The sky had become a pale lime green by the time I drove the Buick back to Cicero. The house was cold. A tortured tomcat chose a spot outside my bedroom window to serenade his complaints about having to roam so far to find warm pussy. I drifted off after he’d expressed himself too heartily and fled from the neighbor’s beagle, then I fell into dreaming about scenes and happenings that had nothing whatsoever to do with crime or investigations or blondes or bullet holes in skulls or rearranging a murder scene.
It was after ten by the time I swallowed a plate of bacon and eggs and read the
Sun-Times
about the Brockway shooting. I’d have to call Kup; they spelled my name wrong.
First I put in a call to the Gateswood estate. Henry had left for the hospital so I had to listen to Bird Legs twitter about how she’d missed all the excitement and would I tell her all the details some time? Yes, Julia was much better although she’d come pretty close to death last night, and it was so awful and on and on, and the doctor thought she might come home in a couple of days.
I hung up on Chatterpussy and dialed Rick at the office. He waited there until I drove down and we rode downtown to the courthouse together. I told all the messy details from last night, about Julia’s mumblings, how I’d thrown the gun in the bushes for the cops to find later, and how I hadn’t heard shots but might have. I told all of it except for the sick feeling it gave me to see Julia doped up and hanging on by a thread, the feelings of wanting to ride off in the sunset with her. There wasn’t any way I could explain those.
“Wilson’s office?” Rick asked, when we got on the elevator.
“So Burk said. At noon. Evidently, Wilson doesn’t take lunches. Too much corruption in the corps to clean up.”
“Burk and Wilson? Probably Gerard too, if I know our Mighty Mouse D.A.”
“We can waltz in together, but don’t be surprised if they shoo you out when they take my statement. I have a feeling they want to put my number elevens to the fire.”
“Wilson’s pretty sharp, Mike, but fair. Just don’t get caught in a lie. I’d hate to have to start an interior decorating company with you at my age.”
“I won’t have to lie. I simply won’t tell them about Julia being there, if I can help it.”
“That’s my man, falling for the femme fatale in every case, or at least following her into the bushes now and then.”
“Not so often I can’t do my job. I’ll try to keep my big head in charge. I know you’ll be directing from the sidelines.”
“Stashing the gun was stupid, Mike. Accessory to murder after the fact draws time in the big house. I hope you have pals at Joliet. Not to mention tampering with evidence. You did all that just to keep your client, who just happens to be Helen of Troy, out of an embarrassing spot? At least you didn’t haul the body across town on a CTA bus.”
He was right. It was all stupid.
A long pecan-wood table in the center of the room dominated Superintendent Wilson’s tenth floor office. One wall was windows from ceiling to floor with half closed draw-curtains, affording a grand panoramic vista of the backside of two ugly buildings and a parking lot. In two corners were small roll top desks. A little side table branched off of the long table where a pleasant-faced strawberry blonde about thirty was typing.
Leaning next to the woman with a sly look and snaking comments under his breath was Detective Burk. Burk’s silver hair buzz cut made him look FBI. It also made him look silly. Two days worth of pale red stubble gave his gaunt face a sick rusty look, but his torso said he hadn’t missed many meals. His partner, Andresson, whispered something in Burk’s ear and left the room. I’ve seen fatter guys in those Auschwitz movies. Burk sat and threw me the sullen look of a turtle. His eyes advertised lack of sleep or an excess of hooch or both. He waggled a long pencil and ignored me when I came in.
Superintendent O. W. Wilson sat in a swivel chair at the right end of the table. The boys at the
Sun-Times
often called him “The Professor.”
Wilson had been brought in to lead the Chicago police department after the Summerdale scandal, where cops had been on the take from a big time burglar ring. Wilson had the reputation for no-nonsense policing — honest but tough. In two years he’d cleaned up some of the mess, prosecuted eight of the cops involved and even pushed Daley out of the way at times to do so.
In front of him was a folder next to my business card, which he slid back and forth in front of him between questions. He was an imposing man: Over 60, short oiled hair, all silver-gray, parted neatly on the side. His small ears gave his large brick-like head an even more leonine aspect. His face was a hard bone mask holding a hundred stories, and dominated by thick black curved eyebrows that never got the message from his genes to turn gray. Under his solid brow his dark brown eyes shone alert behind folded lids and bags so prominent it gave his face an Asian appearance.
Wilson wore the kind of face a heavyweight fighter might have after fifty career fights, most going the distance. His nose had been broken and leaned slightly right. Deep furrows ran from his nose under his cheeks around the corners of his mouth like clamps, and were met by shorter parallel creases on either side that were also quite deep. His forehead had shorter and shallower lines that never varied with expression.
He wore a dark suit, white dress shirt and necktie, navy on top and light orange on the bottom. The tie was the only thing about him a bit off the image I’d imagined.
He motioned me to a seat on his left but I took one straight across from Burk, who had turned his attention to Wilson and was chewing on the eraser end of the pencil. Rick sat on my left. The chairs at the table were hard, straight back chairs, not designed for comfort but for short answers and short meetings.
Wilson slid my card to his left, glanced at it briefly and then slid it back to his right. The blonde’s hands poised on the keyboard. Except for his deft little hand movements, the man might as well have been in a coma. I wasn’t sure he was even breathing.
Just when I thought Wilson would get things underway, the door opened and Gerard clopped in on spit-shined brogues. He had a dramatic way of entering a room and enjoyed making a late appearance, hubbub shuffling papers and finding a seat at the far end of the table from Wilson. Wilson lifted his eyebrows, ever patient. Then he aimed his brooding browns on me. Gerard took out a tablet and wrote something at the top with a gold pen.
“Thank you for allowing me to sit in,” Gerard said weakly over the table. “I’m following this one closely.”
Wilson didn’t acknowledge Gerard except to clear his throat and do the card slide trick again. His mind behind that park bench of a face was nailing down questions, phrasing, waiting for Gerard’s interruption to fade. The muffled brush of traffic below was like a distant waterfall. The room smelled of furniture wax and something sweet that I caught now and then, which I guessed was the blonde’s cologne, unless Burk had a side to him I wasn’t aware of.
“Private dicks,” Wilson said in a thick deep tone. “Which one of you is D’Angelo?”
I pointed at the ceiling. “I am, except if you check the license you’ll see I changed the name to Angel some years ago.”
He looked at the folder at his right, now open. He nodded. “Tough racket. Mister Anthony, I know of your career in New York. You may go. I want Angel’s statement without any assistance.”
Rick patted my arm as he got up, then turned and went through the door.
Wilson nodded to the strawberry blonde, who’d been letting her eyes wander my way. He pulled his square shoulders back slightly, but kept a hard look on me. “You found Brockway’s body, is that correct?” The blonde typed.
“Yes.”
“How did you happen to be there?”
“I was investigating the murder of Gail Gorovoy and had been taken to that house against my will a few days before by a couple of Whipple’s paid thugs. I’d also visited Brockway’s office a week before. When Henry Gateswood asked me to find his missing wife, I staked out the Brockway house because whoever killed Gorovoy planted the body at the Gateswood estate and marked it in such a way to embarrass the congressman. Whipple had all the motive in the world for doing that, and so I wanted to see who came and left the house.”
Little clacks of the typewriter filled the room. Gerard kept his head down taking notes on his yellow pad. Burk sucked on the eraser and shifted in his seat to get a better look at the blonde’s legs. Wilson sat stone-faced, his eyes fixed on me, like he knew everything that was in my mind and was waiting for me to hang myself. I hadn’t seen him blink since I sat down.
“What connection do you think Brockway had to the Gorovoy murder and Julia Gateswood?”
“I didn’t know if Brockway had an angle on Mrs. Gateswood. I was shooting in the dark. But he was Whipple campaign’s legal, and a couple of Whipple’s boys hauled me there last week. Whipple grilled me about some incriminating photographs that I’d come into possession of.”
“Photographs of what? And is that why you went to see Brockway at his office the week before?”
I wondered how he knew about my visit to Brockway’s office. I was certain Brockway hadn’t sent him a telegram about it. I let that go, then realized I’d told Burk about it. My nerves were beginning to act up. “Yes. I’d come into possession of some pictures — him and some very young boys doing things that would have lost him any political support.”
Wilson slid my card a couple more times. The blonde looked up at the corner of the ceiling and flexed her fingers over the keyboard. “Jesus Christ,” Wilson said barely audible. He aimed a stiff finger at Burk and said, “I want a file started on that.” The typist didn’t type those remarks. Then Wilson looked back at me and said: “You think those pictures had something to do with Brockway’s murder?”
“I do. Bigger men have been killed for less. It looks to me that Gail Gorovoy was blackmailing Whipple with them, maybe with Brockway’s help. Whipple had retained Brockway. One of Brockway’s partners defended Christy French in that grand jury mess last year.”
At French’s name, Wilson blinked. “Where are the pictures now?”
“In a safe place.”
“You have them?”
“No. I dropped them in the mail.”
Wilson leaned forward and studied my card like the answers might be there in fine print and he’d missed them before. He pointed his round chin at me and fairly boomed:
“I want straight answers, full answers and answers only about the Brockway shooting. No diversions. I want to know every step you made that night and don’t leave anything out because if you do, I’ll know and I won’t go easy. Now, tell me what happened when you staked the house out. Give me times and to the best of your knowledge any relevant details.”
I ran through the account again, including the made up chase of the white Pontiac, the sound of shots that I might have heard but didn’t.
“You were half a block away and you heard a .32 firing inside a house from that distance inside your car?” Sharp guy, this top cop. I was ready for the question.
“I heard something. I wasn’t sure if it was shots. It might have been a car backfiring nearby.”
“Then you saw this mysterious person leave and you chased the car?”
“Yes.”
“Can you give us any sort of description?”
“Whoever it was wore dark clothing with a hood. From that distance at night, I couldn’t make out much. Tall, over six feet. I did detect a limp.”
“Then you returned to the house, called the precinct and left before Burk and his men arrived?”
I nodded. He turned to the typist and said something, then turned back to me and told me not to answer a question with a nod. “Then you returned again? Why didn’t you wait for the officers to arrive?”
Here was the part I couldn’t tap dance through, where I had to rely on partial truth to get me through. It felt thin, even to me, but I went for the splinter of light in my dark tunnel. “I drove to the Gateswood estate, thinking the Pontiac might have gone there. When it wasn’t and didn’t show, I returned to the Brockway house.”
“Why didn’t you say that to Detective Burk? He asked you point blank at the house.”
“Because I wanted to leave the Gateswoods out of it, considering they’re my client. Besides, Burk asked me a lot of things and in a manner not so sweet at two in the morning. I was turned around, finding Brockway with a hole in his head, worrying about Mrs. Gateswood being missing. I’d hoped to find that she’d returned home.”
“And had she? Returned home.”
“Yes.”
Again, the room was a quiet cavern, with clicking of the typewriter trailing off. The strawberry blonde cleared her throat, slid the carriage return and looked up again at Wilson.
“What would you say if I told you we found a .32 semi-automatic in the hedge with your prints on it?”
His face remained a stone slab, his eyes cold and piercing. “I’d say you’re delirious. I carry a .45 and don’t hide it in the bushes.”
Wilson sat there with his granite judicious mask facing me. All I had to give back was my vulnerable and dumb PI mask. If we’d been kids, on Halloween both of us would have soaped a lot of windows.
“We did find a .32, the murder weapon. No prints. I take it you didn’t see the figure you described toss it?”
“No, but it was dark enough he might have thrown an elephant across the yard without being seen. He was in a rush when he left, compared to when he arrived.”
“He? You sure it was a man? Burk said you weren’t sure last night, isn’t that right, Burk?”
Burk nodded, then said yes.
“I never said the figure wasn’t a man. But he was over six feet and he didn’t move like a woman.”
I glanced at the strawberry blonde and at Burk. They both wore similar smirks. To my surprise she winked at me. I must bring that out in dames.