Boystown 7: Bloodlines (14 page)

“But you can still work on the Levine case, right?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Jimmy’s going to be very angry.” That was good. It fit into their idea of Jimmy as an angry, mean person.
 

“I know, but I don’t want to end up in prison.”

“I’ll do my best to make Jimmy understand.”

“I appreciate that.”

Owen raised an index finger. Then wrote a note. It said, “BUY A BEEPER.” While I read that he said, “Keep me up-to-date on the Levine case.”

“I will.” Though I hadn’t updated him and perhaps should have done just that.
 

He handed me another note on which there was a phone number. I mouthed the word, BEEPER? And he nodded. Then I said goodbye and walked out of his office. All in all, I thought we’d just done a very good job of misdirection. I decided I’d spend the rest of the day on the Levine case, just in case I was being followed around. Taking the day off from Jimmy’s case lent truth to the lie.

Before I left the Loop I looked around for a place to get a beeper. It seemed like these places were springing up all over the place, but then when I wanted one I had trouble finding it. I finally found one on Madison a few doors down from the French Bakery where Brian still worked. It was getting close to eleven so he’d be just getting there. I wondered if Franklin came with him. These past few days Franklin seemed to be everywhere Brian was.

I spent forty-five grueling minutes in the store. By the time I was done I felt mugged. Worse, my mugger was going to mug me to the tune of twenty-five dollars a month for as long as I carried the little black plastic box around. On the upside, when the salesman spent five minutes trying to sell me a briefcase telephone that cost nearly four thousand dollars I managed not to punch him. I had a lot of trouble understanding why I desperately needed something that hadn’t even existed a few years ago. I thought I’d been getting by just fine without a beeper. Now, people would be able to reach me any time, anywhere. I wasn’t sure I liked that idea.

Chapter Twelve

After deciding not to have lunch at the French Bakery, I caught the El back to Boystown. My plan was to grab my car and head out to Park Ridge. I figured I’d find a diner somewhere and have some lunch. On the way from the Belmont El station to Roscoe where my car was parked, I stopped at my office. I called the receptionist at Cooke, Babcock and Lackerby, told her my pager number and asked her to give it to Owen.

I remembered a diner out in Lincoln Square that was mediocre at best but had parking nearby and the guarantee of an open table. The place was called Tasty Bites; it had an overwhelming and encyclopedic menu, so I started thinking about what I might want for lunch well before I got there. After the loose-boned waitress sat me in a booth next to the window, she began to walk away. I said, “I know what I want.”

“Really? Usually it takes people forever.” She took out a pad.

“I’d like a grilled ham and cheese, with French fries and a Coca-Cola.”

“What kind of bread?”

“White.”

“What kind of cheese?”

“Cheddar.”

“You want a salad with that?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“They make me ask.”

“No I don’t want a salad, but why don’t we count talking about it toward my daily requirements.”

“Funny,” she said, without enthusiasm. She snatched up the menu and loped off.
 

I lit a cigarette and tried to get my focus back on the Levine case. Most of my adult life I’d done more than one thing at a time. When I was on the job I only worked for the CPD, but my life at home with Daniel was like a completely different world. It was like being two people. Then when I left the CPD, I started working as an investigator, but for a long time it wasn’t enough money so I was a doorman two nights a week at Paradise Isle, a disco that had eventually shut down. I think someone was turning the place into a mattress store. Anyway, I felt like I should be a lot better at juggling everything I had going on. Yeah, there was a lot at stake in Jimmy’s case and not just for Jimmy. And there was a lot at stake with Madeline’s case, though it wasn’t as personal to me. Probably since I’d never met her and to me she was little more than a picture in the newspaper.
 

My sandwich arrived and it was pretty good. Though it seemed hard to screw up. The greasier and soggier the better. The same cannot be said for the French fries. They were also greasy and soggy, but that doesn’t work for fries. I ate them anyway, paid my bill, and got back on the road.

The Levine’s lived in a grand two-story brick house with brilliant white trim and delicate lace curtains. The lawn was winter brown and the trees were naked. As nice as the house was, it looked beaten down, as though it were reacting to the stress of Madeline’s trial. As I got to the front door it opened and a black woman came out dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Closing the door behind her, she carried a bucket filled with cleaning supplies. She walked past me without smiling. I rang the bell.

The door opened quickly. A woman in her early sixties with a gray pageboy looked at me with a bit of surprise then glowered over my shoulder at her maid.
 

“Why do I always feel guilty when she comes? I pay her twelve dollars an hour and she doesn’t even do that good a job. I’m helping her feed her family, but every time she comes I feel like I’m doing her some terrible disservice. Who are you?”

“My name is Nick Nowak.” I handed her a card. “I’m working with your daughter’s attorneys on her case.”

“That’s over, isn’t it?”

“We’re working on the sentencing phase.”

“I’ve already told Maddy’s lawyers I can’t testify.”

“I know. I’d just like to talk to you about avenues we could pursue to help lessen your daughter’s sentence.”

Her nose crinkled. At first, I thought it was in distaste at the idea of helping her daughter, then she asked, “Do you smoke?”

That was embarrassing, she’d just smelled me. “Yes, I’m sorry if—”

“I’ll let you in for ten minutes if you give me a cigarette.”

“Deal.”

She led me into the house. We walked past a living room where two small children sat in front of a television watching a
Tom and Jerry
cartoon. They were younger than I’d remembered, a boy and a girl around three and five. Mrs. Levine glanced at the TV and said, “There’s about twenty minutes left on that tape so we should be fine. They won’t move until it’s over.” Then she led me down the hallway to the kitchen, which was enormous and spotlessly clean. Looked to me like the maid did a damn fine job.

“My daughter hates the idea of me smoking around her children. I smoked around her when she was a child and it didn’t do anything to her. Well, I guess that’s debatable.”

I pulled out my pack of Marlboro’s and flipped the lid back to offer her one. We each lit up and stood in front of the sink using it as an ashtray.
 

“So you’re here to get me to testify for my daughter.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know what you said. The thing is, I don’t know what I’d say. I can’t go into court and say that Wes deserved to die. He didn’t. I can’t say my daughter needs to be with her children because she’s a good mother. She’s not. I’ve been raising her children for her all along. The only difference is now it’s official. Now I have a legal right. I can’t think of one honest thing I could say that would help her.”

“You could say you love her.”

Her face froze. “Is that all it takes to keep someone out of prison? For a mother to stand up and say they’re loved? Thank God you’ve figured that out. Now we can empty the prisons.”

I thought it best to ignore that. “You testified against your daughter.”

“I didn’t volunteer to do that. They made me. Then they called me hostile. I wasn’t hostile, I was very polite. If anyone was hostile it was the attorneys.”

“Tell me about Wes. What did you think of him?”

“I thought he was great. Any mother would. He was charming and good-looking, and he made my daughter happy. And yes, he wasn’t what you’d call ambitious, but Maddy had enough ambition for both of them. An ambitious man would have gotten in her way.”

“So what happened?”
 

She shrugged and took a drag off her cigarette.

“I know about the drugs,” I said. “Maddy was stealing drugs from her practice.”

“Well, now you know why I can’t testify.”

“Was Wes using too?”

“We tried to help them both. We really did. My husband threatened to take the children away if they didn’t stop. Maddy did. She began going to those meetings. She got better.”

“But Wes didn’t.”

“No.”

“Do you know who Emily Fante is?”

“No.”

“She was a friend of Madeline’s.”

“I know all of my daughter’s friends.”

“Do you know her drug friends?”

“Drug friends? I don’t know what that is.”

“When people do drugs they make friends with people who do drugs. It makes it easier to get what you need.”

“No. I don’t know any of her
drug
friends.”

Something occurred to me, something that struck me as odd. “How much of this was in your testimony?”

“Not much. I answered the questions I was asked. I didn’t elaborate.”

“What did you say?”

“They asked me about Maddy’s relationship with Wes. I said it wasn’t good. They made me describe several arguments they had while visiting. They asked me what the problems were in their marriage. I said I didn’t know.”

“The problem was drugs.”

“No. The symptom was drugs. I have no idea why either of them used drugs.”

“Was he having an affair?”

“I’m sure he was. Charming men usually are.”

“Was he always having affairs?”

“I don’t know. Maddy wouldn’t tell me something like that. She liked things to at least look perfect.”

She turned on the faucet and ran her cigarette butt under the stream, then dropped it into the garbage disposal. I followed suit.

“Do you think the story Maddy told was true? That Wes confessed to having an affair and she stabbed him in a rage?”

“I hope not.”

“What do you mean you hope not?”

“I mean I hope all of this has a point. If Wes was having an affair, Maddy could easily have divorced him. She could even have kept him away from the kids if she wanted. At least until he stopped using drugs. And if he didn’t stop. Well, he wasn’t going to last long. She could have just waited.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t look good. He’d lost a lot of weight. I mean, they don’t eat right, do they? Users? And his skin wasn’t good. He was getting these awful red blotches. It was sad. He’d been so handsome. He’d have been dead by now. If Maddy hadn’t killed him.”

After that she was finished. I offered her another cigarette but she turned it down.
 

There was nothing to do but drive back to my office. When I got there, I set the bag with the priest suit in it by the door so I’d remember to take it with me and I could leave from Brian’s apartment in the morning. I called Owen’s pager number and listened to the prompt, then I put in my office phone number for him to call me back. Then I called Joseph.

“It’s nice to hear from you,” he said.

“It’s nice to be heard. Do you have plans for tomorrow night?”

“Let me check my dance card.” He took a slight pause to support his joke. “No, it looks like I’m free.”

Then I gave him my beeper number in case he needed to reach me and I wasn’t in my office. As soon as I said beeper he said, “Well…everything’s up to date in Kansas City.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s from a musical.
Oklahoma
.”

“And you’re just now figuring out you’re gay?”

“No, I’ve known forever. I just thought I could choose something else. Something more important. And I still might choose that.”

I didn’t know what to say to that and didn’t have to come with a response because call waiting beeped in. “I have to take this.”

“You know who’s calling?”

“I’m expecting a call. Tomorrow around six-thirty? Meet at my office? We’ll figure out what to do then.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I switched over. Like I expected, it was Owen Lovejoy, Esquire.

“You rang?”

“I did. I saw Mrs. Levine about an hour ago.”

“What was that like?”

“She’s knows a lot. A lot that she managed to keep out of testimony.”

“Well don’t keep me in suspense, tell me.”

“Madeline and Wes both had trouble with drugs. Madeline got through it for her kids. Wes didn’t.”

“Why didn’t Madeline tell us? We could have made Wes look like a cheating drug addict, and it would have been true.”

“You would have had to make her look like a drug addict too, though. The other thing is—”

“There’s more? Shit.”

“Mrs. Levine says that Wes was sick. She doesn’t think he was long for this world anyway. Is there anything on the autopsy?”

“I’ll have to dig it out. When I read it before I focused on the skill with which she killed him. She put the knife directly into his heart.”

“Anatomy class.”

“Exactly. Try to make a direct hit seem like it’s not premeditated.”

“I’m looking for signs of long-term drug abuse, liver damage, malnutrition.”

“What do you think that will get us?”

“I don’t know. I would like to know if Mrs. Levine is telling the truth.”

“All right. I’ll have a copy made for you. It’ll be at the front desk.”

“Thanks.”

We chatted for a few minutes about the remaining names on the list he gave me. Given the direction things had gone, he told me I didn’t have to bother with Madeline’s father and brother unless there was something specific I was looking for. It would still be helpful to find the mistress but even that was risky. If we found her and managed to get her in the newspaper she could say some pretty damning things about Madeline and Wes’ drug use. When tainting a jury pool you needed to taint it in the right direction.

“I may need to re-strategize,” Owen said.

I didn’t envy him.

Even though it was a little before three, I decided to call it a day. My plan was to spend Friday staking out the Federal Building’s lobby. Then Saturday, I’d start looking into Wes Berkson. I had to find family, friends, co-workers. I knew he didn’t have a job when he was killed, but had he worked at all in the last year of his life? I needed to find that out. I had my work cut out for me, but I figured I’d manage to talk to at least a few people on Sunday. Well, Sunday afternoon. Late Sunday afternoon. I was planning a hangover after a night at the Glorgy Hole followed by Easter dinner with Mrs. Harker and Terry.