“It never happened,” I repeated. Mr. Right, who I now knew to be Monk, got out and handed me my umbrella, grunting something unintelligible. I didn’t respond, figuring anything I said might earn me yet another whack in the ribs. As the car sped away, I peered at the license plate but could see nothing. The light bulb above it was out.
The rain had almost stopped, although I put up the umbrella anyway, with shaking hands. I rubbed my sore right side through my trench coat and took a step toward my apartment building, but checked myself again and set a course for Kilkenny’s. Now I really needed that beer.
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.”