No Show of Remorse (33 page)

I saw Frick as one of a hundred cops milling around, many of them busy holding back the gathering crowd. He was mad as hell and kept asking where Kilgallon was.

That got my attention. “Richie?” I asked. “Isn't he dead?” I was still on my ass on the cold, wet pavement and was starting to shake.

“Hell no,” Frick said. “He took a bullet, but he was in pretty good—” He looked around. “And where the fuck's Breaker Hanafan? If that crooked sonovabitch has—”

“I'm right here, dammit.”

I looked up and saw Breaker step through the crowd of police officers, then saw his Jaguar parked off to the right. There was no one in the Jag that I could see.

“I hid by my car,” Breaker said. “Think I wanna get my ass shot off by one of your fucking trigger-happy cops?” Breaker always says what's on his mind … except when he's lying.

This time it was a little of each.

CHAPTER

50

I
WOKE UP IN A HOSPITAL BED
, listening to a woman with a clipboard in the crook of her arm tell me about the surgery they'd done to repair my ankle, and how she'd like very much to know the name of my insurance company. Luckily, Renata Carroway came in just then and said she'd take care of those questions later and chased the woman and her clipboard away. Renata told me I'd refused to answer any police questions.

“I don't remember,” I said. “You mean I actually kept my mouth shut?”

“Uh-huh. The one sensible thing you've done this entire month.”

“Really.” I shook my head. “How'd I do last month?”

“Frick called me,” she said. “He wants your statement.”

*   *   *

R
ENATA CONVINCED
F
RICK
to put off the statement for a while because of my surgery. Plus I had to cooperate first with Detective Brasher and his Maura Flanagan homicide investigation.

I explained to Brasher that my music “fake book” found at Flanagan's could have been taken from Miz Becky's Tap, and Becky verified that I always left music on top of the piano there. I'd already told him that my message on Flanagan's machine was in response to a call from her, and he'd gotten a search warrant for my place and heard her message on my machine. They obviously hadn't found the manila envelope, or the card I'd stapled to it, but I said I'd been wanting to talk to her because she was the one at O.P.S. who closed out the Lonnie Bright case so quickly, with a finding of justifiable use of deadly force by police officers.

“What business was that of yours?” he asked.

“She wouldn't talk to me before,” I said, dodging his question, “but I guess she changed her mind.”

We brought in Casey and he gave Brasher the exact times he'd seen me at Saint Ludella's that night, leaving no reasonable probability that I could have been at Flanagan's house at the time she was killed. Unfortunately, Brasher asked Casey whether there'd been anyone else at the rectory and he'd had to answer that Jimmy Coletta and his wife came to see me.

Brasher wasn't interested in pressing me for the contents of my conversation with Jimmy in the rectory basement. He handed that over to Frick, and crossed me off as a murder suspect.

*   *   *

Y
OGI WAS IMPROVING
. He left Inverness Clinic and stayed at my place to recuperate and I got to talk to him about why he and Breaker Hanafan were so late showing up at
Le Chantier.
I didn't try to contact Breaker, but even though I'd failed to get Richie Kilgallon thrown in the slammer, one hundred thousand dollars in cash appeared at my door unannounced one day.

I guess Breaker gave credit for effort.

Meanwhile, Renata managed to get me Frick's police reports. She wouldn't say how, only that someday maybe I'd learn how helpful it could be to try to get along with people. She also found out it was true that Frick had been supposed to be taking time off when he showed up at
Le Chantier.
Some regulation regarding state coppers not accruing too many unused furlough hours. All that did, though, was give him the opportunity to work the Lonnie Bright case on his own time. He'd gotten a little fixated on it. Besides, he apparently had no family, no friends, and nothing to do but the job.

He'd been tailing Breaker from the time Breaker picked Yogi up Friday night at Inverness Clinic. The nurse had told Yogi I promised to visit him, and when I didn't show up he got worried. Then Frick came to see him on Friday and asked about me. Yogi never had much reason to trust “the fuzzies,” but something—he couldn't say what—made him trust Frick. So he told Frick the truth, that Breaker had called and said he had Dr. Tyne's okay to pick Yogi up at ten o'clock that very night and take him somewhere to meet me. Frick told Yogi to go with Breaker, but not to tell him they'd talked.

So Frick was waiting at ten, and followed them. Breaker told Yogi they weren't meeting me until one-thirty, and they drove to an Italian restaurant, where Breaker ate a long, leisurely meal in a private room with some woman. A whore, probably. Meanwhile, two men—“a fat one and a mean one” Yogi said—sat with Yogi in the bar and watched TV.

Breaker and Yogi left the restaurant in the Jaguar; Fat Wilbur and Mick in a different car. Pretty soon Breaker spotted someone following him, and told Yogi they better not meet me, because he didn't know who they'd be leading to me. But time went by, and Yogi was frantic. He insisted I must be in trouble or I'd have called Breaker's cell phone to see where they were. Breaker finally gave in and drove to
Le Chantier.
They parked off to the side of the lot, and Frick pulled in right next to them.

Although he didn't say so in his report, Frick wasn't the type to let local cops screw up a case for him, so he'd brought along two state investigators he could trust. And, I thought, two guys he knew he could order around. Leaving them with Yogi and Breaker, he was headed into the restaurant when he heard two gunshots, which must have been me putting the lights out in the kitchen. He told his men not to call for help yet, and sent one of them to look for a rear entrance and keep it covered.

He went in the front door and found a man in the vestibule, wounded, but apparently stable and not losing blood. According to his report, he recognized the man as a Chicago police officer, Richard Kilgallon, and would have called for an ambulance at once, but then there was more shooting. Frick should have been in trouble for not getting help for Kilgallon right away, but maybe the brass let him slide since it appeared Kilgallon fled the scene on his own.

Anyway, Frick hid near the archway and heard the conversation between Theodosian and me, and set it out in his report nearly verbatim. He'd suspected for some time that Theodosian was involved in the Lonnie Bright incident, which was exactly why he'd asked the Chicago department to assign Theodosian to ICOP, a state-municipal joint effort to ferret out bad cops.

When Theodosian fled through the kitchen exit, Frick's man back there challenged him and Theodosian replied by opening fire. The two exchanged shots and the state guy went down. By then, though, his partner had left Breaker and Yogi and had run around back, where he emptied his .45 into Theodosian. He was still squeezing the trigger on an empty weapon when Frick got to him. That part wasn't in Frick's report, but Yogi told me he ran back there, too, and saw it.

It turned out Frick's wounded investigator was wearing a Kevlar vest and wasn't badly hurt. Theodosian was dead.

Yogi told Frick he never saw Richie Kilgallon, which was probably true. Breaker said the same thing, which was certainly not true. There was nothing in the report about anyone asking me about a fat man and another man—or much of anything else, for that matter. It seemed I was in no shape to be interrogated, and was transported to the hospital.

Theodosian may have gone out the exit door hoping to ditch the weapon with the silencer and then surrender to Frick. Or maybe he'd flipped so far he thought he could get away. Who knows? At any rate, he still had that weapon on him, in addition to his registered 9 mm. He also had my Beretta, unloaded and obviously unfired. On Frick's report, Frankel was listed as the victim of gunshot wounds inflicted by Theodosian “under suspicious circumstances.” Kilgallon was listed as “wanted for questioning” in connection with at least two homicides—Lonnie Bright and Maura Flanagan.

The police considered Kilgallon as “not yet apprehended.” I could have told them he never would be … but didn't.

*   *   *

E
VENTUALLY
I
APPEARED
for my statement regarding the events at
Le Chantier.
Still struggling with my crutches, I was accompanied by my attorney, a very irritable Renata Carroway. The interrogation took place in a crowded little room at Chicago's shiny new police headquarters on the south side. The officer in charge, though, was Frick, and we didn't get along that day any better than we ever had, which didn't surprise—or bother—either one of us. Also present were an assistant state's attorney from Lake County—where Highwood is—and two from Cook County, along with two investigators from the Chicago Police Department.

Renata later told me she thought the crowd made Frick more determined to make me answer some questions I didn't want to answer. I disagreed with her. Frick was just an honest cop trying to do his job—and a sonovabitch who didn't need any goddamn gallery to spur him on.

Anyway, he got right to the point. He started by giving back my Beretta. Then he asked if I'd read his report and I said yes.

“Does it accurately state what happened and what was said that night?”

“What happened and what was said during the time Theodosian was in the kitchen and I was in the dining room … yes.”

“So tell me about before that.”

I told him everything, and patiently answered his questions when he interrupted.

He broke in once and asked, “At one point I heard you tell Theodosian that it was
him
—Theodosian himself—that let on to you that he was the one behind the threats you got when you filed your petition. What did you mean by that?”

“You remember,” I said, “when the three of us—you and I and Theodosian—were in Yogi's room at Inverness Clinic?” He nodded. “And I told you I picked up my mail one day and found an anonymous threat?”

“Right. A letter came in the mail and had a spider with its legs pulled off.”

“Except I know I didn't say whether it ‘came in the mail' or not. In fact, the letter wasn't mailed. Someone put it through my mail slot, in an envelope with no stamp, no address. And Theodosian knew that. When we talked the night Flanagan was killed, he mentioned the note someone shoved through my slot
with
my mail. He
knew
it hadn't been mailed.”

“Pretty subtle thing to rely on.”

“I didn't
say
it; and still he
knew
it. That's enough for me,” I said. “Anyway, you asked what I meant, and that's the answer.”

So Frick asked and I answered. I told him all I knew about Maura Flanagan. I told him about the green Crown Vic that kept tailing me around and I could tell by his reaction those were his men. It was clear, too, that what he heard from behind the archway at
Le Chantier
convinced him that my version of Theodosian's part in the Lonnie Bright incident was accurate—including his shooting Jimmy Coletta. First of all, Theodosian never denied any of it … not until he realized Frick was there. But more important was Theodosian's obvious determination to kill me, even though the proper procedure—and easier and safer by far—would have been to back off and call for assistance.

Not that Frick said all that. But it was clear from his questions.

We both knew that our beliefs wouldn't have stood up as proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and that most of what I said wasn't admissable evidence for one reason or another. But what did that matter? Four of the five bad cops were already dead. At least I hoped—for his sake—that Kilgallon was already dead. Because Breaker Hanafan, cancer patient and concerned grandfather of Stefanie Randle, was not a nice man.

Jimmy Coletta was the only one left, and I didn't talk about him. Nothing said that night at
Le Chantier
tied Jimmy to any crime, and he wasn't a bad cop—or a bad person—anymore. So why not leave him alone? Besides, hadn't I told Jimmy I'd do my best to keep him out of it?

So in the end there were a few questions I declined to answer, contrary to the advice of my attorney. Those questions included, again, what Marlon Shades said five years ago, and what Jimmy Coletta told me when we met in the rectory basement.

“You got any notes of either of those two conversations?” Frick asked.

“No.”

“Tape recordings?”

I stared at him. “No one's ever asked me that before,” I said, “but the answer's no.” Which was true. I'd destroyed the Marlon Shades tape two days earlier.

“And you won't reveal the contents of either conversation?”

“No.”

Frick didn't like that at all.

Nor did the Illinois Supreme Court, when my refusal to answer got that far in a hurry. “Compliance with this court's order five years ago,” the court said, “would have prevented two recent homicides.” Maybe they were right, but somehow I couldn't whomp up much of a sense of guilt over the murders of Art Frankel and Maura Flanagan.

The court, on its own motion, summarily dismissed my petition for reinstatement to the bar. “This petitioner was suspended five years ago,” the court said, “because he disobeyed an order issued by this court. His present renewed contempt for the court's authority is more serious, because he not only continues to invoke a purported attorney-client privilege as to the prior conversation with his client, but also refuses to answer questions about a more recent conversation with a former police officer, a conversation not even colorably protected by any privilege. Petitioner has demonstrated that he lacks all remorse and regret for his misconduct. He persists in his contempt. The petition for reinstatement to the bar is dismissed.”