I dropped back into the chair. “Look,” I said, “where we going with this? What do you care? And how do you know someone won’t give him a funeral?”
“All I know is a funeral would be very unusual,” he said, “because the little shit ain’t dead.”
CHAPTER
18
TO PROVE HIS POINT, Breaker called the morgue. There’d been no cadaver matching Yogi’s description delivered there in the last forty-eight hours.
“Last I knew he was at County Hospital,” Breaker said. “Critical but stable.”
“Theodosian showed me a photograph.”
He shrugged. “What? A picture of a guy who’d been beat up? Unconscious, maybe. Not dead.” He leaned forward across the desk. “You said Theodosian met you at Eleventh and State. Why was that?”
“He said Area Four’s got temporary space there, while they’re remodeling Harrison and Kedzie.”
“Uh-huh. See a lotta cops around while you were there? Suspects? Witnesses?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But they’re starting to empty the place out. Moving into the new central headquarters on the South—”
“I know. But I mean right there in that so-called temporary space. You see any suspects screamin’ about their fuckin’ rights? Any victims’ relatives in hysterics?”
He was right. There should have been some activity. I thought about it and realized Theodosian let me assume Yogi was dead, but never really said so. After that, I didn’t argue with Breaker anymore.
I asked how he knew about my connection with Yogi in the first place, and all he said was he’d been paying attention to me ever since he’d learned about my petition for reinstatement. “That was a couple weeks after it was filed,” he said. “Seems like a horseshit idea.” He paused, then added. “I don’t figure you bein’ happy as a lawyer.”
“Not a world-beater of an idea, I agree.” I spoke from across the room, where I was pulling a second Moretti from the refrigerator. “But I was a pretty good lawyer once.”
“Good, bad, whatever. I said I don’t figure you bein’ happy as a lawyer. There’s a difference. You’re not … Hey, bring me a cup of coffee.” He waved at a coffee maker on the counter by the sink. “It’s decaf and it tastes like piss, but the doctors—”
“I don’t serve coffee,” I said, and returned to my chair with my beer. “And you told me all about your bad heart a long time ago.”
His face reddened, but he heaved himself to his feet and went for his own coffee. He was maybe five-ten, thick-necked and stocky. Gray wool pants, white shirt open at the neck, suspenders; no belt, no tie. He looked like a guy who might run a wholesale flower business. “See what I mean?” he said, tearing open two packets each of fake sugar and fake cream. “How you gonna be happy as a lawyer? Too many rules. Too many people to suck up to.”
“You probably won’t be able to test your theory, anyway. Chances are good I won’t get the license back.”
“Chances are good you won’t even survive, you keep on the way you are.” He sat down behind his desk again.
“None of us survives, Breaker. Not in the long term.”
“Don’t give me that ‘long-term’ crap. I’m talkin’ short-term.”
“What do you care, anyway, whether I live or die?”
“Did somebody say I cared?” He shook his head. “But like I said, it’s interesting … so I’m watching.” He sipped his decaf and frowned in distaste.
“What do you want from me, Breaker?”
“You keep asking that,” he said. “Why does it have to be about me? Maybe I just don’t like to see a guy chasin’ his ass around in stupid directions.”
“Uh-huh. And maybe Philip Morris doesn’t want kids to smoke till they’re twenty-one. And maybe the Muppets aren’t about selling toys and cereal. And—”
“The Muppets? Jesus, how can anyone be a cynic about the goddamn Muppets?”
“Forget it,” I said. “What were you gonna tell me that was gonna make me happy?”
“I told you already. The little guy from the park … he’s still alive. That was it.”
I didn’t believe that was it. I’d seen his surprise when he found out I thought Yogi was dead. But I let it go. “Thanks for the news.” I stood up. “And the beer.”
“Sit down, asshole.” He seemed more exasperated than angry.
“Ah,” I said, and sat down. “So what is it you want from me?”
“I can help you get your license back.”
“We already agreed that’s a bad idea. What is it you want from me?”
“Your friend—Yogi or whatever—even if he doesn’t die, somebody beat the shit outta him.”
“What is it you—”
“Shut up, for chrissake, will you? I’m gettin’ to it.”
I stared at him and suddenly couldn’t see the bastard I’d been talking to. I saw an old man, a tired old man who wanted something but couldn’t ask for it without telling me first what he could do for me.
“I’m giving it up,” he said, and I could barely hear him.
“What?”
“I said I’m giving it up.” He sipped some of his decaf. “Retiring. Walking away.”
“Why?”
He stood up and walked to the sink and emptied his cup into it. Then he reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out a bottle of Old Grand-Dad and refilled the cup. He took it back to his desk, sat down, and took a long drink of the bourbon. He looked at me. “You’re a private investigator,” he said. “That’s a clue.”
“Shit,” I said.
He nodded.
As far as I knew, except for maybe a late-night beer once in a while, Breaker always stuck to the regimen his doctors imposed. Now, apparently, there was no need. “What is it?”
“Prostate,” he said. “Malignant.”
“Surgery?”
“The heart might not be up to it.”
“Who knows?”
“My doctors.” He shrugged. “Now … you.”
“Damn.” On the one hand, I didn’t like Breaker. On the other hand … damn. “Why me?”
“I don’t trust anybody else.” The truth, I thought, was that he had nobody else to tell. “Plus, I got a job for you. A paying job. I want you to…” He hesitated, as though searching for words. “There’s someone I want you to put away.”
“Put away? That’s your depart—”
“Not kill. That’s too easy on him. I want him put away, in the fuckin’ shithouse, for a long time.”
“Good,” I said. “Then call the police, tell them what crime he’s committed. They’ll—”
“Very funny. Even if I had hard evidence of his crimes, which I don’t, I can’t go to the cops. They’d laugh their asses off and you know it. Anyway, what’s important to me is he’s been fuckin’ over someone I care about. I’m leavin’ his crimes to you.”
“So why should I be interested in his crimes?”
“’Cause I think he fucked you over a few years ago, too. He’s a cop. That’s why I want him locked up … so he’ll get special treatment from the gangbangers and animals. His name’s Kilgallon. Richard Kilgallon.”
“Jesus! I just talked to him today.”
“Really? Small world, ain’t it. And guess what … it’s gonna get even smaller.”
“Who’s Richie been— Who do you know he’s mistreated?”
“Somebody you know, too.” He stared at me. “A lawyer.”
“A woman lawyer?” When he nodded I knew who she was. “So,” I asked, “how do you know her?”
“She’s my granddaughter.”
“Stefanie Randle? She’s your granddaughter?”
“My only granddaughter. She doesn’t know me. That is, I’m sure she knows who I am, that I live in Chicago, the … uh … kinda work I do. But we’ve never met, never talked to each other.”
“She must be twenty-five years old. How old are you?”
“I’m … over seventy.”
“Damn, yo
u look young for seventy.”
“You think so, ’cause at your age you think even a guy who’s only sixty is old. Seventy is beyond your fuckin’ imagination.” He sipped some bourbon. “So I look good, okay. Physically, I feel good, too. So far. But I’m a goddamn dying man.”
“We’re all dying, Breaker, soon as we land on the planet.”
“You say that kinda shit pretty easy, y’know? But I don’t think you really feel it.” He swirled the liquid in his cup. “Me? I feel it. I wake up with it every day.”
I looked at my watch. “So you want Richard Kilgallon sent down to Pontiac or Joliet or somewhere, and you want me to see it happens, right?” He nodded. “But why should I? I can’t think of a goddamn thing I want from you in return.”
“My time’s runnin’ out. Maybe a year. Maybe a little more. But I got money I’ll never get to use. I’ll pay fifty grand.”
“Like I said, I can’t think of a goddamn thing I want from—”
“Plus,” he said, “I’ll take care of your friend … Yogi.”
“He’s gonna live or die. You can’t change that.”
“I’ll get him out of County Hospital, beyond the reach of whoever it was went after him. I’ll see he’s protected, gets the best medical care possible. And for you, fifty grand plus expenses. I want this fucker Kilgallon on his stomach over a bench in the shithouse.” He took another sip of the bourbon. “And I want him to know why.”
“I don’t suppose Stefanie Randle knows anything about this?”
“Hell, no. And I don’t want her to know. I got a will that’ll take care of her and all my kids and grandkids. In the meantime, they keep away from me and I keep away from them. But this here’s different. She’s a good kid. She shouldn’t have to suffer from a prick like him.”
“If you don’t have evidence of any crime he’s committed, what makes you think someone else can find something? And why me, in particular?”
“Because by trying to get your license back you been poking a stick in an old pile of dog shit everyone thought was dried out for good. Now it’s startin’ to stink again, and Kilgallon stinks along with it. He was part of the deal that put Jimmy Coletta flat on his ass for life.”
“Deal?” I asked, not believing for a minute that I could fool Breaker. “What deal was that?”
“Don’t bullshit me. I don’t know for sure what happened that night, but Lonnie Bright was a dealer, and anyone who actually believed things went down the way the cops said musta been smoking some bad shit. I think your boy Marlon Shades told you what happened. I think if you keep lookin’, you’ll turn up something that’ll buy one of them orange jumpsuits for Richard Kilgallon. And if you don’t find it by the time I feel myself slidin’ downhill … I’ll just kill the bastard myself.”
He went on to tell me how Kilgallon had mistreated Stefanie Randle. Most of it could have come out of the court file and transcripts from their divorce case—a continuing saga—but Breaker said he’d only recently found out how bad it had been.
The bottom line? Kilgallon was an asshole. Supporting another woman on the side for years. Terrorizing Stefanie with emotional and even physical abuse. And now he couldn’t be bothered paying support for his little girl, or even showing up for visitation days, until recently, when he started fighting like hell to keep Stefanie from taking the child out of state and starting a new life.
Kilgallon was using the legal system to be mean, selfish, and cruel—like a thousand other ex-husbands whose files you could read at the courthouse. Not to mention ex-wives. Not all of them, though, had a grandfather-in-law who listed bone-breaking, and occasional homicide, on his curriculum vitae.
“What if I say okay,” I finally said, “and you help Yogi and then I take a walk?”
“First, I know you, and you won’t do that. Second, you wouldn’t get your fifty grand.” He drained the bourbon from his cup. “Make it a hundred.”
I stood up. “I’ll think it over, call you tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to call,” he said. “And you don’t have to think it over. I already made up your mind for you. We got a done deal here.”
“Look,” I said, “dying or not, you can’t—”
“A done deal,” he said. “Did I mention the third reason you won’t take a walk?”
“A third reason?”
“Yeah. I’ll be gettin’ your little friend the best medical care money can buy.” He pushed a button under his desk somewhere, and I heard the door behind me unlock. “But I’ll know right where he is. You walk on me, Foley, and the little sonovabitch will be as dead as you been thinkin’ he was.”
So I had a done deal. With Breaker Hanafan … the loving granddad.
CHAPTER
19
THEODOSIAN’S CALL had gotten me going that morning before six o’clock, and I was tired. Still, it was Friday night, so I showed up at Miz Becky’s and gave it my best shot. But when the piano player can’t keep even the piano player awake, he should call it a night. I left about eleven and drove home. I must have been asleep in five minutes.
Maybe I dreamed about a man who met a woman who sent him on a search for a treasure he didn’t really want. The man started out, but the woman disappeared, so he was about to turn back when another guy came along and warned the man to give up and go home—or else—and the man got mad and kept going. There was a funeral then, and a magician came and said he could bring the dead person back to life. But first there was this task, you see, that the magician wanted the man to do.
I may have dreamed all that, or I may have dreamed only bits and pieces of it and then put them together when I woke up Saturday morning. Either way, the man in the dream looked like a fool. I got out of bed and had to go downstairs because I hadn’t gotten a plumber to install a new toilet bowl, thinking I’d just wait for an authentic replacement for my antique Expulso.
Even outside the dream, the man didn’t seem very smart.
* * *
AREA FOUR HEADQUARTERS was at Harrison and Kedzie, three miles straight west of the Loop—on what people call “I-290” if they’re just passing through, “the Eisenhower” if they stick around awhile, and just “the Ike” if they’re one of those traffic reporters with the information—always far too late—that it’s jammed up from downtown out to Iowa or someplace. Along the same route, but half the distance from downtown, was Cook County Hospital. I stopped there first. I wanted to talk to Yogi, and if he wasn’t there I wanted to find out whether he’d really been a patient … and whether he was alive or dead when he left.
The trauma unit seemed awfully busy for nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, but what did I know? People lay on transport carts or sat hunched over in plastic chairs, friends and family hovering around them, alternately comforting them and hollering complaints about how long it was taking. Meanwhile, medical staff hustled around with an apparent calmness that surprised me. Getting right to the clerk, behind the swinging door from the waiting area, wasn’t nearly as big a problem as hospital administration probably wanted it to be. Even my not knowing Yogi’s real name wasn’t as big a problem as it might have been if the hospital had had a real name for him, which they didn’t.
I described him and the clerk remembered him. She was middle-aged, with close-cropped gray hair, and seemed both sympathetic and efficient. She entered something on her keyboard, then looked up at the monitor that sat facing her on the counter between us. “He was transferred early this morning,” she said, “to … to another facility. I can’t say where.”
“I’m a close friend,” I said. “I’d like to—”
A cart crashed through the swinging doors, with one uniformed paramedic pushing it and another one holding an IV pole steady and trying to keep the writhing, moaning body on the cart from falling off. A tall, dark-skinned man in a white lab coat trotted alongside, ripping bloody clothing away from the patient’s chest and shouting orders that I probably couldn’t have understood even without the accent he had.
/> Right behind them came a short, very round black woman in a shower cap and a worn bathrobe. “Why you takin’ that man first?” she screamed, “when my chile been waitin’ almos’ a hour!”
The clerk in front of me stood up. “Mrs. Horton, you aren’t supposed to come—”
“Y’all know that ain’t right. My baby been—”
“Please, Mrs. Horton,” the clerk said. By then she was on our side of the counter and had one arm wrapped gently around the woman’s shoulders. “Your baby will be fine. We have to take the more urgent cases first.”
“Well, I…” The woman started to cry. “I know that, but…”
A security guard had arrived by then and walked the woman back out into the waiting area, and the clerk hurried back to her station. She sat down and looked up at me as though she couldn’t quite remember what I was there for.
“I was saying I’m a close friend of the patient.” I nodded to the computer monitor to remind her who I was talking about. “I’d just like to find out how he’s doing.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. She looked up at the monitor, frowned, then adjusted it and tilted the screen downward. “I’m very sorry,” she said, “but at the request of the patient’s next of kin, no information is available.”
It was a wash. She didn’t ask why a close friend didn’t know the patient’s name; and I didn’t ask how his next of kin got him transferred out without giving his name.
“Can I talk to his doctor?”
“Of course you can, sir,” she said, brightening a bit. “You’ll just need a signed authorization from the patient … or a court order.”
I was fresh out of both, so I moved on.
* * *
THE BUILDING AT HARRISON and Kedzie looked to be 1970s vintage, brown brick and tinted glass, with the Eleventh District police station on the first floor and Area Four Headquarters on the second. I went upstairs and found Area Four as friendly and hospitable as any other police station I’ve ever been in—which is to say I’d prefer a trauma center any day.
There were cops everywhere, dozens of them, coming in and going out. Mostly in plainclothes; joking, calling to each other in loud voices. A few were women, but even so a visitor—this visitor, anyway—felt as though he’d invaded the clubhouse of a close-knit, all-male fraternity. I had the feeling any moment a couple of wet, naked guys would dash through, whooping and whirling around, snapping towels at each other’s asses.
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