Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

“Saul Epstein nearly died.”

  “And I didn’t touch him. That was Bruiser.”

  “You thought you’d teach the girl a lesson.”

  “It got out of hand, man, like you said. Okay? But I didn’t leave no bodies in Coontown.” His eyes widened as soon as the word came out of his mouth.

  It took every ounce of my self-control not to hit him. I stood up, and without saying another word, walked out.

  I was shaking and I wanted to put my fist through the wall. Actually, I wanted to put my fist through his face, tear him up the way his friend had torn up Saul Epstein.

  But I made myself keep walking until I found the stairs. I went down them two at a time, my steps echoing on the metal floor, until I reached the main level. Then I walked to the emergency room.

  It was astonishingly quiet. A nurse sat at reception and an ambulance was parked outside the door. Through the open door to the back, I could see another nurse reading a magazine.

  I walked around the desk and through the door. The receptionist was yelling at me, but I didn’t care. I kept walking until I saw Marge Evenrud.

  “That’s him,” I said as I crossed the tile floor.

  She hurried toward me, making little shushing motions with her hands.

  “Did you recognize him?” she asked when she reached me.

  “Oh, yeah. Call the cops.”

  “Great. You can wait—”

  “I’m not waiting for them. You tell them that they asked to see anyone who was burned. Elaine, Saul, Mrs. Weisman—any one of them can identify him.”

  “But—”

  “Thanks, Marge. I’ll talk to you again when I’m calmer.”

  Then I pushed open the emergency-room doors and stepped into the cold, gray afternoon, knowing that if I didn’t get out of there quickly, I’d head back up to the fourth floor and vent all of the rage that I’d been feeling on one wretched little bigot’s face.

  THIRTEEN

  I CALMED DOWN SOME on the drive back to the apartment, which was good, because the moment I pulled in front of the building, a police car pulled in behind me.

  I cursed, then put my hands on top of the wheel, keeping them in plain sight. I had no idea how long the cop car had been tailing me. I’d glanced in my rearview mirror as I drove home, but I hadn’t seen anything. Of course I’d been so furious that it was entirely possible that I missed the car altogether.

  Footsteps approached and then a cop in plainclothes blocked the light through the driver’s side window.

  “Grimshaw,” a familiar voice said, “you are the most paranoid son of a bitch I ever saw.”

  I looked up. Jack Sinkovich was peering into my window. His pale skin was ruddy with cold and his nose dripped. He’d grown a thin mustache since I’d seen him last. It didn’t flatter him.

  “Come on out,” he said. “I gotta talk to you.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at the patrol car. No one else was in it. I grabbed the handle and opened the door slowly. I didn’t entirely trust Sinkovich. We’d worked together on a murder case the previous summer, but I knew he’d also spent the nights of the Democratic National Convention with birdshot in his gloves, beating college students for exercising their constitutional right to free assembly.

  I stood up, towering over him slightly. The last thing I wanted to see right now was a white man, particularly a white cop. “What is it, Sinkovich?”

  “Ain’t you prickly,” he said. “You see the Walker report?”

  He was referring to Daniel Walker’s report on the Convention, the one that called the events a police riot.

  “It seemed pretty fair to me,” I said.

  “Me too.” He didn’t meet my gaze.

  I studied him, surprised. Those two words were a peace offering. The last time I had seen him, I had yelled at him for his part in the riots.

  Still, I wasn’t going to give him much ground. “What do you want, Sinkovich?”

  He tilted his head to one side, gave me an aw-shucks shrug. “Hear you’re a big hero.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Word gets around. You saved some old lady and her kid in Rogers Park.”

  “That’s what they’re saying, huh?” I asked, feeling the anger start to swirl again.

  “Yeah.”

  “ ‘They’ being cops?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned, as if he approved of what I did.

  “I saved an old lady, her grandson, and his girlfriend.” I spoke softly. “His black girlfriend.”

  Sinkovich whistled. “No one mentioned that part.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” I slipped my hands in my jacket pocket, felt the note crinkle, and said again, “What do you want?”

  His smile disappeared. “Can we talk somewhere?”

  “This is good enough,” I said, not wanting to take him into the apartment.

  “I been thinking a lot about this and it’s just not right.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Only I’m in that proverbial—you know—rock. Hard place. So I thought of you.”

  The afternoon’s chill increased. “You’re going to have tell me more than that, Sinkovich.”

  He nodded, then glanced down the street. “Look, can we go inside? I am damn cold.”

  Then I realized what his problem was. He didn’t want anyone to know we’d had a conversation. Now I was curious.

  “All right,” I said, “but the lobby echoes. We’re going up to my apartment. It’s been a hell of a day, so no cracks about the mess, huh?”

  “Deal.” He almost sprinted inside. I followed more slowly, wondering what I was getting myself into.

  He waited by the door. I pulled it open and let us both in. The lobby lights were on, giving the place a yellow look. No one was on the stairs, but I heard a television set blaring a soap opera from a nearby apartment. It felt like I’d lived a week since Jimmy left this morning. It was hard to believe that it was still the middle of the afternoon.

  I led Sinkovich to the apartment. I unlocked all three deadbolts and shoved the door open, the scent of sour milk even worse than it had been before. I flicked on the overhead light and pulled off my coat.

  The radiator clanked in the corner, giving off too much heat, just like it always did in the afternoon. I opened the window leading to the fire escape, and then leaned against the couch, arms crossed.

  Sinkovich closed the door and looked around. “Nice place,” he said with no irony at all. “No offense, but I’d heard most of the apartments in this part of town were holes.”

  “Most of them are,” I said.

  He nodded, then looked away again.

  “So what’s this problem?”

  “You been down to my neighborhood, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ve been to your neighborhood. Remember? Your wife wanted to throw me out and one of your friends called to make sure I wasn’t robbing you blind. I like your neighborhood, Sinkovich. It’s got such community pride.”

  His flush deepened. “That’s just it. Things are changing down there. Lots of houses being sold.”

  “Lots of white people are moving out?” Of course they were. If they were moving out in Delevan’s neighborhood, they were moving out of Sinkovich’s too, which was a mile or more to the north.

  “Yeah.” He hadn’t met my gaze since he came into the apartment. “We got ourselves a neighborhood association and everything.”

  I almost made a sarcastic comment; then I stopped myself because I actually heard him. Was he going to talk to me about Foster? If so, how did he know I was working on the case?

  He ran a hand over his blond crewcut. “I don’t like what I been hearing, you know, Grimshaw?”

  He was serious and upset. I knew there was a good cop mixed in with the bad in Sinkovich. I felt, ever since I’d met him, that the two of them were at war.

  “There’s this new family,” he said, “just a few doors down from me. One of yours.”

  “Mine?” I asked, raising m
y eyebrows.

  “Shit, you know. Colored. Black. Whatever I’m supposed to say nowadays.”

  “Black, Sinkovich. You’re white. I’m black. See how simple that is?”

  “Who put a bug up your ass?” he snapped, suddenly.

  “Oh, I think it’s been there a while,” I said.

  “Forget it.” He spun, headed for the door, then stopped, bowed his head, and sighed. “Goddammit, Grimshaw, you’re not making this easy.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to make easy, Sinkovich.”

  “That family.” He turned, leaned against the door as if it gave him strength. “The neighborhood association, they been telling them to get out, you know. Tried to buy them out, tried to talk them out of the deal. Tried to keep them from moving in.”

  I was cold, despite the clanging radiator. “Are you a member of the neighborhood association, Sinkovich?”

  He shook his head. “Believe it or not, Grimshaw, I kinda have a live-and-let-live attitude. Figured it was the Olsons’ right to sell the house to whoever they wanted. Sometimes you get neighbors you don’t want, and sometimes they turn out okay. You can’t predict this stuff in advance.”

  He sounded sincere enough and he looked troubled. I sighed. “What brought you here, Sinkovich?” I asked, without the edge this time.

  “I got word—I know folks in the association. I mean, I lived there my whole life. My family’s been on that street forever. I grew up in that house.”

  It had been painfully obvious the one time I had been there. Sinkovich’s house had been filled with furniture older than he was, furniture that hadn’t been moved in generations. And there were photographs of Sinkoviches on the wall that seemed to go back half a century or more. At the time, I had found it reassuring, proof that Sinkovich wasn’t living beyond his means, wasn’t a cop on the take.

  I still believed that, as angry as I had gotten at him last August. He’d always seemed honest at his core.

  He leaned his head against the door, the pain evident on his face. “They’re planning to burn them out, Grimshaw. Make it look like a Christmas-tree fire or something.”

  I didn’t move.

  “We’re talking a family here,” he said, his voice pleading. “They got little kids.”

  “Who’s planning to burn them out?” I asked.

  “The association.” He blinked, then looked up at the ceiling as if he had to focus somewhere else. “They say they warned them. But I don’t think you give warnings for this kind of thing, Grimshaw. I think the fire’s the warning. They’re trying to let your people know to stay out of the neighborhood.”

  This time, I let the “your people” pass. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to the family,” he said. “Get them out of there. That’s what you’re good at, right? Taking care of things? I thought maybe if you got involved, then no one’d get hurt.”

  I was so dumbfounded that for a moment, I couldn’t say anything. I shook my head once, let my arms fall to my sides, and then shook my head again.

  “What’s wrong with this picture, Sinkovich?”

  He frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Which one of us in this room is the cop?”

  He smoothed his mustache with his finger. His eyes were shadow-lined, and his lips were chapped. He’d been biting them.

  “Look, I don’t dare get involved,” he said. “This is the best I can do.”

  I snorted and shook my head. “Having me tell them to forfeit the house or get burned out? That’s the best you can do?”

  “The association, most of them are friends and family. And at work, you know, there ain’t much sympathy for guys who cross over.”

  “Cross over the color line?” I asked, not sure I understood him.

  He nodded. “Guys with you guys as partners get shit all the time. And then there’s the whole rat-fink aspect.”

  “Of telling on your friends.”

  “They’re gonna know it was me. I was at the last meeting, begging them to reconsider everything, telling them it wasn’t right. I had to sleep on the couch for a week after that. My wife, she don’t like the changes at all.”

  My stomach was churning. I felt no sympathy for him. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the day I’d had or if it was because I didn’t completely understand his dilemma. The answer to it seemed very clear to me.

  “You were at the meeting,” I said.

  “Yeah.” His flush had grown deeper.

  “Where they planned the arson.”

  “I didn’t have nothing to do with it, Grimshaw, I’m telling you.”

  “What does the law say, Sinkovich? If someone dies in a fire, and that fire was arson, what happens to the folks who were there for the planning session?”

  “I keep telling you! I didn’t plan it.”

  “But if you didn’t stop it, what would the law say then?”

  “I’m trying to stop it,” he said.

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “You want me to stop it by giving the association what they want.”

  “Come on, Grimshaw, this is serious. There’s kids in that house.”

  “Yeah, there are,” I said. “In their home.”

  He stared at me.

  “If this were a white family, what would you do?”

  “If it was a white family, this wouldn’t be happening and you know it.”

  “But use that limited imagination of yours, Sinkovich,” I said. “What if it was?”

  “Shit, Grimshaw,” he said. “It must be easy to be you. So fucking holier than thou. I come here for help.”

  “And I’m giving it to you. You heard a group of people plan arson. That’s illegal. Do something about it.”

  “I’m telling you, I can’t.”

  “Because you put your own standing in the community ahead of people’s lives, Sinkovich.”

  He closed his eyes and tilted his head sideways, his lips pursed. After a moment, he managed, “That ain’t fair.”

  “The truth usually isn’t.”

  He opened his eyes. He looked small and trapped. “You ain’t gonna help me, are you?”

  “You can handle this better than I can,” I said. “Catch them in the act. Send out a squad, some cops you don’t know.”

  He let out a small sigh. “You know how many of these things happen with the force’s approval? Huh? They go by, they see what’s going on, they stop, find out what it’s about, and drive the fuck away. Like I’m supposed to trust them.”

  “Welcome to my world, Sinkovich,” I said softly.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a fucking bitch. If I do this, I won’t be able to go home no more.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, remembering the driving that Jimmy and I did after Martin died, looking for somewhere to go, gradually realizing that Memphis would no longer be home. “I know.”

  He yanked my door open and pointed at me. “If that family dies, Grimshaw, it’s on your head.”

  Then he slammed his way out. I leaned against the couch, sliding it on the thin carpet. Maybe it would be on my head. I hadn’t even asked the family’s name. I had no idea who they were.

  I was about to go after Sinkovich when I heard a car start. I looked out the open window. The patrol car was driving away.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, echoing Sinkovich.

  I went to the phone and dialed the Grimshaws’. Althea answered. “Franklin in?” I asked.

  She must have recognized something in my tone, because she got him immediately.

  “Smokey?”

  “Franklin, I just got word there’s a black family who moved into the Bush who are being harassed by a neighborhood association. The association is planning to burn them out.”

  “Who are they, Smoke?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t get their names. But they moved in somewhere around Eighty-seventh. Can you use your connections, find out who they are?”

  “I’ll do what I can,
” he said, and hung up.

  I’d done all that I could as well. I sank onto the couch, put my face in my hands, and wished that this long, ugly day would finally come to an end.

  FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, we were nearly done with breakfast when Jimmy told me that school had been pushed back half an hour. I didn’t believe him, of course. I thought it would be a good way for him to avoid the Stones and being seen by his friends as he was escorted to school.

  It wasn’t until he found a crumpled and battered note in his school clothes informing parents of the changes that I accepted what he had to say. He got mad at me, and I didn’t blame him.

  I was still furious from the day before. I’d spent half of the night awake, trying to figure out if there was somewhere else I could take Jimmy, somewhere safe where we wouldn’t have to watch our backs every moment of every day.

  I couldn’t come up with anyplace. Small towns were too small, too white. And every large city in the country had problems like Chicago’s.

  I used the extra half hour to clean up the apartment and make a few phone calls. Delevan still didn’t answer, and neither did Mrs. Weisman. I had wanted an update on Epstein.

  So I called Marge Evenrud at the hospital. I apologized for my attitude the day before, and she had said she understood. The police, on the word of Mrs. Weisman, had arrested Owens and moved him to the hospital wing of the Cook County jail.

  At least that problem had been taken care of.

  Even with all of that, Jimmy and I still got to Franklin’s fifteen minutes early. The exterior of the house was covered in Christmas lights. Malcolm was wrapping an evergreen shrub in even more lights, looking like he was having the time of his life.

  “Hi, guys,” he said as we came up the sidewalk. “They’re finishing breakfast inside, Jim. I bet if you hurry, you can get some sausage.”

  “Thanks!” Jimmy said and ran for the door. As he pulled it open, I said to Malcolm, “That was the most effective dismissal I’ve ever seen.”

  Malcolm grinned at me. “I’m still young enough to know how to appeal to a kid.”

  “I’ll ignore that,” I said.

  He put the last few lights on two boughs, then let the electric cord trail to the sidewalk.