An Eye for Murder (6 page)

He settled himself in his chair. “How is Rachel?”

“You should see her on the soccer field.” I filled him in. “You women are definitely taking over.” He smiled. “Your mother would be proud.”

Mother had been a white-gloved liberal, practically a rebel, given that she grew up in Washington, D.C., which, despite its pretensions now, used to be a sleepy Southern town. Her only flaw was her insistence on courtesy. Power to the people, but don’t forget your manners. Please.

Dad got up and put on Sinatra with Basie, snapping his fingers to the brush on the snare drum. My eyes drifted back to the newspaper. “Not just sports,” I said.

Dad looked puzzled.

“Women taking over.” I pointed to the newspaper. “What do you think of her?”

“She’s a politician.” He sniffed. “With money.”

We sat for a few more minutes, while Frank crooned about having me under his skin. I looked at my hands. I could use some nail polish.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” I looked up. “Nothing. Why?”

“You look like you’ve just lost all your money. Or your best friend.”

He’s getting much too perceptive in his old age. I searched for something to say. “Um, well—actually, a sad thing did happen the other day.”

“What?”

I blurted out the story of Ruth Fleishman’s letter and my trip to Rogers Park. By the time I’d finished, the sun broke through the clouds. The late afternoon rays slanting through the window picked out Dad’s stricken expression.

“Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.” I scrambled up guiltily. An old man and woman had died alone, with no family to grieve for them. Of course he’d be upset. “Daddy, that won’t ever happen to you.” I wrapped my arms around him. “And it wasn’t as bad as all that,” I said. “Mrs. Fleishman gave me something of his. A lighter. Turns out it might be worth something.”

“Yeah?” His face perked up.

“Mac’s looking into it for me. Here.” I rooted inside my bag and pulled it out. “Mac says it’s a Zippo.” I handed it to my father.

He frowned at it. Then he took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket, put them on, and examined the lighter at length. When he looked up, the color had drained from his face. “Tell me again where you got this.”

I told him.

“Ben Sinclair, you say?”

“That’s right.”

His eyes were bright with something I didn’t recognize. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“I’ve seen this lighter before. There’s only one person this could have belonged to.”

“Dad, stop kidding around.” I saw from his face he wasn’t. “Are you telling me you know—knew—Ben Sinclair?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “When I knew him, his name was Ben Skulnick—Skull for short. See?” He showed me the monogram: SKL.

“Skull? You knew a guy named Skull?”

“It’s what everyone called him.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“I think it came from the fact that he could bash your head in if he didn’t like you.”

I glanced at the lighter, then at Dad.

“I remember when he got this. It was one of the first Zippos ever engraved. He was so proud of it. He always had it with him. Used it to light the ladies’ cigarettes.” Dad flicked the wheel with a flourish.

“Hold on,” I said doubtfully. “How do you know it’s the same lighter?”

“Take a look.” Dad pointed to the insignia of the man leaning against the lamp-post. “They called this ‘The Drunk.’ It was one of the first engravings you could get. Came out in thirty-six, I think. Skull bought one for all the Miller boys. You know, because of the bar.” He leaned forward. “Anyway, how many people do you know have the chutzpah to put their nickname on a lighter? It’s got to be Skull’s.”

The music ended on cue, and the air in the room thickened.

Chapter Eight

“You know I used to spend time in Lawndale when I was young,” my father said, settling himself in his chair.

“In the late Thirties, wasn’t it?” I curled up on the couch. He’d told me the stories: how he hung out at a pool hall and bar called Davy Miller’s; how he called himself Jake the Snake; how his buddy, Barney Bow-Tie, ran errands for sharks and hustlers. He refused to let me interview him for
Celebrate Chicago
, but a few of his memories ended up in the show anyway.

“My best friend was Barney Teitelman. His parents ran a rooming house and restaurant off Douglas Boulevard.” He paused. “My parents never approved of Barney.”

“How come?” I asked.

“We were German Jews from Hyde Park.” He shrugged. “The Teitelmans weren’t. Of course, I didn’t put much stock in it back then.”

I squirmed. Things change.

“Barney and I did our best to ingratiate ourselves with the guys at Davy Miller’s. Skull was one of those guys.”

He took a sip from his drink; most of the ice cubes had melted. “Skull was tough. Not big. But wiry. Strong. And a hustler. The man could charm the birds out of the trees.” He grinned, clearly savoring the memory.

“Where did he come from?”

“Someone said New York. Somebody else thought he moved over from Maxwell Street. No one really knew. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Skull was one of the best-dressed men I ever saw. Always wore the toniest wool suits. Silk ties too. And a snap-brimmed fedora.”

I thought of the picture Ruth Fleishman had shown me. “I saw a picture of a man and a woman at Mrs. Fleishman’s. The man was holding a snap-brimmed fedora.”

Dad canted his head. “I’d like to have a look at that.”

“I don’t have it,” I said. “It’s still at Mrs. Fleishman’s. So, what did he do, this Skull?”

“He ran numbers, greased palms, took payoffs.” Dad cleared his throat. “Not the sort of activity I condone, you understand.”

“Of course not.”

“But I’ll tell you, Ellie. He did it with such style the ladies practically stood in line to give him his take.”

“Learned a few tricks from him, huh?”

My father’s forehead puckered. “All I did was run errands. Relay messages.”

“You were hanging around with gangsters.”

A sigh escaped my father’s lips. “It was different then, sweetheart. You gotta understand. It was Davy Miller’s gang who opened up Clarendon Beach in the Twenties. It was restricted before that. And it was his boys who kept all the Yeshiva-
bochurs
safe from the Irish street gangs. And there were the stories about the Nazis.”

“What stories?”

“People said Davy Miller and his pals were going after

Nazi Bund members on the North Side.”

“Were they?”

My father looked past me. “There was this actress at the Yiddish theater one summer. Her name was Miriam Hirsch; I had a crush on her. Followed her around all summer. That’s how I met Skull. The two of them were crazy about each other.” He cut himself off and looked at me sideways, as if weighing whether to go on.

First Rachel. Now Dad. Every generation has their secrets.

“Dad. This happened over sixty years ago.”

He rubbed his nose. “You’re right. Well, the bottom line was that Miriam was killed, and Skull went after the guy who did it. Who happened to be the head of the Nazi Bund.”

“She was killed?”

“They caught her spying on the Bund and passing it back to Skull.”

“God. What happened?”

“Skull killed the head of the Bund. Then he disappeared. Skull, I mean.” He pushed himself up and stepped into the kitchen.

I followed him in. “Where did he go?”

“He claimed he ran off to Europe and worked for the underground.”

“The Resistance?”

“That’s what he said. But who really knows? Skull always had a story.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

Dad shook pretzels into a bowl. “Once. After the war. Before I left for law school.” He offered me the bowl. “Barney and I were having a beer at Miller’s. I didn’t see him come in, but all of a sudden, he was there. He sat with us for a while. Not long, I recall. He had
shpulkes
; he kept looking around the room, peeking through the window. I found out afterward he was on the lam.”

I took a pretzel. “What did you talk about?”

My father hunched his shoulders. “This and that. I’d been in the service myself, and I was—” He stiffened, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. So we talked. A few days after that, they arrested him for the murder of the Nazi Bund officer.”

“Was he convicted?”

“Oh, yes. They gave him life.”

“And you never heard from him again?”

“Not a word.” Dad walked back into the living room and bent over his CDs.

“I don’t get it. Why would this Skull, or Ben Sinclair, have my name on a piece of paper?”

Dad frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Was there any unfinished business between you two?”

“No.” He dropped in another CD. “Maybe he wanted to congratulate you on the show. He did live in Lawndale.”

“Maybe.” I washed down the pretzel with pop. “Or maybe when he saw my name, it reminded him of you, and he thought about getting in touch with you.”

“So why didn’t he pick up the phone and call?”

“You’re not listed anymore since you moved, remember?”

“That’s true.”

“His things are sitting in my basement. Maybe I should bring something down for you to check out. You know, to see if it’s really him.”

Dad sat back down in his chair. “What have you got?”

“A couple of cartons. Clothes mostly. But there is that snapshot at Mrs. Fleishman’s. A man and a woman on some bridge. With a baby. It looked like it was taken in Europe. Did Skull ever marry?”

“I don’t know.”

“There was also this metal tackle box. But it was locked.” I shook my head. “She sure wanted to get that thing open. She even had me try a nail file on it. Didn’t work, though.”

“I don’t know, Ellie. If this man really was Skull, he wasn’t the type of man—”

I cut him off. “But you knew him, Dad. It’s quite a coincidence. Aren’t you curious?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, you see?” I took my empty glass into the kitchen. When I left a short time later, the housekeeping cart was still in the hall. I pocketed a couple of the little soaps that were stacked on the side, a habit I seemed to have acquired when dealing with stress. As the elevator doors opened, the first measures of “My Kind of Town” wafted out of Dad’s apartment.

Chapter Nine

By the time I got home it was dusk, and the driveway, flanked with shrubs just now starting to bud, was shrouded in shadows. I pulled into the garage, listening to the last verse of “Miracles,” wishing I could come back as Grace Slick in my next life. As the last note faded, I noticed the door leading out from the basement was open. I thought I’d closed it before I left. I parked, turned off the engine, and headed inside, thinking about the bottle of unopened white wine in the kitchen. But when I got upstairs, I gasped. Cabinet doors were ripped open; several dangled at precarious angles. Broken china covered the counters. Drawers had been pulled out, and silverware had been flung everywhere. A sheaf of papers that I normally keep in neat files lay in a heap on the floor, with mops and brooms piled on top. The pantry had been ransacked, too, cereal boxes smashed under cans of soup.

I registered the chaos in rapid-fire images, like a pulsing strobe light, and ran into the family room. The base of the couch was slashed in several places, and the cushions were a mass of tears and wadding where someone had pulled out the stuffing. The coffee table lay upside down. My good pieces of silver had been hurled into the corners of the room. Then it hit me. Whoever did this might still be in the house.

I bolted out the door, threw myself into the car, and backed out of the garage. At the end of the block I stopped. My hands shook as I tapped 911 on my cell. The police dispatcher told me to stay where I was, and not, under any circumstances, to go back inside. They didn’t have to worry. I gripped the wheel. What if Rachel hadn’t been with Barry? What if she had been home—alone—when this happened? I swallowed.

A few minutes later, two patrol cars with flashing lights turned down the block and slowed in front of the house. Two officers, a man and a woman, hurried out of the cars, their hands over their holsters. As they disappeared inside I tried to think good, safe thoughts. I tracked their progress as lights flipped on in various rooms. There was no sound of gunshots.

The officers came back out to the Volvo. I rolled down the window. “No one’s in the house, ma’am,” the young man said. His shield read
Officer North
. “You can come back in.”

I tightened my grip on the wheel.

“You can come back in now,” he repeated. “The house is empty.”

I nodded and stayed in the car.

The female, whose shield read
Fletcher
, reached for the handle. “You’re going to have to figure out what’s gone. And we need to ask you some questions.” I dragged myself out of the car.

As we walked from room to room, I tried to focus on what was missing, but I felt oddly distanced from the scene, as if a gelatinous curtain had dropped in front of my eyes. I sank down on the steps while North went over when I’d left, where I’d been, and when I got back. He asked if I knew anyone who might want to break in. I shook my head.

“No recent arguments or fights with family members?”

“No.”

“Any disagreements with coworkers?” North asked.

“I work alone. Upstairs.” The officers exchanged glances. “Why—what did they do?”

I raced upstairs. In my office, file cabinets were flung off their tracks, their contents scattered everywhere. Scissors, pens, files, and diskettes littered the floor. The computer was on, and my screen saver, a series of stills by famous photographers, flashed malevolently.

“I didn’t leave it on.” I pointed. “The computer. It wasn’t on this morning.”

“Are you sure?” Fletcher squinted at me. “People leave them on all the time these days.”

“I’m positive.”

She examined the keyboard and mouse. North disappeared downstairs, returning with a canvas bag in his hand. “We could try to get some prints,” she said, more to her partner than me.