Maxwell Street Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  “I hadn’t been paying attention. I’d been relying on my memories as a child and the stories my grandfather told me. Then it was pointed out to me how much things had changed.”

  “Perhaps it was Chancellor Tate who pointed out to you how much things had changed?”

  Conway stared at her desktop. Then she said, “Several people discussed this with me. Dr. Tate may have been one of them.”

  “Did you know Snooky was laundering kickback money from Baron Construction to Tate and Representative Mildish?”

  “It was none of my business what Snooky did with his clients’ money.”

  “Why are you protecting them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about a half-billion-dollar construction contract, and I’m talking about murder.”

  Linda Conway stood, then walked to the door. “Get out!”

  I placed one of my cards on her desk. Before leaving, I promised to call next time.

  28

  Back home, I put the glass elephant on the windowsill and collapsed on the couch. As my brain waves gradually slowed, I thought of checking the university’s bylaws to see what they actually said, then wondered if a junkie took Snooky’s elephant. And what was Voss’s memory theme about? His tone had a childish “I know something you don’t know” quality. I hated goddamn games.

  Two hours later, I awoke to Punim mewing loudly while holding a small plastic fish in her mouth. I put a variety of hearts, livers, and kidneys in her bowl and fixed myself a sandwich of avocados, sprouts, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Then I cracked open a cold diet ginger ale and turned on the Cubs game, where they were about to throw out the first pitch. By the third inning, it was time to head over to Taudrey Tats. When I walked out of my apartment, I couldn’t recall if there had been any scoring or who they were playing.

  Audrey sat in the hydraulic chair with her face buried in a fat paperback. Her index finger moved quickly down one side and then the facing side. By the time I had walked to the edge of The Kitschen, she had twice turned over new pages.

  I said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “What do you mean?” The book was Atlas Shrugged.

  “You read that fast?”

  She gave me a blank look. “I lose myself. It’s like there’s me looking at the words, and then another part of me interpreting. It’s the same for my art. Part of me draws, part of me interprets. When they both agree, then I feel free.”

  I took that for a yes, although I had no idea what she was talking about. “Someone called the police from your phone the Monday morning after they found Snooky.”

  Audrey blinked a few times. “L.A. made the call.”

  It was my turn to give Audrey a blank look, and then I remembered her dark-haired friend visiting from California. “Why did she call?”

  “To tell them we knew the deceased.”

  “So when I walked in here the next day, you already knew Snooky was dead?”

  “Part of me did,” she said, sounding a touch impatient. “But I was denying that part until you walked in and told me he was murdered. Then it hit me that Snooky was gone forever and I fell apart. I’m hungry.”

  Audrey was hungry. “What did L.A. say about her conversation with the police? I assume they sent someone over.”

  “Nobody came over. She said they didn’t seem that interested. Can we go eat somewhere?”

  We walked to Broadway and then headed north until we stopped at a Chinese restaurant. On the way Audrey started talking about a potential client who wanted his entire back covered in a mural. “It’s going to tell the story of wolves devouring humans until the humans become endangered and have to be put in protected sanctuaries …” She was still talking when we sat down. “Am I boring you, Jules?”

  “Did your dad know your meth-head client Jason?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “How do you suppose Jason got your dad’s home telephone number and why would he call him?”

  “You said he had his business card.”

  “The card had only his office number.”

  “Then he must’ve copied it from my address book.”

  “You have your dad’s address?”

  “Of course. I told you I know where he lives.”

  She had a good memory. “Why would Jason call your dad?”

  “Maybe he was looking for me.”

  “He knew where to find you.”

  Audrey did her best to look offended. “You think I’m up to no good, Jules?”

  “It’s your dad I’m trying to figure out.”

  “You get to be friends with repeat customers. I knew Jason was a drug addict, but I treated him with respect. If he was going to kill himself with drugs, there was nothing I could do about it. That’s just his story. And he always paid me in cash. It was just business.”

  “You let anyone look in your address book?”

  “It sits on the counter. What do I care who looks at it?”

  “What could’ve been so important that Jason couldn’t wait until he saw you at the shop?”

  “The guy was out of his mind. Maybe he was going to ask me for money again.”

  “You gave him money?”

  “Once. He paid me back many times with tattoo business.”

  “The calls were only ten or fifteen seconds long. Would your dad have told you Jason called?”

  “He would’ve left a message on my cell. During the day it would have been Anna, his personal assistant, answering the phone. She’s there every weekday to feed the cats, tidy up, run errands, and leave something in the fridge for dinner. Anna has my cell number, and she would’ve called me if I had a message.”

  “Why would anyone call you at your dad’s house?”

  “Because the landline I have is just a courtesy phone for customers to make local calls. When my cell rings, I always know it’s going to be a business-related call.”

  “You’re friends with this personal assistant?”

  “Sort of. I feel sorry for her. She seems kind of desperate. I pay her on the side to let me know what’s going on. Dad needed someone to take care of him. I met her first and described what she was getting into. I told her he’s just a big baby with a bad temper. She drew the line at changing his diapers.”

  Our food arrived, and while we ate I feigned interest in the wolf mural she was planning for someone’s back and listened as she spoke excitedly of what such a project could mean for her reputation. As her words washed over me, I studied her lovely face and thought how the promise of sex gave women an extraordinary power over men. She spoke with a bubbling, self-absorbed, childlike joy, as if she were the creator of worlds and her client’s back existed solely for a chapter of her story. The wolves would be beautiful yet bloodthirsty; compassionate yet ruthless. And they would feast on entrails ripped from human torsos.

  After dinner, we strolled down Broadway. Audrey continued talking about what she could do with the bloody realism of the mural while I enabled her discourse with innocent questions about the world of body art.

  She stopped abruptly. “I’m really sorry about the other night,” she said and laughed. “I had too much wine. And I really need to get home.”

  “Where is home, anyway?”

  “It’s probably better you don’t know.” Audrey gave me a quick hug and walked away.

  29

  At eight o’clock the next morning, I drove back to the park across from Tate’s house while eating one of Santiago’s burritos. I had hoped the personal assistant would get an early jump on things but had to wait until ten-thirty before a beat-up blue Subaru wagon with Pennsylvania plates stopped in front of his house. A nice-looking woman of above-average height with a lean build and light brown hair stepped out. She wore a sleeveless shirt. Her arm muscles were well-defined, as if she had known a life of heavy lifting. I guessed midforties.

  I called in her license plate to Johnny Bonds, who called me back with the name Anna Pian
towski. Her car was still registered in Pennsylvania. A short time later, Anna Piantowski emerged from the house holding a piece of white paper. I leaned against an enormous oak tree directly across the street from her car. When she crossed the sidewalk, I walked quickly to block the driver’s side door.

  “Hi, Ms. Piantowski. I’m a friend of Audrey’s.”

  She seemed unimpressed with this fact. “She’s probably at work.”

  “I’m also a private investigator.” I showed her my license. She took it from my hand, studied it, handed it back. I noticed the cell phone on her belt. “I’m investigating the murder of Charles Snook. He did some work for Dr. Tate. Audrey said you take phone messages during the day. Do you remember a man named Jason calling in the last two weeks?”

  “I don’t remember, and I’ve got a lot of errands to run.” She held up the piece of paper and then stuffed it into her pocket. On her forearm I noticed a tattooed outline of a heart enclosing the letters “LC.”

  “Each call lasted less than fifteen seconds. The time it takes to ask if someone was home and then leave a message. Maybe he asked for Dr. Tate.”

  Anna Piantowski’s jaw muscles momentarily popped up. “I don’t keep a message log. If someone called for Dr. Tate, then ask Dr. Tate if he got the message. Now, do you mind getting out of the way?”

  “I don’t mind, but first let me tell you some facts: Three calls were made in the afternoon hours to this house; three calls were answered. The drug addict who made the calls has since had his brains blown out the back of his head. And here’s a possible fact: if the drug addict wasn’t calling for Audrey or Tate, then maybe he was calling for you.”

  Anna Piantowski was now a wolf about to tear out my throat. “Someone called and hung up,” she said. “I said, ‘Hello, hello?’ and they hung up. It happened a few times.”

  “And you were not going to tell me this because …?”

  “Because I’m in a hurry and didn’t think about it.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re not surprised to see me?”

  Anna Piantowski pursed her lips, and I noticed her hands had become fists that accentuated her forearm muscles. “Look, mister, I have work to do. I’m going to ask you one more time to get out of the way.”

  I did as asked. As she drove away, I saw her left arm bring the cell phone to her ear.

  * * *

  I walked back to the picnic table and called Kalijero. “I’m across from Tate’s house,” I said. “I just had a not-so-friendly chat with his personal assistant, who’s in his house five days a week. She just called someone from her cell.”

  “You want to know who she’s been calling?”

  “I want to know who she’s calling right now.”

  “I need proper legal authority to track someone.”

  “She lied to me when I asked if a recently murdered drug addict had called the house.”

  I heard a grunt, then, “I guess that’s justifiable. Give me a couple hours.”

  The phone rang as I walked back to my car. “Do me a favor,” Dad said. “Meet me at Halsted and Maxwell.” He sounded troubled. I asked if the end of a barrel was pushed against his head. “Just shut up and meet me there,” he said and hung up.

  Forty minutes later, I once again stood at the appointed corner amidst the anarchy of a construction zone. The chain-link fence had advanced another fifty yards or so. For several minutes, I watched the backhoes dig up enormous buckets of dirt before I noticed an apparition of a man in an argyle sweater standing on the opposite corner leaning heavily on a cane. I crossed the street and Dad surprised me by hooking his left arm around my neck and pulling me into an embrace. I carefully hugged him, fearful I would crush the bones of his back.

  “I didn’t mean to sound sore on the phone,” he said. I suggested we sit in the shade. Dad gestured for me to lead the way, and he followed me to the front stoop of an abandoned three-flat—soon to be demolished. I helped him lower himself to the third step.

  “Why here?” I said.

  “First, tell me what’s going on.”

  I told him about meeting Tate at the barely-legal-teen bar, the dead junkie, my encounter with Voss at the lakefront, the conversation at Area B headquarters, my get-together with Linda Conway, and that morning’s conversation with Tate’s personal assistant.

  “You didn’t say how the junkie got dead,” he said.

  “Old age.”

  “Funny. And what about that young broad?”

  “What about her?”

  “Don’t let your prick think for you.”

  “Snooky adored her.”

  “Those nicknames in Snooky’s book, the names I didn’t know. Figure them out yet?”

  “All but one. Butch is still a mystery. I don’t think Butch was part of the Maxwell Street scam.”

  Dad let out a heavy sigh. “You once referred to our family as a bunch of petty criminals.”

  “Sorry. Maybe petty was the wrong word. How about small-time?”

  Dad surprised me with a laugh. “In 1887 a Clark Street saloon keeper knew someone in the recorder’s office who owed him a favor, and my grandfather got his first job making phony real estate sales in return for kickbacks. When he was city collector, bribes from property owners magically transformed unpaid taxes into paid taxes. As city sealer of weights and measures, he saw that cash gifts resulted in accurate scales. As ward committeeman, he had poll watchers kidnapped to make sure the elections were fair. By this time he was making good money. Enough to get his son elected to the superior court at age thirty. Enough to get his chauffeur off a homicide charge after he ran over a woman from Highland Park.”

  Dad took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Then a broad grin spread across his face and, as if under a spell, he continued. “But the Maxwell Street Market,” he said and laughed again. “That’s where Granddad was king! He had his own handpicked policemen. The peddlers feared him and paid him regularly or they were out! He created permanent market stalls and sold and resold them for hundreds of dollars. At the height of his power, he threw himself a fiftieth birthday banquet and was presented with a diamond star purchased by the grateful merchants of the Maxwell Street Market!”

  Dad turned to me and said, “To this day, you can find books about Capone or Hymie Weiss, and somewhere you’ll find your great-grandfather’s name. He’s even mentioned in Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift—I got the book if you don’t believe me.”

  My father looked pissed off. His voice had acquired enough edge to instantly explain how this skinny apparel salesman could also collude with people who never mourned the loss of an associate’s finger because of a delinquent payment. He had that certain chromosome required of men who had no impulse to rationalize how they acquired wealth or dwell on who got hurt in the process. It was the American way to make money; the fact he had hoodlum blood in his veins was a badge of historical honor and fuck you if you had a problem with it. I supposed I had a segment of that same chromosome but only enough so that I could go through life emotionally neutral about having a felon for a father or, perhaps, being a tad proud of it.

  “These people he sucked dry,” I said, “these were his people.”

  “He was a man of his times. Some he helped and others he didn’t. But he always took care of family. You don’t think Capone shafted other Italians?”

  “Capone was a killer.”

  Dad eyed me suspiciously. “Your great-grandfather was a highly respected man. You should command such respect one day.”

  Dad looked away. I wanted to remind him of the difference between respect and fear, but his last comment provoked an unexpected insight. His 1934 birth situated his consciousness astride two spheres: the poor immigrant world that equated money with reverence and the newer, enlightened world that valued integrity over wealth. It seemed Dad would go to his grave with the former world still holding sway in his deep brain regions.

  I said, “Why are we here talking about this?”

  “Your i
nvestigation, Julie. There’s nothing new here. They’re all involved. Politicians, contractors, accountants, trustees, chancellors. The junkie sticking needles in his arms, the broad scratching out tattoos, they’re all involved. It’s the same old story being told over and over for a hundred years.”

  “You think it’s a waste of time? You hired me, remember?”

  Dad shrugged. “Find out what happened to Snooky and make them pay. If you do that, nothing’s wasted. But don’t think you’ll change anything. One corrupt official goes down, another takes his place. That will never change.”

  Dad stared straight ahead with both hands resting on top of his cane. I studied his profile trying to find a hint of myself in his face but saw only those sunken cheeks and hollowed-out eyes.

  “What’s the deal with Voss?” I said. “He’s talking in riddles. Is there some bad blood I should know about?”

  Dad looked as if he was considering my statement. “I don’t know of bad blood with Voss. And if there was, I think I would know about it. Either way I don’t give a shit what that prick thinks. He can’t touch me. Fuck him.”

  “I was more worried about him touching me.”

  Another dismissive wave. “He’s got nothing on you. That’s the key. Just don’t give him anything to use against you. I think you know what I mean. Cross the t’s and dot the i’s.”

  “You need a ride home or what?”

  “I have a ride,” Dad said and pointed at the limo parked down the street. Then he took a folded manila envelope from his sweater pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s another installment.” This time it was in hundred-dollar-bills. Thirty of them.

  Dad made a comical effort to raise himself. I lifted him up from behind with my hands under his arms. He had the weight of an aluminum lawn chair.

  I said, “Are you sure this prostate thing isn’t more urgent?”

  “This isn’t about my goddamn prostate! I’m just old, that’s all. But I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.” Dad waved at the limo. “We’ll talk soon.”

  The limo stopped in front of us. The driver helped Dad into the car. They pulled away a few feet then stopped. Dad’s window lowered. “And don’t worry about Voss, I mean it. Just don’t give him anything.”