Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (10 page)

That was good enough for me.
I called McMillan and told him I approved.
I also told him we had someone to do the autopsies, and were ready to go whenever the experts could start.

I was making a lunch of Campbell’s tomato soup and toast when the phone rang.
It was Laura.
McMillan had spoken to her.
Apparently he had gotten LeDoux to come to Chicago on the next available flight.

She wanted all of us to get together at her apartment Wednesday night so that we could get this investigation underway.

I decided not to bring Minton — he didn’t need to know much more than what he saw when he went into the basement — but agreed to come myself.
I’d have to find someone to care for Jimmy, but that wasn’t hard.
The Grimshaws and I often exchanged babysitting duties and, for once, they owed me more than I owed them.

After Laura hung up, I went back to my lunch, feeling slightly unsettled.
Experts rarely came to another city on such short notice.
Of course, a man who dealt with crime scenes couldn’t always control his own schedule — he would have to come when the scene still existed, not waiting until he had an opening in his calendar.

Still, I had the feeling that McMillan had hired LeDoux without waiting for my approval. I wasn’t sure if I would confront him about that or not, but I did hold the suspicion in reserve.
If the three of us — Laura, McMillan
,
and I — were going to work together on this case, we were going to do so on an equal basis.

Before that meeting, I had some logistics to figure out.
We had to go in and out of the Queen Anne without drawing suspicion.
If anyone at the rental agency or at Sturdy thought we were doing construction work in that building, they might get nervous.
If they noticed us carrying items out of the building, they might get worried.

Somehow, we would have to do our work — photographing, removing the three bodies, taking evidence, and taking down the brick walls — without drawing attention to ourselves.

I figured there were two times we could work: in the middle of the night or during Jimmy’s school hours.
Both had advantages.
Night provided its own cover.
Most people slept and did not watch what was going on in a neighboring building.

But the moment a neighbor became suspicious, he would notice everything we did and maybe call the police.
Since the neighborhood had white students as well as black families, there was a chance the police might actually show up.
If they did, we would be in trouble.

Of course, at
night
no one could call the rental agency or try to track down the building’s owners.
And sometimes what seemed suspicious at 3
:00 A.M.
seemed normal or not worth the effort to contact authorities in the light of day.

Daylight brought its own problems.
We would have to park in that alley.
We would have to remove items from the building while people could see what we were doing.
A call to the rental agency would show that no one was working on the building, which might lead to a call to the police.

But most neighbors in places like that didn’t like to get involved. Most of them wouldn’t be home in the middle of the day either.
And most would accept the presence of a painters’ van or carpet cleaners in the middle of the day if we could find a way to disguise our vehicles like that.

I preferred daylight, provided we could make it work, and not just because it was more convenient for me.
People got nervous about nighttime activity, and I didn’t want them to think we were robbing the place, selling drugs, or running some kind of illegal scam out of the Queen Anne.

By the time I had to pick up Jimmy from the after
-
school program, I had a short, typewritten plan that I hoped would work.

* * *

Wednesday morning, I woke to the news that a dynamite bomb had blown the police statue in Haymarket Square a hundred feet from the pedestal.
Haymarket Square was on the
W
est
S
ide, past Greektown, a place we never went.
I wasn’t even sure I had seen the statue.

But the news unnerved me nonetheless.

I planned to keep the radio in
the
kitchen off while we had breakfast, but Jimmy had gotten there before me.
He’d already put out the milk and cereal, taken raisins and the sugar bowl from the cupboard by the time I staggered out of the shower to make coffee.

He looked up at me, face taut.
“Somebody’s bombing stuff here now.”

Our trip last June had ended when a bomb went off in a building I was in.
I was injured, but not critically.
I simply gained some scars on my legs and arms to match the one that ran down the left side of my face.
For several weeks, though, I was black and blue and moved as if I had aged fifty years.

“I got news for you,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to.
“They’ve been bombing things here for a long time.”

“I don’t remember nothing.”

“Goldblatt’s
D
epartment
S
tor
e
got bombed last Easter,” I said, “and there’ve been other things.”

Worse things, which I didn’t want to explain.

“Then how come this one’s all over the news?”

I sighed, rubbed my hand over my face, and wished I lived in calmer times.
Poor Jim, all he got to see was the ugly side of human nature.

“It’s all over the news for a couple of reasons,” I said. “It’s a police statue.
Someone’s issued a challenge to the Chicago Police Department.”

“You know who?” Jimmy asked as he sat at the table.
The hair on the back of his head was still matted. I would have to send him to the bathroom to clean up before he went to school.

“I have suspicions,” I said. “I’m sure the police do
,
too.”

“Those Days-of-Rage people?” Jimmy asked.

“Probably,” I said. “They promised four days of violence, starting today.
Maybe someone got excited and started early.”

Jimmy splashed too much milk on his cereal.
It sloshed against the edge of the bowl.
“If Haymarket’s near Greektown, it’s not by Lincoln Park.”

“I know,” I said.

“Can I stay home, Smoke?”

“You’ll be fine at school,” I said.
“They’re not coming down here.”

At least not yet.
The Black Panthers had spent the last few days trying to talk the Weatherm
e
n out of rioting in the park because the Panthers believed, with a great deal of justification, that the police would take out their anger in the ghettos, not against the rich white kids planning the so-called actions.

“What about you?” Jimmy asked that last quietly, not meeting my gaze.

“I’m working for Laura today. I’m staying as far away from those crazies as I can.”

He raised his head.
“Promise.”

“Promise,” I said.

He nodded, then finished his breakfast in silence. We listened to the disk jockeys on the radio discuss the radicals in town, the Conspiracy Trial, and the history of that statue, which had been erected by the police on the site of the Haymarket Rebellion.

The rebellion, the disk jockeys “reminded” us (knowing full well that most of us had no idea what it was), happened in 1886.
At an outdoor rally to protest police violence against striking workers, someone threw a bomb that killed eight policemen and two bystanders.
Several anarchists were arrested
,
although no evidence ever linked them to the bombing; four of the anarchists were hanged and a fifth committed suicide by placing a blasting cap between his teeth.

The statue honored the dead policemen.
Blowing it up — with dynamite, nearly a century later — was an act of great symbolism.
And the Weatherm
e
n faction of the SDS loved their symbolism.

I shuddered, bundled Jimmy off to school and hoped that he would think about other things all day, although I had a hunch that was unlikely.

It wasn’t until I went into the back room that served as my office that I realized I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise to Jimmy.

I was heading up
to
the Gold Coast tonight, to Laura’s apartment for that meeting.
The Gold Coast was on the near North Side of Chicago, not too far from Lincoln Park, where the Weatherm
e
n planned to hold their first rally.

With great frustration, I picked up the phone and called Laura.
I wanted her to change the meeting to my apartment, but she wouldn’t.
She felt that her place — a penthouse suite of one of the most expensive apartment buildings in Chicago — would be safe enough. She’d hired extra security after an attack last year, and they would be working tonight.
So would her favorite doorman
,
who was more than capable of defending himself.

However, I did get her to compromise.
I asked her to hold the meeting over an early dinner
,
at five-thirty instead of eight.
Knowing this group of radicals, and having watched their self-serving speeches on the television newscasts for the last week, I had a hunch they’d want as much press coverage as possible.

They’d get that only after the Conspiracy Trial ended for the day, and the national press corps had time to make it from Civic Center Plaza to Lincoln Park.
If we met at five-thirty, we would probably avoid the worst of whatever the Weathermen were planning — if, indeed, the police ever allowed them to leave the Park.

Fortunately, I’d already asked Althea Grimshaw to pick up the kids from the after
-
school program.
Jimmy would be happy when I got home earlier than planned.

If that happened, I would be happy too.

NINE

Laura’s apartment building looked like it was set up for a war.
In addition to the usual doorman, six security guards were stationed around the building’s first floor.

Laura, who owned the building, wasn’t taking any chances.

After more than a year of visiting her, I still wasn’t used to the building’s ornateness.
My entire apartment building could have fit into the lobby, with its raised ceilings and black marble floors.
Leather furniture that cost more than I spent in a year was arranged in casual groupings, although I’d never seen more than one or two residents sit in them.

Large glass windows on the east side overlooked Lake Shore Drive, and Lake Michigan beyond.
This was one of the most spectacular — and expensive — views in Chicago, and the architect that built this place had taken advantage of that.

The newly hired security guards watched me as I crossed the lobby, but the head of security, who sat behind the desk near the elevators, pointedly greeted me by name.
I said hello to him as well and pushed the elevator call button, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

I was not a meeting sort of person. I preferred doing things to talking about them.
But I recognized the necessity of planning ahead.
We were about to do something tricky, and we had to proceed with caution.

The elevator doors opened, and the attendant, an elderly black man, grinned at me.
He knew his presence made me uncomfortable.
More than once I’d asked him why he stayed at the job.
His answer was always the same: he liked Miss Laura.

I liked her too, but I wouldn’t spend my days opening and closing elevator doors for rich people even if she asked me to.

“You think them kids is gonna bomb the Gold Coast?” he asked me as the elevator doors closed.

“I certainly hope not,” I said.

“If they do, they’s not coming here.”

“Because of the extra security?” I asked.

“Because we’s lucky.
Judge Hoffman don’t live here.
He got an apartment in the Drake.”

Judge Hoffman was the judge in charge of the Conspiracy Trial.

“That’s expensive real estate for a judge, isn’t it?” I asked.
The Drake was on Michigan and Oak, with a view of Lincoln Park — and if your apartment was high enough, a view of Lake Michigan as well.
The Drake was older than Laura’s high-rise, and considered one of the premiere addresses in the city.

“His wife got money,” the attendant said.
Then he grinned at me.
“Sometimes it be good to marry money.”