The Maxwell Street Blues

by Michael Raleigh

  The short fat woman was studying the menu. “I want that shrimp basket instead of this.”

  Oh-oh, Whelan thought. He looked at the woman, who squinted up at him and seemed to dare him to voice disagreement with her choice.

  “I want the shrimp basket,” she said to Whelan.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he muttered.

  “What?” The woman gave him a sharp look.

  “That’d be too many shrimp for me.” There was truth in it. Twenty shrimp. Twenty deep-fried shrimp from a Greek restaurant in Uptown run by Persian snake-oil salesmen. Twenty shrimp that had lived in the gelid darkness of Rashid’s cooler since Reagan gave up acting. Shrimp that Rashid and Gus had probably brought with them when they fled the health officials in sunny California. Whelan looked at the woman, who was still staring at him. “Twenty’s a lot,” he offered.

  “I didn’t have much of a breakfast.”

  Hope you have a good pharmacist nearby, he thought.

  Rashid took the woman’s order, put another burger on for the man, and refunded the Filipino woman’s money, carefully forking the iridescent beef back into its container. He grinned at Whelan and rubbed his hands together. “You see, Detective? All taken care of.”

  “Right. Satisfied customers. I’ll have a gyros to go, Rashid. Hold the onions. And cook the gyros,” he added. Rashid winked and giggled and was turning the great cone-shaped gyros on its spit when the pale-skinned man approached.

  “Mr. Abazi?”

  Rashid pointed to his cousin. “He is Mr. Abazi.”

  Gus shook his head and pointed back. “He is too. We are both Mr. Abazi.”

  A faint spot of color came into the pale man’s face. “You can have your jokes now, my friends, but this is no joke.” He held up a printed form with many lines for listing violations. Most of the lines were filled in a flowing script that hinted at the massive ego of the writer.

  The pale man began his speech, summing up the violations and threatening to close the boys down. Whelan peered at the list but could make out only a few words: “cooler” appeared twice on the list, as did “freshness”; the word “unsanitary” seemed to be on every other line. Mr. Health Inspector held the list up and pointed to its contents as though lecturing schoolboys, and the two Iranians hung their heads and nodded.

  The inspector paused at one point and nodded to Rashid. “Is that clear, Mr. Abazi? You, I take it, are the owner?”

  Rashid jerked a thumb in the direction of his cousin. “He is the owner.”

  “No.” Gus gave Rashid a sullen stare. “I own nothing. I work for this one, for no money at all. In Iran, I was professional man. Educated man.”

  Rashid showed fangs. “Educated man! Like what, like doctor? He is doctor, this one, this cleaner of toilets?”

  “Hah, the poisoner, listen to him.”

  The inspector’s eyebrows shot up. “Poisoner? What do you mean, poisoner?”

  The cousins suddenly collected themselves and showed matching grins. “It is old joke,” Gus said. “We are sorry about our poor restaurant.”

  “You may be a lot sorrier soon, sir.”

  Then, finished, Mr. Health Inspector collected his assistant and his briefcase and marched out onto Broadway. Whelan watched him with admiration: the unilateral malice of his performance had transformed him. No longer the bookish civil servant in need of a day in the sun, Mr. Health Inspector now resembled a bird of prey, a harrier looking for his lunch. As Whelan watched, the inspector consulted a notebook, said something to his assistant, nodded once, and was off in the direction of some other semi-hygienic Uptown eatery.

  When Whelan turned back to the counter, the boys were grinning at him. Rashid wiggled his bushy black eyebrows. “That was close one, eh, Detective?”

  “We were hot potatoes, Rashid,” Gus said. He gave his slender cousin a thudding smack on the back that earned him a halfhearted smile and hinted to Whelan of ancient boyish combats in the dusty streets of Tehran.

  “Whew!” Rashid said, and grinned.

  “Yes,” Gus said. “Whew.”

  “I get the feeling that you fellows aren’t taking Mr. Health Inspector seriously. These guys don’t play around. They’ll shut you down.” Then, as Rashid started to protest, Whelan added, “Remember California?”

  Gus nodded. “Yes, sure he does, the poisoner.”

  “This was unfortunate mistake, California. This was misunderstanding.”

  “Better be careful, guys. In California, they put you in jail for health-related offenses. This is Chicago: they’ll take your money. All your money. They’ll wring money out of you that you didn’t know you had.”

  The boys exchanged a panicked glance and nodded. “Okay,” they said together.

  “Now how about my gyros?”

  The Public Aid office was small, crowded, and badly ventilated. He crossed to the front desk and spoke to a receptionist sitting behind a little black sign that said INTAKE.

  “I’d like to talk to Miss McAuliffe if she’s in.”

  The receptionist made a little frown. “She’s in, but—”

  “I’m not a client. It’s personal business.” The receptionist looked over her shoulder and nodded in the direction of a woman standing with her back to them, bending over a desk.

  “That’s her in the blue dress.”

  “Can I just go back there?”

  “I have to let her know you’re here.” The young woman picked up the phone, hit a com-line button, and waited.

  “Someone here to see you…I know. He says it’s a personal business matter.”

  Whelan saw the woman straighten up, squint in his direction, and shrug. She said something into the phone and the young receptionist said, “Okay.”

  “She’s coming out to see you.”

  “Okay,” Whelan said. Right. She’s not sure I should be allowed back to her office.

  The squint seemed to disappear as Sandra McAuliffe crossed the room. Needs glasses for distance, he thought.

  She was tall, and her pale blond hair was cut short and showed a delicate filigree of gray. She was big-boned with dark green eyes, high cheekbones, a wide Irish-looking nose, and full lips: a woman who had probably spent part of adolescence bemoaning her size and features and woke up one morning to the surprising realization that she was nonetheless good-looking, a woman out of a Willa Cather story. He felt foolish at his earlier notion that this might be the faceless woman in Sam Burwell’s life.

  “I’m Sandra McAuliffe. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Paul Whelan. We spoke on the phone.”

  She sighed. “I thought we concluded our business, Mr. Whelan.”

  “People frequently announce to me that my conversations are over, but I’m a detective. If I let everybody tell me when I can ask questions, I might as well hang it up. No disrespect intended, ma’am, but I need information about the case I mentioned, and I think you’ll agree it is not a trivial one, even if it has nothing to do with your caseload.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, shot a quick look at the receptionist, and sighed again. “I’m not here, Peggy. No more calls, no more visitors. If the governor calls, I’m out.”

  “I’m sorry, Sandy.”

  “It’s okay. Come on, Mr. Whelan. Come back to my desk and we’ll talk.”

  “You get a break, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “I could use a cup of coffee. Why don’t we go down the street to the place on the corner?”

  She hesitated, clearly seeing necessary calls delayed, appointments missed.

  “I won’t keep you more than fifteen minutes, I wouldn’t want to ruin your Friday. I’ll even buy you ice cream.”

  She started to laugh, then shrugged. “All right. Let me get my desk put back together, and I’ll meet you here.”

  They walked up the street to the twenty-four-hour grill on the corner of Sheridan and Lawrence, and Whelan waved to the little Filipino waitress.

  “I take it you’ve been here be
fore,” Sandra McAuliffe said, as she slid into a window booth.

  “Restaurants are my hobby. Good or bad.”

  “I’ve been coming here more lately. The one on the next block is going out of business.”

  “Yeah, but it’s going to be reincarnated as a Vietnamese place.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  She gave him a vaguely interested look. “You like Vietnamese food?”

  “If there’s a kind of food in Asia I don’t like, I haven’t heard about it yet.”

  She smiled and gave a little nod.

  The waitress took their order for a coffee and a pot of tea.

  “You had lunch already?” Whelan asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” She watched him without expression.

  “I was serious about the ice cream. They have good ice cream here.”

  “Mr. Whelan, my body converts ice cream to fat cells inside of ten minutes. Thanks, anyhow.”

  When the waitress had served them, Sandra McAuliffe spent a few moments dipping her tea bag. Up close, she was a more complicated picture. Her age was more apparent, wrinkles beginning to appear at the corners of her eyes and more gray in her hair than he’d seen before: he put her somewhere between forty-two and forty-five. On the other hand, she had a splash of freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, and the green eyes were something special. Good or bad, it was plain that Sandra McAuliffe accepted it all, for she wore no makeup.

  He pulled the ashtray over and then caught himself. “Sorry, I forgot to ask. Mind if I smoke?”

  “Doesn’t bother me. I actually like cigars. I hate pipes, though.”

  “No pipes here.” He lit up and was about to start on business when she spoke.

  “I wasn’t being intentionally rude to you before. I just didn’t see…I don’t know anything about private detectives, and—you don’t have a badge, do you?”

  Whelan was puzzled for a moment, then took out his identification. “Should have shown you this before. We don’t carry badges.”

  She shot him a shy smile. “I know. My only previous contact with a private detective wasn’t a pleasant one. We had a guy coming by and hassling a client whose ex-husband was suing her over a car, and this detective would march into our office and flash this badge in everybody’s face and try to look tough. It was basically a toy badge. It said PRIVATE DETECTIVE.”

  Whelan smiled. “Blond guy, handlebar mustache, nice suit?”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  “His name is Ralph Budnik. He’s sort of a curiosity within the profession. No one takes him seriously, but the rest of us all covet his cool badge.”

  “He’s really a jerk. And I guess because of that experience, I couldn’t associate you with a serious case.”

  “A lot of people think that way. They assume we spend all our time following unfaithful spouses. I don’t do any of that kind of work.”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Nope. I don’t need the money that badly. Not that I make a lot, but I get by without having to do anything I don’t want to do.”

  “And you’re investigating this man’s death, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “A friend of his asked me to. I like the friend, so I said I would look into it.”

  “And aren’t the police doing the same thing, with all their—you know, their resources?”

  “No. It’s pretty much a closed case. They think a bunch of kids did it. I don’t think so.”

  “You have reason to think they’re wrong?”

  “Yeah, I do. Most of the time, they’re right. This time, I don’t think they are, partly because of the evidence and partly because I know the investigating officer.”

  She sipped at her tea and gazed out at the street for a moment. Then she put the cup down and looked at him. “What is it you think I can tell you?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’m really trying to locate a woman who was seen going into his apartment, a tall black woman with red hair. I also have reason to believe the dead man had a relationship with a woman living in Uptown. I don’t really have much of a description except that she was white.”

  Sandra McAuliffe leaned on her elbows, held the teacup in both hands, and looked at him over the rim. “And you thought I’d be able to tell you some…no, you thought I might be this woman?” She fixed him with an incredulous smile. A dimple that he hadn’t noticed appeared in her cheek.

  “Not exactly. I mean, the thought crossed my mind once, but this is just for information. Before I actually talked to you, all I had was the most general description possible: a white woman. And I knew there was a caseworker who visited that building.” He shrugged. “It’s all I had: a white woman. He was pretty secretive about it, and none of his friends ever met her. Don’t be insulted. I’m trying to find out who murdered this man, so I can’t be fussy about the leads I check out.”

  She sipped at her tea, put down the cup and added some more hot water, then took another sip. “You must have some theory if you’re so convinced that the police have the wrong people.”

  “I do.”

  She sighed. “You’re not particularly generous with information, Mr. Whelan. You drag me out of my office to see if I’m a potential murder suspect, but your case is still none of my business.”

  “That’s one of the most impolite-sounding phrases in the language, but it doesn’t really make sense to be talking to a stranger about these things. Why do you want to know?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I don’t, really. I was just curious.” She took another sip of tea and looked down into the cup this time. Whelan realized he’d broken off a point of contact.

  “His apartment,” Whelan began, “was at the far end of the hall. He was a tall man pushing sixty and had a scar over one eye.”

  She nodded once. “I saw him. I know who he is…was. I know who he was. I think I told you that on the phone.” She fought off a little shudder. “It’s terrible to learn that someone you passed in the hall was murdered.” She stared at Whelan for a moment as a new realization came into her eyes. “Maybe by someone else I passed in that building.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think his killing had nothing to do with his life now. Names keep coming up from the man’s past, people he knew when he was a young man. I think he was killed by someone who had known him for a long time. Maybe even a family member.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “If it’s true. All I’m saying is that I don’t think his was a random killing, or that he was killed for money. And I don’t think you’d ever have come in contact with the killer. If the killer had found him around here, Burwell would have been killed here.”

  Sandra McAuliffe discreetly checked her watch and gazed around the restaurant.

  “I know. You have to be getting back. You don’t remember ever seeing him with anyone? Anyone going into or coming out of that apartment?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody. I saw him in the hall once, and I saw him coming up the stairs once. That’s all. You’ve been in there, Mr. Whelan, it’s a spooky building, and I saw very few people coming in or going out. And never a woman, of any color.”

  He nodded and took a last puff of his cigarette before grinding it out in the ashtray.

  “It isn’t very pleasant work you do.”

  “It isn’t always like this. I don’t think I could do this all the time. It would put a strain on my sanity. Most of the time I look for people who are missing, I’m working for somebody who wants to find a loved one.” He remembered his first meeting with David Hill. “That’s what I thought I was going to be doing when I took this one on. I was hired to look for this man, and I soon learned that no one had seen him in a week, and I started to get a bad feeling. Then they found his body and it became a whole new case. I can’t say I’m enjoying it, but I’m going to finish it.” He laughed, surprised at himself. “I’ve made too many new enemies to quit now.”

  She smiled. “You mentioned the officer in cha
rge of the case. He’s one of them? The new enemies?”

  “He’s not exactly new. But he’s one good reason to believe this investigation has been mishandled.”

  She leaned forward now with her chin in one hand. “Do you make enough money on a case to make it worth your trouble?”

  He smiled. “Sometimes. Other times, people come to you and you know as soon as you see them that they can’t afford your fee.”

  “Why do you take them on?”

  “It’s not…it’s not a business,” he said, and was surprised at his own answer. “If they come to me with the kind of work that I think I should be involved in, I take the case and hope I make a few bucks somewhere down the line.”

  “Is this one of those cases?” She looked away quickly and shook her head. “I’m sorry, this really is none of my business.”

  He realized that she was genuinely embarrassed. A flush had spread over her cheeks and forehead. “It’s all right, I don’t mind talking about it. And, yeah, I’m afraid this is one of those cases. The man I’m working for has a little money, but not the kind he’d owe me if we agreed to my standard fee. He’ll pay me something, but…I hadn’t thought much about it.” Whelan wondered why he was telling her all this.

  Sandra McAuliffe seemed amused. “Mr. Whelan, you are an eccentric.”

  He thought about it and nodded slowly. “Maybe so. Maybe so.”

  She looked at her watch again. “Well…”

  “Yeah, you have to get back. I was just about to ask how you got into being a caseworker.”

  “It’s simple. I studied geology in college.” She grinned, and he had a glimpse of a different person.

  “Sounds like a story in itself.” He caught himself on the verge of asking her to tell it to him another time and realized how that would sound. “I’ll walk you back to the office.”

  She pursed her lips. “I’d rather walk back alone. People in offices talk,” she said quietly. She stood and held out her hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. Good luck in your investigation, Mr. Whelan.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate your time.”