Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 7

Kilkenny’s was nearly deserted — nobody in the booths and only two guys I didn’t recognize down at the far end of the long bar eating T-bones. Killer had a first-rate kitchen and a deserved reputation for serving some of the best steaks on the North Side.

“Aha, Snap, a buffeted and bedraggled orphan of the storm, come to seek refuge in my humble dram shop,” the Killer intoned, savoring each word. “Indulging in the usual, I trust?” I nodded, wincing slightly as I settled myself on a barstool well removed from the other two customers and wondering if Monk had been jabbing me with his knuckles or with the barrel of a pistol. Either way, the dull ache was spreading through my right side.

“Killer, since you’re not exactly overwhelmed with business at the moment, got a few minutes to chin?”

“When did I not, even when busy, my scrivener compadre?” he responded, placing a frosted stein of Schlitz on a coaster on the scarred cherrywood surface. He leaned on burly elbows and his round face seemed to get rounder as he broke into a benevolent smile. “What be the subject of our interlocution?”

I lowered my voice. “If I was to tell you that there may be a good chance Lloyd Martindale was not killed by or because of the crime syndicate, what would your reaction be?”

He crinkled his eyes and ran a hand through thick, chalk-white hair that he parted down the middle. “Hmmm. Surprise, for starters. And then, after I’d chewed on it for awhile, downright shock, I suppose. And after that, my native curiosity would of course kick in, and I would commence to pose questions. Such as: If the mob or one of its duly chosen representatives did not pull the trigger on Mr. Martindale, who did?”

I took a long, welcome drink and set my mug down, licking my lips. “Precisely my question to you, innkeeper. Tell me where your mind would take you next.”

“Hmm. How about maybe cherchez la femme? As in perhaps a cuckolded husband?”

I shook my head. “Not according to your countryman, Chief of Detectives Fergus Sean Fahey. He says they’ve looked at that angle, and apparently Martindale was the ideal family man, a paragon of domestic virtues. His wife, his friends, his neighbors, they all say he was right out of the movies: faithful and loyal and true and all those other Boy Scout virtues.”

“Well then, what of a gambling debt so big that he couldn’t pay it, even being as prosperous as he was said to be? With the result that he gets eradicated by whomever was holding his markers?”

“You’ve got a great mind, Killer, because it works just like mine. That was my second query to Fahey, and he knocked it down, too. Said that Martindale never — quote never — gambled. The guy apparently was without sin.”

“And no doubt dull, too,” the barkeep observed as he looked down and traced circles on the bar top with a thick finger. “Ah, Snap my friend, I don’t like what I’m thinking.”

“Try me.”

His head came up slowly. “All right, the syndicate didn’t do it, at least so you’re telling me, and apparently there wasn’t a jealous husband or an angry boyfriend. And no bookmaker who Martindale had welshed on.”

“You’ve listened well.”

“I always listen well. Snap, you see before you a staunch Democrat; have been for twenty-five years and then some, but I wonder...”

I gave the Killer time to finish the sentence, and when he didn’t, I finished it for him. “You wonder if somebody in the party, or somebody who was hired by somebody in the party, did the job.”

He held up a hand. “Now I’m not saying that’s what happened, mind you, but it’s just a thought — off the record, of course — not that anything I’d say would be of interest to the newspaper-buying masses. Getting back to the subject: Do I think Mr. Martindale could have won an election against Edward J. Kelly? Ah... probably not. But it might have been close, and maybe, just maybe, one of the faithful — nobody high up or important, mind you, but someone terrified by the idea that this reformer could win — endeavored to do something about it.” The Killer took a deep breath and shook his head as if to erase the almost-sacrilegious thought of a Democrat committing a capital crime. “Now I must concede that is a long shot, Snap — at least I devoutly hope it’s a long shot.”

“I’d have to agree, but it’s worth considering. Question is, where do I find a loyal Democrat who can do some poking around for me? Or maybe more to the point — is there anyone in the party who’d be willing to help me poke around?”

Kilkenny screwed up his map-of-Ireland face. “Most of the party regulars I know in this neighborhood are small-timers — ward and precinct bosses, that sort of thing. Two-bit stuff. But back in Bridgeport on the South Side, there’s a fellow named Mike Daley, a sheet metal worker, a noble man. In fact, we came from the very same slice of the Old Sod, County Wexford it was, and I even knew him back then, only just slightly mind you, when we were lads. But over here, Mike and yours truly got to be pretty good friends, although I don’t see much of him now. He really ragged me about moving up this way when I bought the saloon after Repeal. ‘Ah, goin’ North Side high-hat on us, are you now, Seamus?’ he said. ‘And to think, you, a good Sox fan, buyin’ a pub within an outfielder’s toss of that Wrigley Field place. The shame of it, the shame.’ And Mike, he was only half jollying, if that. And in truth, he has never come through that door, although I’ve invited him more than once.”

“So you see this Mike as a possible contact within the party? Somebody I can talk to?”

“No, no,” the Killer said. “Oh, Mike is one-hundred-percent Democrat, always has been and always will be; but it wasn’t him I was thinking of; it’s his son, who’s a comer. He’s down in Springfield now, sitting in the Legislature. Lord, I’ve known Dick since he was crawling on the living room floor of their flat over on Lowe, corner of 36th. He was always a good lad, an only child, too. And both his parents doted on him, but I wouldn’t call him spoiled, not at all. Well-cared-for, indeed, but not spoiled. His mother, Lillian... now there was a pistol, let me tell you. She fought for women getting the vote — even used to take the little fellow along on those suffragette marches of hers. Damndest thing. And Dick himself, he’s been toiling for the party since he was maybe twelve or so, ringing doorbells, passing out handbills, and the like.”

“If I were to approach this guy, the son that is, think he’d be willing to do some digging around?”

The Killer folded his arms across his chest and contemplated. “I would vote for the direct approach. He is as honest as they come. At least that is my humble conviction.”

“I’ll be damned, Killer. I was just thinking that all the times I’ve been in here, I never knew your first name was Seamus. And I guess I should have figured it out, but I also never knew you were born in Ireland. How’d you get rid of your accent? You sound like you’ve lived in Chicago forever.”

“A fair question from a fair man. Do you know the phrase ‘Irish need not apply’?”

“Sure. When I was a kid growing up in Pilsen, I saw signs saying that in the windows of shops that were hiring. Haven’t seen one in years, though.”

“There was a veritable plethora of them when I came over with my folks and my sisters in ’97, you can believe it. I was but seventeen then, and we were church-mouse poor. My father, rest his noble soul, got a job working nights in the Stock Yards, and he was happy as a leprechaun to have it. And I had to go to work, too — school was beyond the question. So I hit the pavement all around the South Side looking for work, and when these butchers and tailors and other shopkeepers heard my brogue, that was it.” He snapped his fingers. “I was out the door without so much as a fare-thee-well.

“Now Snap, as the good Lord is my witness, it’s fair to say I’m as proud of being Irish as the next chap, indeed maybe a shade more so. But we needed money badly, even with my fine father’s salary, so I got rid of the brogue and forced myself to speak ‘American.’ There you are.” He spread his arms.

I nodded. “I remember my mother telling me that my father’s Bohemian accent hurt him early on, too. But he’s still got the accent, and somehow he persisted and finally landed with the streetcar company, our good old Chicago Surface Lines, where he’s been ever since.”

“Good for him,” the Killer said. “I don’t mean to disparage him or the fine Bohemians, but I honestly don’t believe anybody had it as bad as the Irish. There was a lot of hatred back then — worse than it is today, I feel. But we were talking about Dick Daley.”

“Sorry, I get sidetracked easily. So you think the young Daley’s pretty well wired into the Kelly-Nash machine?”

The Killer flipped a hand over. “I didn’t say that — what I said was, Dick is honest. But yes, although he’s pretty young — probably just about your age, I’d say — he’s already had a good lot of experience, and from what little I know, he knows a multitude of well-placed people in the party.”

“Would you give him a call for me?”

“Why not, given that you’re such a loyal patron of this establishment. I can get his number from his folks. Pray tell, what am I supposed to say?”

“Ask him if he’d be willing to talk to me. You don’t have to say what it’s about, or he might get spooked, but tell him I’m prepared to go down to Springfield to talk to him — the Legislature’s in session now. And Killer, make sure he knows that even though I work for the Trib, I vote Democratic. Which happens to be true. By the way, straight ticket in ’36.”

Kilkenny said he’d make the call. And he did. Two days later, he phoned me at home. “Snap, I just got off the line with young Richard in Springfield — and you owe me for that call, by the way. He was a mite suspicious about why some Tribune reporter would want to go and see him, especially when your paper already has a fellow down there covering the State House. That threw me for a second, but I told him you were on a confidential assignment. And I also said you were honest, trustworthy, and a passel of other fine adjectives. You wouldn’t go and make a liar out of me now, would you?”

“Killer, I’ll be on my best behavior. And I owe you. Feed me that Springfield number.”

Three days later, Friday afternoon, I hoofed it the three blocks east from Police Headquarters over to the Illinois Central Station at 12th and Michigan with my small suitcase. I had gotten our evening man, Ellis, to relieve me early so I could catch the 4:45 to Springfield. He couldn’t very well gripe about it, given all the times I’d hung around the pressroom waiting for him to drag in anywhere from ten minutes to a half hour late.

I bought a round trip ticket in the dreary, drafty old waiting room of the depot and went down the stairway to my track. What greeted me looked unlike any train I’d ever seen; it was low and tubular and green, sort of an elongated earthworm with windows, and it had a grille on the front end that must have been copied straight from a ’34 Chrysler Airflow sedan.

“Is this thing safe?” I asked the portly conductor, who stood on the platform whistling “Camptown Races” off-key.

“Safe? Darn tootin’ right it’s safe, son,” he grunted, peering at me over half-glasses. “You mean to say you haven’t seen the Green Diamond before — pride of the Illinois Central line? You been off hibernatin’ someplace like ol’ Rip Van Winkle? The Diamond’s been running better’n two years now.”

He shook his head, as if pitying my ignorance. “Hellfire, son, this is the last word, the smoothest thing on the rails. Rides like you’re floating on air. Is this safe? Huh!”

I felt like I should say something after that spirited defense of the Green Diamond, but I didn’t know what the etiquette is about apologizing to a train, so I grinned sheepishly and climbed aboard. I settled into a window seat and had to admit to myself that I couldn’t even tell when we began to move.

The earthworm picked up speed quickly as we headed south, with Lake Michigan off to the left and apartment buildings on the right. At one place two or three miles south of the station, we were so close to the windows of the flats that I could see a baby bouncing in his playpen on a sun porch and grinning toothlessly as we flew past. He reminded me of the way Peter welcomed me home from work by jumping up and down in his own little barred enclosure when he was a tyke. That had been only ten years ago, but it seemed like a lifetime had passed, and in a sense, it had.

When I had phoned Dick Daley, he wanted to know what I needed to see him about. After I told him I’d rather discuss it in person, he sounded dubious but told me to come ahead, that he’d meet me in the lobby of the St. Nicholas Hotel at nine o’clock, which was fifty minutes after the train was due to arrive in Springfield.

And the earthworm arrived exactly on time. “Told you it rode smooth, didn’t I, son?” the conductor said as I swung off onto the platform.

“You did, and you were right. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I’ll even ride it back to Chicago tomorrow,” I answered.

He chuckled as I headed off in the direction of the St. Nicholas a few blocks away, enjoying a spring warmth that hadn’t yet arrived farther north. I checked in and splashed water on my face in my room, which was plain but clean. At 5 before 9:00, I went down to the lobby and saw a guy with a well-fitting suit and slicked-down hair standing near the front door. He had clean-cut written all over him.

“Richard Daley?” I asked.

He nodded somberly. “You’re Mr. Malek?”

“Steve Malek,” I said, sticking out a hand, which he gripped firmly. “Thanks for taking the time to see me tonight.”

“Time is something I got right now,” he said in a slightly husky Chicago voice. “I try to get home weekends, but I got a special committee meeting tomorrow, so I’m stuck here until the end of next week.”

“Can I buy you a drink someplace?”

“I’d rather just take a walk,” he answered. “I walk a lot nights when I’m down here.”

I said that was fine with me, and we stepped out into the mild evening air. It was refreshing being without a topcoat. I let Daley set the course, which took us through the streets of downtown Springfield and over into the area around the domed State Capitol.

“You know, I’ve lived in Chicago all my life,” I told him, “and I’ve never been here before. We were supposed to come down on a class trip when I was in school, but there was a scarlet fever epidemic, so it got canceled.”

“I enjoy it,” Daley said off-handedly. “When I walk around at night, the streets are quiet, peaceful, and I think it must have been a lot like this when Lincoln was here himself, before he went to Washington. He walked these same streets, past some of these same houses.”

“A great president.”

“For a Republican,” Daley said, his smooth face creased by a slight smile. “I’ve gotten interested in him since being here the last couple of years. There’s something Lincoln said about this town that I like so much I memorized it: ‘I believe that a man should be proud of the city in which he lives, and he will so live that his city will be proud that he lives in it.’ That’s how I feel about Chicago.”

“I guess I do too,” I agreed, figuring his comment begged a response, “although I’ve never thought about it.”

“Where’d you grow up?” he asked.

“Pilsen.”

“What parish? I’m Nativity of Our Lord — always have been. That’s in Bridgeport.”

“St. Agnes,” I said without missing a beat, although my parents had stopped being active Catholics years before, and I hadn’t been inside a church since a year or so after Norma and I were married.

“Mm, 26th Street, isn’t it?”

“You know the city well — 26th and Lawndale.” I didn’t bother to tell him I’d moved up north, because he’d surely ask what my parish was now. And unless I had misread this man, he gauged others at least in part by their involvement in the church, specifically of the Catholic variety. It was not an area where I could stand much scrutiny, and at the moment I felt it was important to have Daley’s good opinion.

We walked for the next few minutes in silence through residential streets before Daley spoke. “You wanted to talk to me. About what?”

I drew in air and let in out slowly, choosing my words with care. “You’ve been following the coverage of the Martindale murder?”

“Of course I’ve read about it, just about everywhere I’ve turned. You can’t avoid it. So?”

“Well... I’ve got sources — maybe because I’ve been in the news business so long — and they tell me it wasn’t a mob hit.”

Daley’s full face registered surprise. “Who would have done it then?”

“That’s the question. There are several theories floating around,” I improvised. “Now I want to stress that that’s all they are — theories. And...”

“But the police think it was the syndicate, don’t they? That’s what I’ve been reading in all the papers, including yours.”

“The cops publicly say it’s the syndicate because they’ve got no other leads and it seems like a logical explanation. When in doubt, blame the organization; who’s going to contradict you?”

Daley sniffed dismissively. “When in doubt, when somebody gets gunned down the way Martindale was, it usually is the organization. What’s all this got to do with me?”

“Nothing, really, except I need your help.”

“Yeah, how so?” He tossed a suspicious look in my direction but kept up his brisk pace.

“One theory is that somebody in the Democratic organization hired a gun to—”

“That is totally ridiculous!” Dick Daley snapped in a voice that was just below a shout. He stopped in the middle of a residential block and pivoted to face me, chin out. “I should have expected this from the Tribune. Your paper will do anything to smear us.”

I held up a hand. “This isn’t the Tribune, honest. This is me. Nobody on the paper even knows that I’m down here.”

“Huh! I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Look, I’m a Democrat myself, always have been. There’s lots of us at the Trib,” I said, even though only two or maybe three reporters I was aware of consistently voted Democratic.

“If you’re one of us, how can you stand to work for that damned Colonel?” Daley demanded, hands on hips and head tilted aggressively.

I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “It’s a living. They pay on time, and they don’t tell me how to write, or what to write, no matter what you hear around town. And remember, the Tribune did endorse Kelly for mayor in ’35.”

“Well, sure, but they couldn’t very well come out for that Wetten guy the Republicans were running,” Daley said. “That would have been a joke. Besides, the Colonel and Kelly are cronies, so that endorsement wasn’t politics as much as it was the buddy system working.”

“Maybe so, but the Trib also endorsed Brady for city clerk, and the last time I looked, he was a one hundred percent Democrat,” I persisted. “Now I’m not saying somebody from the party is behind the murder, but it is one possibility.”

Daley dismissed that with the sweep of a hand. “Bull! In the first place, people on opposite sides of politics may not like each other, but they don’t go around knocking one another off. And second, nobody I know or have talked to in the party considered Martindale a threat to Kelly next year. Ed would’ve squashed him like a bug. In fact, regulars I know who have been around forever said they hoped Martindale would be the Republican candidate because they figured he’d be easier to beat than Green or even old Thompson.”

“What do you think?”

“That’s an easy one. Kelly will win against anybody, and win big. Let the Republicans run whoever they want to, it’s not gonna matter. Hey, why are you even talking to me about this? I’m small potatoes — way down the line in the party.”

“Seamus Kilkenney said you were a comer, someone to watch.”

Another wave of the hand, this one not dismissive. “Well, Mr. K’s a friend of my folks, a wonderful guy. He’d say things like that.”

“Maybe, but I know him pretty well, and he only says what he means. I want a favor from you.”

We were under a streetlamp at a corner, facing each other in its cheery circle of light. Daley looked down at his well-polished shoes, then at me. “After Mr. K called me the other day and said you wanted to see me, I phoned my father. He doesn’t know you — never met you, but he says you bailed Mr. K out once.”

“People help their friends.”

“Sure. This was a big one though... the way I hear it; they were going to put him out of business.”

He was referring to the time just after I’d moved to Clark Street that a district police lieutenant had been shaking down the Killer for big bucks — so big that, as Daley said, he was close to shutting down.

“That greedy bastard,” I said. “One of the slimiest cops this town’s ever known, and that takes in a lot of territory. He was bleeding businesses all over his district. Somebody had to do something.”

“And it was you.” A hint of respect had crept into Daley’s tone.

“Being a reporter has its ups and downs. One of the downs is the wages, which are okay at the Trib — I’m not griping, mind you — but it’s still not the kind of money that’ll ever get me a house in Winnetka or Park Ridge or Elmhurst. One of the ups is that you get to know people — famous people, interesting people, strange people, and sometimes disgusting, dishonest, disreputable people — it comes with the job. And because I happen to work at Police Headquarters, I know cops — lots of cops. And I was damned if I was going to let some greasy-palmed stooge with brass on his uniform shutter my new favorite saloon because its owner wouldn’t help finance that stooge’s cottage at Lake Geneva and the swivel-hipped floozie he kept in some Drake Towers duplex.”

“So you got the cop tossed out on his ear, and off the force.”

“You could put it that way.”

“I just did. You saved Mr. K and his bar.”

“Sort of.”

“Not ‘sort of.’ You did.”

“All right, I did. But being with the paper helped. Brass on the force listened to what I had to say. If I had just been Joe Blow, who knows whether I’d have gotten anywhere.”

Daley nodded. “You said you want a favor.”

“Yeah.”

Another nod. The shadows thrown across his face by the streetlamp made him seem older and more careworn than earlier. “All right, I’ll hear you out, as long as it doesn’t involve anything illegal.”

“Thanks, it doesn’t. I need to know if somebody — anybody — in the Democratic Party was in any way involved in Martindale’s killing.”

Daley jammed his hands into his pants pockets. He was working to control what I later learned was a high-octane temper. After two deep breaths, he responded. “I can tell you now that I’m not going to find anything.” The words were spaced, and uttered with a quiet intensity.

“But you’ll make an honest effort?”

His body tensed under the well-fitting, pin-striped suit. “Mr. Malek, that is the only kind of effort I ever make,” he said, and coming from him, somehow those words didn’t sound stuffy.

“Thanks again. And at the risk of pushing my luck, I have one more favor to ask you — but this one’s really of your father.”

“Huh?”

“The Killer — Mr. K, that is... most of his customers called him the Killer — keeps hoping that maybe sometime your father will stop by his watering hole. If maybe you could say something...”

This time, Daley’s nod was accompanied by a full-fledged smile, which looked good on him. He should try it more often.