Memorial Bridge (13 page)

They walked side by side down a long corridor. The gleaming brown linoleum, splashed with light from ceiling fixtures, made Cass feel better. Stout wooden benches sat against one wall. The other wall was divided at intervals by doors with carefully lettered numbers and nameplates. At the end of the corridor, Dillon led the way into the office marked simply "Dean." At the sight of that word, Cass felt her racing pulse ease up somewhat, but then she found herself confronted by a white-haired secretary.

As Dillon talked to the woman, Cass's eyes went automatically to the crucifix on the wall behind the secretary's desk, and all at once she ached for the cool, hushed consolation of shadowy St. Gabe's. That church had always been her heart's one refuge; and God's too, she thought, where if He was condemned to claw at His nails, at least He could do so before people on their knees instead of behind surly clerks ignoring Him for their typewriters and telephones. By the time the dean greeted them, Cass's anxiety was peaking like a fever. The sight of his kind eyes above his crisp priest's collar broke it, and she felt at once that now things would be all right.

Dillon's reaction as they entered the dean's office was different, for what he saw were not Father Ferrick's kind eyes, but the blue uniform, all braids and stars, of a senior Chicago policeman standing stiffly
beside the desk. Instead of taking him as the trustworthy figure of the help they needed, Dillon held back. "C.P.D."—the silver letters rode cockily on the man's collar. And Dillon thought of the cop in Doran's tavern, whose main function—an act of pure boss-protection—had' been to squelch Jack Hanley's panic-driven ranting about Raymond Buckley.

"This is Deputy Superintendent Eddie Kane," Father Ferrick said, "an old friend of mine." The priest winked at the cop, a showy affirmation.

After the introductions they sat, the priest behind his desk, the policeman on an adjacent wooden chair, Sean and Cass on the cracked leather couch against the wall. Sean sat forward over his knees, aching to say what Doc Riley had found, but listening also to the warning voice in his head which said, Go slow.

Father Ferrick's gray eyes came gently to rest on the young woman. "I am sorry for your family's trouble, Miss Ryan."

"Thank you, Father."

"How's your aunt?"

"She's holding up."

"Would you tell her that I offered Mass for Mr. Foley this morning? I'll be making the novena for him."

"I will, Father." Cass dropped her head. "Thank you."

Dillon sensed a concentration of feeling in the priest that he had never noticed before; how the old man was flowing toward her. Dillon thought what a rare thing it was for the Jesuit to have such a woman in his presence. Then he thought, glancing at her, what a rare thing for me.

The policeman said, "It's terrible, what happened to your uncle."

That heartfelt acknowledgment made Dillon chastise himself for his initial reticence. The yards have gotten to me; this cop is Father Ferrick's friend. What else do I need to know about him?

When the policeman looked at him, Dillon saw his gaze harden. "Father tells me you're the one who puts two and two together here."

Dillon weighed the moment, having to decide once again to go forward. He said carefully, "Mr. Foley was murdered by Raymond Buckley. Do you know who he is?"

Kane's eyelids dropped, becoming hoods. "I know of him. That's quite a charge you've leveled. But does it make sense? A well-connected party boss brutally killing some nobody? As I'm given to understand it, this Foley was hardly..." He shrugged awkwardly, aware suddenly that
this "nobody" was the man for whom he'd just expressed his sympathy. Truth was, his sympathy was for the girl. "...in a position to cause a man like Buckley a lot of trouble."

"Buckley is a usurer," Dillon said. "It's how he started out, and he's still at it. He crawls all over men like Foley. His system depends—"

"A what?"

"A loan shark."

"That's not the sort of thing you say about a man like Raymond Buckley unless you can prove it."

"Would a loan ledger constitute proof?" Dillon paused, then added, "A full record of principal and interest payments on dozens of loans, including a set to a man named M. Foley?"

"And where would I get such a thing, Mr. Dillon?"

"In the top right-hand drawer of the desk in the office of Buckley's iron company on South Bryant. On page two-seventeen of the ledger you will find Foley's name, and next to it a scrawl of arithmetic, the number five followed by seven hash marks. Foley had missed his interest payment seven times running. At seven Buckley's collection agents get very serious."

"Which means what?"

"As you stand facing that desk there is a file cabinet to the left. It's on wheels and rolls out easily. You'll find a section of wall that has an iron ring embedded in it at the perfect height for shackling a man. When Jack Hanley and I hauled Foley's body out of the blood pit, the flesh on his back was shredded. He'd been flogged." Dillon nearly choked on a feeling of revulsion, that such an image had anything to do with him. "You go to Buckley's office now, and you'll find a long-handled leather whip like the drovers use in the yards. It's in the bottom drawer of that file. I saw it there last night."

Eddie Kane grimaced at the Jesuit. "Don't you teach these guys over here that breaking and entering is against the law?"

"I didn't break. I used a key."

"Where the hell did you get a key?"

"From the watchman's belt. He was asleep. He is a Chicago police officer who works at Buckley's place in uniform."

"You have his badge number?"

"Nine-three-seven."

Kane had to deflect the feeling that he'd fallen too far behind this guy
to get in front again. He shook his head. "Loan sharks don't kill people. What they want is to get paid."

"I think Mike Foley would be alive, but he fought them when he felt that lash on his skin. He broke away from the thugs and jumped the man in charge."

"You're still miles from Buckley. So some punks in his organization use the junkyard to squeeze oranges on the side. Buckley wouldn't go near the rough stuff himself."

"He must like to watch, because he was there, all right. When Foley jumped the man in charge, it was Raymond Buckley. They became locked in a death struggle with each other. I know that for a fact."

"Were you there, or have you talked to someone who was?"

"No."

"Then would it be too much to ask how you know that?"

Dillon glanced at Cass. She had laced her fingers together, was staring at them. He wanted her to look his way, to indicate she was all right with this.

As if she'd read his mind, Cass looked at him then with an unshaken expression, which he read as, This is
my
breaking loose from Buckley's thugs,
my
fighting back.

Right, Dillon said to himself, and he faced the policeman again. "The Foley family had a doctor examine the corpse. He found a piece of a human ear in Foley's throat. The court will find in checking it that that piece matches what's missing from Raymond Buckley's ear."

"Good God!" Father Ferrick's head jolted backward in disgust.

Kane asked calmly, "What doctor?"

Dillon calculated: the police could easily identify him by asking the undertaker. It gave away nothing to tell Kane now. "Dr. Richard Riley, head of the stockyards dispensary."

"And where's the ... specimen?"

"He has it."

"What's the coroner's—?"

"The coroner knows nothing about this. The coroner is on Buckley's list." At that, Dillon reached into his jacket. He handed a piece of unlined yellow paper to Kane. "I copied these names from another ledger in Buckley's office, one labeled 'Special Friends.' You'll see the Cook County coroner's name two thirds of the way down the second column." Dillon gave him a moment to read, then added, "Your name isn't there. If it was, we wouldn't be talking to you."

"Most of these people run for office—aldermen, ward committeemen, judges." The policeman dropped the paper on Father Ferrick's desk. "The coroner runs for office. Buckley solicits contributions for the party. A list like this means nothing. In fact, most of what you've said means very little in a court of law, where you'd have to back up the very serious charge you've made."

The priest had picked up the list, was perusing it, and said now with studied offhandedness, "Come on, Eddie. A piece of one man inside another?" He looked up sharply to fix his friend with a stare. "Your crack surveillance unit should be able to determine if Mr. Buckley's ear is missing."

"Even if it is—"

"It is," Dillon said. "Buckley's right ear is heavily bandaged. That and everything else I've said is easily verified. You could have the warrants you need by lunch. Then you could force a formal inquest. The coroner would have to call his jury. That's step one. They rule for homicide, and then the grand jury has to take it. We bypass the men on Buckley's list."

The superintendent hesitated, glancing at Father Ferrick for support. The Jesuit stared back at him impassively. When at last the priest spoke, it was as if to a mulish student. "What seems to be the problem, Eddie?"

Kane's eyes had softened. "What's that saying, Father? About taking on the king?"

" 'When you strike at a king, you must kill him.' Holmes."

"That's the one."

"Buckley's no king," Dillon said. "He's a Canaryville thug."

"Maybe." Kane picked up the yellow paper, showing more interest in it now than before. "But he's a thug with friends. Who says this is the whole list?"

"It surely isn't."

The cop looked up at Dillon. "So I could be on it after all."

"Yes."

"But I'm not." He folded the list and put it into his coat. "And neither are the people I depend on." He stood up. "South Bryant, you said."

"That's right."

Cass startled them all by standing up abruptly. "Can I say something?"

"Certainly." The policeman took a step toward her, as if to catch her when she fainted.

But Cass Ryan wasn't fainting. "My uncle was a 'nobody,' as you put it. But not to us, he wasn't."

"Of course not. You—"

Cass raised her hand. "I'm a nobody too. But I'm not invisible. That I haven't spoken here doesn't mean that I'm invisible. My uncle was invisible, and you think he might as well stay that way. Raymond Buckley is who you see, and the list of his powerful partners. I saw your eyes widen as you read it. You
see
those people; they are the opposites of 'nobody.' Well, now you have to see me too. I'm not disappearing until you punish him. Do you hear me?" Cass had closed the space between them. Her face was level with the policeman's broad chin, pressing up at him. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am." It seemed to take his entire effort not to back up. He had misunderstood. He'd thought the man was the one with the dogged will. Now he saw they both were. "Yes, ma'am, I hear you."

Only a few blocks away, across the river and outside the Loop proper, past the Water Tower and the Wrigley Building and the
Trib,
just beyond the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive, was the Oak Street Beach. The calm waters of the lake lapped at the crescent of sand like a pet's tongue. The beach was thinly populated, despite the warmth of the bright morning. On a weekend, it would be crowded with thousands of Chicagoans, but today only ladies from the nearby luxury apartments had spread their blankets. A few jobless men in tattered suitcoats and scruffy street shoes, as isolated from each other as from the privileged bathers, walked along the packed sand or sat on the edge of the boardwalk. A ranting old scavenger woman tugged at a battered baby carriage that was loaded down with scraps, the wheels rattling the planks of the boardwalk.

When the old woman had passed, Dillon broke their long silence. "Do you ever come here?"

They had been walking steadily since leaving Loyola, but with no destination. Their purpose had become, apparently, the simple one of not stopping. Now, on the boardwalk, their footsteps sounded loud to Dillon, like the questions in his mind.

"I did," Cass said, "when the boys were younger, before they could come without me."

What about now? he wanted to ask. Do you go to the beach? Do you
go to the movies? Dillon had taken careful note of her friends, men and women who had rallied to her during the wake. Mostly they had looked like telephone operators and clerks, chums from St. Gabe's, neighbors. She was the center of a lively, affectionate circle. It hadn't closed around her for the funeral itself, though. Perhaps because of her role inside her family as the strong daughter on whom both her mother and her aunt leaned—in the church they literally had leaned—her friends had kept their distance. No man had taken her arm or touched her shoulder reassuringly.

"What about you?"

"Not in years," he said. "Though when I was a kid, I used to come down here on Monday mornings to collect the milk bottles out of the trash baskets."

Cass stopped abruptly and faced him with an expression of pure shock. "You did that?"

Dillon thought he was being accused of something. What, of being poor? "Yes, I did."

"So did I." Her face broke into the largest grin. "I collected bottles one whole summer."

Dillon laughed. "I never saw you." He remembered how the boys and girls going from trash barrel to trash barrel had refused to look at each other. It was hard to imagine it now, when everyone took the Depression so for granted, but poverty had once been a dirty secret. The milk bottle collectors at the Oak Street Beach a decade and a half before had been like first friends, even if they never spoke to one another. "Then we got our jobs." Dillon was still laughing. "You did better than I did."

"No, I didn't."

"You got out of Canaryville."

"Just during the day. I go back at night, like the birds."

"Those are sparrows, the birds at twilight. Not canaries."

"Do you know about the canaries, though? What gave the place its name?"

"Sure." The English sparrows eating seeds from cow shit. Was she going to refer to that unseemly part of their native lore?