Windy City Blues (9 page)

The next morning I returned to Budlong Woods. I wanted a few more words with parking officer Rich Jones and hoped to find him again in the same neighborhood. Instead I met a Latino boy who looked barely out of high school. First he shrugged and then he pointed east and said in broken English that Jones was working in Edgewater, a neighborhood directly east that bordered the lake.

I took Foster to Kenmore where I turned north and quickly found a parking place. Since it was a nice day I didn’t mind strolling this historic community with an architecture as eclectic as its demographics. Tree-lined blocks of one-story brick cottages mixed with high-rises, mid-rises, and two-, three-, and four-story stone flats with courtyards.

I spotted Rich a few blocks away on Magnolia, walking toward me along a row of parked cars. His furrowed brow and downward gaze told me he was deep in thought and had no idea someone stood directly in his path. When he was about a car length away I said, “Hey, officer, this isn’t a residential parking zone. Get lost.”

His head jerked up. “What?” Jones said and wiped his nose. He had kind of a wild look in his eye. “I told you all I know.”

“Relax. I just have a few other questions. No big deal. So Baxter’s neighborhood is one of the permit zones for residents only, right?” After Jones agreed, I went on, “So he didn’t get ticketed there, which means he was probably racking up tickets somewhere other than his own neighborhood.”

Jones thought about it. “Yeah.”

“Here’s what’s bugging me: how did you and your fellow officers come across Baxter’s car as a scofflaw? I mean, if he was legally parked in his own neighborhood, what drew your attention?”

Jones paused and said, “Abandoned vehicle. All vehicles have to move at least once every three days. But we only enforce on a complaint basis. Someone calls and tells us a car hasn’t moved in weeks, we chalk it up and come back in three days and see.”

“You plug in the plate, it comes up owing lots of money, then you call the tow truck. You keep an archive of who called in the complaint?”

“Non-emergency calls don’t have to give names.”

“But somewhere there’s a record of the numbers that call in.”

Jones looked around. “You know, they watch us. They got cameras everywhere. And they even got guys sitting in cars watching us.” Jones moved as if to leave then stopped. “Do me a favor. Don’t keep finding me. I never shoulda talked to you.” Jones hurried away.

Traditionally a dusty neighborhood of factory warehouses, the South Loop was fast becoming a young professional’s idyllic community of modern industrial design. Among the stainless steel, concrete, and glass was an old hotel of the Northern Italian Renaissance style that had managed to maintain its architectural integrity for the benefit of the police department’s Crisis Intervention Bureau.

The female receptionist was young with beautiful light brown skin. She didn’t smile. She pointed to the guest list where I was required to sign and print my name. I asked if I could speak to a caseworker familiar with Gordon Baxter. Mentioning Baxter by name was a mistake.

“Do you have legal authority connected with this individual?”

“I’m Jules Landau, a private investigator. I just want to verify a few facts.”

“But you have no legal status allowing you to see information on this person.”

“Do I need legal status to ask someone a few questions?”

“If your questions pertain to this individual, yes.”

“What if I just want to know something like if the guy drove a car?”

She stared at me a moment then picked up the phone and dialed an extension. I heard her ask “Dr. Frank” if he had a minute for “some guy.” Then she took the guest list, turned her back on me, and spoke quietly before hanging up: “Dr. Frank will be right out.”

I thanked her. She ignored me. The clip-clop of Dr. Frank’s shoes trotting down the hallway announced his impending arrival. Six foot, trim, Mediterranean looking with olive skin, brown eyes, and black curly hair, Dr. Frank gave my hand a quick squeeze, said, “I have a couple of minutes,” turned on his heel, and began power-walking back to his office. I did my best to keep up. His office door had no name or title. I sat on a plastic folding chair in front of his desk and caught my breath.

“So how can I help you”—he looked at a piece of paper on his desk—“Mr. Landau?”

“I’m investigating the murder of a parking officer who lived in the same building as a schizophrenic individual who has been arrested four times for threatening parking officers.”

Dr. Frank opened the top drawer of his desk and produced a toothpick that he put between his lips. “And your diagnosis of schizophrenia is based on?”

“An educated guess verified by the man himself. Apparently he owns a car. I was curious if schizophrenics were allowed to drive.”

“Depends. Properly medicated, there shouldn’t be a problem. Sometimes a doctor has to sign off declaring the person fit enough to drive. If you don’t mind, is the individual of whom you speak a murder suspect?”

“Would it be odd if the individual was
not
a suspect?”

Dr. Frank leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk, and aimed his faraway look just over my head. “In addition to being an MD,” he said, “I have a master’s in public health with a focus on the mentally ill and the criminal justice system. I’m called a
liaison officer.
” He stopped, although I sensed he had more to say.

I repeated, “Would it seem strange if he was not a suspect?”

“I haven’t been consulted.”

“Did you expect to be consulted?”

“My department coordinates the information covered under the Confidenti
ality Act. It would be my responsibility to make sure only legally qualified individuals have access to a client’s mental health information. Not consulting us suggests that, for the police, he is not currently a suspect, and, yes, I understand how one could see that as odd.”

“Did you find it curious that Bax-”—I caught myself—“that he drove around the city quite a bit?”

“The car is registered to his mother.”

“Really? And what does she have to say about it?”

“We haven’t established contact with her. She’s listed at her son’s address, but he doesn’t remember when he last saw her.”

“Did you check the trunk?” When Dr. Frank didn’t laugh, I added, “Sorry. I was in his studio apartment and unless she lives under the bed, she ain’t there.”

Dr. Frank looked at his watch and then straightened up in his chair. “Anything else?”

“If a man threatens someone while off his meds, would he carry out that threat when he’s back on his meds?”

Dr. Frank waited for the gyroscope’s rotor and axis to finish adjusting in his head. “Highly unlikely.”

“He’s got a shitload of tickets scattered over the North Side from Howard Street to State Street,” Jones said. He’d called me on my cell. I was standing on the sidewalk in front of Gordon Baxter’s building, and surprised to hear Jones’s voice. “Thirty-two expired meter citations and four abandoned-vehicle complaints,” he said. “And get this—the abandoned complaints are evenly spaced between eight meter tickets.”

“Are the same officers writing the tickets?”

“I don’t know,” Jones said. “They’re not our tickets.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m a Parking Authority officer, the police department’s stepchild. Those tickets were written by Windy City officers.”

“What the hell is a Windy City officer?”

“Hang on.” I heard him blow his nose. “Windy City Meters LLC. The system was privatized. You been living in a cave the last couple of years?”

“So this company has their own private army of officers enforcing city ordinances?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

I started thinking out loud. “Where do they work out of? How can I check their records? Where does all the money go? I don’t get it.”

Jones cursed. “Shut up! Don’t be a dope! I’ve got a wife and two kids, so I don’t gotta
get it.
You wanna get it, you find it on your own.” Jones hung up.

Before digesting this new information, I needed to verify what I had suspected all along. Starting from Farragut Avenue, I began walking the neighborhood looking for a blue sedan that also had the first three numbers of Baxter’s license plate. As expected, I found the car just a block from Baxter’s building. Breaking into vehicles was illegal. I had never done it for real, only on practice cars in the subbasement of Frownie’s building. When I discovered the passenger door unlocked, intense relief washed over me. Now it was just trespassing. When I uncovered an oil change invoice in the glove box with a date from the previous January, I felt great satisfaction. When I leaned over to the driver’s side and saw a digital odometer, I cursed.

I stuck a screwdriver into Baxter’s ignition and prayed for the dash to light up. Nothing. Now I had to remove the panels on the steering column where a cylinder held a bunch of wires. This was the tricky part. Frownie always said if I wasn’t sure which wires to connect, try the red ones. I took his advice and watched with delight as the dash powered up and revealed the sacred odometer numbers. Since the oil change nine months ago, Baxter’s car had been driven only three miles.

I walked past a white van double-parked in front of the Kutaisi Georgian Bakery, backing up traffic. Just as I noticed a large decal on the corner of the windshield with the letters “IIPD,” a squat Hispanic man wearing a green work jacket and holding a bag of pastries rushed out, jumped into the van, and drove off. If I knew what IIPD stood for, I would’ve reported that man.

Tamar and another harried-looking woman busily filled orders and worked the cash register. This time there were two gangsters with burnt orange leather jackets and shaved heads in the end booth while a few dapper men in suits occupied the middle booth. A couple of transients slumped over what I thought was the same table as yesterday. The booth occupants presented a sharp contrast to the horde pushing against the counter crying out for their favorite Georgian pastries. Bitter lamentations over unavailable goodies suggested having a few Cossacks on guard might have been a good idea. It occurred to me that outrage over one’s baked goods might represent a Eurasian compliment of sorts. While Tamar looked tired, she maintained a gracious façade. I waited for the mid-morning rush to disperse and watched her step away to take trays off the rack and push them into the huge oven. Thankfully, there was no sign of the large demon lurking about. I walked to the counter and said, “Did I just witness a post-breakfast sugar panic or a pre-lunch munchies blitz?”

Tamar turned and gave me the smile I hoped for. “I haven’t figured that out yet. We have a similar mid-afternoon event.”

“I wanted you to know I’ve ruled out your ground-floor neighbor as a suspect,” I said and told her the details of what brought me to question Baxter. Tamar knew the man I described.

“He’s creepy. I’ve seen him in the laundry room. Sometimes he leaves his door open while playing weird music. He’s never said a word or even made eye contact.”

“Someone’s been writing tickets to his license plate at addresses over a ten-mile swath of the North Side. But his car has been driven only three miles in nine months. So the tickets never get paid, his car gets towed, and presto! Crazy Baxter loses it and commits murder.”

“Then why hasn’t he been arrested?”

“Good question. By the way, are those booths reserved for neighborhood VIPs or something?”

Tamar glanced toward the back. “Unofficia
lly,” she said as if the policy bothered her. “Cops get the booth at one end, some businessmen have the middle booth, and the boss’s Russian friends get the booth at the other end.”

“How often do they come?”

“Fairly regularly. I mean, whenever I work nights, the businessmen always show up as we’re closing. Sometimes with those two guys with shaved heads. The boss lets them use the space after hours for a more private meeting.”

“Is the boss that, uh, big bald man with the frightening expression?”

“Yes.”

“So these are your boss’s friends?”

“I guess so. He always refers to them by their first names. The regular customers he calls
sir
or
madam
.”

“Who are the two guys with shaved heads?”

“Assholes.”

Such an ugly word from Tamar’s mouth evoked an involuntary laugh that I suppressed after realizing Tamar was not smiling. “Sorry,” she said.

“They look like twin gangster-assholes.”

Tamar nodded enthusiast
ically. “Yes, that fits perfectly. They use a lot of Russian slang around me. I don’t know the exact translations, but I know it’s crude.”

“What would happen if some neighborhood peasant wandered over there and sat?”

Tamar thought about it. “Actually—I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that situation. It’s like everyone just knows to stay away from the booths.”

I thought I should get in touch with Kalijero to see if he could glean something from Detectives Abbott and Costello. I asked Tamar if she still had my card.

“I do,” she said and walked quickly to the counter where she grabbed a bakery business card from a plastic dispenser. On the back she wrote her cell number and handed it to me. “Some weeks I have very strange hours.”

A pile of junk mail lay on the floor just inside my office door. I had yet to receive written correspondence not originating from a four-color digital printing press. But the presence of the catalogues and brochures meant another human being had walked up the shabby flight of stairs to implicitly acknowledge the existence of my office. This I found comforting.

I propped open the door, leaned back in my reclining executive desk chair, extended the footrest, and called Palmer. I left a message suggesting we get together to discuss recent developments. Apart from Palmer’s access to Konigson and ability to operate freely within the
Republic
bureaucracy, his sophistication gave me a valuable ally, if only to engage his intellect as I tried to piece together the puzzle of Gelashvili’s murder. On a yellow legal pad, I began creating a “gut feeling” flow chart with thoughts, observations, and questions inside boxes and circles. Baxter was being framed; Detectives Calvo and Baker were aware or were unknowing participants. They most likely received instructions from the higher ranks. Windy City Meters LLC wrote fraudulent tickets. On whose orders? Why would a commander or deputy chief want a parking officer dead?

The outside door creaked open, then shut. The patter on the steps told me someone lightweight or small was ascending the stairs. I thought of a child who had just mastered stair climbing. A minute later, Izzy came into view.

“A coincidence?” I said.

“There is a coffee shop across the street. From there I sit and watch the world. From there I saw you enter the building.”

Izzy spoke not of a chic café boasting organic fair trade, locally roasted beans in mochas, lattes, and espressos, but a seedy bacon-and-hash joint existing in a time warp from just before the city’s white-flight era. I couldn’t help picturing his nice gray suit splattered with grease.

“Well, it’s been a couple days,” I said. “Time for an update, I guess.”

“Does that pain you so? May I remind—”

“We had this conversation last time…” I rehashed the events since our last dialogue, starting with meeting Tamar and ending with Baxter’s frame-up. As I spoke, Izzy slowly paced the room staring at the floor. His expression, his mannerisms, everything about him seemed contrived.

“Are you suggesting Baxter’s medication was tampered with on each occasion his car was to be towed? How could this be engineered so precisely?”

“If one had access to his apartment and if Baxter used some kind of daily pill-dispensing device, it might be quite easy.”

Izzy thought about it. “Perhaps,” he said. “The tickets issued by this Windy City company. That’s significant, I should think. And what of the newspaper editor?”

“I left a message fifteen minutes ago.” Izzy took a seat in the club chair in front of my desk and rested his head in his hand. I wondered how someone so young could act so timeworn. “If you don’t mind, Izzy, I’m curious about your background.”

My words had a restorative effect. “Yes, finally, acting as a detective should. And what took you this long to be so curious?”

I interpreted the question as rhetorical. “It’s hard for me to see you as an
Izzy
. Why were you given the name Isadore Himmel?”

“The
given
name is a veil of pretense. I
chose
the name with which you struggle.”

His failure to elaborate annoyed me. I should be curious, of course. “Why did you choose this name?”

“It’s a devotional name. A testimonial, if you like.”

“A testimonial to what?”

“Himmel was made into ashes by Nazis,” Izzy said. “I arrived at his name from an obscure book of lists that somehow found its way to the library. The lists were of Hitler’s victims from various German towns. I sat in a far corner of the reference floor, my eyes moving past name after name. You could’ve pushed over a bookcase and I would not have flinched, so transfixed I was. I happen to know some German and when my eyes saw the name Himmel, I stopped. You see, Himmel means ‘heaven,’ and I found the irony of this image touching—H
immel having gone up the chimney in the middle of a forest.”

I waited for the little man to continue, but he offered me nothing more than an antagonizing smirk. Had he not paid me five thousand with the promise of five thousand more, I would have proposed removing his grin at no charge.

“But what
inspired
you to—”

“Forgive me, Landau, you have the right to ask such a question, and for you I will tell quickly my story.” Izzy draped one leg over the other. “One day I went to a Catholic wedding where I was to be an usher. It was there, while standing with the priest and several members of the wedding party, that I heard the priest ask the groom if he had gotten a ‘Jewish deal’ on something he had purchased.” Izzy stopped, unhooked his legs, and slouched on the club chair with his head back. “I was familiar with stereotypes and I knew a disparaging remark when I heard one. And it struck me that if a priest could so deftly embrace such an ancient, unflattering image of a people, then anything was possible. If there was a next time, why shouldn’t I also be included among the victims?”

Izzy took out a handkerchief and began wiping his eyes. I struggled with a translation of what I just heard. Was this his way of assuaging some kind of guilt over horrible events? Thankfully, my phone rang.

“Jules, it’s Wilbert Palmer. I’m a short distance from your office…”

I told Izzy that the editor, Palmer, was on the way. The little man was out the door before I could suggest he leave.