I CALLED LAURA FIRST. I pulled the phone as close to the overheating radiator as I could, and left the window shut. I had caught a chill outside.
Laura picked up on the fifth ring. She sounded harried. When she realized it was me, she said, “I’ve only got a minute, Smokey.”
I needed more than a minute to tell her about Lacey. “I have something important to tell you, and some questions to ask. Are you free for lunch?”
“I’m not free for anything.” I could hear shuffling in the background. She was doing something else while she was talking to me. “In addition to a series of regular meetings I have to be at, I’m supposed to drop in at the Home Furnishings Show at the Merchandise Mart. There are people there I need to talk to. And then I’m supposed to meet with some professors in the University of Chicago’s Center for Continuing Education. They’re sponsoring that conference this weekend on urban housing and they want some of the building owners there. I’m pretty sure they’re going to just smear us as
slumlords, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. So, long story short, I’m not sure I have time for anything.”
“It’s important,” I repeated.
She sighed. “Life-and-death important?”
It was last night. “Not quite that. But close, yes.”
All the sound of shuffling stopped. “You heard my schedule, Smokey,” she said. “I can’t come down to the South Side this afternoon.”
“What about your university meeting? I could find you on campus.”
“They’re coming here. If you and I have lunch, it’ll have to be brief, and it’ll have to be in the Loop. I know you’ve been avoiding it since the trial started, but I have no choice today.”
I couldn’t tell her that I’d been in the Loop the night before. Of course, the Chicago Seven trial had been closed for the day and none of those courageous national reporters had hung around.
“Do you know any place not frequented by the players in the trial?” I asked.
She gave a bitter laugh. “They spread out over the Loop like locusts. Maybe the Terminal Grill?”
I shuddered. “It’s pretty rundown, Laura.”
“The reporters and people you know will be in all the nice restaurants.”
“How about a meal at your desk? I’ll bring something good.”
“That’ll do,” she said. “I’ve got 12:30 to 1:30 and I’m pretty inflexible about it.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up. If I had to go to the Loop, then I needed to be visible for the shortest period of time. I could park nearby and head up to Laura’s office, and be on the street for only a few minutes, as opposed to sitting in a restaurant, maybe attracting attention from someone I didn’t even see.
Still, I didn’t like going there. But I had no real choice. Both Jimmy and Franklin would talk to her as quickly as they could.
This afternoon was the only chance I had to speak to her first.
I carried the phone back to its end table, and then went into the kitchen. I poured myself some coffee. It wasn’t even seven-thirty and I was already on my second cup. It was going to be a long day.
I brought the coffee into my office. I had left the desk lamp on after Franklin’s call this morning. I took the old blotter and shoved it aside, then unwrapped 1970 from its cellophane.
It felt like the year was already half over and we hadn’t been in it for a week. I tossed out the cellophane, then sat in the chair I had found at a yard sale. The chair, at least, felt familiar. I grabbed the coffee cup, set it on the old blotter because I didn’t want to stain the new one on its first day, and dialed Sinkovich.
I had met Jack Sinkovich sixteen months ago when he was one of the undercover police officers keeping an eye on the
protestors in Lincoln Park. Later that week, he beat up kids outside of Grant Park during the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Those demonstrations were at the heart of the Chicago Seven trial right now. The state claimed that the seven defendants had crossed state lines with the intent to start a riot. Sinkovich was one of a handful of cops who had been ordered by the department to attend, mostly as “protection” detail in case anything happened.
Sinkovich believed he was there so that any testimony he would be called to give would be tainted because he’d heard the entire case.
Since his behavior in Grant Park, Sinkovich had changed. That night disturbed him, and some interactions with me and, in particular, Jimmy, forced him to reconsider long-held beliefs. He defended a black family who moved into his neighborhood, prompting his wife to leave because she didn’t know him anymore.
Sinkovich was one of the first people I had ever met who was actively trying to become someone else.
I had no idea if he would succeed, and that really wasn’t my concern at the moment. My concern was this: Since the death of my only other contact on the force, I had to rely on Sinkovich for police department information.
Sinkovich answered the phone mid-ring. He didn’t say hello. Instead, he said, “You know, Grimshaw, you’re the only person who calls me before eight in the morning.”
“Some day someone else will,” I said, “and they’ll ask you who this Grimshaw guy is.”
“I’ll say he’s a pain in my rear end. Which, by the way, is wearing dress blues. I just put the galoshes over my most uncomfortable shoes, and I’m ready to head out the door, so unless this is important, you gotta talk to me tonight.”
“I need your help, Jack,” I said.
“Ain’t it always the way?” he asked.
It wasn’t always that way. When his wife left, I let him sleep on my couch. His friends had turned their back on him too, and the police department saw him as damaged goods.
But I wasn’t going to say that right now, particularly when I was about to ask him for a favor.
“Look, it’s come to my attention that the Starlite Hotel near Jimmy’s school is a by-the-hour place. I was wondering who owns it and if this is a new trend or something else.”
“‘It’s come to my attention?’ You only talk fancy like that when you done something you don’t want me to know.” Sinkovich might’ve been difficult, but he wasn’t dumb.
“You said you were in a hurry.” I sipped my coffee. It was hot, and it started to warm me.
“I don’t know nothing about the Starlite, I don’t know which school is Jimmy’s, and if I don’t leave now, I’m gonna be late, and I don’t need the hassle. You won’t tell me if we’re gonna partner up and as long as you don’t say nothing about that, I gotta be a good boy at the station, or they’ll fire my ass. I can’t afford it, not with the divorce shit raining down. So, I’m outta here.”
He’d been asking me to consider working with him in our own detective agency. I had been putting him off. He was afraid he would have nothing if he got fired from the force.
Still, I was going to let the “partner up” comment slide. “This is the address of Jimmy’s school.” I gave it to him. “Can you at least find out about the Starlite for me?”
“I’m gonna be sittin’ on my ass all day listening to lawyers pretend they’re fightin’ for justice, and then there’s that idiot judge. Yesterday, our fat slug of a mayor shows up and lies through his teeth about what he done. And we’re supposed to work for the SOB! I gotta look real serious and professional and like none of this means nothing to me, and my face is starting to hurt, Bill.”
“I understand,” I said, wishing I could get him to stop.
“No, you don’t. You wouldn’t do it. You’d protest something or punch someone or something. Me, I gotta put up with it for my kid. And then you ask me to look into some hotel like I got all the time in the world—”
“It’s for my kid,” I said quietly.
That stopped him. Sinkovich thought the world of Jimmy.
“He get in trouble?”
“He might have,” I said.
“With someone in a by-the-hour hotel?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Shit, that kid. What’re you teaching him?”
“Before you judge, you need to hear the full story.”
“Oh, yeah, like I got time. I don’t leave now, I don’t get a parking spot, and I have to use one of them cop parking signs you put on your dash which’ll get me in even more hot water with the department. You say this is an emergency?”
I wouldn’t put it like that, I nearly said, then stopped myself. It had been an emergency yesterday, and if Voss were still around, it might’ve been one today.
“It’s pretty urgent,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll have something for you end of the day whenever the hell that is. I’ll get in touch with you. Can I leave a message with the kid?”
“Only that you called. You can’t tell him what it was about.”
“Got it,” Sinkovich said. “Pray for me and my ass. We’re about to have a long day.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I said, but he had already hung up.
I ran a hand over my face. The fact that he hadn’t heard of the Starlite meant nothing. More than three million people lived in the city of Chicago, more than 228 square miles, and the police force of ten thousand couldn’t begin to know everything, even if it patrolled the South Side, which it mostly did not.
I knew all of that extremely well. I had learned all of the statistics so that I could keep myself calm when I got angry because I assumed someone should have known about some crime or another. Or some place like the Starlite.
Sinkovich would find out what he could from a desk in the precinct after his long day.
I needed to find out a few things as well. Early morning was probably the best time to do so.
I finished my coffee, shut off my desk lamp, and went to work.