Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  Out east, Frankie Yale’s bribery of the coastguard meant boats full of liquor were making their way down the coast each week from Canada, filling the city with premium alcohol, so much so that Yale’s warehouse in Brooklyn was over-stocked with the stuff. The agreement the two men had made was for Capone to buy any of Yale’s excess booze, and have his men drive it cross-country to Chicago, a six-day trip across the back roads.

  ‘The last six months, more and more of Capone’s vans are getting hijacked on the way back from New York,’ explained Small. ‘And Capone thinks Yale’s behind the hijackings. A few months ago he sent Jimmy “Files” D’Amato out to New York to look into things. You hear what happened to him?’

  Dante nodded. ‘He was shot dead in the street outside a Coney Island crap game.’

  Small shrugged. ‘So you can understand that the situation between the two cities is a little tense. And in the middle of all that, the poisoning happens. And if Capone suspects New York’s behind it, then he didn’t ask you to Chicago to investigate the poisoning—’

  ‘He asked me here to keep me hostage in case a war gets declared between him and my friends back east,’ said Dante, finishing the governor’s statement for him.

  The governor nodded. ‘You asked me why the news might upset you, boy, and there it is – your position in Chicago looks precarious at best.’

  Dante nodded again, his head spinning. He knew Yale and Capone had struck the agreement, and he knew D’Amato had been shot dead in New York earlier that year, but he hadn’t connected the two events, and he knew nothing of the hijackings that were supposedly plaguing the New-York-to-Chicago route. If all that the governor was saying was true, then Dante had been stabbed in the back not only by Capone, but by his colleagues in New York, too.

  It suddenly made sense why Capone had called him out west – there wasn’t any irony in the job he’d been tasked with, and certainly no coincidence. Capone had planned it all, and Dante’s friends in New York had let him go. He rubbed his temples a moment, wishing he could smoke a cigarette.

  ‘You got the details of the hotel the trigger was staying in?’ he asked.

  ‘And why should I give those to you?’ asked Small.

  ‘Because you still don’t really know who’s behind it all. And even if it was New York, you were one of the men poisoned, and last night they killed your bodyguard. So I’d say it’s personal now for the both of us.’

  ‘And in return, you’ll give me any information you find?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Before you give it to Capone?’

  ‘If it turns out I’ve been double-crossed, sure.’

  Small stared at him, and as Dante waited for a reply, he noticed he was drenched with sweat.

  ‘Very well,’ said Small eventually. He took a receipt from his wallet and wrote down the name and address of the hotel, then he passed it to Dante, who looked at it and frowned. The hotel was in the Northside.

  ‘Moran territory,’ said Small, reading Dante’s thoughts. ‘Where can I reach you?’

  ‘I’m staying in the Lindbergh suite at the Drake.’

  Small nodded and Dante rose and Small looked at his plate.

  ‘You didn’t eat your steak, boy.’

  ‘I’ll take it with me.’

  When Dante returned to the street, he put the steak on the sidewalk outside the Blackhawk and the dog bounded out of the open window and tucked into it.

  Dante watched a moment, then lit a cigarette and tried to arrange his thoughts. Was it his friends in New York who were behind the poisoning? Had Capone called Dante back to Chicago to be held hostage, maybe tortured to reveal information on a plot he knew nothing about, maybe killed and dumped in a hole somewhere in the endless plains?

  Then there was the trigger, in town to tie up loose ends. He’d killed Corrado, who’d been investigating the poisoning too, which meant he’d probably be coming after Dante next.

  And then there was the fact he’d just agreed with the governor to double-cross Capone.

  He took another drag on his cigarette and thought about leaving town, getting in the Blackhawk then and there and driving off. But if he did, he’d have Capone hunting him for the rest of his life, and maybe his ‘friends’ in New York on his tail as well.

  As the dog tore into the steak, Dante stood in the sunshine and glare of the street, wondering what the hell his next move should be. The feeling of dread that had hung over him since he’d arrived in the city got worse, making his heart beat faster, sapping his strength, making him wonder if he wasn’t already a dead man.

  PART FIVE

  SECOND CHORUS

  ‘You can kid about Chicago and its crooks, but they have the smartest way of handling their crooks of any city. They get the rival gangs to kill off each other and all the police have to do is just referee and count up the bodies. They won’t have a crook in Chicago unless he will agree to shoot at another crook. So, viva Chicago.’

  WILL ROGERS, LETTER TO THE

  NEW YORK TIMES, 1928

  Chicago Herald Tribune

  THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEWSPAPER

  TWO NEW BOMBS RIP THROUGH CITY

  Total number of bombings in the city this year up to 65

  (Picture on back page)

  BY JAMES O’DONNELL BENNETT

  A bomb was detonated just after midnight in the West Side last night at the Druggists’ Co-operative Photo Service, 2641 Congress Street. The bomb tore away the frontage of the store and broke windows in buildings a half a block either side of it, though fortunately the building itself was empty and no one was injured in the blast. Warren Avenue police were inclined to believe the bombing to be caused by labor disputes. The damage was estimated at $1,500.

  Following that, at nearly 2 a.m., a second black powder-bomb blast took place at the ice-cream plant of A. Giancane at 1510 Taylor Street. Retaliation for the slaying of Edward Divis, West Side gangster, was thought to be the motive this time, according to Maxwell Street police. The blast was loud enough to be heard in the Loop.

  These new blasts bring the total number of bombings in the city this year to 65, with total damage estimated at over $50,000, dashing citizens’ hopes that the city had seen an end to the spate of bombings that marred the run-up to the so-called ‘Pineapple Primary’ Republican election in March – which saw over 60 bombs going off in the six-month lead-up to the election, including blasts at the houses of the City Comptroller, the Commissioner of Public Services, the Secretary to the State’s Attorney, Judges Swanson and Sbarbaro, and most notably, Senator Deneen.

  G. L. Hostetter, executive secretary of the Employers’ Association, which has been tracking the numbers, said in a statement that half of the bombs were directed at businesses, suggesting labor and union unrest as the main cause, the other half being caused by personal or gang vendettas, protection rackets, and racial turf wars. The use of bombs for terrorization by anarchists – a phenomenon which has plagued recently, among others, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia – was not cited as a reason in any of the Chicago bombings.

  ‘Bomb making and throwing has become a professional occupation, carried on by a syndicate whose services are for hire,’ said Hostetter in the statement issued by the association last week. ‘Bombs may be bought and “serviced” – that is, thrown – wherever directed.’

  Of all the areas in the city, Halstead Street, between Irving Park Boulevard and 63rd Street, saw the most violence, with 12 bombings already this year, leading the association to name it ‘Gunpowder Row’.

  24

  Jacob awoke to the noise of the phone, its dull metal ring penetrating his sleep with a knife-like sharpness. He got up, rubbed his eyes and rushed into the living room to pick it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jacob? This is Pete Geary down at the Twenty-second station. Frank Lynott said you were on the lookout for female shines, mid-twenties?’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Jacob.

  ‘One just popped up in Bridgeport.�
�

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Nope. Deader than a pharaoh. She’s causing a blockage in the Sanitary and Sewage Canal. The assignment’s hot. You want it?’

  ‘I want it. Where on the canal?’

  ‘Just past South Fork, keep going and you’ll see it.’

  ‘Thanks, Pete.’

  Jacob slammed down the phone and rushed to get ready for another long and blood-painted night. He was on the street in less than four minutes, jumping into a cab at the rank a couple of blocks from his apartment in less than seven. It was only when he settled into the back of the taxi that he thought to check the time on his Hamilton – three forty-two a.m. Jacob sighed and leaned his head back and watched the city flash by, night-lights streaking into the darkness behind him. The taxi made good time as the streets were empty, save for a few vagrants and drunks and clutches of lonely souls waiting at the tram stops to catch owl cars back to the suburbs.

  When Lynott had searched the Bureau of Identification for Roebuck’s missing cabaret-dancer girlfriend and come up blank, he’d put a note in the daily bulletins to the stations for people to be on the lookout for anyone turning up, dead or alive, who matched the description. It had been a couple of weeks since then and Jacob had heard nothing on the missing girl or the dead stooge and despite his best efforts to pursue other avenues, his investigation had stalled. Until now.

  After a quarter of an hour he was passing through Bridgeport and by the time he was crossing the river at South Fork, Jacob could see arc lights shining along the southern bank of the canal, police cars, a crowd of cops. He told the cabbie to head for the commotion, and when they got close, the cabbie stopped at the top of the bank and Jacob paid him and walked down toward the lights, making swift progress along the mud, which had been dried hard as macadam in the summer heat.

  By the time he reached the crowd of people at the bottom of the bank, Jacob’s clothes were drenched in sweat, as if the moonbeams themselves were sending down heat. He looked for brass and saw a detective he knew from the division who he guessed was in charge. Jacob walked over and greeted him. The detective eyeballed Jacob a moment before nodding and walking off to confer with two patrolmen who were standing behind an arc light they’d set up on the roof of one of the cars, sending out a beam across the waters.

  Both the men were holding handkerchiefs to their faces against the smell coming off the water. The canal had been built in the previous century, partly to provide a shipping link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes Waterway, mainly to whisk away the city’s industrial waste, sewage and abattoir run-off, causing the waters to run thick with animal blood, offal, entrails, excrement, and dregs from the city’s forges.

  Between the edge of the bank and the canal itself were yards of swampy, dangerous-looking ground, studded with refuse and high weeds. The beam of the arc light, lemon yellow in the gloom, darted across this wasteland to a spot in the middle of the canal where a tiny island of mud rose up from the rushing water, and the naked body of a Negro girl was half submerged.

  Jacob studied what he could see of the corpse a moment, then turned to see a young man standing nearby, maybe an assistant Coroner’s physician, who was also staring out across the hellish landscape. The young man noticed him looking and turned his way.

  ‘Who made the call?’ asked Jacob, wondering how she’d been spotted in the middle of the night in the middle of the canal.

  ‘Anonymous tip-off,’ said the young man. ‘The dam controllers in Lockport opened up the causeways in the afternoon and the water level’s been dropping all night. Enough to reveal her. We’re just waiting for the men from the Sanitary District to come and get her out.’

  Jacob nodded and the man turned back to look westwards, away from the city. Jacob followed his gaze into the darkness on the horizon, where every now and again, far in the distance, the sky was lit up by balls of flaming methane bursting into the night from the tower-like chimneys of the forges outside the city, forges that produced steel twenty-four hours a day. The effect was unsettling – the quiet and darkness, then the fiery flash, impossibly high and far away, as if a dragon was laying waste to the land.

  A few minutes passed and then there was the sound of an engine, and Jacob and the man turned to see a van arriving with Sanitary District of Chicago painted onto its side. Two men got out, spoke briefly to the police, then dressed themselves in boots, overalls and face masks. One of the men strapped a harness to himself, and the other man connected it to the towbar of the van, and with a weariness and efficiency born of having repeated the procedure hundreds of times, the man with the harness waded out into the filthy swamp, placed a rope around the body and dragged it back.

  When the body was eventually schlepped onto the bank, the whole crowd of onlookers came by to inspect it. Patches of the girl’s skin had been bleached by the industrial chemicals dumped into the canal. The parts of her exposed to the air – one side of the face, one arm, one breast, one thigh – were a light-toned brown, the rest a sickly shade of pallid white, the two different colors swirling around each other in a bizarre marbling effect. One of the Coroner’s men retrieved a bucket of water from somewhere and when he poured it over the body, washing away the brown sludge from the canal, the effect was even more pronounced, and everyone, even the battle-hardened men from the Detective Division, stood staring silently at it.

  Aside from the swirls of bleaching, other marks of damage were strewn all over the girl’s naked body; bruises and cuts from where she had tumbled along the canal; sodden, flaking skin; the bites of insects, fish and gulls; the neck, cleanly broken with the head pushed back at a sickening angle; rope marks from where a weight had been tied to her to keep her body underwater; and lastly, two holes where her eyes should have been, both clogged with canal water, either plucked by a bird, or ripped out by a rat, or gouged out like her boyfriend’s, by Anton Hodiak.

  Jacob stepped back from the crowd, unsure if this was the dead man’s girlfriend or not. He took the menu from the Sunset Café out of his pocket, comparing the healthy-looking dancer to the crooked-limbed, bloated body in front of him. It was her, much transformed. From the feature bill at the Sunset, to the chorus line at the Chicago’s Greatest, to a lamentable death in a sewerage canal.

  Jacob returned the menu to his pocket before anyone spotted it, and then the team got to work. The Coroner’s men conducted a quick examination, after which Jacob took photos. He’d packed his Leica into his messenger bag, a portable 35-millimetre camera that didn’t need film plates or a hefty tripod or a flash lamp since, as he’d hoped, the patrolmen had turned their arc light onto the body for him.

  As he worked he stayed close to the detectives so as to overhear what was being said. The consensus was that the girl had been dumped further upstream, somewhere near the mouth of Bubbly Creek, where the Chicago River turned south and joined with the start of the canal. She’d been dumped tied to a weight, hence the ropes around her ankles and wrists. But after a few days in the water, her body had somehow slipped free, and began its journey west. The detectives discussed sending patrolmen up to the creek to canvass for witnesses at first light, and they bemoaned the fact that the killer had chosen such a desolate dump site.

  Bubbly Creek was closer to the city, but it was an area of factories, populated at night by vagrants and the desperately poor, who lived by the side of the waterway in crumbling brick buildings, lean-tos and shacks. The place had gained its name decades earlier, when firms in the Stockyards dumped waste into it at such a rate that all the blood, offal and entrails in it combusted and let off carbonic gas, causing the surface to bubble and steam like some pit of hell.

  Jacob thought a moment, and looked again at the corpse, at the nicks and bruises and the broken neck the Coroners’ men said were caused by its trip down the canal. As fast as the canal rushed, there was no way it was powerful enough to break her neck like that, so cleanly, so forcefully. Jacob thought a moment, something registering on the edge of his consciousn
ess, a memory of a similar injury he had photographed once.

  An hour later, as they were all finishing up, the memory finally materialized. Another murder victim, another woman, dumped off the Adams Street Bridge the previous year. The killer had dropped her body head first off the bridge and her neck had broken in the exact same way when it hit the water. Jacob tried to think of bridges upstream from where they were. And then it came to him – the Ashland Avenue Bridge. It passed right over the canal, between where they were and the creek. The police would be looking for witnesses in the wrong place. If he was quick, he could steal a march on them.

  25

  Michael and Ida’s investigation into the disappearance of Gwendolyn Van Haren continued with them canvassing around the train station where she’d gone missing. They’d made a map of the blocks Gwendolyn could have run down based on the route the cab had taken, then they’d been up and down them in the sweltering heat, hour after hour, going into shops and kiosks, showing the photo, asking if anyone remembered the beautiful heiress who’d gone on the run. They’d gone back in the nighttime too, but still no one had seen a thing.

  In the daytime, they continued to check the hospitals, jails and morgues, but she hadn’t turned up there. Her fiancé and his friend, Lloyd Severyn, were also still missing. None of their known associates could be found for questioning. And as far as they could tell, the girl’s father was still out of town. They’d run background checks on everyone who worked at the house and they’d all come up clean. They called their colleagues in Montreal, figuring maybe she’d got to her destination via a different route, but their colleagues north of the border had no trace of her being in the city.