Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Then how come this one’s all over the news?”

  I sighed, rubbed my hand over my face, and wished I lived in calmer times. Poor Jim, all he got to see was the ugly side of human nature.

  “It’s all over the news for a couple of reasons,” I said. “It’s a police statue. Someone’s issued a challenge to the Chicago Police Department.”

  “You know who?” Jimmy asked as he sat at the table. The hair on the back of his head was still matted. I would have to send him to the bathroom to clean up before he went to school.

  “I have suspicions,” I said. “I’m sure the police do, too.”

  “Those Days-of-Rage people?” Jimmy asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “They promised four days of violence, starting today. Maybe someone got excited and started early.”

  Jimmy splashed too much milk on his cereal. It sloshed against the edge of the bowl. “If Haymarket’s near Greektown, it’s not by Lincoln Park.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Can I stay home, Smoke?”

  “You’ll be fine at school,” I said. “They’re not coming down here.”

  At least not yet. The Black Panthers had spent the last few days trying to talk the Weathermen out of rioting in the park because the Panthers believed, with a great deal of justification, that the police would take out their anger in the ghettos, not against the rich white kids planning the so-called actions.

  “What about you?” Jimmy asked that last quietly, not meeting my gaze.

  “I’m working for Laura today. I’m staying as far away from those crazies as I can.”

  He raised his head. “Promise.”

  “Promise,” I said.

  He nodded, then finished his breakfast in silence. We listened to the disk jockeys on the radio discuss the radicals in town, the Conspiracy Trial, and the history of that statue, which had been erected by the police on the site of the Haymarket Rebellion.

  The rebellion, the disk jockeys “reminded” us (knowing full well that most of us had no idea what it was), happened in 1886. At an outdoor rally to protest police violence against striking workers, someone threw a bomb that killed eight policemen and two bystanders. Several anarchists were arrested, although no evidence ever linked them to the bombing; four of the anarchists were hanged and a fifth committed suicide by placing a blasting cap between his teeth.

  The statue honored the dead policemen. Blowing it up — with dynamite, nearly a century later — was an act of great symbolism. And the Weathermen faction of the SDS loved their symbolism.

  I shuddered, bundled Jimmy off to school and hoped that he would think about other things all day, although I had a hunch that was unlikely.

  It wasn’t until I went into the back room that served as my office that I realized I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise to Jimmy.

  I was heading up to the Gold Coast tonight, to Laura’s apartment for that meeting. The Gold Coast was on the near North Side of Chicago, not too far from Lincoln Park, where the Weathermen planned to hold their first rally.

  With great frustration, I picked up the phone and called Laura. I wanted her to change the meeting to my apartment, but she wouldn’t. She felt that her place — a penthouse suite of one of the most expensive apartment buildings in Chicago — would be safe enough. She’d hired extra security after an attack last year, and they would be working tonight. So would her favorite doorman, who was more than capable of defending himself.

  However, I did get her to compromise. I asked her to hold the meeting over an early dinner, at five-thirty instead of eight. Knowing this group of radicals, and having watched their self-serving speeches on the television newscasts for the last week, I had a hunch they’d want as much press coverage as possible.

  They’d get that only after the Conspiracy Trial ended for the day, and the national press corps had time to make it from Civic Center Plaza to Lincoln Park. If we met at five-thirty, we would probably avoid the worst of whatever the Weathermen were planning — if, indeed, the police ever allowed them to leave the Park.

  Fortunately, I’d already asked Althea Grimshaw to pick up the kids from the after-school program. Jimmy would be happy when I got home earlier than planned.

  If that happened, I would be happy too.

  NINE

  Laura’s apartment building looked like it was set up for a war. In addition to the usual doorman, six security guards were stationed around the building’s first floor.

  Laura, who owned the building, wasn’t taking any chances.

  After more than a year of visiting her, I still wasn’t used to the building’s ornateness. My entire apartment building could have fit into the lobby, with its raised ceilings and black marble floors. Leather furniture that cost more than I spent in a year was arranged in casual groupings, although I’d never seen more than one or two residents sit in them.

  Large glass windows on the east side overlooked Lake Shore Drive, and Lake Michigan beyond. This was one of the most spectacular — and expensive — views in Chicago, and the architect that built this place had taken advantage of that.

  The newly hired security guards watched me as I crossed the lobby, but the head of security, who sat behind the desk near the elevators, pointedly greeted me by name. I said hello to him as well and pushed the elevator call button, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

  I was not a meeting sort of person. I preferred doing things to talking about them. But I recognized the necessity of planning ahead. We were about to do something tricky, and we had to proceed with caution.

  The elevator doors opened, and the attendant, an elderly black man, grinned at me. He knew his presence made me uncomfortable. More than once I’d asked him why he stayed at the job. His answer was always the same: he liked Miss Laura.

  I liked her too, but I wouldn’t spend my days opening and closing elevator doors for rich people even if she asked me to.

  “You think them kids is gonna bomb the Gold Coast?” he asked me as the elevator doors closed.

  “I certainly hope not,” I said.

  “If they do, they’s not coming here.”

  “Because of the extra security?” I asked.

  “Because we’s lucky. Judge Hoffman don’t live here. He got an apartment in the Drake.”

  Judge Hoffman was the judge in charge of the Conspiracy Trial.

  “That’s expensive real estate for a judge, isn’t it?” I asked. The Drake was on Michigan and Oak, with a view of Lincoln Park — and if your apartment was high enough, a view of Lake Michigan as well. The Drake was older than Laura’s high-rise, and considered one of the premiere addresses in the city.

  “His wife got money,” the attendant said. Then he grinned at me. “Sometimes it be good to marry money.”

  The elevator stopped and he opened the door with a flourish. I was glad I didn’t have to respond to his comment. He’d made it clear more than once that he thought I should marry Laura, for my sake, not necessarily for hers. I didn’t want to have that conversation with him again.

  I stepped into the space in front of Laura’s apartment. The space, which I had no name for, wasn’t exactly a hallway and it wasn’t quite a foyer. Yet it was large and grand. It had marble floors, a mirror to make the space look even larger, and a huge vase of fall foliage on an expensive table that added a touch of elegance.

  Laura’s door was partially open, which made my stomach clench. She often did that when she was expecting someone, even though I had asked her not to. She claimed the building was safe enough. It wasn’t. We both knew that any determined person could get past the security, but ever since her apartment had been broken into, she’d been struggling to regain her sense of safety.

  Somehow, leaving that door open on certain occasions, seemed to do that for her.

  I knocked and let myself in. The apartment did have a foyer, with an authentic oriental rug that I’d helped her pick out covering the black marble floor. Black-and-white photographs brushed up against
each other on the walls. My favorite shot was a candid one of Jimmy that Laura had taken herself. She had caught him in a moment of laughter and he looked like the carefree boy I had always wanted him to be.

  The place smelled of garlic and spices. Voices reached me from the main room. Then Laura’s laugh, high and fluted, rose above them.

  Apparently, I was the last to arrive.

  I stepped into the living room and stopped, as I always did, mesmerized by the view. The room had floor-to-ceiling windows that showed Lake Michigan. At the moment, it looked gray and sulky. The sun would be down in about an hour, and the eastern sky was already taking on the shadows of twilight.

  “Smokey.” Laura stood up. She’d been sitting on the leather couch in the middle of the room. Her leather furniture was even more elegant than the furniture in the lobby. Plants dripped off every surface in the main room, which made it look like something out of Architectural Digest, while hiding the room’s astonishing comfort.

  Two men sat opposite each other on the large leather chairs. Drew McMillan faced me. He was wearing one of his stylish New York suits, with its wide jacket and slightly flared pants, and his black hair brushed the edges of his collar. He looked modern and expensive, as if he was the person this apartment had been designed for, not Laura.

  Across from him sat Wayne LeDoux. He was older than the man in the grainy newspaper photographs I’d seen. His hair had gone gray and his cheeks were jowly. His suit had some wear on the sleeves. From the conservative black wool and the narrow lapels, it was clear he’d owned the suit for more than a decade.

  I suddenly felt uncomfortable in my black slacks and white shirt. I hadn’t even thought to wear a suit.

  Laura came to my side. She was wearing long polyester slacks with bell bottoms. Her shirt flowed over the slacks like a short dress.

  “Mr. LeDoux,” she said. “I’d like you to meet our investigator, Bill Grimshaw.”

  It always sounded odd to hear her speak my fake name. Maybe it was the inflection in her voice, the way she emphasized the name Bill, just so that she would get it right.

  “You’re the man who found the bodies?” LeDoux’s voice was deep and authoritative. No wonder so many attorneys had praised him. With that voice, he sounded like an expert right up front.

  “Yes,” I said. “I freelance, and one of the things I do on occasion is inspect buildings for Laura.”

  “I’m sure you’re familiar with the corruption in the city of Chicago,” McMillan said to LeDoux. “It extends to the building inspectors, who usually get bought off.”

  LeDoux nodded. He stared at the scar running along the left side of my face as if he’d never seen anything like it. I clearly wasn’t what he had expected.

  Laura touched my arm and guided me to the couch. I sat down, and she sat beside me, making it clear just with her actions that she supported whatever I did.

  “We’ll have dinner in a few minutes,” she said. “I’m reheating. I ordered in.”

  I smiled at her. Laura could cook a few things, but she wasn’t a gourmet by any standard. It was probably best that she had bought food from a nearby restaurant.

  “Did you touch anything?” LeDoux asked me. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t referring to the food.

  “I found the hidden room, touched the locks, the doors, and the light switches. The wall had caved in on one side, and when I used my flashlight to peer inside, I saw the bones. It took me a second to understand what I was seeing. For some reason, the skulls didn’t register right away.”

  “Three of them,” he said.

  “Three skulls.”

  “On three skeletons?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I’m not sure. To my inexperienced eye, the bodies looked like they’d been tossed in this crawl space, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t know if all the parts were there or if there were extra parts.”

  McMillan grimaced. His specialty was corporate law, although I knew he had consulted the criminal defense attorneys in the New York office to get LeDoux’s name. McMillan just wasn’t used to this kind of detail.

  “But you touched nothing else,” LeDoux said.

  “As soon as I realized what I was looking at, I closed up the room, put the boiler room back the way I found it, and left.”

  “Excellent,” LeDoux said.

  “Smokey’s had some experience working cases like this before,” Laura said.

  “Smokey?” LeDoux asked me.

  I smiled at him. “It’s a childhood nickname that seems to have stuck. My close friends and family use it.”

  LeDoux glanced from Laura to me and then over to McMillan. For the first time in the conversation, LeDoux seemed uncomfortable.

  McMillan templed his fingers and leaned back in the chair. “Bill is one of the most able investigators I’ve seen. We’re going to want him in that basement.”

  LeDoux frowned. He obviously wasn’t happy with the idea of supervision.

  “If nothing else,” I said, “I can move materials for you when you’re ready for that.”

  LeDoux frowned. “You believe there are other things to find down there?”

  “I hope there isn’t,” I said. “But there’s a lot of brick, and none of it has been done by a mason. It’s slap-dash.”

  His lips thinned. McMillan watched us. Laura leaned against me, saying nothing.

  “My examination of the foundation tells me the building has a full basement. But the brick walls off most of it.”

  “Unevenly,” LeDoux said.

  “And with no obvious plan, at least not one I could discern.”

  “In your short examination,” LeDoux said.

  “I wouldn’t even call it an examination,” I said. “I probably spent no more than five minutes in that hidden room.”

  “Good.” He sighed. “We have an uncontaminated scene then. You did well, Mr. Grimshaw.”

  He was patronizing me, but I didn’t mind. He was doing so not because of my color or my abilities, but because he thought I knew nothing about his field.

  I would let him think that. It was easier than trying to explain myself to him.

  A buzzer went off in the kitchen. Laura excused herself and walked there. McMillan stood as well, saying that he would help her.

  LeDoux turned sideways in his chair, so that he faced me more directly. “I do not mean to be rude, Mr. Grimshaw,” he said. “But I prefer to work unsupervised.”

  “I understand. I’m not going to supervise you. I’ll be helping where I can, but mostly, I’m going to be observing. You’re the criminalist. I’ll trust you to handle the evidence correctly. But I’m going to be investigating. We need to know what happened here, when and why.”

  “You have no idea at all?”

  “None,” I said.

  “No hints, no theories?”

  “None,” I said.

  “Except that this is criminal.”

  I folded my hands together to keep them calm. “I think that’s a fair assumption. Bricking three human beings into a wall is not a legal act.”

  “You think they were alive?”

  I hadn’t had that thought at all. The idea turned my stomach. “I have no idea. But I certainly hope not.”

  He nodded, once, as if confirming his own suspicion. I apparently had made assumptions that I hadn’t realized.

  “It’s not so criminal an act to brick bodies into a wall,” he said. “Perhaps they belong to unregistered aliens who died here or to someone who died unexpectedly. Perhaps this was a form of burial.”

  “That’s against the law, too,” I said.

  “Yes, but not so serious as murdering someone. You see?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Miss Hathaway tells me you found someone to perform autopsies. I’m assuming he’s reliable.”

  “He is,” I said. “He will come to the site when we’re ready to release the bodies to him.”

  “I may want to supervise his work.”

 
I couldn’t imagine Minton allowing anyone to supervise him any more than I could imagine LeDoux letting me tell him what to do.

  “He’ll probably let you observe,” I said.

  LeDoux smiled for the first time. It softened his face and made him seem like a kindly old professor instead of a man who specialized in crime scenes.

  “That’s the answer I wanted,” he said. “You were correct in your approach to this. We need a good team. Miss Hathaway has said she may bring in the authorities if the circumstances warrant it. I understand her position is precarious because of the shady nature of the business she is trying to repair. But I will argue for official investigations if her caution seems…unnecessary.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” I said.

  His smile faded. “So there are things I don’t know.”

  “Things you don’t need to know,” I said. “They might lead you in the wrong direction.”

  “Then you do have suspicions,” he said.

  “I have fears,” I said. “I’m hoping your work will alleviate them.”

  He gave me a rueful look. “My work rarely makes things better, Mr. Grimshaw.”

  “In this case,” I said, “it would be hard to make things worse.”

  TEN

  Laura served dinner on her polished oak table in her formal dining room. She used her good china and her silver. She sat at the head of the table. I sat with my back to the windows, while the guests got the last views of the lake before night set in.

  She had ordered authentic Italian food from one of the small neighborhood restaurants in Little Italy. Someone had come all the way up here to deliver it, which was one reason she had to reheat. We had an excellent lasagna, some meatballs in red sauce, and fresh bread, washed down with a Chianti that added a richness to the food.

  Most of the conversation revolved around the case. I told LeDoux and McMillan about the problems we’d have working in that basement. Laura added some information of her own, making it clear that she suspected an employee or someone tied to Sturdy had placed the bodies there.

  LeDoux, of course, reminded her that the building had owners before Sturdy bought it, and basements often showed ancient history. She nodded, having heard that argument from me, but clearly remained unconvinced.