A Simple Suburban Murder (17 page)

I planted my feet. Scott took a position next to me. "Daphne," I said, "I don't want a fight. We don't want trouble for you, but we stay until we get information."

"Do it now," she commanded. "Throw them out."

They came from opposite sides of the bar. They were bigger than Scott and I. The fight was brief. They were muscle-bound clods, more for decoration in scaring lonely old gay men than for real strength. Plus Scott and I, battered as I was, were in better shape than they. A moment later the two flunkies rested on the floor, one up against the bar, the other with a turned over table as a cushion for his head. Daphne didn't join in the brawl.

Scott and I breathed easily. My knuckles were sore, but that was all.

"Wow," Keith said, "you guys are great."

"Shit," Daphne said. "Fucking wimps."

For a minute I thought she might try attacking us herself. Shakily Clarence and Marvin pushed themselves off the floor. They eased slowly away from us. The fight was out of them.

"Should we call the police?" Marvin asked.

"No," she snapped. "You couldn't handle them so I'll have to." She continued to eye us warily for several moments. Finally she heaved her massive shoulders in a thunderous shrug. She waved the two of them away. She gave me a piercing look and said, "What am I supposed to be? Mother Theresa for that whole family? Yes, Phil was here tonight. He left around ten-thirty. I haven't seen him since. His mother was in about eleven-thirty looking for him."

"She was here?"

"That I wouldn't make up."

"How'd you know it was her?" I asked.

"Honey, this mousey suburban-looking woman walked in here. She took one look and freaked—like this was all the circles of hell at once. But she stayed—took a lot of guts. Mamma looking for her young, I guess. She asked a few people about Phil before I could get off the bar and get to her. Marvin should have stopped her at the door, but he's new and not top bright. Probably thought it was the latest drag fashion. She asked me if I knew where Phil was."

"Did you tell her?" I asked.

"No," she snarled. "I'm not here to play nursemaid to fucked-up families. She left abruptly and without learning anything."

"She wasn't home when we tried to call her a little while ago," I said.

"She didn't leave me her itinerary," Daphne responded.

"And you just threw her out," I said.

She stabbed a finger at me. "Look, buddy, I went out of my way to help you once. You've got all the nice you're going to get from me."

I explained about the phone call. "He could be in dangerous trouble," I concluded.

"Could be," she agreed.

"You helped us before," Scott said. "You knew how to get hold of him then. Why not help us?"

"Then and now are two different things," she said. "It's not worth my place here, or my living, to go further." Suddenly she looked annoyed with herself. "I've helped enough and I have work to do." She eyed me carefully, almost kindly, I thought. She said, "Why don't you get the hell out? Go back to your safe suburb. Forget Phil. He's where all lost pretty young boys go in this city. He'll be better off there."

Abruptly I said, "Let's go." Something she said had started me thinking.

In the car Scott asked, "Why'd we give up?"

"If we stayed a year we wouldn't get any more out of her," I said. "She let it slip that there was someone behind her. Someone who I think has a strong hold over her."

"Who?" Scott asked.

"I have no idea."

"What about Phil?" Keith asked.

"He wasn't there, obviously," I said, "and there was no way we could get the information out of them."

"Couldn't you guys beat them up and make them?" Keith asked.

I suppressed a smile. "We're not equipped for extensive torture," I told him. He subsided.

"What's next?" Scott asked.

I drove for a while in silence. The lights of the Loop glittered majestically as we drifted southward on Lake Shore Drives's new S curve. I waited until we drove past McCormick Place on to the Stevenson Expressway before I answered.

"I want to try and get into the computer program again. Something Daphne said gave me an idea."

"What'd she say?"

"Something about where all lost young boys go in this city.

And remember when we heard about the escort service that specializes in young guys?"

"But we got nowhere with that phone call. What would Jim Evans have to do with it anyway?"

"Maybe nothing. But what if there is a connection? Remember Neil said there was. If my idea doesn't work I haven't lost anything. If it does then I think we're a lot closer to catching the real murderer."

It was after four. Besides the lack of sleep I was still worn out from the beating. I noticed Keith. He'd fallen asleep while we were on Lake Shore Drive. He slept with his head resting peacefully on Scott's shoulder.

It was after five when we got home. Keith was sound asleep. Scott carried him into the house. He put him on the couch and covered him with a blanket. Keith stirred briefly then went back to sleep.

I called Mrs. Evans. She answered this time. She sounded exhausted but, even taking that into account, she seemed curiously uninterested in what I had to say about Keith and Phil. When I asked questions about her whereabouts, she was totally uncommunicative. I didn't pursue it. I planned to talk to her after school. I told her we'd be there at four-thirty. She dithered about it, but agreed when I pushed her.

Scott and I sat down at the computer. I inserted the disc, turned on the computer. We watched the preliminary data print on the screen. The question then appeared that I hadn't been able to get beyond for days,
IDENTIFICATION
CODE? The cursor blinked on and off waiting for my response. I typed in Adonis-at-Large. The screen cleared. The disc drive hummed. Then the three most dreaded words of the computer age flashed on the screen,
FILE
-
NOT
-
FOUND
.

I pounded the table softly. "Shit, I thought that was it."

Scott spoke comfortingly. "You've given it a good try."

I glanced out the window. The winter darkness held on. I returned a baleful stare to the computer screen. I was depressed.

Scott rested a hand on my shoulder. "Maybe after you've had some sleep you can try again," he said.

I shook my head. "I'm not going to be able to sleep." I was angry and irritated, and worried about Phil. I thumped the computer screen with my finger. "I want to work at this a little longer."

"Okay," he said. "I'll make us some coffee."

I returned to the computer screen. I stared at the three little hyphenated words. There had to be some combination that worked to give me the information Evans had stored. In a mindless exercise I tried pressing one key at a time starting at the top. Maybe it was those words and a simple combination of keys. I must have been truly tired. If it was random, then my punching was hopeless.

I came to the caps lock key, and it dawned on me. I shouted in excitement. I also felt like a fool.

One of the simplest maneuvers and I missed it. They teach it to elementary school kids. If you type in your access code all in capital letters, you've got to type all capitals to retrieve it.

Scott appeared in the doorway. "What?" he asked.

"This has got to be it," I said. I typed in ADONIS-AT-LARGE. Once again the screen cleared. The disc drive whirred. Beautiful green letters began to dance across the screen.

"You got it!" Scott exclaimed.

It was all there: data from the gambling in the math department, records for Adonis-at-Large, even what Evans held over Armstrong and Sylvester's head. We studied the figures. It took almost an hour to go through it all. We went back over the high points.

"Vance lied. Evans ran the gambling operation. Maybe Evans didn't control it at the beginning, but he did before he died." I tapped the computer screen. "Look at this."

A list of faculty members with the amounts owed Evans appeared, some as low as $50. Vance owed $9,500.

"Plenty enough to kill for," Scott commented.

"And maybe Evans was short this kind of money to someone else. And he may have had gambling debts of his own." The evidence for this was less clear. Someone owed somebody over $20,000. It had to be Evans. But who'd he owe it to?

We examined the records for Adonis-at-Large. Some listings were only names, but most included phone numbers, dollar amounts, and addresses or at least an indication of a region in the metropolitan area. All had listed their sexual interests.

"These are clients," I said. Under Southwest Suburbs Armstrong's name appeared. Moments later Sylvester's showed up.

"Holy shit," Scott said when he saw their names.

A second list began. I recognized some of the names of former students. "These names are by types they would service. Here's the males for males." I pressed the advance arrow. "The males for females." I pressed it again. "And females for males." I saw Greg's sister's name. I pressed the button once more. The last list had females for females.

"Armstrong and Sylvester were customers of Sheila's," I guessed. "That's why she called."

"That's got to be it," Scott said.

I examined the second list. Next to the names were physical characteristics: age, weight, height, color of hair and eyes. None was over twenty-five, one as young as fourteen. Evans was a pimp, and not a cheap one. He kept a large percentage of each whore's take to keep them from making enough money to get big ideas. The costs were next to the names. The lowest was $100 for an hour. The fourteen-year-old was a girl for $5,000 a night. I felt sick.

Scott said, "Evans was a fucking creep."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"You know this is dangerous information," Scott said.

"You're right. Whoever is in charge of Adonis-at-Large must know Evans had this information. They must want it back."

"Maybe Evans was in charge."

"Maybe, but I don't think that was his style. He leached from others. Certainly an operation this big has others involved. Maybe this is what they broke into the Evanses' house looking for."

I pressed the arrow to run the information again. I hoped it would give some clue we'd missed as to who was in this with Evans. But checking the whole entry gave no hint of whom this might be. Whoever it was, I also suspected it was the one Evans owed money to.

"If there is somebody else, maybe Neil would know," Scott suggested.

"I'll try him later." I looked at the end of the program thoughtfully. I had a grim thought. "You know what else bothers me," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"Daphne's comment made me think of this. Remember when she said 'where all pretty young men go.' And that's how Neil described Adonis-at-Large the other day, lots of pretty young men."

"If Evans was part of the operation he peddled his own kid. Nobody could be that vile," Scott said. "And wait, Phil didn't say anything like that."

"Maybe he didn't know his dad was behind it." I ran the information back searching for Phil's name. It wasn't there.

"So he wasn't part of the group," Scott concluded.

I shrugged. "Maybe not or maybe Phil just became part of the group since he left home."

The last set of information on Sylvester and Armstrong revealed the connection among the three of them. They had been skimming money from athletic events, as Meg had suggested. The how and why I wasn't sure yet. I was determined to find out at school that day. I told Scott my plan.

"Shouldn't you take all this to the police?" he objected.

"You forget, they have a copy."

"You know what I mean."

"Okay. They probably haven't broken into the program yet." We were in the bedroom. I talked while I undressed for a quick shower. "I'll tell you what I'll do. After we've talked to Mrs. Evans after school, we'll go straight to the police station."

He looked dissatisfied.

I went on quickly. "Before I leave I'll make another copy of the disc, Plus I want to run copies on the printer. I'll need one for school." I jumped into the shower. "We can mail one copy to your place and one here. That way the information will be in many places, and available to us if someone decides to get nasty."

"They've already gotten nasty," he pointed out.

"You were there to rescue me." I opened the shower curtain and grinned at him.

"Barely," he grumbled, "and I still think we should tell the police now."

"After school, I promise."

Scott wrote Keith a note in case he woke up while we were gone.

We left with one disc and two printouts. I left one disc at home for Scott to examine during the day. We mailed the printouts on the way to school. Scott looked worried all the while he drove.

I gave his hand a reassuring pat. "Everything will be all right. I wouldn't miss this day at school for the world. I can't , wait to meet with Armstrong and Sylvester. It's time to push the bullies around a little."

"I wish this was over with and we were out of it," he said.

"We didn't ask to be in it," I replied.

"What about Phil?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm worried, but I can't think of what we could do."

"We could try Greg's sister."

"We didn't get too far with her before, but I'm willing to give it another try. She should be able to give us a lead on the escort service."

Scott planned to pick me up at school after staying with Keith all day. Together the three of us would go see Mrs. Evans. I was to call Scott immediately if there was a problem with the administrators. As I got out he told me to be careful. I promised I would.

The first thing I did was go to the school office. I asked Georgette to tell Armstrong and Sylvester I wanted to see them in my classroom at noon.

"Tell them?" She gasped faintly.

"Yes, Georgette."

She gaped at me. "What if they're busy?"

"Tell them they need to cancel it, or they can cancel their careers."

If they were sufficiently angry and off balance when they showed up I might be able to get solid information out of them.

Between classes I borrowed a computer from Meg. I filled her in briefly on the latest and told her I'd give her the details later.