Boystown 7: Bloodlines (16 page)

Ten minutes later I walked into the storefront bar. The place was small, with half the space taken up by a horseshoe bar. As it was still early, there were only about half a dozen people in the bar. I assumed it would fill up later. Thursday was the night that people went out. If you lived in the city you avoided most bars on Friday and Saturday since they were full of suburbanites.

Sitting on the far side of the bar was a square looking woman with short hair. She was just a few years older than I was, but that fit with Kimmy’s idea of “older.” I walked over and asked if she was Emily Fante.

“Are you the guy who’s looking for me?”

“I am. Nick Nowak. I’m an investigator working with Madeline Levine-Berkson’s attorneys.” I gave her my card and she set it down next to her drink.
 

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

“Of course you can.”

I asked the bartender for a Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks and whatever the lady was having. That made Emily smirk. Well, what did she expect me to say? “And one for the bull dyke?”

“This isn’t as bad as it looks,” she said.

“It’s not?”
 

“No. Not at all. This is just booze.”

“Your problem is drugs?” It looked like she had bigger problems than just drugs, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Is that how you know Madeline? From doing drugs together?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m her sponsor in NA. Narcotics Anonymous.” Then she said again, “This is just booze by the way.”

“I believe you.”

“That’s why I can’t testify. All that will come out.”

“That Madeline was a drug addict?”

“Yes, that she was an addict. Is an addict.”

“Did you know Wes Berkson?”

She shook her head again. “Never met him. Wouldn’t want to either.”

“He never came to NA?”

“Never.”

The bartender set down our drinks. Emily’s was something clear with a lime. Vodka, gin, rum, tonic, soda, 7-Up. Something of that sort. She smelled sweet and syrupy, the way people do after they’ve been drinking for a long time. But I couldn’t exactly smell what kind of booze she was drinking.

I took a sip of my scotch, lit a cigarette, and asked, “What kind of drugs did Madeline do?”

“Everything. Cocaine, a lot. But heroin, too. You know, you get too high you have to find a way to come down.”

“Was it pharmaceutical cocaine?”

“You’ve been to the dentist.” She giggled like she’d just made a joke.

“I have.”

“She felt bad about that girl who got fired. But she’d stopped using by then and if they found out it was her she’d have lost her license. Her career was important to her. And she had her kids to think about, you know?”
 

“She wasn’t thinking about her kids when she stabbed her husband,” I pointed out.

“I don’t know what she was thinking about when she did that.”

“Was there really a mistress? Was her husband cheating on her?”

She pushed aside the dregs of her last drink and started the new one. “He was, yes.”

“Do you know who he was seeing?”

“A girl named Jane. Jane Weeks.”

“How do you know? You didn’t know Wes. Did Madeline tell you?”

“No. I knew Jane. She’s the kind of girl who gets around. She used to go with anyone who’d give her drugs, you know?” I had the feeling that Emily had been one of those anyones in her day.

“How do I find her?”

“I don’t know. They came and got her. I don’t know where they took her.” She took a gulp of her drink; she’d already managed to down half of it.
 

“Who came and got her?”

“The people who come and get you when you die.”

“She’s dead? How? How did she die?”

“They found her stabbed to death in her apartment.”

I stared at her for a moment. Then guessed, “The same day that Wes Berkson died.”

“Yes.”

I almost asked her why no one figured this out, but that would have been stupid. Emily wouldn’t have known. In fact, I knew more than she did. I’d worked with the CPD. I knew that when a person confessed the investigation consisted of corroborating the confession and little more. No detective would think, “Hey maybe they killed someone else. Someone they’re not confessing to.” I also knew that a dead junkie was not a high priority. It would likely be labeled a drug deal gone bad. The investigation into her death would have been as superficial as trying to find out who her dealer was, and when that didn’t pan out it wouldn’t have gone much further.

“Why? Why would Madeline kill them both and then only confess to killing her husband?”
 

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” Emily said.
 

Then she asked me to buy her another drink.
 

Chapter Fourteen

I slept at my office that night rather than go back to Brian’s. I felt like we’d all be more comfortable that way. After The Closet, I stopped at a liquor store and bought a pint of cheap scotch and finished it off before trying to sleep. My mind was in overdrive. Why had Madeline done the things she did? From the things people said, she didn’t seem the sort to get so worked up over her husband having an affair that she’d kill two people, and yet that seemed to be exactly what she did do. The other thing was that she had known about the affair for some time. She didn’t just find out that day. That was a lie. So, why that particular day? And why confess to one murder but not the other? Of course, none of this was going to help Owen get her a reduced sentence. Even in the unlikely event the reason she killed two people made her more sympathetic, explaining that opened her up to another murder charge, another trial and another sentence. None of that was good.

Since I’d left Joseph’s priest garb over at Brian’s and I needed to shave, at six that morning I dragged my slightly hungover self the four blocks to his apartment. Brian and Franklin were still asleep so I was able to shave, shower and dress without waking them. I dug around Brian’s kitchen for a pail, and then rooted around for a piece of paper and a pen to make a sign. From a bakery bag, I made a simple sign that said Support African Orphans. After I taped it to the pail I chuckled. The sign could be read as giving money to feed African orphans; it could also be read as funding a charity devoted to creating them.

Quietly leaving Brian’s, I walked back to the Belmont El station then went right by it. I was too hungry to go directly downtown and it was still early. I grabbed the newspaper and went to Ann Sathers. The hostess greeted me with a cheerful and disconcerting, “Good morning, Father.” I almost objected but then remembered how I was dressed. Pretending to be a priest was going to take some getting used to.

Over coffee and a delicious cinnamon roll, I read the front page. Khadafy and the Brits were having one of those spats that always result in the wrong people dying. An Arlington Heights man said he was framed in a heroin bust. His story was that a friend wanted to win the release of his wife and brother-in-law so he set-up a sting with the DEA. He claims to have had no knowledge of the drugs in the suitcases he carried as a favor. I thought the whole thing was dubious on all sides, but I did wonder if anyone involved knew Wes Berkson. Standard Oil spilled millions of gallons of oil off the coast of France and now a judge has decided that they had to pay for the damages. What a terrible fate, to actually be responsible for the things you’ve done.

I put the paper aside and had scrambled eggs with Swedish sausage. I was tempted to order another cinnamon roll. I was still on the thin side so I could risk it. I decided to get one to go and have it later. I wasn’t looking forward to the day. Surveillance was the least interesting part of my job and I did my best to never do it. It was very likely a pointless exercise. I didn’t expect to find out much of anything, but it was the only thing I could think to do.

While I waited at the cashier in front of the restaurant, one of the other customers put a quarter in my bucket. I smiled and thanked the woman. Then I wondered if I should have said, “Bless you.” It was more in character. Saying “bless you” wasn’t exactly a sacrament so I wasn’t running afoul of my promise to Joseph.

It was almost eight when I arrived at Federal Plaza. People began to arrive for work around that time so it was perfect. I had no idea what the rules were for soliciting donations in public, so I decided to position myself outside the lobby of the Federal Building. The plaza seemed more “public” and might have different rules than the lobby. I studied the flow of workers into the building to decide which door was used most often. On Monday, I’d switch locations to get full coverage. There were entrances on each of the four sides of the lobby. I decided to spend the day positioned on the northeast corner. I could see two entrances from there and I was just a few feet from the entrance to the subway. Anyone who arrived via the El would have to walk right by me. The Calder bird was to my left and I had a decent view of anyone who decided to hang around looking at it.
 

By eight-thirty I had blessed a lot of people. Most of whom put a quarter or two in my pail. A couple dropped in a dollar bill. A black woman blessed me right back. I worried that someone might ask me more about the charity so I began making up a story in my head. I knew that there was starvation in Africa but to be honest I wasn’t exactly sure where. I began thinking of African countries I knew of. The Congo. Nairobi. Ethiopia. British Guiana. I worried that some of the names had changed. I didn’t want to tell someone that we were helping orphans in some no-longer existing African country. Or one that wasn’t actually suffering famine. If anyone asked, I’d have to say “various African countries.” That would be the best way to handle it.

The bucket was already heavy by nine. I wondered if I might need to go to a bank and change the coins for paper at lunchtime. At the rate I was going, my arms were going to be very tired. I decided I’d stick it out until ten o’clock and then take a short break, stretch my legs and maybe put the bucket down for a few minutes.
 

Around nine-thirty, the two Federal agents I’d ridden in the elevator with crossed the plaza. They didn’t come up from the subway, they came around the post office as though from a parking garage somewhere nearby. Neither of them noticed me, which was a relief.

At about quarter to ten my beeper went off. I studied the little black box for a minute and was able to figure out that I didn’t recognize the number. That meant it might be a call from my potential landlord. I certainly hoped it was. I clipped my beeper back onto my belt a little self-consciously. I wondered if a priest would even have a beeper. Was I giving myself away?

Fifteen minutes later I went down into the Jackson subway station to use the payphone, eating my extra cinnamon bun on the way. The phone was located on the platform so I had to buy a ticket. Of course it wasn’t like I didn’t have correct change, though I did get a look from the CTA agent when I took the change directly out of the bucket. There was a train about to leave when I got to the pay phone so I waited until it pulled out. As soon as it was pulling away, I put my quarter in and dialed Mrs. Harker.

“This is Nick. I want to find out how Terry’s doing.” I said when she picked up.
 

“He have big appetite.” Which told me she already loved having the boy there. Now, I worried that I’d done something terrible to the old lady. Eventually, I was going to have to take him away.

“Listen, I have a beeper now. Let me give you the number.”

“You have what?”

“A beeper. A pager.”

“I don’t know what is.”

“I’m going to give you a phone number. Write this down.”

I gave her the number and then she asked, “Who is phone?”

“No one. You dial in your number and I’ll call you back.”

“Is answering machine?”

“Sort of. Except I know exactly when you call.”

“What is for?”

“It’s for emergency.”

“Everything a-okay. We no have trouble.”

“Good. But if you do you can call that number and I’ll call you right back.”

“You come Sunday. You show me.”

“Okay, I’ll show you on Sunday.”

I said goodbye just as another train was coming by. I doubt she heard me. Pulling the pager off my belt, I clicked the button until I got the number that had beeped me. I put in another quarter, resenting the recent hike from a dime, and dialed the number.
 

“Two Towers,” a woman’s voice said.

“Is this Clementine?”

“It is.”

“This is Nick Nowak,” I said, bracing myself for a no.

“Ah, our new tenant.”

“Oh great. Can I come by later and get the keys?”

“Of course, I’m here until seven.”

“I’ll be there by five-thirty.”

“See you then.”

I left the station and went back to my spot on the plaza. The next two hours were crushingly dull. The number of people going in and out dropped to a trickle between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty, and it seemed that most of the people who walked by had already put a coin or two into my pail.
 

I tried to think through what I was looking for. Most of the offices above me were government agencies. That meant I’d been staring at government employees all morning. But the informer probably didn’t look like a government employee. So, what did the people I’d seen have in common? I couldn’t tell yet. That might be because interspersed among the government workers were people who came to deal with the IRS or their Alderman or some other government agency.
 

Back up, I told myself. I was looking for someone in the Outfit. Someone who was close enough to Jimmy during the period when the crimes were supposedly committed. The crimes noted in the files began in the late sixties. If the informant had been in his mid-twenties he’d be at least in his mid-forties by now. That meant I didn’t have to look at anyone under forty. That helped. Also, since the informant was in the Outfit it was not someone black. As far as I knew there were no black members of the Outfit. They had their own crime syndicates. When it came to crime, separate but equal was still the rule and no one was going to go to court and ask for forced integration. So, I could ignore all the black people that walked by me. That right there was about twenty-five percent. Eliminating the under forties meant I could cut out another twenty-five percent. Half the people who walked by, I could ignore.