Tagged for Murder

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘Means nothing,’ Kopek said.

  ‘Means plenty,’ I said, ‘because the tagger had wised up. He painted an open door on the outside, inviting you, the cops, to see what he’d left inside, where the power washers couldn’t obliterate it so easily.’

  ‘Do you always work so hard to force a theory?’ Jacks asked.

  ‘Alas, only when I’m at my very sharpest,’ I said. I took no offense; life was often a slog.

  I forwarded to the mural I’d found on the top floor. ‘This is what the tagger left for you.’

  Both Kopek and Jacks leaned forward. After a moment, Kopek said, ‘This is certainly graphic.’

  ‘He shows himself as being outside, clinging to the bricks at the side of the next window down. Notice that the railcar is directly below the window in the picture. See the two sets of hands, one pair on either side of the body that’s being aimed out the window? There were two killers. See the dead man’s face? His mouth is open. Your homeless man is screaming as he is being thrown out.’

  For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Kopek said, ‘He wasn’t homeless. His name was Rickey Means. That name mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ His eyes were intent on mine.

  ‘I don’t know the name.’

  ‘He was a case chaser at the county courthouse.’

  ‘A lawyer?’

  ‘The lowest of the breed, living on whatever bones assigning judges threw at him. He had a degree from a defunct school in Indiana and scraped by with DUIs, shoplifters and junior gangbangers.’

  ‘The news said he had bite marks.’

  ‘He’d been lying outside, maybe for some time. He was making a living. He wasn’t homeless.’

  ‘One newspaper said he was wearing a good suit.’

  ‘But he had bad teeth?’ Kopek said. ‘We wondered about that, too, but we’re thinking maybe he wasn’t the original owner of the suit.’ He put away his notebook. ‘As for your mural, there’s no proving it was at the Central Works.’

  ‘Go look for yourself. Top floor.’

  ‘The building burned down last night,’ Kopek said. ‘There’s nothing left.’

  ‘Arson?’

  ‘Probably. That site, besides attracting whoever gave Rickey Means a toss, is drawing other sorts of weirdoes. The off-roader driver who chased you away for one, last night’s torch for another. Nut jobs come out to crime scenes at night, looking for some fun.’

  ‘That arson was convenient. There must be clues as to who lit it up.’

  ‘Maybe for the fire department but not for us. Our interest is the Means investigation.’

  They both stood up.

  ‘What about Herbie Sunheim?’ I asked, standing, too.

  ‘After we got notified of your call, we didn’t just stop for kolach,’ Kopek said. ‘We called Sunheim’s office and spoke with some woman who sounded like she was talking through a box of Kleenex. We could hardly hear her. She says Sunheim is often gone for extended periods, and she doesn’t worry about where he is so long as he comes back to pay her. She told us about the party goods store where Mrs Sunheim works, so we called the wife there. They’re separated, Sunheim and his missus. Sunheim moved out. She said he’s never at the room he rented.’

  ‘You believe her?’

  ‘She said she doesn’t care where he is so long as he makes the payments on their Escalade and shows up in court to finalize their divorce. She gave us the address of his room. We swung by on our way here. Sunheim’s landlady said what the wife said: Sunheim’s not around much. She thinks he has a traveling job. And, she said, he owes her for back rent.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe he just said the hell with it and took off. He’s got no one in his life except women looking for money.’ He grinned. ‘Unless, of course, there’s that tootsie.’

  ‘What was in his room?’

  ‘Not much. Maybe he took his good stuff and vamoosed.’

  ‘He didn’t have any good stuff.’

  Kopek shrugged, and said nothing.

  The obvious, ugly thought had formed. ‘You’re sure there was no body in the rubble at Central Works?’ I asked, as we stepped outside.

  ‘The fire department is still there. So far, they’ve found nothing.’

  ‘Will you?’ I asked.

  ‘Find anything?’ Kopek shook his head. ‘Probably not. The killing of a courthouse cockroach like Rickey Means doesn’t pack heat. He’s just another scumbag lawyer nobody’s going to miss.’

  Kopek eyed the apricot kolachky that was still in my hand. I’d forgotten about it.

  He handed me the bakery bag.

  ‘I hate prunes,’ he said.

  TWELVE

  I drove to the old Central Works to see what surely was no coincidence.

  Kopek was right. The building was gone. It was now only smoking rubble. A uniformed fire captain was watching two firemen train hoses on the smoldering ruin. I handed him my business card, which shows me as an insurance investigator.

  ‘Nothing here for you,’ he said, handing it back. ‘We already called the property manager to check out the potential that financial lightning was involved. He shut that notion down fast. He said there was no insurance on the building, so I don’t know why you’re here.’

  ‘Being thorough.’ I made a show of sniffing the air. The rubble stunk of accelerant and maybe an explosive. ‘This is more than simple arson.’

  ‘You bet your ass. Fuses on timers set to blow simultaneously on all four floors – a professional job. But why anyone would bother to hire professionals to destroy an old derelict structure when there’s no insurance payout is beyond me. A few cans of gasoline, some soaked rigs and a slow-burning cigarette would have done the job for fifty bucks, tops. So why are you here?’

  ‘We like to look out for all of Dace’s properties,’ I said. ‘It was Mister Dace you talked to about this place being uninsured, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t come back at us and say we let this building slip through the cracks uninsured,’ I said, needing to be sure.

  ‘Relax. I asked Dace twice about insurance. He said the building was slated for demolition like the others that were here. They just want the grounds.’

  ‘Dace did the bulldozing?’

  ‘That’s what he implied.’

  ‘Then he should have done them all at once,’ I said.

  ‘Done what?’ he asked, confused.

  ‘Bulldozed all of them all at once, instead of leaving one to be bulldozed standing later.’ I pointed to the smoking heap. ‘Would have saved you all this trouble.’

  ‘We’ll send them a bill,’ he said. ‘A whopper.’

  I thought back to the new electrical piping I’d seen inside but said nothing. ‘So, you won’t be investigating this?’ I asked instead.

  He shook his head. ‘The owners are unperturbed, so I’m unperturbed. I think some arsonist got the wrong location.’

  I took a detour on the way back to Rivertown because the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Herbie Sunheim wasn’t nagging right. She should have been pestering Violet Krumfeld for more than just Herbie’s checkbook. She should have been pestering her to get ahold of him to dump that unaffordable Escalade.

  According to the Internet, Ronald’s Happy Parties was the closest party goods store to Herbie’s house. It was located less than a mile away, stuck to the end of a strip mall that held a dry cleaners and a tattoo parlor. Ronald’s clear front window displayed a colorful array of pastel party goods and, farther back, a portly balding man, presumably Ronald himself. He was standing behind a counter, entirely too close to the right of the woman I recognized as the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Herbie Sunheim. They both appeared to be looking straight out the front window. Their heads did not meet; their lips most certainly did not touch, but Marge Sunheim’s right shoulder was rising up and down with some exertion.

  Such a spectacle, with Herbie Sunheim so recently vanished, was lacking in grace. I got the phone number from the Int
ernet and called.

  The man answered the counter phone with his right hand, the left having dropped behind the counter somewhere. ‘Ronald’s hap … happy parties,’ he managed, sounding out of breath.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ I said. ‘I’m wondering if you have happy paper party plates?’

  ‘Oh, oh, yes,’ he managed, presumably to me but, then again, he might have been speaking to the laboring soon-to-be ex-Mrs Sunheim.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ he said, almost shouting.

  ‘Do you have happy paper party plates in pink?’ I inquired, quite reasonably.

  ‘Pink, yes!’

  ‘Plenty in pink?’

  ‘Plenty what?’ he demanded, somewhat rudely, though in fairness, he sounded like he was losing his breath, perhaps in approach of some modest goal.

  ‘Plenty of happy paper party plates in pink?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, oh, yes!’ he screamed. Through the glass, Marge Sunheim had become a blur.

  ‘Purple!’ I then said. ‘Do you have plenty of happy paper party plates in purple?’

  He hung up. Through the window, I saw him throw his head back and turn to the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Herbie Sunheim, likely in some relief.

  I’d been prepared to continue, and ask what he had in periwinkle, but I’d seen enough.

  Marge Sunheim had moved on, and maybe it was more convenient for her if Herbie did not.

  THIRTEEN

  I’d gone to grammar and high school with Weasel Wurder. I’d heard he was still in town, though I hadn’t run across him in at least five years. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have been long enough, but Weasel chased cases in the halls of the Cook County courthouse, as had the late, airborne Rickey Means.

  Weasel lived in the basement of his mother’s house at the edge of Rivertown’s abandoned factory district. Leo Brumsky once joked that they had that in common, except Leo only worked in the basement of his boyhood home. He slept upstairs, like when he was a kid, except when he slept at the lovely Endora’s condo, close to Lake Michigan, as he’d begun doing more and more now that he was very much grown up.

  Weasel’s was one of five houses on the block, and the only one that had not been gutted by fire. He didn’t need to live in the basement; his mother had been dead for years. But those of us who’d known him in school knew he preferred to live below grade. It was partly how he’d gotten his nickname.

  Five of the eight steps leading up to his front door were missing, and the remaining three looked to have been feasted upon by carpenter ants, so I skipped any thought of knocking and tapped on the front basement window instead. Weasel’s face, long and narrow and very much resembling a weasel’s, appeared like an unwashed ghost behind the grit on the glass. I rubbed enough of it away so he could see me.

  He grinned, pointed to the front of the house, and disappeared. I walked around to the base of the partial front steps but stayed well back in case any lurking carpenter ants might mistake me for wood. The door opened and Weasel appeared.

  ‘Dek!’ he shouted down, as if enthused.

  ‘Weasel!’ I pretended, in kind.

  He looked the same. Tall and emaciated, with yellow skin that matched what remained of his teeth. His upper lip was coated with a film of milk.

  He didn’t invite me in, which was a relief, since thousands of ants were no doubt partying inside. As he began stepping gingerly down what remained of the stairs, I had the thought he might like to dance his feet when he got to the bottom, to rid himself of any free-riders that had tagged along. I stepped back enough to give him room for a full Irish jig, if he so desired.

  ‘You still working the courthouse, Weasel?’ I asked, when he got down to the cement.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t dance at all – merely stomped one leg down hard, but that might have been merely to jam a foot more securely into one of his stained, blue suede running shoes.

  ‘Just heading there, in fact,’ he said, and indeed, along with the shoes, the rest of his wardrobe looked proper for a day of Cook County justice. He wore black khakis, a green shirt with a frayed collar and a greasy black tie that hung perfectly straight, as if weighted by the dried remains of previous lunches.

  ‘Getting good cases, are you?’ I asked, to make conversation.

  ‘The usual – retail theft, burglary, and of course, assault. Got to chase real hard these days to even get those. Younger guys in their twenties, more spry, are always coming along.’

  ‘You know Rickey Means?’

  ‘A regular, like me. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Checking something for a friend. Do you see him much?’

  ‘Better times have befallen him.’

  His choice of the word intrigued. ‘What do you mean, “befallen”?’

  ‘Talk is he’s tumbled onto a retainer client, though nobody knows for sure. He’s not around as much. He’s dressing nice, gonna get his teeth fixed, mostly files papers these days. Fell into some sweet doo, word is.’

  ‘What kind of papers?’ There was no point in telling Weasel that the doo Rickey Means had fallen into was hard and terminal, not sweet.

  ‘Could be it’s still the usual gang stuff and he’s leaving the actual court work to others, but one guy said he’s doing real estate, of all things. Whatever he’s up to, he’s keeping the source of his good fortune close to his vest.’

  ‘Has he ever worked for the big gangs here?’ I asked, thinking of outfits large enough to want to pitch a lawyer out of a window and then blow up the window and the building around it to obliterate any evidence.

  ‘Nah, guys like us never did get those kind of cases. The big locals used to hire the slicks at the fancy downtown firms, but they’ve been put out of business by bigger operators from points south. Guys like me, we get the snot-noses we always got.’

  ‘But not Rickey Means?’ I asked, as though Rickey Means was still in the present tense.

  ‘Nicer clothes, like I said, and better teeth on the horizon. Good times for him, I guess.’

  ‘Who knows exactly what he’s up to these days?’

  He didn’t ask me why, he just held out his palm.

  ‘Someone who really knows something,’ I said, to clarify.

  His palm stayed steady, and open. ‘Hundred for me, hundred for whoever knows,’ he said. ‘Bargain rate, because we knew each other in school.’

  ‘At the meet, Weasel,’ I said, because we knew each other in school.

  Weasel showed up at the turret that evening, about nine o’clock. With a kid.

  The kid was barely five feet tall, but the faint fuzz on his chin made him look sixteen or even older. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt and immaculate, two-hundred-dollar, shiny red basketball shoes speckled artily by a faint Milky Way of other colors. Weasel wore dirty blue jeans, literally dirty and literally blue. His low-cut white canvas sneakers might have been immaculate once, but now they were dirty, too. He wore the same smear of milk on his upper lip that I’d seen earlier, though I supposed the milk was fresher. For sure, it was whiter than his shoes.

  The kid had cautious, darting eyes and shot a hundred glances at me. He seemed interested in the turret but wouldn’t come inside, so we walked down to the river. Weasel made a rubbing gesture with his thumb and forefinger, the signal that cash had to be exchanged before any information got passed. I handed each a C-note, as agreed.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the kid.

  ‘No name,’ Weasel said.

  ‘Mister Shade,’ the kid said.

  ‘Tell me about Rickey Means,’ I said.

  ‘He’s—’

  I shushed Weasel and turned to the kid. ‘I want it straight, and from you.’

  After palming the hundred fast into his jeans, the kid had kept staring down at his red high-tops. ‘He hire me for stuff sometimes.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Dropping off papers, getting coffee and burgers.’ He looked up at me. His eyes were steady now, intent. ‘Sometimes
clean.’

  ‘Clean? Like hauling out?’

  ‘Yeah, haulin’ out,’ the kid said, turning to the Willahock as if mesmerized by the several plastic jugs bobbing downriver.

  ‘Garbage?’ I asked.

  ‘Peoples,’ he said to the river. ‘Used to be.’

  Rickey Means hadn’t just hired the kid to run papers and fetch hamburgers. He’d hired him to get rid of inconvenient corpses.

  ‘What do you mean, “used to be?”’ I asked.

  The kid turned back to me and shrugged.

  ‘When’s the last time you saw Rickey?’ I asked.

  ‘Been some days,’ he said.

  Weasel jerked both beads of his eyes to me. ‘Rickey’s gone? That’s what this is about?’

  ‘Been some days,’ the kid said, and headed up the rise to the street.

  FOURTEEN

  My phone rang as I was driving into the city the next morning.

  ‘Hello?’ I quite naturally said into it.

  Silence.

  ‘Hello?’ I asked again, because I do not give up easily, though I’d just spent an hour fearing I was about to do that. The kid the night before had gotten me no closer to finding Herbie Sunheim, and I was seeing no way forward to learning anything at all.

  ‘How do you fit into things, Mr Elstrom?’ the voice barely whispered. I pressed the phone hard against my ear. It was Violet Krumfeld, Herbie’s assistant, calling.

  ‘I told you. He hired me.’

  ‘The Central Works?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Because cops called maybe an hour after you called me yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday, you suggested I call the cops to find out where Herbie was. I did.’

  ‘All they did yesterday was call, saying they got a report Herbie was missing and what did I know about that and where was he hanging out these days. But this morning they came around, not just asking about Herbie but about a property called Central Works.’