"That's the one big drawback--convincing people." He sat there for a
moment, fingering the check the waitress had given him, then made up
his mind. "Meet me tonight by the library, Randolph street side. Nine
o'clock. I'll have some photographs along."
I reached for my hat. "Exhibit A better be pretty convincing John."
And oddly enough, I didn't have any doubts but what they would be. His
reputation was that good.
It was a nice, warm summer night when I got to the library a couple
of minutes after nine. Downtown was already filling up with teenagers
and pick-ups who flutter around the bright-lights like moths around a
candle. I stood on the library steps and waited watching people crowd
out of the IC entrance.
I had smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes before it
occurred to me that maybe John wasn't going to show. My first thought
was that he had pulled a gag on me. My next was that something had
delayed him. I started to walk over to his hotel.
Between Michigan and Wabash, right next door to the library, there's a
small street that's more of an alley than a street. Street cars used to
turn down it before the Chicago Transit Authority got into office and a
lot of trucks use it to make deliveries. It's not too well lighted and
the only people who use it at night to cut through from Washington to
Randolph are people in a hurry.
You're way ahead of me, I know. And you're right. But you're wrong
if you think I found him after five minutes of playing Sherlock. The
police found him at three in the morning after they had combed the loop
half the night.
John Kelley was in one of the store fronts, his head bashed in.
* * * * *
John Kelley was the first martyr to the cause. In a lot of ways,
he didn't make a very good one. The papers put it down to gangland
enemies--the usual explanation for murders in Chicago--and for a while
I thought I had convinced myself that they were right.
Then I caught myself glancing behind me when I walked up dark streets
at night and staring hard at the mirror in the local bar, watching the
people on the stools and wondering which were real and which were fake.
Kelley's story had started to haunt me and I couldn't shake it.
I thought maybe a vacation would help so I pulled strings at the office
and got the last two weeks in July. I usually take my two weeks up
in northern Wisconsin, around Hayward and Spooner and the Chippewa
Flowage. It's one of the best fishing spots in the nation--everything
from muskies to bullheads, bass to trout. You can take along a small
fortune in flyrod for game fish, or you can have a lot of fun with a
plain bamboo pole and bobber for pan fish.
Fred Gray--he was in the advertising department--went along with me.
After all, fishing is a gregarious sport and besides, whoever heard of
going alone? And Fred was the kind of man who was good company. The
big, bluff variety with a string of stories as long as your arm.
We packed up Friday night and left early Saturday. With both of us
trading off on the driving, it was still a fourteen hour trip. If we
pushed it we could get to the Flowage early Saturday evening.
Fred took his turn at the wheel first and I sat in the back seat and
snoozed. When I woke up it was early afternoon and the towns and the
farmlands had started to fall away and there were longer and longer
stretches of second growth timber and wild looking country that was
largely devoted to Indian reservations. And even then, the shacks were
getting fewer and fewer--an occasional wisp of smoke every few miles
marking a cabin back in the brush.
I took the wheel and when we had about two hours to go, I stopped at a
cross-roads store to pick up some groceries. While I was picking over
the bacon and the pancake flour and the cornmeal, Fred was glancing
through the assortment of plugs in the beat-up showcase near the door.
I took what we needed up to the counter and slid them across to the
character who ran the place. He was an old man, the veins standing out
big and blue on his arms and his face showing the effects of a lot more
than just age.
"Henney's pancake flour is real good flour," he said, glancing at the
box I had picked out.
"What's wrong with this?"
"Nothing--just make a couple more cents on Henney's."
I started for a moment, then decided to be obliging and went back and
got a package of Henney's. "Do you have any white flour?"
"Yep, we got flour. Comes in bulk--gotta ask for it."
He fixed me up with a paper bag containing a couple of pounds, then
started to figure how much I owed him, using a pencil and a hunk of
wrapping paper.
"Pretty dead around here, isn't it?"
"Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't."