1
I saw a small child twisted with cerebral palsy. I saw an even smaller child stomach-bloated with malnutrition, flies walking his face. And a man who had mined his life with cocaine. And a forlorn, whispery woman dying of AIDS.
I almost couldn’t finish the late-night dinner I’d brought back to my motel room from a nearby McDonald’s.
I don’t mean to be sarcastic. I felt all the things those television commercials begged me to feel — guilt, sadness, rage at injustice, and utter helplessness. You know the commercials I mean and you know the time I mean — late night TV in between commercials for Boxcar Willie and Slim Whitman albums and forthcoming professional wrestling matches.
The trouble is, being a sixty-plus retired sheriffs deputy, I don’t exactly have a lot of money to contribute to charities, worthy or not, and even if I did have money, I’d be confused as to which one needed my funding most. How do you decide between a kid with cerebral palsy and a kid with Down’s syndrome?
Finishing my cheeseburger that was by now cold, finishing my Pepsi that was by now warm, I rolled up the grease-stained sack and hook-shotted it for two points into a tiny brown plastic wastebasket next to the bureau. The wastebasket was one of the few things not chained down in this small motel room right on the edge of a Chicago ghetto. I’d been here three days. It seemed more like sixty.
I was starting to think about Faith and Hoyt again — Faith being my thirty-one-year-old ladyfriend and Hoyt the child we inadvertently produced — when the phone rang.
I had hopes, of course, that it would be Faith herself, even though I’d given her all sorts of stern reasons not to phone me and run up the bill, reasons that seemed inane this lonely time of night.
I grabbed the phone.
“Mr. Parnell?”
The voice was young, black.
“We probably should talk,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“You was in the neighborhood today.”
“Yes.”
“Looking for somebody who knows somethin’ about a certain woman.”
“Right.”
“You still interested?”
“Very much.”
“You was lookin’ in the wrong places. Ask for Charlene.”
“Charlene?”
“She works at a restaurant called Charlie’s. She’s cashier there.”
“Okay. You mind if I ask who I’m speaking with?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I looked at my Bulova. “It’s nearly midnight. You wouldn’t be suspicious about a call like this?”
“I guess.”
“Plus, if this leads somewhere, there might be some money in it.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow night. If there’s some money in it, tell me then.”
“Maybe we could accomplish more if we could sit down and talk. Face to face.”
“No reason for that.”
“Up to you.”
“Charlene can tell you some things.”
“I appreciate the advice.”
“Tomorrow night, then.”
He hung up.
I replaced the receiver, stretched my legs and set them between the cigarette burns somebody had decorously put in the bedspread, and leaned back to watch an episode of Andy Griffith, the one where Gomer proves to be a better singer than Barney.
About halfway through the show, two men in the room next door came back from some sort of close and prolonged association with alcohol and turned on their TV to some kind of country-western hoe-down that lead them to stomp their feet and say every few minutes, “Lookit the pair on that babe, will ya?” and then giggle and giggle.
About the time Andy was figuring out a solution to Barney’s dilemma (if you watch the show often enough, you’ll see how Andy evolved over the years from a sly redneck into a genuinely wise and compassionate man) and about the time I was sneaking my fifth cigarette for the day (but sneaking from whom? I was alone), the phone rang.
I decided to be bold and not even say hello. “I’m sure glad you don’t do what old farts tell you to.”
Faith laughed. “I’m glad I don’t either. Otherwise I never would have called tonight.”
“How’s Hoyt’s cold?”
“A lot better.”
“How’re you?”
“Feeling wonderful. I took Hoyt to Immaculate Conception tonight. I’ve always liked Lenten services for some reason. Maybe it’s the bare altar and all the incense and the monks chanting.” A little more than a year ago, Faith had had a mastectomy. You sure wouldn’t know it now.
I laughed. “There were monks there tonight?”
“No, but when I was a girl they’d come up from New Mallory, the monks, and the Gregorian chant was beautiful. Really. You still depressed?”
“It’s just the weather. You know how November is. Rainy and damp.”
“Anything turn up on Carla DiMonte yet?”
“Maybe. Just had a phone call about twenty minutes ago.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you,” I said. I hesitated.
“You’re doing it, aren’t you?”
“What?” I said.
“Looking at your wristwatch.”
“Clairvoyance.”
“No; it’s just something I’ve picked up on since you’ve been in Chicago. How you start noting the minutes.”
“We’re coming up on three minutes.”
She laughed. “God, I wish you were here.”
“Kiss Hoyt for me.”
Ten minutes later, I lay in bed afraid I’d have to go and confront the guests next door. But there was a crash, leaden weight smashing into an end table it sounded like, and then a male voice laughing said, “Man, you’re really soused. You better lay down.” Then the TV went off and then later there was just the sound of the toilet flushing.
Then there was just the darkness of the room and the way the blood-red light of the neon outside climbed along the edge of the curtain like a luminous snake.
Always late at night, and particularly when I was alone, the fear came about Faith. Her health seemed to be all right. Seemed to be.
I fell asleep saying earnest grade school Hail Marys. I woke up twice, the second time to hear one of the men next door barfing on the other side of the wall.
2
I came to Chicago at the request of Sal Carlucci, a Brooklyn private investigator with whom I served in World War II. Sal had been hired by no less a mobster than Don DiMonte to check into the activities of Carla DiMonte, the mobster’s twenty-one-year-old daughter who had a penchant for trouble. At sixteen, for example, DiMonte had had to ease her out of a murder charge. A few weeks ago DiMonte had received a blackmail letter saying that his daughter had killed somebody else — and that if one million dollars wasn’t turned over to the letter writer, said letter writer would go to the police with evidence that would convict Carla.
As if Mr. DiMonte’s troubles weren’t already plentiful, there was yet one more problem. A private detective he’d hired showed him that over the past year Carla had traveled with a rock band, spending decent amounts of time in five major cities. The murder, if it had actually taken place, most likely occurred in one of these cities.
Now, as good a private investigator as Sal Carlucci is, there’s no way he could visit five cities in a week — the amount of time DiMonte figured he had to hold the blackmailer off. So Carlucci hired four other private investigators, including me, to help. Since I’m closest to Chicago, and since Carla spent time there, that’s where I headed.
I spent my first day in the new library on North Franklin, checking out all the local murders for the past twelve months. It was Carlucci’s idea that we first try to ascertain if the blackmailer really had something on Carla — was there an unsolved murder that sounded as if Carla might have been involved?