Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (8 page)

So I used the only other contact I could think of.
I called Laura’s attorney, Drew McMillan. McMillan was based in New York.
He promised to have some names for me in the next few days.

We were proceeding slowly, and while I knew there was a need for caution, I still worried that something might happen while we were planning.
I was afraid kids would break into the house or squatters would notice that no one was there and make it their own.

I had locked up the basement, but I still didn’t want anyone else inside.
I worried about that clipboard, sitting at the top of the stairs, and I hoped no one from Sturdy’s rental agency would go in to check on the place.

Even though I was worried, I resisted the urge to drive by the house.
I had to stay as far from it as possible until we started work in the basement.
Even then, I had to figure out a way to be inconspicuous while doing what was needed.

By the time the weekend came, I had spoken to Laura a few times, played phone tag with McMillan, and had barely had time to start my research on the funeral director.
I tried to save my weekends for Jimmy, and that Saturday we’d lounged around the house, watching the Mets soundly beat the Braves.

Jimmy had chosen the Mets as his team once both Chicago teams were out of the post-season, saying he had to be a Mets fan because we had lived for a short time in New York.
I chose the Braves, not just to be contrary, but because I had been born in Atlanta, something I wasn’t sure Jimmy had known before that afternoon.

Baseball proved a nice diversion — it was something we were both interested in, and I hoped by next spring I would have enough extra cash to buy us an occasional ticket to the ballpark. Chicago had two teams, the White Sox and the Cubs, and it was a shame we hadn’t been to see either of them play in person.

We had a pleasant weekend, which was good, because I had a hunch I wouldn’t have a pleasant week.

Drew McMillan called first thing Monday morning.
I sat bleary-eyed in my office, staring at a cup of coffee that I’d had to set aside twice — once to get Jimmy ready for school, and now for the phone call — and pulled a yellow legal pad toward me.

McMillan had the name of a forensic criminalist.
I had never heard the term before, and said so.

McMillan chuckled.
“It’s what you asked for, Bill.
Someone who investigates crime scenes.”

“I need someone who’ll actually work this scene,” I said.

“He has.
He’s worked half a dozen cases that the police wouldn’t touch, mostly in New York State.
But he’s reputable, and expensive.”

“Have you cleared the costs with Laura?” I asked.

“I quoted his rates when I first talked to her,” McMillan said. “I figured if we got him, we’d be lucky.”

“What about confidentiality?” I asked.

“He’s being hired by us.
Which puts him under lawyer
-
client privilege.
I have a list of credentials and cases he’s worked.
You want them?”

“Yeah,” I said, and used my teeth to pull the cap off my pen.

McMillan listed nearly two dozen cases going back five years before I finally told him I had enough.
I would be spending most of the day at the library looking up this information, and McMillan knew it.

“Okay,” I said when he finished. “Now tell me the downside of this guy.”

“He’s fair,” McMillan said.

“So?”

“If the evidence points to something the client wants hidden, he doesn’t flinch.
He works it.”

“I have to be there with him,” I said.

“You can’t,” McMillan said. “It’ll taint the investigation.”

“I have no stakes in the outcome here,” I lied.

“You’re a Sturdy employee. That taints you automatically.”

“I’m
not,” I said.
“I contract with Laura.
I’m an investigator, just like your criminalist is.”

“Hmmm.” McMillan paused, clearly thinking.
“Let me check with him.
That might make a difference.”

“It better,” I said. “Because I’m going to be at his side, examining everything right along with him, just like a police detective would do.”

“At some point, they leave the evidence sifting to the professionals and go after the bad guys.”

“I’m not sure there’re going to be any bad guys to go after.”

“You know what I mean,” McMillan said.

I did.
He meant that I would have to see where else the evidence led.
I wasn’t willing to concede any point on that, at least not yet.

“See if he’ll work with me,” I said. “You have a backup on this if he won’t?”

“A few,” McMillan said. “But Laura insisted time was of the essence. I’ve already got a flight booked to Chicago on Wednesday.
She wants a meet with the whole team.”

“We’ll see,” I said.
Sometimes Laura got too formal.
“She gave me the right to approve everyone.
So let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”

“You got it,” McMillan said. “But that might muddy the lawyer
-
client thing.”

“You get to check that out,” I said, looking at all the names and dates I’d scrawled across that legal pad.
“It looks like I’ve got quite a bit of digging to do.”

I finally got to my coffee — now cold — and made two slices of buttered toast as a late breakfast. Then I stared at the legal pad and contemplated my next move.

Going to the library would take me to the Loop.
Even though I’d be blocks from Civic Center Plaza where most of the activity was, I would be close enough to make me nervous.

The hoopla around the trial continued.
The violent branch of the SDS, which called itself the Weatherm
e
n, were planning later this week an action they were calling The Days of Rage.

They actually had posters up for it on telephone pol
e
s around the city.
The one I’d seen most had a fist extended in a Power-to-the-People symbol, with the words
Bring the War Home —
Chicago
along the sides. The dates ran along the bottom:
October 8-11.

I’d already told Jimmy that he had to come directly home those days.
I had no real idea what the Weatherm
e
n were planning, but I’d met a few of their kind last summer, and I knew they were dangerous.

They were already in the city.
They’d had a few demonstrations, and made some speeches downtown.
Another branch of the SDS, the supposedly peaceful side, were also giving speeches denouncing the Weatherm
e
n.

And all of this was supposedly in support of the Chicago Eight, as the media was calling the members of the Conspiracy Trial.

Still, I had to research the criminalist.
I couldn’t go to the University of Chicago libraries. Lately, they’d been asking for university identification to use anything unusual like the microfiche viewers.
The University of Illinois Circle
C
ampus was clamping down as well.
In response to the violence and unrest that had become part of campus life all over the nation, universities were increasing security in the most unexpected places.

I hadn’t tried Northwestern, but its location in Evanston meant that I would have to drive through the trouble areas.
Besides, most of the student demonstrations so far had either happened in the Loop or in Lincoln Park, and I didn’t want to go near either.

So I opted for the main library.
I took the El rather than fight for parking downtown.
The library filled the entire block between Washington and Randolph Streets.
This was one of my favorite buildings in the entire city — a good thing, since I had spent a lot of time in it over the years.

The building had been built just before the turn of the century in a classic Chicago Beaux Arts style.
The old stone façade had character, but it didn’t reveal what was in the interior — two Tiffany domes, a sweeping staircase that led up to the second floor, and lots and lots of marble.

It smelled like a library too, dusty and rich, promising all kinds of delights.

Only I wasn’t going for the delights. I was heading to the microfiche room to look up old newspaper articles.
I started with the
New York Times
for the dates McMillan had given me, going through badly scratched photographic film of each newspaper, trying to find articles about the various trials, hoping for a mention of the criminalist.

After three hours of work, I had found a few, most of them having to do with his testimony. They all cited the same credentials, which had to be the ones he was using when asked about his background on the stand.

I finally gave up.
There wasn’t a lot I could learn this way
,
unless he had gotten into trouble. And since McMillan was promoting him, I doubted that I would have received any of the case citations that went badly.

I was about to return the last microfiche of the
New York Times
when I realized I had another option.
I went back through the trial materials in the paper, getting the names of the attorneys on that trial.
Then I made a note of which attorney had hired the criminalist.

When I had a substantial list, I went into the public records room and found the phone books for various metropolitan areas.
Manhattan’s was prominently displayed.
I had more trouble finding the smaller cities, but after another hour had passed, I had the phone numbers of nearly a dozen attorneys, all of whom had contact with the criminalist.

I didn’t feel as defeated.
I left the library with plenty of time to take the El back home and to pick up Jimmy at the after
-
school program.

I stopped on Washington and peered west.
If I walked just five blocks that way, I would be at Laura’s offices.
A knot of people had gathered in Civic Center Plaza near the spectacularly ugly 50-foot-tall Picasso sculpture.
I couldn’t tell who the people were, but from their attention, it looked
like
someone was either giving a press conference or a speech.

That convinced me to stay away.
I walked to the El, and headed home.
I had phone calls to make anyway and questions to be answered before I hired someone to help me excavate what might
become Laura’s most important secret.

SEVEN

By the time I got to the apartment, I only had an hour before I had to pick up Jimmy.
It was after five in New York: most of the law offices were closed, although I knew many lawyers worked later than that.
I figured I’d have better odds of catching people
e
arly in the morning.

Instead, I drove to the funeral home off East
Sixty-third,
where the mortician that Franklin had pointed me to worked.

Poehler’s Funeral Home was in a transitional neighborhood.
The Blackstone Rangers claimed the area as their territory, and legitimate businesses were starting to thin out.
But some old-timers remained, partly because they had been in the area for decades, and partly because their services were still needed.

These days, Poehler’s probably had more business than it could handle.

The building dominated one corner and made the street look more respectable than it was. I parked in the nearby lot, and as I got out, I realized that several nearby buildings had broken windows or were boarded up.
Even more were covered with graffiti.

But no spray
paint had touched Poehler’s brick walls — or if it had, the funeral home had paid a pretty penny to get it scrubbed off.
Unlike the Loop, which was filled with people, the sidewalk here was nearly empty, and littered with broken beer bottles.
I avoided as much glass as I could, but still checked the bottom of my shoes before going inside the funeral parlor.

The parlor’s doors were made of solid oak.
I actually had to brace myself to pull the door open. As I stepped inside, the scent of lilies and formaldehyde greeted me, a scent that always sent me back to my childhood, to that hideous afternoon when the Grand had smuggled me into a funeral home in Atlanta to whisper my good-byes to my parents before he sent me to my family upstate.

He’d taken me into the building hidden between four large, strong men — all vowing to protect me in case someone tried to take me away too.
At the time, I didn’t know — I wouldn’t know for another twenty-nine years — that my parents had been accused of a major crime, and half of Atlanta’s black community wondered if they had done it.