Boystown 7: Bloodlines (17 page)

What else? We were talking about a man. Prince Charles. There was no Princess Di in the files. I was looking for a white man over forty. That cut things down another twenty-five to thirty percent. I could also cut out the suits. White men in their forties and fifties were very likely to be working the higher level government positions. But they were also likely to be wearing nice suits. No one was going to put on a nice suit with a crisp white shirt to come in and inform on a mobster. The few times when I’d seen them in person, or even in the newspaper, members of the Outfit tended to dress like they were about to go shoot a round of golf. They generally opted for a sort of high-class leisurewear. It was an in-your-face way to tell the rest of the world they were too good for hard work. Their lives were like a permanent vacation. With a little violence thrown in. Having a better idea of what I was looking for didn’t mean I turned anything up before lunch, but it did make me sure I hadn’t let the informant walk by me.
 

At twelve-thirty I walked over to Cooke, Babcock and Lackerby. When I walked in the receptionist’s mouth dropped open. Then I remembered that I was dressed like a priest. I smiled at her and said, “Part time job.” That earned me the kind of scowl that could only come from a practicing Catholic. “You have something for me?”

Grudgingly, she handed me a manila envelope. I sat down in one of the comfortable leather chairs, took Wes Berkson’s autopsy out of the envelope and read it.
 

The body is that of a well-developed, well-nourished adult Caucasian male, 134 pounds and 71 inches, whose appearance is appropriate for the stated age of 37 years
, it began. I studied the sentence for a moment. One hundred and thirty-four pounds was too little for a man who was nearly six feet tall. I guessed that when the examiner described the corpse as well-nourished he meant during the developmental years. There were no signs of malnourishment during growth. Malnourishment during adulthood would not leave those permanent signs. He went on to describe the body as cold and purple with obvious rigor mortis present. In other words, dead. Then he described the parts of the body he could see. He described them as normal, except for the presence of lesions on one hand and arm and around both ankles. There was no stated reason for the lesions.

For identifying marks, the examiner noted a small surgical scar in the right lower abdomen at McBurney’s point. McBurney’s point could have been a yacht club for all I knew, but I did understand a scar in the right lower abdomen probably indicated an appendectomy.
 

The part of an autopsy that most detectives jump right to is Evidence of Injury. This one began with the words:
Stab wound of the chest
. Then it described the entrance wound as
on the midline chest beneath the sternum, twenty-two inches below the top of the head at the anterior midline
. The wound itself was one and three quarters inches wide. This statement was uncomfortably visual:
Having washed away the blood, no other marks remain on the rest of the chest
. The wound was then described as being five inches deep and angled upwards. The wound track traveled through the soft tissue of the chest, the pericardial sac, and both cardiac ventricles.
 

Next the examiner looked at Wes’ clothing. He described a two inch-slit in a Kiss World Tour T-shirt. He also described the shirt as being completely soaked in blood.
 

After that, the report went on to examine each organ system. Other than the previously described wound, the heart and major arteries were normal for a man of Wes’ age. The respiratory system showed problems. The report described swelling of tissue in both lungs and suggested that it was due to pulmonary edema. I’d have to look that up to see how dangerous it was, but there was at least the possibility that Mrs. Levine was right and Wes had not been long for the world. The other organ systems were within a normal range. There was nothing else out of the ordinary in the report. The conclusions were all things I already knew. He was stabbed. Madeline had done a good job.

Chapter Fifteen

I asked the receptionist if Mr. Lovejoy was available to see me for five minutes. She hit the intercom button on the phone, dialed a single number, and asked Owen if he had a moment. Then she told me to go back. I took my time walking back to his office. I needed the extra few seconds to figure out how to say what I needed to say.

“I found Emily Fante,” I said after we finished our hellos.

“Did you?”

“I did.” I left a pause. I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “It’s not helpful. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

“Tell me.”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“The reason no one could find Wes Berkson’s mistress is that she’s dead. She was killed the same day as Wes. Earlier. She was stabbed.”

“Fuck. I didn’t want to know that.”

I shrugged an “I told you so.”

“You think Madeline killed her?”

“It looks very likely, don’t you think?”

“Then why didn’t she confess to both murders?”

“Because she knew we’d get here. She could figure out that she’d get less time for one murder than she would for two.”

“That’s very premeditated.”

“She knew for some time that her husband was having an affair. The whole thing was premeditated.”

“Then why? Why kill both? Why not just kill the mistress? And why then?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“I read the autopsy,” he said.

“Then you saw it.” Meaning the pulmonary edema.
 

“I did.”

“Which raises the question, why kill a dying man?”

“She didn’t know that he was dying.”

“Her mother suspected. Madeline would have suspected, too.”

“None of this is helping,” Owen said. “Our job is to make her look like a woman who deserves leniency.”

“Maybe you should just put her up there. Skip everyone else. I mean, she orchestrated the whole thing. Let her play it out.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Tell her to cry.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

I stood there a moment, awkwardly. Since I’d pretended to quit Jimmy’s case for the Feds listening in, I was technically done working for Owen. “Um, so I’ll send you my invoice. Let me know if you have anything else come up.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sure we’ll have something soon.”

We gave each other a silly smile and then I walked out of his office.

I managed to get back to Federal Plaza before two o’clock by skipping lunch. I watched as the office workers came back from their own lunch. Few of them looked excited to be returning. I did continue to get donations though. The largest came with whiffs of alcohol, as though those who drank their way through lunch were trying to make up for it by giving to charity. I didn’t see anyone even close to the parameters I was looking for. I gave some thought to the possibility that I was wrong about the kind of person who might be betraying Jimmy. I just didn’t feel wrong.

I let my mind wander onto other things. Did I really want to paint my apartment? It was a lot of trouble. And even though I didn’t particular care for the current color, I’d just spent a year in a transient hotel; I was fully capable of ignoring my environment. But that was half the point of the apartment, wasn’t it? It was an environment I wouldn’t want to ignore. I’d be able to sit at my window, look at the lake, enjoy my coffee in the morning and my scotch in the evening. And if I managed to pick a color and paint the walls, I could enjoy that, too. Isn’t that the way normal people thought about things? And wasn’t that what I was trying to become?

Around three, a short black woman of about seventy appeared out of no where and attempted to talk me out of my Catholicism. She appreciated that I was following the Lord but I was doing it all wrong. She was particularly distressed by our belief in saints, which she likened to the pantheon of Greek gods. I put up a little bit of a fight, just enough that she didn’t tip to the fact that I wasn’t really a priest, and then excused myself to take a break. I was starving, so I walked down to Dearborn and Adams and found a lunch counter called Mel’s Italian. I ordered a beef sandwich with onions, peppers, and mozzarella cheese. It came with fries and a Coke.

There was something about the Madeline Levine thing that kept nagging at me, except I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. She had to have had a reason for killing two people. And I thought it had to be a better reason than that they were fucking. I just didn’t know what that reason was, but the idea that I should know just wouldn’t go away. I was missing something. I knew it. But I couldn’t think what.

When I went back to my spot on the plaza, I began to wonder how often Prince Charles came in to see the task force. Though it seemed like he’d covered most everything in the transcripts I read, the closer we got to an indictment the more often he’d need to come in. The transcripts covered twelve or fifteen hours of testimony. The testimony Prince Charles would give in front of a Federal Grand Jury would probably be limited to three or four hours. They’d have to do some work to get the important details in.

Around five, I decided to call it a day. People would be leaving work soon but there wasn’t any reason to think that Prince Charles would be among them. He was an informant; he wouldn’t be keeping regular hours. In fact, I needed to keep that in mind. He was more likely to come in after the rush of people early in the morning and leave before the rush of people on their way home. My bucket was more than half full. I probably had forty or fifty dollars just in change. I had a pocket stuffed with singles. I’d gotten concerned that they’d fly out of the pail when I took my breaks.
 

I went down into the subway and caught the Jackson/Howard going north. Rush hour had begun and the car I was in was crowded. It was one of the new silver cars with the orange and butterscotch colored seats. A woman in her early sixties got up and tried to give me her seat. I refused, of course, and then a younger man of about twenty-six or so took the hint and got up to give me his seat. I couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse him, so I got to sit.
 

Was Joseph’s life full of these little perks? Would he miss this sort of privilege? Or, knowing that he had doubts, did they weigh on him? Did they make him feel guilty? People had been looking at me differently all day. I was very aware of that. Certainly a lot of people just ignored me. Non-Catholics. But a lot of other people silently afforded me respect. Well, they gave respect to the collar I wore. Not me.
   

I got off the train at Belmont and walked down to Clark and then up to my office. There were no messages on my answering machine and that made me happy. I didn’t feel like returning any calls. In fact, I was done with work for the day. I was not going to think about Madeline Levine-Berkson or Jimmy English for the rest of the day. I might try to think of something I could do on Jimmy’s case Saturday morning or I might not. I’d decide then. I put the plastic bucket on my desk and dug around until I found a bag of my clothes. I pulled out an old Irish sweater I sometimes wore and put that on instead of Joseph’s priestly collar. I figured I’d be warm enough with just the sweater so I skipped my coat. I had an idea about how I wanted that night’s “normal” date with Joseph to go, so I tried calling him. After eight rings, he picked up.

I’d barely said hello when he said, “You’re cancelling, aren’t you?” I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not.

“No. I just want you to meet me somewhere else.” I gave him my new address.
 

“Where is this?”

“It’s a surprise. Do you like surprises?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone’s tried to surprise me since I was in grammar school.”

“Okay, well, I guess we’ll find out.”

I hung up and hurried out of my office. I had a lot to do in the next hour. First, I walked quickly over to Two Towers. Clementine was in the office and, after she answered the buzzer, she asked me to come back and sign the lease. When I finished signing, which took all of a second, she gave me my copy of the lease and my keys.
 

“Um, I have someone coming by in a bit. Can we get my name on the buzzer?”

“Sure, just give me ten minutes.”

Rather than go up the apartment, I hurried out of the building. My first stop was the Walgreen’s on Broadway where I, perhaps too optimistically, bought a package of Trojans and a tube of KY jelly. The cashier didn’t bat an eye. I’m sure she thought I was just another straight guy trying not to knock up his girlfriend. I wondered if that assumption was soon to change.

Then I walked up Broadway to the Treasure Island at Cornelia. Treasure Island called itself “America’s Most European Supermarket” and it was filled with things you couldn’t get in other stores. There was a sign at the edge of the parking lot that was designed to look like a treasure map. It was exactly the place I wanted for my “normal” date.
 

It had taken almost fifteen minutes to walk there so I was rushed as I entered the store. I grabbed a cart and started heading down each aisle. I grabbed a loaf of French bread, a hard salami, two kinds of hard cheese, two bottles of red wine, a cork screw, two wine glasses, and a plastic coated red gingham table cloth. I cringed a little when the cashier told me it was thirty-one dollars and forty cents. We could have had a nice dinner out for that. Still, I liked the idea of my “normal” date and I was going to stick with it. I was definitely running late when I got out of the store, so I grabbed a cab and ignored the cabbie’s scowling when he realized it was only a six-block trip.
 

Unlocking my door and walking into the apartment was a good feeling. The sun was going down and lights were beginning to come on in the buildings I could see along Lake Shore Drive. My electricity was on, it was included in the rent, but there were only three light fixtures. In the bedroom there was a ceiling light, the bathroom had a light and there was one in the tiny kitchen. I turned them all on and spread out my little picnic. I kicked myself for not buying candles, though I didn’t have anything to stick them—