He caught that immediately. “That’s not what that photograph says.”
“The only thing he did recently was die.”
“Of natural causes?”
I stood up, ready to leave, knowing I’d gotten all I would get and that Shattuck was now trying to turn the tables. “Natural to him, I think.”
20
“What was he like?” Runnion asked as we waited for the crosswalk signal to staunch the early-morning downtown traffic.
I’d been thinking about Shattuck half the night, lying in bed, listening to the sounds of the unfamiliar city around me. “Seemingly a pleasant, slightly off-the-wall retired peace protester-just as advertised in your files.”
Runnion looked at me with a smile. “Seemingly?”
“Call it my own paranoia, but I was pretty sure he knew more than he was letting on. When I showed him Abraham Fuller’s photograph, I felt like I’d handed him a gold coin-not that he showed it much.”
Runnion was unimpressed. “Oh, hell, that happens sometimes. Maybe something’ll come of it.”
We were standing across from Chicago’s City Hall and Cook County Building, a heavy, squared-off, flat-roofed monster. With an army of six-story-tall pale stone Corinthian columns on the outside and turn-of-the-century metal-encased windows peeking out in between them, the whole structure looked like a hundred-year-old office building that had been swallowed up by an ancient Greek temple.
We crossed Randolph Street and walked through the building’s north entrance, taking the stairs down from the first floor’s vaulted grandeur to the conventional modern basement below. Runnion pushed through a pair of glass double doors marked COUNTY CLERK BUREAU OF VITAL STATISTICS-BIRTH, MARRIAGE, DEATH. Ignoring the rows of plastic chairs in the waiting area, already half-full of depressed-looking people, he waved to a heavyset black woman sitting at a desk beyond the counter clerks.
She gave him a small smile, which I took as a form of professional supervisory reserve, and met him at the far end of the counter, where her enthusiasm rose more clearly, albeit quietly, to the surface. “Hey, Norman. What you been up to?”
“Hi, Flo. Not much-waiting for the pension. This is a friend of mine-Joe Gunther-lieutenant from Vermont.”
Flo’s eyes widened. “Vermont? Long way from home.”
I shook hands with her. “Don’t I know it.”
She smiled broadly, then shifted her attention to Runnion. “So, what’s on your mind, Norman? Who do you want the goods on?”
Runnion slipped her a piece of paper with Kevin Shilly’s name on it. “He’s white, rich, and uncooperative.”
She laughed and took the paper with her, disappearing through a door behind the desks.
Runnion pushed himself away from the counter, heading back toward the door. “That’ll take her a few minutes; let’s see what else we can dig up.”
He turned right out the door and headed down the hall to a distant door marked MARRIAGE BUREAU, NOTARY amp; BUSINESS REGISTRATION. “Maybe we can get something on his practice.”
His request for information at the Business Registration desk roughly mirrored his chat with Flo, as did similar requests upstairs at the county treasurer’s office, the county assessor’s office, and a number of other places throughout the building. At every stop, he had a friendly acquaintance, an exchange of pleasantries, and parted with another person digging on our behalf. At the end of the tour, he returned to Flo’s counter to collect what she’d discovered, then continued to each office in turn, reaping what he’d sowed.
We were back on the sidewalk some two hours later, clutching a fistful of copied documents. “Let’s get some coffee and look this stuff over.”
There was a doughnut shop nearby, narrow and long, almost empty during the mid-morning lull. We took a booth at the very back.
“So how did you build up all those contacts?” I asked as we doctored our coffee. “That can’t be typical of every cop in this town.”
He grinned, pleased that I’d recognized his prowess. “Took me years. Even so, I’m not sure I could have done it anywhere else. I visited New York once, on assignment like you, and was led through their version of the paper chase. Lasted forever. Amazing number of cranky people. Chicago’s a whole lot friendlier.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “Takes work, of course. I get to know these people, their families. I help ’em out when I can-keep them up to date on friends or relatives in jail. I buy ’em presents sometimes, or spring for a meal. Mostly, I make myself available. I become their own private policeman-the guy who can cut through the red tape. It’s a ‘you help me, I help you’ kind of thing.”
He pushed his cup to one side and began laying out his treasure on the table between us. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
What we had was a fairly complete portrait of the capitalist system at its most rewarding: a luxury apartment in a glistening tower overlooking the lake; a yacht; a Mercedes-Benz and an Alfa-Romeo; a wife born of one of the city’s prominent families; two boys now in exclusive prep schools; and a cumulative estate assessed by the county at about $5 million.
Whatever it was Kevin Shilly was hiding, it was pretty obvious what the stakes were. I hoped I could use that to my advantage when I went to pay him a second call.
I entered Shilly’s office building off Michigan Avenue and waved to the security guard who’d helped me the day before. He returned the salute and added, “He’s not in.”
I hesitated, and the guard added, “Never showed this morning.” I thanked him and headed for the elevator bank. Maybe Giovanna knew what was up.
I was without Runnion by now, who’d begun to feel the gravitational pull of his paperwork. He was still chewing over the mysteriously absent gunshot report-he’d found no mention of it anywhere in the files. His assumption now was that the hospital had never called it in, and agreed with me that Shilly had probably run interference. That was one question he’d asked me to add to my own list.
Giovanna was distinctly less delighted to see me. “He’s not here,” she said as I crossed the threshold.
“So I gather. Off playing golf?”
“He doesn’t play golf.” She looked as immaculate as before, in a different suit this time, wearing a silky-looking blue blouse with an enormous droopy bow that hung down the front. Her expression, however, wore more than just her displeasure with me.
“What’s up? You look worried.”
She seemed surprised by the question and touched her cheek with her fingertips as if to brush away a blemish. “He was supposed to be here. I’ve been canceling appointments all morning.”
“You call his home?” A faint chill began to trickle down my spine.
“Of course. There’s no answer.”
“How about his wife?”
“She’s in Europe.”
“He ever done this before?” The chill was now becoming a dread that I’d just committed a tremendous blunder.
“No.”
“Did he go home last night?”
“I think so. He sometimes spends the night on his boat, but that number doesn’t answer, either.”
“Call his apartment building,” I said as I stepped back into the hallway. “Tell security I’m coming and to let me up to his apartment. But they are not to move a muscle before I get there, understand? And call Detective Norman Runnion at Area 6 headquarters and tell him to meet me at Shilly’s right away.”
Shilly’s apartment tower was a ten-minute drive from North Michigan on Lake Shore Drive-a sixty-story black glass and steel cylinder standing alone, almost directly opposite Navy Pier. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have had Giovanna call ahead, but I was hoping it would convince the building’s rent-a-cops to let me in without asking questions.
I parked in the NO PARKING zone directly in front of the doorman, whom I addressed with a hurried but authoritative, “Police business.”
The man behind the half-round desk in the lobby was less startled, rising as I announced myself and indicating a second armed guard who was standing by the elevator bank. “One of our men will go with you.” In the background, bolstering my credibility, we could all hear an approaching siren.