Bonatto hadn’t risen, but he turned his head and looked at me. “If we should hear of something, where might we get in touch with you, Lieutenant?”
“Call Norm Runnion at Area 6 headquarters. He’ll pass on any messages.”
The man at my shoulder smiled quietly at that.
“We don’t work it that way, Lieutenant. Where will you be?”
I gave him the address of my motel.
Bonatto nodded, those cool eyes unblinking. “Thank you. Good luck.”
22
Norm Runnion sat back in his office chair and looked at me over the tops of his glasses. “You talked to Angelo Salierno?” His voice was tinged with amazement.
“His adviser, Bonatto.”
He shook his head. “Are you this crazy back home?”
“I didn’t feel there was any great risk.”
He looked like he’d bitten into something sour and muttered, “Not to you, maybe.” And then, more directly, he said, “Why? You were almost handed your plane ticket home yesterday.” Amazement had quickly yielded to irritation.
I pulled the hospital’s now creased and folded Social Services form from my pocket. “Because of this.”
He studied the form, chewing on his lip. “Christ, this is getting strange. So the man with the knee was an Outfit guy?”
“I don’t think so. Both Shattuck and Bonatto were very interested in what I had to say, but judging from the way they reacted-or pretended not to-I think that whoever had his knee repaired put down Shattuck and Salierno’s names to stick their noses in it.”
“In what?”
“I don’t know, but at some point the three of them shared something in common. The Social Services report was the mystery man’s way of flipping the finger at the other two.”
Runnion raised both bushy eyebrows high. “How did he know that report would ever surface again?”
I hadn’t actually thought any of this out in detail, but as the words came out, they began to gain credibility. “He didn’t, any more than any kid does when he throws a bottle into the ocean with a message in it. This guy, whoever he was, was about to disappear forever. It was a gesture, pure and simple-a last chance to write ‘Kilroy was here,’ or even ‘Up yours.’ It didn’t matter if no one saw it, because he did it for himself.”
“So maybe he ripped off Salierno back when and retired to Vermont with his collection of hundred-dollar bills?”
“Could be-there’re a lot of blanks to fill in.”
“Yeah, like where does Shattuck fit in.” Runnion was looking doubtful. “He couldn’t have been a button man for the Outfit; they hate people like him-they’re superconservative red-white-and-blue types, in a twisted kind of way.” He shifted suddenly in his chair and looked at me with a renewed keenness. “How did you get Bonatto to talk to you?”
“It turns out Tommy Salierno died-or more likely was declared dead-twenty-four hours after ‘Shattuck’s’ knee operation.”
Runnion’s brow furrowed. “I remember hearing about Tommy,” he said vaguely.
I pulled a copy I’d made of the article from my pocket and handed it over. He read it carefully, his brain obviously teeming with possibilities. “You think Tommy’s death was faked?”
“I think the time of death was faked. According to the papers, Tommy had a history of striking out on his own, of setting up operations independent of his father. Old man Salierno and his bunch might not have touched the likes of Shattuck with a ten-foot pole, but Tommy could have. He was always breaking convention, screwing things up in the process. If he’d been up to his ears in something with Shattuck and this other guy and gotten himself killed, it stands to reason that Salierno would try to tidy things up. He couldn’t hide his son’s death altogether, but he could make it look more presentable to his peers.”
Runnion was quiet for a long time, mulling it all over. Finally, he took off his glasses, rubbed the corner of one eye, and asked, “So you just drove up to Salierno’s front door and dropped all this in their lap, adding your face to the Chicago PD candid-camera collection in the process.”
I felt like a complete rube, not having thought of any potential police surveillance. “You have a team on Salierno?”
Runnion snorted. “You kidding? We have a whole division that does nothing but eat junk food and squint through camera lenses, all so a bunch of college boys back at headquarters can build files of how many times the don orders out pizza or goes to see his girlfriend. I worked there myself a few years back.” His voice trailed off.
I remembered his initial alarm when I’d told him of my visit to Salierno’s-his questioning my sanity. “And since you’re my babysitter, you’re now in deep shit, too,” I finished for him softly. I was both sympathetic and embarrassed that I’d repaid his kindnesses by threatening his livelihood, just a few months shy of retirement.
He just looked at me in silence. His expression, however, wasn’t disapproving or even distressed; it was merely thoughtful, which prompted me to ask, after a full minute of this, “Are you okay?”
A slow smile spread across his face, mystifying me. “You know what it’s like to hear yourself talk sometimes? When you’re thinking things that never would have crossed your mind just a couple of years back?”
I went with it, although I was no longer following him. “You mean you’re not in deep shit?”
“Deep enough-nothing terminal. I was just wondering how much that mattered.”
Something cathartic was happening here, something I was pretty sure I’d caused but didn’t understand. Runnion and I had been friendly enough from the start; we were similarly aged, with similar dispositions. We’d fit together casually without much effort. I sensed now, however, that our relationship was about to undergo a fundamental change.
“What’re your plans now?” he asked, seemingly out of the blue.
“I’m not sure you’ll like them. You may not even want to know.”
“Try me.”
“I was thinking of diving back into the newspaper morgues and digging up everything I could on Shattuck.”
“Why?” His tone was interested-unalarmed that I might be coming close to trespassing into the ongoing Shilly case.
“To see if I can identify some of his fellow travelers from the sixties. From what we know of him so far, he was part of a big crowd. I was hoping that through photo captions or feature articles I might be able to find a handful of people that I could chase down-people who knew him well enough to still be helpful.”
I was pretty certain of Runnion’s reaction, but he surprised me by simply nodding. “I might have a better idea,” he said, “one that’ll give us more information.”
He reached for his phone and for what appeared to be an inner-agency directory. “But first I better throw a little water on the flames.”
He dialed and asked for a name I didn’t catch. “Hi Walt; it’s Norm Runnion in Area 6. I just got something I thought you’d be interested in-in fact, your field boys’ll probably be bringing it in soon all hot and excited. It’s about Angelo Salierno. I’m babysitting some hick cop from Vermont…” Here he gave me a conspiratorial look. “Yeah, Vermont… He waltzed up to Salierno’s front door today and got an audience with Bonatto. Name’s Joe Gunther, lieutenant… Yeah, he’s chasing down some twenty-year-plus homicide from his side of the mountains. The point is, if I bring him in to talk to you guys, I don’t think you’ll get much-he’s not what you’d call too sophisticated-very suspicious of us city folk. Let me work on him for a couple of days, soften him up, and I’ll let you know what he’s up to, okay? Sure… No, it’s no problem; I’m stuck with him, anyway-might as well make it worthwhile… Yeah, okay. Bye.”