by Rick Polad
I laughed. “Just what I always wanted—a Polish baby-sitter. Okay, I’ll call. And I won’t do anything dumb.” By not telling him about Ronny I wondered if I already had. But I didn’t even know if it was the right Ronny. And I had to do some things for myself. Besides, if I had to, I could stop being nice for awhile.
He steered me out into the hallway. “You got a gun, Spence?”
“No. Haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
He shook his head. “Just remember, the bad guys do. If you’d like to get some practice in, give me a call and I’ll take you over to the range. I’ll spot you fifty points.”
“If we shot today that wouldn’t be enough to make it a fair fight. But you’re going to have to stand in line. Rosie already threw down the gauntlet. I’m going to practice with her this afternoon.”
“Good, I’d hate for anyone to say I took advantage of you. You can use all the practice you can get.”
He knew I was as good with a pistol as any man on the force and had a slew of army medals to prove it. He also knew I was out of practice and I knew he was telling me that, if I was going to be in this business, I’d better get some.
We walked to the main hall. He looked around like he was looking for someone. There was no one there. “By the way,” he said, “I put your dad’s personal revolver and a box of ammo in the wall safe at the house. It’s cleaned. Do the paperwork if you’re gonna use it.”
“Thanks, Stosh.” We shook hands. “Let’s have dinner one night soon.”
“You got it, kid. Any time you want.”
“So long, Sarge.”
He winked.
I was halfway to the stairs when I heard a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. I turned and saw Stosh running down the hallway. I followed. The sound of a man yelling was getting louder. I could make out something about not knowing they were cops and they had no right keeping him.
I was right behind Stosh when he rounded the corner of the cubicles that opened out into the main room full of desks and chairs. A group had gathered over by the windows. We got closer and, as Stosh pushed people out of the way, I saw what the problem was.
A young kid in tattered jeans and a t-shirt, unshaven and seedy-looking, hands cuffed behind his back, was standing by one of the windows. The window was smashed with jagged shards still hanging in the frame and pieces of glass scattered on the floor. Blood running down the kid’s face didn’t make it too hard to figure out what he had broken the window with.
A detective I didn’t know stepped toward the kid and reached for his arm.
The kid twisted, pulled his arm away, and yelled, “Don’t touch me, asshole.”
The next yell came from Stosh.
“Don’t touch him, asshole! Where the hell’s your head, Barker? Everybody back off and give him some space.” Without taking his eyes off the kid, Stosh asked, “This your arrest, Barker?”
“Yes, sir,” Barker answered sheepishly.
The kid watched warily. Nobody moved, including him.
“What’s the charge,” Stosh asked.
“Possession—cocaine.”
“User?”
“Yes, sir,” said Barker. “He was shooting up when we entered.”
“So we know the holes in his arm aren’t from volunteering as a pin cushion at the senior center. My suggestion would be to stay away from that blood. Call an ambulance.” He addressed the kid. “You’ve made a helluva mess here, kid. That’s a taxpayer’s window you broke. Why don’t you have a seat.”
“Bullshit. They broke into my place without due cause. I know my rights. I’m gettin’ outta here if I have to jump out of this window.”
“If you want out of here so bad, I guess you gotta try, but I wouldn’t recommend it. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re two stories up and, at the moment, you don’t have the use of your hands.”
The kid tried to look at his hands like he wasn’t aware of that but he couldn’t find them. He seemed to have no idea they were behind his back.
Stosh continued. “If you’re going out the window, at least wait till the ambulance gets here. I’d rather not have to deal with the crowd all your broken bones in a hump on the sidewalk is going to attract. And if, by some miracle, you’re unlucky enough to be alive, you’re still gonna have to come back here somewhere along the way. So, how about sitting down and getting it over now?”
The kid tilted his head and squinted his eyes but said nothing.
Stosh pulled out a chair and sat down. “Okay, I can wait.”
I could just make out the sound of a siren in the distance.
The kid flinched as he noticed the ambulance. “Okay, okay,” he said haltingly. “I’ll sit, but I don’t want that asshole near me.”
“Fine,” said Stosh as he stood up and offered the kid his chair. “Rodriguez, take over here, please. Let the medics do whatever they have to do and somebody get Mac up here to clean up this mess. Tell him there’s blood.”
Stosh turned and walked towards me as everyone else went back to work. I walked with him back to his office.
“Nice job, Lieutenant.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m more mad at, that screwed up kid or my stupid detective. Glass and blood and he chooses that time to stop thinking. If I wasn’t getting rich off this job I’d quit.”
“Right. And the Pope’s going to convert to Judaism. Me, I’m going hunting.”
He gave me a long hard stare. “Watch your ass. You never know when there’s trouble waiting around the corner. Sometimes, from a distance, it looks like fun. But, when you get closer, it just makes you wanna puke.”
“Thanks for the pep talk and the wonderful imagery. If I get to that point, I’ll call.”
“Oh, you’ll get to that point, all right. It’s not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when. And after you’re done puking you can decide how you like the taste that’s left in your mouth.” He turned into his cubicle and disappeared.
On my way to the car, I thought about my next move. The race track was the next obvious step, but first I wanted to have a talk with Beef. And on the way I wanted to drive by Elizabeth’s two addresses.
Chapter 11
Her old address was a large, u-shaped apartment building that took up the whole end of the block. It was nicely landscaped and had a high, wrought iron fence across the courtyard in the center. There was a gate in the middle with a callbox on the right side. The gate wasn’t closed. The building was brick with wood trim and had a nice homey look to it. Stosh was right in his assessment. I assumed he would be right about the other place too. He was.
About four blocks away from 2415 S. Hunter the neighborhood started to change drastically; garbage in the streets, boarded-up buildings, tough guys pitching pennies on the sidewalks, and old men with brown paper bags rolled up in the shape of a bottle. Ragged kids played in front yards of dirt and weeds.
I stopped across the street from 2415 and felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. It wasn’t the worst on the block; as a matter of fact, it was one of the best. But still, it was not pleasant knowing Marty had lived there. It was an old, stone three-flat and, compared to the previous residence, it was a slum. If Elizabeth was the nice person Beef and her neighbors thought she was, then I had a puzzle to solve. What would make a nice girl desperate enough to move into this dump?
I put the Mustang in gear, did a u-turn, and headed north to the restaurant.
There was only one customer in the joint and Beef was chatting with him at the counter. I walked in, headed for my booth, and motioned for Beef to join me. He did. The guy at the counter threw down some coins and left.
“You like some coffee?” he asked.
“No. I’d like an explanation.”
He slid into the booth. “Of?”
“Of why you forgot to mention a few things.”
“Like?”
“What is this, Password? Like, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the police had a
suspect in your sister’s murder and that suspect was, and is, you.”
“Oh,” he sighed. Then he got tough. “I thought I told you to stay away from that.”
“Yeah. And now I know why.”
He stared at me for a few seconds before he continued. “I got nothin’ to hide. I sure didn’t kill my own sister. So I figured it wasn’t worth bringin’ up.”
“Anything else you didn’t figure worth bringin’ up?” All I got was a cold stare.
I nodded. “Sure, I get it. If you didn’t bring it up before and I haven’t run across it, then you continue with the clam routine. Mind if I go over what you told me last night?”
He shrugged.
“You said you went there in the morning and found her dead. Now I know you were there the night before. You had a fight sometime between ten and ten-thirty. Was she alive when you left?”
“If I say she was, what’s to make you believe me?”
I tried the shrug routine. I wasn’t as good as he was. “Not a thing. But at least I’d have the current story.”
“She was alive. I wouldn’t kill my own sister, for chrissake. She was all I had left.”
“Wrong, you had her and Marty. Now all you’ve got is Marty.”
He fiddled with the salt shaker.
“What was the fight about, Beef?”
“Nothin’ that makes any difference. It was a family problem.”
“Like with her making a few extra bucks at night?”
He slammed his fist on the table and knocked over the salt shaker. “I told you she wasn’t that kind of girl. She never...”
“Cut the crap, Beef. I’m tired of this holier-than-thou routine. She was turning tricks at night to make a few extra bucks. That doesn’t make her bad. She was probably a good kid who got in a jam and needed extra money and saw that as a way out. Her morals don’t interest me. But I just took a tour of her last two addresses and what does interest me is what happened to bring her from somewhere in the middle of the ladder to the bottom rung.”
After a deep breath that let out the toughness, he said, “Yeah, I wondered about that too.” He pushed the shaker around the table with his right forefinger. I watched. “I figure the father quit sending the checks for some reason and she had to move.”
That seemed like the logical answer. If so, what had happened to stop the checks? Could be the father was dead too. Now that Beef had calmed down, I figured I’d try again. “Was that what the fight was about, Beef? Her night employment?”
He looked puzzled for a second. “Oh yeah, sure.”
I had the feeling I had just given him an easy answer but I played along anyway. “Did she say why she did it?”
“She said she needed the money and was looking for a night job when some friend at the bakery told her about this building where she lived that would save her a lot of rent and give her a chance to make some easy money. When I asked her why she didn’t come to me, she said she knew I had taken out a second mortgage on the joint and was having money trouble myself. I told her I would’ve sold the joint rather than have her live in that dump. She said that’s why she didn’t ask. I shoulda known something was wrong when she asked me to watch Marty overnight more often. And she used to have me and Maria for dinner. That stopped when she took the night job.”
“She told you she was taking a night job?”
He nodded. “She said she needed some extra money and was going to work nights at the bakery.”
“Did she tell you she was moving?”
“No. I found out by accident one night. Marty had forgotten her doll and I told her I’d drive her home for it. We got to the old place and she said she didn’t live there anymore. She said her mommy taught her a new address. She rattled it right off. We drove over there and I couldn’t believe it. My sister and Marty living in that... that...”
I could see the disbelief and the pain in his face and I could tell how tough this was for him. Whether his sister was a “good girl” or not, Beef sure had thought she was. After a minute, he continued.
“I wanted to shake her and ask her why the hell she had moved there. If only I hadn’t been crying ‘poor me’ about that second mortgage. Maybe she would have asked for help. I figured she had a good reason for moving there and hadn’t told me cuz she was embarrassed. And she would have been even more embarrassed had I walked in on her. So, I did what I figured was the next best thing—I kept Marty at my place as much as possible.”
I let him sit in silence. I could tell he felt guilty as hell but nothing I could say would do any good. Guilt isn’t something someone else can wave away. All I could do was try and get at the truth. I had to keep giving him little pushes, but not hard enough that he’d tell me to go to hell.
“So the night of the murder you finally went over to talk to her? Did you know then she was hooking?”
He gave me a blank stare. “What?”
“The night she was killed,” I said emphatically, “You finally thought it was important enough to talk to her to risk her knowing that you knew about the new place?”
Knowing I was putting words in his mouth, I watched his face carefully. The vague look suddenly left when he remembered what the new story was. I figured anything he said was better than nothing and maybe one of these times the truth might come out by mistake.
“Yeah, that was it. I decided that wasn’t a good place for Marty, and, no matter what sis thought, they were moving in with me.”
I had no doubt he would make that offer but I figured he would have made it before and there was still something he was leaving out.
“So, what happened that night?”
“I drove over there and knocked on the door. Nobody answered so I knocked again. Then she asked who was there. When I told her, I heard a noise inside and she said she’d be right there. She sounded afraid. I was about to knock the door down when it flies open and this jerk comes runnin’ out yankin’ up his pants.” He turned sideways in the booth, his knee up on the cushion and stared out the window. “If I hadn’t of been so shocked, I would’ve killed the guy.”
Beef was breathing hard and his face turned red. His left hand was clenched in a fist and the veins were popping out on his forearm. The guy was lucky that Beef had hesitated or he’d be dead.
I needed to push a little more. “Could it be you broke the lock on the door?”
He banged his fist on the table, drawing looks from the clientele. “Who the hell are you working for? You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Hey, if I’m going to help you I need the truth. And the lock is a big part of the story.”
I got a blank stare. I also realized that if he didn’t kill her but did break the door down, he left an easy in for whoever did. The guilt tied to that would be huge and he may never admit it. But Stosh was right—Beef was certainly capable of the deed.
“Okay, so what happened after you got in?”
“I told her to pack her things, that she and Marty could move in with me.” He turned to meet my gaze. “She refused and the fight started. I told her there was no question—I’d be back in the morning to get her. That’s when I found her.” The red had drained out of his face leaving a blank mask of pain.
“So the fight wasn’t about hooking?”
I thought his face looked like a chameleon as it suddenly turned red again.
“What the hell does it matter what the fight was about? It was a family thing. What are you making such a big deal about anyway?”
“First, the cops are looking for a motive. Second, did it ever cross your mind that perhaps I wouldn’t want to work for someone who played it like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you feeding me what you think is important and making up half of that.”
He flicked his wrist. “So resign, or whatever you guys do.”
“You want to end our contract, say so. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna give up looking for the father.”
“The hell it doesn�
�t.”
“The hell it does. A fellow can look into whatever a fellow wants. I just wouldn’t be getting paid by you.”
“Then why do it?”
“Cuz I’ve taken a liking to Marty. And if you end up in the slammer, it might be to her benefit if I found the father.”
He pounded the table again. “Goddamn it! I told you I’m the only father she needs.”
“Then why bother looking for the real one?”
He stood up and glared down at me. “I already answered that.”
“I know. Cuz he’s got more money than you. Is that the real reason?”
He stuck a large finger in my face. “Look. You want to find the father, fine. You don’t, that’s fine too. And I didn’t do anything so how can I end up in the slammer?”
“Maybe I’ll have you picked up for being a pain in the ass.”
He turned and walked away.
“Am I fired?” I asked to the back of a white t-shirt. It didn’t answer. I took that for a “no” and walked out into the heat.
Chapter 12
I waited for an opening in traffic and turned left off of Cicero and into Skyline Park, home of harness racing. Just to the south was Linden racetrack where thoroughbred racing would start when the harness season was over. As I drove into the parking lot, I tried to envision myself walking over the rolling bluegrass of Kentucky. It didn’t work. The din of traffic and the rotting factory smell and the brown sky full of pollution trapped in by the heat were too much to overcome. There were only a few cars in the lot and no one to stop me from parking. I locked up and walked between the grandstand and the dorms where the jockeys and hired help lived and made my way back to the stables.
I remembered coming here when I was small enough to have to hold Dad’s hand while we waited in line to get in. Back then the place had an aura of magic that left me awed and enthralled. When Dad made Captain he could afford the private boxes and prime rib. But I still chose to spend the day hanging over the rail at the finish line eating a hot dog with plenty of mustard. That’s where the magic was.
I walked past the stables, casually watching old men go about their work and looking for the magic. I don’t know if I had grown up or the real world had slowly encompassed me, but the magic was gone. I used to wander back here and daydream about the jockeys in their bright silks and the shiny, well-groomed horses. Now it was just another place—dirty and hot. And it didn’t smell too good, either.