The Fifth Floor (5 page)

“See why you’re such a popular fellow?”

“Woods didn’t have anything to do with it, Rodriguez. He was just there. Like me.”

“Not quite. You followed him to Hudson. But he went there for a reason. Maybe not to kill anybody. But he went there for a reason.”

“So what are you guys going to do?”

“Us? Leave it the fuck alone.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. Mostly because I don’t want to wind up with a kilo of cocaine in the trunk of my car some night.”

“Downtown can play rough.”

“You know better than most.” Rodriguez lifted an eyebrow. “Besides, I got a secret weapon.”

“You think I can’t resist taking a shot at this?”

“Am I wrong?”

I shrugged. “Probably not.”

“Here’s the deal,” Rodriguez said. “You take a look at the Bryant thing. Quietly.”

“And if it goes sideways?”

“I’ll cover what I can. Until we find out what’s going on, however, it all stays out of the press.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But let me ask you something. Why the interest? I mean, why get involved at all?”

We had stopped in front of my car. Rodriguez slid a foot onto the bumper and watched traffic fight its way down Belmont. It was early April in Chicago, and I could see the cop’s breath as he spoke.

“You know why, Kelly. It’s what she’d want us to do. Or at least try.”

Nicole Andrews had been part of Rodriguez’s life as well. The love he waited for, only to never have. I’d had more time with her. A childhood’s worth and that would have to do.

“I’ll take a look, Detective. But I don’t think the Fifth Floor is behind this.”

“Maybe not. But they’re worried about something. Been around long enough to know that.”

“The Chicago Fire? Eighteen seventy-one? Seems like a long time ago to be killing folks.”

“Do me a favor. Just take a look.”

I agreed and we shook hands. Then I got in my car and pulled out of the police parking lot. As cops go, Rodriguez was a good one. Straight shooter and good instincts. This time, however, he was wrong. People murder people for just a very few reasons: money, jealousy, revenge, power. They all make sense. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871? Not so much.

I took a left and headed east on Belmont. Rodriguez needed a vacation. A little R amp; R. I’d give his hunch a day or two and tell him there was nothing there. Then I’d move on to more pressing issues. Like how to get Johnny Woods to stop beating up his wife.

T he Chicago Historical Society sits just off Lake Michigan, at the corner of Clark Street and North Avenue. I walked in with the midmorning senior citizen crowd. The lady at the wooden desk in front had volunteer written all over her. She was twenty years past her prime, with enough money to make it not matter. She wore a black wool suit with big gold buttons, black pumps, and a red silk scarf with black horses and yellow chunks of chain on it.

Bolted just above her head was a set of massive radiators belching steam and pouring heat onto an unsuspecting public. The volunteer, however, refused to let it spoil her day in the city. She smiled and waved me over.

“A bit hot, isn’t it?” She fanned herself with a society booklet.

“Just a little,” I said.

She was beyond perspiring and now openly sweating. Her face was florid, except for her cheeks, which made florid seem pale.

“I was going to get a bottle of water,” I said. “Would you like one?”

“Oh, no, thanks. I’m off in ten minutes. My girlfriends are coming down.”

She pointed over to the Big Shoulders Cafй. It stood at one end of the building, next to a second stack of radiators that looked like something out of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

“We’re going to have lunch at the Big Shoulders.”

I guessed that was a big treat in the big city. Why else would someone eat chicken salad at 200 degrees Fahrenheit? Of course, I was talking to a mature woman of about sixty years who talked about her girlfriends like they had just gotten out of high school home ec. Anyway, I liked her. Even better, I needed her help.

“I’m looking to do some research on the Chicago Fire,” I said.

“That’s one of our specialties,” she whispered.

“I know,” I whispered back. “That’s why I’m here. On the Q.T. I’m with the Tribune. We’re hoping to scoop the Sun-Times. Maybe I shouldn’t say any more.”

If it were possible for florid to fluoresce, the volunteer’s face did exactly that.

“Got it.” She winked. “We have an entire section of our library devoted to the fire. By the way, my name is Teen.”

I shook her hand.

“Teen?”

“Short for Kathleen. A friend gave it to me in high school. Just sort of stuck. I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

“Michael. Michael Kelly.”

“Irish. How nice. I’m Irish too. My grandfather hailed from Cork.”

I didn’t know where my grandfather hailed from-besides a barstool inside an old Clark Street boozer called the Stop and Drink. So I made something up.

“That’s nice,” Teen said. “Now, it’s the fire, right?”

I nodded. She pointed up a swirling staircase to a glass door with research library stenciled across it.

“The best place to start is with our research staff.”

She wrote me out a pass and I trudged upward.

TEEN WAS TRUE to her word. Fifteen minutes later, I was knee deep in abstracts, clippings, and journals from the fire. It all seemed highly entertaining, not to mention highly irrelevant, when the volunteer approached again.

“How was the Big Shoulders?” I said.

“Well…”

Teen looked around like someone was listening so I looked around too. She looked back and we bumped heads.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay. Happens all the time in the journalism game.”

“I told the girls I was going to skip lunch.”

Teen pulled out a handkerchief embroidered with her initials and dabbed at her face.

“I wanted to come up and share something with you,” she said.

I waited. She waited. So I smiled.

“Okay,” she said. “There was another man here. I’m not sure who he was. But he was also interested in the fire.”

“Place like this,” I said, “must get a lot of people interested in the fire.”

“Not like him.” She peeked around again. “He looked dangerous.”

“Dangerous, huh?”

Teen nodded as if we were on the same page. I was thinking maybe I could take her in as a partner. She could be like the lady in Murder, She Wrote and I’d be her dumb assistant.

“He asked for access to the green room,” she said.

“Which is?”

“Where we keep our historical accounts of the fire and primary source materials. Not the abstracts.”

“You mean the real letters and all that good stuff?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Would Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire be in the green room?”

The mention of Mr. Sheehan seemed to agitate my new friend. “The other man asked about that book.”

“The dangerous one?”

“Yes.”

“You remember anything else about this man?”

Teen shrugged. “He was big.”

“And dangerous?”

“Yes, dangerous. He wore sunglasses. Kind of hard to get a look at him.”

“Did he have hair?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He wore a hat. One of those stocking hats. Very warm.”

“Did he sign in? On a logbook or anything?”

Teen shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. Why? Is he another reporter?”

I smiled again. “Sounds like it.”

“Do you want to see our Sheehan’s?” my new friend said.

“Is it in the green room?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Seems only fair.”

Teen stood up, straightened herself, and led the way. I followed.

T he green room was exactly that: green rug, green drapes, and dark green wallpaper. With a light thread of green running through it. Wooden carrels ran down one side of the room. Each had a banker’s lamp, gold plated with a green glass shade. Interspersed among the carrels were leather reading chairs, green, of course, with silver studs stitched down the sides and along the armrests.

Floor-to-ceiling stacks ran down the other side of the room and contained, presumably, the collected wisdom of Chicago’s history. I walked down one of the aisles and pulled out a file on the Eastland Steamer. In 1915 it capsized on the Chicago River, found the bottom in fewer than three minutes, and killed 844. I slid that bit of tragedy back onto its shelf and moved over to the Chicago Fire.

The volunteer had left to find the curator. That’s what she called her boss: curator. I figured, Hell with the curator. If he really wanted to curate, he’d be here. Ten minutes later, I had the first set of files on the fire open when someone stepped across my light. I turned.

“The curator, I presume.”

He gave me a once-over like only a man who kept files for a living could. The badge on his lapel read lawrence randolph. Like it or not, the curator now had a name.

“Why would you want to do any original research?” he said.

“It’s a calling. You know, like the phone call you get in your head when you’re supposed to become a priest.”

Randolph just stared.

“Didn’t go to Catholic school, huh?” I said.

“The material here is extremely fragile. Delicate. And some of it, highly sensitive.”

“That’s what I want. The highly sensitive part.”

Randolph had a head that could have passed for a thumb had it not been for the ears. He plucked a pair of spectacles off the bridge of what he most likely called a nose and began to polish.

“I really don’t see this working,” he said.

“It’s about a murder.”

It usually does the trick. Most likely does the trick. In this case, definitely did the trick. The glasses went back on the nose and the flat expanse of face drew down just the slightest hue of pink.

“A real murder?”

“Sure.” I flipped out my ID. “I lied to your assistant. I’m actually a private investigator. Working a case. Dead guy’s name was Allen Bryant. Did a lot of research on the fire. Maybe you heard of him?”

Randolph shook his head.

“Not your century, huh?”

Another shake of the head.

“Okay. Anyway, this book popped up. Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire.”

“Timothy Sheehan?” Randolph scuttled down an aisle. Rows of books towered on either side. I scuttled after him.

“The definitive work on the fire,” he said, and stopped before a particularly imposing shelf. “Move out of the way.”

I barely had time before a ladder, set into a metal track on the floor, came whirring down the aisle. Randolph had summoned it via a button built into the framework near my head.

“Pretty neat there,” I said.

Randolph clambered up the ladder and came down with the tome. It was old and blue with gold lettering on the cover: Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire by Timothy Sheehan.

“You got a lot of copies of this?” I asked.

“That’s a first edition.”

“Tell me what’s so special about a first edition?”

“Nothing. Just worth more money.”

The private investigator in me caught the faintest whiff of a motive.

“How much money?” I intrepidly asked.

“Sheehan’s was published in 1886. They offered a very limited first printing.”

The curator flipped open the cover. On the inside was the number 12 embossed in red.

“Each one is numbered. One through twenty.”

“Just twenty of ’em, huh?”

“That’s right. There is at least one other first edition in the Chicago area. Not entirely sure about ownership, but I believe it’s in private hands.”

I didn’t tell Randolph that his private hands were now dead. Might make him nervous, and I didn’t need that.

“The scarcity of copies,” Randolph said, “obviously makes each first edition worth a considerable amount.”

Randolph talked about money like it was a dirty secret. I figured I’d do the same.

“What’s considerable?” I whispered.

“Two, three hundred dollars.”

My motive suddenly didn’t smell so good.

“You think someone got killed over a first edition of Sheehan’s History of the Chicago Fire?” Randolph said.

“You don’t buy it either.”

“I don’t see why,” he said.

I considered the book, then moved my eyes back to Randolph.

“If you were me, what would you do?”

The curator looked at the book. Then he looked at me. “I’d read it.”

So that’s what I did. I was on page fifty when Randolph was there again. At my shoulder. The smell of fine and dusty typeface was heavy upon him. Or maybe it was just booze.

“You been drinking?” I said.

Randolph blinked.

“I just got to the part about the watchman,” I said.

Two blinks. I took that as a good sign and continued.

“Mathias Shafer, age forty. He’s sitting up in the city’s watchtower on the night of the fire. Sees a bit of smoke. Rings down to the boy. Let’s see…”

I consulted my Sheehan’s.

“Boy by the name of Billy Brown. Stop me if you already know all this. Billy is down in the business part of the tower. The part where all the alarms are. He’s got his girl down there. Playing the guitar for her and-well, you can figure out the rest.”

Randolph took off his bifocals and wiped them down.

“That’s right, you got it,” I said. “Billy pulls the wrong alarm and continues with the wooing. That’s what they called it back then. Wooing. Same deal, just a better name. Anyway, a half hour or so goes by and Shaffer notices the bit of smoke is now a lot of smoke and a bit of fire. He calls down to Billy again. Tells him he pulled the wrong alarm. Billy zips himself up and says, No worries, boss, I’ll get right to it. Except he doesn’t get right to it. Another half hour goes by before the city gets its fire engines where they need to be. By then-hell, it was too late, wasn’t it?”