A Body in Belmont Harbor

by Michael Raleigh

  Rush Street, where somebody looking like Vosic would inevitably wind up, where conventioneers and self-styled playboys and old men in white belts and white shoes were drawn like lemmings to a cliff.

  Some neighborhoods thrived on what they offered their residents, some on what they could promise the tourists, still others on what they could sell the city’s gargantuan population of single males. There were a number of places young men could go to find women, but only Rush Street existed for this sole purpose. It promised women, encounters with women, all kinds of women.

  He followed Vosic up Division and onto Rush and laughed as a cabbie ahead of him pulled up in front of a bar and burped up half a dozen grinning middle-aged men, all wearing name tags. Save yourselves, Chicago, the pharmacists have landed.

  It was his theory that cabdrivers kept Rush alive. If you came to Chicago and wanted to go somewhere to drink, they took you to Rush Street. If you wanted to go to a nice restaurant, they brought you to Rush and you ate at a place with a name like Bernardo O’Callahan’s or Uncle Charlie’s. And if you wanted women, of course they took you to Rush Street. The customer said “Where’s the action?” and cabbies ten weeks out of the mountains of Afghanistan smiled knowingly and headed for Rush Street. Nigerians still struggling with the street guide nodded curtly and took the customer to Rush Street. The taverns were no better than saloons in other neighborhoods and possibly a good deal worse, with prices a buck higher than anywhere else and all the sincerity of a guy selling carpeting on TV. The women were there—maybe one for every six men.

  Rush Street was noisy, smoky, garish, crowded, expensive, and artificial, and that was on a good night, say on the night of a Papal Visit. Whelan nodded. Yes, this was where a guy in a yellow Lotus with I RUNIT license plates and white shoes would own a business.

  Vosic turned up Elm and pulled up in front of a stately old brownstone that had been turned into a two-story tavern. A dark brown sign hanging from the second-floor balcony proclaimed this to be RICK’S ROOST. The old stone columns had been painted off-white and phony red shingles had been added to the facade, and the overall effect was that of a Taco Bell gone mad.

  Tasteful, Whelan said to himself. Vosic hopped out of the two-seater and said something to a smiley dark-haired young man, who laughed. Whelan had the feeling this kid would laugh at anything Vosic said. Whelan drove around the block. When he made his second pass by Rick’s Roost he saw Vosic standing in front of the tavern talking with a young woman. She was tall and model thin, with dark hair almost to her waist. A heavyset man in a business suit walked into a lamp post while craning to get a better look at her. This was a woman who could make you wear cologne, dress better, change your attitude, get rid of your vices, and lose weight. She was a woman who could cause fender benders, and she was having trouble getting old Rich to look at her as she spoke. She leaned forward as if to pierce his indifference and he pretended to be studying traffic. She made a little gesture of frustration with both hands and he affected to be checking the time.

  This guy is not going to grow on me, Whelan thought. I just have a feeling.

  Finally Vosic turned on his heels and walked into his roost, crooking a finger over his shoulder to the woman. Shaking her head, the woman followed.

  Okay, Rich. My surveillance has revealed that you are a prick.

  It was obvious that Vosic was going to stay in this place for a while, and Whelan decided to call it a day. There was a fight card at the Aragon tonight and he’d promised old Tom Cheney a ticket. What had seemed like a decent way to spend a Monday night with a friend was now looking like a stroke of genius, subliminal brilliance, because he was sure Sonny Riles would be at the fights.

  There were landmarks and there were landmarks. To most people Chicago’s genuine landmarks were places like the Water Tower, the John Hancock Building, the Sears Tower, the Art Institute, Wrigley Field, and Comiskey Park. To Whelan these were landmarks, but merely cosmetic ones. The true landmarks were stuck back in the shadows, thrust out of the limelight but there nonetheless, places that for better or worse gave a more honest view of Chicago, of what made the place tick: State Street, the Stadium, the old stockyards, the vast metal tangle of the railroad yards, the river, the slightly baroque old museums, the smelly and truncated remains of the great open-air garage sale that was Maxwell Street, the miles and miles of crowded beaches, and the Aragon Ballroom.

  Forty years ago the Aragon had been a one-of-a-kind place, a place beyond description, where young couples crowded in to hear and dance to the great bands of the day, all of them—the Dorseys and Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller and Bunny Berrigan. It was a mixture of the fantastic and the grotesque, with imitation Moorish architecture, stucco walls, tiny balconies where lovers could get serious in the dark or pass the flask. And there was the ceiling, the Aragon ceiling, the brainchild of some now-forgotten decorator who should have been designing sets for DeMille. It was the only ceiling of its type that Whelan had ever seen, the only one he expected ever to see, unless they did strange things to their ceilings in the afterlife.

  The ceiling of the Aragon was a living painting of the night sky, a high dome painted darkest blue, with tiny openings that showed flickering pinpoints of light to re-create the stars. The highlight of the ceiling, however, was the clouds, the passing wisps of cloud created by the clever use of projectors.

  The last big-time show at the Aragon had been Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Merry-Makers in the late fifties. Now the paint was dull and flaking, there were cracks in the masonry and holes in the stucco; the young couples of the forties and fifties were now gone, the bizarre architect and the ceiling engineer probably long dead, like the men who made the famous music. The Aragon was home to salsa bands and entertainers from Latin America and deservedly obscure heavy metal bands, and to fight cards twice a month that drew five hundred people. All things had changed, except for the clouds on the ceiling.

  From the corner of his eye he watched Tom Cheney study the ceiling. He made it a point to drop by Tom’s house or take him out for a beer at least once a month. They’d become friends while Whelan was looking for Artie Shears’s killer a year ago.

  The old man chuckled and quietly said, “God damn.” He looked at Whelan. “Now what in the hell makes those clouds?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. You never saw clouds in Wyoming?”

  “Not inside our buildings, smartass. I like ’em, though.”

  “Me, too. My folks used to come here to dance, when they were going together. They saw Harry James here and Artie Shaw.”

  He looked around. There were a hundred or so people in the folding chairs on the main floor and a few dozen already firmly ensconced in the little balconies—best seats in the house unless you were looking for someone who’d be down on the main floor. It was warm and there was already a gray cloud of cigar and cigarette smoke hovering over the empty ring.

  Ernie Terrell made his way down an aisle, tall and bulky and smiling.

  “There’s your promoter.”

  Tom Cheney squinted. “Big one, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah, he is that. Ever see him fight?”

  “Just the one time, the fight with Ali.”

  “Good fighter. Would’ve been a champion at another time.”

  A cluster of young men were gathered around a short black man with a gray mustache. Whelan nodded in his direction.

  “See that stubby little guy there?”

  “Yep.”

  “He fought Beau Jack, Bob Montgomery, all those guys. That’s the man I have to see.”

  “He don’t look that old.”

  Whelan shrugged. “Neither do you. Be back in a little bit.” He got up and strolled up the aisle to ringside, nodded at a couple of men he knew, and approached Sonny Riles, who was standing behind the red corner of the ring and speaking earnestly to a young man in a plain blue boxing robe. Whelan stopped a few feet from Riles and waited for him to impart the wisdom of two hundred fights into the ear of the young
fighter. Riles looked up for a moment, nodded to him, and finished his instructions, patting the young man on the behind and sending him into the ring. Riles watched the kid dance and strut and shadow box around the ring and then looked at Whelan.

  “Hey, detective man.”

  “Who do you like tonight, Sonny?”

  “I like this boy here, Westside boy. Six fights, ain’t lost, ain’t been down. Got one of my own boys going in the next one, got a pretty left hook, good chin, got some heart, too. And he listen.” Riles laughed.

  “Something different, huh?”

  “Yeah, he listen. That mean if I tell him he ain’t got it, if I tell him he got to quit, he gon’ quit.”

  “Who else you got going tonight?”

  “Couple boys. Light-heavyweight from Humboldt Park, white boy. And that crazy Indian boy.”

  “Alvin Thunder? Hot damn.”

  Riles laughed. “He worth the price of the ticket, huh?”

  “No question. I get the feeling he’ll be needing a new career soon, though. Am I right?”

  Sonny Riles nodded slowly. “Yeah. Can’t nobody get hit like that each time out and keep comin’ back. He get hit like that in the gym, too. He say he gonna fight a little bit more an’ then go to work in the lumber mill they got up there.”

  “Up where? The reservation?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I’ll treasure each of these last fights, then.” Riles laughed again and waved to a man Whelan recognized as a columnist for the Sun-Times. “I have to ask you about somebody, Sonny.”

  “So ask.”

  “Harry Palm.”

  Sonny Riles made a sour face and pretended to start walking away. “Don’t be talking ’bout that boy around here. Bring bad luck.”

  “Well, he brought himself some of that.”

  “I heard. Didn’t surprise me none.” He frowned and looked at Whelan. “You lookin’ into that?”

  “No, not really. I’m—I’m checking out somebody with gambling habits. Serious gambling habits.”

  “Lots of folks got gambling habits.”

  “Did you see him around here lately? Past few weeks, maybe?”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw him. He always here. He come to the fights to strut, you know. Wearin’ them white suits and gold chains, look like that Camacho boy. He wear a suit coat and no shirt. Suit coat and no shirt and ’bout five pounds of gold chains.” He slapped a heavy hand over his eyes and shook his head.

  “Anybody with him?”

  “Women. Old Harry Palm always had a woman with him. Some nights he be the only one here with a woman. He liked that, you know.”

  “Yeah. I never figured him for a fight man.”

  “He liked to make some money on a fight.” Sonny Riles raised his eyebrows and there was an edge to his voice. “Interested in fuckin’ up some young boy so’s he could make a dollar on a fight.”

  “Your boys?”

  Riles nodded.

  “What did he offer them, Sonny, the moon?”

  “Didn’t offer them nothin’. Offered me two hundred. Two hundred dollars to have one of my boys lay down. Didn’t offer the boy shit. Said if I got a boy to go along with him, he’d work something out later. What’d he call it? Oh, yeah, said he need the kid to ‘go along with the program.’” He shook his head and muttered, “Sheeeit.”

  Whelan looked at Sonny Riles and saw the little sparkle in the dark eyes.

  “You hit him, Sonny?”

  Riles nodded slowly. Whelan remembered watching films of Sonny Riles and Ike Williams, Sonny Riles and Beau Jack, and he smiled.

  “More than once?”

  “Didn’t need to hit him but once. That boy didn’t have no chin at all.”

  Another fighter now climbed into the ring from behind the blue corner, a Mexican boy in a brightly colored robe with LITTLE MANTEQUILLA across his back.

  Riles laughed. “Lookit this little skinny boy callin’ hisself ‘Little Mantequilla.’ The real Mantequilla be knocking this boy out with one hand.”

  “Harry Palm also liked to do his business in public places. Liked people to see him operating.”

  Riles nodded. “Prob’ly what got the man killed. All that showboat shit. Piss somebody off.”

  “That’s what the police think. They think somebody took old Harry out because he pissed them off.”

  “What you think, detective man?”

  “I think stupid people do stupid things. I think Harry did something stupid to somebody nasty and they killed him. I don’t think it was anybody heavy, though.”

  “Anybody heavy, they wouldn’t pay no never mind to Harry Palm.”

  “And if they did, we’d still be looking for parts of him.”

  Ben Bentley, the ageless boxing announcer, onetime promoter himself, climbed into the ring, took an enormous cigar out of his mouth, and reached up for the ring mike. He spoke into the microphone with the cadence of W. C. Fields and the vocabulary of a grand duke, called the evening “a night of pugilistic artistry,” and thanked everyone for coming. The audience was “ladies and gentlemen” and the fighters were all “fine young men,” and the bouts were going to be “memorable.”

  Whelan laughed and shook his head. “If you’d never been to a fight before, Ben Bentley’d have you thinking you were gonna see Zale and Graziano.”

  “Dempsey-Firpo,” Riles said, laughing.

  They sat down in a couple of second-row seats. “I got to be gettin back to the locker room,” Riles said.

  “Okay. Listen, ever see Harry Palm doing his other business here?”

  “Shit, yes. All the time.”

  “Remember any of the people you saw him with?”

  “Yeah. Couple of the brothers, couple young Mexicans. One white man. White man just like Harry.” He puffed his chest out importantly.

  “Another peacock, huh?”

  “Yeah. Big man, look like a wrestler or something. Big body, look like his suit coat gonna bust. Had a shaved head like Marvin Hagler. Goatee and funny eyes. Stared at people like…he look like a bouncer, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Like he was waiting for action?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any idea what kind of business they were doing?”

  “What you think? Old Harry was wearin’ his sport coat buttoned. They went downstairs to the men’s room and when they came back, Harry was showin’ his little hairless chest to the girls and the bald dude, he lef’. Three fights to go, and he lef’. He got his package.”

  Whelan nodded and got up to leave. “Thanks, Sonny. Always a pleasure to talk to you.”

  “Hey, come see me again. I got a new boy fighting next time, middleweight. That white man, that the man you looking for?”

  “I really don’t know yet. I know all this is about white men, though, and one of them was big and bald, and I think they all knew Harry Palm.” He nodded and left.

  The first fight was over by the time he got back to his seat. Tom Cheney gave him a sour look.

  “Wasn’t much of a fight, was it. That little Mexican boy didn’t have a thing.”

  “No. But this is what a lot of it is like, club fights. Couple of kids dancing around because somebody told them to become fighters. A lot of them don’t even really want to do this, and here is where they find out.”

  The next two fights were dull and one-sided: Sonny Riles’s fighter won his fight easily and the third bout ended when a Mexican boy landed his first body punch of the evening and his opponent decided to go down and stay down. Whelan bought them beers and a box of popcorn and he made small talk with Tom Cheney, and eventually a murmur rose from the crowd, a murmur he’d heard before. He looked up to see Sonny Riles standing on the ring apron in the red corner and holding the ring rope up for Alvin Thunder.

  “Here we go, Tom. The real main event of the evening. Forget about those dinosaurs listed on the program.”

  A muscular Latino climbed in through the ropes and began bouncing from foot to foot in the blue
corner. His handlers took off his robe and Sonny did the same for the Indian, and there were hoots from the people in the audience who hadn’t seen Alvin Thunder before. He was short and skinny with no visible muscle development, and when he strutted around the ring he listed to one side on a leg that was markedly thinner than his other.

  Tom Cheney looked at the Indian, then at Whelan. “Sure looks like a mismatch. This is the boy you told me about.”

  “Yes. People think you need muscles to throw a punch.”

  “What happened to his leg?”

  “Polio. When he was little.”

  Ben Bentley went through the pleasantries, the referee gave his instructions, and the bell sounded. The Puerto Rican fighter came out fast, confident, hands down almost to his belt, and Alvin Thunder came bounding out on his one good leg and floored him with a looping right hand that broke half a dozen rules of boxing. The Puerto Rican got up on the count of one, too pissed off to give himself a few seconds to clear his head. He gestured to the Indian boy to come and get him, and Alvin Thunder was all over him. They stood toe to toe for almost the entire round and neither gave way till Alvin ran out of gas with about half a minute left. Sensing his moment, the Puerto Rican boy threw three- and four-punch combinations and had the Indian covering up in a corner when the bell ended the round.

  “Whooeee!” Tom Cheney shook his head.

  “Told you,” Whelan said.

  “Think he’s got anything left, that Indian boy?”

  “Oh, I think he’ll come up with something.”

  What he came up with was exactly what he’d started the fight with, a frontal assault and long, wild punches that did no real damage but took the taller boy by surprise and drove him back to his own corner. They put their heads on each other’s shoulders and dug to the body and threw nasty little uppercuts and then Alvin was on his back from a short, sharp right. Unlike the other boy, Alvin Thunder took a count of eight on one knee, got to his feet, held out his gloves for the referee to wipe them, and then, to the delight of all present, grinned happily at the Puerto Rican fighter.

  He charged across the ring, the Puerto Rican met him on the dead run, and they clashed in the center, throwing punches like windmills.