Maxwell Street Blues (8 page)

17

“Voss,” Kalijero said. “Internal Affairs. He’s watching you.” Kalijero paced back and forth like those tortured tigers at the Lincoln Park Zoo. “He must’ve seen us at Snooky’s house and then followed you to the tattoo girl …”

“Jimmy, get a grip. Snooky only used aliases, and Audrey would’ve told me if he had info on a dirty cop. And I got no use for Internal Affairs assholes.”

“Twenty-five years I’ve been busting my ass as a cop. For what?”

He bordered on pitiful. “Baron gave fifty grand to Snooky between March and July before it was split between the chancellor and the Honorable Mildish. Guess who got a huge contract from the university?”

Kalijero didn’t respond, just stared into the middle distance until he said, “Fuck it!” and, “Watch your back, Landau.” Then he walked out.

I didn’t get it. Internal Affairs wasn’t going to find any book fingering Kalijero by name. The guys upstairs were sure as hell going to keep their yaps shut. There was probably more going on than Kalijero was telling me, but at that point I had too much on the plate in front of me to care.

I called Audrey again, ostensibly to make sure she accepted my apology for rude behavior and that our dinner date was still on. I also asked, “Did Snooky ever mention people in construction?”

Audrey thought for a moment. “Is that the same as a developer?”

“Sometimes.”

“There was Uncle Bug-Bear the developer,” Audrey said. “Snooky used to say, ‘Got a check from my Uncle Bug-Bear. I just
love
my Uncle Bug-Bear.’ ”

Audrey was a little girl again as she confirmed for me another alias from Snooky’s notebook. In the world of Audrey’s giggling, Snooky was just a pleasant memory, an old pal who made her laugh, an actor in her favorite show that starred Chancellor Tate as Chance, the Honorable Jacob Mildish as Milly, and Baron Construction as the Devil.

* * *

I drove to the Kennedy Expressway and headed south to the Eisenhower, then back to Oak Park where I stopped in front of Baron’s house. I stepped onto the porch carrying a folder of photographs and stared at the stained glass surrounding the massive front door. The doorbell chimed in the stately manner you would expect, and soon I heard the sharp sound of heels on hardwood until the door opened and a girl about sixteen with short hair dyed blue and a metal loop through her nose looked at me. I introduced myself and asked if her dad was home. She turned and shouted that “someone” was here to see him. To my surprise, he shouted back to show me in.

I followed the girl through a couple of large rooms to a short hallway that led to a smaller room set up for viewing the sixty-inch plasma television mounted on the wall. Baron sat in an armchair watching a baseball game. The girl pointed to her father and
walked away.

I knocked lightly on the oak paneling. Baron turned to me, hit the mute button on the remote, and told me to have a seat on the small sofa opposite his chair.

I introduced myself and asked if we could discuss Snooky. He looked at me and said, “Would you believe this used to be the butler’s room?”

“That’s fascinating. Any idea why Snooky was murdered?”

Baron sighed and then shook his head. “He was a good man. I liked him. And he knew his stuff—”

“You gave Snooky tens of thousands over a five-month period. Care to tell me what it was for?”

Baron looked at me squinty-eyed and said, “You’re pretty cocky for a young guy. You stroll into my house and start asking personal questions. I’m not surprised you’re walking around with that shiner.”

“You didn’t
have
to let me in. You always let strangers into your house?” I took out the photographs of Baron meeting with Mildish and Tate and spread them out on the glass table between us. Baron glanced at them.

“So what do you want?” Baron said. “Get to the point and stop the tough guy crap.”

“I don’t give a damn where you got your money or what you did with it. All I care about is finding Snooky’s killer. And at investigator school they teach us to follow the money. Right now I’m thinking someone pulled some strings so Baron Construction got the university expansion contract. And I’m thinking that Snooky laundered money that was then kicked back as payment for the string-pullers.”

Baron rose from his chair, walked to a small liquor cabinet, and poured himself a drink. I declined his offer. After sitting back down, he took a sip and said, “Ever study fluid mechanics? Money always takes the path of least resistance. In Chicago, that path is especially slimy. And there is no less resistant path than through a politician. As a student of local history, I seem to recall some characters with the name Landau who understood this principle quite well.”

“Why is Snooky dead?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Baron said. “When I said I liked the guy, I meant it. He understood the system. He knew to keep his mouth shut.” Baron started shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he said again. “He didn’t deserve this. Somebody fucked up.”

“What do Tate and Mildish say?”

“They say they don’t know.”

“Do you believe them?”

Baron stared at me for a few seconds and said, “Mildish is the boss. Me and Tate don’t know shit. Mildish knows more than he’ll ever tell either of us.”

“What was that little meeting out front about?”

“About an investigator dropping in for a visit. You got those two bent, that’s for sure.”

Baron seemed awfully relaxed for someone who could be implicated in murder and bribing government officials. But maybe I was being naïve.

“I want you to set up a meeting for me with Tate and Mildish,” I said. “Somewhere public.” I gave Baron my cell phone number. “And if I find out you’ve been jerking me around, I’ll have the auditor general crawling up your ass.”

18

I was tired and my eye socket throbbed. I chopped up some organ meat and dropped it into Punim’s bowl, the sound of which brought her running to the bloody scene. Then I popped some acetaminophen and stretched out on the couch with an ice pack over my eye. There was still some lingering daylight at eight-thirty, but my body told me to let the recent events percolate awhile in an unconscious state. And to be perfectly honest, something about the image of myself crashed on the couch after a successful day of sleuthing was irresistible.

When I opened my eyes again, the subtle hues of daylight confirmed that I had spent the entire night on the couch. Punim sat on the coffee table staring at me, and when I sat up, she darted to the kitchen and waited next to her bowl. I showered and then we ate breakfast together. Halfway through my bowl of oatmeal, the cell phone rang. “Noon,” Baron said, “in front of the Melrose diner.”

“Are they gonna buy lunch?”

Baron hung up.

* * *

It was a busy restaurant on a busy street, about as public as you can get. I arrived ten minutes early and watched from the dry-cleaning joint across the street. Noon came and went without any sign of Tate or Mildish, and it occurred to me that they, too, were watching the front of the restaurant from another location. My inclination was to give in
and be the first to show, but before I could act, a foul odor accosted me, and a raspy voice suggested I not turn around. I felt something hard press into my lower spine while a skinny tentacle reached under my jacket and relieved me of my Colt.

“If that’s your dick, you’re pretty damned tall,” I said. It was supposedly a gay neighborhood, after all.

“Look, fucker,” the voice said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m getting a hundred bucks to walk you to that black limo next to the diner. If I have to shoot you, they’ll give me two hundred.” The stink was indescribable.

“How about I give you two hundred bucks to walk away? But I’d like my gun back.”

I assumed Shit Breath was thinking about it until he said, “I’m gonna put my arm around your shoulder, and we’re gonna walk like a happy couple. The whole time this gun will be under my shirt sticking into your side.” While crossing the street, I realized that my ghoulish-looking eye—complemented by my new pal—made me look like just another junkie.

A rear passenger door swung open and waiting for me in the backseat of the refrigerated Cadillac limousine was the Honorable Jacob Mildish—not a bad ride on a rep’s salary. Great-Granddad would’ve been impressed. Shit Breath gave me a shove and closed the door. A tinted partition separated us from the front seat where the driver lowered his window and handed the meth-head a hundred-dollar bill before driving away.

“I apologize for that,” Mildish said. “I hope he wasn’t too rude.”

Mildish had one of those chubby baby faces that looked downright cartoonish on a man I guessed to be around sixty.

“He threatened to kill me, that’s all. And he stole my fully licensed handgun.”

“Good god, I’m sorry. I offered him a hundred dollars to get you to come over to the car. It’s too darn hot to stand outside. It was Tate’s idea to meet here.” Then Mildish leaned toward me and said, “How’s that eye healing? Tate told me about it so I’d be sure to recognize you.”

Because the lore behind the Mildish myth included a hardscrabble upbringing as the son of an iron- and steelworker, I found his grandfatherly manner and aristocratic accent puzzling. “Where is Tate?”

“He’s too upset. I told him he’ll drop dead if he doesn’t relax.”

“I see, so what’re you gonna do, dump my body somewhere?” I was half serious.

Mildish recoiled as if a cobra had shimmied out of my collar. “You’ve got the wrong idea, Mr. Landau. I’m a businessman.”

“You’re a politician.”

“Politics is just an aspect of business. I’d be surprised if you didn’t know this concept inside and out—given your family history. Either way, accept this fact and your chosen profession will be easier to master.”

“Terrific. Who killed Snooky and why?”

“We know it doesn’t look good—”

“You mean it looks like Snooky was killed to cover the path leading to kickbacks you and Tate got from the developer who won the university expansion contract? What happened, Your Honor, somebody panic?”

“We don’t know who killed Mr. Snook or why. He was completely trustworthy, an expert launderer. Why would we want him dead? That would be a terrible business decision.”

We sat in silence. Small shivers began racing through me, and I thought I might have entered stage-one hypothermia. If only to take my mind off the cold, I said, “You can’t think of
any
reason someone would want Snooky dead?”

Mildish took a deep breath and rotated his fat body to face me. “Mr. Landau, I have racked my brains over this, and I can’t think of a single reason why someone would do this. Could it have just been a random act of violence?”

I laughed. “Two random bullets in his head, three hundred and fifty random dollars still in his wallet, his body randomly lying on a pile of construction debris and showing no random signs of struggle.”

Silence again until Mildish said, “I feel compelled to ask what your intentions are.”

“I’m being paid to find Snooky’s killer, nothing else. As long as you’re not lying to me, I don’t care what you do.”

Mildish stared at me and sort of smiled. “That’s the attitude I was hoping for. I’m not convinced you can maintain it, but for now I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Do you trust me?”

“It would be bad for business to trust you.”

“Touché!” Mildish said and laughed loudly. Then he reached into his breast pocket and produced a billfold. He counted out some cash and handed it to me. “Will this cover the cost of a new gun?” I looked at the seven hundred-dollar bills, handed two of them back to Mildish. “Now we’re even,” I said.

19

I came home with a Glock .40-caliber and called my father. I told him what was up with Kalijero and about my meetings with Baron and Mildish. He sounded tired but enjoyed hearing about Kalijero’s troubles. Mildish troubled him.

“Mildish scares me. While he’s shaking your hand, he’s picking your pocket.”

“Tate’s the one that’s really squirming,” I said. “The others might conveniently forget things, but Tate’s the true liar. It sounds like he panicked, and Snooky ended up dead.”

“Who pulled the trigger?”

“I don’t know. Guys like Tate don’t get their hands dirty.”

“You think his kid has anything more to say?”

“I think she does, but I don’t know when it will come out. Daddy is a professor after all.”

“Don’t forget blackmail. I doubt Tate had the final say on a multimillion-dollar contract. You said that yourself when I first came over.”

He was right. Trustees would have to give the go-ahead. I felt a renewed appreciation for my father’s experience in corruption.

* * *

Tate’s house was a three-story brownstone across the street from a large park on a bluff above Lake Michigan. A few decades ago, this building housed three middle-class families. Today you would find couples with seven-figure incomes living their renovated fantasies of stainless steel double sinks, kitchen islands, recessed lighting, and home theaters. I didn’t know what I would accomplish by staking out his house on a Saturday afternoon, but the park was well shaded and a nice breeze blew off the lake.

From a picnic table, I sat and focused my camera on the house. I zoomed in on the enormous plate glass window and then examined the solid wood door. I put myself in Tate’s shoes as a wealthy, educated, middle-aged man running a large public university. An opportunity presented itself for easy money. He got one of the trustees in on it, maybe the comptroller or the treasurer. His Chicago Yacht Club dream was closer than ever.

Then he started to worry, felt vulnerable. Or the trustee started to sweat, started to wonder who knew what and how it could be used against him. The trustee started leaning on Tate to do something. Tate revealed his fears to Mildish and Baron, who both dismissed the neophyte’s anxiety. He would get no relief from these two seasoned, well-connected veterans of the game. And how did he know he was not being played for the
fool? How did he know Mildish and Baron wouldn’t sell him down the river? He lay awake at night thinking his whole life, everything he had worked for, would be destroyed and his name would just be another added to the long list of imprisoned Illinois luminaries.