Black House

George Potter looks at him with eyes that are suddenly alight. Jack doesn’t even have to finish the thought, which is good. He has found the wavelength—he almost always does, it’s his gift—and now it’s time to get down to business.

“You do know,” Potter says simply.

Jack nods. “You know why you’re here?”

“They think I killed that lady’s kid.” Potter nods toward the window. “The one out there that was holdin’ up the noose. I didn’t. That’s what I know.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Listen to me, now.”

Very quickly, Jack lays out the chain of events that has brought Potter to this cell. Potter’s brow furrows as Jack speaks, and his big hands knot together.

“Railsback!” he says at last. “I shoulda known! Nosy goddamn old man, always askin’ questions, always askin’ do you want to play cards or maybe shoot some pool or, I dunno, play Parcheesi, for Christ’s sake! All so he can ask questions. Goddamn nosey parker . . .”

There’s more in this vein, and Jack lets him go on with it for a while. Cancer or no cancer, this old fellow has been ripped out of his ordinary routine without much mercy, and needs to vent a little. If Jack cuts him off to save time, he’ll lose it instead. It’s hard to be patient (how is Dale holding those two assholes off? Jack doesn’t even want to know), but patience is necessary. When Potter begins to widen the scope of his attack, however (Morty Fine comes in for some abuse, as does Andy Railsback’s pal Irv Throneberry), Jack steps in.

“The point is, Mr. Potter, that Railsback followed someone to your room. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. Railsback was led to your room.”

Potter doesn’t reply, just sits looking at his hands. But he nods. He’s old, he’s sick and getting sicker, but he’s four counties over from stupid.

“The person who led Railsback was almost certainly the same person who left the Polaroids of the dead children in your closet.”

“Yar, makes sense. And if he had pictures of the dead kiddies, he was prob’ly the one who made ’em dead.”

“Right. So I have to wonder—”

Potter waves an impatient hand. “I guess I know what you got to wonder. Who there is around these parts who’d like to see Chicago Potsie strung up by the neck. Or the balls.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t want to put a stick in your spokes, sonny, but I can’t think of nobody.”

“No?” Jack raises his eyebrows. “Never did business around here, built a house or laid out a golf course?”

Potter raises his head and gives Jack a grin. “Course I did. How else d’you think I knew how nice it is? Specially in the summer? You know the part of town they call Libertyville? Got all those ‘ye olde’ streets like Camelot and Avalon?”

Jack nods.

“I built half of those. Back in the seventies. There was a fella around then . . . some moke I knew from Chicago . . . or thought I knew. . . . Was he in the business?” This last seems to be Potter addressing Potter. In any case, he gives his head a brief shake. “Can’t remember. Doesn’t matter, anyway. How could it? Fella was gettin’ on then, must be dead now. It was a long time ago.”

But Jack, who interrogates as Jerry Lee Lewis once played the piano, thinks it does matter. In the usually dim section of his mind where intuition keeps its headquarters, lights are coming on. Not a lot yet, but maybe more than just a few.

“A moke,” he says, as if he has never heard the word before. “What’s that?”

Potter gives him a brief, irritated look. “A citizen who . . . well, not exactly a citizen. Someone who knows people who are connected. Or maybe sometimes connected people call him. Maybe they do each other favors. A moke. It’s not the world’s best thing to be.”

No, Jack thinks, but moking can get you a Cadillac with that nice smooth ride.

“Were you ever a moke, George?” Got to get a little more intimate now. This is not a question Jack can address to a Mr. Potter.

“Maybe,” Potter says after a grudging, considering pause. “Maybe I was. Back in Chi. In Chi, you had to scratch backs and wet beaks if you wanted to land the big contracts. I don’t know how it is there now, but in those days, a clean contractor was a poor contractor. You know?”

Jack nods.

“The biggest deal I ever made was a housing development on the South Side of Chicago. Just like in that song about bad, bad Leroy Brown.” Potter chuckles rustily. For a moment he’s not thinking about cancer, or false accusations, or almost being lynched. He’s living in the past, and it may be a little sleazy, but it’s better than the present—the bunk chained to the wall, the steel toilet, the cancer spreading through his guts.

“Man, that one was big, I kid you not. Lots of federal money, but the local hotshots decided where the dough went home at night. And me and this other guy, this moke, we were in a horse race —”

He breaks off, looking at Jack with wide eyes.

“Holy shit, what are you, magic?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m just sitting here.”

“That guy was the guy who showed up here. That was the moke!”