Michael Harvey - The Chicago Way

“You’re the best I ever worked with,” Gibbons continued. “You know it. I know it. Everyone on the force knew it. If you can help out, I’d be grateful.”

The Irishman threw an envelope across the table. I opened it up and enjoyed the warm feeling money can sometimes give a person. Then I looked up and across the desk.

“Tell me about the girl,” I said.

Gibbons began to talk. I picked up the letter and, reluctantly, began to read.

The phone rang at three-thirty the next morning. I didn’t want the phone to be ringing at three-thirty. But there it was.

I reached for the receiver and knocked the whole thing onto the floor. Then I got up to turn on the light and hit my toe on the steel footing of the nightstand. I cursed appropriately and picked up the receiver. The voice at the other end was breathy, but one I didn’t recognize.

“Mr. Kelly?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Is this Mr. Kelly?”

I answered who else would it be, and wondered about the face attached to the voice.

“Mr. Kelly, this is Lisa Bange calling from Channel 6 Action News.”

Three questions buzzed through the early morning fog I call my brain: What kind of woman has a last name of Bange? Why was Channel 6 Action News calling me at three-thirty in the morning? And what kind of woman has a last name of Bange?

“Hi, Lisa Bange,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“We are calling to get a comment-”

Lisa stopped and I heard some voices argue at the other end of the line.

“Mr. Kelly?”

“Still here,” I said.

A bated Bange breath.

“Sorry,” she said.

“So, Lisa. Here we are. Just you, me, and three-thirty in the morning.”

“Yes, Mr. Kelly. I’m calling to see if you have any comment on the shooting death of a Mr. John Gibbons.”

I keep a copy of the Iliad in the original Greek on the dresser next to my bed. Beside it is Richard Lattimore’s translation. The only translation worth owning as far as I can see. Behind these volumes sits a nine-millimeter Beretta in a holster. Lattimore might not appreciate the subtlety; Odysseus certainly would. I checked the clip on the Beretta, then the safety. Lisa kept talking.

“He was shot twice. In the stomach, I think. Down by Navy Pier. But not in the water. Mr. Kelly?”

“Yes, Lisa.”

“Well, your business card was found on his person. And so we just thought…”

“Where you located, Lisa?”

She seemed surprised. Like everyone in the city of Chicago knew where Channel 6 Action News was.

“Three hundred North McClurg Court.”

“Do you have footage of the crime scene?” I said.

“B-roll? Sure.”

“I’ll give you a statement, and you let me look at what you have. Deal?”

Lisa was in over her head. But I knew the voices were there. After a moment she came back on the line.

“Deal.”

“See you, Lisa.”

I hung up the phone and got dressed.

The first thing I noticed about Channel 6 was the slant. Not an editorial slant. Channel 6 was built on a landfill and in the process of sliding into Lake Michigan. The smart guys among us would deem both landfill and the notion of sliding into an abyss appropriate analogies for Chicago’s local news. Not being a smart guy, I was there for Lisa Bange.

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.