CHAPTER 17
I woke up the next morning, looked at the clock, and allowed myself a smile. Then I picked up the phone and dialed.
“What?”
Fred Jacobs sounded like he might have been asleep all of five minutes.
“Wake up, Fred.”
“Kelly?”
There was a fumble as he dropped the phone. Followed by a curse or two. Then my favorite reporter came back on the line.
“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What?” I said.
“It’s six-thirty on a Saturday morning. People like to sleep on Saturday mornings.”
“Get out of bed, Fred. Take yourself outside for a nice run.”
More fumbling, then the line cleared.
“What do you want, Kelly?”
“Vince Rodriguez and Dan Masters.”
Jacobs didn’t respond. I allowed the silence to thicken and congeal before I continued.
“Saw them over at Belmont and Western the other day. Asked me what I knew about Johnny Woods.”
“You think that was me?”
“I know it was you, Fred. No one else knew I was looking at Woods.”
Fred Jacobs could lie with the best of them. At six-thirty on a Saturday morning, maybe not so well. “Okay, Kelly. It might have slipped out.”
“I bet.”
“Sorry.”
Across the line I could hear the scratch of a match followed by a smooth inhale. Jacobs had lit up his first heater of the day.
“What do you expect?” he said, and blew smoke through the receiver. “You know how this stuff works. Besides, you love being down there.”
“You think so?”
“Hell, yeah. You got the itch, Kelly. Just no badge anymore to scratch it with.”
“Thanks, Fred. I’ll write that down. Next time, just try a little harder to hold up your end of things.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Jacobs’ voice puckered at the mere thought of his not living up to the journalist’s code of ethics. A code he had just admitted to trampling not ten seconds earlier.
“Okay, Fred. I need a little more info.”
“Knew that was coming.”
“It’s painless. An old Sun-Times reporter named Rawlings Smith. You know him?”
“This have to do with my story?”
“Could be.”
Jacobs thought about that for a second. Trying to figure out how he could get his scoop without waiting on me.
“He’s in Joliet,” the reporter said. “Working at a paper called the Times.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Not exactly The New York Times. In fact, it doesn’t even rate in Joliet. And that ain’t good.”
Another draw on the cigarette and a gurgle in the lungs.
“How’d he wind up there?” I said.
“Not sure.”
“You heard things?”
“I always hear things.”
“Bad things?”
“If they were good, a guy like me wouldn’t hear ’em.”
“No details, huh?”
“You going to see Smith?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Ask him yourself. I don’t know the guy, so I’ll stay out of it.”
I figured that was decent of Jacobs. Or as close to decent as this reporter was likely to get. “Thanks, Fred. I’ll let you know when I have something.”
I punched off and called directory assistance for Joliet, Illinois. There was no listing for Rawlings Smith. I called down to the Joliet Times. A sleepy female picked up on the fifth ring. I told her a reporter named Smith had left me his card and wanted to interview me for a story. She told me the guy I was looking for worked weekends and would be in at nine. I smiled for a second time, got out of bed, and got dressed.
JOLIET IS ABOUT forty miles outside of Chicago. Famous for nothing except its prison. Remember Joliet Jake from the Blues Brothers? He did his time inside Joliet’s Stateville lockup, home to two thousand of Illinois’ worst. I cruised past the big walls and kept moving. The Joliet Times was located in a storefront downtown. At the back of the empty newsroom was a cubicle. Inside it, the old crime reporter I was looking for.
“Call me Smitty,” he said.
So I did.
“Smitty, thanks for taking the time.”
I had called ahead and told him I wanted to talk. He didn’t ask why, so I didn’t offer. Now he was here. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Not a problem, Mr. Kelly. What can I do for you?”
I could see the reporter thirty years prior, brown hair, eyes sketched in blue, sharp features and intelligence everywhere. Now it had all gone to booze and cigarettes. A life swallowed up in a matter of newsprint and missed deadlines.
“I’m here about an article you wrote.”
“Been a reporter a lifetime, son. Wrote a lot of articles.”
From his bottom drawer Smitty pulled out a can of Bud and poured it into a water glass. It was more warm foam than beer, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm. Smitty tipped the glass my way and took down half of it in one go.
“Management doesn’t seem to care much on weekends, so I indulge. You?”
“No, thanks. How did you get here, anyway?”
“You mean paradise?”
“I’m sure it has its moments.”
He poured the rest of the beer into his glass and watched it settle. I watched with him. Then he continued.
“Not exactly the happily-ever-after you plan on, is it? I was thirty-two years old. Hell, that was more than thirty years ago.”
Smitty moved forward to the edge of his seat. One disinterested leg crossed over the other. His foot dangled at the end, bobbing time to a beat only he could hear.
“Thirty-two. My own byline at the Sun-Times. Phone calls from New York. Newsweek had its eye on me. Did you know I was short-listed for a Pulitzer?”
He looked over, a bit of challenge in his eyes.
“No, I didn’t. Congratulations.” I said it neutral, enough to keep the conversation moving. The old man wasn’t stupid. He knew I didn’t really care about his would-be Pulitzer. He also knew I had to listen, so he sunk into it.
“A seam corruption out of the First Ward. Alderman’s name was Frank Raymond.”
I’d heard the name but not much else.
“Before your time,” the reporter said. “A throwback guy. Big cars, silk suits, cigars, the whole thing. First Ward was filthy with the bent-noses. Still is, I assume.”
I nodded. Smitty ignored me and plowed ahead.
“Anyway, Frankie liked sex. Problem was, he liked it with little girls.”
“Hold on. I remember that.”
That got a cackle. “Figured you might.”
“Maybe 1975, around there?”
“That’s right. Even got a picture of him with a kid. ’Course, back then we didn’t use photos the way they would today.”
“I bet.”
“Look up the clips. Story ran on the front page for two weeks. First, it was the sex stuff with Frankie. Then he started talking and they took down the largest child pornography ring in the Midwest. Wound up passing new laws on child prostitution as a result of that story.”
The old man’s gaze crept up and over my shoulder. I let him sit with his memories. After a while, he came back.
“They sent Frankie away for two years. I thought it was light time. One of those country-club pens.”
“What did Frankie think?”
“Never got a chance to ask him. He took a slug of bleach a month into his sentence.”
Smith coughed up a bit of phlegm. He spit it into a napkin, looked at it, folded the napkin, and put it in his pocket.
“That’s the way it goes, you know. Highlight of my career. At the time I thought it was just the beginning. But it turned out to be the end.”
“How’d you wind up down here?”
It was the second time I had asked the question. This time I got the glimmer of an answer.