Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (47 page)

“Why do you say theoretically?” I asked.

“Because Capone always denied involvement.”

I shrugged. “Why would he admit to
the
murder of two police officers, even corrupt ones?”

“Because a flat-out denial wasn’t Capone’s style,” she said. “He was good at sideways stuff. He let people know when he did something he thought was in their best interest. And he could have made shooting two corrupt police officers sound like it was in people’s best interests.”

A body dump on the South Side.
Rice and Dawley were friends of Baird’s.
I wondered if my scenario was right: they had helped Baird by killing Ellis, Talgart, and Pruitt, and they had taken the five grand as payment for doing so.
Baird had made the tactical error of suggesting his basement as a dump site — or had Rice and Dawley suggested it so that Baird would get in trouble if the bodies were found? And then, somehow, Rice and Dawley had continued using the basement for their site through the twenties.

“Does your self
-
published author have a name?” I asked.

Serena flipped to the front of the book.
“Twombly,” she said.
“Lloyd Twombly.”

“Is he still around?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said.
“That’s how I got interested in the Levee in the first place.
I couldn’t believe the stories this little old man used to tell me when he’d come in here.
I thought he was trying to shock me.
Then he told me to read his book. He’d donated a copy to the library, and the head librarian took it because she considered it history of a period we didn’t have a lot of first
-
person accounts for.
I read it, and then I went to the other books and realized
,
if anything, Mr. Twombly was holding back.”

“How do I find him?” I asked.

“He spends Sunday mornings in the newspaper room,” she said.
“He claims it’s better than church.”

FORTY-SEVEN

Laura met us in the lobby of the Sturdy building.
She wore her rabbit
-
fur coat, which I hadn’t seen since last winter, and her blond hair was piled high on top of her head.
Her skirt was too short, her boots too high, and her makeup too pale.
It looked like a rebellion outfit instead of something a woman who was trying to be taken seriously would wear.

“No more
M
odel
C
ities people, huh?” I asked.

“I
hated
those people,” she said
,
and grinned.
“They were convinced I was some kind of front for the organization, as if Sturdy thought it could hide something behind a dumb female executive.”

“I’m sure you set them straight,” I said.

“I did.” She put her arm around Jim and pulled him close.
“I missed you, kiddo.”

“Me, too,” he said, his face so red I thought it was going to explode.

She handed me a key on its own ring and a number
-ten
envelope.
“The address is inside,” she said.

I pocketed the envelope and put the key
ring on mine.
Then we walked to dinner, which surprised me.
I would’ve thought that we would go away from the downtown.

Until we went into the restaurant — a diner not too far from the Chicago Theater.
It was filled with young people in blue jeans, longhairs
,
and mixed race couples.

“Thank the Conspiracy Trial,” Laura said as we waited for a table.
“You wouldn’t believe the kind of people who’ve been hanging out downtown.”

“Is it safe?” Jimmy asked me.
Anyone else would have thought he meant being around hippies.
I knew he meant being downtown, so close to the police and the FBI.

“No one important comes in here anymore,” Laura said to Jim.
She nodded at a balding man in a blue shirt and black pants.
“See the manager? He wishes it were still as dead at night as it used to be.”

The manager stood behind the cash register, which was next to a counter filled with people of indeterminate gender.
The tables that went all the way around the counter were full too.

A waitress saw us, grimaced, and grabbed some menus. She led us all the way to the back, near the kitchen door
,
not because she disapproved (which she clearly did)
,
but because that was the only available table.

Still, I looked around to make sure I didn’t recognize any faces.

“Is this gonna be business
,
or can we talk about cool stuff?” Jimmy asked.

“How about both?” Laura said.
“You first.”

“No,” he said. “You guys first.
I gotta figure out what to order.”

In a low voice, I told Laura the good and bad news — that our discovery predated her father’s purchase of the building, but that the basement was being used illegally for y
ears afterward
.

“You think he knew?” she asked.

“I don’t know how he couldn’t,” I said.

She chewed the lipstick off her bottom lip.

“But I’m only guessing at this point,” I said. “We may never know for certain.”

“You keep saying that, and then we get more and more certain.”
Her gaze flicked to Jimmy, who seemed preoccupied with the menu.
“My father couldn’t have used that basement himself, could he?”

“I don’t know.” That thought had crossed my mind, and then I had ruled it out.
Initially, it didn’t seem like something Earl Hathaway would have done.
Now, though, it made an odd kind of sense.
If he had decided to become a thug, he had the perfect storage space.

“This is a mess no matter what,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “and it was a mess all the way back.
I’ll give you a fuller update later.”

“When the kid’s not here,” Jimmy said.
“Because, you know, it’s all confidential.”

“It is,” I said. “There are some things you’re better off
not
knowing.”

“Then you shouldn’t talk about them in front of me,” he said
,
a little earlier than I expected.
The waitress hadn’t even taken our order yet.

I ignored that last comment.
“Did you find out about Kaztauskis?”

“Loyal soldier to Cronk,” she said.
“He’d been doing yeoman’s work for a long time.
Nothing really identifiable.
Mostly overseeing projects that existed only on paper.
Needless to say, he’s going to be one of the first to go in the next round of layoffs.”

“Why not ask him to retire early?” I said.

“And give him a pension?” she said.
“With all that I suspect he’s done?”

“It might be better for the company,” I said.

She grimaced.
“I hate it when you think like a corporate man.”

I grinned. “I’m practical.”

The waitress hurried past us, setting three waters on the table as she whooshed by.
Jimmy tried to catch her — he wanted to order so that he could eventually take over the conversation — but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t think he’s speaking for the neighbors,” she said. “I think someone’s noticed what you’re doing.
Someone who shouldn’t.”

I was afraid that would happen.
I was amazed we’d had this much grace time.

“What are you doing?” Jim asked.

“Helping Laura,” I said in my best imitation of my adopted father.
That tone meant children-should-not-ask-questions-in-an-adult-conversation.

Jimmy flounced back in his chair.

“Do you think anyone is going to do anything about it?” I asked Laura.

Her lips thinned.
“I got a personal phone call from Cronk just the other day.”

“At the office?” I asked.

“At home,” she said.
“I think he’s the one who’s been hanging up on me.”

My stomach clenched.
“What did he say?”

“He asked if I had any questions for him.” Two spots of color decorated her cheeks.
“When I said no, as innocently as I could, he said I’d been in charge for nearly a year now and people would think that I knew more than I did.
I asked him what that meant, and he laughed.
He said I would know soon enough.”

“He was threatening you.”

Jimmy stopped fidgeting.
“You gonna be okay?”

Laura smiled at him.
“He threatened my reputation
.
He’s too much of a coward to hurt me.”

“Do you think he’ll act?” I asked.

“Not until he’s sure we have something,” she said.
“At least I hope so.
I have a hunch he’ll sic Kaztauskis on me before he does anything else.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. “But we’d better take precautions.”

She laughed.
“Smokey, we’re taking all the precautions we can.
If something comes out, I’ll go after the messenger first.
He’s giving me some time to think about it.”

Jimmy seemed reassured by her tone, but I wasn’t.
I knew this frightened her.
It worried me.

“What about the mailman story?” I asked.

“So far as all my records go, it’s accurate.
I don’t think it came from within the company.”

“Where do you think it came from?” I asked.

“According to the records, we got a call from the local precinct asking if Hanley had listed next of kin with us.”

“Had he?”

“He doesn’t seem to have any.
Our rental agency actually looked.
The office manager over there is really quite a nice woman, unlike so many other Sturdy employees.”

“This guy die?” Jimmy asked.

“Alone and unloved,” I said. “It’s a recommendation against living life as a mean
SOB
.”

“Smokey!” Laura said with a smile.

I shrugged. “It’s true.
Everyone I talked to hated him.
Even his mailman.”

“I thought mailmen were supposed to be nice to everybody,” Jim said.

“Me too,” I said, thinking about what Laura had told me.
The police station told them the mailman had found the body.
Which meant I needed that death report from Sinkovich more than ever.

This was more police involvement.
It was a pattern, one I didn’t like.

FORTY-EIGHT

My Saturday started out good.
Marvella watched Jim for an hour while I delivered LeDoux and Minton to the Queen Anne.
Then Jim and I spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon running errands and living what I liked to call a Normal Life.

That normal life changed when I left Jim with Marvella for a second hour, and returned to the Queen Anne.

The lights were out and the basement door was locked.
Neither man answered when I called for them.
The hair on the back of my neck rose.

I walked around to the front of the building.
The main door was open about a foot.
My heart started pounding hard.

I didn’t like this.

I went up the steps.
The sharp odor of paint caught me, followed by voices.
I pushed the door open.

Tarps covered the scuffed wood floor.
LeDoux and Minton stood near the far wall.
LeDoux was pouring paint into a tray, and Minton was rolling paint on the plaster, doing an adequate job.
It would’ve looked better if the paint I’d bought, on sale, hadn’t been a robin’s egg blue.

“What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

They both jumped as if I’d shouted at the top of my lungs.
LeDoux set the can of paint down, wiped his hands on his coveralls, and came toward me, one blue-stained finger to his lips.

“He still out there?” he asked.

My stomach knotted. “Who?”

“There was a guy, claimed he wanted to buy the place,” LeDoux said.
He peered out the front door.
“I don’t see him.”

I hadn’t noticed anything, and I had been looking.

Minton balanced the roller on the edge of the tray, then joined us.
He stepped outside, stretched on the porch as if he’d been working all day, and then came back in.