Campanelli: Sentinel (5 page)

              “Oh, great,” Campanelli huffed, “I can’t wait to hear about that one.”

              “Don’t worry, Frank,” the scientist said as he turned back to the handgun in the rest, “I’ll make it good.”

            
 
With that, Frank headed out the door and went back to his car. He sat there for a bit, not knowing what else to do with his morning. Then, realizing that he was hungry, decided to head to
Tam’s Place
.

***

Campanelli’s day was uneventful and drab after breakfast. Not knowing what else to do but sit around the house with a few drinks, he decided to drive around Chinatown for a while. He spent some time in a few shops and eventually drove back home. Frank had checked the CPD server many times during the day, looking for updates on his cases and hoping that someone needed his assistance on the Kelly shooting. Normally, someone would. Today was different.

              Giving up his hope of finding something to work on, he signed off from the CPD computer, stepped from his car and into the tree enshrouded courtyard of his condominium complex. As he approached his door he came upon an old man that he had not seen before, sitting on a lawn chair next to a large, sad-faced dog. The landlord had warned Frank of a new tenant, an eccentric, the landlord had labeled him.

              “Aft’noon to ya,” the white bearded man called in a strange accent. The dog did not stir, but his watery eyes followed Frank’s every move.

              “Good afternoon,” Campanelli returned as he accessed the building’s security computer via implant.

              “You the detective?” the old man pried and stuck out a shaky, bony hand.

              “Yes, I am,” Frank replied. He stopped and shook the hand. “Frank Campanelli.”

              “Luke McKay,” the old man said.

              “Good to meet ya. Are you the new tenant?” Frank smiled.

              “Yessir,” the man said as he grinned toothily. “I’m up from Mississip’ with Old Bill here.”

              “Well, welcome to Chicago.”

              “Thankee kindly,” Luke nodded.

              “What made you leave Mississippi?”

              “Well, things got bad at home so me and Old Bill went a’walkin’.”

              “You
walked
here?”

              “Well, we got help on a‘casion. Left ‘bout a month ago. Damn hooligans went tearin’ up my place. Burnt it down one night. Didn’t have nuthin’ left so, here me and Old Bill are.”

              “Sorry to hear that. I would have thought urban areas like Chicago were more lawless.”

              “Can’t rightly say if’n they are or ain’t,” Luke said thoughtfully. “All I know is, my home’s gone and here we is,” he finished with a smile and a wink.

              “Well, again, welcome,” Frank wished and opened the front door.

              “If’n you need some work up there, give a holler,” McKay added. “I promised the landlord my handy work in exchange for some rent off. I do plumbin’, paintin’, resto-work, what-have-you. If’n ever’thin’s fine, drop on by my place here,” he indicated the first floor unit to Frank’s left, “anytime for a nip or a toke.”

              “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks!” Frank said and went upstairs. Luke McKay in his torn up flannel shirt, denim pants and holey shoes did not look the type that would know anything about handy work, but there was that leaking sink in the kitchen that he had not taken the time to fix. Campanelli uttered a short laugh once inside his top floor residence, “Ha…a nip or a toke.”

              Frank tried to link with the CPD computer with his implant, but he could not. The satellite service was down again with the familiar message, “
We’re sorry, but we are experiencing a technical issue. Please try again later
.”

              “Damn it,” the detective muttered and stepped out to his patio to link directly with District One’s server across the street. Although the range was at the extreme for his bio-electronic transceiver, the height of the station’s antenna and the fact that he was on the third floor would help. On occasion, the steel “L” tracks between his condo and the station would interfere depending on atmospheric conditions, but the direct approach was proving to be more reliable of late than trying to connect with the satellite service’s repeater towers.

              The connection made, Frank uploaded the picture of Luke McKay and entered the man’s name. In moments, the wanderer’s story was confirmed insofar as where he had come from. There was no report of the burned home, but it was possible that McKay had been truthful about the lawlessness of the area and that the incident had gone by unnoticed by authorities.

              Campanelli also found that the man had been in trouble with the law many times over the years for one of the oldest crimes on the books: Moonshining. The most recent arrest had been three years earlier. Why the state had been stubborn about the private distillation of liquor, Frank could not answer, but that was the extent of his new neighbor’s troublemaking.

              Frank discontinued the connection and went about his lazy afternoon, trying hard not to think about work but failing miserably until he forced a nap upon himself in his favorite spot, his lounger on the patio. He awoke to darkness as always and initiated his implant to restore his sight. Finding the time, he realized that Tamara was probably on her way for their date. He no sooner had changed his clothes than the door chimed, announcing her arrival.

              “I met your new neighbor,” Tam stated with wide eyes that suggested the encounter had been strange.

              “What do you think?” Frank said as he put on a sport coat that was light in color and not intended for work.

              “I dunno. Have you checked him out?” she asked, impressing Frank at her knowledge of his habits.

              “Sure did,” Frank answered and held her gaze for a moment in faux sincerity that she did not pick up on. “Repeat offender,” he commented as he shook his head and closed his eyes briefly as if to say that she did not want to know.

              “Frank,” Billingsley almost exclaimed, “what did he do?” He said nothing, only glanced into her eyes and then away quickly as he made his way to the door. “Frank? Frank?!”

              Campanelli left her behind as he headed down the stairwell, leaving her to shut his condo door. She scrambled quickly after him, conflicted that she was also hurrying to meet with the mysterious new tenant for a second time.

              At the lobby, she gave his sleeve a hard tug. “Frank,” she hissed, knowing that McKay was just outside the door. “What is he?”

              Campanelli turned with an unlit cigarette in his mouth held tight by quivering lips. She saw his laughing eyes take in her horrified expression, so she smacked him on the bicep.

              “A career moonshiner from Mississippi,” he chuckled.

              She hit him again, though she smiled.

              The two stepped out and exchanged ‘good evenings’ with McKay and Old Bill and made their way to her car, a fifty-year-old convertible of German manufacture. The machine was long overdue for the boneyard, but it worked okay. The car was a gasoline/electric hybrid and though fuel was strictly rationed, Tam used it only once or twice a week.

              The doors creaked loudly as they shut them. The electric motor whined irritatingly in reverse, but quieted as it headed to the street. The springs cried like a frightened family of boars as the car leaned on the right turn, which made Frank smile and cringe at the same time.

              The drive was just over two miles to the theater, a vast complex of large viewing rooms on East Illinois Street, on the north side of the Chicago River. The building was once quite beautiful, featuring great vaulted windows upon its street side façade. Most were boarded up, leaving only one such window to hint at what once was.

              Tam parked the roadster and between the two of them, they got the top up and crossed the street. “Not very busy for a Friday night,” Tam commented.

              Frank grunted in agreement as they walked, his eyes taking in the view of the great building which once contained a hotel, a bowling alley and who remembers what else. It stood amongst a group of the last skyscrapers in the area; a collection of empty or almost empty hotels and office buildings. Like a great forest cut down for their wood, Chicago had been heavily harvested for its steel at the behest of the starship building firms. This neighborhood survived, but was in such a state that it brought about sentimentality to anyone over the age of thirty that remembered how the city once looked. Campanelli, though a native New Yorker, experienced the same harvesting of historic constructs there and looked upon every cordoned off foundation as if it was a grave.

              The city was still alive, but like someone in a coma stuffed away in some corner private room of a convalescent home, it suffered from memory loss and was unaware of what it used to be. Frank owned several photography books featuring Chicago as it once appeared; logs of black & white, grainy squares depicting people, buildings and car-filled streets. The publications ranged from the late nineteenth century to photos taken a couple of decades after Alethea was discovered. Even the most recent pictures hinted at a much more vibrant life than that of current day.

              Frank had always disagreed with the anti-migration law, but every day he saw the reasons for the continued defiance of it. Like their ancestors who thumbed their noses as they drank their illegal alcohol during the prohibition years of the early twentieth century, Americans wanted out and
were
leaving.

              “Frank,” Tam almost shouted from his left side as she tugged his sleeve.

              “Huh?” he said as he blinked himself to the now. He had stopped at the curb, pondering as he took in the sight of the building jutting high into the sky above him.

              “The show is going to start,” she smiled though her eyes questioned his hesitation.

              Frank smiled and the two of them hurried their pace to buy tickets. Once in the grand lobby, his melancholy could not be shaken as his eyes danced over the mural-covered walls. Chipped and faded as they were, the actors of old that had been painted there could still be recognized. He knew quite a few of them, but many had yet to be rediscovered. It was for another time, however as they grabbed their popcorn, candy and soda on their way into one of the four viewing rooms that were still in use.

              There was no time for conversation, for the film rolled almost as soon as the couple sat down. Looking about in his police-trained habit, Frank noted that there were only eighteen other attendees, couples like themselves and most were similar in age.

              Both Tam and Frank had seen
Key Largo
many times, but it made it no less enjoyable. The story took place in a hotel in the Florida Keys, a string of islands off the southern tip of the state. A hurricane was taking place, becoming another character as its influence manipulated the other characters to react to it. The sounds of the wind and rain were soothing to Frank, balancing the intense drama unfolding between the innocents, the protagonist and the gangsters. The ending was exciting, confirming Humphrey Bogart as the victor yet again, but it all came too soon and before he knew it, he and Tam were on their way back to the car, this time, dodging a welcomed, wind-driven rain.

              The two of them jumped in the roadster, laughing at the circumstance and their instant sogginess. Tam started the vehicle and, working her way out onto the street, pulled an illegal U-turn and sped away. The car’s lights barely cut through the comforting blanket of rain.

              Lightning blitzed through the darkness, giving Tam no help to see. She was forced to slow down, no longer able to differentiate between good stretches of road and potholes. In time, she made it, though there were a few hard jars to the car that made the both of them doubt the journey’s completion. But complete it they did and Tamara parked the beaten old automobile and settled back into the seat hard, relieved that the tension-filled drive was over.

              “Whew,” she spat, “sometimes I wish I had one of those computer cars.”

              “It wouldn’t have helped much, trust me,” Frank confirmed.

              “Okay, so a sprint to the door?” Tam urged, grasping the door handle and daring Frank with her eyes.

              “Sure. Ready?” he accepted and grasped the handle, “One, two…,” he cheated and threw the door open without reaching three. He sprinted to the condominium’s door, Tam screaming after him, calling him a fink and some other things that thunder censored.

              Luke and Old Bill were absent from the front door, though a light was on in their window facing the courtyard. Quickly, he stuck his card in the lock and it released, so he held the door open for Tam. Their speed mattered not at all, for the both of them were soaked through their clothes in mere seconds. Fortunately, since it had been such a warm day, the water was not at first cold.

              “Bastard!” Billingsley accused once inside with a loud whisper. She was aware of McKay’s presence and wished not to alert the man or the odd-looking dog.