Windy City Blues (24 page)

I went for a walk along the shoreline, an activity on a gloomy autumn day guaranteed to encourage depressive, self-defeating thoughts. Robertson’s pathetic image kept flashing in my brain, his face distorted by pain after I had driven my knee into his gut and twisted his wrist into an agonizing posture. What had I become?

It was dark when I got home. A restless night awaited me. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering why Izzy viewed the world allegorically and had chosen me to portray his protagonist in a morality play. He knew the reasons. I knew he paid me.

The phone rang just after midnight, arousing me from a semi-conscious slumber barely qualifying as sleep.

“Landau?” Kalijero said.

“Jimmy?”

“Responsib
ility for civilians, Landau. Remember?”

I struggled to clear a lingering cobweb from my brain. “What do you want, Jimmy?”

“Before you showed up at Area B today, I found out your editor buddy washed up along Navy Pier. The back of his head caved in.”

A meteor swung around Earth a few times in its elliptical orbit before crashing into me and dispersing my particles around Palmer’s round face. An intense ache filled my belly, a pain that throbbed from allowing a kind, helpless man to end up floating lifeless in a cold lake. Frownie’s disapproving mug came into view.
What about the newspaper editor?
he said.
Don’t tell me he’s already dead.
Frownie faded away shaking his head, thoroughly disgusted.
It’s for your own good you should feel such pain
.

I heard myself say, “You’re sure it’s Palmer?”

“His wallet had a driver’s license and
Republic
ID. Wilbert J. Palmer. We’re still looking for his next of kin.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Shut up! He was a grown-up, Landau, and he knew you were investigating a murder. You can’t tell me this guy was just some babe in the woods.”

But he had been protected, I wanted to say, groomed to see only what the privileged owners of media saw. To Palmer, neutralizing threats of financial exposure was just a cliché of Gotham.

“Did you hear what I said about staying clearheaded?”

I heard him, but his words had no effect. I hadn’t yet hardened enough to do what Kalijero advised. Maybe I never would. Then what was I doing in the murder business? I let the phone drop to the floor and lay awake thinking about my last conversation with Palmer, when he told me not to fret, when he told me that he took pride in his ability to remain inconspicuous.

Saturday morning arrived barely distinguis
hable from the previous night’s quasi-sleep chaos. Palmer’s death wrenched my guts. Lying low to deal with my turmoil was out of the question. I told myself that I needed to proceed as planned, if only because that’s what Palmer would’ve wanted. Having no appetite for breakfast, I sat on the couch stupefied—as if drugged—wa
tching Punim gorge herself on a pre-mixed combination of muscles, organs, brains, and bones. Kalijero could’ve waited until Sunday to tell me about Palmer. Maybe he hoped the news would discourage me from going to the port.

Soon after finishing breakfast, Punim’s inner wildcat showed up. Her pupils the size of nickels, her ears unnaturally askance, she batted a yellow crunched up Post-it note around the living room, occasionally stopping for a quick, intense groom and then an equally brief glance at me, before carrying on. I usually took great delight in watching her so thoroughly amused, but this morning her antics appeared ordinary, barely registering as novelty behavior for which cats expected exaltation. So absorbed was I in Palmer’s death and my mission at the Port of Chicago, I didn’t notice the show had ended until I caught sight of her sitting at the end of the couch, staring at me. When I reached to give her a scratch behind the ears, she bolted then disappeared down the hall. In a matter of minutes, she would be dead asleep. Somewhere, a metaphor lurked in Punim’s lifestyle, meant for my spiritual growth.

I called Tamar and asked her to meet me somewhere. Since her shift started in a couple of hours, she suggested the bakery. “You don’t sound so good,” she said.

“I’ll see you shortly,” I said.

Late-morning pastry mania engulfed the counter. Tamar had not yet arrived. I took a table in the back, away from the clamor. Six teenagers occupied one of the booths, none of them speaking, all transfixed by some kind of computer screen, be it phone or laptop. Their varying shades of brown and tan temporarily lessened my pain over Palmer. I hoped nobody would hassle them for sitting in a booth.

A guy wheeled in a stack of
The Partisan
and began loading them on the magazine rack near the front door. So much news, corruption, entertainment, so many crooks and characters, a paper like
The Partisan
needed to be semi-weekly if only to fill in the holes left by a daily corporate shill like the
Republic
. I walked over and grabbed a copy. One of the kids did the same, returning with a paper for each friend. Below the fold: “THE CRACKHEAD AND THE SCHIZO” with a subhead, “Meter Maid and Scofflaw—Both Expired.”

Ellis Knight asked what a guy named Gelashvili and a guy named Jones had in common with a guy named Baxter. Two of the three needed drugs to survive, two of the three lived in the same building on Farragut Avenue, two of the three were parking officers, two of the three knew the third—and three of the three were dead.

“Anonymous Sources” in bold letters prefaced the next paragraph, followed by “Wassup B? My aces say things ain’t
aight,
three sidewalk outlines without a fight, but nothin’ an AK couldn’t set right. Them wangstas think they all that, but they ain’t nothin’ but a hood rat…booya!”

Without an interpreter, I could only read the article assuming that my vague understanding of ghetto slang was accurate. The project quickly became tiresome. To the kids in the booth as well as those younger faces sitting at surrounding tables, Knight’s style was familiar and customary. Many read quotes aloud from the article, eliciting sympathetic laughter and cynical comments relating to social injustices.

Boris and Vlad appeared, each carrying a pastry and a cup of coffee. They took their customary booth at the end of the row. Tamar walked in soon after. On the way over to me, she looked at the vagrant passed out at his usual table. Something about her demeanor told me she was all business this morning.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she took a seat.

I told her about being arrested, my conversation with Konigson, and my staunch belief Elon was behind her cousin’s murder. “Other than that, I’m fine.”

“You sound terrible.”

“Okay, you got me.” I explained who Palmer was and told her about his murder.

“That’s terrible. Horrible. But you can’t blame yourself—”

“Yeah, yeah, he had to have known how cruel the world was, et cetera and so on. But listen, I figured out what Gigi’s twenty-four is. It’s at the Port of Chicago; that’s where the girls are brought in. The number twenty-four in Gigi’s appointment book must mean
pier
twenty-four. A reliable source told me Elon uses the occasion to pick out his new girlfriend. This means we can actually catch Elon and Gigi in the act of smuggling women into the country to be prostitutes.”

“That’s tonight, remember. The next delivery.”

“I’m going down there today to find pier twenty-four. Then I’ll call Kalijero and give him the lay of the land. If Kalijero thinks he’s got a good chance of catching Elon involved in human trafficking or prostitution, he’ll respond—or I hope he will.”

“Gigi, Elon, and probably those two clowns will be there,” Tamar said, nodding toward Boris and Vlad. “God!” she said. “I’d do anything for this to be my last shift with Gigi.” I sensed a chilling undercurrent in her voice.

“Try to stay cool,” I said. “You can’t let Gigi know you’re on to something. Trust me, we’ll get his ass in prison but you gotta be patient.”

Tamar was anything but cool as she sat with those dark eyes intently fixed on Boris and Vlad as they casually sipped coffee and nibbled pastries. She radiated anger like heat shimmering off blacktop. Despite the seriousness of our endeavor, I found myself fascinated by this fiery side of her and, unexpectedly, more than a little turned on.

“Look at those two morons,” Tamar said. “They just sit here all day, waiting to cause pain in someone’s life as soon as they get instructions from Big Bunny, or whoever they take orders from.”

I thought I was hearing things. “Did you say ‘Big Bun’—?”

Tamar jumped out of her chair, climbed on top of the gangsters’ table, then began pounding her fists on Boris’s head. Running over just as Vlad grabbed the back of Tamar’s neck, I drove my shoulder into his ribs, knocking him sideways over the seat. From behind, I bear-hugged Tamar, trying to pull her off the guy, but this made things worse since Tamar now had two fistfuls of hair, eliciting horrifying screams. I put my hands around her wrists and shouted in her ear, “Let go! Just let him go!”

Movement from my periphery convinced me I should let go first, then swivel around to plant a foot into Vlad’s stomach. This time, Vlad made it all the way to the floor, where he would remain. Gigi was now on the scene taking his turn at trying to get Tamar to relinquish her grip. I put a hand on each side of her face and spoke calmly into her ear. She had stopped shouting but tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Please,” I said. “Just let go.” I kissed her then repeated, “Please, Tamar, let go,” and kissed her again. Gradually, she loosened her grip enough for Boris to pull away. Gigi and I grabbed her, practically carrying her out the front door, as an astonished crowd of pastry patrons watched.

“My god!” Gigi said, sounding more concerned than angry. “What’s happened to you? What’s going on?”

Keep it simple,
I wanted to say, fearing Tamar might let her anger give away our newfound knowledge.

“I’m tired of those two stupid idiots sitting there all day making nasty comments, insulting our heritage,” Tamar said, making up the story on the spot. “The one I attacked called me a little Georgian whore. Tell them this isn’t Russia and they need to respect me.”

Gigi stared wide eyed at Tamar as if a spiraling horn had just popped out of her forehead. “Why didn’t you say something before?” Gigi said. “
Of course
they should respect you. You’re one of us, my child!”

Gigi reentered the bakery then stormed up to the gangsters’ table. Through the glass, we watched him stand defiantly with hands on hips, as he dispensed a tongue-lashing to the bewildered tough guys.

“See if you can skip this shift and go home,” I said.

“No. I’d rather work. If there’s a delivery tonight, I’ll watch closely what goes on here.”

“Just be careful not to give yourself away. I’m sure Gigi’s compassion has its limits.”

“Gigi and I are blood. He wouldn’t hurt me no matter what—if that’s what you mean.”

“A white slaver with a heart of gold.”

“Stalin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.” Her ironic comeback only added to the intensity of my attraction.

“I better get ready for my shift,” Tamar said. “The Port of Chicago. Be careful. I mean it! I’m going to call you around five or six. You better answer and tell me what’s up.” Tamar took hold of my jacket collar, pulled me toward her into a kiss, then walked back into the bakery.