Maxwell Street Blues

by Marc Krulewitch

  My legs felt heavy on the stairway. I tilted the recliner back to its farthest position. I had foolishly thought uncovering the blackmailing of Linda Conway would break open the case. Instead I learned that greed and corruption were alive and well in Chicago city politics. Who knew being a lesbian was even frowned upon by anyone anymore? I drifted off thinking I’d wake up to discover the last ten days had all been a dream and Snooky was home dusting his collection of rain-forest bird statues hand-carved from tagua nuts. Once again, the phone woke me two hours later.

  “I’m taking the morning off,” Audrey said. “Come with me to a gallery.”

  “I’m trying to focus on the case.”

  “Perfect! Come with me to take your mind off things awhile and that might help you see more clearly.”

  I supposed she had a point.

  * * *

  Next door to Audrey’s shop, a thirty-something woman wearing a sequined lavender head scarf was on her knees in the display window of Vagabond Boutique, dressing a mannequin in a 1950s housedress. Beside her lay a large orange tabby cat. Our eyes met long enough to surpass my comfort level. I blinked. Her gaze followed me into Taudrey Tats, where Audrey waited to wrap her skinny arms around my torso. She squeezed tight with the side of her head plastered against my chest just under my chin. I squeezed back, and it felt good, though it seemed pretentious on her part.

  I let up a bit, but she squeezed harder. Audrey manipulating her sexuality, leading me around by a ring through my nose. Pathetic.

  “All right already,” I said and freed myself. “I’m a big boy.”

  She studied me. “You got punched in the other eye?”

  “Maybe.”

  She shook her head. “Well, then, let’s go.”

  I volunteered to drive, but she flagged down a cab. “It feels more urban-appropriate,” she said. I didn’t bother asking what that meant. She gave the driver an address on the northwest side.

  “Where are you taking me?” I said.

  “A gallery I stumbled on last year. I go every few months when there’s a new exhibit.” She described the artwork at The Eclectic Narcoleptic as typical of “extreme development fused with intellectual neo-expressionism.”

  Audrey hummed an unidentifiable tune. I tried to relax, but my thoughts stuck to the case. In particular, Voss’s mysterious grudge. Did the Landaus piss off the Germans somehow? Or maybe it was the Greeks he hated, particularly Kalijero. Did he blame me for his inability to settle an old score with Kalijero? Why wouldn’t Kalijero tell me about this conflict? Maybe he didn’t know.

  The taxi let us off in front of a converted firehouse in another brick-bungalow neighborhood. “The artist is H. R. Musick,” Audrey said as we walked into the sparsely populated engine bay. “His disparate pop-art characters interacting on photographed backgrounds create vignettes of absurd theater. It’s a brilliant demonstration of the subtext of real life.”

  We looked at a picture of a child dressed in an old-fashioned sailor’s outfit sitting cross-legged on the back of a giant black swan as it floated across a pond. The child’s toy schooner floated next to them.

  I felt compelled to ask, “That’s the real life you live in?”

  Audrey responded with something about each picture having a million worlds and each world having a million stories and that truth was everything and nothing—or something equally bizarre. Then she recognized a woman across the room and ran over to her. I continued the tour seeing only the events of the previous ten days. Fear of not finding Snooky’s killer crept in. Angles, I thought. There had to be another angle. Snooky was family, but he wasn’t blood. If someone wanted Landau blood, why didn’t they kill me?

  Audrey’s voice startled me. “What stories do you see?”

  The painting in front of me depicted young girls, bunnies, a World War II fighter plane diving with guns spitting out orange flames, and a black bear. “I see Snooky lying on a pile of construction trash with two bullets in his head.” Audrey had no reaction. She started telling her own story about the picture’s characters. Tate killed Snooky, I thought, because he was perversely jealous of Snooky’s relationship with Audrey. Or maybe Tate killed Snooky because he knew too much about Tate’s financial dealings. Both scenarios seemed improbable and had nothing to do with bad blood.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking?”

  I looked at Audrey. “I need a story of irrefutable evidence.”

  We walked to the firehouse’s tower, a sixty-foot-tall structure used for drying hoses. At the top of the structure was the original 1912 bronze bell. “I’ll start spending more time with him,” Audrey said. “Maybe we can figure out who actually pulled the trigger.”

  “Your life isn’t complicated enough? I mean, you’ve got real issues to deal with regarding your dad.”

  “If Dad is a murderer, things become much less complicated.”

  As soon as I attributed her unapologetic indifference to the world as part of a shallow, immature personality, she blindsided me with a simple observation that demonstrated intellectual depth and sensitivity. Add a generous sprinkling of sex appeal and you had a woman difficult to resist.

  We shared a cab back to Taudrey Tats, where Audrey had planned to spend the afternoon preparing sketches for her wolf-mural client. Next door, the Boutique Lady remained in the display window, meticulously pinning all kinds of trinkets to a dress. From her knees, she looked up and stared at us while we said our goodbyes.

  “Your gaudy neighbor likes to stare.”

  Audrey turned and waved to Miss Boutique, who smiled and resumed decorating. “She thinks you’re in love with me.”

  Audrey’s sudden relapse annoyed me. “The shock value of your blunt honesty is zero. In fact, it’s a real turnoff.”

  Audrey stepped back and searched my face. “Okay,” she said and walked into her shop.

  38

  The Friday lunchtime crowd kept me circling the neighborhood longer than usual, and with each pass I noticed the black Cadillac limousine parked in the loading zone across from my apartment. No doubt it idled with the air-conditioning on. Eventually I found a space two blocks away and started walking. About half a block from my building, the limo bullied across both lanes of traffic and stopped in front of me on the wrong side of the street. The passenger rear window lowered to reveal Mildish’s cherubic face. Undisturbed by the blaring horns and obscenities directed at his driver, Mildish said, “Could you give me a few minutes, Mr. Landau?”

  Mildish pushed open the door. A frigid gust swept over me. My Honda could drive ten miles burning the gas used to create that arctic blast. Once I was inside, Mildish tapped on the glass partition. The tires squealed, throwing me against the door as the car swung around and merged back into traffic. “Sorry about that,” Mildish said. “I guess none of us is immune to the temptation of power.”

  “Especially four hundred horsepower,” I said.

  Mildish chuckled. “It’s time I tell you that Dr. Tate murdered Mr. Snook.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, I said, “That settles it. I’ll call Area B headquarters and have a warrant issued for his arrest.”

  I waited until Mildish said, “I made an executive decision—”

  “You can’t prove it, but you’re going to throw Tate under the bus. Why?”

  Mildish rubbed his chin and then his eyes and forehead. “To end this once and for all.” His voice had that unemotional edge of a professional assassin.

  “You mean, to end my investigation once and for all.”

  “It looks bad, I know. It was our fault. Tate was new to this, and we didn’t keep an eye on him. We should have anticipated his panic and stepped in. Surely you must know he acted on his own, and we had nothing whatever to do with your friend’s murder.”

  “You want me to accept your executive decision as truth and leave it at that?”

  “It’s just business.”

  “And you think your business decision will exonerate you? If you don’t like being
a suspect, then give me proof of your innocence or someone else’s guilt.”

  I didn’t think it possible to sweat inside a refrigerator, but Mildish took out a handkerchief and started mopping his forehead as if he were sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley. “I will testify under oath—” Mildish started to breathe rapidly and rub his hands together. Then he frantically searched his jacket pockets and found a pill to place under his tongue. “Give me a few moments, please,” he said. I waited as His Honor’s head fell back and his fists pushed into the leather seats, apparently bracing himself against some unimaginable horror. A couple of minutes later, he sighed deeply and relaxed.

  “I’ve never actually seen a panic attack, but that sure looked like one,” I said.

  “We all have inner demons to battle,” Mildish said and leaned toward me just a bit. “It would be a mistake to interpret mine as a sign of weakness.”

  I should’ve been scared or at least intimidated. Instead, I leaned toward His Honor and said, “Tell me again how you had nothing to do with those photos Tate used to blackmail Linda Conway.”

  Mildish straightened himself. “Good god almighty—that was business! His efforts at persuasion were failing. He was showing signs of weakness, so we made a decision. In retrospect, we never should have brought Tate in. We could have used some other channels to get to the trustees. If we were going to kill someone, it would have made more sense to kill Tate than Mr. Snook. We trusted Mr. Snook. Tate was an amateur.”

  “You tracked me down just to tell me of your executive decision?”

  “I have been made aware that Dr. Tate’s past includes some shocking behavior. The kind of behavior that should ruin a man’s life.”

  “Killing someone isn’t shocking enough?”

  “This involves the abuse of a child.”

  “What does this have to do with Snooky’s murder?”

  “Dr. Tate murdered Charles Snook. Trust me on this decision.”

  I struggled to quash my laughter. “I should trust you?”

  “Tate will be told that he can either tell the truth about it or be exposed as a degenerate. In effect, this will end your investigation.”

  I took a moment to digest his words. “You’re going to tell a man to confess to murder or be labeled a child molester? You are indeed the all-powerful Oz! What the hell kind of choice is that? Either way, he’s finished.”

  “There’s nothing to be gained by putting off the inevitable. If a guilty man can’t be brought to justice, then bring the justice to him.”

  “Your executive decision seems a bit irrational and desperate.”

  Mildish groaned. “I had nothing to do with Mr. Snook’s murder. We hope you’ll be satisfied with our decision and let things return to normal. Of course, you’ll be well compensated for dropping the investigation.” Mildish tapped on the glass partition and the driver slowed at the next intersection before pulling a sharp U-turn.

  I stared out the window watching the city blocks pass as we moved closer to my apartment. “So who’s going to inform Tate of your executive decision?”

  “Do not trouble yourself with such details.”

  “And what does the Windy City Wizard have in store for me should I not be satisfied that Tate acted alone or acted at all?”

  “This is the last time I will tell you that I don’t kill people. But if you want to work anymore in this town, you should know that destroying someone’s reputation is not beyond my reach.”

  The limo pulled over in front of my building. I left without saying goodbye.

  39

  Frownie wore a black silk bathrobe with matching slippers. He placed a small, ornate glass on the end table next to me and then sunk into a huge leather lounger and put his feet up. “These are specially made for single malt,” he said. “See the outturned lip? That’s supposed to channel the whiskey to the tip of your tongue so the smoky taste is emphasized.” I sipped and nodded and sipped again. When I didn’t say anything else, Frownie said, “You don’t give a shit. So what’s up?”

  “Mildish is giving Tate the choice of confessing to Snooky’s murder or being exposed as a child molester. And he said he’d pay me off to drop the whole thing.”

  Frownie sipped and held the whiskey in his mouth. When he finally swallowed, he said, “How much he gonna pay you?”

  His response annoyed me. “Is that really the point?”

  Frownie sipped again and repeated the routine. “Sometimes you gotta step back and reassess things, Julie. Not all crimes are solved. You did your best for now. Maybe somethin’ else will come up later. But in the meantime if you can get paid, that’s not such a bad thing.”

  “So Mildish wins and the truth never comes out?”

  “What did he win? You got him shittin’ his pants so he’s gonna pay you. With guys like him, you don’t wanna go too far if you can help it. He’s a coward and cowards take the easy way out. Destroyin’ someone’s life is easy for a guy like Mildish. If you had rock-solid proof of who killed Snooky, then maybe you stick to your guns. But if you got nothin’, then you gotta ask yourself if it’s worth riskin’ your life anymore.”

  “What about Tate? If he’s the killer, no way he acted alone.”

  “What about the molestin’ thing?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess. Audrey suggested he was a pervert.”

  “So he cut deals with crooks and he’s possibly a child molester. He made his bed, Jules—and you can’t protect people from themselves. Remember, Snooky also chose to do business with criminals.”

  The day had begun with Frownie’s three A.M. freak-out about Voss. Twelve hours later, Frownie casually sipped whiskey and told me to take the money and run. Play the game was what he was really saying—and be thankful you got a few bucks for your trouble. The disappointment stung, but I stayed in Frownie’s company and listened to him mellow with each sip, gradually sliding into the ocean of memories that shaped so many lives of his generation, who had lived through an economic calamity and a world war. It was not difficult to understand how the promise of easy money influenced Frownie’s world. A quick payday was a no-brainer when images of hardworking Americans waiting in line at soup kitchens were as real as the late-twentieth-century crack whore. Prohibition gangsters and crooked politicians lived in my consciousness only as romantic images of Hollywood history. The bad guys I had recently dealt with were hardly larger than life. Despite having killed a hopeless junkie, I had seen too little of what it really meant to live and die in America. Frownie had seen too much.

  * * *

  I left Frownie’s place troubled by the idea of taking Mildish’s money. Lack of sleep caught up to me. At home I lay on the couch where Punim joined me, nestling between the crook of my arm and my rib cage. I fell into a deep, black sleep from which I awoke three hours later with no memory of dreaming but with the idea that I should inform Audrey that her father’s life had just become more complicated.

  “You sound sad,” Audrey said.

  “Yes, I’m a sad guy. But I need to talk to you about some new developments.”

  “Good, I can show you some of my wolf drawings! Come by any time before ten.”

  I splashed cold water on my face. Refreshed from the nap, I was struck by the strangeness of Audrey’s response. Considering our sober discussion a few hours earlier, I didn’t expect wolf sketches to outweigh new developments in a murder case. But she was an artist after all.

  I arrived at Taudrey Tats around eight. Audrey had set up a display rack of pencil drawings. The first sketch showed a furry, angelic face worthy of a Hallmark greeting card. As much Siberian husky as wolf. With each subsequent sketch, the face changed until it gradually morphed into a vicious, bloodthirsty hellhound.

  “It’s the potential in all of us,” Audrey said. “Hungry sexual violence just beneath the surface.”

  I didn’t want to consider the possible scenarios that may have influenced this interpretation. “Let’s get some tea or coffee,�
�� I said, and Audrey suggested a place down the street called Blind Roasted.

  “The owner really is blind,” she said as we walked. “He buys coffee and tea by sense of smell.”

  The shop was softly lit by small spotlights illuminating landscape paintings of various Asian and South American countries whose seeds and leaves we drank. Audrey ordered a cup of Peruvian dark whole bean, and I got a cup of lemon lavender mint. We sat at a table under a watercolor of Brazilian fruits and vegetables.

  “Your father will be given the choice of confessing to Snooky’s murder or being exposed as a child molester.”

  Audrey raised her eyebrows and stared at me as if waiting for the punch line. “Who told you this?”

  “The people I’m in touch with are deadly serious about protecting their asses. They’re tired of having this murder hanging over their heads, so they’re outing Tate as the guilty party.”

  “He’s not going to admit to anything.”

  “I said they’re deadly serious.”

  Audrey turned pale. She looked confused and then incredulous. “They’re going to kill him if he doesn’t cooperate?”

  Her sudden awakening to the gravity of the situation appeared genuine. I wanted to believe that from this realization the real Audrey would emerge, an Audrey who didn’t speak ambiguously or forget crucial details, an Audrey who stayed focused on the tragedy at hand and didn’t digress to frivolous thoughts. I wanted to like Audrey. I wanted to trust her.

  “At the very least they’d ruin him, that’s for sure. And they threatened to ruin me, too.”

  She slumped in her chair. “I hate him,” she said. “Ruin him but don’t kill him.”

  “He’s got money. Do you think he’d run?” Audrey stared at me. “What’s worse, death or life in prison?”

  “Depends who you ask. I can’t picture your dad in prison. If he did run, he’d probably be okay if he stayed away from Chicago.”