The Shoulders of Giants (10 page)

“So, does it get easier?”

“After a while, you kind of become detached. It’s like these bodies were never actual people. You can’t let yourself care about them. They’re just puzzles to solve. That’s the theory anyway. Fact is, you get used to it, but it doesn’t really get easier.”

Chapter 15

Once Scott had left, and I was alone in my office, I tried to figure out my next move. With Walsh dead, all bets were off. It could be some unidentified motiveless psycho, someone with a grudge against all six victims, or maybe even the Mob. I still couldn’t let that one go.

I scanned in the composite of Tommy Byrne and emailed it to Lucy, my Borderline contact with what little I knew about him. This was going to cost me. About an hour later, after Lucy had compared the composite to all the photos of Tommy Byrnes on the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles database, I had a copy of his driver’s license, last known address, date of birth and car make, model and registration. I took the files on Richard West and Melissa Adams from my filing cabinet. I started three new files which I labeled Julie Campbell, Grant Foster, and Calvin Walsh. By the time I’d finished, the last two were still empty, except for a single sheet of paper in each containing what little I knew about them. I had updated the information in the other files, and added more newspaper clippings.

I scanned in pictures of Richard West and Melissa Adams from the newspaper reports of their deaths. The report on Julie Campbell had not warranted a picture, and one would probably been harder to get given that her family lived in England. For Grant Foster, I trawled the Internet, looking at sites about film and television. It soon became clear that he was not a successful actor. I wondered whether he had more luck as a model.

After a good half an hour of research, I discovered he had once played a minor criminal in an episode of
NYPD Blue
, and fortunately, a fan of the show with way too much time on their hands had posted screenshots of every guest star on his website. Grant Foster’s picture was grainy, to say the least. He was good looking, but that was before someone had shoved a knife through his neck. I copied and pasted the picture into a Word document with the others, and printed it out. I wished I had a photo of Calvin Walsh, but for now these would have to do.

As I left my office building, I half expected to see Tommy Byrne and his friend again. If I was right, and someone at Flanagan’s was tipping them off when Patterson hired me, then maybe they hadn’t bothered to have me followed, assuming I’d cave just like Joey Cicero. If they were only protecting their boss and had nothing to do with Susan’s death then maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about anyway. Time would tell. In the meantime, my right hand went inside my jacket to rest on the butt of my gun. It stayed there until I reached my car.

It was almost nine when I arrived at Dutch’s bar. Nick the bouncer was on the door. I didn’t say hello. I didn’t want to confuse him. I sat down at the bar, and ordered a Budweiser. If Dutch recognized me, he didn’t show it in his face. I must remember never to play poker with him. I was halfway through a bowl of complimentary peanuts by the time I realized I hadn’t had any dinner.

The bar was a little less busy than it had been on Sunday, but business was still good. I sat nursing my beer for around twenty minutes, during which time, nobody offered to buy me a drink, or asked me to dance. I felt a little put out. Finally, I noticed the person I had gone there to see. I waited a couple of songs, until he stopped dancing, and then sidled up to him.

“Hi Frank,” I said, “can I buy you a drink?”

He turned, and looked at me for a moment, trying to place me, trying to remember...

“Jake, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “That’s right.”

“I knew you’d be back,” he said. I didn’t know quite what to make of that. “The shiner threw me for a minute.” I self-consciously touched my black eye, which had now added some yellow to the purple. “What happened to you?”

“Occupational hazard,” I said. “So how about that drink?”

“Sure, I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

I ordered him a Budweiser, and got myself another. When they arrived he clinked the neck of his bottle against mine.

“Bottoms up!” he said.

“Once again, I’m afraid I’m here on business.”

“Oh yes, still looking for that girl?”

“No. She turned up. Unfortunately, we were too late.” He looked appropriately saddened. “But you may still be able to help.”

“Fire away.”

Frank looked deep into my eyes, and I wondered if he was fully paying attention. I took the folded page from my pocket and showed it to him.

“I was wondering if you’ve ever seen any of these people in here. Or for that matter, anywhere else.”

He looked at the pictures in turn, and I watched his face for any reaction. When he got to Grant Foster’s picture, he arched his eyebrows, and I got a small rush of adrenaline.

“He’s kind of cute.”

“Ever seen him before?” I asked, hopefully.

“I wish. Sorry, I can’t help you.”

“Would you mind showing these to your friends? Maybe someone else has seen them around. I’d appreciate a call, if you hear anything.” I handed him one of my business cards.

“Jake,” he said, smiling, “It would be my pleasure. You want to dance?”

“No, thanks, I have to go and eat. But I’ll see you around. And thanks.”

I drained the last of my beer and left before they played any more Abba songs. When I got home I fried some chicken with some chopped peppers and onions and I added a few ripe tomatoes. I let it simmer while I dropped some noodles in a pan of boiling water. When I was done, and I’d doused the whole lot in soy sauce, it actually tasted fairly good.

I watched a documentary on black holes on the Discovery Channel until it was time to go to bed, but I wasn’t tired, and I didn’t want to lie in bed trying to sleep, so I started looking for things to do. I flipped through the TV Guide, and read an article on the demise of sitcoms since
Seinfeld
finished. I started watching
Twelve Angry Men
on TCM for about the millionth time, but I fell asleep somewhere near the end of the film, and didn’t wake up until after ten the next morning.

I showered and shaved, and thought about eating breakfast. At the moment, I didn’t seem to know very much. With six victims and a possible Mob connection there were a lot of people to talk to and things to know, and I didn’t want all my eggs in one basket. I decided I would keep speaking to people who knew Susan, since she was my connection to the case, and I’d look into two of the other victims to see if I could find a link between them, to the Mob, or to Susan. If I didn’t find anything I’d move on to two more victims, and then two more. The obvious one to choose first was Calvin Walsh, since he was probably the first victim, and according to
Silence of the Lambs
that’s a good place to start –
“What do we begin to covet? We covet what we see every day.”
I didn’t know if there was any coveting going on in this case, but maybe Walsh was the first victim because he knew the killer. There were no signs of forced entry into his apartment, suggesting he let his killer in. Come to that, Grant Foster was also killed in his apartment, and his door hadn’t been forced either. Maybe they both knew the killer. I decided to start with these two and look for where their lives might have overlapped.

I called the zipper factory where Calvin Walsh worked, and spoke to his boss, Mr Perry. Perry seemed excited at the prospect of my coming to speak with him, and suggested he set aside a room so I could talk privately with some of ‘the boys’, who probably knew more about Calvin.

Forty-five minutes later, when I arrived at the factory, I was greeted like an old friend. Perry had an office up a flight of metal stairs, with windows on all sides, so that he could survey his people constantly.

The second I entered, he left his sentry box, and practically ran down the staircase towards me, hands outstretched in welcome. He must have been watching the door.

“Hi,” he shouted, before he got anywhere near me. “Hi there. Name’s Perry, Joe Perry. You can call me ‘Pez’, everybody does. Jesus, you been in a fight? That’s a pretty nice bruise you got there. I used to do a little boxing, you know.” He grabbed my hand and started pumping it up and down like he expected oil to come shooting out of the top of my head.

“Jake Abraham.” I said, quite meekly.

I was ushered through the huge factory, past acres of noisy machinery, and men in matching blue coveralls, to a small room containing a table and two chairs. The walls were lined with cardboard boxes, which, judging by the writing on the side, contained coffee. Nothing else. No choice of caf or decaf, no cocoa, or tea. Maybe they had different rooms for different drinks, but I doubted it. If they had a siege, they might starve to death, but they would certainly stay awake. Suddenly the reason for Pez’s exuberance became all too clear. As the manager, he probably sat in his treetop office all day watching the troops and drinking the coffee.

He motioned me to sit down behind the table, in the position of authority, and said he would send the boys in to speak to me, one by one. I wondered how many he had in mind.

“Mr Perry,” I said.

“Pez, please.”

“Pez,” I conceded. “Why don’t we start with you? Unless you’re busy.”

“No busier than I’m gonna be later on.” He almost sat down, but stopped himself when a thought occurred to him. “You want some coffee?”

“No, thanks.” I don’t drink coffee. Can’t stand the stuff.

“Mind if I get some?” He was an addict. I considered trying an intervention, but decided I didn’t know him well enough yet.

“Not at all.”

He opened the door to the small room, and yelled towards one of the coveralls.

“Hey Billy, get me a coffee, would you?… Huh?… No, just one.”

He walked over to one wall, and stared at the side of a box as if he was looking through a window. Before long he thought better of it and sat down in the chair opposite me. He began fidgeting immediately. I would have said he was hiding something, but I figured it was just the DTs. “So, dreadful thing about Cal, huh? Just tell me what I can do to help.”

“Perhaps you can begin by telling me what Calvin did here, exactly.”

“Well Jake, ...can I call you Jake?” I nodded. “Cal was a line manager.”

“Which means...?”

“He was in charge of about thirty machinists. His team mostly makes the stringers on the spiral plastic zippers.”

I had know idea what that meant, and was still deciding whether or not to ask, when Pez decided to tell me.

“Lot of different processes go into making a zipper, Jake. Zippers have been made here in Chicago for over a hundred years – they were invented here. Most of the production’s in China and Japan these days, but we still produce over 7 million zippers a day right here. Cal and his team run the machines that make the stringers – that’s the tape and teeth that make up half a zipper.”

“Had he done that long?”

“He started out as a machinist himself. Eight years, he stuck at it. He was a Union Rep. for a while, then he got promoted, and he’s been a line manager going on four years.”

“So, he was here for a while, then.” Loyal, I wondered, or unambitious? “You know anyone who might have had a grudge against him?”

Pez smiled. “A fairly long list of jealous husbands and boyfriends, I’d say.”

“He fooled around a lot?”

“Cal? Hell, yeah. He’d fuck a snake if you hold it for him. I mean, you know, he’s a single guy, and ordinarily, there’s nothing wrong with playing the field, per se, but Cal did have a liking for ladies who were already taken. He told me once...”

There was a faint knock at the door. Pez said “Yeah?” and the door opened. Billy came in carrying two coffees. He handed one to Pez, and offered me the other. It seems Billy didn’t have much of a memory. Either that or the concept of someone not wanting coffee was just too much for him to cope with. I took the coffee with a smile, and placed it on the table, next to my notepad.

“You were saying?” I continued, after Billy had left the room.

“Huh?”

“You were just about to say what Cal once told you.”

“Was I?” He thought for a couple of seconds, and took a large swallow of his coffee. “No, sorry, it’s gone.”

“Is there anyone who works here, who might have been mad at Cal?”

“Here? No, he gets on with everyone.”

“Nobody that you know of that might have had good reason to dislike him at all?”

“No. Like I said, he was very popular.”

He wasn’t getting it. Third time lucky.

“Let me put it like this. To your knowledge, did Cal ever sleep with the wife or girlfriend of anyone who works at the factory?” Well, third time less subtle, anyway.

“Oh, no. Cal would never do that to a friend. No, he liked women, but he was honorable.” He gulped down the rest of his coffee. He must drink thirty of those a day, I thought.

“It looks like Calvin was killed on or before Sunday. Would anyone here have usually seen him at the weekend?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

“When he didn’t show up for work on Monday morning, what did you do? Weren’t you concerned?”

“Not really, I got someone else to cover for him.”

“Wouldn’t you normally expect a phone call from someone who was taking the day off?”

He looked directly into my eyes, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “Cal used to drink a little, Jake. He’s been better recently, but he’s not clean. I had a similar problem a while back. Still do, I guess. So I know what it’s like. Difference is, Cal never really admitted he had a problem. I’ve been clean for six years now. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. By the way,” he said, gesturing at my coffee, “If you’re not gonna drink that, do you mind if I have it?” I pushed it across the table to him. A man’s got to be allowed to have vices.

“So, when he didn’t come in on Monday, you assumed he was drunk somewhere?”