Chicago Noir [Anthology]

The next morning, I noticed Mr. Klein across the street. He wasn'’t watching the neighborhood, he was doing the Sun Times crossword. When I asked if he knew that our house had been hit, he said that he’d been sitting outside all yesterday. He’d seen my mother drive to work with her Crawford’s bags, had seen the ambulance pick up Hallie and my grandfather, had seen the ambulance return later that afternoon, then my mother coming home, and then the squad cars. He didn'’t know how he could have missed it.

I asked Mr. Klein if he’d seen a red Cadillac DeVille.

“Not even that,” he said.

“It’s enough, Joe,” I heard his wife Fran say.

During the night, I concocted a plan that would allow me to search through the apartment on Albion Street without arousing Jason’s suspicions. I would suggest a game of hide-and-seek. I feared that Jason might find the idea babyish, yet I couldn'’t think of another way to be alone in Bobby’s room. But when I reached the apartment, Bobby Kagan was there. He was wearing a white headband, white tube socks with red stripes on them, no shirt. Now that he was dating my mother, he had invented nicknames for me.

“Benny,” he said, “Benito, what’s happening?”

There were more than a dozen questions I wanted to ask Bobby Kagan. Why hadn'’t he been able to pick up my mother the previous night? Where had he been between 5:00 and 7:00? Where did all that money in his dresser come from? But he was the one asking questions before I could pose any of my own. Was I hungry for pancakes? Did I want to see the ballgame tonight? The Sox were playing the Angels. Though he had some business to take care of, he could drop me and Jason off and give us money for a taxi home.

“How do you get such good seats?” I asked.

“I work for the Sox, Benski,” he said.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Public relations, Benovich. I thought I told you that already.”

Midway through the game that night, with the Sox down 7-0, I sensed that Jason had grown bored with me. He disappeared for the fifth inning and when he returned and I asked where he’d been, he said he was talking to some girls. I thought he was lying, but during the seventh-inning stretch he left again, then came back to ask if I wanted to join him and the girls in the upper deck. I asked why he couldn'’t bring them back to our seats; we had the better view.

“Because no one’s in the upper deck,” he said. “And if no one’s in the upper deck, no one can bust you for spitting on people in the boxes.”

In the front row of the empty right-field upper deck of Comiskey Park, Judy Petak and Brenda Lawton, two gumchewing girls with Le Sportsac bags slung over their shoulders, had ditched their parents and were crouched down in front of the green seats. Then, suddenly, they would spring up, spit as far as they could, and duck back down. I don’t know if the girls heard Jason when he introduced me, but my name made no impression.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and when I returned, Jason was making out with Judy Petak, and Brenda Lawton was spitting her half-chewed gum down. I had the twenty-dollar bill that Bobby Kagan had given us and I figured I could find a taxi in front of Comiskey and Jason wouldn'’t mind at all if I disappeared. But once I'’d made it out the main gates and had searched vainly for a cab, wondering if I would survive a bus or train ride through the city at night, I heard Jason calling after me.

“What the fuck’s your problem, man?” he said.

I told him that I hadn'’t expected him to follow me. He was welcome to stay.

“How am I supposed to do that when you have all the money?” he said.

We took the El back north; Jason had grabbed the twenty-dollar bill from me and said that he wouldn'’t spend that money on something as stupid as a cab ride. I said that it was probably dangerous to be riding the El so late, but he just laughed.

“If anyone wants to mug me, I'’ll just give them you as collateral,” he said.

We sat next to each other on the train, but we didn'’t talk much. Every so often, Jason would just say how “goddamn stupid” I was, while I spent most of the ride staring out the windows, hoping no one would pull a knife on me then get pissed because I didn'’t have money. But when we got to Argyle Street, I grew exasperated with Jason telling me how goddamn stupid I was.

“Maybe I’m stupid,” I said, “but at least I’m not so stupid that I don’t even know what my uncle does for a living.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason asked and snorted. “I knew you were dumb. Are you crazy now, too?”

“If I’m so dumb, what does he do?” I asked. “Sometimes He’'s a scout, sometimes He’'s in public relations, which is it? Do you know?”

“Yeah,” he said, “he just doesn'’t like me to talk about it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s illegal.”

I couldn'’t believe how matter-of-fact he was. I asked him why he wasn'’t more upset about it. What would happen when Bobby got caught, what would happen to Jason? Where would he live? What would happen if someone caught Bobby in the act and shot him dead?

Jason Rubinstein regarded me with a seemingly indelible sneer. When I was through, he exhaled with a sharp, sardonic laugh. “You’re pretty hopeless,” he said. “Bobby doesn'’t rob people.”

“Then what do you call what he does?” I asked.

“He’'s a ticket scalper, you freak.”

As the El curved along the tracks, streaking toward Loyola, I stammered, but couldn'’t get out another word. We were supposed to get off at Morse, then take the Lunt bus home, but Jason got out early. When I tried to follow him, he froze me with a stare.

“Fuck you, asshole,” he said.

In the past, no matter where I'’d been, I'’d always feel dejected when I saw the house on Whipple, could feel my world constricting around me until I could barely breathe. I'’d smell the urine and the disinfectant, hear the breaths and the voices. This night, I didn'’t mind so much.

As I walked in, Hallie was seated at the kitchen table.

In her right hand she clutched a paperback Agatha Christie book: Elephants Can Remember. But her hand was trembling and her eyes weren'’t moving over the page.

“She'’s in the garage,” Hallie said when she saw me.

I walked through the den, onto the porch, out the back door, and through the yard, navigating a path of dead tomato plants, weeds, and wildflowers. There was a dim light in the garage. Bobby Kagan’s Cadillac was parked in the alley.

Cupping my hands over the garage window, I could see Bobby in an open leather vest, blue jeans, and boots. With one hand, he was roughly grabbing my mother’s hand, leading her around, while with the other hand, he ripped open boxes and reached into Crawford’s shopping bags, every so often pulling something out—a necklace, a handful of cufflinks, a roll of hundred-dollar bills—and gesturing with it in front of my mother’s face before shoving it into his pockets.

Her cheeks were red and her eyes were huge. I couldn'’t tell if she was angry or afraid. I ran into the house, then back outside with my Pat Kelly baseball bat, not paying attention when Hallie told me to stop.

I quietly slipped out the back gate and into the alley and walked a few paces north. I stepped into the light spilling out of the garage, walked around the red Cadillac toward the garage door, which was open three-quarters of the way. Bobby Kagan stood with his back to me, his hand still gripping my mother’s arm hard as she leaned against the hood of my grandfather’s dusty old Lincoln. There were streaks of gray soot on her pale-blue dress. Boxes and bags were scattered around the Lincoln. I could see the TV from my grandfather’s living room, I could see the necklaces, the rings, the paperweights, the bracelets. My palms were slippery as I gripped the bat in my hands and my mother’s eyes shifted from Bobby onto me.