The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1)

by Robert Campbell

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  Praise for Robert Campbell

  “Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”

  —— Los Angeles Times

  “Robert Campbell is an awfully good writer.”

  —— Elmore Leonard

  “Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”

  —— New York Times

  Praise for Edgar Award Winner & Anthony Award Winner

  The Junkyard Dog

  “Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”

  —— New York Times Book Review

  “This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”

  —— ALA Booklist

  “Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”

  —— Publishers Weekly

  Winner of The EDGAR AWARD

  The Junkyard Dog

  BY

  Robert Campbell

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1986 Robert Campbell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design © 2015 Ayeshire Publishing

  ONE

  My name is Flannery. My mother, who died eight years ago of a cancer—she rest in God’s arms—called me James. My father calls me Jim. Friends call me Jimmy. Assholes call me Jimbo.

  Let me explain a little something about how I fit into the organization of the Democratic Party in the city of Chicago, County of Cook, State of Illinois. I’m not going to tell you everything about it. Who’s got a lifetime? That’s how long it takes to learn the pecking order, or what the late warlord of the Fourteenth, Eddie Lurgan—God rest his soul—sometimes called the "pecker order."

  For fifty years, until his retirement from the fire department, my father, Mike Flannery, was a loyal party worker and a first-class precinct captain. Even though he was Lurgan’s right- and left-hand man until the old ward leader’s death—over there in the Fourteenth on the South Side, where I was born and raised among the Irish—he still claims he don’t know all the ins and outs.

  My father still lives in the Fourteenth. I don’t. I live in the Twenty-seventh, west of the Loop, which has Irish, Bohemian, Italian, Polish, German, and some Swedes. Also a good many winos and derelicts, the Twenty-Seventh having Skid Row for a gut. We also have our share of silk stockings, businessmen, blacks, and Jewish pawnbrokers.

  My old man gave up the big house and moved into a one-room flat after my mother died, and I moved over to the Twenty-seventh because he said I’d never have a chance for alderman in the Fourteenth. Lurgan’s only son, George, would inherit. He did . . . one year later, when Lurgan keeled over after eating two plates of corned beef and cabbage at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration over to the Sons of Hibernia Lodge.

  Devlin, the warlord of the Twenty-seventh and the sewer boss of the city, has no sons. Or daughters, for that matter—a dose of the clap, so they say, having rendered him incapable of same. So, the Twenty-seventh, says my old man, is my land of opportunity.

  Devlin gives me a job in the sewers. I almost don’t take it, but my old man says, "Once you climb out of the shit, you’ll never let anybody push you back into it."

  I don’t work down in the pipes anymore. I’m an inspector, reading meters. Occasionally I look down a manhole to remind myself of my father’s good advice.

  I’m also a precinct captain for the party. My father says there will come a day when I am at least a prince, if not a king. I don’t tell him that the world of old pols and patronage is probably doomed. This new mayor promised to dismantle the machine. He ain’t got around to it yet. Then, again, maybe he’ll decide to do what the last mayor done, and use it if he can. Still and all, it seems to me, the old ways is dying.

  I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy what I got while I can. What my old man don’t know is that I already found my place and contentment.

  There are people who put me in the same bag with the old men who stand in the lobby of public buildings and point out which automatic elevator is empty. They put me on the same shelf as Kippy Kerner, who was given a job in the County Building supervising the man who adjusts the valves on the furnaces, and Billy Swinarski, who sits in front of the city treasurer’s office and tells people who ask that they’re in front of the city treasurer’s office.

  I do a job for the city that really has to be done, and if it don’t take me eight hours a day, the time I put in doing what some social workers would be doing makes it a seventy-hour week for me, with sometimes no time off for Saturdays and Sundays.

  I was going to tell you about the organization, what they call the “machine”—wasn’t I?

  Well, at the top, you’ve got the mayor, of course. Also you’ve got the Democratic Party chairman. Once, when Daley ruled, he was both. Like the Russian bosses make themselves the head of government and state.

  You’ve got fifty wards and thirty suburban wards with a committeeman for each. You’ve got fifty to seventy precincts per city ward—making about thirty-five hundred precincts—each with a captain and one to six full-time workers depending on how many jobs the committeeman has in his pocket to hand out. There’s thirty thousand jobs. It’s called patronage. So one out of ten city workers is a precinct captain.

  Next to the mayor, the park district superintendent—who is presently tough Ed Keady, the warlord of the Forty-seventh on the Northwest Side—has the most patronage to give. They give him Parks because he tore the ward out of Republican hands a long time ago. Next comes the president of the county board, who controls an enormous amount of public funds and several thousand patronage jobs.

  The sheriff's office is a regular fountain of juice. Among favors, it supplies badges and guns to big-time contributors and other special persons who like to pack heat and horse around with the law as part-time deputies. Then comes my Chinaman—who is called a rabbi in New York, a mentor in the colleges and a political sponsor elsewhere—Devlin, who has plenty of jobs to give out since the shit has to be kept moving.

  Now, there’s eighty alderman and committeeman, I mean women, too. They sometimes wear skirts, but they ask no favors and are likely to kick you in the slats when you ain’t looking if you make the mistake of treating them like flowers…except when they so desire same. The par
ty does not worry about electing state or national candidates, keeping a working relationship with whoever sits in the White House or the governor’s mansion.

  The party works to elect the mayor, the alderman, the committeemen, the county assessor, who is usually Irish, the Democratic county clerk, who is in charge of the election machinery, and the Cook County state’s attorney, also Irish. The city clerk is usually Polish. At least one seat on the sanitary board goes to the Greeks. Don’t ask me why.

  The wards that are worked the best can produce three hundred votes; the best ward, twenty thousand. A captain, like me, asks his people to vote a straight ticket. That means every city employee and his relations by blood or marriage vote straight Democratic. Also anyone who has given me his or her marker for a favor. Also any policemen or firemen living in my precinct, which are not many.

  Now you know something about the wheels and gears of the “machine,” but you’ll agree you don’t have a clue how to run it. Neither do I. I’m just learning.

  What I do—besides inspecting the sewers—is provide services and favors for my people, which is like my family. I admit that I keep the idea in mind that they’ll do me a favor for favor when election time comes around.

  What’s wrong with that? Helping one another. It’s what friends and families do. I will, however, do them a favor when asked even if they tell me they’re going to vote Republican or Liberal. I bank on their integrity when election time comes. I think the people who give me their marker usually pay me back.

  I live on the top floor of the six-family tenement on Polk Street. You got to walk six blocks through Skid Row, a war zone of abandoned buildings, filthy gutters, wreck dreams, and trash lives.

  Across the hall at the top of six flights of stairs was a family of seven named Recore or, more nice people accept their youngest, Stanley, likes to pound on my door in the morning then run away when I go to see who it is waking me up. His mother says it’s because he likes me. Maybe he likes me because I am one of the few outside his family who understand him when he talks since he’s got this trouble with his speech.

  Like last summer he comes into my kitchen when I’m sitting there having breakfast with a friend and says, "Jimbly, if you gib me some chawpee and bickets I’ll give you some japes." Which means, "Jimmy, if you give me some coffee and biscuits, I’ll give you some grapes."

  His oldest sister is crazy for roller-skating and leaves the house practically every night during a little skirt that shows the curve of her biscuits, and if it wasn’t that she lived so close to home, I would maybe have taken a nibble when I was without a friend.

  Right below me lives Mrs. Warowski, who lives alone since her husband, Mooshie, was a fireman, died just before he was ready to retire out at full pension. She asked me what I can do for her, and I’m trying to get her full survivor benefits and maybe a posthumous citation for her husband, which is both hard to do since Mooshie don’t die in the line of duty but of drowning when he drives his car off the road into the lake, knocking down at twenty-thousand-dollar light standard as he goes.

  Across from her listen nice Jewish couple—Myron is a teacher and Shirley is a librarian——who have a little girl that is seven and so smart I think maybe she’ll be the first lady president if somebody don’t get there first.

  On the ground floor is Mrs. Foran, who is ninety-two, and her companion, Ms. King, who is maybe ninety but still does all the work around the flat, taking care of Mrs. Foran, and doing some babysitting for extra money, too. The word about them is that Mrs. Foran left her husband sixty years ago to run away with her lover, Ms. King, they have been a couple ever since.

  There is a Quick-Stop where the downstairs corner flat would be. A couple of Jewish kids from South America, Joe and Pearl Pakula, own the place and support their old mother. They live in two rooms in the back. I do them favors even though they can’t vote yet, not being citizens. Unlike some precinct captains I don’t vote aliens or the dead. At least not the long dead.

  Joe and Pearl let me use their water faucet on the side of the store to wash my car. I wash it every clear Saturday morning.

  This Saturday when it all begins, I’m washing my car like always when Mrs. Klutzman comes down the street to get something from the grocery store, and I say, "Hello, Mrs. Klutzman, how’s your back? Did you do like I told you?"

  "Mr. Flannery, not only do I do like you tell me, but already the back is feeling better," she says, putting her hand to her kidney show me it don’t hurt anymore. "It’s like a miracle."

  "Remember, just half a Caroid tablet, not a whole one, in a little hot water. You should put, maybe, a little lemon, it should taste like dishes," I tell her. "Where are you off to?"

  "I need a milk, maybe a sweet role for my breakfast before I go to the clinic."

  "You’re not sick?"

  "The Free Abortion Clinic over on Sperry Avenue, you should pardon me."

  "Why should I pardon you?" I asks.

  "Because maybe you don’t approve of what help I try to give these poor foolish children who make a mistake and might otherwise and up with the burden. Being you are Catholic and all."

  "I don’t make a case against other people, Mrs. Klutzman. I ain’t got enough of my own troubles, and the troubles of my friends, I should go around passing judgment on silly girls who didn’t take precautions?"

  "Or whatever," she says, fingering her purse and looking troubled.

  "You got troubles," I says.

  "Such a mind reader."

  "So, tell me."

  She opens the battered embroidered bag she carries and takes out a stained rag wrapped around something. She unfolds it and there’s a knife covered in blood laying there. Also I smell ketchup. I stick out a finger in touch the red stuff and smell it. Then I tasted. It’s ketchup.

  "Is this a joke, Mrs. Klutzman?" I says.

  "Look on me. Am I laughing?"

  She looks very, very troubled, and not a little frightened.

  "This knife was on the step in front of the clinic last night when I leave," she says.

  "Why are you carrying it around?"

  "I don’t want to scare nobody in the clinic."

  "What were you going to do with it?"

  "What do I know? Maybe I’m thinking I should find a cop. Maybe not. But when I see you, I know what to do," she says, and hands me the knife. "Also I need a butter, I shouldn’t forget."

  TWO

  After I wash the car—it usually takes me four hours because I'm doing business all while I'm washing—I walk down to the police station and look up Captain Dominick Pescaro.

  "Look at this," I says.

  "How long you had that?" he says.

  "Four, maybe five hours."

  "What you doing carrying around a knife smeared with ketchup?" he says.

  "How do you know it ain't blood?" I says.

  "If you been carrying it around four, maybe five hours it would be brown."

  "See what you can learn when you got friends in high places?" I says.

  "Also I got a nose," he says, tapping the side of a honker that you could play like a horn in a parade on St. Anthony's Day. "Where'd you get it?"

  "An old lady give it me."

  "What are you going to do with it?"

  "I'm giving it to you."

  "Can you tell me where the old lady got it?"

  "It was left in front of the door at the Free Abortion Clinic over to Sperry Avenue."

  "That sonofabitch Joe Asbach and his squirrels."

  "You know the man who done this?"

  "He likes to march around in circles."

  "What kind of gentleman is he?"

  "The kind who wears a topcoat and a hat on a sunny day."

  "Is he amenable to reason?"

  "He knows his rights and likes to stand on them."

  "Mother of God, one of those."

  Seven men and three women are marching around when I get to the clinic on Sperry Avenue carrying signs that say, "The Nazis burne
d the babies at Dachau" and "Murderers, murderers, murderers." I can maybe understand why the women are there protesting the removal of the unborn, but it's a little hard for me to understand what the men are doing there, since they don't have to ever worry about having unwanted visitors in their bellies.

  I'm not there to debate, however, but to negotiate, once I come face to face with this Joe Asbach. It's a cool day and those who ain't wearing coats are wearing at least a sweater. A couple of the men is wearing hats. I go up to a woman with red hair and a mole on her chin and I ask her which one, if any, of the men is Joe Asbach.

  "The man is a saint," she says.

  "All I want is you should point him out to me," I says.

  "He should be president."

  "You don't have to point the finger, just nod when he passes."

  "You're here to do him harm."

  "I'm here to join the cause," I says.

  I will lie at the drop of a hat if it don't do no individual any, harm, prevents hysteria, or cuts through the crap.

  "There he is now, getting out of the taxi," she says. "You want I should introduce you?"

  "Let me make my own hellos. I'm shy in crowds."

  I walk over and take Joe Asbach's elbow. Even though he's over six feet and I'm maybe five feet nine, I walk him about twenty yards away from his people.

  I'm going to assume you mean to take your hand off my arm," he says.

  "I moved you away from your people to save you some embarrassment," I says.

  "What can you do that would embarrass me?" he says.

  "I could step on your shoeshine," I says.

  "If that's some sort of street threat, I don't get the meaning," he says.

  "You dropped an ugly thing on the doorstep of this lawful establishment."

  "Is there an ordinance about losing a knife?"

  He doesn't try to cop, so right away I got to think that he's either very dumb or very sure of hisself.