He pulled out one of those old credit card gadgets, the kind that makes an imprint of the card on a carbon copy, and I handed him my Visa.
After he'd bagged the doll, I thanked him and headed to the next place on the list, a warehouse and factory just west of Old Town. A name had once been painted on the building's brick facade, Jorgensen's, maybe, but that was decades ago. The street that ran along the front of the building was narrow and empty, except for one truly eye-catching set of wheels.
I parked next to a mint new Corvette, spent three seconds admiring the lines, then walked to a door that had one of those cheap tin entrance signs stuck in the middle. The old knob was scuffed, and badly dented, and it complained loudly when I gave it a quick twist. The room on the other side of the metal door was a cramped office that smelled of dried sweat and recycled grease. The paint on the walls may have been beige once, but years of cigarette smoke and stale air had left a mud brown patina.
A small man with spiked hair sat behind a metal desk that was built long before computer monitors were common. He looked up at me as though he'd been waiting for someone, and I wasn't that guy.
“What do you want?” he asked as though that was his default greeting.
I looked beyond him to a partially open door and noticed the shadow of someone on the other side.
“Is that how you greet all your customers?”
“We're closed.”
He tucked something into his hip pocket as he stood. This wasn't a guy you showed your back to. He was short but solid, even his eyebrows had muscles, and his legs could've passed for fire hydrants in blue jeans.
“Are you Marty Cleven?” I asked in my most authoritative voice.
“What do you know about Marty?”
“Nothing, except he was supposed to meet a man named Emil Constentino here two days ago.”
“Don't know either of them. Time for you to go.”
“Is Mr. Cleven here? I just need a minute.”
“Time for you to go,” he repeated, raising his voice several decibels.
I glanced beyond him again, and saw what looked like a man moving around in the next room.
“Is he in the room behind you?”
“I warned you, buddy.”
He came out from behind the desk, reaching around his back as he closed the twenty feet of cracked grey tile between us. When his thick right hand re-emerged it was holding a tazer.
I never had military training, never formally studied the martial arts. But you pick up stuff over the years. After more than a decade of interviewing all sorts of people, experts in a wide variety of areas, not all of them legal, I've learned enough to defend myself in most circumstances. As all four feet, eleven inches of him came toward me I was certain this was one of those circumstances.
Mighty mite was just five feet away when I lunged forward and slammed my left fist down on his right wrist, sending the tazer tumbling across the floor until it came to a stop somewhere under the desk. Before he could snap out of his what-the-fuck-just-happened trance, I swung my right forearm into his chin and across the side of his neck. He dropped to the floor like someone had cut his strings, one hand rubbing his face, the other seeking the tazer.
The shadows in the other room weren't moving around anymore, they were huddled by the door. It was time to go.
I reached back for the entrance door and noticed there were dents and a lot of scuffed metal around the lock. Maybe the damage to the outside knob was recent, because maybe these guys didn't have a key to the place. I heard shorty growl something R-rated as I walked out.
Driving through busy Lincoln Park streets, I checked the rearview a dozen times on my way to the third stop, an apartment above a small business in Rogers Park. Calling the police crossed my mind more than once, but I didn't exactly have what you would call a friendly relationship with a majority of the Chicago PD. Besides, what would I say? I saw a guy who might have broken into an old warehouse with his friends, and I assaulted him because he might have tried to attack me because I wouldn't leave when he told me to? I'd been hassled by cops enough over the years, and I didn't want to add another unpleasant experience to the collection. So it was on to the third address on my short list.
The sign on the door of North Side Plastics read Closed. Between broken slats in the lowered blinds I could see someone moving around inside. I found the entrance to the apartments around the side of the building, and the name on the mail box confirmed that Angel Batara lived on the second floor. But the amount of mail filling the box also suggested what I soon confirmed, Angel wasn't home.
An hour later I was sitting at Johnny's Beef, eating a sandwich and looking over the notes I'd made, which added up to a whole lot of nothing. I finished lunch, got back in my car, and pointed it toward home.
And that's when I got the call from Zach.
Four floaters in eight weeks. An attention-getting number. One death is a human interest story. Two can sometimes be the result of some sort of a grudge, or gang activity. A third can be dismissed as fallout from the first two deaths. But when the body count reaches four, regular folks start worrying that they could be next. And that sells papers.
The scene along the North branch of the Chicago River was about what I had expected. I parked the car several blocks away so as to not draw attention to myself, and walked to the scene. The mid-summer sun that had recently baked the town to a crisp was still clinging to the late afternoon sky. Scanning the area for an anxious witness, a familiar face, or another reporter, I roamed the perimeter that the cops had staked out until I spotted Jimmy Gordon.
“Hey, Officer Gordon,” I said just above a whisper. He turned and eyed me right away.
“Chapa, I should've known you'd end up here along with the gawkers, bugs, and river rats.”
Jimmy had been my pal since back in the nineties when I wrote a series of stories that helped him and a few of his brothers in blue get off on bum corruption charges.
“What have we got here?”
“The guy hasn't been in the water for long, and it doesn't look like he drowned.”
“You got a name?”
“Don't think so, but all of this will be released to the press in due time.”
“C'mon, Jim,” I said with a smile.
He smiled back, though not as much, and appeared to consider his options.
After a moment, he said, “Have I told you about my brother?”
“Didn't know you had one.”
“I do, he's an orthodontist, very successful, knows all the latest technology and shit. And he just opened his own office in Glen Ellyn.”
“You don't say.”
“It's a tough business, Alex, very competitive and publicity can be hard to come by.”
“Sounds like he's providing a fine and necessary service to the good people of DuPage County.” I nodded. “I could probably milk a decent feature out of that.”
He returned my nod. We had an agreement.
I watched Jimmy walk down to the river and over near a woman I recognized as Homicide Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels. As Jimmy hovered around the scene I slipped behind an oak tree to avoid being spotted by the other cops. Daniels was a tough customer and a decent enough cop, but she didn't take kindly to members of the news media. If she spotted me, Jimmy would immediately forget our deal, my name, or that he'd ever even heard of newspapers.
She was surrounded by the usual array of police officials who were poking around the scene and carefully examining the corpse. I was so locked in to the goings on that I didn't notice Jimmy had returned and was casually leaning against the tree I was standing behind.
“The stiff is a white male, about six-three, under two hundred pounds, probably in his early to mid thirties. A group of folks on a river cruise spotted him floating by.”
“That'll ruin a nice day in the big city.”
“No shit. He was found fully dressed, but without any ID on him.”
“Cause of death?”
