The Skeleton's Knee (29 page)

He looked up as we approached along a narrow central aisle, giving Norm Runnion a beaming smile. “My God—there’s a face from the past.”

He rose to greet us, Norm making the introductions. He wasn’t what I’d expected—no thinning white hair, sallow skin, and Coke-bottle glasses. Instead, he looked like a barely over-the-hill football hero: clear-eyed, athletic, suntanned, the very image of someone who wouldn’t be caught dead in a mausoleum like this.

Catching my skepticism, he spread his arms wide to encompass his realm and grinned. “Welcome to the hole of holes—the ultimate in job security.”

I shook my head, remembering the intelligence files Runnion and I had reviewed on the computer. “What is all this?”

“History, pretty much pure and simple—a lot more than any flatfoot wants to know when he calls up a name on his console, which is why we keep it off the central network. I don’t have current rap sheets or addresses or DMV information down here; it’s all deep background. If you have a problem understanding the relationship between two street gangs, or why it is that a certain ward or alderman behaves in a certain way, you come here. The only catch, of course, is that something criminal has to play a part. There are definitely no saints down here.” He looked fondly over the rows and rows all around him. “Also, it’s got to be older than yesterday’s headlines—current intelligence files are kept on Maxwell Street.”

“Which is what brings us here,” Norm joined in. “What can you tell us about a sixties radical named Robert Shattuck? We’re looking for people he may have formed special connections with.”

Stoddard gave him a half-dreamy look, the smile still on his face. “Let’s look him up.”

He stepped away from his desk and we followed him farther back into the shadows, wending our way down various pathways until we came to a distant wall, lined, as usual, with shelves. A glowing computer was parked there at chest level.

I let out a small grunt of surprise, which Stoddard obviously found amusing. “What did Norm tell you? That I was some gnome sitting in a damp cellar with all this crap in my head? Forget it. It may look old and messy, but it’s organized. And I’m just the head of the section; there’re a half-dozen guys like me who wander around this place. I’d be swamped otherwise. Okay, let’s see where our friend is hiding.”

He typed in Shattuck’s name, along with a few commands. A nearby printer spit out a location list of all references. Only then, list in hand, did Stoddard do the expected and begin ferreting among his informational gold mine. I noticed, here and there, there were indeed other desks and other archivists, tucked away in their private corners like secretive monks. It pleased me, for some perverse reason, to know that an enclave like this was alive and well in a bureaucracy given over to uniformity, strip lighting, and doing away with the “old.”

It took over an hour. He set us up at a work table under a hanging fluorescent light and began feeding us with bits and pieces, periodically appearing with memos, captioned intelligence photos, old arrest records, FBI inter-service data sheets, even magazine and newspaper articles that either dealt with Shattuck directly or with aspects of the causes he’d espoused over the years.

Runnion and I went through it all, taking notes, building lists of names, addresses, dates, and events, trying both to establish a chronology of Shattuck’s political life and to gain insight into his personal relations. As we went along, we also kept a separate list of those names that moved with our quarry in his successive shifts toward the radical militant left, pegging them as the true inner circle and the most likely to have kept in touch with him up to the present.

That list was not long, for Shattuck had explored well beyond the political extremes we’d found on his rap sheet. There were connections to the Weather Underground and to other, more violent splinter groups, although nothing for which he’d ever been arrested, which explained the relative tameness of our first official view of his activities.

Near the end, Norm tapped the list with his finger. “You know, it occurs to me that if any of these hard-core people are still around, they’re not likely to be too friendly to us.”

I pulled my note pad from somewhere under the growing pile and waved it at him. “I’ve been scribbling down a few names of those who went only so far with him. Whether they broke ranks or just left town, I don’t know, but I’m hoping at least one or two of them grew disenchanted enough to tell us why.”

We had also made a separate pile of all the photographs Stoddard had delivered, which included mug shots of eighty percent of everyone on our lists. Getting booked back then had been the unintentionally ironic equivalent of a battlefield promotion. I pulled the pile toward me now and leafed through the rebellious young faces, putting Shattuck’s off to one side.

Runnion watched me, smiling sometimes at the extreme Afros and love beads. “So what do you think of Mr. Shattuck now?”

I laid the pictures down, thinking back to my conversation with Gail the night before. “His killing Shilly seems a lot more in character. He was obviously a lot more than a radical protester, at least by the early seventies. Some of the people he hung out with were robbing banks, grabbing hostages, and blowing up buildings. Seems the only difference was, he didn’t get caught.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out Abraham Fuller’s picture. “I am disappointed, though, that this guy hasn’t surfaced. I know God-damn well Shattuck recognized him.”

“You run his prints through our files yet?” Stoddard asked from behind us.

“Yeah, when I was still in Brattleboro.” I waved my hand across the assembled mug shots. “He either never made the A-team or he was a lot more clever than they were.” I placed Fuller on the table next to Shattuck. “It makes me wonder if the guy with the metal knee is here, staring at us right now, or if he’s as lost as Mr. Fuller.”

That thought made me dig into my pocket once more, and pull out the birth date Billie Lucas had deciphered from the astrological chart, an item I’d almost forgotten about. I handed it to Stoddard. “Can you run a check just on a date of birth?”

He took the slip of paper from me. “Sure.”

Runnion cleared his throat, obviously sensitive of overstaying our welcome here, despite Stoddard’s continued affability. “I have one more favor to ask, too, Miles.”

Stoddard let him off the hook. “Shoot.”

“What can you tell us about Tommy Salierno—the night he died, and any connections he might have had with any of these folks? That was before my time in Intelligence.”

Stoddard suddenly looked doubtful and checked his watch. “Angie’s boy? The first part of that maybe I can handle, if you can accept a verbal report, but connecting Tommy to the radicals will take some time—more than we’ve got left today. The Outfit takes up more shelf space than anyone—besides the politicians,” he added with a laugh. “Hang on a sec; let me get you the resident expert.”

He disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a man I thought far better suited physically to this environment—wispy white hair, thick glasses, and not built like a quarterback. “This is Ray—Mr. Mafia. You see Tommy Salierno tied in with a bunch of radical hippies, Ray?”

I held up my hand to interrupt. “Not tied in necessarily; let’s say having any interactions with them.”

Ray ran his hand up and across the top of his bald head, pausing to scratch the back of his neck. “It’s possible—he did things just to drive the old man crazy. I don’t remember anything specific, though. The politics sure don’t line up. Tommy was as right-wing as his father—most of them are.”

“What do you remember about his death?” Runnion asked. “Was there anything suspicious or unusual about it?”

Ray looked surprised. “Suspicious? It seemed straightforward enough—bad-boy mobster crosses one husband too many.”

“You emphasized
seemed
.”

“Yeah. Well, he had been a pain in Angelo’s neck, from when he was a teenager. People talked about how maybe he got to be too much, but I don’t think so. Despite the movies, you don’t see much of that kind of activity in the Outfit. They tend to be stoics about blood family—good or bad, they figure they’re stuck with them. Especially an old-timer like Angelo—blood ties are sacred to him.”

“You think Tommy died the same day he was found?” I asked.

Ray’s eyes widened slightly. “Like did he die some other day or something? Interesting… He could have.”

“Why?”

“Only because there’s no proof he didn’t. All the autopsy files disappeared. About twelve or fifteen years ago, some reporter was doing a story on the local Mafia—a routine feature piece—and he decided to check Tommy’s autopsy report. I think just to show what a hotshot he was. It wasn’t there. A small article appeared about it, the medical examiner acknowledged that sometimes files wandered, and the system was revamped. No one made much of it.”

“What about the doc who did the autopsy?”

“Dead end. He’d moved on, and he died a couple of years later. Natural causes,” he added to our collective but unstated question.

“Still,” Runnion persisted, “Tommy’s death being vague like that sure is curious.” He gathered together the lists of names and handed them to Stoddard. “I know you said it would take a while, but could you copy these and see if any of them connect to Tommy?”

Stoddard shrugged, passed them to Ray with a nod, and Ray turned to get back to work. I reached out and touched his elbow before he left. “One last question.”

He looked back at me, his face expectant. “What’s that?”

“Mafia types—the Outfit, I mean—they favor small-caliber weapons for the most part, don’t they?”

“Depends. The button men like .22s or .32s ’cause they’re small and quiet. Those boys tend to work up close. But some of the others—the general bodyguards, the soldiers—they might carry anything, especially nowadays.”

That wasn’t what I was hoping for. I tried a different, more specific angle. “What about Tommy Salierno? Did he use something special?”

Ray nodded with a smile. “Oh yeah. Typical, really, given his attitude. He had a nickel-plated, ivory-handled Colt automatic, just as showy as he was.”

“A .45?” I asked.

“Yup—big enough to blow your head off.”

“Or your knee,” I muttered, and one more piece of the puzzle—hypothetical, unsubstantiated, and utterly compelling—fell into place.

“
I GOT A HIT
,” Norm Runnion said as he approached my desk.

We were still in the basement, in separate vacant office cubbyholes, each equipped with a phone book, a phone, and a computer terminal, on which Norm had taught me how to look up current addresses of anyone with a recent record. We’d been chasing down some of the names we’d accumulated for over an hour and a half without success—until now.

He sat on the corner of the desk, his face slightly quizzical. “Brandon Huff—he was on the hard-core list—an ex-Black Panther, currently at Carruthers, McBride.”

“A law firm?”

“Yeah—sounds pretty Waspy, don’t it? Actually, it’s the kind of place William Kunstler would call home—big on defending the poor and the oppressed, as they say; drives the state’s attorney’s office nuts on a regular basis. He’s agreeable to a meet, but on a Wendella—a tour boat—in less than an hour. We’re supposed to stand by the flag at the stern and wait.”

I’d noticed the colorful boats plying the Chicago River earlier that day when I’d visited the Tribune Tower; I’d thought they looked as incongruous against Chicago’s sophisticated backdrop as a pair of sandals on a three-piece-suited executive. “What’d you think? Any reason to be nervous?”

Norm turned both palms heavenward. “Don’t guess so—two of us, one of him… Maybe.”

· · ·

It wasn’t quite dark when we acquired our spot at the boat’s stern. The sky overhead was tinged blood-red, orange, and yellow by the setting sun, the cirrus clouds looking like rippled, burning lava. The city’s towering, sparkling buildings were hard-edged and brittle by comparison—black steel and glittering glass and pale, unyielding stone, flashing with electrical might. Despite the wealth and power bristling beneath it, the sky remained as placid, soothing, and unconcerned as I’d noticed before.

Norm, unlike me, was watching the gangplank. “Hard to tell; there’ve been a few black guys, but none of them looks right. I wonder if we’ve just been jerked around.”

I was having a hard time sharing his concerns. As corny as these boats had seemed to me earlier, boarding one had proved to be a distinctly odd experience, as if the single step from dock to deck had transported me beyond Chicago’s urban grasp. I was suddenly part of the river and the lake nearby, safe from the concrete human meat grinder that crowded the shore. The sounds around me were of softly lapping water, laughter, and clicking cameras. I couldn’t bring myself to feel in peril.

The smile that sensation evoked died, however, as soon as I spotted the two men leaning over the bridge railing above us. Both were well built, in their thirties or forties, wearing dark glasses and baseball caps. They were also dressed in colorful T-shirts, and sharing popcorn out of a single big bag, like lots of other people who were out enjoying the early evening. The popcorn vendor, whose umbrella I could just see over the top of the stone balustrade lining the quay, was obviously doing quite a business. Over a dozen of his customers had taken advantage of the setting to loiter by the bridge and eat while staring at the water traffic below.

Was one of the men the same guy I’d seen eyeing the mini-skirted girl across from Norm’s office? I couldn’t be sure, and while I watched, one of the men turned, stretched, slapped his buddy on the back, and they both disappeared from view, presumably to continue their stroll.

I had acted impulsively twice in this case—once when I’d gone to interview Bob Shattuck and again when I’d poked at the local mob. Both had been catalytic, stimulating a response; Shattuck had killed Shilly, and Bonatto, curious, had emerged from his cave to talk. It seemed entirely reasonable to me that either or both had extended their interest enough to pin a tail on me by now.