“How about you take me to one of those fifty-dollar rooms? On the way, look at the table, then tell me who the boss is.”
Candy seemed to ponder my suggestion. “Well, okay. But I gotta warn you, once we enter the room, I can’t leave without my hard work being rewarded.”
“If you let me get out my wallet, I’ll pay you right now.”
She laughed again. “Not here, sweetie. Let’s go.”
I followed her, noted she looked over at the wiseguy table and smiled, heard their laughter, disappeared into a dark corridor behind the bar, then walked through a door where my world became no bigger than the coat closet in my apartment. On the wall, a skinny, tall mirror. On the ceiling, a bare lightbulb. Candy dropped to her knees and began unbuttoning my pants.
“Wait,” I said. “What’s the boss’s name?”
“No business
before
pleasure, silly.”
I took her by the shoulders. “C’mon, stand up.” She did as told. “I’m all business tonight.” I took out my wallet and produced two fifty-dollar bills. “All I want is the boss’s name and you’re done.”
Candy looked a little confused. “That guy is
the
boss. Cooper-the-cop, we call him—but not to his face.”
I put the hundred bucks into Candy’s hand and moved toward the door.
“Don’t you want anything out of this deal?”
“Candy, you gave me all I needed for tonight,” I said then walked out.
From the shadows behind the bar I surveilled the room. Cooper and his crew were gone. Pureed strawberry juice dripped down the side of my untouched daiquiri.
“How you doin’, sir? Everything okay?”
The gangbanger’s words startled me. “Everything is great. Thank you for checking in.”
“Enjoy your evening.”
“I will,” I said, thinking only that I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
Chapter 23
The next morning I awoke surprisingly rested, having learned that if I remained on my back in the crevasse of the mattress, a semblance of sleep could be maintained. For breakfast, two peanut-butter sandwiches, then off to meet the boss of Irvington.
I parked in front of Cooper’s mini-precinct, still with a few minutes to kill. Although the sun had been up for at least three hours, the abandoned buildings and wandering, hollow-eyed dope addicts seemed to filter the light into a kind of duskiness. Staring through the windshield, I tried to imagine this neighborhood as the bleak backdrop through which Eddie trekked to school each morning. The thought of used hypodermic needles, tracked into the house from a kid’s shoe, depressed me. I needed air.
Inside the precinct, the same African American man sat behind the metal desk. He looked at his watch. “It might be a bit early.”
“Can I call you by name?”
The question took him by surprise. “Uh, sure. Sergeant Blake.”
“Sergeant Blake, yesterday you said,
after nine
. It is now after nine.”
Sergeant Blake looked at his watch again. “You are correct, sir.”
He walked to the staircase at the back of the room and shut the door behind him. On Sergeant Blake’s desk sat a business telephone system circa 1980. Nobody was calling or holding. The bare white walls seemed out of place without case charts or crime-statistic graphs. A four-door vertical file cabinet caught my attention, then Sergeant Blake opened the door, a metal detector in his left hand.
“Detective Cooper will see you, Mr. Landau.”
I walked to Sergeant Blake and held my arms above my head. “You looking for a weapon or a wire?”
Sergeant Blake didn’t respond. “Okay, you’re good to go.”
A precipitous concrete stairway led me to a well-lit room resembling a plush home office, complete with wet bar, leather couches, and an HDTV taking up most of a wall. Sequestered at the other end of the room, the man I saw at Back End Up sat behind a beautifully preserved table of wooden planks. At the front of the desk, a gold nameplate with embossed black lettering said, “Lt. Landon Cooper.” A tapered black shirt with purple stitching gave him a stylishly creepy look. A sign hanging from the front of the table said, “Entering a Drug-Free Zone.”
“Old barns,” Cooper said.
I stepped closer but kept my distance. The size of the table made him look even smaller and skinnier than last night. But his nose appeared larger.
“The desk. I can tell you like it.”
“How can you tell?”
Cooper laughed. “Have a seat.” He pointed to the chair in front of the desk. “Enjoy yourself last night?”
I pulled the chair a few feet farther from the table before sitting. “Nice little setup you have here. I don’t think Kalijero ever had it this nice.”
Cooper paused. “You know Jimmy Kalijero, huh? He’s probably put in his papers by now.”
“You’re not in touch?”
“Why would I be?”
“You recommended that Eddie Byrne seek him out.”
Cooper looked up a bit and to his left. He stayed that way until a realization manifested as a smile. “Oh, you mean Eddie went to Chicago? That’s what this is about?”
“Eddie hired me to find Tanya—”
“Just for the record,” Cooper interrupted. “I didn’t recommend nobody. I may have dropped Kalijero’s name a few times over the years. But that’s it.”
Cooper still had a Chicago accent, but without the broad blue-collar inflection one might expect from a cop.
“Sorry. I thought you guys were good friends.”
Cooper looked thoughtfully over my head. “I disappointed him. He took it personally. Fuck it. So what brings you to Irvington, Detective Landau?”
“Actually, I’m still just an investigator.”
Cooper waited for more then took a breath. “So what can I do for you?” The irritability in his voice did not escape me.
“I’m getting lots of clues but I can’t connect the dots. Eddie Byrne’s kind of a mystery to me. He doesn’t like talking about himself.”
“Byrne. Even his name sounds like a pain in the ass. He hires you, but keeps secrets. What the fuck?”
“He’s a challenge—”
“So you thought if you came here, you could find out more about him. Maybe dig up some info that might connect those dots for you. That makes sense.”
“Thank you. You’ve lived out here a long time. How well do you know this kid?”
“Eddie? He’s an odd one—but it’s not his fault. I mean, he’s just a product of his environment, you know what I mean? The apple-not-far-from-the-tree thing.”
“Messed-up family.”
“Sure. And look where he grew up! Dumbass father refused to leave. What the hell kind of father would let their kid grow up in this town?”
“You were a patrol officer here?”
“Yeah, till I made detective. That’s how I got to know Eddie. I tried steering him the right way but I was up against the whole culture, you know what I mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The family.
His
family. The uncles and cousins. All into something. Low-level mob shit. Drugs, guns. Whatever can make a buck.”
“He worked for his family?”
Cooper pondered my question. “Well, he kind of did his own thing. Ran around with other delinquents. But he was underage. So when we busted them, the worst they got was a night in the can or juvie hall. We tried to get him and his pals to flip on the uncles. But they were too deep in the culture. You don’t ever rat someone out, after all. Never.”
“Now Eddie’s all grown up. Officially working for the family?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know. I
assume
he’s still in the family biz. But unless we catch him doing something naughty, he isn’t our concern. I can tell you this, though. I’ve told him many times that my door is always open if he needs someone to talk to.”
“What were you thinking when you referred Eddie to Kalijero? You thought he’d take the case himself?”
“Like I said, I didn’t
refer
him to Kalijero—exactly. I probably said out loud, if you’re in Chicago, Kalijero would be a good contact, or something like that. I’m surprised Eddie even remembered his name. I would’ve thought Kalijero knew someone more experienced than you at this kind of thing.”
“You don’t think I’m the right guy?”
Cooper shrugged. “No disrespect. But the fact you made the trip here tells me you’ve lost the scent. So it’s not just that you’re wasting your time, but you could easily get yourself killed in the process. Right? And for what?”
I leaned forward, elbow on thigh, chin in hand, and stayed in
The Thinker
pose long enough to suggest a dilemma. “Yeah, I see your point. But while I’m here I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me pick your brain a little bit longer.”
“Of course.”
“Eddie’s got a lot of cash. He swore it wasn’t drug money. Should I believe him?”
“Yeah, I think you can believe him and I’ll tell you why. Like I said, Eddie grew up in this dump. He didn’t have a chance, but he learned to survive. He did what he had to do. But when his eighteenth birthday was coming up, I took him aside and told him it was time to clean up, otherwise he was going to end up in prison.”
“So you got him to reassess his life, take the straight road.”
“I did! And I’m telling you that kid had
everything
against him. Not just this town, but his family. All the cops knew his family had their fingers in all kinds of vice. It’d been going on for decades. Once Eddie was an adult, we would’ve popped him every chance we got, just to try to get to his uncles and cousins.”
“But he still ended up going to the slammer.”
Cooper sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, that was unfortunate. But it wasn’t drugs! He got into a fight and went a little too far with it. He should’ve stopped when the guy hit the ground. Had Eddie been a rat, they would’ve dropped the ‘aggravated’ part and made it simple assault. Pay a fine but no jail time. But Eddie’s not a rat.”
“Do you have any kids?” I asked, knowing Kalijero’s story of Cooper abandoning mother and child after the kid was born.
“No.”
“I get the feeling you kind of like Eddie.”
Cooper smiled. “You know, I’m one of those guys who can’t help but respect someone who was dealt a shit hand but tries to make the best of it. Sure, he got into some trouble. But he didn’t use or sell drugs, he wasn’t into armed robbery or putting himself in a position where an innocent might get hurt. Deep down, I think he’s a good kid. He just didn’t have any guidance.”
I wondered what kind of guidance Cooper’s abandoned child had. “Do you think Eddie’s
only
reason for coming to Chicago was to find Tanya Maggio?”
“I have no reason to think he went there for anything else.” Cooper sat up in his chair and cleared his throat. “Why do you ask?”
The sounds of commerce exuded from Cooper’s head. Sprockets creaked. Meshed gears rotated and rattled. Industrial grease coated his eyes. “Well—I think I trust him. I mean, he probably carries a lot of cash because a guy like him might not have a good credit rating, right?”
Cooper pretended to think about it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And you know cash is part of the
culture
with families like his. They like to do everything in cash. They don’t like banks.”
Cooper pushed back his chair and walked to the bar. I guessed he stood five foot seven or eight. His distressed jeans added to a rakishly chic persona.
“You like scotch, Landau?”
“At nine-thirty in the morning?”
“Sure, at nine-thirty in the
A.M.
!”
He returned holding two tumblers with a couple of fingers of scotch. He sat back down then raised his glass. “You can thank the oak tree for fine scotch. It has to be aged in oak barrels. That’s the rule. Here’s to a long and successful career for Chicago’s Detective Landau.”
Cooper sipped then smacked his lips. I sipped then raised my glass and said, “Here’s to Eddie finding Tanya.”
Cooper didn’t react. His eyes bounced around the room until he said, “Maybe it’s better for Tanya that he doesn’t find her.”
“Why?”
“Look around this slum. Eddie belongs here but Tanya Maggio could do better.”
“Maybe they’ll go somewhere else. Together.”
I carefully watched Cooper’s reaction. “Eddie’s not the type to leave. Irvington is all he knows.”
“You knew Tanya pretty well.”
“Nah. It’s the company you keep, right? It’s not hard to brand somebody around here. The die is cast early in life. But if you’re smart in that trampy kind of way,
and
pretty, you can go far in life.”
“When she took off, did you know she had left town?”
Cooper looked squint-eyed at his watch then back to me. “Not till Eddie told me.”
“That was just a couple weeks ago, after he got out of prison. They hadn’t spoken in a year. You didn’t know earlier?”
“Why would I? I’d visit Eddie in the joint a few times a month. To make sure he was okay and that he knew I didn’t forget about him. That kind of thing. Tanya was none of my business—unless Eddie wanted to talk about her. By the way, did you bring a firearm into the state, Landau?”
“Why do you ask?”
“New Jersey doesn’t have a concealed-carry reciprocity agreement with Illinois.”
“Thank you. I’ll remember that if I ever decide to carry a gun.”
“This is a dangerous town, kid. It’s pretty stressful to be surrounded by violent gangs and drug addicts. You ever had a crackhead point a gun in your face,
investigator
?”
I cultivated a prolonged silence then said, “Sorry. I’ve been doing mostly birth parents and cheating spouses.”
Cooper liked my answer. “Yeah, sure. You’re still a young guy. It takes a while before you can get the confidence for a scumbag world like Irvington. But you’ve got to know what you’re getting into. A strange white boy snooping around this dump can get snuffed out pretty quick around here.”
I pretended it all made sense. “If you don’t mind, could you explain how a mini-precinct operates? What’s the role in the community?”
Cooper leaned back. “I’m sure Kalijero filled your head with lots of lies. But I don’t mind telling you that he doesn’t know shit, sitting on his ass in Chicago. I developed a whole new way of policing this precinct. And I keep it real simple.”