Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Why should we?” Johnson whirled, grabbed the photo of the cigarette smoker and shoved it in Sinkovich’s face. “You people do this.”

  Sinkovich held his position. He didn’t even unclasp his hands. “I never did nothing like that.”

  “No?” Johnson glanced at me. “Bill tells me you enjoyed doing riot control at the Democratic National Convention. You beat college students with nightsticks.”

  The color drained from Sinkovich’s face. “And I can’t stop thinking about it. I dream about it every night, the way that stick sounded when it hit a kid’s head. I could feel the shot move in my glove, scraping my fingers, when I punched somebody. I sat up most nights smoking because I couldn’t sleep, then the wife took my cigarettes away. Hell, I still can’t sleep. Then Grimshaw here, he tells me that I violate people’s rights all the time, and now all I’m trying to do is help, and my wife steals my kid, and you guys treat me like I’m the goddamn enemy.”

  He grabbed the photograph out of Johnson’s hand and stood so that they were eye to eye. “I would never, ever, violate a person like this. It’s wrong. I don’t care if I hated the dead guy for doing something to me personal, I’d never ever do this to a corpse. You can’t just blame me because I’m the only white guy in the room.”

  “Why the hell not?” Johnson asked. “That’s what you people do to us.”

  “That’s enough.” I stood, grabbed the photographs and stacked them. “I didn’t bring these pictures out here so you guys would start reenacting Birmingham. I brought them because of what Sinkovich said about Hucke. If he’s a precinct captain, then he’s got friends on the force, right?”

  “If some precinct captain tried to hide some murderer’s trail,” Sinkovich said, “no cop would cover for him.”

  He was still glaring at Johnson, who hadn’t moved either. I put my hands between them and pushed them apart.

  “Concentrate, Truman,” I said. “We have a dead woman on our hands and she’s the tenth victim that we know about.”

  Johnson didn’t seem to hear me. “Maybe the problem’s the definition of murder. Any man who would do that to a corpse doesn’t see the victim as human.”

  Sinkovich moved away from us. “Give us some credit. There’s something else going on here.”

  “What could that possibly be?” Johnson asked.

  I frowned, let my hand fall. “Delevan said something yesterday.”

  Both men looked at me.

  “He was fighting me, saying no one would deliberately kill Foster. But after a while, he got nervous. It was pretty clear to me that he knew his neighbors were capable of beating someone to death and calling it an accident.”

  “He said that to you?” Johnson asked.

  “Not quite that plainly, but yeah.”

  Sinkovich nodded. “If these cops think someone they know is involved, and they think it’s accidental, then they’ll cover it.”

  “Especially if the victim isn’t human,” Johnson said.

  “Even if the victim is white,” Sinkovich said.

  They stared at each other.

  “A knife wound isn’t accidental,” I said, “and it was really clear that Foster wasn’t beaten.”

  “But by the time they found that out, they’d already mucked up the corpse. See, guys who beat up black guys, if they’re good, they don’t go for nothing that’ll show. They’ll fight dirty, break some ribs, but stay away from the face,” Sinkovich said.

  “Like you used to do?” Johnson asked.

  “I never did nothing like that,” Sinkovich said.

  “Except at the Convention.”

  Sinkovich’s shoulders drooped and he stopped looking at both of us. After a moment, he said, “Guess I done all I can here, Grimshaw. I’m gonna head back. You need something, you call.”

  “Stay, Jack,” I said.

  Sinkovich shook his head. “I’ll catch ya later.”

  And then he was gone.

  I whirled toward Johnson. “Jesus, Truman, we need him. He has connections that we don’t have. He can go in and out of that neighborhood with no problem. He can talk to people and they’ll talk back without being suspicious.”

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you believe that little sob story, but I don’t. How do we know he’s not just passing our information onto all his little buddies from high school?”

  “Why would he do that after last week? After all he’s been through?”

  “To get back in their good graces.” Johnson said this so flatly that I knew he believed it.

  “Look, Truman, I think he’s actually been going through some kind of change. He had no idea I was working this when he stopped here last week. And he has been extremely helpful.”

  Johnson shook his head. “Sometimes your idealism surprises me, Grimshaw, it really does. You look down the ass-end of humanity and come up with gold.”

  I didn’t like the analogy. “I don’t think you understand—”

  “No.” His voice was firm. “I don’t think you do. Chicago’s not Memphis. We have a long-standing tradition of graft and corruption. Either you flow with it or you lose.”

  “Do you flow with it?” I asked.

  “I ignore it a lot,” he said, “and when you ignore it, it ignores you. But when you buck against it, you could get killed.”

  “You’re saying that’s what happened to these people?”

  “No, I’m saying that with a precinct captain involved—”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “—and the appearance of some police involvement, the stakes have gone way up. You ever hear of Benjamin Louis?”

  “No,” I said, feeling wary.

  “Louis was one of Daley’s house niggers. Daley still has them, aldermen who say, ‘Yasuh, Mistah Daley,’ and ‘Nosuh, Mistah Daley,’ and never once think about the people they represent.”

  I crossed my arms. I was beginning to hate the way people kept telling me that I didn’t understand Chicago.

  “At the end of sixty-two, Louis starts believing his own press. He starts easing the white precinct captains out of the ward. Some say he was talking about keeping a larger share of the ward’s gambling money, but I don’t think Louis was that smart.”

  “Gambling money?” I asked.

  Johnson held up a finger to keep me quiet. “Next thing you know, Louis is murdered, found in his office handcuffed to a chair with three slugs in the back of his head.”

  “Mob hit,” I said.

  “Looked that way, but no one got arrested. And the white precinct captains stayed, and control stayed in the hands of those guys who always had it.”

  “You think Daley did that?” I asked.

  “Mayor Daley.” Johnson gave me a cold smile. “Mayor Daley denies that any of this goes on, and I think he actually believes that. He knows about the machine and uses the machine and turns a blind eye when it makes a mistake.”

  “So did he give an order and turn a blind eye?” I asked.

  Johnson shook his head. “Daley’s too political for something like that. He must have been mad, though. Someone wasn’t thinking. There was a tight mayoral primary coming up in a few weeks, and this created a minor stink. Not a major one because, as the Democrats kept saying, ‘Thank God Louis wasn’t a white guy.’”

  “Why am I supposed to care about this right now?” I asked.

  “Because it shows that those precinct captains have a direct route to the seat of power. If we bring any one of them down even by implication, we’re attacking the mayor. He’ll quash us like nothing. He’ll throw me and Sinkovich out of uniform and find a way to get rid of you without touching you at all.”

  “We don’t know that this guy Hucke covered up anything,” I said. “We’re making assumptions.”

  “I’m making an assumption,” Johnson said.

  “And you warned me about that just this morning.”

  He nodded. “But I know how this city works, and even though this isn’t evidence that’ll stan
d up in court, it more than convicts Hucke in my eyes.”

  “Not mine,” I said.

  “So you’re going to go after him.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to meet him and his neighbors, and treat them all like suspects. Maybe that’ll lead us to the real killer. Or maybe it’ll just eliminate them and force us down a different route.”

  Johnson leaned against my stove and crossed his arms. He looked like a professor about to chastise a student who hadn’t studied. “What will you do when you get your proof?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Let’s say I’m right. Let’s say Hucke is covering for someone. Hucke represents the entire machine, and he’s not going to let go. Who will arrest our killer?”

  “You,” I said, “Maybe Sinkovich.”

  “Why?” Johnson asked.

  “People are dying, Truman.”

  “Black people, Grimshaw. They die every day. Why should we care?”

  If I hadn’t known that he did, I would have been shocked at his tone of voice. I knew he was baiting me.

  “Because this is murder, Johnson. Murder on a large scale, and someone’s got to care.”

  “There it is again,” Johnson said. “You’re staring down the shit hole and expecting to find gold. Where did that idealism come from? You should know better.”

  “Stop patronizing me,” I snapped.

  “I’m not,” Johnson said. “I’m just telling you that we can’t do anything. If we get evidence and we find out that Hucke has been covering for our guy, then no one will arrest him—or if I do, I’m done, out of this job, finito. And I like to think that I do some good on occasion. Not all the time, but some of the time.”

  “What about the FBI?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable as I did. I hated the FBI, but they had their uses. However, if they were on any case, I’d have to make sure Jimmy and I stayed far out of their way. “They’re supposed to look at multiples.”

  “The Chicago branch of the FBI?”

  “C’mon,” I said. “Not everyone in this city’s corrupt.”

  “Not everyone,” Johnson said. “But some of us are practical. No one connected with this town will go after anyone who is protected by a precinct captain. Not even the high and mighty Tribune. The Defender might, but no one in government or anywhere else cares what the Defender prints. More paranoia from the Negroes, they’ll say, and that’s what it’ll be.”

  “So we let this go on?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice.

  “That’s one choice,” Johnson said.

  “You sound like there’s another,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “How do you know our copycat’s gone?”

  My breath left my body. I felt it disappear, like I felt the warmth leave my skin. Johnson had known, even though I never told him, that I had killed the man who menaced Jimmy and Laura. I had had no choice. In the year of assassinations, I too had become an assassin.

  And it wasn’t a role I cared to repeat.

  “Be clear,” I said.

  Johnson tilted his head slightly. “I’m just saying that no one would care if a slimeball like this got taken out.”

  “Not even his cronies in the government? Not even the mayor?”

  Johnson shrugged. “Stuff would leak about him, just like it did about Louis. Someone would assume that the last victim turned the tables and killed the killer instead.”

  “Or they’d investigate and find the man who took him out.”

  “Not if that man was good at moving around,” Johnson said.

  I stared at him, unable to believe what he had just said. He was encouraging me to kill another human being, and him a cop, a cop whom I had mistaken for a good man.

  “You can get out of my house,” I said.

  “Grimshaw, look—”

  “Jesus, Johnson, I came to you for help. I came to you because we have a problem we need to solve legally. And then you throw this at me.”

  “Sometimes that’s the only way,” he said.

  It certainly had been for me last August. But I had arrived to find Laura’s and Jim’s lives in danger. I had acted in the heat of the moment, not with the cold, rational calm that Johnson now had.

  “Sometimes it is,” I said, “but not this time. We haven’t explored all our options yet.”

  “Explore, then,” he said. “You’ll see that I’m right.”

  I shook my head. “I thought you were a cop.”

  “I am a cop.”

  “A cop who wants a vigilante partner on the side, some killing machine he can let loose when he’s afraid the system will fail him.”

  “The system will fail us,” Johnson said. “You know that. No one’s going to care about these people and no one’s going to act.”

  “So I should?” I said. “Every time I find injustice against black people, I should take matters into my own hands because you’re not strong enough to fight the system that you’re part of, the system you claim to believe in? Do you know what you’re asking?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “No, you don’t.” I took a step toward him. He actually stood up straighter. I must have looked menacing. “You’re asking me to become no better than this nameless, faceless creature who is out there murdering people for God knows what reason. I’m sure it’s rational to him. I’m sure it makes perfect sense, and I’m sure he believes the system would fail him, too.”

  “It’s not the same,” Johnson said.

  “Isn’t it?” I asked. “Tell me how it’s different.”

  He stared at me. His mouth moved, then he shook his head. “These killings can’t continue.”

  “So stop them, Truman. That’s your job.”

  He shook his head slightly. “You know, I thought I’d finally found someone else who knew what we’re up against every day, every moment of our lives. Someone who actually had a sense of the way the world works.”

  He pushed off the stove and walked toward the coat rack.

  “But?” I asked.

  “But I should have realized how naïve you are when I found out that you and Franklin Grimshaw were related. You still think the system works sometimes.”

  “You sound no different than that Black Panther I heard a week ago Saturday,” I said.

  Johnson shrugged on his coat. “Sometimes,” he said, “the revolutionaries have a point.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I WAS STILL SHAKING with fury as I drove to pick up the kids. When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw that the playground was full of young Blackstone Rangers, their red tams dull in the twilight gray. They seemed to be having some sort of rally, although I couldn’t see a speaker. They didn’t seem to be threatening anyone else, even though part of me wished they were.

  That same part of me wanted to vent this anger, to let it loose and do harm while also doing good.

  In essence, do exactly what Johnson was suggesting.

  Jimmy and the Grimshaw children were not outside. I had to go inside the school to get them. They were watching the playground through the window, the expression on their faces the same—fear.

  I had no solution for any of this, save a fantasy one in which I waved my arms and all things were equal—schools, justice, friendship. But I didn’t have that power. No one did. And I couldn’t think of any place to go to find it.

  Jimmy saw me and smiled. He didn’t hug me, although I could see him check the impulse in front of Keith. The boys moved the younger children forward, and they all marched in a clump toward the car, just like Franklin and I had instructed them.

  No one on the playground noticed. It was as if we weren’t even there.

  I stopped at the Grimshaws’ when I dropped off the children. I wanted to talk to Althea, to thank her for taking over every time I’d asked her to. As yet, I didn’t know how to repay her or Franklin, but I would think of something.

  For the sake of my own pride, I would have to.

  As I followed the children to
the door, Malcolm came down the walk. His eyes twinkled as he caught my arm and kept me from going inside.

  “I found it,” he said.

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I found the watch.”

  Even after he had clarified, it took me a moment to remember. He had found the watch that the Stones had stolen from Gus and Van and then pawned. Even though I had given him the assignment ten days before, it seemed like an entire lifetime ago.

  “Are you sure it’s the right one?”

  “It matches the description,” he said. “Besides, it was in the pawn shop near the Stones headquarters on Sixty-seventh. Word is they use it a lot.”

  “Word?” I asked.

  He grinned at me. “I still have friends in low places, Smokey.”

  “The kids see the watch yet? Have they confirmed it?”

  “No,” he said, his grin fading. “And we have another problem, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The watch is selling for fifty dollars, no negotiation.”

  “None? It’s a pawn shop.” My stomach sank. I couldn’t afford fifty dollars for a good deed. Not right now.

  Malcolm nodded. “I got him down from seventy-five, but he won’t go lower. The guy behind the counter wasn’t acting like it was his idea.”

  I sighed. “All right. But I don’t want to take the boys down into Stones country. It doesn’t seem safe.”

  “There’s lots of little kids there,” Malcolm said.

  “All wearing suns, I’ll bet.”

  “Most.”

  I shook my head. “Let’s see what we can do first. If we need Gus or Van, we’ll bring them back.”

  “All right,” Malcolm said. “You want to go now?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have to take Jimmy home. I’ve been imposing on Franklin and Althea too much as it is.”

  “I don’t think the watch’s going to be there long.”

  “At fifty bucks, it will be,” I said.

  Malcolm moved closer to me. “I think a couple of Stones have their eyes on it. I think if they push hard enough, they might get a gangland discount.”