Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 9

I had been back in the apartment for less than three minutes when the phone rang. I didn’t recognize Daley’s voice until he identified himself.

“Be damned. I figured I wasn’t going to hear from you,” I said.

“You figured wrong,” he answered without hostility or any other emotion as far as I could tell. “I’ve been calling all afternoon. Do you plan to be at work tomorrow?”

“It’s a Monday, so I figure to, unless I was canned over the weekend and haven’t gotten the word.”

Daley let my attempt at drollery pass without comment. “I’m up here for a couple of days,” he said. “There’s a little restaurant about a block and a half north of Police Headquarters on the west side of State, and I assume your bosses give you time off for lunch. Can you meet me there at noon tomorrow?”

“On the condition that I pick up the lunch tab.”

“I won’t fight you for it,” Daley answered.

The café, barely a sharp knife’s cut above being a greasy spoon, was nonetheless always crowded with uniformed cops, dicks, lawyers, reporters, judges, bondsmen, bailiffs, bookmakers, pimps, prostitutes, and assorted other players in the cavalcade that moved through the law enforcement nerve center of the country’s second-largest city.

I got there at 5 to 12:00 and settled into a booth near the back. Dick Daley arrived two minutes later, and I hailed him as he breezed confidently through the front door, dapper in a brown double-breasted suit, starched white shirt, and brown-and-yellow tie. He stopped twice on his way back, once to pump the paw of a white-haired uniformed sergeant at the counter, and then to lean down and exchange apparently friendly words with a guy in a booth who was the only person in the place better dressed than he.

“How y’been?” he asked as we shook hands mechanically and he slid in opposite me.

“Makin’ it. You?”

He nodded. “All right. I gather you’re still interested in that Martindale business, right?”

“Of course.”

“I figured you would be.” Daley threw a glance over one shoulder, not that anyone, even in the next booth, could hear us above the din, and leaned forward, riveting me with his light blue eyes. “Lloyd Martindale was not a nice man,” the legislator pronounced, giving each word equal emphasis.

“Because he was a Republican?”

Daley shook his head vigorously. “Hey, I don’t judge people by their party.” He grinned for an instant. “Not most of them, anyway. But on this I’m dead serious. It’s got nothing to do with party.”

“You have my full attention,” I answered. He started in, but was interrupted by the arrival of a waitress reeking of cologne. We each ordered corned beef on rye and coffee.

“All right,” Daley continued, leaning forward again as if he were letting me in on a secret. “I did some checking with a source, who—”

“Care to name the source?”

He set his jaw. “I do not. Listen, Mr. Malek, I’ll lay my cards down. I was bothered by what you said when we met in Springfield last month. You seemed more or less convinced, for whatever reasons, that Martindale was not a mob hit, and I have to take you on faith about that, especially knowing that as a newspaperman you must have good sources. Now I want you to know that I never, not for one minute, truly believed he was killed for political reasons. But—”

“But you wanted to be sure?”

Daley gave a slow, reluctant nod as the coffee was poured. “I need your word that this conversation is confidential.” He threw a glance over his shoulder again, and I noticed that beads of perspiration had formed on his upper lip.

“You’ve got my word. And you can check again with Kilkenny about whether that word is good.”

“Oh, I’ve done that. Now, my source had already... my source did some checking and learned among other things that Mr. Martindale was not the sterling individual that he — and some members of the press — led people to believe he was.”

“And I gather that your source also put your mind to rest regarding any machine or party role in the killing, right?”

Another nod, this one not reluctant.

“All right, time to summarize,” I said as the corned beef sandwiches (with pickle) were plunked down unceremoniously in front of us, along with the check, which I scooped up. “Now I am, as I said, more or less convinced that the crime syndicate is clean on Martindale. You apparently are positive that the Democratic Party is clean as well, but you also suggest that Lloyd Martindale himself was not so clean. You’re not going to tell me that he had ties with the mob, are you? Because I’m not as gullible as I may look.”

Daley took a healthy bite of his sandwich and held up a palm for silence while he chewed. “No, I am not going to tell you that. Mr. Malek, Lloyd Martindale was a pervert.”

That sent my eyebrows shooting halfway up my forehead. “We are talking here about ‘Model Citizen’ Martindale, aren’t we?”

“We are.” Richard Daley was grim-faced. “Twenty-five years or so ago, when Martindale was a young man in his early twenties, he was accused — more than once — of molesting children. Young kids, both boys and girls.”

I almost choked on the last bite of my sandwich. “My God. As far as I know, nothing about that ever made it into the papers.”

“Yeah, and for good reason,” Daley growled. “His father, the grand and rich steel tycoon Edgar Martindale, used his connections at City Hall and with the police and God only knows where else to get the business hushed up tight, really tight. Apparently, no charges were ever made.”

“If this is true, your source, or sources, impress me. Do you have any specifics?”

Daley shook his head and finished his sandwich.

“Okay, let’s back up a step. You haven’t said why you’re so sure Martindale’s murder was not committed or ordered by the Democratic Party or the machine.”

“I can assure you that my sources checked out this aspect very, very thoroughly.”

“All right, that being the case, then do you, or your sources, know who the murderer was?”

“No, but based on what was learned, I have to wonder — and this is only speculation — I have to wonder if someone was getting revenge for... what I mentioned before.”

“The molestings. But you said that those were — what — about twenty-five years ago?”

“People have long memories about certain things,” Daley observed somberly.

“Granted. Especially something like this. I’d like to do some checking on those charges. You must have gotten some specifics, like the year, or the name, or the location.”

His expression remained grim. “There were at least two, and they happened in Chicago. And I can tell you this much for sure... Lloyd Martindale’s name never even made it onto the police blotter, his old man saw to that.” Daley’s tone reflected his disgust. “That is all I know, and even that is more than I care to know.”

I finished the watery coffee in my cup (refills free). “Mr. Daley, do you know what I think? I think your source is some sort of private investigator, and maybe an off-duty cop, who is either on the party payroll or on retainer. Or possibly there’s more than one of them. My guess is that he, or they, had already begun poking around into Martindale’s past when it looked like the guy had a damned good chance to be the Republican candidate for mayor in the next election.”

Daley’s broad face reddened slightly, but he said nothing, so I ploughed on. “The digging apparently hit the jackpot, at least from a Democratic point of view. And I have no doubt — I don’t expect you to comment on this — that if Martindale had been the candidate, his long-hidden past would have become public, and very quickly.”

“You’re right about one thing that you said — I won’t comment,” Daley replied curtly.

“So now that Martindale has gone to his final reward, wherever that may be, the information is of no value to the party, and it dies with the man, right?”

He shrugged and looked at his watch. “As I told you, I won’t comment, except to say that some things are better off left alone, Mr. Malek. I found out what you asked me to and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m due at a meeting in the Loop in less than half an hour. Thank you very much for lunch.”

“My pleasure,” I said half-heartedly, rising with him. We shook hands, even more formally than at the beginning of the meal, and State Representative Richard J. Daley left the noisy café with the self-assured stride of a man who knew precisely who he was and where he was going.