And got the hell out of there.
St. Andrew’s Church—a stone’s throw from the Drury home, just beyond the rumbling El—was more than just the biggest cathedral on the Northside: it was a tribute to the fund-raising savvy of Bishop Bernard J. Sheil. The sprawling complex of Catholic activity, including a school and a gym, took up three of the four corners of the Addison/Paulina intersection, and the formidable brick cathedral spanned a city block, with twin bell towers, a massive round stained-glass window between them, and a trio of solemn wall-sconce-enshrined concrete statues, one of them depicting St. Andrew (don’t ask me which or who the other two were—it was my mother who was the Catholic).
The vast ornate sanctuary, with its high vaulted plastered ceilings, was filled almost to capacity for the funeral of William Drury, the fallen Watchdog of the Loop…though noticeably absent were the high-ranking city and county officials, who— in the days since Bill’s murder—had been badmouthing the deceased in the press.
Bishop Sheil himself was sending Bill off, with a requiem high mass, and a dramatic sermon worthy of the fat- cat Catholic industrialists and politicos who had made this cavern of Christianity possible. Of course, Catholics do love a good martyr, even a poor one.
“Bill Drury was a man who gave his life for things he thought were right and just,” the prelate said. “Now we have men elected to a high public office who have thrown innuendos at this hero, and sullied his name, and attempted to tarnish his character.”
This didn’t bode well for Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert and his boss, State’s Attorney John S. Boyle, who were the unnamed public officials the powerful priest was referring to. And the reporters, scattered amidst the mourners in the pews, were scribbling down every word.
“I am prevented by the canons and ethics of my office from saying things burning now within my heart and body,” the bishop said from his pulpit. “I will say them on another, not so sacred occasion in the near future.”
Another service, in a modest chapel at Erie and Wabash, was also under way this morning: Marvin J. Bas was being laid to rest, before a smaller but no less indignant group of mourners.
Bas, like Bill, had been the object of Tubbo and the State’s Attorney’s afflictions, in the days since the twin murders. To reporters, Boyle asked the tactless rhetorical question: “Who says Bill Drury was a brave, heroic crimefighter? We don’t know how he made his living, the last two years. He had six hundred dollars in his pants when he was shot—in his new Cadillac!”
As for Bas, Tubbo’s boss proclaimed that the attorney “worked the wrong side of the fence. Bas was always getting a habeas corpus for persons we arrested. And he represented a lot of honky-tonks and hoodlums.”
According to Boyle, “good, law-abiding citizens” had no fear of being “shot down on Chicago’s streets—no one tending to his own honest business is in any danger in Chicago.”
Which meant, of course, that Drury and Bas were not good, law-abiding citizens tending to their own honest business.
Tubbo—who abandoned his leave of absence to take command of the Drury and Bas investigations—proclaimed that the slayings were unrelated, though he offered no theory on the murder of either man. And a statement from Gilbert’s campaign manager made it clear that “we can see no connection between these slayings and the candidacy of Captain Gilbert.”
No connection, that is, other than Drury and Bas working together to gather evidence against Tubbo to hand over to his opponent in the sheriffs race.
Tubbo’s investigation consisted of issuing an “arrest on sight” order for “every hoodlum in town”; and making an accusation to the press that, while on the force, Drury had “shaken down” bookies. Then, the day after the killings, without a warrant, Tubbo raided murder victim Bas’s office, seizing the attorney’s papers and records.
John E. Babb, Tubbo’s opponent for sheriff—who was among the mourners at Drury’s funeral—told the press, “It’s a new twist in law enforcement that the officers in charge are devoting more time to maligning the murder victims than to catching their murderers.”
And the widows of the two men stuck up gamely for their husbands, Mrs. Bas decrying Tubbo’s gestapo tactics in confiscating his private papers, while Mrs. Drury said, “I’ll sue any public official—State’s Attorney Boyle and Captain Gilbert included—who makes dirty statements about my husband.”
Petite, pretty Annabel Drury—who’d been married to Bill for twenty-one years—had had a rough time of it from the start. And I’d made that inevitable, when I’d bolted the crime scene to pursue the assassins, leaving Mrs. Drury the most likely person to make the ghastly discovery.
Around six-thirty that evening, she’d heard three loud reports, which she took to be cars backfiring at the nearby neighborhood service station. She and Bill lived on the second floor, and a kitchen window looked out on the garage.
“I had a strange feeling about those noises, though,” she’d told me last night, at the funeral home. Her dark silver-streaked hair in a fashionable bob, she wore a black suit and white gloves as we sat, holding hands. “I kept thinking about those noises…. They seemed…different. But when I looked out the window, I could see down below, and the garage lights weren’t on—Bill always turned the lights on when he came home.”
I knew she wanted to talk—had to talk—so I let her; she couldn’t know how goddamn lousy she was making me feel, for my role in making her ordeal even harder.
“I knew Bill said he had an appointment, at seven, but he also said he’d stop at home, and grab a bite to eat if there was time. I was preparing a little something in the kitchen, just a sandwich he could take with him…. Then when it was almost seven, I thought—maybe he’d gone on to that appointment…. Still, something seemed wrong, and finally I got a little flashlight and went out to the garage.”
She had found Bill there, sitting in the Caddy, covered in blood, torn by bullets, and her scream had summoned Bill’s seventy-six-year-old mother, and several other family members—all of whom were subjected to that terrible scene.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You have nothing to be sorry about, Nate.”
Well….
