Raul brought the drinks and a basket of tortilla chips and Bauman took the bourbon at one swallow, then half the beer straight from the bottle. The young couple across the room got up to leave and the young man crossed the room to use the restroom, only to find Jack still comatose on the john floor.
He looked down at Jack, then over at Raul. “Excuse me, sir? This man—”
“Ah, he’s okay, just walk over him. You can move him if you want, he won’t wake up till later.”
“Is he all right?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Maybe somebody should…I don’t know if he’s breathing. And his pants are…you know, down.”
Bauman looked at Whelan. “You bring all your women here, Whelan?”
“I don’t have any women these days.”
“Can’t figure out why.” Bauman put his cigar in the ashtray and got to his feet. Hitching up his pants over the solid, lime green dome of his stomach, he strode over to the bathroom, looked down at Jack, and then up at the young man.
“This guy’s a smooth act, huh? Pants down to his ankles and he’s out cold.”
He bent down and shook Jack by the shoulder, then grabbed a large pinch of cheek and shook his face. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home? Come on, Sunshine, wake up. People got to use this facility.” Bauman stepped over Jack and turned on the cold water, then splashed it liberally on the sleeping drunk.
The young man moved back a few steps and looked uneasily at his companion.
“He’s a police officer,” Whelan called out. “He won’t hurt the guy. I don’t think.”
Jack moved slightly and made the sound a horse makes after a good run, then rolled over on his side.
“Hey, no, no, no. Nappy’s over, guy. Time to get up.” He poked Jack with his shoe. “Up, Oscar.”
An eyelid fluttered and Jack attempted speech. He said, “Wha?”
Bauman splashed more water on him. Jack opened one eye completely and was working on the other. He began to focus on the crew cut apparition throwing water on him and Whelan began to feel sorry for him—coming out of an alcoholic stupor in a strange men’s room with Bauman standing over him.
“Come on, babe, you’re almost there.”
Jack sat up on one elbow and tried to manage indignation. His face wouldn’t form the necessary scowl, so he settled for confusion. “What?”
“You’re in a place called Raul’s. You’re on the floor of the can with your pants down to your ankles and the door’s open and there’s a woman present.”
“Who the fuck’re you?” Jack sat up and tried to work up belligerence, but the left eye wouldn’t focus. Whelan shook his head and laughed.
“I’m the law, dimwit, and it’s time to pull our pants up and get off the floor. Come on. What would your ma say if she saw you laying on the floor of a public toilet with your schwantz hanging out?”
Jack looked down and squinted at himself, then began to wrestle with his pants without actually getting up. “Where’s Jamie?”
“That the guy in the red shirt? At the bar?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s dead.”
“What?” Jack stopped pulling on his pants and stared slack jawed at him.
“Fell asleep in his food. Suffocated.” Bauman winked at the young man and grinned over at Whelan. “Naw, he’s okay. Least we think he is. Got his pants on, anyway. Come on, now, you get yourself together so this gentleman can use the john.” He then lifted Jack by one arm and swung the deejay around like a child. When Jack had his pants up and almost fastened, Bauman escorted him to a table in the farthest corner of the room, dropped him into a chair, and said, “Sit there till I tell you to get up.” Then he went to the bar to Jamie. He put his fat fingers alongside Jamie’s neck, seemed to listen, then nodded. “Not much, but it’s a pulse.”
He came back to his table just as Raul emerged from the kitchen with the food.
“Nice place, Whelan.”
“You belong here.”
They fell to their food and Bauman tried a little of everything set before him. He chewed and nodded, chewed some more. “Good. It’s good. Real good. I like this place, Whelan.”
“I kind of figured you’d fit in.”
Bauman nodded. “So. You wanted to talk. Here we are. You first.” He picked up the burrito and bit into it, then made little moaning sounds.
“I have a client. Her husband was killed two years ago in a boating accident. There is almost overwhelming evidence that it was suicide, but she refuses to believe it. She’s convinced the guy’s business partner is somehow responsible. Had him taken out or something, she’s not sure.”
Bauman stopped chewing and gave Whelan a funny look. He sat there for a moment, head tilted to one side, then shook his head.
“What was the guy’s name?”
“Fairs. He died in a fire on his boat.”
“So what are you doin’ with that? That’s no case, Whelan. That’s runnin’ around chasing your tail. I remember that one, Whelan. I did a little pokin’ around on it. We got a tip; there was nothing to it, though. We figure it came from the broad.” He shrugged, then gave Whelan a puzzled look. “So what makes her bring it up now? I mean, after two years?”
“Mrs. Fairs remains convinced that her husband’s partner had something to do with it, and her husband’s bookie led her to believe there was something to the story.”
Bauman resumed chewing, then took a pull at the beer. “Lemme guess: his bookie was Harry Palm.”
“Right.”
“That asshole. He was just taking her money, Whelan. He was just telling her what she wanted to hear. But why now, is what I’m wondering?”
“She ran into Palm a couple of weeks ago, and she talked with him recently. She was supposed to meet him one night around the time he disappeared.”
Bauman cut into an enchilada with his fork, ate some, nodded. “This fucker can cook, Whelan. What were they supposed to meet about?”
“Harry Palm told her he had something on the partner. She says he was excited and acting very nervous, but that he seemed confident he had something special. He told her he was getting ready to take the partner down.”
“That’s the whole thing?”
“No, there’s more. I’m fairly sure the partner, whose name is Vosic, made book with Harry Palm, too.”
“Well, it figures if his partner did…”
“Recently. Since his partner died. I’ve been nosing around his place of business and I know his staff is familiar with the late Harry Palm.”
“Don’t mean he killed him.”
“No, but it’s a start.”
Bauman shrugged, took a bite of enchilada, shook his head. “This don’t sound like something for you, Whelan. How’d you get into this one? This babe something special?” He chewed and tilted his head slightly. “You’re not goin’ that route again, are you?”
Whelan squirmed. The question was genuinely embarrassing. “No. She’s nothing to me. Just a client. Not my type at all. She’s used to money and she probably thinks of me as somebody from the peasant class.”
“What then? Money? She paying you a lot of money?”
“She’s paying me, and right now any money is a lot of money.”
Bauman nodded as though this made more sense.
“Mostly, though, she made me curious. Her husband didn’t sound like the type to commit suicide, and she half convinced me that there was a connection between her husband and old Harry. And now that I’m in it, there are a couple of people in it that have…captured my imagination, I guess you’d say.”
“The partner and who else?”
“Their accountant. A guy they hired who took off just before Fairs is supposed to have committed suicide. A guy everybody took to be a harmless drunk and who seems to have taken them all to the cleaners, to the tune of hundreds of thousands.”
“Where’s he?”
“Don’t know. Everybody tells me he disappeared four or five days before this guy, Philip F
airs, was killed on his boat.”
Bauman shrugged. “Always fascinates me when one of these button-down types with a lot of money punches his own ticket.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Not much to remember, except there was nothing to make it homicide, no evidence of any kind of violence. There was, you know, a bunch of witnesses—”
“A bunch? News to me.”
“Yeah. Bunch of other richies on a boat off the breakwater. They recognized the boat, they knew this guy, they saw him pouring gasoline all over the boat. Then, boom. Pieces of boat all over the lake. Found the body about a week later in Monroe Harbor, kinda caught up in the anchor lines of one of the big sailboats.” Bauman laughed. “Imagine you’re some poor slob wants to go out on his sailboat and play sea captain, and here’s this thing caught up in your ropes, looks like a man only it’s kind of puffy and slimy and all white. You ever see a floater, Whelan?”
“Once, but he was only in the water a day or so.”
“You don’t wanta see ’em when they been in there a while, ’specially when the lake’s warmed up a little.”
Whelan thought for a moment. “Maybe these people on the other boat didn’t see what they thought they were seeing. Maybe Fairs was already dead and they saw somebody else.”
Bauman smiled. “Come on, Whelan. Where’s the evidence of anything like that? The explosion would’ve killed whoever was on board.”
Whelan shrugged.
“So what’s your idea, that this accountant and the partner took this guy out for his money?”
“In a general sort of way, I guess I think the accountant wasn’t who he was supposed to be—at least he wasn’t the dumb drunk everybody took him for. And I think the partner smells funny. I don’t know if he had anything to do with the death of Fairs, but he knows things he’s not telling, and it was clear that I bothered him. I let a few things drop about the accountant being around town again, about him bleeding some other companies, and this guy turned green. He knows something I don’t, and he’s worried about something.”
“Is the accountant back in town?”
Whelan sat back and thought for a moment. “I have no idea. He’s a complete mystery to me; the pieces of him that people have given me just don’t fit together. This Vosic said they tried to find him and that he seems to have gone back to Seattle, where he was from.”
“And did he?”
“Don’t know. I got somebody there I could call, but by now I can’t believe there’d be any trail. And even if he went to Seattle, who says he’s still there?”
“You think he came back,” Bauman said, pointing with his fork.
“Yeah, I guess I do.” He thought for a moment and then added, “If he ever really left.”
“But nobody knows nothing, right?”
“No.”
“And did this guy know Harry Palm?”
Whelan smiled. “Such a smart cop, Bauman. That’s what I’m working on now.”
“Well, it ain’t your case to be working on, so you got something ties this guy with Palm, I want it.” A hard little glint came into Bauman’s eyes.
“I don’t really have anything. I thought you might. That’s why I decided to buy you din-din. I’ve got descriptions of several guys who were doing business with Harry Palm—a skinny black guy, a little white guy with one arm, a big guy with no hair and a bad attitude. So what do you have?”
“Never mind what I got—skinny black guy, huh?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No reason.” Bauman looked around casually. “These three guys connected?”
“I doubt it. Maybe the big guy and the guy with the one arm, I don’t know. Don’t know a thing about the black guy.”
“No, huh? So which one you really interested in? The big one?”
“Maybe, but he doesn’t really sound like the guy I’m looking for. Got another question for you. How hard are you looking for Harry’s killer?”
Bauman shrugged. He finished the last of the enchiladas and was scraping his plate with his fork.
“Easy on the plate, Bauman. I’ll buy you another dinner if you’re still hungry.”
Bauman paused and looked at Whelan from up under his eyebrows for a long moment and said simply, “I’ll live. And as for Harry Palm, it’s none of your business. How many ways I got to tell you that?”
“Tell me this, then: do you give a shit who killed him?”
“No. He was a scumbag and I think another scumbag whacked him. But I’m looking. It’s not the only thing I got on my hands, though.”
“It never is, is it?”
Bauman smiled. “No. I’m looking for half a dozen people at the same time, Whelan, and I figure I’m gonna get a couple of ’em, at least a couple.”
“And one of ’em’s special.”
Bauman nodded. “That’s right. And if I have time, I’ll maybe get serious about this asshole.”
Whelan decided not to ask Bauman about his “special” case. “Your partner mentioned the Outfit.”
“I didn’t,” Bauman said.
“You think it was amateur night.” Bauman nodded. “That’s how it sounded to me.”
“That’s how it looked, too. But maybe it was somebody small time. Everybody Harry Palm knew was small time. A genuine hood wouldn’t work up a sweat killing a sleaze like Harry Palm. Another player just up from the minors, though, he’d do it.”
“That what you think it is, a guy from triple A?”
Bauman shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you.”
“Yeah, you could, Bauman. The wheels are always turning.”
“I don’t know shit, Whelan. But if I had to place a bet, that’s what it would be. Somebody small time, wants to be big shit, wants to send out his message, leave his, you know, his calling card. And if that’s what we got here, you know what’s gonna happen to this new kid on the block?”
“He’s going to have a short life.”
Bauman pointed at Whelan with his fork. “There you go. If this is new talent, Whelan, I don’t really have to do much, you know? They’re gonna find pieces of him twenty years from now, they’re gonna find his teeth in the forest preserves. Which is what I think would’ve happened if somebody that was Outfit decided to do old Harry.”
“So tell me, Bauman, if you think this Harry Palm thing isn’t important, if you think it’s gonna clean itself up eventually, why do you care if I dig around a little? It’s not hurting you and it could help me.”
Bauman shrugged. “’Cause it’s mine, Whelan. That’s all you need to know. It’s my case, and whether I’m workin’ hard on it or lettin’ it go for a while, you got nothing to do with it. And who says it ain’t gonna hurt me? Who says you ain’t gonna screw something up?”
“I gave you a collar last time I ‘screwed one up.’ You suffering from memory loss, Bauman?”
Bauman went red and dropped the fork. He leaned forward, giving Whelan a better look at the burst capillaries all over his face. “No, I don’t suffer from no memory loss, Whelan. I remember everything. I remember you found who you had to find, I remember you found a couple guys just after they got whacked and you eventually put it all together and it was a nice piece of work, and I also remember I saved your ass ’cause you decided to play the masked avenger, take it all by yourself.”
“I don’t remember you having any major problems with it when it was all over.”
“Maybe I changed my mind,” Bauman said. He turned suddenly and held up his glass and Raul hurried over.
“How about another beer—a shot, too. And give Whelan what he wants,” Bauman said.
“Okay, Albert,” Raul said and hurried back to his bar. Whelan watched him and then looked for a moment at the two drunks—Jack was bent over his partner, trying vainly to wake him. Jack apparently hadn’t yet noticed that he’d lost a shoe.
Bauman glared at Whelan. “This guy calls me Albert one more time and I think I’m gonna put a plate down your throat.”
Raul came back with two beers and Bauman’s shot.
“Take it easy, Bauman. Just nurse your cocktail.” Whelan watched Bauman down the shot and then take a pull at the beer. Bauman let out a soft belch.
“Let me tell you what I think, Detective Bauman. I think you’re getting nervous that a private investigator is going to start following you around like your pet monkey and it’s gonna ruin your image. That’s one. Two, I think you’ve got an idea about who did Harry and for some reason it makes a difference to you, you want this one all to yourself; you’re afraid I’ll come up with something. Three, I think you probably put down more liquor in one day than any three guys in the Chicago Police Department.”
Bauman stared at him. “What are you, my ma? What do you care if I drink?”
Whelan shrugged. “Look, I’m not going to follow you around and I’ll give you whatever I come up with. And I don’t care if you kill yourself with that shit, actually. It’s a free country—man’s got a right to turn himself into a derelict if that’s his taste. But I think I’m going to need help and I don’t know where else to get it.” He was about to say more, then stopped. There was nothing more to say.
Bauman looked at him for a second, then laughed quietly. “You got a mouth on you, Whelan. Some day I’m gonna read in the paper that they found you in the trunk of some car and I’m gonna say ‘He got whacked ’cause of his mouth.’” He sipped at his beer, looked at his empty shot glass, and shot a quick look back at Raul, obviously trying to decide whether to have another one.
“So Mother Whelan thinks I drink too much, huh? All right, Whelan. Let’s do this: you keep out of my way as much as possible, you go ahead and ask your questions and snoop around, and anything you hear, you come right back to me with it, is that clear?” Whelan nodded. “Okay. You be careful not to muddy up the waters and let me know what you got, and we won’t have a problem.”
“And what will I get out of this?”
Bauman grinned now. “The goodwill of the Chicago Police Department, particularly Area Six, Violent Crimes. And you’ll have your health. That’s gotta count for something, Whelan, right? You’ll have your health.” He chuckled and sipped at his beer. “No, I’m just jerking you around here, Shamus. You gimme what you got and I’ll let you know if this guy Vosic’s name comes up, or this other guy, the floater—Fairs? They come up in the course of my investigation, I’ll let you know. And about my drinking, Whelan…fuck you.”
A Body in Belmont Harbor Page 12