by Thomas Laird
My knees start to come together. I can’t bear to think about sterilizing Sonny.
“Would you consider mating him, in a few years?” I ask the sixty-year-old breeder.
“Sure. Just give me a call.”
“Can I get one of his pups for stud service?” I smile.
“Absolutely. That’s standard.”
I take Sonny home. He comes with a collar and a leash, and he has his tag for his vaccinations. He’s housebroken, also, Bill told me. He warned me, though, that border collies aren’t always good house pets and that sometimes they can become hyper-active.
When he gets home, the first thing he does is yank himself out of his collar and run down the street, away from me.
There goes two hundred and twenty-five bucks, I’m thinking. I run down the sidewalk after him, but he’s gone. I feel like bawling the way I did when Lila got clipped. Instead, I go back to my front porch and sit on the steps in this soupy August evening, and I wait and watch it get dark. I think about calling somebody, but the dog’s collar is still attached to the leash Bill gave me. It’d be almost comical except that I really wanted to take Sonny home with me.
Maybe it’s a message from God, it occurs to me. Maybe I’m supposed to be alone. It does seem to follow a pattern, after all.
Then after about ninety minutes of feeling my ass go to sleep on the stoop, here trots Sonny from down the block. I’m not sure it’s him at first, so I just sit there. But he saunters right up to me and starts slobbering all over me with his tongue.
“You took the tour, huh? You little jerk.”
He doesn’t take offense at the “little jerk,” so I slip the collar back over his head, and I walk him into my house.
I’ve got a fenced in yard, a six-footer, and I’ve got about a third-acre lot, pretty big for a city dwelling. I’m worried that Sonny might be a digger, but after three days with me, he’s king of the yard, and he becomes very territorial. He’s pissed up every square foot of the chainlink to show the other mutts in the hood he’s the man. He isn’t much of a barker, but he cuts loose if anyone approaches the house, front or back. Sonny’s my new security system.
He stays outside during the day. There are two maple trees in the back, so he has plenty of shade from the heat, but I never leave him out at night. If I’m working second or third, I leave him in the basement. Border collies are escape artists, Bill told me, so I have to make sure there’s no way he can bolt on another tour of the area. He’d have to be able to open the door, but the fucker doesn’t have thumbs, so I feel confident he’ll be there when I get back home.
There is still no record of Franklin Toliver tapping his bank account, so I’m thinking that Lila was right. He’s within the house or he’s within close range of the house. He has to be a nocturnal creature by now. His face has been too well circulated for him to bop down the pavement during the light hours. No, he’s more like a vampire—night time’s the right time.
The Vice guy, Al, has circulated his picture to all the pimps in his area, and Vice has spread the photo all over the city. If he does show a hair on his booty to a working girl, we hope they’re going to cooperate and drop a dime on Franklin. After all the publicity, you’d think they’d want him out of the way as much as we do. He’s cutting down on business, Al informs me. The girls are becoming very wary about getting into some dude’s ride and going anywhere remote with him. They’d rather do a standup in an alley, but a lot of johns aren’t up for quick pops like that. The girls tell them to go fuck themselves, so business has gone into a mini-recession, the Vice copper explained to me on the phone.
I don’t expect Franklin to return to his former hunting ground, and we did have that call from Waukegan identifying Toliver, but this guy might be thinking what I’m thinking. Isn’t that the idea in a battle? To think as your opponent thinks? We’ll have to see, if and when he pops up. Because where Franklin is is a bad place. I don’t mean his mother’s house. I mean his state of mind. It could very well be that he has the urge to kill very badly by now but he doesn’t have the opportunity. Again, the pressure cooker’s lid has to blow when the heat builds too high. The lid will fly explosively, and somebody’s bound to get really fucked up.
Bill O’Connor throws a first class funeral for his wife, Sharon. It’s no pauper’s grave for her, pardner. They go out to Woodland Springs, in suburban Oak Forest. The media is denied access inside the cemetery, but I’m not, when I show the badge. A cop’s shield is still pretty much “open Sesame.” We get in where others do not tread, even at fancy night clubs and trendy joints that have lines outside with ex-NFL players holding ropes to keep the petty middle classers out.
There are more than two hundred attendees standing here at gravesite. There are thousands of dollars of cut flowers stationed all around the grave. A Protestant minister does the service. It is brief and eloquent, especially since he probably never met the dearly departed.
I come to see the audience, the mourners. Frequently, a killer will want a last taste of the misery he’s caused and he’ll show up at the funeral. I have a photographer standing back in the trees about a hundred feet from us taking photos of everyone in attendance. I come personally, though, to take a look at the faces.
This time, I can’t make any connection to any of the people here. It’s not that I can make them as the perp just by sight, but there are occasions when gut instinct can prove helpful on a murder case. It’s not extra sensory perception. It’s nothing supernatural. But it has to do with body language, the way people pose themselves, sometimes.
Today nothing helpful occurs to me.
Until at the end, when I look squarely at the grieving husband himself. The problem is that there is no grief on his face. He holds himself as if he’s attending some kind of photo op. His face is blank, without emotion of any kind.
Some people display their grief in a host of different ways. Some cry, some become hysterical, and some freeze like Bambi in the headlights. There’s nothing but detached calm in Bill O’Connor’s demeanor. He’s either too good an actor, or he just doesn’t give a shit that his wife’s been brutally slain.
The other alternate is that he’s delighting in the moment. Perhaps he’s happy she’s out of the way. Maybe this is where he knew long ago the road would end for her.
He has an iron clad alibi. His staffers were with him during and long after the time of death. Their testimony to the cops who interviewed the two of them had no inconsistencies. They were right in sync with each other.
They’re all very good. Too good. The tracks are hidden too well. There are no cracks in the structure; everything’s neat and tidy.
I wish Lila were healthy enough to be here for me to bounce all this stuff off her to see what her reactions are.
I can see O’Connor doing Sharon or having her done. It wasn’t one of the three security men. We have their whereabouts established on video, and we’ve checked to make certain that the tapes have not been tampered with.
Then it’s got to be the doorman. He’s the only one left. He must have seen someone unusual come through that door in time to meet up, fatally, with Sharon O’Connor. Did Bill the Magnate of Television and Master of the Printed Slick Word have his old lady whacked? Did his two staffers lie about their boss’s whereabouts? They’ve been properly questioned once, but I think I’ll have to take a run at all of them—doorman, staffers and Big Boy Bill—all by my lonesome.
I spend my off time checking on Lila. She’s got two more weeks in the hospital and then three more at home. When I’m not phoning my daughter in DeKalb, I’m spending quality time with my Lassie (Sonny) Come Home.
He hasn’t tried to take off on me again, yet. I’m almost tempted to take him out front and let him off the leash and see if he has any rabbit in his legs, but I’m too attached to him by now to give it a test.
The Sun-Times has deemed it fit to publish my photograph and Lila’s in their newspaper. It isn’t ordinary for cops to receive such publicity, bu
t it isn’t worth the effort to go after them for pasting my mug in their paper. They’re just trying to keep the hookers’ murders alive in print, and it’s still selling copy. They’ve just taken the personal approach to the case. They’ve done biographies of all six of the women who were killed, presumably by Franklin Toliver or by person or persons unknown. They’ve done pieces on Lila and me.
Somehow they’ve got wind that I received the Bronze and Silver Star and four Purple Hearts, and all the detectives at work have been calling me “Superstar” until I want to douse all their lights. It’s all good-natured, I suppose, but what I did in the War is between me and the Department shrink. I’ve never told Kelly or Lila about the medals I have stowed in a suitcase in my closet in the bedroom, but now she’ll know, if she reads the paper. And I know she reads the Times and the Tribune.
When I receive a phone call from my daughter regarding all of the above, I know I’ve finally hit it, big time.
21
The doorman at O’Connor’s swank roost’s name is Frank Swanson. He’s been at the entrance of the place for eighteen years. When I bring him into Homicide, he is naturally very nervous about my star treatment toward him.
Frank is pushing seventy. He looks as if retirement has passed him by without his consent. So I think it’s about money. It must have been significant cash if he’s willing to hide evidence in a murder rap against his boss. Or, as I said, it could be a conspiracy, on O’Connor’s part. Whichever way it plays out, Frank Swanson’s in the shit if I’ve deduced all this correctly—there’s just no other way I can figure that a person known or unknown got past the doorman.
Unless Frank was goofing off, asleep or drunk, or both.
We sit in my office. I don’t want to talk to him in the interrogation room because I want this to be more like Pearl Harbor, a sneak attack. He’s facing the window behind me, and he’s staring out into the Loop. He’s basically bald, with a red fringe along the perimeter of his dome. The hair is scruffy, and he needs a haircut. I’m big about hair because I’ve retained something close to a GI cut ever since I returned to The World. Kelly and Lila both rib me about its shortness, but I feel like a slob when it grows out too long.
You’d think a guy who works the door at a hot stuff high rise on Michigan Avenue would be more alert when it comes to his grooming. He’s growing a bit of a stubble with his beard, also.
“How you doing, Frank?” I ask.
“Not bad. Not bad,” he mumbles.
“You feeling okay?”
“Oh, I’m good, thanks.”
“You need coffee or a pop?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“You look a little pale, Frank.”
He shoots me a look that acknowledges that I’m fucking with him.
“I just don’t know why I’m here.”
“You’re here regarding the Sharon O’Connor murder.”
“I figured it’d have to be about her, but they already questioned me, more than once.”
“Loose ends, you know? It’s all very routine stuff, Frank. I thought you’d rather come down here to talk than do it at your job, no?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“No. I don’t think you killed Mrs. O’Connor,” I smile broadly at the old guy.
He returns the smile rather weakly. I’m wondering if he really is sick. But we go on to the end.
“What can I tell you I haven’t already, Detective Mangan?”
“Were you sick the night Mrs. O’Connor was killed, Frank?”
“No. I was okay, that night.”
“You drink, Frank?”
“Socially.”
He winces with “socially,” just slightly.
“You drink heavier, sometimes?”
He watches me carefully.
“You mean like New Year’s Eve and stuff?”
“I mean maybe more often than that.”
He looks back out the window, averting my gaze.
“Frank. Look at me, Frank. Were you drunk that night?”
“I wasn’t—I wasn’t drunk. I’d had a few at my lunch break.”
“Who watches the door when you take your breaks?”
“Nobody.”
Swanson squirms in his chair, across from me.
“So anyone could just walk right in?”
“No. I lock the door and they have to ring the bell that gets me in the little break room I have off the lobby.”
“You ever forget to lock that door? Or maybe forget about answering the bell?”
“No. Not once. Not ever. I’d get canned.”
“You need this job, Frank?”
He starts to avoid my eyes by glancing side to side. It’s as if he feels trapped and he’s looking for a way out of my office.
“You sure I can’t get you something to drink, Frank? Anything?”
“I could use coffee.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black,” he replies.
“Sugar?”
He shakes his head as if I’ve knocked him down and picked him back up again so I can knock him down again. I’m not enjoying myself at all, but I can’t let him off the hook now.
I go to the break room to get his coffee. It’s just down the hall. I wait a few beats at the coffee maker, and then I walk back slowly to my office.
He’s standing by my window. The windows don’t open in this building because we have climate control. I’m wondering if he was thinking about taking a nosedive out of here.
But then he returns to his chair and sits down.
I hand him the paper cup of black coffee, and he sips at it.
“So you weren’t loaded on the night Mrs. O’Connor had her throat slit.”
He grimaces as he tries to take another sip.
“He hung her upside down, like you would if you slaughtered a pig.”
“Oh my—“
“That wasn’t in the papers, Frank. You never saw the body, did you.”
“No. I never.”
“It was pretty terrible. You fight in Korea?”
“No. I had flat feet and high blood pressure. I still do.”
“You got a shitty job for a guy with flat feet,” I tell him.
“I get to sit down when it’s slow, and I got medication for the BP.”
“That’s good. You take a rest the night she got killed? You sit down for a while?”
“I probably—“
“You maybe could’ve nodded off? Just for a minute. Just for a minute?” I grin.
His forehead is beading with moisture. I don’t have any hot white lights on him, just a couple of fluorescents, on the ceiling. My desk lamp is unlit.
“No. I would’ve remembered crapping out. I don’t do that.”
“They pay you medical insurance on this job?”
“No. I’ve got Medicare, though.”
“Doesn’t pay all the bills, though, right?”
“Sometimes.”
I watch him sipping his coffee carefully. Our brew is extraordinarily hot. It’s scalding. We all make jokes about dumping a cup on our crotches and suing the Department, but no one has ever given it a shot.
“How many medications do you take, Frank?”
“I don’t see—“
“You don’t have to see, Frank. How many medications?”
He looks up at the ceiling, up at my lights.
“Uh, five. Yeah, five.”
“All those for high blood pressure?”
“I take something for the gout, too.”
“What kinds of meds?”
“Something to control my blood pressure. Some stuff to help the blood flow. Like that.”
“How much does Medicare cover?”
“Maybe half.”
“So how much do you have to pay monthly, Frank?”
“Detective—“
“How much?”
“Maybe a hundred, a hundred and a half.”
“That sounds like a big bite. Especially on your salary.”<
br />
He nods.
“They big tippers at your place?” I ask him.
“Some of them. Not all of them.”
He tries to sip his coffee, again. It’s still too hot, so he can only get a taste. Otherwise he’ll fry his upper lip.
“How about Bill O’Connor?”
Now he has a look of recognition in his eyes. He knows where I’m going.
“He’s a very generous man.”
“How generous?” I ask Swanson.
He ponders the latest question.
“Maybe a hundred on the Holidays. A fifty, here or there.”
“It’s not like he can’t afford it, right?”
He grins sheepishly.
“No. He can afford it all right.”
“You know what happens when guys withhold evidence, Frank?”
He doesn’t answer.
“They go to jail. And if you go to court and perjure yourself….Shit, now you’re talking about getting in the shit very big time.”
“I didn’t withhold anything, Detective.”
“I know. I heard you. But I’m just saying. What do you owe Bill O’Connor, anyway? Is he worth jail time?”
“I didn’t withhold anything, Detective, I swear to God, I didn’t.”
“I believe you, Frank. I just want you to know the score on this thing. I find out you weren’t totally forthright and honest and up front, I have to come after you. And the guy I should be harassing doesn’t give a shit if you take the fall instead of him. I know you didn’t have anything to do with Sharon’s death. Not directly. But if you lied for O’Connor or for someone who works for O’Connor, it’s almost like you helped cut her throat yourself. Now maybe that sounds a little dramatic or melodramatic, but that’s the way it is. Because if you’re helping somebody out on this thing, if you even looked the other way or something, you’re an accessory to murder, and that is some serious shit you don’t ever want to wade into, Frank.”
He puts the cup back onto my desk.
“I think I might need a lawyer,” he says. His eyes twitch just visibly.