GD00 - ToxiCity (22 page)

Chapter Forty-six

Heavy droplets of sleet splattered on the windshield of the unmarked, leaving ridges of ice that dribbled sideways and then up as Stone and Matt drove southwest. In the three years Stone had lived in Chicago, he’d never been to Joliet. Home to Statesville, the largest penitentiary in the state, there used to be a perverse cachet to the place. He remembered countless movies in which the bad guys were sent up to Joliet, usually threatening to come back bigger and badder.

Over the past decade, though, the city fathers had tried to revitalize the city, no doubt to offset its gritty image. They’d succeeded too. They closed the prison, replacing one house of vice with others. Riverboat casinos now floated down the Des Plaines river, and the Route Sixty-Six raceway was nearby. Gamblers flocked to the area, generating new tax revenues, with which the city rebuilt its downtown. Joliet was now the third fastest growing city in Illinois.

Stone drove past a brand new theater, walkway, and restaurant on the Riverfront. They could preen about progress, pretend a newfound respectability, but Joliet still attracted the seedy underbelly of society.

“Where’s Jefferson Street?” He said in the fading afternoon light.

Matt studied a map spread out on his lap. “We need to get back to the west side of town.”

They had come east off of I-80 and headed north. Stone swung around, turning onto a street that clearly wasn’t part of the renovation. A vacant lot surrounded by a chain link fence was sandwiched between two dingy buildings.

Ten minutes later they pulled up to Al’s Steak House. As Stone opened the heavy oak door, the scent of hunks of beef sizzling on a charcoal grill made his mouth water. Deanna hardly ever served red meat, and the smoky aroma made him ravenous. Maybe he and Matt could come back later. He turned to Matt, but his partner’s expression was blank.

Stone peered into the dining area, a series of rooms with beamed ceilings, each decked out with uninspired Christmas gear. It was barely five o-clock, but business was brisk. He didn’t see a maitre d’, but the hat check girl opposite them was cracking her gum loud enough to muffle a twenty-two. He walked over.

“Good evening.” He flashed his badge. “Couple of questions for you, ma’am.”

She inspected his badge, then looked up with a bland, moon-shaped face.

“How long you been working here?”

“I came on at four.”

“That might not be long enough. I’m looking for someone who might have known Maggie Champlain. She worked here about a year ago.”

The girl got a faraway look as if she was thinking hard, then shook her head. “Sorry. I’ve only been here six months.”

“Well, maybe you can tell me who’s been here for a while?”

Her eyes slid to the main room. Two or three waitresses in black skirts and white shirts scurried back and forth. “Sheila. The one with red hair? She’s been here forever.”

Stone spotted a rail-thin woman with too bright red hair and a face just this side of burnout. Hefting a tray loaded with salads, soups, and drinks, she hurried over to a table. One of the diners was a woman with blue-white hair who looked well past eighty. Her voice was loud and reedy. “What do you mean, I’m a dizzy dame, Leo?”

Her dinner companion, a considerably younger man, wore a pained expression. “No, Ma. What I said was it was a drizzly game. They canceled Stevie’s soccer match.”

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so?” The woman looked around as if to see whether anyone had caught her gaffe. When she caught sight of Stone, she lowered her head.

Sheila set down their salads with a thump, flashing the woman’s son a what-can-you-do smile. “Here ‘ya go, boys and girls. Italian for the young lady, French for the old man.”

“Old in more ways than one,” the woman cracked.

Sheila smiled. “You betcha, sweetheart. Don’t let him put anything over on you.”

Stone watched as Sheila winked at the son, and then retreated to the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel pinched into her waistband. She was good: fast, efficient, sense of humor.

As she chatted with another waitress in an alcove, Stone went over. Matt followed. Sheila turned and sized him up. A knowing expression came into her eyes.

“Sergeant John Stone, ma’am.” Her badge read, ‘Hi—I’m Sheila.’ “I’m from the Northview Police Department.”

“Northview?” He noted the heavy mascara on her lashes as she spoke. “Where’s that?”

He knew people whose concept of urban demographics was limited to whether their subject backed the Cubs or the Sox. “It’s north of the city. Near Winnetka.”

“You’re a long way from home, cowboy.” Her eyes flicked over to Matt. “You too?”

Matt nodded.

“You boys come down this way for some southern comfort?”

“Sorry,” Stone said. “My wife doesn’t let me.”

“You always do just what she says?”

She didn’t miss a trick. “Sheila, I’m wondering whether you might have known a woman named Maggie Champlain?”

“Maggie Champlain?” Her grin disappeared. She picked at a spot of food on her pants.

“She worked here a year ago.”

“There’s a lot of turnover here.”

“Sheila,” His voice took on an edge. “You’re not stupid. You wouldn’t refuse to answer a cop out of some misplaced sense of loyalty or something, would you?”

Wiping her hands on her apron, she looked at the floor. Stone waited. She looked up, saw he was still watching her, and sighed. “She was my boss.”

“How long did you work together?”

“About a year.”

Long enough to get to know someone. “We’re trying to find out what happened to her.”

“You and the rest of the world.” She smiled ruefully. “She up and disappeared one night. Didn’t show up for work. Still hasn’t.”

“You never heard from her?”

The woman hesitated for just a fraction of a moment. “Not a clue. She just left. Doo-doo-doo-doo.” She hummed the opening bars of
Twilight Zone
.

She was holding back.

“And you don’t know where she ended up?”

“Nope.”

There wasn’t enough time to finesse her, win her confidence. “Sheila, I sure hope you’re telling me the truth. Because if, by some chance, it turns out you know something—anything—about Maggie’s whereabouts and you didn’t tell us, you might have a problem.”

A nervous look swept across her face. “What kind of problem?”

“Obstruction of justice. A criminal offense.”

A ding from the kitchen signaled someone’s food was ready.

“But you know something?” Stone went on. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem. I have a feeling you cared about Maggie Champlain. She was your boss, but she was your friend too, wasn’t she?”

She looked down.

“You want to protect her.” Her eyes flicked up. Stone smiled. “Frankly, I don’t blame you. That woman got nothing but shit heaped on her four ways from Sunday.”

Her features softened. “You got that right.”

“We know she got screwed.”

Her eyes darted from Stone to Matt, as if she was weighing whether to believe them. Stone repressed his impatience. She needed time to come to terms with what they were asking her to do.

“I don’t know what happened to Maggie, Detective. And I’m probably better off not knowing.” She took in a breath, expelled it, and sighed. “But her son, Dusty, used to live with this girl, Mira. She’s the niece of my husband’s best friend. They were in the Arsenal trailer park over on the east side of town. Far as I know, she’s still there.”

Stone brushed his hand against her bony shoulder. “Thanks, Sheila.”

“She’s not in trouble, is she?”

Stone didn’t answer.

***

On the way to the trailer park, a cold rain started. Stone wiped the inside of the windshield with his sleeve. Night had closed in; the throw of his headlights barely pierced the blackness.

“You really think she got screwed?” Matt asked.

Stone blasted the defroster and the heat.

“Stone?”

Stone gripped the wheel. He had to tell Matt about Stuart Feldman. He searched for a kind way to tell him, didn’t find it. He blurted it out. “The woman never had a fucking chance.”

“Because of the lawsuit?”

Stone hesitated. “That was just the tip of the iceberg. Turns out twenty years ago, Stuart Feldman paid off a lot of people to build those houses.”

Stone explained what Art Newell and Frannie Yablonski told him. “Feldman hired the best lawyers money could buy, collected favors he was owed, and threw around enough money around to make it go away.”

The heat inside the car rolled over them in waves. He stole a look at his partner. Matt clutched the map of Joliet like a life preserver. Stone went on. “You know those CEASE people? The ones I thought might be behind the dog? Well, one of them – by the name of Krieger—had a run-in with him. About fifteen years ago his father got screwed by Feldman on a property deal.”

Matt stared through the windshield.

“He buys people, Matt, by doling out tiny percentages on deals. Then, when he needs to, he calls in his chits. You saw the list of partners in Meadow City. It’s a Who’s Who of Chicago. He doesn’t care who gets shafted, as long as he makes a profit.” He cracked the window. “And then there’s that witness who mysteriously died.”

Matt’s fingers curled around the edge of the map

“Now if that’s all he did, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of difference between him and your average Mob boss. You wouldn’t ignore it, but you maybe could understand it, this being Chicago and all.” He took a breath. “But Feldman crossed the line when those children died, Matt. He basically murdered them himself.”

Stone turned off to a side road flanked with trees. A dense fog was tangled in their branches.

“That’s the father,” Matt said after a pause. “Not Ricki. She doesn’t know about any of this. She couldn’t.”

Stone looked over. His partner was coiled tighter than a metal spring. Stone knew he had slipped a noose around his partner’s neck and was starting to tighten it. Matt would have to reject the daughter or reject himself. To do less would be hypocrisy.

He slowed at a sign on the side of the road. A few strands of colored Christmas lights were strung around its border. He could just make out “Arsenal Trailer Camp” through the rain.

“Georgia walked out on me, you know. Not the other way around.”

Stone turned into an unpaved driveway. The headlights of the unmarked flickered through trees, illuminating rows of trailers set back on blocks. He braked and cut the engine. “You ever think about talking this over with someone? Just so you’re clear on things?”

Matt looked at him as if he were an alien who had just dropped onto the surface of the planet.

Chapter Forty-seven

“I saw Dusty after he left.”

Mira Peckinpah was young, but not too young to have a toddler. Slender, almost frail, she had lank blond hair that fell to her shoulders, and her face seemed to hold a perpetual look of surprise. The toddler was asleep in front of a black and white TV plugged into the wall. Aside from the glow of the tube, there wasn’t much light in the trailer. It smelled of mildew, little boy, and pizza.

“But I haven’t seen him since—well, I haven’t seen him in a while.” She looked at her baby.

Stone stood against the door of the trailer, Matt beside him. He followed Mira’s gaze. “Does Dusty know?”

Her eyes clouded. “No.”

“You have a job, Mira?”

“I work at Wal-Mart.” She brushed a hand through her stringy hair. “But my girlfriend works at Harrah’s. She’s ‘gonna get me a job there soon.” Harrah’s was one of Joliet’s riverboat casinos. Mira’s chest puffed out. “It’ll be better for Brandon. I’ll be home during the day. More money, too. We’re ‘gonna rent us a real apartment.”

Stone nodded. “What can you tell me about Dusty’s whereabouts?”

She shifted. “Nothin’,” she said after a pause.

“Can’t or won’t?”

She wouldn’t look at him.

“Mira, we think Dusty may be in trouble. We want to help him.”

“Sure you do.”

“Here’s the thing, Mira. If you know where he is and you don’t tell us, you could be in trouble, too.”

She looked at Brandon, then turned frightened eyes to Stone. “I can’t say anything. If they find out, they’ll kill me.”

“Who?” No answer. “Who’s going to kill you, Mira?”

She bit the inside of her lip. Lines that shouldn’t be on a woman as young as she was creased her forehead. “He swore me not to.”

Stone yanked his thumb toward Brandon. “Let’s go outside.”

Mira got her jacket. Before she could open the door, Brandon woke up and started to wail. “No go, Mama.”

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetie. Just outside to talk to the policeman.”

Brandon’s face brightened. “Policeman?” He faced Stone. “Bang, bang.”

“Honey, you watch TV for a while,” Mira said. “Then you can have more pizza.”

Brandon toddled back to the TV. Stone opened the squeaky trailer door. The three of them stepped into the night. The door to the trailer slapped against the frame.

“So what can you tell us about Dusty?”

Mira huddled against the side of the trailer.

“Mira?”

She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head.

“Mira, we can always leave now, without your telling us anything.” She looked up. “But then, suppose in a few days, someone else knocks on your door, and you open it up, and it turns out to be Dusty or one of his friends.”

A puzzled look crossed her face.

“You know how fast news gets around. People love to talk. Sometimes they even make up things. We’ve been asking around about Dusty. At restaurants, banks, places like that. There’s always the chance that it could get back to him that we’ve been to see you.”

A light strung up between the trailers caught her face at an angle. She looked scared.

“Now, you know and we know that you didn’t tell us anything. But he and his pals don’t. And seeing how Dusty doesn’t know he’s Brandon’s father, well, who knows what might happen if they decide to show up? I’d hate for something to happen to you. Or Brandon, you know what I mean?”

She started to shiver.

“You don’t want that, do you?”

Her face, pale and gaunt, twisted with indecision. Stone wondered when either of them had last had a good meal.

“He’s up in Minnesota,” she whispered. “With his family. “

“Family?” Stone backed up. “Dusty has a family?”

“Just his mom. They’re living with a bunch of people in the woods.”

“What people?”

“I don’t know. He just calls them the family.”

“The family?”

“They want to change the world... make things better for people like us.” She tossed her head. “But he wasn’t like that.”

“Like what?”

“They taught him how to shoot a machine gun and shotgun and stuff like that.” Matt and Stone exchanged glances.

“Like I said,” she repeated. “Dusty wasn’t like that. He’s a real – a real gentle person.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“He stopped coming before Brandon was born.”

“Why?”

“He got scared. He thought someone was following him. Watching, you know. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing or talking to anyone he used to know.”

Stone asked a few more questions, then motioned Matt back to the car. Halfway there, he stopped and reached for his wallet. Pulling out two twenties, he retraced his steps and handed them to her. “Buy Brandon something nice for Christmas, okay?”

She looked at the cash, then at him, then slipped the bills into her pocket. As they pulled away, the light swayed in the wind, casting a silhouette of Mira against the side of the trailer.