City Blood

by Clark Howard

  “What have we got on the vic?” Turtleneck asked. Bianco took over.

  “According to Getman, she’s worked for him about a month. He thinks she’s from somewhere downstate, or maybe Indiana, he’s not sure. The dancers get paid cash by the shift; the joint doesn’t really ask many questions.”

  Kiley cut back in. “According to one of the other dancers, an Asian named Amy, the vic had a boyfriend named Tony something who called her on the backstage phone earlier this evening. She was supposed to meet him someplace later tonight or something; it wasn’t too clear.”

  “That it?’ Fireplug asked when Joe stopped talking.

  “That’s it,” Kiley said. Both he and Nick nodded.

  “Okay, Meadows and me’ll take it from here,” Fireplug said. “Get a copy of the IR to us sometime tomorrow, okay?”

  “Right,” said Bianco. The IR was the Incident Report.

  Kiley and Bianco went back to their car as the Shop cops began their official homicide investigation.

  “What now?” Nick asked as they were let out of one blocked end of the alley.

  “Now we try to get a line on Tony Touhy, find out where he is,” said Kiley. “See if he’s got bruised knuckles. If he has, his ass is ours, partner.”

  Three

  Kiley and Bianco came into the precinct just after noon the next day, almost four hours before their shift started. Eyebrows were raised. Cracks were made.

  “Joey and Nicky are trying for brownie points again.”

  “Oh, lieutenant, dear, we have visitors from another shift.”

  “You mean another planet.”

  “Is there an exam for sergeant coming up?”

  “Yeah, but whites are excluded.”

  “Hey, fuck you, honky!”

  Kiley ignored them. Bianco shook his head and said, “Look at them. One step up from crossing guards.”

  The two partners went into a computer alcove and sat down at adjacent terminals in the farthest corner so that no one could walk by and see what they were displaying. In tandem, they accessed felony records and entered the name Tony Touhy. Momentarily the screen displayed:

  Touhy, Anthony Francis

  aka: Tony Touhy, Frankie Touhy

  ACCESS RESTRICTED

  ORGANIZED CRIME BUREAU ONLY

  “What the hell’s it got an OCB lock on it for?” Nick asked indignantly. “This punk has never been anybody.”

  “Every relative Phil Touhy’s got probably has an OCB file,” Kiley said. “Let’s run misdemeanors.”

  This time the screen displayed:

  Touhy, Anthony Francis

  Drivers License T3068763

  6-17-93 TC 109 FTS BF $250

  4-10-93 TC 109 FTS BF $200

  9-21-92 TC 109 FTS BF $150

  4-19-92 TC 109 FTS BF $100

  1-11-92 TC 109 FTS BF $100

  “All traffic code violations for excessive speed, all failures to show in court, all bail forfeits,” Nick translated aloud.

  “And no license revocation,” Kiley noted. “Must be nice to have a big brother who owns judges. Let’s run the DL.”

  They accessed motor vehicle records and entered Tony Touhy’s drivers license number. The screen displayed:

  Touhy, Anthony Francis

  DL T3068763

  ACCESS RESTRICTED

  ORGANIZED CRIME BUREAU ONLY

  “I don’t believe this,” Nick said. “His fucking driver’s license is classified?”

  Frowning, Kiley accessed the Chicago metropolitan alphabetical telephone listings. He got:

  Touhy, Anthony F.

  Non-published

  “Call Glenda at the phone company and get his number and address,” Kiley said. Nick went over to the nearest telephone. While he was gone, Kiley accessed, in turn, municipal business license records, Cook County business license records, pending criminal actions, pending civil actions, Illinois state parole and probation records, real estate ownership records, and credit bureau records. Each response on the screen was:

  Touhy, Anthony Francis

  No Record

  Sitting back, Kiley tried to think of another record sector to search. Juvenile criminal records was out, he knew; in Illinois, such records were au tomatically computer purged on the eighteenth birthday of the offender. Before Kiley could think of anything else, Bianco returned with a disgusted look on his face.

  “Glenda says his listing is in what they call a Class X file. All those records are kept by a phone company officer in a locked cabinet. It’s where they keep the mayor’s home phone number, stuff like that. No way Glenda can get to it.”

  “Big brother Phil is keeping a tight lid on young Anthony,” Kiley said thoughtfully. “Wonder if it’s because he’s a weak link in the Touhy chain?”

  “What I’ve heard,” Nick said, “Phil Touhy doesn’t have any weak links.”

  “Bullshit. Everybody’s got a weak link. Listen, you go work up the IR on Ronnie Lynn; that’ll give us an excuse to call the Shop cops and find out what they turned up last night. I’ll keep playing with this.”

  While Nick went out to his desk to type up the IR, Kiley resumed random accessing of every data base he could think of. He tried voters registration, board of education records, communicable disease records, even the birth section of vital statistics in case Tony Touhy was listed as the father of a legitimate or illegitimate child. Everything came back NO RECORD. Accessing the data base first of the Chicago Sun-Times, then the Chicago Tribune, he tried to find any mention of Tony Touhy in either daily newspaper during the preceding five years. Again, nothing. He even tried accessing Illinois state income tax records; they were confidential, but three years earlier a GA cop named Glogowski had accidentally got into the data base, for nearly twenty minutes, before the system monitor caught him, he had pulled up and printed hard copies of tax returns from his friends, relatives, fellow cops, city aldermen, mayoral appointees, and everyone else he could think of except the suspect he was investigating, whom he completely forgot in the excitement of the moment. Since then, every cop who sat down at a terminal tried to access state income tax records, just in case. So Joe Kiley entered Tony Touhy’s name twelve times, just in case. But each time he received an ACCESS DENIED response.

  Giving up on the computer, Kiley went out to their desks where Nick was just finishing the IR. Kiley read and, as senior officer on the team, signed the report, kept one copy for themselves, put a copy in the fax pickup box to be sent downtown to Homicide, and tossed what was left into the records distribution pickup. It was two o’clock by then, so Kiley called Homicide and asked for Dietrick, but was told the Shop cop hadn’t checked in for his shift yet.

  “Can I get his home number? This is Kiley, GA at Warren Boulevard.”

  “I’ll refer it to the lieutenant,” the duty clerk said.

  Ten minutes later, the Homicide day watch lieutenant called Kiley back and gave him Dietrick’s unlisted home number. With Bianco listening on an extension, Kiley called the Homicide investigator.

  “Hey, Dietrick, this is Kiley. I just wanted to let you know that the IR on the Lynn case is on its way to your desk. Did you turn anything new last night?”

  “Naw, nothing, Kiley,” the Shop cop replied. “Everybody at the club looks clean. We’re trying to nail down this Tony whoever, her boyfriend, but nobody seems to know his last name.”

  “Could be he’s a customer she got cozy with,” Kiley suggested.

  “Yeah, could be that. Meadows might hang out in the joint for a while tonight, see if he can make somebody.”

  “Bianco and I’ll check with our regular snitches in that area,” Kiley said. “If we turn anything, I’ll give you a yell.”

  When Kiley and Bianco hung up, Joe said with a grunt, “Meadows might hang out in the joint tonight. My ass.”

  “All’s they’re gonna do is paperwork,”-Nick said knowingly. “They don’t give a shit about some bimbo dead in an alley.”

  “Better for us. Now, how
the hell do we make Tony Touhy? We don’t have any contacts in OCB; nobody has contacts in OCB. They’ve got tighter assholes than IA has got. I wonder if any of Tony Touhy’s traffic hits were taken near where he lives? And if the uniform who hit him would remember it?”

  “Listen,” Bianco said, “I might have a better way for us. Let’s run down to the Shop. We got time.”

  “The Shop? What for?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” Bianco said. “Come on.”

  On the drive down to 11th and State, Nick Bianco said, “Before I did the IR, I made a call to a contact I’ve got in Central Records. A supervisor I know there might be willing to take a quick peek at Tony Touhy’s OCB file, just for an address.”

  “Who do you know in CR that I don’t know?” Kiley asked curiously.

  “Sergeant Mendez.” Bianco threw his partner a quick glance. “Gloria Mendez.”

  Kiley frowned. Gloria Mendez. A Latino female sergeant—that his partner knew but he didn’t? Eight years they had been working together, and this was the first Kiley had ever heard of Sergeant Gloria Mendez. “Would you mind sharing with me,” Kiley said acidly, “just how you know this sergeant when I don’t, and tell me why you think she might violate department regulations for us by giving us information from a restricted file?”

  “Look, Joe, this is a little embarrassing,” Bianco said. “I mean, you’re like one of my own family, you know? You and Stella are close, you’re godfather to my youngest daughter—”

  “Skip the guinea family bullshit and get to it,” Kiley said.

  “Gloria Mendez and I had an affair once,” Nick admitted.

  “What, you mean before Stella?”

  “No, Joe. After Stella.”

  Kiley stared incredulously at him. After Stella? How in hell could a guy with a wife like Stella Bianco fool around with another woman? Kiley couldn’t imagine it. He kept staring at Bianco in disbelief.

  “There, see?” Nick said, seizing on the look. “That’s what I meant about you being like part of my family. That look is exactly how my sisters, uncles, and cousins would look at me”

  Kiley shook his head. “I can’t believe this,” he voiced his thoughts. “You asshole.”

  Nick shrugged. “It was a long time ago, Joe. Gloria and I worked Humboldt precinct together when I was in uniform. She worked in the property room and I worked the lockup.” Nick’s voice became subdued, a little woeful. “It wasn’t something I went out looking for, Joe; I wasn’t on the prowl for pussy like a lot of married cops we both know. I was just young, the kids hadn’t come yet, Stella was working days and I was working nights. Gloria and I kept running into each other; I mean, like everywhere: coffee room, hallway, parking lot, until it finally got to be kind of a joke between us, you know? And one time I said to her, ‘You know, I think I see you almost as much as I see my wife.’ And she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Want to try for more?’ That was when we both realized that it wasn’t a joke, that there was something real between us. It was very strong and very good. I might even have split up with Stella over it—but the thing I didn’t know was that Stella was already pregnant with Jennifer. So that was that. Gloria had been married once and had a daughter, so she knew how bad it was to have a family break up. She would have tried to take me away from just Stella in a minute, but not from Stella and a baby. So we kind of pulled apart, you know, even though the feeling was still there between us. It didn’t mean that I didn’t love Stella; I did. I never stopped loving Stella. But I loved Gloria too, in a different way.”

  Nick took a handkerchief from his inside coat pocket to wipe his hands, which had begun to sweat on the steering wheel while he was telling his partner the story. Kiley continued to stare at him, thinking of Stella, of how he always resisted her efforts to fix him up with other women. And why. Because none of them were like her, like Stella.

  “Are you still seeing this Gloria?” Kiley asked bluntly.

  “No, Joe, I’m not. Not for a long time.”

  “What makes you think she’ll check Tony Touhy’s record for you?”

  “I just think she will, that’s all. You’ll understand when you meet her. She’ll help me because she’s that kind of woman, Joe.”

  Chicago Police Headquarters, the “Shop” at 11th and State, was a worn-out, decrepit, dilapidated old excuse for a building, some sixty years old but looking a hundred. As Kiley and Bianco walked along one of its grimy halls, in yellowish light from long-faded fixtures, through an ongoing foreign smell that made an outsider’s nose hairs bristle, Nick shook his head in amazement and said, “This is the end of the rainbow here. This is where we all want to get promoted to. I can’t believe how fucking dumb we are.”

  “If we were smart,” Kiley told him, “we’d be with the FBI.”

  A fearless roach, from one of the world’s largest colonies housed in the old building, scurried across their path and disappeared under a floor molding. Through open doors, the detectives saw uniformed desk cops moving about: ass-heavy men and women who had spread out after they got their tedious, boring, dull, dreary, monotonous, safe jobs in the Shop. Everyone seemed to move with a listlessness, almost an indifference to their duties, as if none of it really mattered. There were probably more bellies hanging over belts, and more high-riding asses, per capita in the Shop than anywhere else in the world except Tahiti. Considering the decaying building, its vermin population, the huge percentage of unattractive employees, along with the steady traffic of hoodlums, punks, hookers, snitches and, worst of all, slick or sweaty shyster lawyers who had business on the premises, some considered the most fortunate person at 11th and State to be the old man who ran the concession stand in the lobby—who was blind.

  When the two detectives entered the reception area of Central Records, they found themselves surrounded on three sides by a long counter against which policemen and others who worked in the Shop were requesting or perusing hard copies of records. Nick looked around until he saw a woman wave at him from the door of an office deep behind the counter. She pointed to a gate in the counter and nodded to a clerk to buzz them through.

  Gloria Mendez, Kiley saw as they walked toward her, was a bosomy, light brown Puerto Rican woman with upswept raven hair, not a hint of makeup, and delicate, beautifully shaped ears. There was about her an immediate allure as well as a suggestion of sharp, steel edge, the one to attract, the other to fend off if necessary In her starched blue blouse with its gleaming badge and sergeant chevrons, she was every inch a female as well as a police officer. “Hi,” Nick said, walking up to her.

  “Hi.”

  Awkwardly they started to shake hands, hesitated as if feeling foolish, then finally did it, although tentatively.

  “Hey, you look great,” Nick told her.

  “Yeah, you too.” Smiling, Gloria removed her hand from Nick’s and extended it to Kiley. “You must be Joe. I’m Gloria.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Kiley, suddenly feeling awkward himself as he took her hand. Pleased to meet you ? His mother had taught him that when he was eight; he hadn’t said it in two decades. Now all of a sudden he found himself feeling like a kid in the presence of this woman he had already made his mind up to dislike.

  “How’s Meralda?” Nick asked. Gloria rolled her eyes.

  “Sixteen, shapely, and smart-mouthed,” she said. “If I survive the next couple of years, it’ll be a miracle. Your girls?”

  “Growing like weeds. Both daddy’s girls until this one comes over,” he nodded at Joe, “then they’re Uncle Joey’s girls. Fickle, both of them.”

  “A few more years and you’ll know what I’m going through,” Gloria said, nodding sagely. “Come on in.” As she went around her desk, Nick started to close the door behind him and Kiley, but Gloria said, “Leave it open. Looks better.” The detectives sat facing her and she leaned forward a little, keeping her voice low. “So you want to look at a restricted access file? I presume it’s important or you wouldn’t have asked.”
/>
  “It’s important,” Nick confirmed.

  “You know, Nick, that when I pull up a restricted access file, there’s an automatic record made of my terminal number, the date and the time. Anybody accessing the file after that can trace my access back to me. Then I could have to justify it to my superiors. I can always say it was an accidental access, but if there’s been some kind of heat related to the subject, I might not be believed. Then I could be up on charges, you know? And there goes my career.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to ask you,” Nick said.

  “Friends are for friends, Nick,” she told him, “but I need to know what’s going down before I get involved. For my own protection.”

  Bianco looked at Kiley, who shrugged and said, “That’s fair. Tell her.”

  “You know Phil Touhy, the mob guy who runs most of the North Side? Well, we think we can make his kid brother Tony on a homicide,” Nick said, his own voice also very quiet now. “We think he lost his head and beat a girl to death last night. But we need to eyeball him before his bruised knuckles heal, and we haven’t been able to make him anywhere: no home address, no business, no hangouts, nothing. We don’t need his whole record; just some starting point so we can track him down.”

  “Whether I give you one line or the whole record,” Gloria said, “I still have to pull it up. What are your chances of making a case?”

  Again Nick looked at Joe Kiley. “High,” Joe said, “if he’s got bruised knuckles. Zilch if he hasn’t.”

  “If you bust him, there’s bound to be some activity around his record,” Gloria said. “What are the chances you can get me a back-dated request for the file from the assistant state’s attorney who handles the charge?”

  “Probably eighty percent,” Joe said. “We know most of the prosecutors; they’re pretty solid.”

  Gloria gave it a long moment of deep thought, slowly tapping one fore-finger on a notepad in front of her. Just as her face was without makeup, so were her nails without polish, but they were long and attractive nevertheless, Kiley noticed. And those pretty ears. And her mind; that good, logical, cop thinking; it was seductive as hell, better than if she’d unbuttoned her blouse. Kiley began to understand the mixed feelings Nick had spoken of earlier.