Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  She ducked through the door, which I assumed led into the kitchen.

  “Come on,” Sinkovich said to me. He led me into the living room. It took me a moment to realize the air was cooler here. An air-conditioner stuck out of a side window, rattling, and dripping water onto an ancient gray carpet. Someone had placed a pan beneath it, but the pan was overflowing.

  The house smelled of cigarettes, cooked cabbage, and dirty diapers. The air was stale, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in a very long time. A console television played a baseball game in black and white, the sound turned down.

  Sinkovich hovered near a leather recliner, so old that the back was ripped and stuffing tumbled out of it. He wasn’t going to invite me to sit down.

  His wife came into the room clutching two Old Styles. She handed one to Jack and mouthed something at him. He glared at her. Then she brought a can to me, but she couldn’t bring herself to hand it to me. Instead, she set it on the coffee table, as far away from me as she could get.

  “Charlene,” Sinkovich said in that same tone, only she ignored him, and disappeared into the kitchen. His gaze met mine. “She don’t like strangers.”

  I didn’t respond and I didn’t reach for the beer. “There’s still police tape on the front porch, but I don’t think anyone’s coming back to take it down.”

  Sinkovich’s shoulders slumped. “That kid—”

  “Was an only child.”

  His gaze flicked toward the kitchen. “You screwing with a police investigation?”

  “I don’t expect there to be a police investigation.”

  “Not even your friend Johnson?”

  “What do you think, Sinkovich? All of you seem to be sitting around watching all of us. There’s no time for investigation.”

  “So you think you can do it? What the hell kinda guy are you, anyway?”

  I struggled to keep my voice level. “Why don’t you just tell me what you saw yesterday afternoon.”

  “I don’t get interrogated by nobody. Especially not some”—the pause was too long; he was obviously groping for a better word than the one he’d originally come up with—“civilian.”

  That was it. I had wasted a trip. I had thought that Sinkovich and I felt the same way about the murder. I had thought he cared. But apparently he cared about the good opinion of his wife and neighbors more. Or maybe I had embarrassed him in Old Town last night. Harassment detail usually didn’t allow itself to get harassed.

  I turned and headed for the door.

  “Wait.” The posturing tone was gone. “Look, this ain’t usual, you know?”

  I knew it. I had my back to him. I could see his wife through the door to the kitchen. She sat at the table, feeding the baby in his high chair, her hand shaking.

  “I been goin’ over it in my head. Maybe if I’d’ve stayed instead of followin’ you…” His voice trailed off.

  This was the man I had seen the night before. The one who hid beneath the tough-guy surface. The one who still felt things. Sometimes guys on the street lost their ability to feel anything.

  I faced him. “I don’t think it would have made any difference. Some of those burns were old enough to scab.”

  “Jesus.” He breathed that, then fumbled in his breast pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped it, letting one slid forward, and offered it to me. I shook my head.

  He picked it out with his lips, then replaced the pack and found his lighter. It took two attempts to get the butane to ignite, and then it barely lasted long enough for him to light up.

  “I never seen anything like that, you know?”

  “I know.” I recognized the response. Nicotine to calm the nerves. Beer to keep the memories down.

  “I thought with all the guys there…” He took a drag, then tapped the cigarette out in a tin ashtray on an end table. “I went back to the house, wrote up a report before I came home. Dog tired, but I haven’t been to sleep yet. Can’t seem to close my eyes.”

  “I haven’t slept either.”

  “Nobody’s been here. Nobody’s called. Nobody’s followed up.” He reached for the cigarette pack again, stopped himself, took a sip of beer instead. “Just you.”

  We both knew that most murders were solved in the first forty-eight hours. Investigators usually worked around the clock the first twenty-four on egregious cases, just to hedge their bets.

  “It wasn’t the kids, the ones I was watching. They were harassing that boy you took north. Malcolm?”

  I nodded.

  “They made it real clear. He wasn’t nothing to them no more. It was almost like a sport, you know? Pick on the kid, see if he comes back. It was kinda pathetic, the way he just kinda stayed close, maybe to see if they changed their minds.”

  I still didn’t say anything. I was afraid that if I did, this stream of consciousness would end, and Sinkovich would remember who he was talking to.

  “There was at least one other unit on the street. And the guy I replaced. I’ll see if he saw something. But I didn’t. I didn’t even see the boy. I didn’t see any boys, you know? No kids at all. I figured it was too hot. Everyone was inside.”

  Where it was even hotter. He had said the night before he knew nothing of the neighborhood. That last comment proved it.

  The phone rang. Sinkovich blinked, as if the sound brought him to himself. He held up a finger, then went around me and answered it, listened for a minute and gave me a surreptitious glance.

  I suppressed a sigh and stepped deeper into the living room, even though I didn’t want to, just to give him some privacy.

  The recliner wasn’t the only old piece of furniture. The couch had claw feet, and the coffee table had been refinished several times. Family photographs hung on the wall behind three high school football trophies with Sinkovich’s name on them.

  The house was in all the photographs. Long rows of people, a number of them with a variation on Sinkovich’s features, lined up before the stairs. The newest photos were in color and closest to the trophies. But it was the old ones that held my attention. They were posed. The women wore long skirts and starched blouses, and there was a fence where the maples were now. The road was dirt, and there were no houses nearby.

  This place had been in Sinkovich’s family for generations, just like the furniture. Somehow I hadn’t expected such poverty in a cop’s house—especially in a town like Chicago, where extra money had to be easy to come by.

  “Sorry.” Sinkovich was behind me.

  As I faced him, I said, “Did you reassure your neighbors that I haven’t robbed you blind yet?”

  He had the grace to flush. “They know I’m a cop. They worry.”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  He looked away. “I don’t know much about this stuff,” he said, “but that looked like a pro job to me. Calculated, you know?”

  “Either that,” I said, “or we have a hell of a sadist on our hands.”

  He winced. “This isn’t my case, so there ain’t much I can do, official.”

  “I know.”

  “But maybe if I hear something, I can pass it along.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Is that all you come here for? To find out about yesterday afternoon?”

  “No.” This was the gamble. I had to watch him closely and hope I could read him well enough to recognize a lie. And hope that he trusted me enough to give me an honest answer. “I need to know the name of one of your undercover guys.”

  He stiffened.

  “He’s black, has an afro, does his job real well. Undercover’s probably his specialty.”

  Sinkovich’s eyes narrowed.

  “I know it’s not procedure to give me the name of an undercover cop, but I think this guy may know something about the murder.”

  “I told you last night, it’s not my normal neighborhood.” Sinkovich held my gaze.

  “If you don’t want to tell me, maybe you can ask him directly. A few of the neighbors saw him watching the ho
use. He might have seen something.”

  “Our orders were pretty plain. See and be seen. A little intimidation was okay, but don’t start nothing. That’s why they sent in white cops. They figured if we dogged the right people, they’d stay away from the convention.”

  I frowned. “You’re saying he’s not one of yours?”

  “If he is, I don’t know about it. He’s not doing the same job I am.”

  Sinkovich seemed sincere, and I didn’t think he was a good enough actor to fool me. “What kind of job would he be doing?”

  Sinkovich shrugged. “Undercover usually just don’t watch places. They become part of it. If that’s what he’s doing, somebody in your neighborhood knows him.”

  I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “I’d appreciate hearing anything you find out.”

  “You think you can solve this?”

  “Not without help.”

  Sinkovich took another sip of his beer. His hand strayed to his shirt pocket, patted the cigarettes, then eased back as if he were reminding himself not to smoke. “How come you know so much about this stuff?”

  Asking me that question made him nervous. It was almost as if he was afraid of me. “What stuff?”

  “Procedure. Most people, they don’t know about cop stuff. They just know to call us or they’re afraid of us. Guys like you usually don’t like us.”

  In the kitchen, the baby let out a wail, and his mother’s voice cooed at him.

  He’d been honest with me. I owed him the same in return. “I didn’t call the cops. You did. I called Truman Johnson.”

  “Like he’s gonna do something.”

  You could hear this boy being shuffled to the bottom of the pile even before the sun rose.

  “I seem to remember you didn’t think you’d get anywhere in my neighborhood.”

  He rocked on his feet for a moment, then nodded. “You still didn’t answer my original question.”

  A point for Sinkovich. Most people would have let my answer distract them and would have forgotten the question until I left—if they remembered at all.

  I didn’t know what to tell him. On this one, I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Where I come from, people take care of themselves. They don’t expect others to do it.”

  He gave me a small, understanding smile, then nodded. “I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He set down his beer and extended his hand. I stared at it for a moment, surprised by the gesture. A look came over his face at my hesitation, an embarrassment, almost an anger, precisely the way I had felt at the front door when he refused me entry.

  I took his hand and shook it. Then I nodded at him. He nodded back, and I headed for the door.

  “Hey,” he said, picking up his beer again and following me.

  I turned. We stood in the entry. He closed the door to the kitchen.

  “I did see something kinda strange, but it wasn’t yesterday. It was a coupla days ago.”

  “What was that?” I tried not to sound too eager.

  “You mentioning the afro got me remembering.” He sipped his beer, frowning, as if drawing on his memory. “I had some business on the West Side before I started that day’s harassment duty. I followed a blue Olds all the way to your neighborhood.”

  A blue Olds had followed me to Lincoln Park the night before, just like Sinkovich had. Only I had lost the blue Olds.

  “Parked it about five blocks away from your place and a guy with an afro gets out.”

  I waited, holding my breath.

  “I didn’t think nothing of it, but then later, I seen him lurking, you know? In the shadow of one of the buildings, like he was watching something.”

  “Near my apartment?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “That didn’t seem unusual to you at the time?”

  “Hey, I don’t know the neighborhood that well. I don’t know what people do.”

  “Then why’d you remember it?”

  He shrugged. “I thought it was kinda weird.”

  “What was?”

  “The car. It had New York plates. I seen it a couple of times after that, parked in the same spot, but I never seen him again.”

  “Would you recognize him?”

  Sinkovich shook his head. “He wasn’t my business. I didn’t think of it until now. I wouldn’ta remembered if you hadn’t said something.”

  “Where’d he come from?” I asked.

  “Near the old Ramparts office. You know where that is?”

  Ramparts was an underground publication. I didn’t know, but I could find out. “Sort of.”

  “Shit area, if you pardon my French, and that’s one of the things that made it kinda weird. The car was pretty new.”

  I felt a chill. Had Sinkovich been harassing this driver because he looked out of place?

  “Think this is your guy?” he asked with undisguised enthusiasm.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’d appreciate it if you checked on who is working undercover anyway.”

  He nodded. “Let’s hope they seen something.”

  “Let’s hope,” I said.

  * * *

  I didn’t have time to check on the lead before work. I had started the week of twelve-hour shifts. I would have to be very organized or I wouldn’t have time to do anything.

  The hotel was crazy that night and I was grateful for it. I was too exhausted to do a good job. If it had been a long, dull evening, I might have fallen asleep leaning against the wall.

  Instead, I watched celebrities go to the Haymarket Lounge and get lost in the haze of cigarette smoke. Paul Newman’s eyes really were a fantastic color of blue. Walter Cronkite was shorter than I expected. Eugene McCarthy seemed cold and distant and out of place.

  Mixed among all of them were the delegates, most of whom seemed starstruck, especially around Newman, though he was a delegate too. He seemed gracious enough, signing autographs, talking politics, but he looked as out of place as I was.

  There were dozens of police around the entrances, and the Secret Service had taken over the extra elevator, which went only to the presidential level. The Hilton was the only hotel in Chicago that could house a president because it had one completely isolated floor.

  The rooms there had originally been reserved for President Johnson, but he wasn’t coming to the convention. The Secret Service had put Humphrey up there instead, maybe afraid he might not survive his nomination.

  My job was to repeatedly check the entrances, and tail people who looked suspicious. No longhairs were allowed in, so the suspicious folk were mostly press. Their press badges protected them—at least from me.

  I found myself keeping out of the way of the police and Feds, my mind wandering to Brian’s body lying on the steps. I couldn’t get past the feeling that I was wasting my time here, and yet I couldn’t figure out a way to leave.

  * * *

  I was so exhausted I didn’t remember driving home. I passed out the twin bed, fully clothed despite the heat, and dreamed.

  The chop-scrap-chop of shovels, the Chinese digging, despite the frozen ground. My mittens were threadbare, my feet blocks of ice in my boots. I rubbed my hands together, bracing my rifle against my chest, peering over the edge of the trench at the snow-covered hills. The light of the full moon gave everything an eerie silver quality. We could almost see the enemy, digging, half a mile away.

  We hadn’t been relieved. We should have been relieved an hour before, but something was happening. When we radioed in, we were told to hold our ground.

  But there was no fighting. The Chinese were digging. We should have been too, improving our poor trench. But we were cold and tired and ready for a warm meal, an uncomfortable bunk. Our sergeant was moving, patrolling the line, trying to keep our morale up. He didn’t chastise us for failing to shovel; we’d barely made any progress in the hard dirt and I guessed he didn’t want us to feel bad about not making any more.

  A figure a
ppeared on the hill, dark against the snow. I caught him in my sights, a clear shot, my finger on the trigger.

  “Weapons down,” the sarge said.

  All of us had been aiming, ready—eager—to fight an enemy we’d been listening to on still nights. Anything to break the monotony and the cold.

  I blinked myself awake, shivering and sweating at the same time. My shirt was twisted around my chest, binding my arms in place. I sat up, my breathing harsh and strained.

  I peeled off my shirt and my shoes, then padded barefoot to the kitchen, my heart still racing. I opened the refrigerator, and in its thin light, I saw Malcolm asleep on the couch. I hadn’t even seen him when I stumbled in. His face was scrunched up and he was twitching, as if he too were having bad dreams.

  I poured myself a glass of water, drank, then poured some more. This time, before I sipped, I put the glass against my sweaty forehead, but the chill seemed weak against the cold of my memory, those days in Korea that I thought would never end.

  The same feeling stifled me now, the sense of being trapped in events bigger than I was. I was an insignificant player on a vast team, in a game none of us entirely understood.

  I finished the water, set the glass in the sink, and went back to bed. This time, no dreams found me, and I actually got some sleep.

  THIRTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING, I awoke to a phone call from Grace Kirkland, panicked and angry. Franklin got me out of bed with an apology, handed me orange juice while I stood in the living room, listening to her soft voice on the other end of the line.

  Apparently there had been some sort of riot in Lincoln Park the night before. She wanted me to go back there and find Daniel.

  “He’s an adult, Grace,” I said. “He’s free to do what he wants.”

  “But he could be in trouble!”

  “He already knows how you feel. He also knows that I’m around. If something’s going on that he feels he can’t handle, he’ll call.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” But I wasn’t. I had felt responsible for Elijah. I didn’t feel responsible for Daniel. I wasn’t going to get in the middle of this family battle any more than I already had. “Is Elijah still at home?”