Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  But shutting down the Starlite would accomplish at least one of my agendas. It would get the operation away from the school.

  It might accomplish a second agenda as well: It might lift the veil of protection for a very short period of time.

  Protection was usually tied to location, because cops worked beats, and those beats were neighborhood- and precinct-based. If the operation had to switch neighborhoods, then a whole new group of cops would have to be put on retainer. The old ones wouldn’t protect and the new ones wouldn’t have been enlisted yet.

  Who could blame an overzealous cop trying to restore his name if he arrested someone like Turner on prostitution and human-trafficking charges? Once Turner got into the system, once the newspapers were on it, once stations like WMAQ had covered the story, then the city would have to make some kind of effort to corral this guy.

  Plus, if I could get this to happen fast, then the national news would still be here, and this would be one of those stories that might be a feature to accompany the Chicago Seven trial and Black Panther trial stories. Corrupt Chicago and its seedy underbelly. National reporters liked stories like that, particularly when they were handed those stories on a silver platter.

  What I found myself doing, though, was doodling the name Jonathan had given me. Donna Loring. Jonathan had said that Donna Loring was the sister of one of Jeff Fort’s right-hand men.

  Fort had been featured on tonight’s newscast. He’d been in jail on an aggravated battery charge, and the Blackstone Rangers—or the Black P. Stone Nation, as they were calling themselves now, apparently—had raised $8,000 in less than twenty-four hours to get Fort released. Fort’s $75,000 bond had been a joke.

  At least that was what the slime Hanrahan had said, and for once, I agreed with him. Edward V. Hanrahan was the murderer in the form of the state’s attorney who had ordered the attack on the sleeping Black Panthers a month ago. On tonight’s newscast, he had stated that the speed with which the Blackstone Rangers had put up bail—so fast that Fort’s attorney had gone to court to ask for more time only to find out that Fort had already been released—showed the power of the street gangs.

  I’d seen that power several times already. I’d gone up against it more than once. I’d harnessed it a few times, but it had been like holding onto a tornado.

  Donna Loring.

  I kept underlining her name, and thinking.

  I had investigating to do.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  AT SOME POINT during that very long night, I fell asleep. This time, before sleep took me completely, I managed to get off the couch, drop the legal pad in my office, and tumble into my bed. I had nightmares—Lacey screaming, bloody boots, Jimmy finding my gun in the Chicago River—and they woke me up before the alarm went off.

  Or before the alarm should have gone off, since I had forgotten to set it.

  I got out of bed, showered, and woke Jimmy. I had time to make him a good breakfast for the second day in a row. The lack of sleep had at least one benefit.

  Franklin drove the kids to school again. For a while, he wanted to control this one thing, and I would let him. He would remain vigilant, and that was what the kids needed. Today, he wanted to handle everything, including driving them to the after-school program. I suspected he wanted to have a discussion with Mrs. Armitage. He probably wanted a second look at that neighborhood as well.

  All of this freed me to take care of my own business. I made some coffee and took it into my office. I reviewed my finances, which were messier than I wanted them to be. I hadn’t paid enough attention these last few months.

  I did have money squirreled away in Memphis. A friend of mine rented out my house there and put the money into an account for me. But I couldn’t access it without drawing attention to myself. I didn’t want anyone to trace Jimmy through me.

  I had initially thought of that as Jimmy’s college fund. At the moment, I needed to continue thinking of it that way.

  I did need to drum up as much work as I could, in addition to the work I did for Sturdy. So as 9 a.m. rolled around, I contacted Bronzeville Home, Health, Life, and Burial Insurance. I did a lot of freelance work for them in the past, although I hadn’t done any for about six months.

  I told them I was available again for insurance investigations, and they promised to let me know the moment they had something. They sounded happy to hear from me again, and I hoped they hadn’t found someone to replace me in the interim.

  I didn’t want to hang out a shingle. I felt that would bring too much attention on me. And I still didn’t want to partner up with Sinkovich. Too many difficulties, not just with the fact that he’d never run a business before, but also that he was a cop with a history, and people around here would remember that history.

  And then there was the issue of his mouth.

  Still, I wanted to make more money than I was doing, and I couldn’t do it entirely alone.

  Nor could I do it when I spent time on cases like the Starlite, cases that would bring no money.

  Almost on cue, the phone rang. It was Laura.

  “I had an interesting start to my day,” she said without really saying hello. “Have you heard of Chet Klempton?”

  My hand tightened on my cooling coffee mug. “No.”

  “He’s one of the big real estate brokers in town. He knows everyone, and many of the major purchases for businesses associated with the city go through his company.” She didn’t sound upset. She almost sounded amused. “He wanted to know why I was interested in the Starlite Hotel.”

  My heart rate increased. “How did he know you were interested?”

  “I figured this might happen after yesterday,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure before I contacted you.”

  “Okay,” I said, wishing I could see her face. “What’s going on?”

  “The owner of the hotel is Eddie Turner,” she said. “He’s one of the new society guys. I’ve seen him at all kinds of functions because he’s hard to miss.”

  I frowned. Laura knew Eddie Turner. “Because he’s black?”

  “And reserved. He hangs back, doesn’t schmooze like most people who’ve been given permission to hang out with the so-called important set. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was someone’s muscle when I first met him.”

  “Why didn’t you point him out to me?” I asked.

  “Because,” she said, and I could really hear that amusement now, “you have only been to one of those functions. Last year, when I took you to see Ella Fitzgerald. And it wasn’t really Eddie’s crowd. He prefers to socialize with the extremely rich.”

  She said all of that without any hint of irony or apology. She knew who she was, and she knew that I knew it as well.

  “I can’t believe he would have blended in at society gatherings,” I said.

  “He didn’t,” she said, “but no one really talked about it. That’s why I thought he was muscle at first. Usually new people to the crowd try to talk to everyone. I asked about him, though, because of you.”

  “Me?” I rubbed the coffee mug back and forth between my palms. The liquid sloshed but didn’t spill.

  “I thought if he was there, and you were there, you would…”

  “Fit in better,” I finished. Or everyone would think we were both muscle. That was the unspoken thought.

  “And that’s when I was told about his shady connections,” she said. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t believe it entirely, because people often say such things about others who are different.”

  I loved how she managed to hang onto part of her naiveté, no matter what had happened in her life. It was one of the things I found the most endearing about her.

  “I didn’t think about it again,” she said, “until I assigned someone to look up the Starlite Hotel in the county records, and he came up as the owner. That confirmed everything for me, and made me believe that the rumors were true.”

  That would have clinched it for me as well. But she had just said
something that worried me. “You had someone look this up? Was it Judith?”

  “No,” Laura said. “I needed her to monitor that meeting with the professors. I’m not sure I want to spend my Saturday talking about things these people profess to understand and are truly ignorant about. There’s this patronizing attitude, as if they can study the ghetto from afar, without understanding its stresses and undercurrents at all, as if everything can be solved through theory. I got real impatient real fast.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking not about the professors because I’d had run-ins with that type myself, but about Sinkovich and our discussion about schools.

  Maybe my attitude toward Jimmy’s education this past eighteen months had more in common with the professors and their understanding of the ghetto, and less to do with the reality on the ground.

  That thought disturbed me more than I cared to say.

  “So who did you send to find out about the Starlite?” I asked her.

  She chuckled. “I sent one of Cronk’s old favorites, a secretary who is supposed to retire on the first of May.”

  One of the people who remained from the days before Laura’s father died. “You sent someone with mob connections,” I said, smiling for the first time that morning.

  “I did,” she said. “I figured that given the nature of the business at the Starlite, I should keep my hands off as much as possible.”

  I let out a small sigh, and then remembered that she got a visit anyway. “So why did Klempton come to see you?”

  “I found out about Turner about two hours after you left. So I had one of my mid-level people call the office Turner uses as a front to discuss a purchase of the Starlite. I made it clear that we’d spare no expense, we had plans for the area, and we’d love to look at that property.”

  In other words, she broke all of the rules of negotiation. She let them know she was willing to pay through the nose for the property itself.

  “I was told in no uncertain terms that the property was not now and never would be available for sale,” she said. “I thought the matter closed, until this morning.”

  “When Klempton showed up,” I said.

  “Unannounced, without going through secretaries, etc. We’ve known each other for years. He was a friend of Addison’s—”

  Addison was her ex-husband.

  “—and we’d encountered each other at countless social gatherings. I couldn’t tell if Chet had come to see me because he’s worried about me or because someone told him to make it clear to me that I did not belong anywhere near the Starlite.”

  “Or both,” I said, not certain how I felt about this particular old friendship. Laura probably had a lot of shady contacts that she wasn’t even aware of.

  “That crossed my mind too,” she said. “He seemed awfully concerned. This is dangerous territory, Smokey.”

  She clearly wasn’t just referring to the Starlite.

  “I know,” I said. “What did you tell him?”

  She laughed. “I played the dumb blond. Addison’s friends always underestimated me, and I worked that angle. I guess dumb isn’t the accurate word. Naïve is better. I pretended I had no idea what was happening there and told him truthfully that I had never seen the property.”

  I was frowning. There was a touch of Goldie-Hawn ditziness in her voice as she told me this. I could almost hear how she had said it to Klempton, all light and clueless.

  “I said that we’re looking into adding a business restoring classic hotels. Unfortunately, most of the properties that have decayed are in the Black Belt and south, so we would have to do a lot of rehab work and PR work. Then he told me, somewhat condescendingly, that the hotel was in gang territory, and I certainly didn’t want that. So I told him that I was involved in this urban planning stuff, and these kinds of businesses—rehabbing old, once-thriving communities—were the very things that counteracted urban decay.”

  Her cageyness was breathtaking. She was learning to use everything to her advantage, in ways I would never even consider.

  “He told me that I was playing with things I didn’t understand, and I shouldn’t listen to academics to guide my company policy. If I wanted help managing the business, he knew some wonderful people who would look at the books and help me decide how to make profitable decisions, not decisions that simply sounded like a good charity project.”

  I let out an involuntary laugh. “He didn’t say that to you.”

  “Oh, he did,” she said. “He was so sincere, too. He really thought I was dumb enough to put the entire business at risk rehabbing old hotels in the Black Belt.”

  “Because of me,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “that was part of it. He said that he knew I’d had some unsavory influences in my life of late, and really, I should be consulting with old friends who had been in Chicago for years instead of flirting with the latest trends. He compared me to the Bernsteins.”

  “The who?” I asked.

  “You have not been reading your New York Times,” she said in that society voice she could put on like makeup. “Next week, the Leonard Bernsteins will be holding a fundraiser for the Panther 21 defendants. All of Society is already abuzz, and everyone is trying to score an invitation. I could wrangle one for you if you want.”

  “For an event in New York?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said.

  I was trying to wrap my mind around New York café society intermingling with the families of twenty-one Black Panther defendants who had been in prison for nearly a year without trial. I shook my head.

  Sometimes the depth of her connections surprised me. I frowned, thought about it, and realized something.

  “Klempton thinks you’re doing this because it’s chic,” I said.

  “Better than thinking I’m doing it to shut down a mob operation, right?” she asked.

  I wished she hadn’t been so blunt. Sinkovich had made me paranoid. I had no idea who was listening in, if anyone was at all.

  “Yes,” I said. “That is better.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to quell the disappointment I felt. I had truly hoped that somehow Laura would be able to buy that hotel.

  “I wish I could have helped more,” she said.

  “Oh, you helped a lot,” I said. “I just wish it had gone differently.”

  “Me too.”

  We sat in silence for a moment in our separate offices, hers with an expensive view of Chicago’s downtown, and mine with its limited view of the neighboring building.

  “Smokey—”

  “Laura—”

  We had spoken over each other.

  “You first,” I said.

  “I called Franklin. You do know that the Catholic schools are offering testing for prospective students this weekend, right?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “He and I are getting together tonight. I’m going to help them, with Lacey at least.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I’m not sure Catholic school is a good idea,” she said. “I’m thinking maybe the lab school at the University of Chicago. Do you know if she got good grades?”

  “I don’t know about the last few years,” I said.

  She was silent again. Then I heard her sigh. “You know my offer still stands for Jimmy.”

  “I know,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I wasn’t as dismissive as I’ve been in the past. I wasn’t ready to make a full decision yet, though.

  “You were going to say something,” she said.

  I shook my head even though she couldn’t see it. “I was just going to tell you that I’ll be going back to my housing inspections soon. Maybe we can step those up a bit?”

  “Sure.” She sounded confused. She didn’t know I’d been going over my finances. “You’re ready now?”

  “Almost,” I said. “I have a few things to wrap up.”

  “All right,” she said. And then she added, softly, “Be careful.”

  “I will,” I said an
d hung up.

  I stared at the phone for a long moment. Like Sinkovich, she knew I was going to do something to the operation at the Starlite. Unlike Sinkovich, she didn’t try to stop me.

  I wasn’t sure anyone could stop me.

  I didn’t even think I could stop myself.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  AFTER I GOT OFF the phone, I grabbed my keys and my parka. I didn’t bother to zip it, though. I hurried down the stairs and stepped outside for the first time that day.

  The cold hit me like a slap. A wind off the lake added a wind-chill to the three degrees above zero that WVON had reported this morning. Clouds covered the city in a thin haze. The forecasters told me that the haze would make the day warmer, but that had to be some kind of wishful thinking.

  Nothing about this day could be considered warm.

  I slid my way toward the van, grabbing my gloves out of the parka’s pockets as I did so. After the wind hit my face, I decided I didn’t want to touch the van’s door handle with my bare skin.

  I reached the driver’s side and sank into the ice-crusted snow. Some of it leached over my shoes and started to melt against my feet. Smart move, Dalton, I thought. I’d been in such a hurry to grab the folder inside the van, I hadn’t thought about the deadly Chicago weather.

  Sometimes I truly hated this place.

  I unlocked the driver’s door. It squealed as it opened. I leaned inside and grabbed the folder that still rested on the bench seat. I had forgotten the folder the day before with all of the distractions.

  I resisted the urge to open it here to make sure everything was inside. I wasn’t dressed for the weather. I tucked the folder under my parka, slid out, shut and locked the door, and headed back inside.

  Even a short trip was a trek at this time of year.

  I got in, pulled off my gloves, shoes, and socks, hung up the parka, and set the folder on the kitchen table. Then I half-walked half-hopped to the bedroom for another pair of socks and some slippers.