Boystown 7: Bloodlines (8 page)

As I took the last sips of my morning coffee, I tried to focus on Jimmy’s case. The main thing I needed to do was discover who their informant was. From the transcripts I’d read, the informant knew a great deal about Jimmy. He was close to Jimmy. Close enough to steal or copy some kind of datebook or a series of datebooks, or diary, or journal. Of course, I needed to sit down with Jimmy and ask him about that, but it seemed a good idea to make a little progress first. I wanted to study the files I’d put together and read through everything again, but I didn’t think that would yield much. I knew what I needed to do; I just didn’t want to do it. I finished off the coffee, tossed the Styrofoam cup into my trash basket, and pulled my overcoat back on. It was time to go down to the Loop.
 

Operation Tea and Crumpets was working out of the Federal Building on Dearborn. From the information in the files, I knew that the interviews were taking place in their office on the twenty-third floor. What I wanted to know was who went in and out of the building, but even before I went down, I knew that was going to be difficult. I took the Jackson/Howard down to Jackson, and when I climbed up out of the subway I was right at the Federal building plaza staring at the big red bird by Calder.
 

The Federal Building was a black monolith by Mies van der Rohe of forty-some floors; across the street was the Courthouse, another van der Rohe building of only thirty floors, though much wider. Just beyond the Calder was a mammoth, one-story Post Office made of the same black metal used in the other two buildings. I was looking for someplace to watch the lobby of the federal building. My options were limited.
 

I circled the building. Across Jackson was a hundred-year-old, sixteen-story brick building. I eyed it seriously for a few minutes. If I could rent an office on the second floor then I’d be able to watch the entrance to the Federal Building. But that was a big if. Even if an office was available, I had no way of knowing if the landlord would go for something short term. And, if they somehow learned that I was watching the Federal Building in order to keep tabs on a Federal investigation, they might not feel too comfortable. I considered the Post Office for a moment. Like most Post Offices there were long lines most of the day. I could slip from long line to long line, keeping my eye on the Federal Building the whole time. But I figured sooner or later someone would notice me hanging around and ask me to buy some stamps or get out.

Walking into the lobby of the Federal Building I quickly saw that there were even fewer possibilities in there. In fact, there barely was an “in there.” The lobby, enclosed in two-story glass windows, was nothing but a shiny floor, some pillars, and a few elevator banks. The back of the elevator bank was an expanse of tile with the Federal Seal in the middle.
 

Dozens of people walked across the lobby, on their way to offices upstairs, on their way out of the building. I wondered how many thousands of people walked across the space every day. There was no place to go unnoticed, though. Everyone was visible and anyone standing around for hours would draw attention. On the wall by the elevators was a directory. I studied it for a few minutes. There was no listing for anything on the twenty-third floor. The IRS was on the twenty-fourth, and on the twenty-second the office of Alderman Kenkowski of the Second Ward.

Without thinking too much about it, I got into one of the elevators and pressed 23. The elevator filled and began to rise. The first stop was the twentieth floor. Another elevator ran from the first floor to the nineteenth. The second stop was twenty-three and I got off. Luckily, I got off alone and found myself in a cream-colored space with doors at either end. I walked to my right and looked up and down the bland hallway. Most of the office spaces were just labeled with numbers. There was a law office at the end of the hallway, Clarkson and Peters, which I guessed did a lot of business with the Federal government. Halfway down was a men’s room. I tried the door but it was locked and required a key. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t hang out in the restroom all day. Not only would it be suspicious if anyone noticed me but there was no guarantee I’d learn anything.

I walked by the elevator and entered the other hallway. It was virtually indistinguishable from the first. Most of the offices were again unmarked. I tried a couple of the doors, ready to tell anyone inside that I was looking for Clarkson and Peters, but the doors were locked. Near the end of the hallway, I found an office with a plaque that said “British Export Company.”
Clever
, I thought. Most people wouldn’t think twice about their business name. Even though if there were a real British Export Company they’d be located in England. A company doing similar business in the United States would be called British Import Company.

Letting my hand rest on the doorknob, I tried to think whether to try to open it. It would be interesting to see their setup. If anyone was in there I could say I was looking for the attorney’s office like I’d planned, even though that would make me look like I couldn’t read a plaque on the door. The thing is, worse than looking stupid, I was afraid of being recognized. It wasn’t likely but I might know whoever they had from the CPD. Or, I might be recognized later on…I wasn’t sure I should risk it. I wasn’t even sure I knew what it was I wanted to see. I took my hand off the door and walked back down the hallway to the elevator. Pushing the down button, I stood there waiting.

Then I heard a door open far down the hallway I’d just come from. I pushed the down button again, even though I knew perfectly well the elevator wouldn’t come any faster. Voices grew closer as I waited. I considered running around the corner into the other hallway but that seemed ridiculous. I didn’t even know if the voices coming down the hall were part of the task force. There were other doors they could have come out of. On top of that, if they were from the task force, an elevator mysteriously opening with no one there might raise—

The elevator opened, I stepped into the car. I hit the down button a number of times hoping that the door would close before the voices got there. But it didn’t. Two men in their late thirties got into the car. They were both thick-bodied, kept their hair in crew cuts, and wore inexpensive suits with trench coats draped over their arms. In my experience, they looked like Federal agents. I looked like a bum who’d lost his way.

Quickly, I reached over and hit 22 before the doors closed, by way explanation I said, “Wrong floor. Did you know if you actually come down and complain to your Alderman about potholes they fix them? We got this pothole so deep you can see the cobblestone down underneath it.”

One of them said, “No kidding.”
 

“It works better to come down. If you just call or write a letter they only fix it half the time. Showing up it’s a hundred percent. Guess they’re afraid you’ll come back.”

The door opened and we were at the twenty-second floor. I got off and looked around as though I was actually trying to find my Alderman’s office. The door closed behind me and I stopped. I decided I needed to wait at least ten minutes before I went down to the lobby. If the agents were at all suspicious they’d wait down there to see how long I took. There was an ashtray on the wall between the elevator banks; I lit up a cigarette and considered my situation. I needed to know who was coming in and out of the task force’s offices. It was the best way to determine who their informant was. But there was no easy way to set up surveillance. There was no hard way that I could see either.

 
By the time I finished my cigarette I decided to head back to my office and go through the boxes again. There had to be something in there that would lead me to the informant. But even as I rode the elevator down and walked back across the lobby and out to the subway, I began to wonder if there wasn’t another way to approach this.
 

I went back over the basics. Shady and Josette Perelli had been murdered, or rather, hit. Murder is a word that implies some level of passion. They were hit. Taken out of existence for purely business reasons. According to Prince Charles, a soldier named Nino “The Nose” Nitti killed the couple on Jimmy’s orders. Nitti died seven years after the Perellis in 1979. He was shanked in a prison shower. He was about to be paroled, early and somewhat suspiciously. What Nitti was in prison for was not mentioned in the files. I had no idea if it was relevant.

The El train’s doors opened and let me out at the Belmont stop. I’d been riding in one of the old green cars with the stiff leather seats. One of the windows didn’t close all the way so it had been a chilly ride. Still, I liked that it had kept me awake and thinking. It seemed like a good idea to find someone who knew The Nose. I sat down on one of the wooden benches that dot the platform. I was trying to decide if I should cross over to the other side of the platform and head back to the library and do some research on The Nose. There had to be newspaper stories about him. His arrests. His death. What I needed were relatives. A wife. Kids. Someone he might have confessed to. They wouldn’t be in the articles necessarily, but his address would. It would give me a place to start. I decided I’d start there in the morning. I didn’t feel like trekking back downtown.
 

I walked down the wooden stairs into the station, which had to be seventy or eighty years old and looked every day of it. The electric blue paint was thick and heavily chipped. The wooden steps sagged in the middle where foot traffic had worn them down. The ticket taker’s booth, only a bit bigger than a phone booth, was original, but the silver turnstiles were not. In fact, much of the station probably was not. I imagined the wood being replaced over and over again as the weather and millions of feet wore it down. I went through the tall turnstile that led to the street.
 

In front of the station, a woman in a white uniform held a plastic bucket collecting coins as people walked by. I wasn’t sure if she was Salvation Army or not. They usually only came out at Christmas. But it was nearly Easter, maybe that’s why they were reappearing. I started down Belmont toward Clark, but then I stopped and turned to look at the woman again. She’d given me an idea, an idea that might actually work.

Chapter Seven

I was hungry when I walked into my office. I wondered if I should buy one of those little fridges and stock it with snacks. Or at least ice cubes. It would be nice to sit at my desk and have a scotch on the rocks once and a while. Of course, I could simply walk over to Brian’s and rifle through his kitchen for a sandwich or something, but I was beginning to feel like I’d accepted enough of his hospitality. Which didn’t mean I was going to run out and get the
Reader
to start looking for an apartment. It just meant I needed to start thinking about doing something.

My answering machine had five messages. I felt popular. I ran the tape back so I could hear them. The first message was from Mrs. Harker, my sort of onetime mother-in-law. All she said was, “Is Easter Sunday, you come to dinner.” Which meant that I was to show up at her condo in Edison Park at two o’clock Sunday afternoon, preferably shaved, showered, and wearing a pressed shirt. I’d been to dinner a number of times that winter, but that had stopped when Mrs. Harker found out that her priest had lied to her about the departure of the deacon, who’d been having sex with his students, including Terry. Father Dewes had told her the Deacon was dismissed due to theft. She hadn’t appreciated being lied to and somehow her priest lying to her became my fault. Apparently, though, she’d forgiven me, so now I had to go out and have some ham to celebrate Christ’s resurrection.

The second message was a woman saying, “Hello? Is someone there?” I didn’t recognize the voice. She said, “Hello” a couple more times and then hung up with a clunk. I rewound the tape and listened again. She didn’t sound happy. But then, she might have been calling to sell me something. Something she wasn’t happy about.

The third message was Joseph, “Hi. I’m calling to confirm dinner tomorrow and to give you my number. I realized you didn’t have it and I thought if you had to cancel you wouldn’t be able to reach me. I don’t want you to cancel, don’t get that idea. I just thought, you know, you should be able to reschedule if something came up.” I scrambled for a piece of paper as he gave me the number. As I wrote it down, I was happy. Too happy. And that bothered me. Though I couldn’t figure out if it was because he was a priest; going on a date with a priest couldn’t possibly be a good idea. Or was I bothered because I wasn’t ready to be happy in that way? I didn’t know. Wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Maybe I should just be happy and not worry about it.

The next message started and I was barely paying attention. “This is Kimmy Crete. I heard through the grapevine that you wanted to talk to me. I called Maddy’s lawyer and got your number. Um, I’m available whenever. I’m not working so, just give me a call if you want to talk about something. I really want to help Maddy. She was always nice to me.”

The final message was silence. I had the feeling it was the same woman who’d called earlier but there was no way to tell. Now I had a decision to make. I was hungry and wanted to go have lunch, but I also wanted to return Joseph’s call and possibly Kimmy’s.
 

I dialed Joseph first. When he answered I said, “I didn’t think you had a phone. I was imagining you living like a monk in a barren room with a twin bed and a crucifix on the wall.”

“You’re not that far off. But I do have a phone all to myself. We’re medieval but still civilized. I’m glad you called me back.”

“You may not be that glad in a minute.”

“You’re going to cancel, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I’m wondering if we could have dinner tonight and see a movie if you’d like.”

“I’m supposed to have a counseling session at six. I could be at your office at seven-thirty. Is that too late?”

“No, it’s fine. I need a favor though.”

“All right.”

“Could you bring one of your black suits with the black shirt and clerical collar?” I asked as blandly as I could.