Peerless detective, p.10
Peerless Detective, page 10
“I believe that will compensate you and your people for your time.”
With that, Beverly Morse made her exit, leaving behind her a mist of elegance, expensive perfume, and sex. Billy watched her go and found himself wishing he’d been the recipient of the kiss she’d planted on Harry.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” Doris said, with just the faintest trace of amusement.
“Still dangerous after all these years,” she added, and Billy pretended not to hear.
Harry hefted the envelope, peeked inside, chuckled softly, and said “I think we can make rent this month.”
Just before closing, Harry gave him a folder.
“Before you leave, look this over. This is a kid you’re going to help me find.”
Billy looked at the clock, decided he had no place better to go, shrugged. “Okay.”
There wasn’t much to the file, just a few pages and an old photo of an angelic-looking kid in an altar boy outfit. At the end of the file was a fifty-dollar bill.
“Whoa.”
Billy held up the bill.
“Bonus. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I can’t. And lock up when you’re through.” With that, Harry tossed him a key. “Don’t lose it,” he said.
Money and a key, Billy thought to himself. It seemed to him that the key was the important thing, a matter of trust. But the money didn’t hurt.
Billy walked down the street and remembered an old song about a guy who has money in his pocket but nowhere to spend it because he’s new in town.
He stopped in a bar and had a beer while watching a ballgame. It struck him that he was the only person in the bar who wasn’t talking to someone. He left and headed back to his room, then stopped, reluctant to go back to the rooming house with an entire evening stretching out before him.
What did people do when they had a few bucks in their pockets? He thought of going downtown, taking in a movie, but he did not want to sit alone in a darkened theater. Up ahead, he saw the diner and decided to stop for coffee.
She was there, the thin girl with the Southern drawl, and he was pleased when she smiled at him and said, “How you doing today, Hon?”
“Got paid.”
“No day like payday,” she said. He ordered coffee and she poured him a cup, then stood a few feet away and stared out at the window. It struck him that if he could come up with something to talk about he might have his first conversation with a girl in a long time. He was about to comment on the hot weather when a customer came in and sat at the far end of the counter, and the waitress was gone.
He drank his coffee in silence and listened to one old song after another. The girl named Millie swung by and refilled his cup, then made her way to the far end of the diner. She leaned against the doorway into the back room. An old Bo Diddley song came on—he remembered dancing to this with Rita. The waitress slipped back a bit further where she thought her customers couldn’t see her and broke into a little dance. He watched her bounce and bop in the doorway.
A small girl. And skinny. Skinny but cute.
She caught his eye and burst out laughing, her pale skin flushing pink. She put a hand to her face and shook her head and went out to give an old man one more cup of coffee.
When she brought him his check, she gave him a sheepish look but said nothing.
As she turned away, he blurted out, “My name’s Billy. Or Bill.”
She gave him a mischievous smile. “Well, do you know which one it is?”
“Most people call me Billy.”
She touched her plastic name plate. “This is who I am.”
“You don’t look like a Millie.”
“I was named for my mama and my grandma. I hope to grow into it. Where you from, Billy or Bill?”
“Michigan.”
She was about to say something when the cook called out that an order was ready. When she had served the customer, two more orders were ready, and then another man asked for more water. Billy waited to see if she would come back his way and then grew self-conscious. Finally he left money on the counter and started toward the door, frustrated and surprised at himself. As he pushed open the door, he heard her call out to him.
“Bye, Billy.”
Billy said, “See you around,” and hoped he’d made it sound casual.
She nodded and walked away. “Hope so,” she said quietly.
For the next three weeks Harry Strummer kept Billy busy, tired, off-balance, and frequently either confused or amused. He ran more errands that took him far and wide into the city and checked out a series of recent addresses for a man who had skipped out on his family and taken most of the money with him. For every step he took in the course of his job, Billy took two steps in his own time, looking for Rita. At times, there seemed no point to his nocturnal wanderings, but on certain nights he felt a change in himself, a certain quiet elation, a conviction that everything he was learning and doing was sure to bring about a result. It seemed he had fallen into the perfect job for a guy trying to learn a city, for that matter, for a guy trying to learn who he was and how he fit in. When this was done, Billy told himself, he would know how he fit into the world.
More than once he thought of mentioning his situation to Harry, but he was reluctant to talk about Rita, about his own life. And Harry never asked him about his private life, had never even really asked him what brought him to Chicago. When he thought about that, it seemed odd, but he was certain that Harry wanted to let him have his privacy.
At times during this period, his growing knowledge of the city made him confident that he would eventually find her, and at these moments he was exuberant, his thoughts filled with the possibilities. He even dared to imagine them together once more. On other days his quest wore him down, and he saw his tireless search for a woman he hadn’t seen in years in a colder light. He saw himself as an outsider might—a transient wandering around a city where he had no life of his own.
Three times in that period Billy stopped in to eat at the diner, and each time the young southern girl called Millie was there.
“Hello, Billy from Michigan,” she said on his second visit of the week.
“You work all the time?”
“Unless I’ve got something better to do. Saturday, for instance, I’m going out with a gentleman. Least I hope he’s a gentleman.” She looked out at the street and frowned briefly.
When she went to serve another customer, Billy watched her. He tried to remember the last time he’d been on a date. It seemed like something that other people did. He considered his own situation and realized there was something about it that wasn’t normal, this was not how a young man lived. But he needed to see it through, come what may.
• • •
One night, Billy followed Harry Strummer. If asked, he wouldn’t have been able to say why—perhaps to prove to himself that he could follow a veteran detective, perhaps to learn about Harry’s habits, perhaps just to get a look at the man outside of the job. Harry Strummer was easy to tail. For one thing, he made slow progress down the street, allowing his off-balance strut to be interrupted by half a dozen things—he stopped to peer into shop windows, stood in the open doorway of a tavern and waved at someone inside, slowed down to watch an old car pass by. At a corner he stopped to talk to an old street guy, and Billy saw him give the old man money with one hand as he patted his back with the other. A cop in a sergeant’s white shirt waved from his squad car and called out to him, and Harry made the sergeant laugh with his response. From across the street a middle-aged woman called his name and Harry blew her a kiss. He seemed to know everyone. It was Harry’s street. Billy watched him saunter down Wells Street and wondered if he’d ever seen a man as comfortable in his own skin.
On a steamy Saturday, the three of them, Leo, Billy, and Harry, put on sport coats and ties and provided security at a Mexican wedding. When the wedding was invaded by three big drunken Anglos, the bride’s ex-boyfriend and his two friends, Harry met them at the door, snapped his fingers theatrically, and Billy and Leo appeared at his side, expressionless. Harry remonstrated with the three drunks and sent them off. As they left, the ex-boyfriend was blubbering about his love for the bride, and his companions did what they could to console him.
Leo looked at Billy, disgusted. “Guy comes to a wedding in a t-shirt. A t-shirt.” He shook his head.
• • •
On a Friday in mid-June, Harry had Billy report to a particular address in the projects on Clybourn near the river, there to drive one Wendell Brooks to the bank.
“To the bank?”
“Yes, so he can cash his Social Security check. You will accompany him there and to the grocery store. While doing this you will see two shifty-looking youths. One is white, one is black. Stare at them. Later, when you’re through running errands with Wendell, find the two shifty youths and follow them.”
“To where?”
“Wherever they go. Follow them. On foot, in the car, whatever works. And let them see you. Make them nervous. Oh, and when you’re with Wendell, just listen to him. He lives alone, he’s got no one to listen to him.”
And so Billy accompanied the seventy-year-old Wendell Brooks, a wiry black man in an elegant panama hat, to his bank, a grocery store, a tavern—where Wendell bought him a beer—and home again. And Wendell indeed had stories. He’d served as a mess attendant on the battleship Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, and they had to cut him out with a blowtorch when the ship capsized. He’d been stabbed in a fight over a woman, he’d been married three times and outlived all his wives, he’d met Admiral Halsey and cooked for Chester Nimitz, he’d played two seasons in the Negro leagues as an infielder. And he’d outlived all the people in his life, but seemingly counted himself fortunate.
“I’m alive and I’ve got my faculties and my health. You have your health, you’re doing fine, Son. Go easy on the bottle, get your rest, you’ll live a long time and see life. You’re here to see life.”
Oh, I’m seeing life, Billy thought.
Billy let Wendell out a few feet from his door. Just up the street he spotted the two kids, and they saw Wendell. Billy got out and walked the old man to his door. Then he began walking in the direction of the two kids, walking very fast, and they took off. Billy drove around the projects until he came across the two punks again. He gave them the look and they moved on, heads down. He got out of the car and began walking after them until they broke into a run. Then he retraced his steps to Harry’s car and drove around until he found them again. This time he slowed down as he passed them and tried to look as demented as possible. He said, “Come here, you,” and opened the door. They took off and ran down toward the river.
At the next light a police car pulled up beside him.
The cop on the passenger side nodded. His name plate said Perez.
“We’ve been watching you follow those two kids all around the neighborhood. What’s your business with them?”
“I’m trying to scare ’em. They bother this old guy named Wendell.”
The cop watched Billy without expression. The driver leaned forward and said something.
“My partner says this is Harry Strummer’s car. You work for Harry or did you boost it?”
“I work for him. I’m Billy Fox.”
The driver said something Billy didn’t catch and both cops laughed.
“Okay, Billy Fox. Now we’ll follow the young men for a while. Have a nice day.”
• • •
Back at the office, Harry laughed when Billy made his report. “Koss and Perez. I know those guys, good people. How’d you like Wendell?”
“He’s like a walking history book.”
“Yeah. He is that. Good job, Bill. Come on, let’s get a sandwich.”
After lunch they strolled up Wells Street and eventually wandered over to Lincoln Park. A large group of people in name tags walked up Clark Street toward the history museum and had to step aside for another group moving in the opposite direction. Some of the people frowned at having to move aside. Harry watched the street traffic.
“Dueling tour groups,” Billy said.
“Good,” Harry said, and laughed. “We all see the same things, Bill, but some of us notice more, remember more.”
“I think I’m getting better. But I don’t know if I’ll ever notice all the things you do. I think it’s a thing just certain people can do. Like people who can do memory tricks.”
“You can train yourself. Matter of fact, you can train yourself to do those memory tricks. I can introduce you to a guy—”
Harry froze in mid-sentence and his eyes went soft, lost focus—he looked like a man trying to make sense of small print.
“This guy I know,” he tried again, then broke off.
Billy followed his gaze, saw people getting off a bus on La Salle Street. One of them was a tall, slender man in a white shirt and dark tie. He wore glasses and looked up and down the street carefully before heading down Lincoln.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Harry looked at him and forced a smile, but his eyes strayed once more.
“Something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just thought I saw a guy—can’t be the same guy, though. This guy is dead.” Then, as though speaking to himself, “Long dead.”
He took one more glance in the same direction, then changed the subject.
“Now, on Monday we have business with Sunny Carter. You’ll enjoy him.”
• • •
Later, in the office, Harry took a call from a client who owed him money. When the call was done, Harry sat staring at the notepad on his desk. After a while he began doodling. Doris asked him something and had to repeat herself before he realized she was speaking to him. When he left for the day, Billy glanced at Harry’s desk. On the notepad he’d drawn a dark box around a name, gone over the edges until the box nearly went through the paper, then colored in the box and scratched out the name. It could have been “Derrick” or “Dietrich.”
SEVEN
The Case of the Dueling Detectives
The cabbie let them off at Randolph and Michigan, and Harry said, “Let’s walk. We’re early.” He gestured up Michigan Avenue with his cigarette and started walking.
At first Billy was reluctant to break the silence. Besides, this was only the second time he’d seen Michigan Avenue, and the earlier time he’d been acutely conscious that he was the only person on the entire street in jeans and a t-shirt. It was easily the most elegant street he had ever seen, the showpiece of the city, bordered on one side by the art museum and a park that seemed to roll on forever. Half the people on the street seemed to be tourists, the other half looked like money. The late morning sun blessed the glass-and-steel buildings and the cars, and the breeze off the lake brushed across the treetops. Here and there, if you peered through the trees in Grant Park you could see the blue water, already dotted with sailboats. A picture postcard for Chicago.
Beside him Harry was nodding, as though Billy had expressed his thought aloud.
“It’s not the real world, Bill, but it’s something. I never get tired of walking down here. When I got back from Korea I came down here a lot. I’d walk all the way from back there by the Water Tower, Chicago Avenue, to the south end of Grant Park, looking at the buildings and admiring the women and the cars and the fine buildings, and telling myself I was going to make a new start, make something of myself. It’s not the real world, kid, but it’s like an advertisement for the city, kind of luring you in, inviting you to see yourself with a life here. I been many places in the world, and I’ll tell anyone there’s no place quite like Michigan Avenue. One time they asked Cary Grant what his favorite place was, from all his many travels. He told them ‘Michigan Avenue in Chicago.’ Well, I’m with old Cary.”
Harry gave Billy a sidelong look. “I’ve tried to stay out of your business, Bill. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind for yourself, but you could do a lot worse than Chicago. You’re a smart kid and you learn fast. And it’s an interesting place—this part’s beautiful to look at but it’s just for show. But the rest of it, the neighborhoods and the people, every kind of people on God’s earth. That college up by you, Truman College, they’ve got, I think, people from seventy different countries in that school. And of course you got Indians up there, too, dozens of kinds.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “I found myself in an Indian bar one night. There was a picture of Geronimo looking down at me. I thought about picking a fight but decided not to.”
“Yeah, right,” Harry said, and laughed.
V. C. “Sunny” Carter proved to be a study in irony. His offices were on Wabash, on the third floor of an aging office building honeycombed with jewelers and small offices, and there seemed to be business transactions going on in all of them. In one office a small, excitable looking man in a vest looked through a jeweler’s loupe at a pile of stones spread out before him. He looked from the stones to the man who had presumably brought them in, a tall heavy man in a wrinkled suit. The small man gestured toward the stones and curled his lip, and the big man took an unconscious step backward.
“Business, Bill. Diamonds and money. We’re on Jeweler’s Row. Good place to come for that wedding ring that’s in your future someday.”
V.C. Carter’s offices themselves were a model of minimal elegance—dark furniture, paneled walls, small prints of the Chicago lakefront at night. The rooms were presided over by a large black woman with a pretty face and the air of a high school principal, who took Harry’s name and in a voice that brooked no rebellion told the two of them to be seated.
A moment later she ushered them into the inner sanctum, holding open the door and announcing, “Mr. Strummer and his associate.”
“Come in, Harry,” said the man at the desk. He was meticulously dressed, handsome, very dark, and glowering, and Billy wondered if the nickname “Sunny” was the gift of an older family member with a sense of humor. The “V.C.” Harry had explained to him on the ride over—it stood for “Vivian Cornell.”
