The Maxwell Street Blues

by Michael Raleigh

  “Paul Whelan.”

  “You hafta change your schedule so you can take some of your calls, doll.”

  “Hello, Shel. Who was it this time?”

  “A Mr. Franklin.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He said you told him to call. He runs a building on Polk.”

  “Still doesn’t…oh, wait, I know who he is. I talked to him the other day.”

  “Right. He left a message. He says Covington lives at sixteen hundred West Madison. And he says you can send the money to three-two-four-one West Polk.”

  Whelan laughed. “The money, huh? I like the trusting ones, Shel. He thinks I’m going to send him money in the mail, so I guess I better.”

  “It’s as easy as that? Like makin’ a wish?”

  “Not quite. This is for information. Anything else?”

  “How much business do you want? Toodle-oo,” she said, and cracked gum in his ear.

  Whelan slipped ten bucks into an envelope and addressed it to Mr. Franklin. When he’d stamped it, he stared at the other address for a while. Sixteen hundred Madison made it the corner of Madison and Ashland, three blocks east of Chicago Stadium, and he couldn’t picture a residence at that corner. Then it came to him. Mr. Covington now had a different type of landlord.

  Maxwell Street was already wearing its close-of-business ensemble. A couple of the smaller shops had already pulled their security gates out, putting the hurry-up into the last few customers of the day. The north wind made tumbleweeds of the sandwich wrappers and newspapers littering the street but couldn’t budge or erase or hide the onion-and-grease smell.

  He parked just off the corner of Halsted and Fifteenth and made his way backward toward Maxwell itself. He worked fast, questioning the tire and hubcap dealers and the kids selling Bulls T-shirts and Bears hats and the fast-talkers who wanted to sell him watches and gold chains. He talked to the counter boys in Reno’s and the old lady in the window of Matty’s and the sweating line working the window in Jim’s, and though half the people he spoke with knew Buddy Lenz, no one had seen anything of the ragpicker in the gray sweatshirt.

  A tight cold knot began to grow in his stomach. He went back to his car and made himself go through the motions of cruising the back lots, then checked out the viaducts where Buddy might be sleeping. Nothing. He killed the rest of dusk in the faint hope that the coming dark would bring Buddy Lenz out, but the feeling in his chest told him he was wasting his time.

  At the corner of Fourteenth and Peoria he questioned a couple of older men sitting on the curb. It cost him three dollars and a couple of smokes to learn that one of the men knew Buddy from Whelan’s description but neither man had seen him. He got back into the car. He was heading north toward Roosevelt Road when he picked up the other car in his rearview mirror. He took a sudden left, went a block down the side street, then made another left. The car in the mirror kept coming. He couldn’t make out the driver’s face, but something in the rigid posture told him who it was.

  He went west to Blue Island, hung a right and decided to play along. He went west on Roosevelt, cruised north on Racine, took a quick right at Taylor Street and parked in front of an Italian lemonade stand that had drawn a crowd in spite of the cool night. While he was standing in line the other car passed him and he got a fast look at the driver: Mark Durkin.

  Whelan bought an Italian lemonade and stood at the curb eating it and waiting. Five minutes later the car returned. Whelan watched Durkin cruise by. The cop stared rigidly ahead as though noticing nothing.

  Nice tail, Durkin. Nobody saw you.

  He’d killed the entire evening and used up his options. Someone had to have seen something. He thought about the big cabbie who’d picked him up last night. Time to turn over a new rock.

  There were three cabs in the cabstand at Lincoln and Halsted but none of them was the right one. He parked a few yards away in the alley near the Biograph, the selfsame alley where Dillinger had learned not to trust women wearing red. Dillinger was long gone, as was the old telephone pole with what every kid on the North Side believed to be the original bullet holes from that storied night.

  The first cab contained a slender little Pakistani man who got himself excited at the prospect of a fare but didn’t know Whelan’s cabdriver. The second cab in the row was driven by an African man who had just gotten his medallion and shiny new cab the previous week. He said he knew nothing and Whelan believed him.

  The third cabdriver was homegrown, a chubby black man with an animated face and quick smile. “Yes, sir. Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t need a ride.”

  “I figured that, sir, when you skipped the first two cabs in line. What do you need?” He spoke in a precise, clipped sort of speech that reminded Whelan of a judge he’d once known.

  “Information. I’m looking for a driver who uses this stand a lot. He’s a white guy, big, an older guy, wears a blue cap and talks a lot. A little crazy, maybe.”

  The black cabbie nodded and smiled. “From the first part, it could be anybody. When you added the last part, I knew your man. Don’t know his name but he’s here a lot.”

  “Have you seen him tonight?”

  “No, but I saw a cab parked back on Fullerton. I think he likes to eat at Peter’s, just around the corner.”

  “I know where it is. Here, buy yourself a cup of coffee.” He gave the cabbie two dollars.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Whelan knew Peter’s well from his days as a beat cop. He’d never been sure what the name really was, for the bright sign out front used a hundred bulbs to announce PETER’S BROASTED CHICKEN but gave no hint as to the name of the establishment. Frequented by nurses from Children’s Memorial and bartenders and waitresses and the occasional street person, it served breakfast all day, made a mean Denver omelet and pancakes that would stop small-arms fire, and had half a dozen daily dinner specials.

  Half the booths were full and most of the stools at the long white counter, and in the middle of them sat the cabdriver, working his way through a perch dinner. He had an empty stool on either side of him, as though his bulk and body language had warned off potential neighbors. Whelan decided to ignore the warnings. He slid onto the stool to the man’s left, weathered the frown thus earned, and smiled.

  “Hi. Remember me?”

  The cabbie glared for a moment, then broke into a grin. “Yeah, sure. Need a ride someplace?”

  “Not tonight. My car has a battery again.” A tall thin waitress appeared, pad in hand. She looked from the cabbie to Whelan with mild surprise, as though taken aback that the cabbie would talk to anyone.

  “Just coffee,” Whelan said. “How’s the perch?” he asked the driver.

  “It’s all right. Whaddya want for five bucks, right?”

  “Absolutely. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Frank.”

  “Frank, I’m Paul. Listen, I wanted to ask you something.”

  Frank cut a piece of fish with the edge of his fork but left it on the plate. “Go ’head,” he said, but there was a wariness in the man’s eyes that made Whelan hesitate for just a second. Then the cabbie brightened. “Wait, you mean like detective questions?”

  “That’s right.”

  He grinned. “Sure. What do you need?”

  “You said you drive up Halsted on your way home a couple nights a week.”

  “Right. Sometimes more, sometimes three nights a week. Depends on this blow job I told you about from City Hall.”

  “Okay, first I need to know if you saw anybody or anything unusual last night before you picked me up.”

  “No…but I was only down there for the time it takes to drive through.”

  “I know. It’s a long shot. I’m thinking of a light-skinned black man in glasses. Well-dressed guy, late-model Buick Park Avenue, blue?”

  Frank shook his head. “No. I ain’t seen any of them that I’d call well-dressed, you know what I mean?”

  Whel
an ignored the comment and sipped his coffee. He wanted to ask about Nate’s bus but the bus wasn’t really visible from the street. He thought of Buddy.

  “What about street people?”

  “The bums? They’re everywhere. Yeah, I see bums down there. Who do you think goes down there?”

  “There are all kinds of people there, friend. I’m talking about real street people, the kind that live in doorways.”

  The cabbie shrugged and put a piece of fish in his mouth. He chewed for a second and then spoke through the mouthful of food. “Yeah, sure, I seen them. Almost hit a couple of ’em the other night. Run right out in front of me.”

  “Ever see one in a gray sweatshirt? White man with black hair, sweatshirt with a hood?”

  Frank grinned and pointed at Whelan with his fork. “Yeah, sure, him I almost fucking punched out. I’m stopped at that corner by the hot-dog place and I can’t move ’cause I got a guy pushin’ a grocery cart across the street, and this asshole in the sweatshirt comes up and tries to hit me up for a buck. A buck! Like I got money to give away. What am I workin’ for anyway?”

  His face was flushed and he was half turned on the stool facing Whelan. He was about to say something else when he seemed to rein himself back in.

  He grinned. “I get all worked up when people that don’t work try to put the arm on me for money. If they want money, let ’em work for it like me. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

  Whelan nodded. “When was this?”

  “I dunno. Last week sometime.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “Him I see all the time. I think he goes behind that beef place there, right across from the tire place. They go through the garbage and get food, those guys. I seen him there.”

  “See him last night?”

  “No. Last night I didn’t see nobody but you.” Frank sipped at his own coffee, then called for the waitress. “You wanna warm this up, hon?” He waited till the waitress poured fresh coffee and took another sip. Then he turned to Whelan. “Wanna go have a beer?”

  “Not tonight. Maybe some other time.”

  “Okay.”

  Whelan walked Frank back to his cab, and when the cabbie got in Whelan leaned through the passenger’s side window. Frank’s license picture made him look like a cartoon character.

  “Nice picture.”

  Frank snorted. “You shoulda seen my last one. Anything else I can do for you, Paul?”

  “That about does it. But if you’re back down that way, keep your eyes open for the guy in the sweatshirt. And try not to run him over. I need to talk to him.”

  “You want me to bring him to you?” He grinned.

  “No, kidnapping is still a federal offense,” Whelan said, handing him a card.

  Whelan thought about taking in a movie but didn’t want to mingle with all the happy couples in the world. Eventually, he settled for a burger and a couple of dark BBK’s in the wondrous chattery company of Joe Danno at the Bucket o’ Suds.

  He drove home feeling more tired than he should have, and wondering what he had to do to get a woman in his life. In his darkened living room he had a bottle of Berghoff’s dark and a final cigarette and forced himself to admit what he’d been denying all day.

  Buddy Lenz is dead.

  Later, in bed, he lay in the dark listening to a jazz station on his radio and to the insistent voice in the back of his consciousness that told him his problem was not that he hadn’t found the right people but that he’d missed something.

  Fifteen

  Day 9, Saturday

  Saturday morning broke warm and sunny, an Indian summer day. Whelan put on one of his beloved guayabera shirts, promised himself Mexican food for lunch, and made himself breakfast. Over coffee and toast and a pear he listened with one ear to the radio while he retraced a week’s steps. The little voice once again told him he’d missed something, something simple, something early on.

  An hour later he parked in front of the video shop on Broadway. The first wave was already assembled at the corner for the Salvation Army’s lunch, and he scanned the crowd for a moment. There were a few familiar faces, even one or two he’d talked to in different investigations, and he moved closer to see if there was anyone who might be able to tell him something. A shapeless row of black and white faces, mostly men, a few women, a handful of small children, stared back at him till he was forced to turn away.

  He was almost at the door to Sam Burwell’s building when he spotted a familiar figure. Violet Haley waddled across the middle of Broadway clutching her purse and a small bag of groceries to her chest. In spite of the warmth of the day she wore a coat and had wrapped a woolen scarf around her head. She looked ready for the Yukon. Her slow progress across the street earned her a long blast on the horn from a truck driver, and Whelan heard someone in the line at the corner hoot as she tried to move out of the way of a station wagon doing forty up the street.

  Mrs. Haley cast nervous glances at the various groups of men up and down her block, her gaze resting for a moment on the men outside the used tire place. She was almost at her door before she noticed Whelan. She came to a stop and opened her mouth. Whelan saw her eyes flit about as if she were looking for an escape hatch.

  “Mrs. Haley? I want to talk to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she finally summoned up enough anger to look less frightened. “I got all kindsa work to do. I got no time to—”

  “You said if I needed more information, I could come by again. It’s worth money to me.”

  The promise of cash caught her in mid-protest. She moved closer to him, still clutching her purse. A Flash cab and a guy in a beater were engaged in a horn duel on Broadway. The noise seemed to frighten her, and she shot a worried glance at the two motorists. Then she looked at Whelan.

  “I guess I got a couple minutes. I don’t know what else I could tell you…” She stole a worried look toward the street.

  “Can you tell me whether the apartment has been rented? The one you let me look at?”

  She peered at him a moment through her glasses, then nodded. “I had that place rented, then the guy found someplace else. The owner’s mad about it. Like it’s my fault.”

  Shaking her head, she walked toward her building. She inclined her head toward the door.

  “C’mon. You can look at it now. You wanted to see it now, right?”

  “If it’s no trouble, yeah. Thanks.”

  “Didn’t say it was no trouble,” she grumbled.

  Once inside, Mrs. Haley made him wait a moment while she put her groceries away and took off her coat and scarf. He could hear her banging around in the kitchen and muttering to herself, obviously irritated. When she appeared, she was in the ratty smoke-smelling housecoat she’d worn the first time. Her hair hung down over her forehead and a cigarette had sprouted from the center of her mouth.

  “C’mon,” she said, and marched down the hall, leaving smoke.

  The apartment at the end of the hall looked exactly as it had during Whelan’s first visit. With Mrs. Haley standing in the doorway and squinting at him through her smoke, he made a quick inspection of each of the place’s little rooms, looking in the cabinets and the refrigerator.

  In the bathroom he paused for a moment and studied his own face in the mirror. The face was frowning. He was surprised to see that the face looked fatigued, a little sunburnt, a face in need of a change. He looked away for a moment, gazing at the empty shelves above the toilet. Then he saw the kit.

  On the floor beside the little shower lay a man’s toilet kit, a leather case with a zippered top. This one had cost money once but was getting on in years, with the dark brown finish of the leather worn through at corners and edges. It was closed, zippered tightly.

  He bent down and opened it. Inside he found the usual jumble of old razors and Band-Aids and cough drops. There was a tightly rolled tube of antiseptic and a couple of the kind of toothpaste tube that comes in the mail as a sample. That was it. No stunning clues, no note
s, no names scrawled on matchbooks, nothing—except for the fact that the kit hadn’t been in the room on his first visit. He went out to see Mrs. Haley.

  “How many times would you say you’ve been in here since you showed me the place?”

  “I had to clean up. He left food in the fridge. I left all his stuff here, though. I ain’t touched none of his stuff. I ain’t no thief.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t think you were. Nothing’s missing, as far as I can see.”

  She frowned. “What’s wrong then?”

  He thought for a moment. “Nothing, actually.” Nothing you’d be able to understand, he thought. “Let me ask you a couple of things.”

  “Okay,” she said but looked unhappy.

  “Has anyone but you been in the room since I was here last?”

  “The tenant. I mean, the guy that was almost gonna take it.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was a Filipino. Name was Santos. They got Filipinos up here now. Got everything, like the United Nations.”

  “You’re right. But what did he look like?”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Like a Filipino. He was short and kinda chubby and he had black hair and he talked funny. They talk funny.”

  “I guess so. He’s the only one who’s been in here?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Last time I was here, we were talking about visitors the dead man might have had.”

  “I remember. We talked about that one that came to see him.” Violet Haley’s lip curled at the memory, her delicate sensibilities offended once more.

  “What about men?”

  “Who, me?”

  “No, no. I’m sure you—” Dance faster, Whelan. “Your life is your business. I was asking if the dead man, Mr. Burwell, had any male visitors that you could recollect. Maybe you’ve remembered something since we talked. Did a man come to see him, a young man, maybe? A young black man?”

  She gave him a blank look and shook her head.

  “The police officers who were here to ask you questions—what did they look like?”