But for these children, the death of each season’s hopes simply meant a change of sports: the Cubs and Sox had each gone into the toilet in their own way and it was now another season: in most places, football season. And to city kids, basketball season. But then it was always basketball season in the city.
You wouldn’t know from watching these little boys running their circular pass patterns that they spent a good deal of their time hoping they wouldn’t be shot from a passing car for looking like somebody in a rival gang.
Something made him glance in the rearview mirror and he saw the car, a white car that looked to be a Ford Escort, and realized he had seen it once already today. He felt a little jump in his heart, a tight little rush of exhilaration and fear. To test his theory he made a sudden right, and when he was in midblock he looked up to see the Ford turn onto the street behind him.
My very own tail. Just like old times.
He’d been followed many times before, by professionals and semipros and unpolished talent just up from the minors. This one had a lot to learn; he was too close and it was broad daylight. Whelan drove to the corner and hung a left, then proceeded north on Ogden Avenue. The Ford crept out into the traffic a couple of car lengths back and stayed there. Whelan slowed down a little and tried to get a glimpse of the driver. He saw a black man in a baseball cap, wearing sunglasses and slouched back in his seat, doing what they called the gangster lean. The face was backlit; that was as much as he was going to see unless he got closer. A couple of blocks later the tail turned off and was gone.
Whelan turned at the next opportunity and doubled back, hoping to catch up with the Ford. He drove two blocks to the south, turned west, came back north, even cut into an alley, where a group of teenagers interrupted what appeared to be a business transaction and melted into the gangways. When he came back to traffic, his visitor was gone.
Whelan drove east in time to catch the rush-hour spill from the hospitals clustered along Roosevelt. From time to time he checked the mirror, but the tail never reappeared.
At seven o’clock that night he was in his car again, trying to figure out something to do. He hit the buttons on the radio till he got a jazz station and drove through his neighborhood listening to the quiet guitar of Kenny Burrell. He resisted the temptation to drive down to Rush Street and pop in on a certain fortyish waitress named Pat.
At this point, that would be a disaster. For a brief time the previous summer, Whelan had found himself in that rarest of experiences, a sudden serious relationship. A few weeks of infatuation, a calming-down period during which they realized they genuinely liked one another, another short period of romantic intensity, and then each had begun to pull back. Pat was very much like Whelan, a person single so long that involvement was a painful, often alien experience.
Whelan found himself asking whether he’d grown too set in his ways for a serious commitment. After many bouts of late-night brooding, he had decided he wanted to try, and at exactly that point, life had grown a bit more complicated for both of them: Pat’s ex-husband had come back into her life.
“What does he want?” Whelan had asked.
“I don’t know. But I don’t know what you want either.”
“This guy walked out on you. He ‘booked,’ as they say. He couldn’t handle his liquor or his money or having a kid, and he just split. Now that the child is grown and his life hasn’t exactly turned out the way he expected, he wants to come back.”
Pat’s gray eyes watched him for a moment. “Maybe. Maybe he’s never found anything better and now he knows what he let go of. I know he’s quit drinking. He’s in a program.”
“I’m sure he never found anything better, Pat. But only an asshole would have left.”
She smiled. “Two weeks ago, you weren’t sure you wanted to sign on, sailor.”
“I’m not anybody’s husband. I wouldn’t walk out.”
“You sure of that?” She raised her eyebrows. She was smiling, but the eyes told him she’d never trust another man, not completely.
“Yeah. I am. So…what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see him. I’ve got to see what happens.”
He was about to say something and then stopped himself. He remembered what a divorced friend, a woman, had once told him: that there would always be, in some women, the need to try once more to have that first marriage work out.
“So you’re going to give this guy one more shot, huh, Pat? Like he deserves one.”
She looked at him for a long time and then nodded slowly.
“Well…”
“Sorry, Paul.”
“I’ll call you anyway.”
“I hope so. Give me some time, though.”
“Deal.”
So there would be no crime in driving by the hamburger place where she still worked, this woman who deserved better, a better job, a better husband, a better life, but if she saw him he’d be embarrassed, and he was humiliated enough about the new dynamics of their relationship.
He drove instead to the House of Zeus, to feed his sense of the bizarre. He hung a left at the corner of Wilson and Broadway and waited patiently while an elderly black man pushed a shopping cart laden with his worldly possessions across Broadway. Whelan could see aluminum cans and a bundle of clothes and what appeared to be the side-view mirror of a truck. The old man labored against his shopping cart—pilfered from the local Jewel—and paused for just a moment to tip his baseball cap to Whelan.
Whelan drove up Broadway past the point where the El cast its skeletal shadow on the street and pulled up in front of the restaurant.
There was trouble in the House of Zeus.
In the front booth a chunky woman was wrestling with her preteen son, who had her purse. She grabbed his cheek and pinched till he let go.
A few feet away, a drunk slept at a corner table. He was face down in the little red basket that held his food.
At the counter, the entrepreneurs of the House of Zeus were arguing quality control with a dissatisfied customer.
Comfortable as old shoes, Whelan said to himself, and parked himself in a booth a few feet away. He took a quick reassuring look around at the garish murals on the walls. Like any self-respecting Greek restaurant in Chicago, the House of Zeus boasted huge murals intended to give a little of the flavor of Greece. Usually the wall paintings showed peasant villages or happy Greek fishermen pulling in their nets, or even the occasional tourist view of a ruined temple or amphitheater.
Here at the House of Zeus the artwork ran to the more sensational: the walls here showed Greek warriors dying in battle, most of them at the hands of Persians and Medes. It was gory, gaudy, oversize, and not quite what Whelan wanted to aid digestion. But then, if you wanted a more mainstream dining experience, you didn’t go to the only Greek restaurant in town run by a pair of Persians. Especially these Persians, who had cut their teeth running the town’s oddest fast-food place and then gone to California to participate in the Good Life. A “misunderstanding” with the Los Angeles Board of Health had sent them back here, where they most certainly belonged. There was no one like them. There was no restaurant like the House of Zeus. Or any other restaurant they ran.
Whelan leaned his chin against his hand and watched the floor show.
The customer was a young black man in his twenties and there was apparently a problem with his gyros, which he held up to his nose and then quickly thrust away from him.
“Damn! Smell that.”
Rashid showed his enormous teeth in a nervous grin, and Gus, his fat, brooding cousin, looked sullen and shrugged. His attitude was plain: after all, it wasn’t his sandwich.
“This shit is old, man.”
Rashid shook his head. “No, this guy is fresh. He’s fresh.” He pointed to the huge cone-shaped gyros turning slowly on a spit a few feet away.
“See? It’s a big one. Not old. When they’re old, they get real little.”
“Man, I don’t care. This is old. I can tell when mea
t is bad, and this shit done gone bad on you.”
He thrust the sandwich farther. Gus took a chance and sniffed, then recoiled in obvious horror.
“You see that?” the customer asked Rashid.
Rashid shot his cousin a murderous look and then leaned forward. He sniffed, and shrugged, then smiled and attempted to create an air of Middle Eastern wisdom. He shook his head.
“It’s what he’s supposed to smell like.”
“No, man.”
“Yes. This one is lamb. All lamb smells like shit.”
“Lamb?”
“You don’ know gyros, this is lamb?”
“I don’t know what it is, but the shit is old.”
“Well, this comes all the way from Greece. Takes a long time.”
Whelan listened closely, awaiting a final argument from Rashid.
“Comes on boat, boat is slow,” Rashid said, smiling.
The customer slammed the sandwich down on the counter. “Gimme my money back, man.”
Rashid sighed and turned to his cousin. “Give this man his money back.”
“You give it to him,” Gus said. “I didn’t make it.”
Rashid put his hands on his hips and shook his head at the truculence of Americans, the treason of his cousin. With a visible effort he turned and opened the cash register. With a pained look on his face, he pulled out a couple of singles and then some change. He reminded Whelan of a man pulling an arrow from his own body. He handed the money to the customer.
“Two seventy-five? Cost me four bucks, man. With tax and the orange pop.”
“Awright, okay, tax, I give him to you, but you pay for pop.”
“Pop probably poison too. I’m probably gon’ die on the street goin’ home. And I took a little bite out of that sucker.” He indicated the offending sandwich with a little thrust of his chin. Rashid handed him some more change, and the man took the money and left.
Rashid watched him leave and then looked over to Whelan’s booth. He showed his wondrously huge teeth in a grin.
“Hello, Detective. How is tricks?”
“Hello, Rashid. Little problem, huh?”
“Ah, no big deal.” He shrugged and winked and looked at his cousin.
Gus glared.
“Okay, so we got a problem with refrigeration. One cooler, he went out of commission. Maybe some of the food, it’s not so good now.”
“It’s spoiled.” Gus pointed at Rashid with a large fork. “He fucked it up. I told him call the people to fix, but no, he wants to fix it himself. He is genius now at electricity. Hah!”
“Electronics. I am engineer in Iran.”
“You were clerk in Iran.”
“You were street sweeper in Iran.” Rashid grinned at him.
“So what? You want to make trouble with me?”
“Ah, you crazy.”
“Maybe so,” Gus said, walking away.
“And your father was in jail in Iran.”
Gus turned slowly. Whelan thought he might have to referee this one. “My father was political prisoner of the Shah,” Gus growled.
“My father too.”
“Hah! My father spits on your father.”
“Is there anything that’s not spoiled?” Whelan asked.
Gus looked at Rashid for a moment and mumbled something in Farsi.
“The souvlaki, he’s okay.”
Gus said something else, and Rashid nodded again.
“And the Persian food, we put him in little refrigerator, and this one he’s still okay. Shalimar kabob, maybe.”
“Fine. I’ll have the shalimar kabob and a root beer.”
Rashid put his hands on his hips. “You heard the detective. Get the food.”
His burly cousin stared at him for a long moment, then looked at Whelan. “Someday, this one, he’s dead man. They will find this one in river. He will have cement underwear.” Gus nodded.
“Overshoes,” Whelan corrected. “Cement overshoes.”
Gus smiled slightly. “Yes, cement overshoes.” He went back into the kitchen.
Whelan looked at Rashid. “I see you finished the murals.”
“Yes. What do you think?”
“A little bloody for a restaurant. We generally don’t go in for a lot of battle scenes at mealtimes, but it’s colorful.” He stared for a moment at a vivid re-creation of a Persian warrior about to behead a Greek warrior.
“And I’m not sure your—uh, motif will go over well with the Greeks.”
Rashid showed a thousand teeth. “The Greeks are barbarians.” He shrugged. “Who cares what they think? They are a backward people. All culture in world came from Persia.”
“The Chinese will give you an argument.”
“From Persia, their culture comes. All is from Persia. All culture in whole world is from Persia.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“This will come as a blow to the French.”
He looked around. The woman in the front booth was still struggling with her twelve-year-old. She pointed a finger in his face and said something. He apparently gave her an unsatisfactory response because she smacked him in the head with her purse. Like any healthy child, he laughed. He was still laughing when they left a few minutes later, and he had his hand in Ma’s purse.
Dorothy was right: there’s no place like home, Whelan thought, looking around.
“Add some onion rings to that order, Rashid.”
“You bet. The onion rings, they are still good.”
I doubt it, Whelan thought, but it’s worth the risk. He looked at the sleeping drunk a few feet away.
“This guy had the gyros, huh?”
Rashid looked at the drunk. “Yes, but he didn’t finish.”
“If he hasn’t moved by closing time, you’d better get a lawyer.”
Rashid paused in the act of chopping lettuce. He stared owl-eyed at Whelan and after a moment let out a nervous laugh.
“Ha-ha. Very funny joke. Get lawyer.” He laughed again, but Whelan thought Rashid’s complexion was just a bit lighter now. The Iranian stood with the big knife in his hand and stared off into space, presumably remembering his unfortunate experience with the Los Angeles Board of Health and various legal representatives of the Golden State.
A few minutes later Whelan’s food came, in a recycled A & W red plastic basket: steaming shalimar kabob in a Persian pita, the whole mess covered with a spicy green curry whose components were better left to the imagination. It came with cole slaw and a mound of bad fries that made his golden onion rings an unnecessary excess, but there were times when the human body cried out for deep-fried food in large amounts and this was one of them.
The drunk was still sleeping when Whelan left, but he had at least changed position, and Rashid looked relieved.
A more normal clientele was beginning to arrive, and half the tables were filled. At the door, he waved.
“Good night, Detective!” Rashid called out. Half the people in the place turned to look at Whelan, and Rashid grinned delightedly.
He thought about stopping for a beer at the Green Mill and then decided it wasn’t what he wanted. People had begun to discover the old saloon and it was now a night spot, with live music and poetry readings. The Bucket of Suds was too far, and no other place appealed to him at the moment. In the end, he decided to go home and have a couple bottles of dark beer and watch television.
The night was looking up: Boom Town was on Channel 9: Clark Gable, the great Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr. Tough guys and redheaded women and brawls in the mud, and one of the great drinking scenes in movie history.
The call came about midnight.
There was a pause when he answered. He could hear the noisy brakes of a bus in the near background, cars going by. Pay phone.
“Hello?”
He thought he could hear breathing.
“You don’t want to talk, I’ll catch you later.”
“Whelan?” It was a young man’s vo
ice, a young black man, and he pronounced the name Wee-lin.
“That’s right. Who’s this?”
“You come to the West Side again, you gonna get hurt.”
“I’m terrified.”
“You gonna be terrified, you come back.”
“Who’re you, Joe Louis?”
“Sam Burwell don’t need nobody botherin’ him.”
“I’m not bothering him. I’m working for a member of his family.”
“His family, huh?”
“That’s right.”
The caller made a little snorting sound, and then said, “Sheeeit. I don’t know who you working for, man, but it ain’t his family.”
“No, huh?”
“No, mister, Sam’s family know where he at. You ain’t workin’ for his family.”
“Want to tell me who you are, so I know whether to believe you?”
“You best believe me, or your white ass is kicked. You hear?” He hung up before Whelan could say anything.
Whelan put the phone down and sat back in front of the TV. He wondered what Mr. David Hill, Barrister, would make of this caller’s information, then decided there was plenty of time to talk to Hill. He had left his business card all over the West Side and it had already earned him a tail and now attention of a more personal kind. He decided he could afford to take Saturday off.
Sunday, he’d be working. On Sunday morning, he’d get up early and wander down to Maxwell Street and see what kind of attention he could attract there.
Four
Day 3, Sunday
The Maxwell Street Blues Page 5