“Whoa, hold on a minute, Mrs. Fairs. How could an accountant working for a small company get away with something like this without a partner noticing?”
She seemed to sag. She looked out the window and shook her head and then decided to go fishing for another cigarette. When she seemed to be having trouble locating one, he leaned forward and shook one up from his pack, then lit it for her.
“They made it easy for him, Mr. Whelan. They had him making all kinds of…of dummy transactions. They even had a second ledger to use for audits when they went in for another loan. Brister got to play all the games he wanted with their numbers, and he had no trouble at all taking money out.”
“I see.”
She gave him a cynical smile. “Oh, you haven’t heard anything yet.” She nodded slowly. “He took out hundreds of thousands and then he left. Right about the time things were really beginning to come apart for the company. I think it’s what put everything, you know…”
“Over the top? Yeah, I bet it did. But you implied a couple of minutes ago that Rich Vosic was involved in this, that he ‘knew what he was doing’ when he hired Brister.”
“It was his idea. And the way it all turned out, I think it’s obvious he was behind it.” She took a puff on her cigarette.
Whelan thought for a moment and then said, “Do we know whether he really left town or did he go on a prolonged bender? Did he clear out his bank accounts, sublet his apartment, cut off his utilities?”
She gave him an odd look and the hint of a smile appeared around her lips. “You have experience in these things.”
“It’s what I do.”
“Well, Brister did some of the things you mentioned, but not everything. The police did look into that but said there was no evidence that Brister had anything to do with my husband’s ‘suicide’ other than being a factor in it. They said he closed his bank accounts and took the money out in cash.”
“Large amounts or small, did they say?”
“Small. They said there was nothing out of the ordinary in his bank records, no large deposits or withdrawals.”
“Could’ve had other accounts. What else?”
“Well, Phil told me he’d heard that Brister might be relocating to the coast. Seattle. That’s where he was from originally.”
“Is there any evidence that that’s where he went?”
“Yes.” The blue eyes took on a little color now and Mrs. Fairs nodded in satisfaction. “He bought a one-way ticket. First class,” she added as though it was significant.
“And were the police able to track him down in Seattle?”
“Phil found out about the plane ticket himself. The police were never called in about the money. Rich never pressed any charges against Brister.” She smiled slightly. “It was very nicely done; I’m sure Phil wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway. If he’d lived.”
Whelan nodded. “I guess not. They had books they couldn’t hold up to the light and they were saving a few bucks from Uncle.” There was a certain justice to it, a perverse beauty—a pair of well-heeled high rollers conning dozens of underwriters and investors and then an accountant cleaning them out.
“But none of this really points very convincingly to Rich Vosic as the man behind the swindle.”
She gave him a long look intended to work as a dramatic pause. “Two years after my husband’s death, Rich Vosic has a small empire going, Mr. Whelan.”
“So what? You’ve already told me what a bright guy he was, and he’s had two years—careers are made and undone in ten minutes at the stock exchange, Mrs. Fairs. There’s nothing surprising about him making it again.”
“With what credit, Mr. Whelan? With what money? George Brister left the company with almost nothing in the way of ready cash, and the firm had nothing that wasn’t already tied up in collateral. No money, no credit, and not much of a reputation after word got out about Phil’s alleged suicide and Brister’s getaway.”
“I don’t claim to understand business, Mrs. Fairs.”
She puffed at her cigarette and gave him the look of someone who hasn’t played a hole card yet.
“Mr. Whelan, Rich Vosic owns another software company, he owns an enormous house in Lincoln Park, one in Melrose Park, a condominium on the Gold Coast, buildings in several neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, and a very large Rush Street bar. On paper he owns these things in partnership with his younger brother, but Rich Vosic is the owner of everything. Everything.”
“So the banks went along with him.”
“No. The banks don’t wait for their money, Mr. Whelan. I don’t know what he did, but he did something.”
“All right, Mrs. Fairs, but if all this stuff is true and Rich Vosic is as dirty as last week’s laundry, I’m still looking for a motive. Why would he kill your husband? It couldn’t have been for money—doesn’t sound like there was much, even before they hired this accountant. And your husband was the one with the connections. So—why?”
She made a noise of exasperation and gave her head a little shake. “Mr. Whelan, their relationship…deteriorated.”
He began to shake his head and she leaned forward.
“They hated each other, Mr. Whelan. Do you need more than that? They were the most intense competitors, Mr. Whelan, always had been, even in better times. And when things began to come undone, each one blamed the other. Rich talked about getting out of the partnership and Phil threatened some sort of court action. Does that soothe your logical mind?”
“I’m sorry. It’s the way I work. Hatred is a much more solid motive for a killing than financial difficulties. Still…” He thought for a moment. “Okay, then tell me this. Why now? After all this time, why come to me with your suspicions? What else has turned up that would make a difference now?”
She smiled; she’d been waiting for this one. “This.” She pulled out a newspaper clipping, took a fast look at it, and then handed it to Whelan.
It was from the preceding Friday’s Tribune and he recognized it immediately—it recapped an earlier story about the discovery of a body in the sand along the fringe of Belmont Harbor and added that the body had now been identified as that of Henry “Harry” Palm. The article went on to describe Palm as a gambler, drug dealer, and “reputed underworld figure.” Whelan allowed himself a smile as he read the article again.
“What’s so amusing, Mr. Whelan?”
“It has nothing to do with you, Mrs. Fairs. I was familiar with this gentleman. I busted him once, actually. All his life Harry Palm tried to get into the mob, first in Milwaukee, then here. He was nobody, a punk, a small-timer, and they had no use for him. And here he goes and gets himself killed and some stringer on the Trib, probably seeing his first dead body, decides Harry Palm was the genuine article and puts it in his story. All over the western suburbs where these creeps live they’re laughing about this. Harry Palm, ‘underworld figure.’”
“You knew this man?”
“No. I try not to know people like him. He was a runner, Mrs. Fairs. He had a little saloon on Irving and he was a small-time dealer and he ran a small book.” He looked at her and smiled. “Ah. And that’s how you know him. Phil’s gambling. He was your husband’s bookie.”
She nodded.
“Phil even introduced us once. He had made a good deal of money on a football game, and later that week we were at a party at one of the hotels out by the airport, and this dark-haired man in a loud jacket came up to us, and Phil started laughing and he gave the man a big bear hug and introduced him to me as his bookie. I was so mortified, I could feel people’s eyes boring into me.”
“I bet it didn’t bother Harry.”
She smiled slightly. “No, that was surprising. He seemed to like it. I would have thought…you know, since these people are involved in illegal things…”
“You’re right. A genuine gambler or a hood worthy of the name would have taken Phil to the men’s room and threatened to punch in his larynx if he didn’t shut his mouth. But, as I said, Harry Palm was
no big deal. He would have liked it if your husband had described him as a hoodlum. He would’ve offered his autograph. By the way, was he using the name ‘Palm’?”
“No. It was Palmisa.”
Whelan allowed himself a quiet chuckle. “He called himself a lot of things. For one thing, he could never decide what ethnic group he wanted to belong to. Called himself ‘La Palma’ when he wanted to do business with Latins, ‘Palmisa’ when he thought it would help to sound Italian, and ‘Palm’ or ‘Palmer’ when he wanted to be taken for an Anglo, which I believe he was.”
“Well, we ran into him several other times. Once, at a Bulls game, he came to our box and he and Phil went off someplace, and when he came back he was absolutely giddy, all flushed and grinning and smelling of liquor, and dropped a roll of fifties into my lap. A little over two thousand dollars, from a bet Phil had placed on an earlier game.”
Whelan nodded. Time to play devil’s advocate again. “But this is Chicago, Mrs. Fairs, and a lot of people have bookies, and a lot of people are bookies, and there are thousands more waiting to become bookies after the other bookies go into stir or wind up in alleys. There are more bookies than detectives, and probably more bookies than computer software specialists. They’re everywhere, you can get a bet down on anything—on when it’s going to rain or who the next Pope is going to be, or when the giant pandas are going to mate. I’ve put a few bucks down here and there.”
She leaned forward suddenly, like a hawk diving, and put her hand on his desk.
“Did they find your bookie buried in the sand with knife holes in his body?”
He shook his head slightly and scanned the clipping again. No suspects, no witnesses, and only robbery had been ruled out as a motive. The “motive” was probably the simplest one: Harry had finally pissed somebody off at the wrong moment, had pressed the proper button and gotten himself taken out.
“I can understand what you’re thinking, given the association of your husband and Harry Palm, but…we’re really talking about two deaths, two years apart, with nothing else to connect them. You must see the problems there are with that.”
She shook her head quickly. “There’s another connection.”
“Show me.”
She tapped the clipping. “This man was killed after talking to me.” He watched her and waited to force her to come up with more. “I contacted him, Mr. Whelan.”
“When?”
“About a month ago, and again about two weeks ago. I saw him in a downtown restaurant where I was attending a dinner party for a friend of my parents, and something made me…I just got up and walked across the room and tapped him on the shoulder. He couldn’t place me at first, so he just gave me his, you know, his make-out smile and called me ‘baby’ a lot. My name meant nothing to him, but when I identified myself as Phil’s wife, this little light went on in his eyes and I knew my instincts were right. I knew it. There was something there and that man knew about it. For a second there, Mr. Whelan, that man was afraid of me.” She smiled coldly.
“Go ahead.”
She made a visible effort at self-control and it was apparent that she thought this was the critical moment in the interview—this was game, set, and match.
“I arranged to talk to him on the phone the following day. He wanted to meet, kept suggesting that we get together for a drink at his, his tavern.”
“The King’s Palace. On Irving.”
“Eventually I got him to talk to me over the phone. I told him what I suspected, and while he didn’t come right out and say it, he knew something. He was coy with me. He said he knew Rich but he wouldn’t say much else.”
No, he wouldn’t, Whelan thought. He’d hang onto the phone for dear life and squeeze it till it turned into money. He’d tell this woman anything she wanted to hear and see if there was a dollar in it for Harry Palm.
“He knew something, Mr. Whelan. And he said Rich still owed him money.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t say. A gambling debt, I suppose.”
Whelan nodded and said nothing. He was imagining this conversation and getting quite a different picture from the one Mrs. Fairs wanted him to have. He saw a cheap, gaudy little hood who knew nothing more about Rich Vosic except that someone wanted to make trouble for him. He would have told her anything to keep the scam going. If she’d told him Jesse James was living in Chicago, Palm would have said, “Yeah, I been thinking that way myself.”
“So how did this develop, Mrs. Fairs?”
She stared at him for a moment and then gave her head a little shake. “Mr. Whelan, I know what I was dealing with. He was a nasty little man and he sat on the other end of that phone and fed me a solid line of bullshit. That’s how it ‘developed.’ Are you satisfied? But he had something on Rich Vosic. He told me he’d get back to me in a week with something I’d be interested in. I told him I’d call him.”
“And then?”
“I contacted him later that week and we met in a restaurant.”
“Did he have anything?”
“He was somewhat evasive, as I expected him to be. He was also…he behaved very strangely, he may have been drunk. But he was giddy and his conversation was rather disjointed, and he kept interrupting himself to say things like, ‘Lady, things are really getting freaky,’ things like that.”
He laughed. It was a very accurate rendering of Harry Palm and it took him by surprise. “That’s just how he’d talk. Did he seem nervous?”
“Yes, but not frightened, if that’s what you mean. He talked as though he’d fallen into something. That’s the impression I got.”
“A windfall.”
“Yes. And he said he thought we could both make a lot of money if I went along with him. If I ‘went with the program’ was the way he put it.”
“And what was Harry’s program?”
“He wouldn’t say. Just that he was going to ‘take these dudes down.’ That’s what he said.”
“‘These dudes’?” Whelan asked. “Somebody besides Vosic?”
She made a little shake of her head. “I don’t know what that meant. At any rate, he asked me what it would be worth to me. I told him it would depend on what he had.”
She rooted around in her purse again and pulled out another cigarette. “He said it would cost me money up front but that in the long run I would get my money back five times over…but he needed cash. To grease a few palms.”
“You didn’t give this guy money, did you?”
“Mr. Whelan, I am accustomed to money and I don’t need anyone like you to counsel me on how to spend it. No, I didn’t give him anything. He didn’t like it, but after hemming and hawing, he finally told me he thought he could prove Rich was a drug dealer. On a large scale.” She put the unlit cigarette in her mouth and took it out immediately.
Whelan wanted to laugh at the image of Harry Palm turning in someone else as a pusher. “A dealer. This guy doesn’t sound like the type.”
She shook her head. “It didn’t really seem right, but I decided that perhaps I’d go along with him and see what turned up. So I told him if he could furnish evidence of that, I’d come up with money. So he asked me to meet him and bring money.”
“Where and how much?”
“To Antonio’s on Rush Street. With ten thousand dollars.”
“Let me guess. He called it ‘ten K.’”
The ghost of a smile returned to her face. “Yes, he did. And when I told him I didn’t have that kind of money, he laughed and said he’d been doing some research on me, too, and that he knew ten thousand would be no trouble for me.”
“And is that true?”
She nodded casually. “My father died shortly after…after Phil. He left me a good deal of money and a substantial insurance policy. I have more money now than I did when my husband was alive.”
Mrs. Fairs looked at her unlit cigarette again as though noticing it for the first time, and Whelan came up with his Zippo again.
She nodded, puff
ed at the flame, exhaled smoke, and nodded thanks. “We never had the meeting. I went to the restaurant and he never showed up. I heard nothing from him for almost two weeks and then I came across that.” She nodded in the direction of the clipping, then sat back and looked for a reaction.
“Have you told any of this to the police?”
She rolled her eyes, took a hurried puff on the cigarette, and blew smoke without inhaling. “Are you telling me you don’t see a connection, or at least a possible connection, between this man’s death and my husband’s?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that there’s an ongoing police investigation into this man’s death and that any evidence of any kind should go to the police first.”
“It went to the police first. I spoke with several people, including one officer whom I talked to after Phil died, and he noted all my information dutifully and said it would be looked into. And you know what that means.”
“Probably means somebody will look into it, whether half-heartedly or not. But this is not something I can do for you, Mrs. Fairs. I don’t get involved—”
“I’m not asking you to get involved in this man’s murder or the police inquiry or whatever you call it, I’m asking you to provide a service. I’m asking you to investigate Rich Vosic, find out about him. And if you learn anything about the other man’s death, you can take it to the police.”
Whelan turned slightly in his chair and looked out the window to give himself time to think.
“Mr. Whelan?”
“I’m not ignoring you. I’m trying to see an angle of approach to this. I’d need—”
“What?” She’d caught the faint note of promise and leaned forward like a schoolgirl following her lesson.
“Divine guidance, for one thing. That and some luck, and more than anything else, some idea in plain English of what you expect me to do. Knowing, that is, that I won’t get involved at all in this Harry Palm thing. Not while it’s still an open case. What do you want me to find about Vosic?”
She smiled brightly, a smile for show. “His habits. His associates. His money. Anything that will send him to jail. Follow him for a few days, Mr. Whelan, and if you’re as good as you’re supposed to be, you’ll see something, or you’ll notice a pattern. If Rich is a drug dealer, as this man believed, I’m sure you’ll be able to determine that. But he’s guilty of something, Mr. Whelan, that I’m sure of.”
A Body in Belmont Harbor Page 3