J anet Woods lived in a section of Chicago known as Sauganash. On the northwest edge of the city, Sauganash was more suburb than city, more Irish than WASP, and tight-knit to the point of incestuous.
A lot of cops lived in Sauganash. A lot of firemen. A lot of people like Johnny Woods. People who worked for the city and had to live there in order to keep their job. Homes in Sauganash rarely went on the market. When they did, prices started at a half mil, which was okay since no one got to buy in the neighborhood unless they “knew” somebody. Like I said, a tight-knit group.
Johnny and Janet lived at the squared-off end of a neat block of colonials. The lawns were green, the streets clean. Kids played basketball in the driveway and probably had nice teeth. All in all, the place was safe. Boring, yes. And everyone seemed to look alike. Still, it was Sauganash. A daily celebration of a certain kind of life, preserved under glass and, in the minds of its residents, the only state of mind in which to live. Unless, of course, you could afford Winnetka.
I parked around the corner with a view of the front door. It was just past three on a Thursday afternoon, and I needed to have a word with my client about her daughter. The same daughter who wanted me to kill her step- dad. I had thought about calling ahead of time but decided against it. Sometimes, it was better to just show up.
I was about to get out of the car when I saw a black Saab back out of the driveway. Janet was behind the wheel, wearing a scarf and sunglasses. I was going to flag her down. Instead, I turned the engine over and followed.
A couple of minutes later, we were out of Sauganash and into the grit along Lincoln Avenue, past two blocks’ worth of Korean restaurants, a couple of motels that rent rooms by the hour, and an all-night bail bondsman. Ten minutes after that, Janet Woods pulled to the curb inside the 1800 block of West Winona. She got out, took a quick look behind her, and headed for a place called Big Bob’s Saloon. I didn’t know much about Big Bob’s except that it sponsored Chicago’s only live turtle races. They happened every Friday night. Six turtles with numbers on their shells, a man with a microphone, and a hundred or so screaming fans. You could bet on a turtle, win a pitcher of beer, and basically get hammered as the green guys crawled across the floor. I had gone once with a woman. Won seven of eight races and lost my date halfway through. All in all, not a bad night.
I pulled up to the curb and watched the afternoon sun paint shadows across the tavern’s front windows. Janet walked in and took a seat at the end of the bar. A moment later, the man pouring booze shifted his bulk her way. He fixed her up some sort of drink and lingered. The two talked, heads together, like they’d done it before. The talk continued for the better part of ten minutes. Then the bartender moved away and my client sat alone, sipping her drink and looking straight ahead. I locked up the car and walked into the tavern.
At four in the afternoon, the race track wasn’t quite what I remembered. Looked more like a dump, with a long narrow bar made of thin plywood, cracked Formica tables, and the faint smell of dead rodent wafting from somewhere near the bathrooms. Up close and personal, the bartender looked like an ex-jock from a very local high school, maybe six feet and long gone to fat. He was wearing a 1985 Bears Super Bowl sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves, and inhaling an order of Chinese takeout. The rest of the place was filled up with an old man at a dark corner table, nursing a bottle of Miller High Life as if it were the champagne of beers and staring at his life from the wrong side.
Janet drank from a plastic cup and was almost done when I walked up. She still had her sunglasses on, and the scarf bunched around her neck and lower face. She watched me approach in the mirror behind the bar.
“You come here a lot, Michael?”
“Been here for the turtle races.”
Janet sniffed at that and rattled the ice in her cup. The barkeep got up with a groan, dumped some ice in another cup, and filled it up with ginger ale. He slid the drink in front of Janet, took a look at me, and asked what I wanted. I ordered a Bud and sat down without being invited.
“This guy know you?” I said.
The bartender returned with my beer, grunted back to his stool, and exhaled into a another mouthful of soft noodles. The Cubs game came up on a TV in the corner. It was the bottom of the fourth and they were losing twelve to two.
“I come here now and again,” she said.
I took a sip of my beer and pretended to look around. “Yeah, you fit right in.”
“They leave me alone. Give me some space to think.”
“You come in here to do your thinking?”
“Sometimes. If that’s okay with you.”
Janet took off her glasses as she spoke. The eye had healed nicely, which was good because the scarf was covering a cheek and jaw that were ruined.
“He hit you with a fist?” I said.
Janet pushed the scarf up close to her skin. I pulled it back.
“Started with an open hand, didn’t he?” My fingers traced the edge of her jaw and the soft bruises she called lips. “Lip’s cut on the inside. Teeth probably went right through when he caught you. Had to be with a fist. That’s why it’s all swollen.”
The bartender was edging his eyes my way. I wondered how much he knew about my client’s bruises. I wondered why he cared.
“Put some ice on it if you haven’t already,” I said. “It’ll help. Still, I wouldn’t get rid of the scarf.”
“Thanks. Is that all you came in here for?”
“Taylor came to see me the other day.” I dropped it in without missing a beat and looked straight ahead. I felt her head swivel, her focus tighten.
“My Taylor?”
I nodded.
“What did she want?”
“She wanted to talk about her step-daddy. About how we could maybe figure out a way to kill him.”
I caught her eyes in the barroom mirror, then they swam away.
“How do you feel about that?” I said.
“How am I supposed to feel?”
“I don’t know. Sick? Scared?”
“Taylor’s a kid. She’s upset and angry.”
“That it?”
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“You sure about that?”
“Kill Johnny? You can’t think she’d ever seriously consider…” Janet dismissed the notion with a shake of her head. “No one’s going to hurt Johnny, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried. Just thought you might want to talk to your girl. Explain some things to her.”
“My kid’s not a murderer.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to her.”
Janet sank her eyes into her drink. I scratched at the label on my bottle of beer. The old man in the corner leafed through a Sun-Times. He read it from back to front, two fingers played up the side of his face, a lit cigarette dangling there. He moved his mouth to the smoke without ever taking his hand from under his chin and turned the pages slowly.
“You think I’m making a mistake, don’t you?” Janet said.
“I told you what I think.”
“The face isn’t as bad as it looks.”
My client’s reflection played like some sort of cruel joke above the row of bottles behind the bar.
“It isn’t?”
Janet slipped the glasses back over her eyes and folded the rest of herself back into the scarf.
“No, it isn’t. Besides, I get my pound of flesh.” She said the last part with a measured cadence, a rhythm, soaked in some sort of very private satisfaction.
“And how does that work?”
I didn’t expect a window into how or where my client took her marital pound. I wasn’t disappointed.
