Family Affair: A Smokey Dalton Story (4 page)

I shook my head. “They haven’t been back
all month,” I lied. “He moved out. I thought they were getting a divorce.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” the boy
said. “But my roommate — he’s Duane’s brother — he said it was a
love match and all it would take was some persuading.”

I shivered, and it wasn’t from the
growing chill. Someone had clearly been persuaded, and not in a good way.

“I never thought it was a love match,” I
said, looking at the door, but deliberately not looking at the upstairs window,
as if I didn’t know which apartment she had lived in.

“I think the whole thing’s kinda weird,
myself,” the boy said. “I was studying for my econ exam when he came to get
her. It didn’t sound like a love match to me.”

“What do you mean?”

The boy shrugged again. “It’s none of my
business, really.”

And he said it in a way that also meant
it was none of mine.

“They fought?”

“Nothing like that. But that little girl
sure cried hard. I’d never heard a peep from her before that.”

“Was she all right?” I couldn’t help the
question.

The boy looked at me. He was frowning. “You
know, I wondered. So I looked out the window. They all got into his car. He put
suitcases into the back and Linda, she was holding her daughter. She saw me
looking, and she waved at me. So I knew everything was all right.”

I started in surprise. I hadn’t expected
Linda Krag to think of anyone except herself and her daughter. But she had
protected her neighbor. By pretending everything was okay, she made sure he
didn’t intervene.

“When was this?” I asked.

“A week ago Wednesday. I know because the
exam was on Thursday.” He grinned. “And of course, I aced it.”

“Good for you,” I said, and hoped it
didn’t sound patronizing. Then I thanked him, and went back down the stairs.

There was no point in asking anyone else
questions.

Duane’s brother had clearly alerted him
to Linda’s presence, probably on the weekend between the time Duane last
punched in for work and the Monday when he hadn’t shown up. Duane had come
here, tried to talk to her, hit her so hard she threw up or hurt the little
girl somehow.

Then, when he realized Linda actually
knew people here, he took her and Annie out of the apartment. He drove them
somewhere.

But the question was where.

I didn’t have the capability to track
someone like him, even with his white car and Missouri license plates. Ten days
was a long time.

And he could have taken her anywhere.

Except, Valentina told me that he had
been using his telephone.

He was in Madison, in his old stomping
grounds, and if we were lucky, Linda and Annie were still alive.

***

I didn’t break any speed limits heading
to Madison, but I wanted to. I wanted to get there as quickly as I could.

Had he kept her in Chicago, I would have
had options. I knew people in the police department, I had friends who worked
alongside me and could act as back-up. I even knew people who could have
discretely checked on the apartment and let me know he was inside.

The only person I knew in Madison was
Valentina. And I didn’t want to involve her. But I was beginning to think I
wasn’t going to have a choice.

Because I couldn’t see any good way for
this to play out.

Madison was a white town. I couldn’t just
barge into a white man’s apartment and demand that he hand over his wife. I
couldn’t call the police with my suspicions — and they couldn’t do
anything anyway. A man was entitled to treat his family anyway he liked. Only
when things got “out of hand” and the definition of that phrase varied from
police department to police department, could the police step in at all.

So as I drove, I tried to formulate a
plan, but I couldn’t come up with a good one.

I only hoped that Valentina’s friends
included someone other than the lady who worked for the phone company.

 
Because otherwise, I was about to make a
difficult situation worse.

***

Valentina’s hot line was housed in an old
church near Lake Mendota, not far from either the state capitol building or the
University of Wisconsin.

I knew better than to show up unannounced
at a hot line run primarily by women who dealt daily with rape. The last thing
they needed to see was a muscular, scarred black man pounding on the church
door. So I called ahead, leaving Valentina worried, but willing to open the hot
line’s doors for me.

Three cars were in the parking lot when I
showed up around ten. The church looked like it had once been a monstrosity of
the Protestant type — some stained windows, but not a lot of iconography.
A tasteful cross carved into the brick chimney, but little else besides the
building’s shape to even suggest it had once been a church.

Valentina was waiting outside, wrapped in
a parka that looked two sizes too big for her. She waved as I pulled up, then
shifted from foot to foot while I got out of the car.

The minute I stepped outside, I knew why
she was dressed so heavily. It was a lot colder here than it was in Chicago. There
was also a dusting of snow on the ground, visible under the church’s dome
light.

Valentina didn’t say hello.

“The fact that you’re here means something
bad is going on, doesn’t it, Smokey?”

“Yeah,” I said, since there was no reason
to lie. “Where can we go to talk about this?”

She led me inside and up a flight of
stairs into the former sanctuary. It smelled of freshly cut wood. She flicked a
light switch and a dozen overhead lights came on.

Instead of revealing church pews, a choir
loft, and an altar, the lights revealed piles of wood, several saws, and some
half built walls.

She waved a hand at it. “We need room for
women to stay overnight, and after what most of them have been through, we
can’t ask them to share a room like some kind of church shelter.”

“Overnight?” I asked as I stepped over a
pile of 2x4s.

“So many won’t go home after they’ve been
raped. They won’t go to the hospital, and they won’t see a friend, particularly
if they’ve been battered. Most don’t have money for a hotel room either.” She
ran a hand through her short hair. “Actually, it was Linda who gave me this
idea. She was so afraid of Duane.”

She let the words hang. We stopped near stairs
that had clearly once led to the altar. Someone had pulled the carpet off them,
and one of the stairs to my left had already been dismantled. But we sat on the
top step, surveying the work in progress.

“I take it the hot line itself is
somewhere else,” I said.

“In the basement,” she said. “I figured
it was best if my volunteers didn’t know what was going on.”

I nodded. As carefully as I could, I told
her what I had learned. I also told her that I had come to find Linda.

“You can’t go to that neighborhood at
night,” Valentina said.

“I can’t go period,” I said. “No one can
walk up to the door of that apartment and ask Duane Krag what he did with his
wife and daughter.”

Valentina rested her elbows on her knees.
To her credit, she didn’t say I told you so nor did she reprimand Helping Hands
for not searching for Linda sooner.

“What can we do?” she asked.

“We can’t do anything,” I said. “But I
need some information from you. Tell me about those apartments.”

She frowned for a moment. Then she said,
“They’re single story, low income housing.”

“Government built?”

“Yes, with Model Cities money,” she said,
citing one of the many Johnson era programs that Nixon had dismantled in his
first term. “They were built to look like row houses, so that each family could
feel like they had privacy.”

“But they’re attached?”

“Yes,” she said.

“They’re government buildings. They
should have fire alarms. Do they?”

She frowned. “It’s not something I
normally notice, and I was there three months ago, not really paying attention.
But the city is pretty anal about making sure every building follows code. This
place isn’t like Chicago at all. No one can buy off a building inspector.”

I nodded, hoping that was the case. “Then
the buildings have to have fire alarms. The trick is where.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “I’ll tell
you mine, if you tell me yours.”

“Done,” I said, and then told her what I
was planning.

***

Of course, she wouldn’t let me go alone. I
should have known that when I arrived outside the hot line building. I had forgotten
how stubborn Valentina could be.

“You have to do exactly what I tell you,”
I said as we drove to the apartment complex.

Madison at night was pretty deserted. On
the wide swatch of East Washington Avenue, I had only seen two other cars. I
drove underneath well tended street light after well tended street light, past
warehouses and buildings from the turn of the century.

No one could break into one of those
buildings without drawing some kind of attention, even though the streets were
empty.

“I will do exactly what you say, Smokey,”
Valentina said with some bemusement. “You don’t have to keep repeating that.”

“I just don’t want you hurt,” I said. “If
the cops show up, you have to get out. Is that clear?”

“I know a cop to call,” she said. “We’ll
be all right.”

I glanced at her. She was staring
straight ahead, the light playing across her face. The occasional shadows hid
the hollows in her cheeks and she looked a lot more like the woman I had met
four years ago.

“Is he one of your contacts?” I asked.

“I have to know everyone from police
officers to the best criminal attorneys,” she said. “I’m getting quite a list.”

I nodded. “Well, they’re not going to
like what we’re about to do.”

“Don’t like it,” she said. “I just don’t
see any other choice.”

Neither did I.

She gave me good directions to the
apartment complex. I drove past it once, to see it for myself.

It was already starting to look worn. The
hope that the city had placed in its low income housing had faded with the
Johnson Administration. But there were still things that made this place
unusual.

It had functioning lights over every
front door. Each apartment number was clearly marked. The sidewalks in front of
each apartment had been shoveled. None of the windows were boarded up, and none
had security bars either.

The lights were on in the Krags’ living
room. Someone had pulled the curtains against the outside, but I could see the
flickering shadows of a television set.

Someone was inside.

Which made me sigh with relief.

Just like driving past the building’s
side, and seeing a giant fire alarm built onto the outside wall.

“Looks like you were right,” I said to
Valentina.

“It was the only logical place,” she
said. “I’m going to have to run to pull two alarms.”

“It’s necessary,” I said. “I don’t want
him to think that we’ve targeted his building.”

“Okay,” she said. “Drop me off
here. The parking lot is —”

“I’m going to park in front of his
apartment,” I said.

“He’ll see you.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I know what
I’m doing.”

Unfortunately, I had snuck into
neighborhoods before. I knew how to do it, and do it well.

I dropped Valentina on the corner, then
went around the block. She was supposed to wait five minutes before she went
anywhere near that first alarm.

I hoped she listened.

As I got ready to turn back onto the
Krag’s street, I turned off the car’s lights and took my foot off the gas. I
coasted to a stop in front of his sidewalk, and shut off the ignition.

Then I unscrewed the dome light. I opened
the driver’s door as quietly as I could, and slipped out, careful not to close
the door too tightly.

Staying on the street, I walked around
the corner. There was no alarm on this side, but I didn’t expect one. The alarm
was on the other end of the building, hidden in that alcove between two
buildings.

I waited at the front corner of the
building, in the shadows so that I could see the street but no one could see
me.

Then an alarm clanged. It sounded very
far away.

Another followed. The second one was
deafening.

Valentina had been right; Madison’s low
income housing was up to code.

Now we’d see how long it took the fire
department to respond to a major fire.