The Blackmail Club (23 page)

Jack’s thoughts were interrupted when Tyson hung up the phone. “Hello, Artie,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I’d catch you in this early.”

“Early? Shit. This is the back end of yesterday. I work nights. Sleep afternoons.” He thrust his chin forward like a fighting cock. “What do you want?”

“You invited me to come see you. Promised to explain the ins and outs of being a DC snoop dick, if I recall your phrase.” Jack’s attempt to match Tyson’s smirk failed.

Tyson reached in a bottom drawer and brought out a bottle of whiskey grasped by the neck. On the return trip, his hand brought up two stubby glasses decorated with smudges; his index finger deep inside one, his wide thumb getting personal with the second. He poured a big gulp into each. Then stared at Jack like a dim bulb stares from the far end of a dark hallway.

“Quit fencing, McCall,” Tyson said. “That’s not what brung ya. You’re uptown. Me, I’m skidsville. I know it. What the hell you want?” Tyson picked up the index-finger glass, inclined it toward Jack and chugged its contents in one swallow. Jack left the wide-thumb glass sitting.

Jack had learned the word
gumshoe
for private investigators watching detective movies from the forties. He couldn’t recall ever having used it before, but gumshoe fit Tyson and his rumpled office. Still, Tyson had been right. They were sniffing each other like a couple of circling dogs.

“Okay, Artie. Here’s a part of it. We know you were a silent partner for Tittle and his bag man for protec—”

“An old rumor,” he bellowed. “Ancient history. Get to the point, McCall. Spit it out.” He illustrated “spit it out” by squirting a dark stringy clump of tobacco juice into the spittoon next to his desk. Thus, answering one question: the spittoon was an accessory and not noir deco.

“For curiosity’s sake, tell me one thing?”

“If I can, sure,” Tyson said, “one PI to another.” Tyson made a noise that sounded half snuff and half snort.

Jack hadn’t been invited to sit, but he did after picking up the files from the dirty beige chair and stacking them on top of some cameras and recording equipment on the floor along the wall.

A cockroach scampered out of one of the folders when Jack started to pick them up off the desk. Tyson hammered the roach with the flat of his hand and swept the twitching remains off his palm and into the spittoon, then wiped his hand on his pants. Then he returned his attention to Jack. “So ask. I ain’t got all day.” Then he shrugged, picked up the thumb glass and took its contents in a single swallow.

“At my open house you went to speak with Mayor Molloy. Almost the moment you got to him, he started shaking his head. To what was he saying no?”

“Hell, who knows. I’d had a few that night to celebrate your opening. I don’t even remember speaking to Molloy. I ain’t exactly in the mayor’s inner circle.”

“You mean your poker games with the mayor aren’t on his social calendar?”

Tyson’s squint pouched his cheeks up to smear the bottom edge of his glasses. He again spat at his spittoon. “Well, aren’t you Sam Fuckin’ Spade.”

Jack considered that a compliment, but Tyson had gotten the middle name wrong.

He decided not to ask Tyson if he had been outside Sarah Andujar’s house that first morning. He wouldn’t get anything out of Tyson unless he had him by the short hairs, and he didn’t. Not yet.

Jack stood.

Tyson stood also, his belly closing the desk’s partially opened pencil drawer. He hacked up a mouth wad and fired it at the spittoon. This time he missed. The two men stood temporarily mesmerized by the green slime slithering down the side of the desk.

“You got more to say, McCall?” Tyson asked after sitting back down.

“That’s it for now, Artie. That is, unless you wanna talk about why Donny Andujar was so eager to get Jena Moves on her back with Randolph Harkin?”

Tyson’s smirk disappeared. He refilled the void with a hard, blank look. Then he laughed. “Donny runs whores. The whole town knows it. I’ve been in there enough to know that Jena Moves had what it took from her hips to her lips. He prob’ly just wanted another working mattress-back. Now, if that’s all, I got to be excusing myself.”

Jack decided to skip shaking Tyson’s roach-crusted hand. “Thanks, Artie. You were thoughtful enough to visit my office. I wanted to repay the courtesy. I’ll see you around.”

Jack had turned his back and taken the two steps necessary to reach for the knob when he heard a chair screech hard and hit the wall. He spun around.

“Interesting interrogation, McCall. Me, an ex-copper versus you, ex-king-shit spook.” The vein in Tyson’s temple twitched to its own rhythm. “I put four killers in the ground and another dozen in the can, and the city threw me out like I was garbage.”

Tyson used the back of his hand to wipe away a stringy white substance that had bunched up at the corner of his mouth.

Jack moved closer, Tyson’s desk standing as a demilitarized zone. “I guess some of us just get the breaks, Artie. I’m leaving now, unless you have something else you wanna say.”

Tyson hacked again and leaned toward his spittoon, then swung his head around and spit whatever he had brought up onto Jack’s face.

Jack wiped his face with his hand, wiped his hand on his shirt, and wiped Tyson’s grin with his fist. The fat gumshoe went down like a puppet without strings.

The surveillance equipment stacked in the corner beside the room’s one file cabinet was the same kind that had been installed in the office of Dr. Karros.

Jack left Arthur Tyson, Private Investigator, after dumping the contents of his spittoon over him from grin to groin.

Chapter 35

Jack stopped at home, tore off his shirt, threw it away, took a quick shower, and changed into a fresh pair of slacks and a shirt he had just picked up at the cleaners. He was meeting Max for lunch. While sliding his feet into a pair of black loafers, Drummy called.

“Your place was clean, but I hit the jackpot at Nora’s. There was a wireless near her living room phone and another in the bedroom. The conversations pass to a CD in a micro recorder hidden in some rocks out front so he can swap it out without having to get inside her place.”

“That doesn’t sound like the kind of stuff you found at Dr. Karros’s.”

“For sure, this equipment is up to date. The CD will hold a ton.”

“Anyway to trace it?”

“I’m still here; you want it out?”

Jack rubbed his chin. “We have to assume it was put there by the blackmailer. What’s your guess on why the equipment is more state-of-the-art than what we found in Karros’s office?”

“The easy answer is two different installers; but this kind of work isn’t usually a team sport. One thing that is certain, the guy who would use what’s here wouldn’t be caught dead using the junk in the doctors’ offices. The two may not be related. This one could be a curious lover. Is Nora dating anyone in the business?”

“Not that I know of. Let’s leave it in place. Since Benny Haviland was killed, maybe the blackmailer got a new electronics man. Then again, Haviland could have planted the bugs making a new installer necessary. Maybe his loot from the blackmailings let him upgrade. We could guess all day. Whoever it is, he’ll be eager to keep up with what’s on it. I’ll alert Nora. Maybe we can use it to flush him out. There are some trees in front of her place. Can you set up a camera so we can see whoever comes for it?”

“Piece of cake. And I’ll bring you a remote that will let Nora check from inside the house to see if any pictures have been taken.”

The restaurant where Jack was meeting Max had a counter with round stools and a dozen or so booths covered with red checkered oilcloths. The menu featured sandwiches named after Hollywood stars. The place was a throwback to the days when if it wasn’t cooked on a grill, it came out of a deep fryer, so the food tasted great. Every time Jack drove by, the place was packed with people breathing grease and treating their mouths to a good time.

Jack ordered his usual, the Humphrey Bogart. Max’s choice, a hotdog named the George Hamilton. They both backed up their sandwiches with a Killian Red Ale. He brought Max current on the investigation before saying, “You made quite an impression on Mary Lou. Thanks for handling the biker.”

“You’ve seen his type, boss, loud and nasty disguised as tough.”

“I’m just glad you came by when you did.”

“You know, if I’d have called in Metro for the assault on Mary Lou, Phoebe Ziegler might still be alive.”

“Max, you know better than to armchair quarterback these things. Hell, I could say the same. If I had given Suggs Donny’s confession that named George Rockton as one of his goons that beat me up, Rockton might’ve been arrested. In either event, the biker would have been out on bail fast and might well have still raped and murdered Phoebe Ziegler. This thinking also assumes the blackmailer had no other muscle than Rockton, and we don’t know that either.”

“That’s good rationalizing, boss, but still—”

“Still nothing,” Jack said sharply. “The bottom line is we had an investigation underway regarding Dr. Chris Andujar. We knew of no credible threat to Phoebe, hell, no threat whatsoever. Rockton chose to commit a crime. No one is at fault for that but Rockton.”

The waitress, wearing a checkerboard apron that matched the oilcloths on the tables, brought them their orders. Max raised his Killian Red. “Here’s to confusion for all the enemies of the Irish.”

Jack raised his glass and they each took a drink.

“Okay, boss. I don’t figure you’re bribing me with this here George Hamilton just to talk about Mr. Smelly?”

“You’re right,” Jack said through a big grin. “I need to know about Mayor Patrick Molloy. Family background. Real stuff, without the public polish. The mayor’s Irish and you’re Scottish and Irish. You once told me that your families came here when you two were boys. You okay with my asking?”

“When we was kids the mayor and me was real chums, but for the past twenty-five years he’s acted like he never knew me. I got no grudge, but I got no problem telling you what I know. It’s all ancient history though.”

Max, not a guy for those fancy mustards, lathered his dog in plain yellow, sprinkled on onions, and suffocated it with pickle relish. Max looked up. “What? A man has to eat his greens.” He winked and took a first bite.

“Ancient history is exactly what I’m after,” Jack said. “I need a peak at the real guy.”

“My family and Patrick Molloy’s family left Chicago for DC on my ninth birthday. Patrick was a few months younger than me—still is fer that matter. Before we was born, Patrick’s daddy, Sean Molloy, and my pa, Alastair Logan, met in Chicago where they both worked for the Irish racketeer Dion O’Banion. In the beginning they both drove beer trucks. My pa stayed a driver, saying he had to provide for his family and that the silliness of prohibition made it okay to deliver for a bootlegger. Sean Molloy, the way my pa told me, let his ambitions reshape his sense of right and wrong, and over time Sean moved up in O’Banion’s mob from driver to enforcer to all-around hooligan.”

Max paused to take the second bite of his George Hamilton. By the length left, Jack estimated that for Max a hot dog took three bites. When the waitress came by, Max, busy chewing, hand signaled for another Hamilton dog.

Jack picked up the second half of his Bogey, a dill rye sandwich made with meat loaf cooked with cut up carrots and mixed-in cheese and layered with slices of bread-and-butter pickles. Along with the sandwich the place served pan-fried, diced new potatoes that Max explained in South Ireland were called English Queens.

“Wasn’t O’Banion the competing bootlegger Al Capone had gunned down in a flower shop?”

“That’d be O’Banion.” Max’s second dog arrived and he set to dressing it while he talked. “In the mid-twenties, three killers, probably out-of-town talent so they wouldn’t be recognized, walked into O’Banion’s flower shop like they was customers. One guy shook O’Banion’s hand to keep him from drawing his piece while the other two pumped O’Banion full of lead. After that, our papas went to work for Bugs Moran, a half Irishman who took over O’Banion’s mob.

“In twenty-nine, Capone came after Moran by engineering what the press called the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. They killed off a bunch of his boys but missed Moran, who wasn’t at the scene. It finished Moran as a big shot though. Patrick’s daddy, Sean, got killed in a gun fight in ‘42. Patrick, still a wee lad, never remembered his pa. My pa kept on as Bugs Moran’s chauffeur until Moran left Chicago for Ohio. That’s when we all came to DC. My pa died about fifteen years ago; the doc labeled it natural causes.”

Jack moved his sandwich back from his mouth.

“I’ve seen pictures of Mayor Molloy with an old man identified as his father. Is he a stepfather?”

Max talked around bite one of dog two. “That’d be Patrick’s uncle, Liam, his pa’s younger brother. The mayor and his momma came to live with Liam after Sean went down for the count in Chi-town. Liam’s old; he must be, I don’t know, ninety maybe. He’s a good man. He’s raised Patrick as his own. To Patrick and the world his uncle is his papa.”

Max inserted bite two of dog two while Jack asked, “Why did your families pick DC?”

Jack waited while Max chewed and washed the bite down with a gulp of his red ale.

“The mayor’s ma picked DC ‘cause Liam lived here and he would take ‘em in, that simple. As for my folks, my ma wanted my pa out of the rackets. DC got ‘im away from the Irish hooligans in both Chicago and New York.”

Jack dropped his napkin in his plate and pushed it aside. “Is your mother still alive?”

“No,” Max said with his eyes shut. “Momma, God rest her soul, was the last of the adults in my family to be born and raised in the land of our ancestors. She grew up in Ireland and then lived in Scotland with my pa before they came to the States. I have no brothers or sisters, and my Colleen could not carry a child.” His voice got distant. “We talked about adopting, but never got it done. I don’t expect to be procreating—how’s that for a big word—at my age, so, unless I got a relative the family never spoke about, I’m the last of the Logans.”