The Poet

12

Larry Legs kept me twisting in the wind the rest of the afternoon. At five I tried calling him but couldn't locate him at Area Three or Eleven-Twenty-One, as the department's headquarters was known. The secretary in the homicide office refused to disclose his whereabouts or to page him. At six I was resigned to being blown off when there was a knock on my door. It was him.

"Hey, Jack," he said without stepping in. "Let's take a ride."

Washington had his car parked in the valet lane in the hotel drive-up. On the dash he had placed a Police Business card so there was no problem. We got in and pulled out. He crossed the river and started north on Michigan Avenue. The snow had not abated as far as I could tell and there were drifts along both sides of the road. Many of the cars on the road had a three-inch frosting on their horizontal surfaces. I could see my breath in Washington 's car and the heater was on high.

"Guess you get a lot of snow where you come from, Jack."

"Yeah."

He was just making conversation. I was anxious to see what he really had to say but thought it better to wait, to let him tell me at his speed. I could always pull the reporter act and ask questions later.

He turned west on Division and headed away from the lake. The sparkle of the Miracle Mile and the Gold Coast soon disappeared and the buildings began to get a little more seedy and in need of repair and upkeep. I thought maybe we were heading toward the school Bobby Smathers had disappeared from but Washington didn't say.

It was completely dark now. We went under the El and soon passed a school. Washington pointed at it.

"That's where the kid went. There's the yard. Just like that, he was gone." He snapped his fingers. "I staked it all day yesterday. You know, a year since the disappearance. Just in case something happened or the guy, the doer, came back by."

"Anything?"

Washington shook his head and dropped into a brooding silence.

But we didn't stop. If Washington wanted me to see the school, the view had been quick. We kept heading west and eventually came upon a series of brick towers that somehow looked abandoned in some way. I knew what they were. The projects. They were dimly lit monoliths against the blue-black sky. They had assuredly taken on the appearance of those that were housed within. They were cold and despairing, the have-nots of the city skyline.

"What are we doing?" I asked.

"You know what this place is?"

"Yeah. I went to school here-I mean in Chicago. Everybody knows Cabrini-Green. What about it?"

"I grew up here. So did Jumpin' John Brooks."

Immediately, I thought of the odds. First of just surviving in such a place, next of surviving and then becoming a cop.

"Vertical ghettos, each one of them. Me and John used to say it was the only time when you had to take the elevator up when you were going to hell."

I just nodded. This was out of my realm completely.

"And that's only if the elevators were working," he added.

I realized that I never considered that Brooks might be a black man. There was no photo in the computer printouts and no reason to mention race in the stories. I had just assumed he was white and it was an assumption I would have to analyze later. At the moment, I was trying to figure out what Washington was trying to tell me by taking me here.

Washington pulled into a lot next to one of the buildings.

There were a couple of dumpsters coated with decades of graffiti slogans. There was a rusted basketball backboard but the rim was long gone. He put the car in park but left it running. I didn't know if that was to keep the heat flowing or to allow us a quick getaway if needed. I saw a small group of teenagers in long coats, their faces as dark as the sky, scurry from the building closest to us, then cross a frozen courtyard and hustle into one of the other buildings.

"At this point you're wondering what the hell you're doing here," Washington said then. "That's okay, I understand. A white boy like you."

Again I said nothing. I was letting him run out his line.

"See that one, third on the right. That was our building. I was on fourteen with my grand-auntie and John lived with his mother on twelve, one below us. They didn't have no thirteen, already enough bad luck 'round here. Neither of us had fathers. At least ones that showed up."

I thought he wanted me to say something but I didn't know what. I had no earthly idea what kind of struggle the two friends must have had to make it out of the tombstone of a building he had pointed at. I remained mute.

"We were friends for life. Hell, he ended up marrying my first girlfriend, Edna. Then on the department, after we both made homicide and trained with senior detectives for a few years, we asked to be partnered. And damn, it got approved. Story about us in the Sun-Times once. They stuck us in Three because it included this place. They figured it was part of our expertise. A lot of our cases come outta here. But its still on rotation. So we just happened to be the ones catching on the day that boy turned up without no fingers. Shit, the call came in right at eight. Ten minutes before and it would've gone to night shift."

He was silent for a while, probably thinking about what kind of difference it would have made if the call had gone to somebody else.

"Sometimes at night when we'd been workin' a case or on a stake or something, me'n John would drive out here after shift, park right where we are now and just look the place over."

It occurred to me then what the message was. Larry Legs knew Jumpin' John hadn't pulled the trigger on himself because he had known the exact struggle Brooks had experienced coming out of a place like this. Brooks had fought his way out of hell and he wasn't about to go back by his own hand. That was the message.

"This is how you knew, isn't it?"

Washington looked across the seat at me and nodded once.

"It was just one of those things you know, that's all. He didn't do it. I told them that in MIU but they just wanted to get it the fuck away from them."

"So all you had was your gut. There was nothing out of line anywhere else?"

"There was one thing but it wasn't enough for them. I mean they had the handwriting, his history with the shrink, all that in place. It fit too nicely for them. He was a suicide before they zipped up the bag and took him away. Cut and dried."

"What was the one thing?"

"The two shots."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's get out of here. Let's get some food."

He put the car in drive and made a large circle in the lot and then out onto the street. We headed north on streets I had never been on. I had an idea where we were going, though. After five minutes of this I was tired of waiting for the next part of the story.

"What about the two shots?"

"He fired two shots, right?"

"Did he? It wasn't in the papers."

"They never put out all the details on anything. But I was there at the house. Edna called me after she found him. I got there ahead of MIU. There was one shot in the floor and one shot in the mouth. The official explanation was that the first shot was supposed to be him seeing if he could do it or something, like a practice. Gettin' the courage up. Then the second time was when he went ahead and did it. It didn't make sense. Not to me."

"Why not? What did you think the two shots were for?"

"I think the first one went in the mouth. The second one was for gunshot residue. The perp wrapped John's hand around the gun and fired it into the floor. John's hand gets GSR on it. The case goes suicide. End of story."

"But nobody agreed with you."

"Not until today. Not until you turn up with this Edgar Allan Poe thing. I went to Major Investigations to tell them what you've got. I reminded them of the problems with the suicide. My problems. They are going to reopen it and take another look. Tomorrow A.M. we've got a start-up meeting over at Eleven-Twenty-One. The MIU chief is going to get me detached and put on the squad."

"That's great."

I watched out the window and was silent for a while. I was excited. Things were falling into place. I now had the presumed self-inflicted deaths of two cops in two different cities being reinvestigated as possible murders and possibly connected. That was a story. A damn good one. And it was something I could use as a wedge in Washington to get into the foundation records and even the FBI. That is, if I got there first. If Chicago or Denver went to the bureau first, I'd likely be squeezed out because they wouldn't need me anymore.

"Why?" I said out loud.

"Why what?"

"Why is somebody doing this? What exactly are they doing?"

Washington didn't answer. He just drove through the cold night.

We had dinner in a booth in the back of the Slammer, a cop bar near Area Three. Both of us ordered the special, roast turkey and gravy, good cold-weather food. As we ate, Washington gave me a rundown on the MIU plan. He told me everything was off the record and that if I wanted to write anything, I had to get it from the lieutenant who would eventually head up the squad. I had no problem with that. The squad was going to exist because of me. The lieutenant would have to talk to me.

Washington kept both elbows on the table while he ate. It looked like he was guarding his food. He spoke with his mouth full at times but that was because he was excited. So was I. I was also wary of protecting my place in the investigation, in the story.

"We'll start off with Denver," Washington said. "We'll work together, get our ducks lined up and then see what happens. Hey, did you talk to Wexler? He was mad at you, boy."

"How come?"

"Why you think? You didn't tell him about Poe, Brooks, Chicago. I think you lost a source there, Jack."

"Maybe. They got anything new there?"

"Yeah, the ranger."

"What about him?"

"They did the hypnosis thing. Took him back to that day. He said your brother was wearing only one glove when he looked in the window of the car for the gun. Then that glove, with the GSR, somehow gets back on the hand. Wexler said they've got no doubts about it now."

I nodded more to myself than to Washington.

"You and Denver, you'll have to go to the FBI, won't you? You're talking about crimes connected across state lines."

"We'll see. You gotta remember the locals here never get much excited about working with the G. We go to them and we get bigfooted. Every time, right up the ass. But you're right, it's probably the only way. If this is what I think it is, and what you think it is, the bureau will eventually have to run the show."

I didn't tell Washington I was going to the FBI myself. I knew I had to get there first. I pushed my plate aside, looked at Washington and shook my head. This story was incredible.

"What's your feeling on this? What are we talking about?"

"Only a few possibilities," Washington said. "One, we're talking about one guy, somebody out there killing people, then doubling back and taking out the lead cop working the case."

I nodded. I was with him.

"Second, the first killings are unrelated and our doer just comes into town, waits for a case he likes or sees on the TV and goes after the cop who heads up the investigation."

"Yeah."

"And third is we have two killers. In both cities one does the first killing and the second comes in and does the second, takes out the cop. Of the three, I don't like this one. Too many questions. Do they know each other? Are they working together? It gets pretty far out there."

"They would have to know each other. How else would the second guy know where the first one has been?"

"Exactly. So we are concentrating on possibilities one and two. We haven't decided whether Denver is coming here and we'll send some people there but we've got to look at the boy and the college kid. Look for any connection and if we find one we go from there."

I nodded. I was thinking of the first possibility. One person, one killer doing all of this.

"If it is just one guy, who is the real target?" I asked, more to myself than Washington. "Is it the first victim or the cop?"

Washington put the V back in his brow.

"Maybe," I said, "we've got somebody who wants to kill cops. That's his objective, okay? So he uses the first killing-Smathers, Lofton-to draw out his prey. The cop."

I looked around the table. Saying it out loud, though I had been thinking it since I was on the plane, sent a chill through me.

"Spooky, huh?" Washington asked.

"Yeah. Real spooky."

"And you know why? Because if this is the case, there's got to be others. Every time a cop supposedly kills himself the investigation is quick and quiet. No department wants that kind of story. So they go through the motions quick and then that's it. So there's gotta be more of them out there. If the first possibility is the correct one, then this guy didn't begin with Brooks and end with your brother. There's more. I'd bet on it."

He pushed his plate away. He was finished.

A half hour later he dropped me at the front of the Hyatt. The wind off the lake was chilling. I didn't want to stand outside but Washington said he wasn't coming up to the room. He gave me a business card.

"I got my home and beeper on there. Call me."

"I will."

"Okay then, Jack." He put his hand out and I took it.

"And thanks, man."

"For what?"

"For making believers out of them. I owe you one for that. So does Jumpin' John."