City Blood

by Clark Howard

  “Tell Otis to give me my guns back,” Kiley said quietly.

  “Return Detective Kiley’s guns,” Fraz obeyed.

  Kiley accepted the guns one at a time with his left hand, putting the service revolver in his belt holster, the backup revolver in his trousers pocket, all the time keeping the concealed automatic firmly against Fraz’s kidney area.

  “Otis here is the one who searched me when I came in,” Kiley told the Disciples leader, smiling. “I thought you’d appreciate knowing how thorough he is.”

  “Yes,” Fraz replied through compressed lips, “I do.”

  On out to the street they went, closely side by side, appearing to be in casual conversation, no indication of anything being amiss. A small contingent of curious Disciples followed them as far as the box office but no farther. And no one even considered doing anything; it was such a bizarre scene, and President Fraz seemed to be completely at ease with the honky cop. This was the first time many of them had ever seen him with a white man.

  The young Disciple and his two loitering friends were still in front of the chicken wings joint, all with mouths agape as Kiley and Fraz crossed the street to Kiley’s car. Kiley had to transfer his coat and the concealed gun to his left hand because his car keys were in his right pocket. When he got the car door open and rolled down the window, he held his right hand out and said, “Let’s shake hands so everybody will see that we’re friends. Then you turn and walk back across the street, nice and easy. And remember what I said about this gun having power loads in it. I can put one in your spine all the way to that box office.”

  Fraz raised his hand and they shook.

  “Start walking,” Kiley said.

  As Fraz Lamont found a break in traffic and went back across Division Street, Kiley got in his car and started the engine. Finding his own opening in the flow of traffic, he pulled away from the curb. Fraz Lamont did not look back as he reached the opposite sidewalk. In the rearview mirror, Kiley saw him stride resolutely into the old theater.

  Going to be a bad afternoon for Otis, he thought.

  Twenty-Three

  In the newspaper archives of the Chicago Public Library’s main branch, Kiley spoke to a tall woman with eyeglasses hanging around her neck by a black cord.

  “About fourteen or fifteen years ago,” he said, “there was a big state crime investigation hearing held down in Springfield. It was similar to the Kefauver Hearings conducted by the federal government. Can you tell me how I can find the exact dates so I can read about it in the newspaper files?”

  “Surely,” she said. She came around the counter. “This way, please—”

  Kiley was led to a collection of reference volumes kept in a center stack with several worktables around it.

  “The blue set of books indexes all Illinois state news since 1950. You can select specific years and try them, or you can go to the master index, here,” she touched an extremely thick book, “and find what you want under more general categories. When you have your dates, bring them over to the counter and someone will get the microfilm for you.”

  Thanking her, Kiley opted for the master index and began searching. Beginning with the general category of “Crime,” he moved his finger down several long columns of primary subcategories until he came to “Illinois State Senate Investigation of.” There was an additional long column of secondary sub-categories, which Kiley perused slowly and carefully. A short way down that column was an article headlined: CRIME HEARINGS END; WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED? AN OVERVIEW OF THE NEARLY YEAR-LONG STATE SENATE INVESTIGATION INTO ORGANIZED CRIME IN ILLINOIS. It was a Sunday Sun-Times article with an October 1980 dateline.

  Scribbling down the date, Kiley took it back to the counter and this time was helped by a young Hispanic man in shirt and tie. Kiley waited while the young man went to a deep section of low, block-like filing drawers, scanned them, and pulled open one that contained several dozen microfilm boxes roughly half the size of a cigar box. Returning to the counter, he asked, “You know how to use the viewers?”

  “No,” Kiley said. He had never even been in the main library before.

  “Okay, come on, I teach you—”

  The young man selected an unoccupied viewer for Kiley and instructed him in loading and threading the microfilm through the lens bracket. Then he turned on the viewer.

  “This strip is from July through December. You just turn this handle here to move the film forward to the date you want.”

  Kiley thanked him and started turning the handle that moved the film strip forward chronologically. In a couple of minutes he had reached the date he wanted and began slowly browsing that edition for the article he sought. He found it in the Sunday Magazine section.

  CRIME HEARINGS END, subheaded, WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED, was a doublepage spread, the narrative of which began:

  After eleven months and twelve days of hearings that cost taxpayers in excess of $17 million, the State Senate Sub-Committee for the Investigation of Organized Crime in Illinois, adjourned two months ago and has to date not made a single viable recommendation to the full Senate body for a plan to help city, county, and state law enforcement agencies begin to eradicate organized crime from our society …

  A box in the lower corner of one page broke down the expense of the hearings into numerous categories covering everything from heating and cooling the hearing rooms to living expenses for out-of-town subpoenaed witnesses. Another box showed a graph detailing the increase in the number of known members of known organized crime gangs in Illinois decade-by-decade since the days of Al Capone back in the 1920s.

  The narrative of the article was, in addition to an overview of the Senate hearings themselves, a history of organized crime in Illinois, generally, and Chicago, specifically. There were, the text stated, tentacles of organized crime in such communities as Kankakee, East St. Louis, Quincy, Decatur, Rock Island, Peoria, and the state capitol, Springfield—but it was all controlled, according to the writer, by the three major crime families that were known to rule in Chicago. Those three were the crime families of Philip Algernon Touhy, Augustus Dellafranco, and Laurence Morowski. The three individuals had come into power in the late 1970s when the last undisputed crime lord of the state, Frederico Scarpelli, aka Fred Scarp, had gone into semi-retirement as a counselor and adviser to the three men he personally selected to succeed him. Scarp had close personal ties to each of the men he picked. Phil Touhy had been his longtime bodyguard and protégé, and Scarp had personally sponsored younger brother Tony for membership in the organization. Augie Dellafranco was Scarp’s favorite nephew, the son of his favorite older sister. And Larry Morowski’s father had been Scarp’s closest friend during a seven-year stay on Alcatraz following a federal conviction for interstate transportation of stolen property in the mid-1950s. Al Morelli, Dellafranco’s chief lieutenant, was an in-law of the Scarpelli family. Jocko Hennessey, Touhy’s second-in-command, was married to a sister of Phil and Tony. Mick O’Shea, another top player in the Touhy family, was married to a niece. There were personal ties and blood ties in all directions. And every tie ran, directly or indirectly, to Fred Scarp.

  When Kiley finished the article, he rewound the strip as instructed, reboxed the film, and returned it to the counter. Then he went back to the reference books, found the volumes pertaining to the city of Chicago, and looked in the index under “Scarp.” There were numerous articles listed for all of the Chicago daily newspapers during the 1950s and 1960s. They started to become sparser during the 1970s, when Scarp began to phase out his own leadership in favor of the younger men. During the 1980s, there were fewer and fewer mentions of his name, and by the early 1990s he was seldom mentioned at all. The last item under his name read: PHOTO—WHERE ARE THEY NOW? CHICAGO SUN-TIMES. Kiley copied the information and returned to the microfilm counter where he was helped again by the young Hispanic man. When he was finally seated at a viewer again, the strip of film in place, he found the photo on a page that contained the newspaper’s crossword puzzl
e and horoscope listings. The two-column photo had a heading identical to the reference listing: “Where Are They Now?” The picture itself showed a smallish, somewhat stooped man in plaid cap, sport coat, and open-collar shirt, binoculars hanging around his neck, long cigar clenched in his teeth, studying a racing form. The caption read: FORMER REPUTED MOB BOSS, FRED SCARP, IS SEEN HERE AT CHICAGO’S HAWTHORNE RACE TRACK. NOW IN HIS LATE SEVENTIES AND A WIDOWER, SCARP RESIDES WITH A LIVE-IN CHAUFFEUR-COMPANION-BODYGUARD ON A SMALL ESTATE IN MADISON ACRES, WEST OF CHICAGO. HE FREQUENTLY ATTENDS THE RACES.

  Sitting back in his chair at the microfilm viewer, Kiley studied the photograph. Everything about Fred Scarp fit what Kiley was looking for: the background, the mob stature, the connections, the blood ties. To mid-western organized crime, he was like a retired head of state. And that’s how he could expect to be treated.

  Slowly Kiley nodded his head.

  Fred Scarp was perfect.

  When he left the library, Kiley got on the Dan Ryan Expressway and drove out to 59th Street, then turned east and cut around Washington Park to Drexel Boulevard. Near the University of Chicago School of Law, he pulled into a No PARKING zone, turned the car’s sun visor down to display a police department parking permit, and left his car. He walked down to a little barbecue restaurant just off Drexel, with a sign above the door reading: REGGIE’S RIBS. It was past the lunch hour and Kiley saw upon entering that the place was not crowded, although because of its proximity to the school of law and other university buildings, it still had about half of its two dozen tables occupied. Several older women in starched white dresses were waiting tables, serving wooden trays of barbecued pork and beef ribs buried almost completely in what the menu called, “Reggie’s Own Secret, Savory, Southern Sauce.”

  At a cash register counter near the front door sat Reggie himself, a whip-thin black man with a razor scar down the left cheek of an otherwise pleasant-featured face that had a casual, easy, very genuine smile. When he saw Joe Kiley that smile widened to almost dazzling proportions.

  “Hey, my man Joseph!”

  “Hello, Reggie,” said Kiley. “How’s things?”

  “Right as rain, brother,” Reggie replied as the two men shook hands. Then his smile disappeared. “I ought to be good and pissed at you, though. Ain’t been around to see me for three months—”

  “Yeah, I know. I planned to a couple of times—”

  “I don’t want to hear no lame excuses,” Reggie preempted. “You discriminating against me jus’ ’cause I’m honest now.”

  Kiley shrugged. “Can’t waste my time on people who don’t break the law. Listen, you got a couple minutes?”

  “Always got time for you, man, you know that.” Reggie turned to the nearest waitress. “Tonisha, take care of the register for a spell. Come on, Joseph—”

  Reggie led Kiley through swinging doors into the kitchen, where he had two white-outfitted barbecue chefs sizzling meat and stirring sauce; then on into a long, narrow pantry, the shelves of which were stocked with restaurant-sized containers of condiments, stacks of crisp white tablecloths and napkins, and large bags of flour, dried red beans, and raw brown sugar. At the far end of the pantry was a rickety card table and several folding chairs under a single unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Reaching behind a sack of beans, Reggie retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniels and pulled two five-ounce paper cups from a dispenser mounted on the wall.

  “You’ll have a snort with me, won’t you?”

  “Short one,” Kiley replied. He was normally not a drinker of whiskey in any form; Scotch, bourbon, or rye—to Kiley it all tasted like it should be poured into an engine of some kind. But he had not seen Reggie for a while and wanted him to know they were still friends. And—he had a major favor to ask.

  Reggie handed Kiley a cup and raised his own in a toast. “To your very good health, my friend.”

  “And yours,” Kiley said. They sat at the shaky little table. “Business all right?” Kiley asked.

  “Never better,” Reggie boasted. “There’s a whole new generation of lawyers coming up who’ve been prime-fed my secret, savory, Southern sauce all the way to their bar exams. Someday I fully expect to have my ribs praised on the U-nited States Su-preme Court.” He winked. “Not bad for a reformed burglar, say what?”

  “You deserve it, Reg,” said Kiley. “You’ve worked hard.” He sipped a little of the Jack Daniels, then said, “I need a big favor from you.”

  “You got it, brother. Just ask.”

  “I’m going to need to get through a door a few nights from now.”

  “Oh?” Reggie was clearly surprised.

  “It’s very important.”

  Reggie laced his fingers around the paper cup of Jack Daniels. “Joe, you know I’ll do damn near anything you want me to. Wasn’t for you, no telling where I’d be today: back in the joint, fucked up on dope, maybe even dead. So I know I owe you, big time—”

  Kiley didn’t disagree. He had arrested Reggie years earlier, back when he was riding a squad car in uniform; caught Reggie, then a heroin addict, coming out of an Outdoorsman Sporting Goods store with eight hundred dollars in cash-drawer starter money, and a duffel bag filled with target pistols, hunting rifles, expensive fishing reels, designer jogging suits, and a variety of other marketable merchandise with a stolen goods street value of six thousand dollars. Kiley had testified against Reggie at his preliminary hearing, then seen him go down for four-to-six on a plea bargain arrangement prior to his trial date. Reggie had been sent to Pontiac Correctional Center and about six months later had done an unusual thing: He had written Kiley a letter in care of the department, explaining that he had no family to write to, and asking permission to send Kiley, as part of the prison program, reports on his rehabilitation efforts. He thanked Kiley for arresting him and said that he was cleaning up his act in prison and intended to return to society a new person.

  Typically, Kiley had ignored the letter. Then he began receiving one every month, with details about educational classes Reggie was taking, drug therapy he was undergoing, and self-improvement programs he was participating in. After several letters, which were being forwarded to Kiley out in the district he was assigned to—and for which he was taking more than a little heckling—Kiley had finally answered the young convict, reluctantly and awkwardly wished him well in his efforts, and asked him to kindly stop sending letters in care of the department. Reggie immediately replied to the return address on Kiley’s envelope, and before long the correspondence had become mutually friendly. In a rare instance of benefaction toward his fellow man, Joe Kiley had begun encouraging Reggie along the rehabilitative path the young drug-addicted burglar had already taken. Several times during Reggie’s incarceration, Kiley had even driven down to visit him and put a little money in Reggie’s commissary account. And when Reggie was cut loose on parole, Kiley had vouched for him to get a busboy job in a Thompson’s Cafeteria. Kiley subsequently loaned Reggie money to buy his first car; vouched for him again when Reggie applied somewhere else for a short order cook’s job; helped him pay his way through culinary school after Reggie decided he wanted to become a chef; and finally, nearly a dozen years after the original arrest, co-signed on a small business bank loan for the ex-criminal to finance the opening of Reggie’s Ribs.

  Kiley had never told Nick Bianco about his friendship with Reggie, just as Nick for years had not told Kiley about Gloria Mendez. But his relationship with Reggie, and the knowledge that he had helped someone turn around an unfortunate life, had been a gratifying experience for Joe Kiley—particularly so since Reggie was black and Kiley was generally predisposed toward prejudice, intolerance, and narrow-minded bigotry. Kiley’s genuine fondness for Reggie was the one reservation he had about involving Reggie in his plan to avenge Nick. He was only doing so now because the possibility of Reggie being caught was, in Kiley’s judgment, close to nonexistent.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” he told Reggie as they sat in the pantry, “if I thought there w
as any chance of you taking a fall—”

  “It’s not that,” Reggie assured him. “Even if there was a chance of taking a fall, I’d still do it for you, Joe, you know that. The thing that concerns me is that I might blow it. It’s been a lot of years, you know; I imagine new locks have been developed, new tumbler systems; I know some doors open now with card keys, some with dial pads—”

  “This won’t be anything like that,” Kiley assured. “This will be an ordinary door, an ordinary lock, probably in place for twenty or thirty years. There’s no need for extra security where I’m talking about; it’s a place nobody would break into.”

  “You’re going to break into it,” Reggie pointed out.

  “Not to steal anything,” Joe said, shaking his head. He shrugged. “There’s really nothing to steal.”

  Reggie sat back for a moment, evaluating. Finally he tossed down the last of his Jack Daniels and snapped the fingers of both hands simultaneously. “Okay, bro. When do we do it?”

  “I’ll call you in a few days,” Kiley said. He was feeling a little guilty. “I really appreciate this, Reg.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Can you get a set of lock-pick tools?” Kiley asked, rising.

  “I’ve already got a set,” Reggie told him. He immediately looked away, aware of his slip. Hoping to cover it, he rose and went about putting the Jack Daniels bottle back in its hiding place.

  “You’ve got lock-pick tools?” Kiley asked, surprised. Reggie kept his eyes averted and did not answer; his expression in profile told Kiley that he was desperately trying to conjure up an answer. “What for?” Kiley wanted to know. Still no answer. Kiley pulled Reggie around to face him. “Reggie, you are a fucking restaurant owner!” he snapped. “What the fuck are you doing with lock-pick tools?”

  Reggie’s thin shoulders slumped. “I had a couple of problems, Joe—”