Trip Wire (4 page)

“Your mother’s in Connecticut, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought Connecticut was a place for people with a lot of money. But Wilt said you’re not rich. He said your mom was working class and she raised you by herself.”

“She did. Well, not exactly. My brother kind of raised me, too.”

“You liked him a lot, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

I realized too late how dumb it was of me to ask about Cliff’s brother, Cary, who had been killed in Vietnam last year. Still raw from the loss, Cliff would sometimes watch the evening news coverage of the war in fascinated disgust until he could take it no more. Then he would get up and leave. Mia said a couple of times she heard him crying in his room.

Desperate to change the subject now, I asked, “Did Barry leave?”

“No. Where’s he gonna go? Nobody wants him.”

“Did you see Jordan?”

“Not yet. I wish I could bring him over here, but I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“Yeah. Better not.”

“I’m gonna go to Crash and Bev’s, see if he’s okay. The police have been there asking him questions.”

“About us.”

“Yeah. And those two assholes are mad at him for bringing heat into their house. Like the cops don’t know they’re idiot junkies.”

Cliff continued to hold the milkshake for me, as if I were an invalid. I was sucking up the last drops when Taylor came in to tell me Nat Joffrey was on the line.

I figured Nat was worried about me. “I’m not here,” I said. Making truth out of the lie, I told Cliff, “I’m coming with you. Let’s go.” And I grabbed my bag and coat.

I hated Nat. I knew it wasn’t fair, but, just for five seconds, I let myself hate him.

I snatched the front door open, frantic to get away. I can’t imagine anything in the world that could have halted my forward motion other than what I spotted out of the corner of my eye. The silver peace sign that hung from the giant ring that held Wilton’s keys. There it was on one of the pegs of the coatrack. I snatched it off and kept right on going.

I took the stairs two and three at a time, leaving Cliff behind.

I knew how that goddamn conversation with Nat would have gone. I’d sooner be buried alive than endure his fatherly solicitude now. No matter what kind words he might have had for me, the real message behind them would have been “I told you so.” And if he’d dared suggest that Wilton somehow brought this terrible violence down on himself, I’d have gone over there and broken something over De Lawd’s woolly head.

4

“Jordan’s father. Why do they call him Crash?”

“I don’t know,” Cliff said. “I guess it’s something he thought was cool to call himself.”

“You know what?” I said. “I know they’re terrible parents and Jordan would rather be with you than live with them. But he must talk to them sometimes, right?”

“Talk about what?”

“About what he sees at the commune. He’s seen Barry with a lot of dope, right? Maybe he’s seen him with a wad of money, too. You think he could have told Crash and Bev stuff like that?”

“They’re behind what happened to Mia and Wilt? Is that what you’re thinking? What—they broke in, tied up Wilt like that, tried to get him to tell them where this big wad of money was?”

“Look, Cliff. Like you’re always saying, they’re asshole junkies . . . end of story.”

“Yeah. Okay. But they’re too stupid to do anything like that. And too strung out.”

“Maybe. But what if they pump the kid for information and then sell it—like snitches—to other addicts who’re more together than they are? Maybe they tip off people which apartments are easy to break into, who’s holding a supply of pills or grass or whatever.”

He shook his head. “I don’t see it, Sandy. I don’t see Jordan telling them much of anything. He’s pretty cool for his age. And besides that, he barely even talks to me. Can’t you see what a fucked-up kid he is?”

No point in ringing the doorbell at Crash and Bev’s place. It probably hadn’t worked in years. What you did was stand on the sidewalk and yell their names until one of them heard you and came to the window. The key was then tossed down in a filthy sock.

It was Jordan who threw the window up and looked down at us. His eyes were big and terrified.

Cliff hurried up the stairs. “What’s the matter?” he said as soon as the boy opened the apartment door.

Bev, his mother, lay shivering on the couch, eyes way back in her head, her lips cracked and sore-looking. She was trying to talk, but only croaks came out.

“Shit,” I said, “you think she overdosed?”

“I don’t think so.” Cliff placed his palm on her forehead. “She’s sick, though. Got a real fever.”

And she stinks, I thought as I pulled the stiff army blanket at the foot of the couch up around her shoulders.

“It’s freezing in here,” I said.

“Jordan, get some matches,” Cliff ordered. “See if the space heater works, Sandy.”

“I hope they paid the gas bill,” I said.

I got the heat working and then found a packet of dry soup mix, not happy about rooting around in their nasty cabinets. I boiled water and brought the hot drink over to the couch.

Bev could sit up a little by then. No light in her eyes, but even in the ruin of her thin face you saw how pretty she must have been once. She sure wasn’t interested in that chicken soup, but she was too weak to lift her arm and push the cup away from her lips.

I took the cup away from her mouth for a minute and was startled when she spoke. “Still trying to heal me, huh?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. She began to slide back onto the sofa cushion, eyes flickering.

“Something happen to your mom, Jordan?” Cliff asked. “How long has she been sick?”

He was standing in a corner of the room, back to the wall. All he did was shake his head.

“Where’s Crash?” Cliff said.

“I don’t know. He went out.”

“She looks awful, Cliff,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“. . . sweet girl . . . ,” Bev mumbled. “Only ones who ever help us out, you and that Indian man of yours. He’s fine.”

Cliff and I looked at each other. “Indian. You think she’s talking about Dan?”

“She must be delirious,” he said. “She thinks you’re Mia.”

I lifted Bev’s head again, which was heavy with sleep. It was then that I realized the smell coming off the blanket was not run-of-the-mill BO. I pulled the blanket away and saw the blood soaking into the couch seat.

“Call an ambulance, Cliff. She’s bleeding out.”

The ambulance driver told us Bev had had a miscarriage. Malnourishment and what looked like pneumonia—to say nothing of the heroin usage—didn’t exactly make for the healthiest pregnancy. By the time they were loading the stretcher into the emergency vehicle, Jordan was hysterical. When the county social services people turned up and informed Cliff they were going to keep Jordan until his father returned, Cliff went into his own set of hysterics.

Ain’t grown-up life grand? Blood and death. Just the kind of thing I bargained for when I left Ivy and Woody to strike out on my own.

I got Cliff calmed down enough to go back home. But I didn’t go upstairs with him. I’d had enough of my comrades for one day. And I’d had enough of bearing up and taking charge. I swear, if we’d found any heroin in that apartment, I might have taken it myself.

I ran along the avenue, zigzagging around the deadly patches of ice. Coat collar open. No hat or gloves. The cold was deep inside me now. Rattling around in there with my grief and confusion. No, I wasn’t going to turn to heroin. But I did need a drink.

5

Strung with lights on a lonely corner of Willow Street, the Tap Root was our neighborhood bar. It was an old German beer garden that brought together a hodgepodge of white pensioner drunks, folkies and blues men from other North Side bars, college kids, journalists, the aged Wobblies from the IWW hall on Lincoln Avenue, even a few tourists who had read about the landmark watering hole in their guidebooks and were maybe hoping to meet Studs Terkel.

They served the best franks and sauerkraut at the Tap Root. Wilt and I had lunched there many a time, and as we ate, he always extracted the same promise from me—“For Christ’s sake don’t tell Mia. I can’t take another one of her raps about preservatives.”

Not much of a mix of people that day. Everybody looked old. Old and lonely. I took a stool at the bar and ordered the bitter brown ale. The Louis Armstrong concert from the juke flowed into a Jo Stafford extravaganza. I wasn’t unhappy to hear that old-fashioned music; there was an odd comfort in it.

Not a soul interfered with me as I downed one tankard after another. I was getting drunk and that was just fine. It was almost enough to obliterate all the memories. Please, God, no more memories just now. Not the good ones, like holding on tight to Wilt as we roared up Lincoln Avenue on a borrowed motorcycle. And surely not the newer ones, like the sight of him in that chair, or the sucking noises my boots made as I waded through Mia’s blood.

“Cass.”

I turned at the sound of my name, already knowing who had spoken it.

Ivy. I wanted to speak her name in return, but I was tongue-tied.

But then she took hold of my hand and looked at me, the familiar kindness in her eyes.

It slipped out then. “I’m sorry.”

“Never mind that now.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for you, Cass. Your friends told me I was pretty sure to find you here. Woody’s got himself under control now, baby. We all acted ugly. But we’re going to get past it. All right?”

I was swaying on the barstool. I straightened myself, tried to sound authoritative. “Just because I’m calmed down doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind. You can’t just boss me around anymore.”

“Fine. Now, you lay that drink aside and let’s get down to business.”

I frowned at her. What business?

“Did you mean what you said about finding out who killed your friend?”

“Of course I did.”

“And the rest of it?”

“What rest?”

“You said you would be willing to come back home after the killings were solved.”

“I did?”

“Not in so many words. But you said you’d consider it.”

“I did?”

“By implication, Cassandra.”

I couldn’t help it; I actually laughed.

“Well?” she said. “Are you willing to make a bargain with us? Can we come to an understanding? After justice is done, you’ll give up living with—”

“With
these people,
right?”

“Cassandra, what are you laughing about?”

“Justice,” I said. And then I burped.

“Are you listening to me, girl?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Woody wants your word that you’ll think about coming home after you find out what happened to your friend.”

“Sure. Okay. And what’s Woody’s part of the bargain?”

“He’s going to help you do it.”

“Ain’t no justice. Ain’t no truth and beauty, neither,” Wilton said. May have been right here in this bar that he said it. “Sandy, if we could learn to accept that, we’d probably be much happier Negroes.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THURSDAY

1

My room was gray and musty from cigarette smoke. It was long past sunrise, but light was hard to come by. The news issuing from my clock radio was just as sunless and heavy—

Death toll for the week so far: 80. That was just “our” side. No figures on how many of the enemy incinerated. A Christmas truce was in the offing, and Bob Hope was on the way to Saigon.

Other headlines: Two children and their welfare mother asphyxiated. Mix poor people with no heat and a faulty gas oven. Result, death. A drunk driver killed four teens on the highway. And, near the insular working-class area where Mayor Daley was born and resided to this day, a twenty-eight-year-old black man identified as Larry Dean was found shot to death. Police said they had no leads as yet in the case.

Well, that set the right funereal tone for the day.

I moved around quietly, trying not to wake anyone. But before I left the apartment, I went in carefully to look in on them all as they slept—Taylor and Barry, Beth, Cliff. I even tipped into Dan’s room, hoping against hope I’d see his lovely hair splayed across the pillow on his mat. Pretend time. I let myself fantasize for a moment. If only I could be the Good Witch, a chubby little fairy in gossamer, I’d just wave my magic wand and make all the awful shit that had marked the last two days go away. I’d even let skanky Bev keep her baby.

2

I was lucky to get a seat. Most people on the number 11 bus were going to work, and didn’t look particularly happy about it. I didn’t blame them. Who wanted to stoke the fires of capitalism taking shorthand or delivering interoffice mail in some airless coop in the Loop?

However, I was going somewhere every bit as odious. Woody had arranged for me to talk to his cop buddy, Jack Klaus, who might be able to give me the inside track on the homicide investigation. Klaus might prove to be a good source, but I didn’t much like him. As the bus jerked along, I stared out the window.

Where the fuck is Dan?
as Annabeth had so trenchantly put it.

Good question.

Funny about memory. I kept harking back to that stoned-out weekend we’d spent at Annabeth’s family’s farm in Wisconsin, how beautiful it was, how close I felt to the others, what fun we had.

So why was I constantly flashing on some out-of-place feelings from that weekend? Now I had to wonder if Dan Zuni had given off some hint of trouble then. I couldn’t think of anything particularly weird about the way Dan was acting that weekend. Nothing bad had happened, or had it? Maybe the delightful mind-expanding trips I’d been enjoying were killing off brain cells quicker than you could say “Light my fire.”

I made a big bowl of popcorn and took it into the musty sitting room in the farmhouse. I was planning to leaf through some old magazines, maybe read the copy of
The Marble Faun
I’d spotted on the bookshelf in there. But I was startled when Dan popped up from the sofa.

“Oh! I didn’t know you were in here. Would you rather be alone?”

He grinned at me. “No way. Come on in. Let’s rap.”

It cracked me up when Dan used words like
rap.

“Is that popcorn?”

“Yeah. I just made it.”

“Far out. I’m dying for popcorn. And look—we got beer.”

“Are you stoned, Dan?”

“Uh-huh. You?”

“Yeah.”

We polished off the bowl of popcorn in quick order. A few minutes later I thought I heard him humming under his breath, and he was keeping a kind of tom-tom beat on the arm of the couch.

“What’s that you’re singing? Creedence again?”

“No. Remember that hokey song—’Running Bear’?”

That was a blast from childhood. “Yeah. Running Bear and Little White Dove.” AM radio Top Ten stuff. “They were like the Indian Romeo and Juliet. And they committed suicide at the end of the song.”

He chuckled. “My pop had this big job at the BIA. Big fucking bureaucrat job. Sent me and my brother to this tight-assed private school in Tucson. The white kids used to call me Running Bear. Jesus, they were so ignorant. I thought it was funny. But Bobby, my brother, couldn’t take that kind of shit. Wasn’t just those kids, though. He couldn’t deal with much of anything. He was always begging Pop to let us come home.”

“And did he?”

Dan shook his head. “Well, he did finally. But it was too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bobby killed himself. After that, he let us come home.”

“God, Dan. I never knew that about you.”

“Yep. Old Bobby. We used to talk about running away to New York. That woulda been funny.”

Dan joined me on the floor then. He rolled a joint, slowly and meticulously, and let me take the first hit.

“Wilt said you and your father don’t speak anymore.”

He nodded. “Right. Wilt and me kind of have a lot in common. I guess we’ve all got bad family stuff to deal with. Like Cliff’s brother getting killed. You’ve got a fucked-up relationship with your parents, too, don’t you?”

“I don’t know about fucked-up. It’s not even fucked-up. I don’t know where they are. I was raised by my grandmother’s sister and her husband. They’re older, but they’re really cool.”

“Me too. I mean, my grandfather took me because of all the trouble between me and my father. He’s great. It’s kind of great being around some old people. Except he’s always after me to do my kiva ceremony.”

“What’s that?”

“You gotta go into a cave, pray and dance and do all kinds of shit. He says I won’t really be a man until I do it.”

“Are you going to do it someday?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

We smoked quietly for a few minutes until I got a little giggly. “This grass is pretty great. Where’d it come from—Barry?”

“Yeah, the Great White Father of Weed.”

“Barry Running Dog,” I said.

“Yeah, Barry Howling Wolf.”

“Barry Screaming Mimi.”

We laughed and hollered. Then we went quiet for a while. Lord, he’s gorgeous, I thought as I watched him stretch out on the rag rug before the disused fireplace. I relit the joint that had gone cold.

“What are you thinking about, Sandy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your face looked fantastic just then. Sort of sad. Can I take some shots of you?”

“Shots. What do you mean
—
take my picture?”

“Yeah.”

“No way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t photograph well. I’m—I don’t look good.”

“Bullshit. Come on, sit for me.”

“Forget it. Why don’t you take Mia’s picture? She’s beautiful.”

“I already did. I’ve got lots of Mia.”

He began to pull at my sock then, tickling the underside of my foot, torturing me into agreeing to be photographed. I absolutely lost it, being the world’s most ticklish person, and soon gave in.

I lay there, catching my breath, and Dan took my hand in his. For a split second I thought maybe he was going to kiss me, and I went rigid. I had never even dreamed of sleeping with anybody that good-looking. He didn’t kiss me, though. Instead, he helped me to my feet. “Let’s catch the light before it gets late,” he said.

3

I didn’t despise Jack Klaus, the way I did that Detective Norris. But I didn’t much like him, either. Klaus was another white cop, also a detective, and unlikely as it was, we had a few things in common—history of a sort.

Technically the history was between him and Uncle Woody. I didn’t know what kind of favors one owed the other, or how the two came to know each other. I just knew Woody trusted him and they went back a ways. My uncle had called on Klaus to help untangle a couple of grisly South Side murders my family had been pulled into. Sure enough, Klaus had come through for us. He provided vital info from Chicago PD files and kept a great deal of heat off of me and Woody. When the smoke cleared he was being hailed as a supercop. He had earned a big rep for solving the crimes, and a big promotion to match.

His new digs on Taylor Street reflected it. Klaus, who was half Woody’s age, had been appointed to a cushy spot in major crimes. He was sitting behind his blond wood desk when I came into the office. He cut his phone conversation short when he saw me, even stood to greet me. “It’s nice to see you again, Cass.”

I had been well brought up. Normally I appreciate that kind of courtesy. But I didn’t return the greeting.

He had been nothing but respectful to Ivy, Woody, and me. And now he was being nice, going out of his way to look into Wilton’s and Mia’s murders. I just couldn’t get up for being nice back to him.

I had to give him one thing: He sure looked more prosperous than he did the last time we’d met. Gone were the Robert Hall vines and the square haircut. He wore a nicely tailored suit—prison stripes, Nat called straight clothes—and his hair hung fashionably close to the collar of his crisp white shirt. Real sharp. Kind of like one of the actors on
The Name of the Game.
A long brown cigarillo rested on the lip of a brass ashtray near his hand.

I took out my pack of Multifilters, and he lit my cigarette.

“I understand they were friends of yours,” he said. “You holding up okay?”

“I guess.”

“Tough thing to be going through.”

“Right.”

He waited for me to expand on it. But I just sat there.

“You probably know I don’t have jurisdiction in the case. I can only poke around, ask to be kept up-to-date.”

“Okay.”

“It’s early in the investigation. But I was able to find out a few things anyway. I thought maybe you and me could catch some breakfast and I’d tell you about it.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I mean no, thanks. I don’t want to keep you from your job. Can’t we just talk here?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

He used the intercom to ask for coffee. A few minutes later, it was delivered along with a tray of sweet rolls.

“They don’t have a lot to go on so far. There were plenty of prints and junk left in the apartment from the previous tenants. You and your roommates had all been in the empty place, too—and the maintenance guy who had the heart attack. All that just puts more BS in the game. And as you know, they haven’t fixed time of death exactly. But before we get into what I know, let me ask you something, Cass.”

“What?”

“What do
you
think happened? Any idea who could have killed them? Maybe they were dealing? They ripped off a supplier, burned the wrong guy. Something like that.”

Burned,
eh? Well, ain’t you just the hippest narc in town.

“Is that what the police think?”

“It’s in the running,” he said.

I shook my head. “No way. Wilt and Mia didn’t do that.”

“Right.”

He pressed a cherry danish on me, but I declined.

“It’s pretty tense over your way since the riots. I mean, even now,” he said. “We’re looking at a lot of violence in that neighborhood. Shootings, holdups, muggings. You and your friends get along with—with everybody?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did your guy Wilton know any of the brothers from the projects maybe? Any of them ever come by the apartment to see him?”

“No.”

“I’m wondering if any of the brothers ever give your friends grief?”

“Grief for what?”

“For living like you do—did. He had a girlfriend, after all, who wasn’t the same race.”

I didn’t answer for a minute. His questions were rife with implications, all of them unimaginative and dumb. Probably the very dumbest was that young black males would actually be outraged that one of their own was screwing a white girl.

“Wilton knew lots of people,” I said. “Far as I know, nobody resented him for being with Mia. Not because she was white, anyway.”

“She was a pretty girl, they say. Some of the other guys in the house a little jealous of your friend Wilton?”

He was being cagey. Obviously he’d heard something about Barry and Wilt’s rivalry. So it shocked me when he said, “Are you sure you never heard this Zuni threaten your friend Wilton?”

“Dan? What are you talking about?”

“Just wondering.”

“Look,” I said. “You people are wasting your time suspecting Dan. Not only did he think the world of Mia and Wilt, he wouldn’t kill a flea if it was biting him.”

He nodded, relit his brown smoke, which had gone cold.

“I mean it. Dan’ll turn up in a day or two with a perfectly good explanation.”

“Um-hum.”

“Besides, has it occurred to Norris that somebody might have hurt Dan, too? He could have been grabbed or something when he left the house that morning. If you all have any smarts, you’ll start looking at him as another possible victim.”

“Good thinking. Any other thoughts?”

My chance to twit him a little. “There are these guys ‘around our way,’ as you say. These white guys who don’t like freaks. Or black people. I heard they’re the ones ripping off apartments. I heard a couple of girls have been raped.”

He took that in. “Doesn’t sound likely. Thugs like that, if they’d been watching the apartment, they’d have waited till you were all at home, and they’d have waited to catch everybody where you all live, not in a vacant apartment. No, this thing sounds much more personal. Lot of anger in this killing. Somebody really didn’t like Wilton Mobley.”

That sounded right. Unhappy as I was to have it said.

“Anyway,” he said, “the chatter says it doesn’t look like Mia Boone was raped.”

“I’m glad,” I said. For whatever it was worth.

“You looked so surprised when I mentioned Dan Zuni might’ve been jealous of your friend.”

“Like I told you, that isn’t true.”

He opened a second container of coffee. “Cass, I told your uncle I’d do what I could for him. For you. And I meant what I said. Woody told me you’d cooperate in any way you can to help us nail whoever did this crime. Is that true?”