While driving home I wondered why a guy with a load of cash would stay at a slum like the Jackson. A prison cell was five-star compared to the Jackson. After lucking out with a parking spot only three blocks away from my place, I walked past Tasty Harmony and waved at the guys who kept me properly nourished. As expected, two packages waited outside my apartment. Seconds after picking up the bags, I heard the thump of Punim’s paws hitting the floor before she ran to the door.
From one of the bags, I took a plastic container of small animal organs and dropped a few into Punim’s bowl. While she dug in, I fell into the recliner, tore into my sandwich, and replayed the day’s events. On one hand, there wasn’t much I liked about Eddie. His heartbroken aloofness annoyed me. Go back to Jersey and suffer in silence if you want to act like a tragic hero. However, I couldn’t deny that the bankroll and his lousy first impression made me pretty damn curious. On the other hand, I liked what I’d learned about Tanya. She was cute in a blue-collar kind of way. And she was smart. In my book, curious people are smart because they want to learn. I found this incredibly sexy, combined with her working-class sensibility. I wondered what she saw in a jerk like Eddie.
—
Unlike many of Chicago’s historic enclaves that have lost their ethnic flavor, the Near West Side neighborhood of Greektown had maintained its culture primarily through food and festivals, the popularity of which had helped foster gentrification. For prices starting in the mid-$300,000s, one could buy a condo in the surrounding blocks and live only steps from a Hellenic gastronomic paradise.
And then there was the Jackson Hotel. The stench of urine and tobacco greeted me in the lobby. A skinny man with sunken eyes sat behind a glass counter, holding a comic book in trembling hands. I stood at the counter several seconds before he blinked a few times and looked at me.
“Yeah?”
“I’m looking for someone. You got a guest register?”
“No.”
The last surviving quaalude addict was my guess. “Cool. Then I think I’ll just walk around and see if I can find him.”
Ten stories made up this horror hotel, but I chose the stairway over the ancient phone booth of an elevator. Shouting Eddie’s name down the hallways of shabby carpeting, cigarette butts, and dead roaches, I felt not the least bit self-conscious. Besides the occasional grunt or television chatter behind closed doors, there was no sign of life. By the seventh floor I started wondering if Eddie gave me this number as a ploy to avoid unwanted attention—like a real control freak might do. As I opened the door to head up to number eight, I heard my name shouted from the lower part of the stairwell in that unmistakable Jersey accent. I shouted back, “Meet me downstairs,” and began my descent.
Once in the lobby, Eddie Byrne showed not the slightest expression of surprise or contrition for putting me through this trial. “He told me you were lookin’ for me,” he said.
I put a twenty on the counter and thanked Quaalude Man. “You gave me the front desk phone number because you don’t have a cellphone?”
“Nah. Don’t need one.”
“C’mon,” I said and pulled Eddie by the arm outside. “Why the hell are you staying in that dump?”
Eddie looked hurt. “It ain’t so bad! You shoulda seen where I been livin’ the last three years. How would you like a roommate takin’ a crap five feet from where you sleep?”
I guessed having a room to yourself was an incomparable luxury. “Okay, sorry. How the hell did you expect me to get ahold of you? You think that walking-dead phantom behind the counter was going to take messages for you?”
“I was gonna call you. Why you so mad?”
“You’re getting a cellphone just so you can talk to me. When we’re done working together, throw it away if you want.” I dragged him down the street to the first discount appliance store I saw and bought a prepaid phone. A burner, the criminal element called it. He took it without complaint. Then I suggested we find a place to talk. We ended up in a Greek coffee shop. They served us dark brown sludge and a plate of white cheese, olives, and cucumbers. A small sampling of the bitter goo convinced me to forgo any ambition of developing a taste for it. Eddie took several sips, each a little larger, as if defying the flavor, challenging it to defeat him.
I said, “You had no contact with Tanya during the final six months of your prison stretch. Right?”
He sipped. His mouth no longer puckered from the flavor. “Yeah.”
“I spoke to a guy who worked with her.”
He looked alarmed. “Just workin’? Was he datin’ her?”
“They were friends. Nothing more.”
Serial killer face returned. “How do you know? Where is this guy?”
“Listen to me, Eddie. You have to fucking grow up if you want my help. If I say they were just friends, then believe me. If you can’t, we’re done. And if I thought they were more than friends, I would’ve said so. Got it?”
Back to street kid. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Mr. Landau.”
I let several moments pass, hoping Eddie would snap out of his pathetic posture. “I’m going to tell you what I believe are facts. And you’re going to have to deal with it like a big boy. Tanya’s friend said the owner used to flirt with the chicks—including Tanya. One time he saw Tanya sitting in the boss’s BMW. That doesn’t mean anything, but we have to look at this equation. You know what I mean?”
“No. What?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “You grew up in Newark?”
“Irvington.”
“A white boy in Irvington? Must’ve been rough,” I guessed. “How’d you land there?”
“My dad was born there and never left. The neighborhood changed but we stayed. It was just the way things were.”
“Tanya too?”
“A few towns over. Not great but nothin’ like Irvington.” He looked around, drummed his fingers on the table.
“You don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?”
He thought about it a second then shrugged. “Nobody ever asks me nothin’ about myself.”
“What I mentioned earlier—the equation. Hear me out and then tell me if you think it’s crap. For the first time, Tanya breaks away from the working-poor world she’s always known. She gets a job in a bar with upper-middle-class young people. She sees they’re really not too different from her other than their education, some money in the bank, and probably parents to fall back on if things go south. It feels good to go home with a pile of cash every night. The boss starts hitting on her. He’s way too old for her and she doesn’t take him seriously. Still, she notices the nice cars, his clothes, he probably has a great place in Lincoln Park. See where I’m going?”
He looked pained. “I don’t see her goin’ with some guy just ’cause he had money.”
“Okay. But it’s the only thing I got to go on until we find more people who knew her. Tell me again, who told you she worked at a wine bar in Chicago?”
Eddie pushed his chair back a couple of inches and then looked around again. “Her friends from home.”
“Is she still in touch with these friends?”
“Nah. They don’t know nothin’.”
“You mind if I ask them—”
Angry Eddie appeared. “They don’t know nothin’! And don’t go pokin’ around there neither.”
I paused to let the words hover in the space between us. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to walk in one direction and you’ll walk in the other. Then you’re going to think about whether you really want me to find out what happened to Tanya. If you decide my services are in fact desired, you will call me and tell me so. Your admission will serve as an agreement that you will never again bark orders at me. If you break that agreement, our association will immediately end—and, yes, I will keep all the cash you gave me.”
I walked out without looking back.
—
Home for the evening, leaning back in the recliner, I wondered if I needed more vices. Guys like Eddie had plenty of vices, including
self-destructive qualities that required guys like me to pretend to be tough. Maybe stupidity was my vice. Acting tough when it didn’t come naturally or even feel good. Sadly, SOBs like Eddie respected strength. The top motivations for stupidity: money, sex, obsession with younger women. What else did I have to go on? Would Tanya Maggio have been seen sitting in an older man’s beat-up Oldsmobile?
Eddie’s call came sooner than expected. “Hey, Mr. Landau, I’m really sorry—”
“What’s up, Eddie?”
“I didn’t mean to sound like a dope. I mean, you got a job to do and that’s why I’m payin’ you. And I need your help. You don’t gotta worry about me no more. And I promise I’ll keep payin’ you. You don’t have to worry about that neither.”
“Why did you freak out at the thought of me talking to Tanya’s New Jersey friends?”
“Well, it’s just that you’re a stranger and they’re kinda tight over there….”
Eddie spent the next ten minutes stammering about why I wouldn’t be welcome in his native sandbox, suggesting that for my own good, I should stay away. A juncture had been reached, one that shouted for me to drop the case. Every cell in my body waved a red flag while the shadowy, impetuous, stupid side of me delighted at the prospect of a plunge into the unknown.
“I appreciate your input on my well-being, but I’m going to do what I want to do whether you approve or not. You still want me on the case?”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s fine. I’m not tellin’ you what to do or nothin’. I’m done with that. Okay?”
“Hold on to that cellphone. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to someone from back East.” I hung up before he could respond.
Doug had wanted to convert his yuppie pub into a snobby wine bar. Across the street, a café with a frog played violin on a chunk of Camembert. I fell asleep thinking about French cheese.
Chapter 5
By the time I got to Pâtisserie Grenouille the next morning, most of the tables were already occupied by someone reading the paper or eating a crepe. Classical music played softly as the patrons enjoyed their organic French-roast fair-trade coffee.
The woman behind the counter appeared intensely preoccupied while she wiped down the machinery and put various components of the coffee-making trade away. Several times she held up a shiny metal object to study it before deciding where it should go. When she noticed me, she quickly wiped her hands on her apron and apologized. Her nametag said Brenda.
“We just had a rush,” she said with a self-conscious giggle.
Brenda’s crow’s-feet betrayed an otherwise youthful face. She looked at me wide-eyed, waiting for me to say something. “How’s the cheese business?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Oh, we have lots of cheese. I make cheese crepes every morning—”
“I was just kidding.”
“Wait here,” she said and dashed into the back, returning with a crepe on a plate. “First-time customers get a free sample.”
The joyful anticipation of Brenda’s expression left me no choice. “I never eat cheese crepes alone,” I said. “But you’re probably too busy—”
“No, actually, I just have one rush in the morning. Mostly the same people. The next busy time won’t be until the light-lunch rush.”
She showed me to a table and said she’d be right back. I watched her chat with the other patrons while collecting dirty plates on a tray. An old man with a bushy white beard and a black beret watched her from a table against the far wall. He pushed his chair back then slowly stood and carried his plate to her. She thanked him warmly. He doffed his cap to reveal his bald head and walked out. When she returned, her eyes moved back and forth between the crepe and my face. I pushed the plate to the middle of the table. “We have to share. If I eat, everybody eats.”
She took a fork and cut off a piece. I cut off the end, managing to avoid any cheese. “I think I’ll use more lemon in tomorrow’s batch,” she said.
“Is it worth being open every morning just for a handful of regulars?”
“Oh, yeah, well—I don’t know. They’re so loyal. I mean I don’t want to let people down. I love so much to cook for others—duh! And you meet so many people in this business. Are you new to the neighborhood?”
I told her my name and put a card on the table. When she read it her eyes widened again. “You’re a private investigator? Really? I’m Brenda Gallagher, by the way. I own this place, if you hadn’t figured that out.”
“Did you know the guy who owned the pub across the street before it became the fancy wine bar?”
Her face returned to the distracted demeanor I’d noticed when I first walked in. She studied the tablecloth a moment and then gazed out the window toward the Auvergnat Vin Bar. “Yeah, I knew Doug Daley,” she said, cutting off another piece of crepe. Saying his name seemed to elicit pain.
“What about the staff? Did you know any of them?”
She nodded. “A few of them. We used to have after-hours parties on Friday and Saturday nights.”
“Did Doug attend the parties?”
“Yeah, at first. He kidded around with the girls. He liked gory magic tricks, like in the movies. I remember one time Doug pretended to push a knife into his stomach. Ugh. Then we would chat, just the two of us at a different table. He was very interested in learning about French wine. He thought if he could attract the pricey wine crowd it would be mutually beneficial to our businesses.”
I took out the picture of Tanya. “Did you ever see her?”
“Oh, yeah, she was a sweetie. Is she in trouble?”
“What do you remember about her?”
“I remember her well because she didn’t drink, so I would make her a cup of cocoa. Once in a while she would join me outside for a cigarette, but she was trying to quit so I discouraged her.”
“You and Doug became friends—or more?”
Brenda sighed. “It’s none of your business, but I thought he was interested. We spent a lot of time together—”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to figure out Tanya’s whereabouts. An old boyfriend of hers seems to think she’s gone missing.”
“Doug hung around only during working hours or after he closed the bar—duh! I’m not good at reading people. You’re probably really good at reading people, aren’t you? Since that’s your job.”
“What changed your mind about Doug?”
“His wife.”
“He’s married?”
Brenda gave me a conciliatory smile and nod. “Right? See what I mean? I should’ve seen it. Not all married men wear rings.”
The more I heard about Doug Daley, the sharper he came into focus. Brenda’s vulnerability to a man who shared a common interest in French wine would have been hard to resist. He wanted to learn, she had the knowledge. Doug had no problem using people, even if he hadn’t mentioned he was married. But she would’ve still needed to shave ten years off her age to have had a chance.
“How did you find out he was married?”
“Margot started coming into the pâtisserie for an occasional glass of wine. We got to be friends. She often referred to ‘her husband’ and I had no idea it was Doug until she showed up at one of the after-hours parties.”
“How did Doug’s employees react to her presence?”
“Hard to say. I was so shocked and upset, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“If you don’t mind, Brenda, was Doug a real hunk or what?”
Loud laughter. “Oh, yeah. Well, he was nice looking, in good shape. Not very tall but still GQ handsome with a full head of grayish hair with streaks of white. He always looked me in the eye when he spoke, like he was really interested in what I had to say.”
“I heard he was doing fine with the microbrews and that his desire to turn the Webster Avenue Saloon into a snobby wine joint tanked his business.”
Brenda considered my statement. “Yeah, I don’t know. You should probably be one or the other. Did the wine thing ruin his business? I can’t say
. He just kind of sold out and hit the road.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“I never saw him again after he shut the saloon down. And since the accident, Margot hardly ever comes in—but she’s still around.”
“What accident?”
Brenda looked surprised. “You didn’t know? I’m sorry. Doug was killed in a car wreck early last month, in New Mexico. Margot showed me the article.”
I sat back in my chair and tried to absorb the significance of Brenda’s words to my case.
“What do you mean ‘but she’s still around’?”
“Margot lives down the street. She’s been kind of reclusive since the accident. Her windows are always lit up at night.”
“Can you show me the building?”
Brenda stood and motioned for me to follow her out the door to the sidewalk. “See that rounded room with the dome roof sticking out? That’s her place.”
Chapter 6
It was one of those buildings that made you wonder what the hell people had been thinking. A classic Victorian transformed into a red-brick rectangle, sprouting bay-window lesions. Margot Daley’s apartment included the lesion that faced Webster Avenue. Despite the intercom system, I was instantly buzzed through. At the top of the first flight, her door was halfway open.
“Mrs. Daley?” I called out.
“Call me Margot,” I heard before she came into view.
Once upon a time she had been breathtakingly beautiful, a redhead who hushed a crowded room upon entering. Older now, she was still pretty, with a smattering of gray streaks and a few vertical lines around the lips that did nothing to take away from her elegance. Sunlight streaming through the bay window revealed a spacious mustard yellow apartment and walls decorated with French impressionist prints. An expensive-looking lamp sat on what looked like a fancy grand piano. Oriental rugs covered the floor. I found myself drawn to the multicolored paper butterflies adorning the chain to the attic door.
“The butterflies help me forget there’s a dank loft up there.”
I said, “Persian on the floor, Tiffany on the baby grand?”
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