against the seat in front of her. Her body was prevented from sliding down to the floor on top of Robert Fredericks by the handle of the butcher knife, which had wedged itself on the top of the theater seat while the knife blade was snagged between two bones of the upper rib cage.

  There were other panicked screams.

  Doors were flung open and the sparse audience began to run toward the two exit doors. At the same time people from the lobby rushed into the theater. Someone flung open the fire exit door and stumbled into the alley, and others wasted no time following.

  13

  Despite his promise to Kathleen, Jack Donovan did not get home early.

  He had intended to go to the state’s attorney’s office downtown in the big steel Civic Center and arrange to take a few days leave to straighten out his family affairs.

  But first Lee Horowitz corralled him as he walked into the main office on the fifth floor. Then he was rushed into a special conference room where state’s attorney Bud Halligan, the police superintendent, and chief of homicide Leonard Ranallo sat waiting. Donovan did not recognize a fourth man, who sat in the corner. The man did not bother to introduce himself, but Jack Donovan discovered he was from the mayor’s office.

  “Jack, we’re going to take you off administrative duties for the next couple of weeks and set up a special state’s attorney’s task force to try to get to the bottom of these park murders,” Halligan began pompously.

  It was shortly after eleven A.M., and no one in the room was aware that Bonni Brighton, a porno movie starlet, had just been killed less than three blocks away.

  “I came downtown this morning to get some time off. For personal matters.” Jack Donovan said.

  “What about?” asked Lee Horowitz.

  “It’s personal and urgent. I’ll tell you later,” said Donovan.

  Leonard Ranallo spoke now. He looked unhappy. “The mayor feels we haven’t gone after this business the right way. He thinks there’s too many cooks in the pie.”

  Donovan smiled. The man from the mayor’s office lit a cigarette and said nothing.

  “He wants a special force to deal with this, so he can announce it. We got word this morning—well, the mayor got word—that the upholsterers’ convention has decided to cancel its meeting here next spring. The mayor says the city is getting a bad reputation with these unsolved murders.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” said Donovan. “Is he talking about Al Capone’s day?”

  “Cut the crap,” said Lee Horowitz. Again Halligan looked uncomfortable.

  The police superintendent spoke for the first time. “Politically these are very uncomfortable crimes for all of us. You know that and we all know it. Actually the police have a very good record in clearing murders but it’s the spectacular crime, the random crime like this, that is so difficult. And gets the public’s attention.”

  Donovan decided the superintendent was talking to him. It was hard to be sure. He stared at a pad of paper on the table and never glanced up. The superintendent’s eyes were swimming behind thick glasses.

  The superintendent cleared his throat. “This doesn’t reflect well on any of us. The police department has even been under fire in this matter. Compounding the crimes themselves is the unfortunate… er… disappearance of Mr. Norman Frank from the Criminal Courts building. Well, none of these murders would mean that much in another context. But those women were murdered, as we know, in Grant Park. Right downtown. We had one suspect and he escaped, and now we have another, a strong suspect, this person, this man…”

  The police superintendent finished speaking and gestured ineffectively with his left hand. The gesture was meant to convey the whole crime surrounding the imprisonment of the young girl in the Susy-Q Lounge.

  “There really is nothing more to be done,” Jack Donovan said quietly. “The police, as you know, began a decoy patrol this morning in Grant Park involving two homicide detectives. And our office is still working on aspects of the Seymour Weiss case as well as the case of Luther Jones. I really can’t see what else can be done—”

  “Godamnit, Donovan,” cried Horowitz. He pounded the table, and this startled even the phlegmatic police superintendent. “We want results. The mayor expects results. You stonewalled us on Weiss and you told us he didn’t do it. Okay. You get who did it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lee,” said Jack Donovan. “We had to bend Ranallo’s arm even to get a decoy set up.”

  “That’s not true, Jack,” said Ranallo. His face was flushed.

  Both the superintendent and Halligan looked away.

  “All that’s changed now,” said the mayor’s man. It was the first time he had spoken. They all looked at him. His
voice had the trace of an Irish brogue.

  “You got priority, Donovan,” the man continued. “The man said for you to run the operation.”

  Donovan flushed and Halligan stared at him.

  “He doesn’t even know me—”

  “He reads the papers. He read about you. He checked around.” The mayor’s man chuckled. “You come from the right side of town.” Meaning the Irish South Side, where the mayor had his roots and where the power elite of the city mostly came from.

  There was a knock at the conference room door.

  “Excuse me,” said the secretary who opened it. “There’s an urgent call for you, Commander,” She nodded to Ranallo. The homicide chief got up gratefully and went to the other room. While he was gone, there was silence. No one knew what to say.

  Halligan kept staring at Donovan. The mayor knew him. Maybe Donovan was a better man than Lee Horowitz made him out to be. He’d have to talk with Lee about Jack.

  When Ranallo returned, his face was white.

  “A movie star just got murdered in a porn theater. In the Loop. About three blocks from here, on Washington.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” said the superintendent. He was obviously disgusted. He tore off the pad of paper and threw it in the wastebasket at his feet. “For Christ’s sake.”

  14

  By eleven thirty A.M. there were too many policemen in the theater. They bumped into each other passing in and out of the seating area; they clogged the tiny lobby and some of them had even managed to squeeze into the one-desk office of the theater manager, where they used the single phone constantly.

  Tiny Preston, who stood behind the popcorn machine, looked miserable. He stood and stuffed popcorn into his mouth and watched the policemen trudge back and forth. It was all worse than he had imagined trouble could be. In front of the theater a police squadrol waited at the curb. And blue-and-white squad cars blocked traffic on Washington Street, with their blue Mars light rotating.

  At the same time four unmarked police cars were parked at crazy angles in front of and on the side of the theater, blocking three lanes of Washington Street and the service alley. Special barricades marked POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS had been erected on the sidewalk alongside the velvet rope line. The barriers forced pedestrians to cross the street to the opposite walk to pass the theater.