City of Dark Corners

I lit a nail and leaned against the wall of the booth. Anybody who wanted to use a phone here was out of luck. I should have stayed with Victoria last night, should have accompanied her on the commercial shoot. Should have. Should have.

“The wrong end of my saw, just like Carrie.” It had to be the killer.

Ten minutes more passed and still silence. I looked at the pay phone, willing it to ring.

At fifteen minutes, I fed a coin in the phone, heard it fall into the machine, and called Victoria again, getting no answer. It kept my nickel. Damned Ma Bell. I flipped through the phone book. Banged the phone, inserted another coin, and I called the McCulloch Brothers studio.

“I’m looking for Victoria Vasquez,” I said.

In a moment the most beautiful sound in my life came across the wire: her voice.

“Victoria? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Eugene. What’s wrong?”

In the distance, I heard sirens.

“I think I’ve been duped. Do you still have that .38?”

“Right with me.”

“Good. Please be careful. I love you.”

I hung up before she could respond. I was afraid to know what she might say. Then I ran to my apartment, got in the Ford, and drove toward the Monihon Building.

Three blocks away I could see the fire engines and smoke.

By the time I got there and parked, firemen were setting up fans at the door of Boehmer’s drugs on the first floor. A plume of smoke was wafting as far as Kress. I found Gladys amid the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk. She was wearing her cloche.

“They say someone set off a smoke bomb in the drugstore. We thought it was a fire.”

I cursed and ran for the stairs.

“I locked up!” she called.

But that wasn’t enough. By the time I reached our landing, I was coughing and out of breath, my eyes burning from the smoke. But I could see someone had used a pry bar to wrench open the old wooden door to the outer office. I pulled my M1911 and thumbed back the hammer. Then I slowly pushed the door open.

The outer office was undisturbed, and no bad guy awaited me. The accountant’s door was fine. The same could not be said for mine. The door to my inner office had received the same pry-bar treatment, with the knob and lock sitting on the wooden floor. Again, I carefully pushed the door fully open and traversed the room with the barrel of my gun. Whoever had been here was gone. The safe was undisturbed, while all the drawers of my desk were thrown onto the floor and given a quick shake. He didn’t have enough time to get in my filing cabinet, which was locked anyway.

But Carrie’s letters and diary were gone.

He was a cool operator, knowing I had taken the streetcar to work and was without a car, so he could run me around on foot, get me out of the building so he could set off the smoke bomb in the pharmacy, watch people evacuate the upper floors, then make his move. Crack open the doors, make a quick ransack of my office with the biggest prize sitting right on top of the desk. He might have made the call to me at the Rexall from right here, with firemen and bystanders down below. Very slick. Very nervy.

I holstered my gun and stared at the disaster that was my empty blotter. How could I have been so careless? If I had ten minutes to get to the Rexall, what difference would it have made to pause a few seconds and lock up this critical evidence in the safe? But at the time I was only thinking of Victoria, fearful she would end up dead and dismembered.

Now I was left with a good memory of the snippets I had read of Carrie’s last months. It was so little to go on, leaving far more questions. As I opened windows in the office to let the smoke vent, I imagined the burglar tossing Carrie’s love letters and diary into an incinerator. I tasted the ashes and cursed under my breath.

* * *

Angry and anxious to retake the offensive, I drove south across the tracks to where the Mexican part of Grant Park turned Negro. The individual houses were small and old, many going back to the 1890s or earlier, some on meticulously cared-for lots, others on weedy dirt. I knew some of their floors were dirt and outhouses were common. But given the age of the area, for most of the year it benefited from an abundant shade canopy.

At Hadley Street, I spun into a dusty lot before a tar-paper building with double screen doors. Don’t be fooled by the Barq’s root beer strips on the door handles—“Drink Barq’s, It’s Good”—this was a colored speakeasy and juke joint.

I could hear jazz coming from a jukebox and laughter, but when I stepped inside, all went quiet. Three pool tables, a jukebox, tables and chairs, a bar. Six young colored men stared at me. One started a military-like drill with his pool stick, while his friend tossed a cue ball in his hand. It was as white as he was black and would find an easy mark on my forehead, if the cat with the pool stick didn’t get to me first.

He said, “Lost your way, Officer?”

Suddenly the entire door behind me was filled with a giant. Cyrus Cleveland doffed his hat and stepped in the room.