Not that I didn’t care about John Gibbons. I did. But he was dead, and nothing I could do would change that. On the other hand, I was out of my bed at four o’clock in the morning, walking down a sideways plastic hallway, on my way toward a newsroom full of people I would either hate or despise. I would view the tape and try to get a line on Gibbons’ killer before the cops dumped the whole mess. I figured that was more than enough for someone I hadn’t seen in four years before yesterday. I was doing my best. And if Lisa Bange happened along the way, so be it.
She was sitting in a cubicle at the end of the hall, drinking what looked like coffee and smoking what looked like a cigarette.
She was five feet eight and great-looking in that newsroom sort of way. Picture long sweaters and jeans that hang pretty well. Long-limbed and athletic, with loose brown hair and Irish skin the color of cream. She was worth getting out of bed for. She also wasn’t Lisa Bange.
“Down there,” she pointed.
“You’re not Lisa Bange, are you?”
“Down there.” She spoke without taking her eyes off the newspaper. Tribune crossword.
“Seven down,” I said. “Five-letter word for nonsense. Try hooey.”
She lifted her blues from the accursed ink. “Hooey, huh?”
I nodded. She scribbled.
“It fits.”
“What can I say? I’m good with words.”
She pointed again. “See how good you are down the hall.” At least this time she smiled.
Down the hall was the Channel 6 newsroom. For four o’clock on a Sunday morning, it had the action thing down pretty well. I was directed to a long row of gray cubicles. Inside the last one I found a thin set of shoulders, hunched over a TV monitor, stopwatch in hand.
“Lisa Bange,” I said.
A large pair of 1950s cat-eye glasses appeared over the top of the TV. Directly underneath said glasses was a pallid face twisted into a silent shriek, masquerading as a smile. How pleasant it all sometimes seems. Until you get out of bed, that is.
“Yes,” she breathed.
I introduced myself. With a pencil Lisa vaguely pointed to a corner set of cubicles. They were green. I assumed that set them apart.
“Over there. Diane wants to speak to you.”
I guess I was supposed to know who Diane was. Not being an avid fan of Channel 6 Action News, I was at a loss. Still, I figured she was the star of this little drama. And she had to be a sight better than Lisa.
“Diane?” I said.
Three heads huddled around a desk turned in perfect sync. They fixed me with a single look, one of practiced disdain. Inside the newsroom Cerberus sat the fatted calf. The pot of gold, if you will, at the end of the Action 6 News rainbow. Also known as the anchorwoman.
“You mean Ms. Lindsay,” said one of the heads.
“I guess so,” I replied.
Quick, like the detective I am, I reached in and spun Her Highness around by the chair. Diane Lindsay gave a bit of a gasp. She had headphones plugged into a small TV set and had not heard a word we said. Across the screen rolled a stretcher. I noted a soft felt hat at the end of the gurney. Two EMTs loaded John Gibbons into an ambulance. Then the tape cut to a single shell casing, cold in the Chicago night.
Ms. Lindsay removed the headset, looked at me, and back at the tape. Then she shut the machine down.
“Mr. Kelly.”
She was good-looking. In a redheaded, cold, clinical sort of way. The kind of person you’d think was attractive if you were into guilt and relentless remorse. I didn’t have a hankering for either. And Ms. Lindsay didn’t seem to take a liking to me anyway. Still, it was four in the morning and I didn’t much give a damn.
“You called me down here,” I said. “I’d like to see the rest of the tape.”
Diane’s acolytes had moved around me in a loose sort of triangle. Two took notes. The other sized me up for the boneyard.
“I believe Ms. Bange told you we could talk about that,” Diane said.
“Yeah, okay. Listen, we don’t talk about anything until we get rid of the audience.”
Diane gave the trio a look, and they loped off to a solitary corner of the newsroom.
“Now, Mr. Kelly. Let’s chat.”
I unclipped the Beretta I’d snuck past the receptionist who, if there was a God in heaven, would have been Lisa Bange. I put the piece on the desk and sat down. Diane took a fresh pencil from the red hive atop her head. Her eyes fastened on the gun as she rammed the wooden end of her number two into an electric sharpener. She brandished the polished lead and pointed to a stack of legal documents that had surfaced at my elbow.
“You’ll have to sign all of these before we can let you view any tape shot by Channel 6.”
“You mean Channel 6 Action News,” I said.
She smiled. I signed.
“There you go. Channel 6 Action News wants to sue me, they get into that long line heading down the Action News corridor.”
I pointed toward the hall. Diane just looked at me.
“Now, Mr. Kelly, how do you know Mr. Gibbons?”
“You mean how did I know Mr. Gibbons? I mean he’s dead, right?”
Diane confirmed with the slightest of nods. John Gibbons was now officially dead.
“He was my partner a while back. On the force.”
“Any idea what he was doing down by the pier?”
“None.”
“He had your card in his pocket.”
“He was a friend.”
“He was shot with a nine-millimeter semiautomatic.” Diane looked across the desk at my piece. I shrugged.
“You’re a private investigator now,” she said.
I gave her a nod. This was getting boring.
“Let me see if I can speed this up for you, Diane. No, we were not working together. And yes, Diane, I might be lying. If we were working together on something, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. Not without getting something in return. Now are you going to roll that tape or do I get to take it home with me?”
“Why do you want the video?” she said.
“The cops tipped you to me, right?”
Now it was her turn to demur.
“Either they think I’m good for the murder,” I said, “which is insane, and therefore probably what you suspect. Or they want to know what Gibbons was working on and they think I might know.”
“What was he working on?”
I studied a piece of green cubicle just above Diane’s head and to the left.
“Look, Kelly,” she said. “You’re right. The cops did tip me. They do want to talk to you.”
The slightest of pauses, and then she continued.
“Now, why would that be?”
I shrugged.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I get anything I think you can use, I’ll let you know. If I can, I’ll do it before I go to the cops. But it’s a two-way street. You screw me and…”
I shrugged again.
“Just don’t screw me.”
“Deal.” Diane stuck out her hand. I held it longer than I wanted.
“Now, how about the tape,” I said.
She pulled a VHS cassette off the desk.
“This is a dub of the footage we shot tonight. You can take it home. With one additional condition.”
“And what might that be?” I said.
“That you take me with you.”
Approximately three and a half minutes later, we were in a cab, heading south on Michigan Avenue.
CHAPTER 4
S o you’re thinking you’re going to turn the page and find me in flagrante delicto with Red. Right? Wrong. Diane was just joking. Some strange brand of anchorwoman humor, no doubt.
She did, however, buy me a drink. In Chicago, at a few minutes before five in the morning, the choices are limited but endlessly interesting. We went to the Inkwell, a local hangout for news types, tucked into the shadow of the Michigan Avenue bridge.
“So, Mr. Kelly.” Diane drank her whiskey neat with a water chaser. I had a Lite beer from Miller. I figured we were both putting on airs.
“So, Ms. Lindsay.”
“Here’s to your friend.”
“Associate,” I said and cracked my tooth on a peanut shell that felt like it was filled with cement. When I opened it, petrified peanuts turned to dust and fell to the floor.
“I hadn’t seen John Gibbons in four years before yesterday afternoon.”
“That’s how he got your card?” Diane said.
“He wanted some help on a case. A woman was assaulted. Long time ago.”
I motioned to the bartender. He was asleep, so I threw a peanut at him. It nearly knocked him into the beer cooler. He came out with another Lite.
“And less than ten hours later, Gibbons winds up shot,” Diane said. “Shot as in dead.”
“The worst kind,” I said.
Diane drained her glass. A fresh one appeared at her elbow.
“You know what we call that in the news business, Mr. Kelly?”
“A coincidence?”
“No, Mr. Kelly. In the news business, that’s a story.”
“I don’t know much about news stories. But I do know a little bit about murder. Gibbons wasn’t the type to go into anything blind. He could handle himself and knew it.”
My little speech gave Diane pause.
“Your friend was shot at a range of one to two feet,” she said and passed over a copy of the initial police report. “He wasn’t carrying a gun and there were no signs of a struggle.”
I glanced through the report and laid it down by my elbow.
“That’s interesting, Ms. Lindsay. But let me ask you a question. How much do you make for a living?”
The anchorwoman shot her glass back to the bar and got up to go. I stopped her in an easy sort of way.
“Now don’t go off getting offended. Let’s say it’s a half million.”
She started to get up again.
“Okay, okay. Let’s say it’s a million. Why does someone who gets paid a million dollars go to her TV station in the middle of the night to cover a story about a retired Chicago cop who gets stiffed?”
Diane smiled. Maybe a little too quick for her own good. Then she turned back to the bartender. I shrugged, walked to a window, and looked out. It was the gray just before morning. Buildings blurred and crowded close together. Wisps of fog slid across the surface of the Chicago River, running fast and steady from the locks and Lake Michigan beyond.
Diane sidled close and offered a fresh drink. This time it was whiskey, like hers. She laid her forehead against the window. The last whispers of night pushed gently against the glass. We stayed that way and watched for a while, until the first cold fingers of dawn brushed the top of the Wrigley Building, moved down the white lady, and pretended to warm the city below.
“What’s your deal, Kelly?”
“Huh?”
She turned and gave me a look only single women over thirty can manage.
“You’re what, thirty-two, thirty-three?”
I took a sip of whiskey and nodded. I was really thirty-five, but what the hell.
“Ever been married?”
I shook my head.
“Engaged?”
Another shake.
“Afraid?”
I shrugged.
She shrugged.
“With these kinds of conversation skills, you should be.”
“I love it when you’re charming,” I said.
“What do you know about the TV business in Chicago?”
“I turn on the TV and there it is.”
“Chicago’s the third-largest market in the country,” she said. “Far and away, the biggest snake pit. I’m in the last year of my contract with a news director who likes blondes and bodies. I have neither.”
I was about to disagree but thought better.
“I need a big story or six months from now I’m shooting consumer pieces in Flint, Michigan. After five years in Chicago, Flint doesn’t work for me. In fact, Flint never worked for me. Bottom line, I just don’t have a lot of time here, Kelly. Then again, if the police are any indication, neither do you.”
At least she smiled when she said it.
***
THE SKY WAS TINGED a smoky sort of pink as we exited the Inkwell. I held the door open for a couple of cops I knew, out-of-uniform guys. They ducked their heads when they saw Diane, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was quiet. Maybe she was thinking about the murder. Maybe she was thinking about going to bed with me. Maybe she was just drunk.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you read through the police report and look at the tapes. Then we can touch base.”
A taxi pulled to the curb. She stepped into the back and rolled down the window.
“Nice meeting you, Mr. Kelly.”
“Bye, Diane.”
The cab began to pull away, then paused.
“Oh, and Mr. Kelly…”
I leaned forward. She did the same. Our faces hovered at the precipice, inches apart.
“Yes, Diane.”
“Whoever killed your friend fired from close range. Makes me think Gibbons must have known his attacker. Probably trusted him.”
I nodded.
“And well, Mr. Kelly, doesn’t that make you a legitimate suspect?”
She blinked once and waited.
“Talk to you, Diane.”
I gave the cab a rap and off it went. She was right, of course. John Gibbons had to have known his killer. And trusted him. Unless the killer was a woman. Then all bets were off.
CHAPTER 5
T he cabbie dropped me a half block from my flat. His rig belched white smoke as it drifted around a corner, and I tasted the grit at the back of my throat. My apartment was one of three in a walk-up graystone. Not a bad place, but better in the summer when Wrigley Field was only two blocks away.
I fully expected to find Chicago’s finest camped on my stoop. Instead, I found the Sunday morning paper and a Saturday evening blonde. Not necessarily in that order.
She scattered a smile around the corners of my doorstep. I stepped forward to inhale as much as I could. I figured she hadn’t opened her mouth yet and this might be as good as it got. I was right.