The Fifth Floor (12 page)

“Nice lady,” Masters said. The waitress brought our coffee and the detective’s toast.

“Excuse me?”

“Your friend there. Judge Swenson. Nice lady.”

“About that. We need to keep tonight quiet. Especially the part about Rachel. Totally quiet.”

“Mum’s the word, Kelly.”

Masters buttered some toast and let his coffee cool. The frat boys shuffled into our diner and began asking for a table. One waitress brought me a plate of eggs while another took the college kids into the back. Masters watched them settle in and then returned to our conversation.

“The Bryant murder.”

“It’s a murder now?” I said.

“Whatever. Rodriguez told me you think this Chicago Fire connection is legit?”

“The more I look at it, the better it gets.”

The detective poured sugar into his coffee. Did it the old-fashioned way: held the spoon over his cup, filled it up with sugar, and then dropped it in. His hand holding the sugar shook a little. The spoon was worse. He finished with the coffee, stirred three or four times, and took a sip.

“Seems like you might be stepping on some toes downtown, Kelly.”

“That bother you?”

“Not at all.”

The detective’s response came too fast. Fear does that to a person. Does it to old reporters in Joliet. Does it to tough detectives in Chicago. The waitress wandered over and gave us a refill. Masters waited until she left before continuing.

“Thing is, I’m a year and a half from my twenty. Full pension. Wouldn’t want to screw that up.”

“I hear you.”

“Do you?”

“I think so. You don’t have to be in this, Masters. Same for Rodriguez.”

The detective gave a single nod and looked away. His face was still old-school. Square jaw, blue eyes, and a wire-brush police academy haircut. A cutout from a police recruiting poster circa 1970, one that had been put up on a wall and left there too long. Now it was curled at the corners and yellow, torn in too many places to count, and held together with pieces of dried-up tape.

“How you feeling, Dan?”

“I look like shit, right?”

I shrugged.

Masters slid a look across the booth. “What did Rodriguez tell you?”

“He told me you were going through a tough time.”

“Nothing else?”

“He seemed a little worried.”

That earned me a laugh. “Good.”

Chicago had passed a no-smoking ordinance for all its restaurants. I guess that didn’t include the detective’s Marlboros. He lit up and cupped his cigarette in his hand as he drew the cup of coffee to his lips.

“How’re the eggs?” he said.

“Awful.”

Masters nodded and exhaled smoke through his nose. It floated across the table in soft pillows. I inhaled as much as I could. Surgeon general be damned. I loved smoke: firsthand, secondhand. Didn’t matter much to me.

“Rodriguez didn’t tell you my story?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Rodriguez knows,” Masters said. “One of the only ones who does.”

“We don’t need to do this.”

It was too late. Dan Masters was ready to talk. And I was ready to listen. Whether I was ready or not.

“It was maybe six months ago.” Masters grimaced at the date and showed me all of his teeth for the first time. Middle-of-the-road caps, gums receding, edged in black.

“Actually, it was six months, four days, and”-the detective glanced down at his watch-“about four hours ago. I was supposed to work a double shift. At least, that’s what I thought. We have this duty roster for detectives. Swear the fucking thing is from the sixties. A bunch of colored magnets on a metal board. Tacked to a wall. Tells us our shifts. Sometimes the magnets don’t work so well. This was one of those times. A yellow magnet fell off and I thought I was doing a double. Working straight through till nine in the morning. I really got off at one.”

“So you got home earlier than you thought.”

“Earlier than my wife thought.”

Now I knew where this was going and liked it even less. Not after all that had already gone on. Not in the Tempo restaurant. Not at six in the morning.

“We had a nice place in Lincoln Square. One of those new developments near Welles Park. You know the place?”

“Sure.”

“So I got home at a little after two. We lived on the second floor. I figured Michelle would be sleeping so I was quiet coming up the stairs.”

Masters took another sip of coffee. The waitress came by with the bill. He waited for her to leave.

“You know what I remember most, Kelly?”

“What’s that?”

“You remember your wife, the wife you’ve had for twenty-two years. Saying some guy’s name. Saying it like she meant it. That’s what you remember. That’s when you step outside of yourself and realize your life will never be the same. Realize this’ll be it, the sounds, the smells, the moment by which everything else will be reckoned. Your life happened before or after this moment. Nothing else matters. Everything else pales.”

The detective twisted a wedding ring on his left hand. Except there was no ring there. Just a patch of pale white skin where the gold used to be.

“What’d you do, Dan?”

Masters took a final draw on his cigarette, until the red cinders scorched his lips. Or at least it seemed that way. Then he dropped the remains into his cup.

“That’s what Rodriguez asked me. ‘What’d you do?’ Must be a cop thing. Thinking about the gun.”

Masters thumped his weapon onto the table. It was a heavy thing, forty caliber, blue steel, covered in a rich coat of oil. A weapon that was cared for, ready to go.

“I stood in the kitchen,” Masters said, “and listened. Michelle and the guy were still in the bedroom. I had the gun in my hand. Looking at the door. Thinking about going through it. Then I just got cold inside. Walked back down the stairs. Sat in my car until he left. It was a little after five in the morning. I gave her another ten minutes and then I went in. She took one look and knew. Never said a word. Just started to cry.”

Before I could respond, there was another noise. The college kids again. Screaming for their orders. Masters closed his eyes. He had a couple of days’ growth of gray coloring his cheeks. A small muscle twitched along the line of his jaw, and he opened his eyes again.

“I sat down at the kitchen table and put my arms around her. She still loved me, but that wasn’t going to carry the day and we both knew it. After a while, she stopped crying. Asked if I wanted any breakfast. I said no. She asked if I wanted to sleep. I said no. Never went in that bedroom again.”

He looked across the diner at the college kids and kept talking.

“Later that day we went downtown and filed papers. Two months after that, we were divorced. I gave her everything. Really, all we had was the condo, but it was no good to me.”

“Where do you live now?”

“LaSalle Street. One of those furnished jobs.”

“How is it?”

Masters shrugged. “What do you think? Excuse me for a minute.”

One of the frat boys had made his way to the waitress station. He was wearing a collared shirt under a cranberry-colored sweater and a pair of tan chinos. The waitress asked him to go back to his seat. The kid wanted to talk about an order of pancakes. She told him to go back to his seat again and turned away. He wasn’t used to being ignored. Certainly not by the help.

He’d just put a hand on the girl when Masters arrived. A cuff to the back of the head knocked the kid against the wall and to the ground. Before anyone could move, Masters had back pressure on the kid’s wrist. He was on his knees and swearing up a storm. Masters increased pressure on the wrist, a practical demonstration in how the cooperation-to-pain ratio worked. The kid wasn’t dumb and decided to shut up. The rest of the frat boys were nailed to their seats. No heroes there. I wandered over. Just in case.

“These guys pay their bill?” Masters spoke to the waitress, who hovered somewhere between the kitchen and hysteria. She fumbled in a pocket on her apron and came out with a slip of paper.

“I was just about to give it to them.”

Masters shooed her along with a wave of his free hand. “Get the money, ma’am.”

She moved forward. A suddenly sober trio in the booth threw some bills at her. I guess their buddy on the ground was going to get a free meal. Seemed only fair.

“You got it?” the detective said. The waitress nodded. Masters released the kid, who hadn’t uttered another word. Probably an honors student.

“Now, the four of you, get your coats on and get the fuck out of here. Not just this place. This neighborhood.”

Masters shoved a thumb my way.

“This guy’s a police officer. He sees you around here, it’s in the back of the cruiser. Now get out. And I don’t want to hear a word from any of you.”

Two minutes later, we were back inside our booth, the frat boys just a memory.

“They’re okay,” Masters grumbled. “Just young and drunk. Nothing wrong with that.”

Our check still lay on the table. In a green leather binder with tempo in gilt-edged lettering across the front.

“Let me get this,” Masters said, and stuffed some money into the binder. The waitress tried to refuse, but the detective insisted.

“Sorry for the sad story, Kelly. Not sure why that all came up.”

“You going to be all right?” I said.

“Day at a time. I remember now why I told you.”

“Why?”

“You like being alone?”

I shrugged. “Don’t think too much about it.”

“You should. Not something you want to get used to. The judge is a good lady. Something else you should think about.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The good ones are hard to spot. Even harder to keep. You need to try harder.”

We walked outside and stopped at the corner. Masters offered me a ride home, but I said I wanted to walk for a bit.

“Suit yourself,” Masters said, his breath steaming in the early morning chill. “Keep me in the loop. On the City Hall thing.”

“Gonna pay a visit to the Fifth Floor,” I said. “Take a meeting with Johnny Woods. Probably this week.”

The detective nodded and unlocked his car. “Just keep me in the loop.”

Masters pulled away from the curb and drove three blocks, to his furnished apartment on LaSalle Street. He’d lock himself inside and pour out a glass or four of happy morning gin. Day would dwindle into night. He’d read the paper, watch TV, and wonder whatever happened to the girl he knew named Michelle. He might go out for dinner. Probably not. Easier to cook something from a can. Then he’d get into bed, close his eyes, and sleep. Only to get up tomorrow and do it all over again.

I felt for Masters. Decided I needed to keep closer tabs on him. Then I thought about my apartment. My own life. Maybe not quite as empty. Not yet, anyway.

T he fifth floor of City Hall looked a lot like the fourth and even more like the sixth. The difference lingered in the shadows. There you could catch a glimpse of ambition, the faintest whiff of avarice, and the footsteps of those who curried favor. Sometimes lost, sometimes won, but always curried. Because that’s what the Fifth Floor was all about. A court of intrigue, inside a building of stone and a city of red blood and muscle. At its center sat the only door along the entire hallway that mattered. A plain and simple door. Brown and wooden. The exact same door closed off the Office of the Bureau of Planning on the fourth floor and the Assistant Commissioner of Water on the sixth. Here on the fifth floor there was no such ornate title. Just simple letters, gold leaf, five in all, hammered into the wood with tenpenny nails. Five letters that spelled mayor. Anyone who needed any more of an introduction to this door need not bother stepping through its crooked portal.

I got off the elevator and turned left, away from the door and down the hall. There, if you knew how to find it, was an archway of sorts, leading into a cubbyhole that was more hole than cubby. A green metal desk was pushed up against a beige wall. The desk’s occupant had his back to me and was leaning over a filing cabinet.

“Hey, Willie,” I said.

The mayor’s unofficial assistant straightened up and spoke without turning. “It’s not who I think it is.”

“Turn around,” I said.

“Be happy to. Once I hear your boots backing down the hallway.”

I took the only seat available, a folding job with one leg that was missing its rubber stopper, and tilted back.

“Nice chair, Willie. Come on. Turn around. You know I’m not going anywhere. Or maybe you’d rather I pay Himself a visit.”

Willie Dawson turned and looked. Not in a way that made me feel fuzzy and infused with civic warmth.

“Kelly.”

“Willie.”

I hadn’t seen Willie in more than a while. Time had not been unkind. Mostly because it didn’t need to be. Willie Dawson was somewhere between forty and dead. His skin was black to the point of shiny and stretched tight over his skull. He was mostly bald and specialized in dandruff, a blizzard of white flakes drifting down onto his shoulders, desk, and environs. Environs now including me.

On most days the layer of scurf only enhanced Willie’s wardrobe. Today was no exception. His suit was light brown, of the leisure variety, and worn through in all the proper places. His shirt was yellow, although I doubt its hue was of natural origin. His tie smacked of maroon, with little yellow figurines on it. I squinted and the figurines morphed into Marilyn Monroe. For the first and probably last time during my visit, Willie smiled.

“Sure it’s Marilyn. Like it, huh? Actually I can plug it in and she takes her clothes off. But, you know.”

Willie looked around. I nodded. Willie actually wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, he was a good guy. Good as in connected. In fact, if you dressed like Willie did, there was more than bad taste behind it. It was Willie’s way of telling all the Giorgio Armanis to park their asses and pay attention. Simply put, if Willie could dress like that and still carry water to the mayor…well, Willie could carry water to the mayor.