Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘Mickey’s your man,’ she said.

  I gave her the address of the campaign headquarters where the four musketeers had worked with Marilyn.

  ‘Hang up on him,’ Leo said for the third time.

  She laughed, and did.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Mickey said there were nine bars within three blocks of your address,’ Endora said at ten the next morning. She read off the list.

  ‘Now I’ll bet there are twenty,’ I said, because the neighborhood had been yupped up in recent years. I thanked her and called Lena Jankowski, the used-to-be Democratic volunteer who’d worked with the musketeers.

  ‘I was wondering if I’d hear from you again,’ she said.

  ‘I’m like termites,’ I said. ‘Almost impossible to eradicate.’

  ‘Or understand completely,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to read you a list of bars, or lounges, or small restaurants. I want you to give me any memory or association that comes to mind.’

  ‘We’re playing games?’

  ‘I hope not. First name: Tony’s.’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Willadean’s Whistle.’

  She laughed. ‘We went there, back in the Delman Bean days.’

  ‘You, John Shea, Willard Piser, Red Halvorson and Tim Wade?’

  ‘And others,’ she said.

  ‘Marilyn Paul?’

  ‘I told you, she didn’t hang with us after hours. She was all business, that woman.’

  ‘Anything else about Willadean’s Whistle?’

  ‘It was a real dump. Too bright, fluorescent lighting, sticky red tile floor. They were still serving Harvey Wallbangers twenty years after the last young person in Chicago ordered one.’

  She had no memory of the next two names I read off.

  ‘Harley’s,’ I said.

  ‘Motorcycle-themed,’ she said. ‘Spicy chicken wings. We went there once in a while.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Despite the biker name, a nice place. Clean.’

  ‘Lakota Nation,’ I read out.

  Dead silence. I couldn’t even hear her breathe.

  ‘Lakota Nation?’ I repeated. It was the name of an American Indian tribe that moved around the Midwest.

  ‘Sorry; remembering that place set off a lot of memories,’ she said finally. ‘We went there the most because they had cheap pizza and good-enough beer. It was American Indian warrior-themed, can you believe it? No one worried about political correctness back then. Chicago still has its Blackhawks hockey team, but so many of the other Indian themes are gone from here …’ Her voice drifted away for a moment, and then she said, ‘That was the place, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘That was our last good time. I remember because we got as drunk as coots and some of us got thrown out.’

  ‘The musketeers?’

  She laughed. ‘Probably. They always got drunker than the rest of us.’

  A queasy thought flitted in my mind. ‘Tell me about the decor,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I might have been there, long ago,’ I lied. My gut was already sure.

  ‘What you’d imagine,’ she said. ‘Dark wood booths, American Indian stuff on the walls – fake feather headdresses, bows and arrows.’

  My mind replayed the television video of the bones falling out of the silo. ‘Tomahawks, too, I seem to remember,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘There were tomahawks on the walls.’

  ‘Those little Indian axes you used to see in old Westerns?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘They were everywhere,’ she said. ‘There must have been a hundred of them stuck on the walls – cheap little plastic ones so much smaller than the other junk. You know, Mr Elstrom …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The sad part was how it ended. We had so much fun working on that campaign. And then John, Willard and Red walked out of that place and out of our lives without so much as a goodbye and the rest of us had to get crazy busy trying to cover their jobs. We couldn’t do it, not on such short notice. We lost the election.’

  ‘They said nothing about leaving, you’re sure?’

  ‘Not one damned word. The next morning they were gone and we were stuck. We couldn’t get all our voters to the polls. And worst of all? Not even after the election, after the candidate we’d worked so hard for lost by so few votes, did one of those guys think to send a note of apology for leaving us in such a lurch. We would have understood. Good jobs were tough to get, then as now.’

  ‘Just Christmas cards, every December, from Halvorson?’

  She sighed. ‘After that, we grew up.’

  I read her the last of Mickey Rosen’s names but she had few memories of them. That was fine. I’d gotten more than I’d phoned for. The cryptic threat that John Shea, living as David Arlin, wanted passed to Timothy Wade had nothing to do with American Indians, or headdresses, or bows or arrows.

  ‘If he wants to keep the hatchet buried,’ Shea had threatened, playing off an old cliché. He’d been cryptic, so that only Timothy Wade would understand.

  Marilyn Paul hadn’t understood but she suspected enough to set a rubber axe and some plastic bones tumbling from a silo. Likely, she’d merely intended to nudge Wade just a little into dealing with what Marilyn saw as a real threat. But Wade had overreacted and gone into hiding. And then the man who she thought was John Shea got blown up. It set all her alarm bells ringing. She tried to locate Red Halvorson and Willard Piser because they were both musketeers and might know something about Shea’s blackmail plot, and because they’d fled town twenty years earlier, along with Shea.

  Both had disappeared. One very recently, the other perhaps years before.

  She hired me to see if I could learn more, on the cheap. But someone was watching her, someone who needed to kill her before she could ever know that Shea’s cryptic message had nothing to do with a hatchet, or even a tomahawk.

  It had been about a bar.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  By now my gut was sure that Shea, Piser and Halvorson had not left Chicago to take oil rig jobs together in California. They’d fled Chicago abruptly, split up and scattered to Laguna Beach, Reeder and Tucson. They’d quit on a lie. What my gut didn’t know was what triggered it.

  I went to Chicago’s online newspaper archives for mentions of the Lakota Nation bar, seemingly the last place the four musketeers had been together. There was only one, and that was when the place was gutted to become an Italian restaurant, several years after the Delman Bean campaign.

  I went into the kitchen and nuked a purple Peep. As I watched it collapse into a marshmallow smear I wondered if Shea’s message to Timothy Wade had nothing to do with the bar itself but was a more cryptic reference to their whole last evening together.

  I left scraping the microwave for later and went back to my computer to print out a ten-square block map of the area surrounding the Democratic campaign headquarters. I then searched the Internet for mentions of the five streets surrounding it, adding the words, ‘crime, accident, disturbance and police’ and finished up by qualifying the search to include only events that happened during the four days that were likely the trio’s last in Chicago.

  I got seven newspaper hits. A purse was snatched one block from the campaign headquarters; a window was smashed by two kids throwing a chip of terracotta that had fallen from a century-old building; a shoplifter was arrested in a women’s store, another in a Walgreen’s and a third in an office supply shop.

  There was also a killing. The remaining two mentions reported the murder of a convenience store clerk two blocks from the campaign office and one block from the Lakota Nation.

  The first, on November 6, reported the crime:

  MOTIVE A MYSTERY IN CONVENIENCE STORE MURDER

  At 12:48 this morning, November 5, a silent alarm summoned police to the Super Convenience Mart on West Willoughby Street, where the body of Anwar Farr
ug was found bludgeoned to death behind the counter. The cash register was full and a fifty-dollar bill lay on the counter, leading police to rule out a robbery. The silent alarm button, three feet away from Mr Farrug’s body, did not contain traces of the dead man’s blood, though both his hands had been bloodied. Police believe someone else pressed the silent alarm. The clerk’s gun was found dropped behind the counter. One bullet had been fired. Police are investigating.

  The second mention of the case came two days later, in smaller type on a back page:

  POLICE ASK FOR PUBLIC’S HELP IN CONVENIENCE STORE KILLING

  Chicago police today requested help from anyone knowing the circumstances surrounding the mysterious murder of Anwar Farrug, a convenience store clerk found bludgeoned to death two days ago behind the counter of the Super Convenience Mart. Gunshot residue found on his hand and blood evidence found on the floor near the front door suggest that Mr Farrug fired one shot at his assailant, striking him, but likely not fatally, since the perpetrator managed to escape out the front door. Blood evidence of the same type was found leading away from the store to a spot on the street where presumably the perpetrator managed to get into his car. Unexplained are the fifty-dollar bill found lying on the counter and the absence of Mr Farrug’s blood on the silent alarm button, despite the fact that both his hands were bloodied, probably from cradling his head after he was struck. Anyone familiar with this crime is asked to contact their local police precinct.

  I rootled more in the newspapers’ archives but found no further mention of the convenience store killing. Nowadays, shootings had become almost commonplace in Chicago as the city morphed into a major distribution hub for drugs moving through the United States, but I’d expected that, twenty years earlier, a convenience murder would have been more newsworthy. I took the absence of follow-up reports meant that no progress had been made on the case.

  I leaned back and considered all the cops I was friendly enough with to call for more information. There were none. I called Bohler.

  ‘Ready to confess to killing Marilyn Paul, Elstrom?’ she asked, right off.

  ‘It could be a few lifetimes before I’m ready to admit to something I didn’t do,’ I said, taking no offense.

  ‘Why are you tormenting me with your call?’

  ‘I’d like you to research an old killing. Twenty years ago, a convenience store clerk got gunned down a little after midnight. Someone else’s blood was also found at the scene. I’d like to know what was learned.’

  ‘And you thought of me?’

  ‘I thought of no one else,’ I said, truthfully.

  ‘How is your inquiry relevant to anything in my life?’

  ‘I have no idea, but when I do, you’ll be one of the first to know.’

  ‘I’ll go along, but I expect a full explanation when I come to arrest you for Marilyn Paul’s murder.’

  ‘Maybe even sooner,’ I said.

  Or so I hoped.

  FORTY-NINE

  I ate the Peep scrapings from the microwave, vowing to set down a paper towel next time, and called Lieutenant Beech in Laguna Beach. ‘What did you learn from Tucson?’

  ‘I just got off the phone with Sergeant Bohler. You’ve got a big cheek, Elstrom, asking her to check on an old case without telling her why.’

  ‘Did you tell her she should help me out?’

  ‘I told her you asked me to help you out without telling me why and that she should go along so I wouldn’t be the only fool.’

  ‘So, what did you learn from Tucson?’

  ‘Tucson cops have no record of a Gary Halvorson at the address you gave me. As a favor, they drove by the place, called the number on the For Sale sign and spent some quality minutes with the property owner. He said Halvorson was a nut job, a recluse, but as far as the landlord was concerned, an ideal renter. He traveled a lot and didn’t cause any wear and tear on the house, paid the rent early, demanded nothing in the way of maintenance or upkeep and didn’t bother the neighbors.’

  ‘So why is the landlord selling the place now?’

  ‘A break-in spooked him and the house had tripled in value in the last twenty years. The landlord is approaching retirement. He got to thinking that a tenant who was always gone wasn’t good protection for his investment. So, for all kinds of reasons, he decided to cash in.’

  ‘Did he say anything about having to scrub the place?’

  ‘He said Halvorson left a mess but that it was a small price for twenty years of prompt rent. He also said he was getting freaked about the attention he was receiving. Some newswoman from San Francisco paid him a visit, asking the same sorts of things an insurance guy was inquiring about. I’m thinking the woman from San Francisco was the same one that pestered me and I’m thinking the insurance guy was you, Elstrom. I’m also thinking you two know each other, and both of you know a lot more about Halvorson than the Tucson cops or I do. Also, I just got a call from a security guy working for the Democrat party in Chicago. He asked whether we were sure of the identity of the man that got killed in a house explosion out here. I said we were working on it and then I asked him if he knew you. He hung up. Everything stinks of you, Elstrom. What do you know?’

  ‘Arlin’s real name is John Shea. I think Halvorson was involved with him in something.’

  ‘Involved in what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Dainsto Runney was involved, too?’

  ‘Probably. His real name is Willard Piser.’

  ‘Where would they be now? Not Runney, we know he’s here; in fact, he’s all over Arlin’s neighborhood – the street, the yards, everywhere.’ He chuckled but there was no mirth behind it. ‘We matched DNA from the car to the corpse, by the way, so we know he drove here. So, this Halvorson fellow, what’s he been up to all these years when Shea was here and Runney up in Oregon? And how does all of this fit with the explosion in my town?’

  ‘Halvorson is red-headed.’

  ‘That’s all you can offer me?’

  ‘It’s significant that a red-headed man asked that neighbor to make sure of Arlin’s residence the night before the house exploded.’

  ‘He didn’t want to blow the wrong house?’

  ‘Or, as I’ve suggested, it was Arlin himself, wanting to be noticed as someone else.’

  ‘As Halvorson?’ he asked.

  ‘As Halvorson,’ I said, as though I understood what that might mean.

  I called Jenny’s cell phone and got routed to voicemail. I asked what she’d learned in Reeder and Tucson without sounding petulant at not having been kept informed. I then called her extension in her newsroom, got sent to voicemail and left the same carefully controlled words.

  Last, I called the newsroom’s general number and asked to speak to Jennifer Gale’s producer.

  ‘Miss Gale is not in at the moment,’ he said. ‘You can leave information on our tip line and we’ll get back to you.’

  ‘My name’s Elstrom. Jenny and I are friends. I need to talk to her.’

  ‘You say you’re a friend?’

  ‘From Chicago.’

  ‘Hold.’ He came back on the line a moment later. ‘She still uses a Rolodex, believe it or not, and you’re in it: Elstrom, Dek, of Rivertown, Illinois, wherever the hell that is.’

  ‘It’s a beach town along the sun-drenched banks of Illinois’ most pristine river.’

  ‘She’s doing a little traveling,’ he said.

  ‘Oregon and Arizona I know about. Now where?’

  ‘She called from Chicago, three days ago, saying she needed personal time and nothing more. I assumed it has something to do with her mother, but as far as Oregon and Arizona go you probably know more than I do. Jenny’s like so many reporters – secretive, paranoid even, about getting scooped within her own newsroom. I don’t know what she’s up to. And we’re worried because she’s not answering her phone. It’s not like her to not check in. Can you help?’

  ‘I didn’t know that she’s here,’ I said, but I should have.<
br />
  I’d mentioned Timothy Wade’s name.

  FIFTY

  Galecki’s was like a thousand restaurants in Chicago. A two-room place of plastic, fake wood-grained tables with their glosses scrubbed off, worn green vinyl benches and chairs and wallpaper yellowed by decades of frying food, it drew bus drivers, real estate and insurance people for breakfasts, cops and shop folks for lunch, and families for the blue-plate specials at dinner. And me, that day. I got there at one, just past the lunch rush.

  Mrs Galecki, Jenny’s mother, watched every plate that was served and every nickel that paid for it. But that afternoon, as I walked up to her perch at the cash register, she didn’t see me.

  It was a relief. She was dodging.

  I continued on into the side room and sat at the booth farthest in the back. They never sat customers at that booth because its back cushion was below the shelves that stored the ketchup. It was a highly trafficked spot. Galecki’s customers loved ketchup.

  A waitress brought me a glass of ice water, pointed to the menu in the wire holder against the wall and said she’d be back in a minute.

  She wasn’t. Thirty minutes passed. By then, the side room had emptied of everyone, including any sign of a waitress. By two o’clock, the main dining room had quieted into low conversations and gently clattering dishes. I supposed the waitresses were having their own lunches, for there was no noise coming from the cash register, nor was the usually voluble Mrs Galecki yelling at anyone in English or Polish or a mixture of both, as was her custom when the place was busy.

  I sipped my water, ate the crackers in the little straw basket and read the newspapers that had been left in the next booth. And I thought about the time Jenny and I had eaten in that same booth when we’d been wary and new to each other, and hopeful, perhaps, of the distances that might come to grow between ourselves and our ghosts.

  My waitress finally returned. Or more likely, she’d been dispatched to dispatch me. ‘We had to close the kitchen,’ she said.

  ‘I’m fine with the crackers,’ I said. ‘The water, by the way, is delicious.’