Praise for Lenny Kleinfeld’s
SHOOTERS AND CHASERS
“In Kleinfeld’s spellbinding debut, a young Chicago cop chases a pair of killers-for-hire who are also star-crossed lovers. Appealing heroes and villains, a quirky love story, with, style, suspense, plus all the authenticity of an Ed McBain procedural. Lose yourself in it.”
—Kirkus Starred review
“Dazzling debut! In addition to a smooth prose style and a great sense of humor, Kleinfeld is terrific at depicting relationships—the people in this impressive first novel come to vivid life.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine
“A smart, intriguing and very funny… A page-turner that never disappoints.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A fine, fine, fine book, a book all of you should have, who like mystery and Chicago…You have a real sense of place. And I’ve known a lot of Chicago cops—you really get these guys.”
—Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune and WGN radio
SOME DEAD GENIUS
Lenny Kleinfeld
SOME DEAD GENIUS
by
Lenny Kleinfeld
Published by Niaux-Noir Books
Copyright © 2014 by Lenny Kleinfeld
Cover design by Stewart A. Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.
Contents
Dedication
Begin reading SOME DEAD GENIUS
Notes
Material Witnesses
About the Author
For Leigton Gage,
whose noblesse obliged him to champion the underdog—or in this case, the underbook.
One | 2005
Phone calls are easy. You dial. It rings. Tesca answers. You inform the semi-simian loan shark you’ve got another painting you can turn into cash.
Call. Now. Before Tesca turns you into a cripple. Or fish food.
Come the fuck on, what’s one more painting, this point you’ve already lost everything. Every penny, your gallery, your car. And as of this week, your hair; past few days your comb’s been doing more harvesting than grooming. Compared to that, what’s one lousy magnificent Laurie Desh canvas.
That painting. Best day of Dale’s life. A Thursday. Seven years ago. Laurie’s face when he took one long look and bought it. That Thursday when he discovered Laurie, and became her dealer, and her friend.
Not that she’d been so fucking sentimental about him, had no problem blowing Dale off soon as she caught fire. But, shit. It’s like trying to blame a tiger for having teeth. Like most of the great ones, Laurie had the simple clear-eyed selfishness an artist needs to survive.
Survive. Good word.
Dale reached for the phone but it rang. The double ring-ring, ring-ring: front-door intercom.
Tommy Tesca was downstairs. Great. Don’t even have to make that easy phone call. Just buzz him in and give him the good news.
Dale buzzed, waited, opened the door, said, “Hi—”
Tesca grabbed Dale by the throat and bulled him across the loft to the open-plan kitchen, where he slammed Dale against the fridge and asked, none too optimistically, “So you got any money for me—like this week’s vig—an’ last week, plus the week before? Heh, Dalie-boy?”
Dalie-boy made a frantic gagging noise, as verbal as he could get with the loan shark’s massive hand clamped on his throat.
“What I thought.” Tesca shook his head. “Look, I like you Dale, heh? So you pick what’s it gonna be. We go old school, bat to the kneecap. Or how ’bout a welding torch to the nuts. Or—messy, but really does the trick—I put a drill through your eyeball. Your choice.”
Dale tried to shout through his nose, which sprayed snot on Tesca’s sleeve.
“Heh, gross.”
Tesca yanked Dale to the sink, grabbed Dale’s arm and shoved Dale’s hand down the drain, mashing Dale’s fingers against the dull blades of the disposal. “Say we just get it over, heh. Save me goin’ out the car for my toolbox.” Tesca released Dale’s throat to reach for the disposal switch—
“Painting!” Dale gasped, “Ga’ ’nother painting—my closet in my closet!”
Tesca scowled. “Thought you were outta paintings.”
“Lent it a girlfriend last year but when I asked it back refused claimed it was a gift this morning I made her give it back,” Dale rattled off woodpecker fast.
Tesca smirked at the pale, toothpick-limbed Amedagone. American white-bread. Soft, bleached, crust-less. “You made her give it back?”
“Tommy I can sell that for fifteen—no twenty, twenty thousand Laurie Desh is white-hot, she—”
“Which closet?”
“Up, upstairs—Arrrgggghhhhh!”
Tesca grabbed Dale’s ear and dragged the squealing art dealer past forlorn walls pimpled with empty picture hooks, up a short set of stairs to a sleeping loft. Only thing in it was an air mattress, lost inside the imprint left by a king-size bed; Dale’s furniture had marched out the door months ago. Tesca kicked the air mattress out of the way as he strode to the closet, with Dale’s ear and what was attached to it lurching after him.
Tesca yanked open the closet door. Snorted. The spacious walk-in was a ghost town, populated only by one suit, one pair of black jeans, four shirts, a flock of empty hangers, and, on the floor, leaning against the wall, a 30x20 rectangle wrapped in brown paper.
“Looks small.”
“Twenty grand,” Dale vowed.
The simian shark released Dale’s ear. Dale stepped into the closet and carefully lifted the package.
Tesca fished out a switchblade and popped the blade.
“Let me unwrap it,” Dale insisted. Quickly adding, “Please.”
Tesca offered him the knife. Amused. What with both of them knowing Dale Phipps plus switchblade added up to zero threat.
Dale shook his head. “One slip and twenty grand turns to shit.” He carefully peeled away the paper.
The canvas was entirely shades of dark red. Many of Laurie’s early works were. Dale once teased her, Someday this will be known as Desh’s Blood-Red Period. Now, not funny… The painting was still a trip. Laurie’d slathered on layers of pigment with a palette knife, making it look like a classic mid-century abstraction. But if you looked long enough the textured edges of slather resolved into a ghostly suggestion of a face. At first critics dismissed it as a trompe l’oeil parlor trick. But Dale knew it wasn’t what an artist did, it was how, and Laurie’s—
“Heh! Some asswipe pay twenty large for that crap?”
Dale realized he was glaring. He neutered his expression.
“Tommy, there are asswipes lining up to buy Laurie Deshes. I’ll need a couple of days, maybe a week, to sell—”
“Ah no no no no no, that leaves here with me.” Tesca shot him a shrewd look. “How much you pay for this?”
“Twelve hundred.”
“Shit,” Tesca complimented him. “How come so cheap?”
“Laurie was just starting out. Could’ve paid even less, but I wanted to put a couple of bucks in her pocket.”
Tesca peered at the painting, examining it with professorial gravity.
Looked at Dale. “Didja fuck her?”
“No. Well—once—we, uh… Just a bump in the night. Maybe we were a little too drunk.”
“Didn’t get your twelve hundred worth?”
Dale suppressed an urge to commit suic
ide by throwing a punch. Settled for throwing Tesca a sour grin and retorting: “Twenty grand.”
“That’d make up for a lousy lay,” Tesca conceded. Then grumbled, “But you owe me twenty-five.”
Dale’s heart thudded and he tried not to imagine a drill bit juicing his eyeball. “Please, Tommy, twenty is the bulk, you get that right away, just give me another week—”
“The fuck ya gonna get another five? Plus vig.”
“Beg, sell my blood… Ah, shit, this is gonna—just a notion—Laurie’s the rock star of young Chicago artists, if you hold that painting a year or two—”
“You owe me now, not in two years.” Tesca paused. Frowned. “When’d you buy this crap looks like a wall been plastered by a spazz, heh?”
“Seven years ago.”
“Twelve hundred to twenty large. So another seven years, this spazz job brings… four hundred thousand?”
“Jeez, Tommy, no one can—it’s not geometry—I mean anything’s possible, but even when an artist dies you can’t guarantee a price bump that nuclear, I, I, I was just saying, if you did hang on—sorry, sorry, forget I—sell the painting, a-a-and I will do whatever it takes to get the money. What-fucking-ever.”
Tesca stared at him. Gauging, Dale was certain, what level of maiming would motivate him to actually do what-fucking-ever.
Tesca still had the switchblade clutched in his paw. Dale tried to take solace in the thought the knife was preferable to the disposal. Truly.
“Wrap it up,” Tesca muttered. “And careful.”
The brown paper was too torn to re-use. Dale took the painting to the kitchen and wrapped it in his one remaining apron. Secured it by knotting the apron strings. Handed it to Tesca. Promised, soberly, “I will come up with the rest. On time.”
“I know,” Tesca said. He slapped Dale so hard it spun him around and buckled his knees. Tesca put the painting down. Yanked Dale upright and slammed him against the sink. Shoved Dale’s hand into the drain. Turned on the disposal.
Two | 2012
The gun never got old. So good in the hand. And the power. No shit we’re gun crazy. It’s still a recent infatuation for us thinking monkeys. A million years of flinging rocks and pointy sticks, now suddenly there’s this explosion coming out the end of your arm… Mark thought he thought too much, for a cop monkey. Though he did shoot okay just now. All tens, except that one fucking eight.
Gale. Gale had popped into his mind. His ex-girlfriend. She’d moved back to Santa Monica two years ago. Two days ago Mark heard Gale was engaged. She’d met a guy named Boyd Whitsell, and decided to marry him anyway.
Detectives Mark Bergman and John Dunegan were down in Area Three’s basement range, shooting qualifiers. The annual session at which a Chicago cop is obliged to fire thirty rounds at silhouettes. And to hit enough of them to assure the Department that if you discharged your weapon in the real world, there was at least a 70-30 chance you wouldn’t hit an innocent bystander who knew a lawyer.
Doonie, the big shambling vet who’d taught Mark the homicide business, stuck his head around the divider as Mark reeled in his final target. Doonie took an unsurprised glance at the tight group shredding the silhouette’s heart. Issued his ritual dismissal: “You were trying.”
After twenty-six years on the job Doonie’s own marksmanship had tailed off; a natural side-effect of age, weight, children and bourbon. Doonie claimed he was conserving energy, saving his best shooting for the street fucks who deserved it.
• • •
Lunch. They parked half a block from their usual Thai joint on Belmont. Walked, shoulders hunched forward, into an umbrella-killing squall, clutching shut their raincoats, which neither cop had buttoned despite the slashing rain and chill; it was thirty-three degrees, the temperature at which rain can’t quite bring itself to turn into snow, and settles for being suspiciously thick ice water. Springtime in Chicago. At least the worst part of spring was over. That first serious thaw in early March where the icy-hard snow banks lining the sidewalks melt and release six months worth of defrosting dog fudge. It was now the third week in March, when the weather might begin to show some genuine friendliness. Except maybe for an April sucker-punch snowstorm.
Mark and Doonie peeled off their raincoats as they went through the door, knowing the room would be overheated.
Their regular waitress asked if they wanted menus. They said nah, and ordered.
She came right back with drinks. Tea for Mark, a Singha for Doon.
Doonie took a grateful, first-drink-of-the-day pull on his beer. Asked, “So what happened?”
“With what?”
“You missed a shot.”
“I took that one left-handed, with my back to the target.”
“Usually make that shot in your sleep. Lose a lotta sleep last night?” Doonie wondered, hopefully. Doon was forty-seven, thoroughly married, and a big fan of his thirty-five-year-old partner’s busy sex life.
“Nope, none at all. Sorry. How are Phyl and the kids?” Mark was a big fan of Doonie’s busy family.
Doonie answered with a dismissive grunt.
Something was up. Mark asked, “Kieran heard back from anyplace?”
“Yesterday,” Doonie sighed. “Looks like my firstborn will be getting his Masters at Notre Dame.”
“Congratulations.”
“Gets worse. Only a partial scholarship.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck,” Doonie agreed.
Doonie’s second son, Tom, had two years of undergrad left. Next September, Patty, the youngest, would be a freshman, which meant Doonie would continue his tuition hell streak of having two kids in college—three, if Kieran went for a doctorate.
Mark knew better than to offer help to Doonie. Have to have that conversation later, with Phyllis.
Steaming aromatic plates landed in front of them. The cops ate in silence; Doonie stewing about having let slip he was worried about doing right by his kids, Mark stewing about letting the thought of his ex-girlfriend’s engagement distract him while firing live ammo. Gale would’ve married Mark if he’d asked. That’s why she’d moved in with him.
Gale came from semi-serious wealth. Within a year the romance of embracing an alternative lifestyle—a cop’s—had worn off. Gale pressed Mark to take the job her father offered as head of security for his company. Mark asked, “So instead of being his guest at Chamonix and Kauai and Tierra del Fuego, I’d be his employee?”
It ended. Case closed.
Except for him shooting that one fucking eight.
Mark’s radio burbled. There was a dead guy demanding Mark and Doonie’s attention.
Cheered them right up.
Three | 2012
On the outside it was a typical 1950s two-story wood-frame, with sensible Chicago priorities. Roof and double-paned windows looked new. Paint job didn’t.
Inside, the brush work was hallucinatory. The place was crammed with modern art. A number of canvases were glowing airbrush portraits of eroticized, half-nightmarish women and men, many dressed in sci-fi fetish wear. The skin tones were electric colors never seen on an Earthling. But the faces were fully human, unapologetically challenging the viewer.
“Lotta Robert Gilsons,” Mark noted.
“Lotta whats?” Doonie asked.
“Chicago painter.”
“Also the vic,” said the young uniformed cop who’d let them in. “Robert Gilson, forty-eight. His wife, Helen,” the young uni added, indicating the woman sunk into a couch in the living room.
Helen Gilson was fiftyish. Wearing a patchwork neo-hippie work shirt over jeggings. Terrific legs, but what caught the eye was her neon-orange hair. That and the fact she was doing the blank stare and the slow, gooey head wobble of the seriously tranqed.
Huddled with Helen was a tall silver-haired woman in a black turtleneck and long black skirt. She was clasping Helen’s hand, gazing into her wide numb eyes and murmuring, too softly for the cops to eavesdrop.
“Her shrink,” the
young uni explained. “Now for the good part,” he murmured, with a barely suppressed smirk.
“You mean the deceased?” Mark asked.
The young uni gave them a confident nod. He led them through the house and out across the yard to a garage.
A former garage. Long ago converted to a studio, and, according to Connie The Coroner and her magic thermometer, converted to a murder scene less than four hours ago.
When they walked in, Mark and Doonie’s view of the vic was blocked by one of the TV Stars (Doonie’s term for Crime Scene techs) processing the scene. The TV Star, also in his twenties, was bent over the corpse, shooting a close-up.
The TV Star saw them, gave a delighted shake of the head and stepped aside. The TV Star and the uni watched with snarky glee as Mark and Doonie got their first glimpse of the corpse.
“Yeah, that used to be Robert Gilson,” Mark confirmed, as they approached the guest of honor.
“You recognize painters,” Doonie complained, unsurprised.
The young uni shot the TV Star a puzzled frown, stymied by the detectives’ refusal to acknowledge the hilarious sick shit right in front of them.
“I recognize Gilson,” Mark told Doonie. “West Rogers Park boy, with an international rep.”
“Well,” Doonie countered, “I recognize the guy in Gilson’s mouth. That’s Ken—though a lot better hung than the one Patty had.”
A naked Ken doll was stuffed, feet-first, in the dead artist’s mouth. Ken had a glued-on erection that was resting on Gilson’s upper lip.
Doonie leaned down and examined Gilson’s wounds. “Ken didn’t do these,” Doonie said. The perp had clocked Gilson on the head, presumably with the bloody, jagged two-foot-long shaft of Cor-Ten steel that was on the floor nearby.
“Came from that,” Mark said, pointing to a tripod-shaped steel sculpture in the corner of the studio that had two similar shafts dangling from hooks, and one empty hook.
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