“Do we know a cop who has access?”
“I don’t,” Turner said. “Depends on how bad people really want this case solved. We can ask the commander when we get back.”
At Area Ten headquarters they talked to uniformed officers checking the backgrounds of: all the people connected with Giles’s campaign staff, everyone connected with Giles’s private life, anyone who knew Frank Ricken. They’d given them a cramped section of a fourth-floor storage area for the team working on the case. Turner sat on a pile of cardboard boxes as he talked to the senior staff officers working the computer checks and phone calls. Fenwick went in search of the commander to find a contact in the mayor’s office.
Turner asked what they had so far.
Jack Blessing, an African-American cop in his late twenties, told him, “We’ve gone through nearly 500 people. We have enough unpaid parking tickets among these political people to pay off the national debt. One of the campaign staff got caught for shoplifting in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1962.” He flipped through several pages of notebook. “Most everybody working the campaign comes up with nothing. We’ve got five or six arrested at various demonstrations from the late sixties to last year.” He showed Turner the list of names.
Turner didn’t recognize any of them.
“Did you start on the ward organization as well as all the reform organizations he was involved in?” Turner asked.
Blessing frowned. “You’re not serious.”
Turner nodded.
“We’ll add them to the list,” Blessing said dejectedly.
“How about Ricken’s people?”
“Nothing on the family. Brother and sister in Indiana, both schoolteachers. Mom and dad retired and living in Centerboro, little suburb outside Aurora. We’re hunting through friends.”
“You get anything on those University people, especially Sorenson, Worthington, and Kempe?”
Blessing checked through a stack of papers, read for a second, and said, “They’re all clean. Hardly a parking ticket among the three of them.”
The probability of any of the background information giving them a substantial clue was about the same as winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning, but it had to be done. Some profile or pattern might be found.
“Rodriguez and Carruthers back from checking into the liberal groups?” Turner asked.
“Haven’t seen them,” Blessing said.
Turner walked down to his desk on the third floor. He leaned his elbows on the top and cupped his chin in his hands. Fenwick swung into the room before he had a chance to reflect on what they learned.
“I got us an interview with a third—deputy assistant mayor in charge of snowing the public,” Fenwick said.
“Why bother?” Turner said.
“Commander set it up. Shows the mayor’s office is trying to help. We’ve got fifteen minutes to get to the interview.”
Fenwick squeezed through Loop traffic and parked illegally on Clark Street across from City Hall.
The third—deputy assistant mayor took ten minutes to tell them how cooperative the mayor’s office planned to be.
Turner asked about politics in the Fifth Ward and who had the power to overthrow Mike McGee.
The third—deputy assistant mayor took twenty more minutes to explain how the mayor’s office didn’t get involved in local ward politics.
Turner put a restraining hand on Fenwick’s arm. His partner hadn’t said anything, but Turner recognized the signs. Fenwick was close to blowing when he started rolling up the sides of the paper in his notebook. When Fenwick snapped his pen in two between his fingers the third—deputy assistant mayor said, “Is something wrong?”
Turner said quickly, “Thank you for your help,” and got Fenwick out of the room as quickly as possible.
“Double fuck, triple fuck, asshole dumb numbnuts son of a bitch shit for brains.” Fenwick raged through the outer offices all the way to the car. Numerous office workers and then pedestrians stared after him.
In the car Turner said, “Did the commander explain why we needed to talk to this particular guy?”
“Huh?” Fenwick said.
“You were sitting there when the commander called?” Fenwick nodded.
“Did he tell the guy on the other end that we thought ward politics might be the motivation for the murder.”
Fenwick gazed at him thoughtfully. “I think he said something about people in the ward maybe being behind the murder.”
“Geared to warn even the densest politician,” Turner said.
“Are you saying we can’t trust the commander?” Fenwick said.
“Not ready to go that far. He may have given too much information. The people at City Hall aren’t stupid. We’ve got to talk to politically connected people.”
“We could try Mary Ann Eliot again,” Fenwick said.
The police radio called their car number. Turner acknowledged.
The dispatcher said, “We’ve got another problem for you.”
FIVE
Turner and Fenwick walked into the Fifth Ward office. Uniformed cops outside, tech personnel inside, static from cop radios, people murmuring back and forth to each other, and blood on the floor as they crossed the threshold. Speckles of blood at irregular intervals lead to the back room. On the rear wall of the former alderman’s office, handprints of red streaked down two of the posters, which now featured bloody whales and smeared wetlands. Surrounded by paramedics, Jack Stimpson, the media consultant, slumped in the desk chair. Bandages covered the left side of his head.
Turner spoke to the uniformed cop who showed up first, Miriam Blackwell, in her early twenties, blond hair in a pony tail. She chewed on her gum for a minute then responded to Turner’s question.
“Call came in about fifteen minutes ago. Guy next door was washing pots in the restaurant. Heard shouts then a couple of pops. Said he knew the sound of gunfire. Called it in. We got here, door was open, neighbors gawking outside. Claim nobody walked in here.” She checked her notebook. “We saw the blood. Called the tech people immediately. Found this guy on the floor in here.” She pointed to Stimpson. “Refuses to go to a hospital. Not shot, but beat-up pretty bad.”
“Why not crawl out to the street for help? Why’d he come back here?” Turner asked.
“Have to ask him,” she said.
Fenwick jerked a thumb toward the outer office. “Anybody out there see anything?”
“Nothing yet. We’ve got the names down. We’re trying to keep everybody in the crowd here.” She left.
The paramedics finished their work, suggested Stimpson see a doctor. He shook his head. They left.
Turner sat on the desk. Stimpson looked at him through eyes rapidly purpling. “What happened?” Turner asked.
“I was working. Trying to clean out my files. My work here was done. Three men burst in here with nylon stockings over their heads. They didn’t say anything. I thought it was a robbery, but they simply started beating me. I thought I was going to die.”
“Why’d they stop?” Fenwick asked.
“I don’t know. They shot a gun off into the wall and ran out.”
“No one else here today?” Turner asked.
“No. I think most everybody went home early. I waited until after the wake started this afternoon to come in.”
“Why crawl back here?” Turner asked.
“I was afraid they’d be waiting for me out in the street. I managed to get to the desk, but I must have passed out. I don’t remember anything else until the police came.”
“Why attack you?” Fenwick asked.
“I don’t know. It was awful.”
They asked more questions but got few answers. Finally Stimpson said, “I can’t take any more of this. I’d like to leave now.”
A few minutes later he was led out by a campaign staffer who lived in the neighborhood.
“Why this campaign organization?” Fenwick asked.
“Murder’s got to be connected to these attacks,
” Turner said. “Who’d they piss off? Who gains by harming these people?”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Fenwick said. “Murder a Chicago alderman and who cares? Doesn’t affect the political life of the world much. And as a group, one Chicago alderman more or less is not a huge loss.”
Turner knew Fenwick’s attitude reflected the jaded opinion of Chicagoans toward their city council members more than heartlessness.
“Has to be something more personal,” Fenwick concluded.
Turner nodded agreement. “And why murder Giles and only attack these guys? What do they know or don’t they know that’s keeping them alive?”
“We only think Ricken’s still alive,” Fenwick said. “Or at least he hasn’t turned up dead yet.”
Turner said, “We’ve got to check into their campaign activities, and we’ve got to find somebody who’s an expert on all these groups they belonged to.”
“Don’t know where we’re going to find any more sources,” Fenwick said. “So far what we’ve tried has turned to shit.”
“We’ve got too many people. We’ve got to begin narrowing this down.”
The commander walked in. “Hell of a mess,” he said.
Fenwick said, “We got shit from that idiot you sent us to in city hall.”
One of these days Fenwick’s bluntness was going to cause a big problem, Turner thought.
Turner explained what had happened at City Hall.
“My contacts at City Hall aren’t the best,” the commander said. “I agree with Buck’s assessment. You got shit. Sorry. If they’re stonewalling, we’ve got political problems. This case was screwed up enough before.” He harrumphed. “I’ll try a few other contacts. I don’t have a lot of hope.”
Turner knew the stories about the commander. He had too much skill to be kept out of top positions, but he lacked political backing. He had no clout pushing for him behind the sidelines, and if you didn’t have major clout behind you in Chicago, you had to have stupendous skills to move up past the functionaries that filled city offices.
“What happened here?” the commander asked.
They explained. The commander agreed the murder, Ricken’s disappearance, and the beating here had to be connected. Instead of his usual few words of encouragement, he pressed them to come up with a solution. “The press is nuts on this, and whether City Hall wants to help or not, they are saying all the right thing to show excessive concern. I need answers.” He left minutes later. Turner has never seen him look this worried.
Turner and Fenwick talked to witnesses. They called Mable Ashcroft, the alderman’s chief assistant, who came to the office and went over the list of socially concerned organizations in which Giles and his people had been involved. They dropped the list off at Area Ten headquarters. On the fourth floor Turner told Blessing to have his people check all of the organizations for anything remotely illegal or any connection to violence.
Back at his desk, Turner found the report from the crime lab. He scanned it quickly. In the fingerprint section, he found what he suspected, the half-opened bottle of homemade vegetable brew had only Giles’s fingerprints on it. The other bottles included Giles’s and some random prints, probably from a store clerk. If the murderer had touched them, the prints would probably have been rubbed off them as well. Still they’d try and check them out.
Fingerprinting as a method of solving a case was highly overrated. Unless you had a suspect to match them up with, it was virtually impossible to check the ones you had against every fingerprint on file in Chicago, much less with the FBI or any other criminal jurisdiction. Once you had a suspect, they were excellent for confirming if the criminal was there or not. Richard Speck, who killed eight student nurses in Chicago, left one clear print at the scene. On a door the print was eighteen inches off the ground, a place cops didn’t normally check, but the case was so horrific, they’d checked the entire door, and they did find it, and they got him.
It was midnight before Turner got out of the station. He’d called home around six. Brian and Jeff were in, since it was a school night. They’d eaten at Mrs. Talucci’s. Brian would have made sure Jeff got to bed on time. Paul pulled into his driveway, turned off the ignition, and listened to the murmurs and clicks of the car settling to rest for the night. He heard traffic on Taylor Street nearby, a horn honked, a siren clanged in the distance. He looked toward Mrs. Talucci’s house. The lights in the back half of the ground floor gleamed softly through the windows. Paul glanced in, but didn’t see Mrs. Talucci. Knitting lay sprawled on the kitchen table. He knew she must be upset, because she hated knitting. She thought it was for old fuddy-duddies who didn’t have anything better to do with their lives. He considered stopping in for a visit.
He opened the car door, began to get out, then reached back for his briefcase. A shot rang through the night. The glass in the driver’s side window shattered. Paul scrambled out of the car and flattened himself on the ground. He peered between the wheels of the car trying to see where the shot came from.
The window in his house six feet above him slid open. Turner could make out Mrs. Talucci’s and Brian’s face in the opening.
“Get back,” Paul whispered.
The two heads disappeared. Paul crawled behind his car, dashed across the two feet to the back of his house and in the back door.
Brian and Mrs. Talucci met him in the kitchen.
“I’ve got to call this in,” Paul said.
“They’ll be here in a few seconds,” Mrs. Talucci said.
Minutes later three squad cars screeched to a halt out front, another rolled into the alley in the back. Two unmarked cars blocked the street.
Mrs. Talucci joined Paul on the front porch, talking to the cops. Lights went on in a few houses on the street. Mrs. Talucci told the officers to keep their voices down so as not to waken the neighborhood, so the men and women of the department spent most of the time whispering in deference to Mrs. Talucci’s commands. Two of the uniforms hunted in back where they thought the shot had come from.
They came back ten minutes later. Reported they hadn’t found anything. They promised to return in the daylight to continue the search. Finally the police left and the neighborhood returned to normal.
Mrs. Talucci joined Brian and Paul in their kitchen. While Paul put together a late supper, Mrs. Talucci explained that minutes before Paul drove up, she and Brian had both thought they heard someone sneaking through their connected backyards.
Brian said, “I turned on the back porch light and went outside. Mrs. Talucci told me to douse the light and get back inside. She joined me here. Then you drove up. I checked Jeff. He slept through the whole thing.”
They discussed the gunshot, and Paul told them about the case. Mrs. Talucci was firmly convinced the shot fired was an attack related to the investigation.
Paul remained doubtful but didn’t contradict her.
Mrs. Talucci said, “I didn’t remember the other day when we first talked about it, but I attended a lecture by Gideon Giles when I was at the University.” Mrs. Talucci had gotten her masters degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago while she was in her seventies. “A fool,” she declared. “He spoke at some esoteric cross-discipline forum. Supposed to be about philosophy and language. He talked about some cause or other.”
“Off the topic?” Paul said.
“Just plain stupid,” she said, “and I didn’t like him. He smiled like a politician who’s been stealing from the till.”
“Most of his campaign staff said he was honest and upright. Couple of the politicians claimed he had to have sold out, but we’ve got no proof of that.”
Mrs. Talucci said, “I’ve lived in this city all my life. I’ve read the papers. I’ve listened in the neighborhood. I know when somebody’s sold out to win an election. Mike McGee should never have lost.”
“Who would Giles sell out to?” Turner asked.
“Who’s benefited the most since he’s been in the council?” she replied.
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br /> “I don’t know.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll take hard work. It’s late now and you need some sleep. I’ll talk to a few people.”
Turner was never quite sure about Mrs. Talucci’s connections. Her “talking to people” could mean anything from being connected to the most powerful mafia don in the country to gossiping with the neighbors. Often amazing things seemed to get done when Mrs. Talucci talked to people. Several years ago a gang of street kids had been harassing older women returning from the Jewel grocery store on Harrison Street. One of the kids had been found hanging naked upside down from the front of the store the day after Mrs. Talucci had “talked to someone.” The problems at the store never recurred. The kid was fine but never said a word about who attacked him.
Paul stopped at Jeffs bedroom downstairs before going up. He pulled his son’s tangled sheet up over the slender body against the early morning coolness. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the boy breathe quietly. He touched the sleeping boy’s check. Jeff sighed and opened his eyes.
“Hi, Dad,” he said sleepily.
“Go back to sleep, son,” Paul said.
“I love you,” Jeff said.
Paul leaned over and kissed his son’s forehead. “I love you, son,” he said. The boy sighed and moments later was fast asleep.
The next morning Brian stumbled into the kitchen, took one look at Paul and said, “You look like hell, Dad.”
Jeff swung in on his crutches, plopped himself at his place, and opened his math book. He wanted help with some homework.
“Why didn’t you ask your brother last night?” Paul asked.
“I tried to help him,” Brian said.
“You explain it better, Dad” Jeff said. “And I missed you. I wanted you to be home.”
This was familiar territory to most cops. Their high divorce rate was a testimony to how the time demanded by their jobs affected them. Paul soothed and cuddled his younger son for an extra fifteen minutes and slipped into the squad room late for roll call.
When they finished, Turner organized the team for the day. Background checks needed to be finished. Fingerprint reports needed to be gone over. Turner held out little hope for either task being of real help. Paperwork on people interviewed needed to be completed. Plus they had more interviews to conduct.
Political Poison Page 10